Chapter Two - More Bark than Bite

Oak surveyed the lands that had once been the Deepwoods and, in the depths of his soul, he wept.

He knew the woods were shrinking, he had seen the devastation of the woodcutters and the Destroyer at work. And yet, despite this, he had never seen the swaths of missing trees or smelled the desperate pleas of a million torn plants in the air. Even the insects swarmed away from the field of stumps, and the few creatures running about did so fitfully and with skittish fear.

The cause was just beyond the rise of a hill.

The Destroyer and his followers lived in a small camp. No walls, just buildings made of fallen trees set next to a flowing river. The largest of the buildings had a wheel set in the side that spun in the water and created a noise not dissimilar to the cruel saws they used to slice apart trees.

The camp had once been in the Darkwoods, but with time the Destroyer had cut and chopped and annihilated a circle around his home.

Oak shifted with the winds, his resolve and determination waxing and waning even as the sun slowly crept above.

Then he saw his nemesis step out of one of the shacks, an axe over a shoulder and a wide grin on his scarred face. The man was large, nearly as tall and wide as Oak himself, with arms so thick that his patterned red shirt couldn’t hide the muscles hidden beneath.

The Destroyer set his axe to the side and tied his boots, then, with a jovial laugh that the winds carried all the way to Oak, he spoke in his man-tongue to the others around him and an entire group set out towards the woods, towards Oak.

It was now or never.

Oak stood up and slung his bandoleer off his shoulder. It was a simple thing, made of vines and flexible branches that he had molded together with his woodcraft. He had a spear, long and just a little flexible, just as the girl had showed him. At its tip was a large wooden leaf with sharpened edges.

Next he found his bow. It was a little more crude. The cord he used was made of braided vines. Complicated to make, and not as good as he would have liked, but the flexible wood of the bow itself made up for it. His arrows went far and they went fast.

He pressed a foot into the ground and arrows sprouted up around him like strange flowers. Not all were straight or as sharp as he would have liked, but they would work.

He nocked the first, pulled back the string until the bow’s haft strained, then loosed.

The arrow flew fast and far. And it sailed over the Destroyer’s head.

The men stopped. Some looking back to where the shaft had gone, others lifted axes and saws up to their chests.

His second arrow was fired with more strength, but just as with the first the only thing it punctured was the afternoon’s quiet.

The Destroyer locked eyes with him.

Something was shouted by the menfolk and some ran back to their camp. Others sought shelter behind fallen trunks.

Oak’s third arrow flew true. He paused to watch it slice through the air on a direct path to the Destroyer and his heart sang as he imagined the monster failing in the face of his tool.

Then the Destroyer shifted his axe and the arrow clattered against the thick steel head, shattering apart and spraying wooden pieces all across the Destroyer’s front.

Oak tossed his bow aside. Perhaps Wisp would find it when all was done? He took his spear and began to walk towards the Destroyer. The man returned the favour, stepping up with sure footfalls that trampled twigs and shortened the distance.

He was, deep down at the core of his body, terrified. This was the Destroyer, the one that ruined everything. He was a monster to be feared. But Oak had tools now, things would be different.

Their charge was met, Oak’s spear shooting forwards to stab at the Destroyer who, with a swing of his axe’s haft, shoved the blow aside.

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The axe shifted until the Destroyer was holding it near the head and, with a short chop, the end of Oak’s spear fell apart.

A set back.

Oak moved to the side, and when the Destroyer came for him again he tossed the broken spear at the man. The distraction was enough. Oak summoned a second spear, the same as the first.

This time the wide-eyed Destroyer, caught off guard by the second tool, did not stop the stab in time.

The tip sank into his thick thigh.

Oak wanted to grin, to join the birds in their joyous song as he saw a trickle of blood come pouring out of the Destroyer’s leg.

He had done it, he had proven the man’s mortality!

Then the Destroyer roared and any such thoughts fled Oak as he was faced with the man’s wrath. Down the axe came, and even with Oak’s spear in its path it still came crashing down.

Oak had seen boulders tumbling down from great heights before, especially in the north where the mountains were cracked by windy erosions. Huge stones would dislodge themselves from the cliff-like walls of the mountain and with great weight would come hurtling down.

The axe, likewise, would not be stopped.

His spear didn’t shatter so much as it simply gave way to the axe. Then the head dug into his chest.

Oak was already stepping back, roots shifting over a stump behind him in an attempt to get out of the Destroyer’s path. It was the only thing that spared him.

He gasped as a hot slice was torn out of his front, bark rent and sap flowing.

The axe was yanked back and Oak almost came with it.

He faced the Destroyer and in that moment knew that he would not live to see the night.

But he couldn’t afford to die, not yet.

Magic pushed into the ground beneath him. Flowers began sprouting all around, large bushes with thorny vines and great flowers that shone brightly.

When Oak fell the many bushes around him swayed to cover him.

He knew the healing arts, the ways to mend a wounded tree and how to cover a cut like the one he had received, but these would take time.

The axe cutting apart a layer of the bushed above told him that he had none.

Oak turned onto his front, head rising just enough to see the woods not a hundred strides away.

He could make it.

A hand pressed against the gash on his front, the dryad shot out of the bushes with all of the flexibility and speed he could muster. It wasn’t much, and it certainly wasn’t enough.

The Destroyer roared like one of the bears living deep in the woods and ran around the bushes Oak had erected.

He realized he wouldn’t make it soon after.

His next step was atop a torn trunk, and in that fleeting moment he could feel the life mana left in the roots of the torn tree, could feel the eagerness to try and grow to flourish once more.

Oak pulled, and from that stump came a wall of spears like the prickly back of a hedgehog.

It made the Destroyer pause, at least until his axe glowed and with a swipe he tore apart Oak’s wall as if it were little more than a pile of Autumn leaves.

Oak had gained some distance in that time, some room to spare between himself and the enraged man.

He ran. There was no looking back, no looking over his shoulder to see a rushing Destroyer and no second chances to be taken. The woods loomed large and safe before him, and like a squirrel being chased by a wolf.

Trees flew past, then bushes and stones and soon Oak’s legs ached and his body could take no more. He collapsed to the ground, crashing into loamy earth and resting beneath the shadows of a dozen trees.

He waited for the axe to fall, but it never came.

Instead, Oak wallowed in his own losses, his life sap slowly seeping away. He had failed.

***