The Wandering Woods II
Having ventured deep within the forest and reached its center, it would be bad form to leave without greeting your host.
Requirements:
Gain an audience with the king of the forest.
???
Rewards:
+2500xp
Variable dependent upon method of completion.
Especially with the incomplete requirement section, the quest felt alarmingly nebulous. Even ignoring that aspect, I wasn’t liking my odds of reaching said “heart tree.” Something told me the many sentries wouldn’t appreciate it if I tried to breach their perimeter without permission.
On the plus side, the quest description emboldened Verin, placing her more in her element. Never mind that the sentries were still just as powerful and just as likely to pulp us for some perceived transgression. Phrases like “greeting your host” and “king of the forest” activated the noble like a sleeper agent, and she immediately broke out of her icy cocoon.
“Curious. I would not have expected anyone to be holding court within such a region. Do you suppose the central tree is some form of palace, then, with the king living in its center?”
I couldn’t detect any signs that people were living within the tree, but I hoped so. Maybe they had better beds, or a real kitchen. Given the forest denizens we’d spotted so far, I tried not to get my hopes up. I sincerely doubted the king in question was human, and his idea of creature comforts might be very far removed from mine.
Although, maybe we can snag a few rooms for ourselves if we play our cards right.
Before I could get lost in pleasant thoughts of living in a palace instead of a cabin, Verin tugged on my arm.
“Come. I do not know if the king has already been made aware of our presence, but either way, it would be rude to keep him waiting. I will do my best to gain us an audience.” Despite her low Strength, her grip was firm as she fearlessly led us towards the very same creatures she’d feared moments before.
To her credit, the golems made no move to attack, even as we approached. Moving straight to the two sentries guarding the bridge inwards, Verin launched into a measured speech.
“Greetings. I am Verin’Sylus, high noble and prospective head of Sylum and its surrounding territories. Alongside me stands my companion, Tess, god-touched ruler of the ancient city of Emer’Thalis. While we apologize for our unannounced arrival, we would be honored to pay our respects to his Highness at his leisure, should he be so amenable.”
Though her Charisma was much diminished after changing her class, I swore I could physically feel it as her Etiquette pushed up against the sentry. If we were dealing with a standard guard, I had little doubt that they would be running inside to deliver her message.
As it was, the golem merely stood there, impassively.
While Verin was likely prepared for all manner of reactions, it was clear that she was not geared to receive only silence. “Perhaps there is a dedicated functionary we must speak to further in? Or it is possible they communicate at a distance, and the message has already been passed on.”
Either way, Verin wasn’t going to let such a minor obstacle stop her. “If you have no qualms with our presence, then I will approach the palace to announce my arrival in person. Please let us know if we should continue to wait, or if you have been instructed to prevent us from moving forward.”
When, once again, she was met with only silence, Verin nodded, turning back to me. “I have relayed my intentions, and they remain entirely docile. I would suggest proceeding for now, and if they attempt to stop us, to take it gracefully and back off.”
I was uneasy moving between the high-leveled golems, but barring us storming in, guns ablaze, I had no better solution.
Sensing my acceptance, Verin once more grabbed my hand and tugged me forward, confidently stepping onto the bridge leading to the central tree.
The golems’ response was immediate.
From their gnarled hands, a root shot off from each of the sentries. With razor-sharp tips and speeds that belied their wielders’ lumbering forms, the attacks whizzed through the air, en route to run Verin through. Before I could fully process what I was seeing, the attacks were already halfway to skewering Verin.
With another ten points in Dexterity, I might have been able to react perfectly. I would summon a sword and deftly chop the roots apart before they closed the distance. As it was, it was all I could do to jerkily thrust my gauntleted hands in front of the projectiles, arms spread wide to block the attacks from opposite directions. Without time to wrest my hand from Verin’s grip, I was forced to yank her to the side, barely managing to activate Overload Armor before the strikes landed.
Piercing Root hits you for 5 damage!
Piercing Root hits you for 6 damage!
Breaking through my mana armor, the roots managed to strike the plate mail underneath, denting the metal and leaving my hands smarting. If that was the worst of it, however, things would have been fine.
Though deflected by my armor, the roots didn’t recoil or retreat. One was sent off at an angle, harmlessly smashing into the ground below.
As for the one that hit the hand still gripping Verin, it slid down the path of least resistance.
Not even sensing the attack until it was already biting into her, Verin cried out in both pain and shock as the root gouged out a bloody furrow in her arm.
Flash Feet. Not waiting for another round of blows to arrive, I grabbed onto Verin and jumped back, hugging her to my chest. The entire time, I trained my eyes on every groove and ridge of our wooden foes, ready to react to whatever else they might throw our way.
As if warded off by my vigilance, however, the next attacks never came.
The entire clearing seemed to freeze in place, save for Verin. The noble did her best to muffle her pained hiss, even as she clutched at her arm, a steady stream of blood falling down to water the earth. As much as I wanted to heal her, I worried that the slightest misstep would sick the sentries on us once more.
Slowly, I began to move back, dragging Verin along with me. Step by step, we retreated until we reached the edge of the clearing. At last marginally letting my guard down, I immediately started to cast Minor Healing on Verin. If nothing else, I was glad the spell’s Initiate augment had given it a small boost to blood regeneration.
My measly cantrip wasn’t up to the task of completely healing Verin in one cast, but I didn’t let that discourage me, casting it over and over until the flesh knit itself back together. It was only then that Verin allowed herself to speak, her arm going slack as I held it.
“Lady Tess. I am afraid I was not successful in securing an audience.”
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In a kinder world, that would have been the end of things. After having twin roots nearly quarter Verin, we would have retreated back to the cabin and carried on without giving the golems another thought.
Unfortunately, this was not a kinder world, and both of us had been through far worse. Even for Verin, who was normally insulated from the worst of the damage, a single near-death experience wasn’t enough to send her packing. Admittedly, whether she was actually okay, or she was just hiding her shaky nerves behind a layer of etiquette, I wasn’t sure. Regardless, she was committed to continuing with our quest if we could.
And as it turned out, we could!
Sort of.
Our first discovery after our ill-fated entry attempt was that the sentries didn’t hold a grudge. While we had to be exceptionally careful while confirming that fact, every sign pointed to the guards going back to their previous, stationary state. Not that it was particularly comfortable being so close to them now that we knew what they were capable of, but Verin was determined to figure out how to meet this so-called king, one way or another.
For obvious reasons, we didn’t try to cross the bridge again, but that didn’t stop us from trying to elicit a reaction from the golems in other more innocuous ways. While she wasn’t too familiar with golems in general, Verin shifted through a wide range of possible trigger words to grab their attention.
When that didn’t work, she changed languages. With how popular Common was -- as one would expect from the name -- she’d never had cause to gain full fluency in any other language, but she at least knew how to say “hello” in a good handful. For all her attempts, nothing seemed to work.
In the end, it was a stray thought that led us forward, although, in hindsight, it should have come to me much sooner. In my defense, it relied on a skill that I had little desire to use these days.
Do golems have minds? Or how do they work?
My own mind flashed back to darker times, back in my final dungeon run in Sylum. There, I’d found multiple objects that could be controlled mentally, chief amongst them being the forge that had created my hammer.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
While that was probably the singular best example of something that had gone horribly in my life, I liked to think that the technique still held some merit.
“I’m going to try something.” I gestured for Verin to back up, and without questioning, she retreated before encasing herself in ice.
With her safe, I bit the bullet and entered my mental space.
Endless piles of black rubble surrounded me, perfectly matching the bleak landscape around it. Not wanting to give myself a chance to dwell on what I was seeing, I immediately cast Sense Minds. Without the usual citadel walls, the spell rippled out directly from me, sweeping through the dilapidated remnants of the fortress.
Even having cast the spell for exactly that reason, I was still slightly surprised as the ripples broke against two objects to my sides. In the directions of the two golems, two tiny purple orbs floated in the void.
Heartwood Sentry Golem
No more information was forthcoming from either orb, and not quite knowing what to do, I focused on one of them, trying to reach out, and-
Mental Magic has reached level 19!
“Gah. Crap.” I reeled back as I was forcibly kicked out of my mental space, landing on my ass. Vaguely, I was aware of Verin rushing up to check on me, but I couldn’t focus on her.
The hands that I should have used to break my fall were instead tightly clutching my head as an unfiltered wave of images and feelings assaulted me. Even without speaking to me in any true language, the thoughts contained bits of meaning that hammered their way into my head.
King. Wait. Sleep. Guard. Variations of those four words repeated themselves, until, despite the sentry’s lackluster mental vocabulary, I thought I understood.
And as it turned out, the system seemed to agree.
Quest Updated.
The king of the forest lies in deep slumber. Until he wakes, his royal court is out of session, and none are permitted near him. Will you wait for the end of his long rest, or will you resort to my drastic measure to awake him?
Verin helped me to my feet as I slowly overcame a pounding headache and a brief bout of vertigo. Having seen the update on her own quest log, she didn’t need me to relay the new information. Instead, she turned to the nearest golem with a resolute nod.
“Very well, then. I suppose we will wait.”
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Three days later, the cool and collected noble reached a novel conclusion: “Lady Tess. I do not enjoy waiting.”
If there was one plus side to our time in the center of the forest, it was the safety. The finicky guards notwithstanding, nothing saw fit to accost us, even when we set up camp and slept in shifts.
If there was a downside, it was the sheer monotony of it all.
That wasn’t to say we sat and twiddled our thumbs for three days. Though the clearing was massive, we’d long since covered every accessible inch of it, looking for some hidden clue that would help us proceed. Finding nothing, we went with a simpler option: making noise.
Ever the consummate noble, Verin was aghast at the very suggestion of raising a clamor outside a king’s palace. When it became clear that the king in question was grabbing far more than some quick shuteye, however, she begrudgingly allowed it.
I’d spent a solid hour banging my armor with an assortment of hammers like the world’s worst xylophone player. I even went one step further, singing along to the cacophonous din. If nothing else, it served as very solid proof that the king was well insulated within his tree. With my vocal skills, I trusted that anyone in ear range would be forced to show themselves if just to beg me to stop.
That didn’t keep the system from giving me a pity level, though.
Singing has reached level 2!
With the king still sleeping and without any other leads, we were forced to admit that we only had two real options.
We could break in uninvited, earning the ire of the guards, or we could call it a wash and retreat.
Of course, there was a third possibility, but neither of us could pull it off. With a poorly stifled huff, Verin said as much.
“Loathe as I am to suggest that we cannot handle this region on our own, it does seem that this would be an ideal scenario for the Lady Calilah, does it not?” She gazed out towards the bridge where she’d nearly been skewered a few days prior, scanning its length. “Were she to become invisible, I doubt the guards would give her any trouble, and it is entirely possible she could complete our quest in a matter of minutes. I am aware that we have gotten rather far on our own, but perhaps we should retreat for the time being and return with our resident stealth specialist.”
If that was what Verin wanted to do, I wasn’t going to fight her on it. I actually felt like I was holding up pretty well, all things considered, but I wouldn’t say no to a few days back at the cabin regardless. Assuming we could share the quest and the various nymphs’ blessings with Cal, it hopefully wouldn’t be too hard to get back here. Better yet, we hadn’t seen a single panther since the quest began, taking the bulk of the risk out of play.
It did feel like a bit of a letdown to get this far only to pack up and head home, but we weren’t here to go out in some blaze of glory. If there was a slow and careful way to beat the region, we would take it.
“May we have better luck when next we return.” Bidding the clearing farewell, Verin hopped onto my back, summoning up her Advancing Glacier. Just like that, we waded back out into the dense sea of trees, doing our best to retrace our steps.
Our best, sadly, didn’t prove to be very good at all.
With God’s Mind, I was certain I remembered the exact direction we’d come from. Even so, when we walked back to where the tunnel from the water nymph’s region should have been, it was notably absent.
In fact, everything was absent save for the pervasive looming trees. No waterfalls. No caves. Nothing. The more I looked around, the more it felt like there was an eerie sort of uniformity, as if someone had copied a single chunk of the woods and then pasted it over and over again.
We kept wandering for a time, hoping to spot even the smallest of deviations from the norm. As the hours dragged on, I wondered if we’d made a mistake in leaving the clearing. What if the forest just never ended? What if we were confined here with no escape now?
It was almost a physical weight off my mind when I spotted the trees abruptly drop off up ahead. Rushing forward, I was ready to greet the prairie once more, or failing that, anything but the deep woods.
It came as a shock, then, when I realized the area ahead wasn’t a new region at all.
Instead, it was a clearing.
With a massive, towering tree.
And a moat. And a bridge. And a ring of wooden golems.
I was certain that I’d walked straight. There was no chance we’d gone in a circle.
Which left only one decidedly unpleasant possibility.
Cracking open her glacier, Verin took in the familiar sight.
“I suppose we’ll be staying here a touch longer than we thought.”
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We camped out for one more day. In part, that was from a futile hope that this sleeping king would finally wake up. Mostly, though, we used our time to verify that we were well and truly trapped.
And as best we could tell, the answer was a resounding yes.
After gaining our first nymph’s blessing, we’d been transported by walking into a tree. In that vein, Verin and I spent a solid hour choosing trees at random and trying to walk into them, hoping to find one that functioned similarly. Rather than making any headway, we only managed to make ourselves feel increasingly dumb, walking into tree after tree with nothing to show for it.
Going up was likewise fruitless. Or, at least I thought it was. The canopy was so thick, we couldn’t see what lay above it.
Twice, I’d ascended -- once in the clearing, and once in the forest proper -- hoping to saw my way through the obscuring branches to break free. What exactly would have happened had I followed through, I couldn’t say. On both occasions, Danger Sense had activated with such an intensity, I immediately let myself free fall through the air rather than risk traveling even an inch higher.
Failing that, we’d even tried asking the golems to let us leave, which went as well as one might expect. Knowing that they weren’t very verbal, I tried to recreate the earlier mental link, but this time, send my thoughts to them. Whether I wasn’t doing it right, or they just didn’t care, I couldn’t say. Either way, they didn’t respond.
Truly, it seemed we were out of luck unless we completed our quest.
Backed into a corner, the only thing that remained was the logistics.
“In sum, I would say the most pertinent question is whether we wish to fight our way to the center, or run there while dodging the sentries’ attacks. If the latter, we will have to determine if I should assist you from your back, or if you wish to leave me behind.” Verin paced not far from the guards in question, none of them looking our way even as we openly discussed defying them.
Frankly, I didn’t have much input, leaving Verin to nervously monologue for most of the debate. Still, in the end, I was satisfied with our choices.
As for if we should fight or run, we decided to run. Ignoring the fact that the supposed king might not be entirely happy with us if we chopped down all his guards, we just weren’t strong enough. Even two heartwood sentries had landed blows on us, and that was only with one of their skills. If all we had to deal with were sharp roots, then maybe we’d be fine, but that was optimistic to the point of delusion.
At level 38, the guards certainly had more than one basic attack. What would we do if they had an immobilization skill? What if they could summon roots to drag us into the earth and bury us alive?
If none of those attacks ever landed, we’d be fine, but in a protracted battle against an entire swarm of golems targeting me at once, there was no chance I’d dodge everything thrown at me.
So. Running.
As for the second matter, that took us considerably longer to figure out.
On the pros of taking Verin with me, she would be much better at speaking to the king if we managed to find him. And safety wise, even if we ignored her various slowing skills, I wouldn’t mind having someone who knew the Ice Wall spell watching my back. There was also the question of if the golems would start attacking her even if I was the only one to make a run for the central tree. If so, she was better off with me.
As for the cons, her glacier would be in the thin backpack mode, leaving her vulnerable to attacks with enough force. Particularly concerning for my chances of success, her presence on my back also heavily limited my mobility, tying down my Spatial Step as well.
Truthfully, if that was all, I would have wanted to go alone. Safety aside, the mobility boost would be huge if I wasn’t hefting her about.
The real concern, though, was what would happen if I actually succeeded without her.
What if the quest involved me staying in the palace for another month? Would Verin just sit out here starving the entire time? Even if she somehow found food in this oddly lifeless stretch of the woods, with her cooking skills, she’d probably die from food poisoning before a week was over.
Or, worse yet, what if the quest ended, and the king teleported me out of the forest for good. Would he bring Verin with me? Would she be trapped for good if I didn’t find a way to come back?
No, for better or for worse, as long as we had this quest, Verin and I weren’t splitting up.
And so it came to be that, after over a week of our journey, I stood before the bridge to the great tree, two golems at my side, and Verin on my back.
Despite my need for speed, I wore my plate armor, both to insulate me from the cold of Verin’s glacier and to ward off whatever attacks might head my way. The sentries had already proven that their roots could poke through my mana defenses, and dent the metal armor beneath, and I had little desire to subject my skin to such a treatment.
With Verin mute and immobilized while in her glacier, it fell squarely on me to kick things off.
I took a deep breath, steeling myself for whatever was about to come. Wanting whatever advantage I could get, I then activated Flash Feet, sinking light mana into my soles.
And at last, I sprinted forward.
One step. Then two. Past the guards and onto the bridge.
As one, the entire ring of sentries turned to face me.
And all at once, the entire clearing exploded into action.