Izreea and Jareth had no memory of the small space of lost time Jonathan, Grey, and Stein had erased. All they knew was they had been sharing the story of their group’s journey with Stein when the light in her eyes suddenly went out. Nothing they could do would wake her or return the light to her eyes. They tried moving her stone body, but she was far too heavy to be lifted. Precious minutes went by as they conversed on what to do when suddenly the enclosure around them began to change.

The narrow doorway, which felt so protective before, was closed off as if it had never existed. The canopy overhead thickened until the tree leaves resembled thick wood beams. The sun was cut off, plunging them into darkness. Then a loud creaking sound began to emanate from the walls around them, sounding like a thick rope being pulled tight.

Izreea lit the room with a spell, putting the orb of light in the air so they could see what was happening around them. They quickly saw that the walls were closing around them, intent on crushing them at its center. It was obvious to Izreea, who knew much of nature and the mind of trees that the tree did not know exactly where they were at, and this was the most effective way of ensuring it captured its prey.

Izreea’s thoughts stunned her. The prophecy had been fulfilled, the Great Road was open, Elder trees were growing again … and it was trying to kill us?

She didn’t know how to handle or react to the news. She didn’t know if Stein had abandoned them to their fate, or was in cohorts with the tree all along, although she doubted it. Stein was stubborn, ritualistic, and rude, but she was also loyal to a fault. She described herself as “the rock” of the guardians for a reason. Betrayal and intrigue did not fit.

“We can’t burn it open; we’d suffocate from the smoke caused by the burning wet roots. Could we go under?” Jareth asked her calmly, assessing the situation and suggesting options as if he had all the answers.

She saw through his facade. He was just as startled as she was but was hiding it well.

“Going under is where the roots are coming from. We would only be crushed faster,” Izreea replied, trying to mimic his calm tone. “We could try ice then burst it? We might make it through,” she suggested instead.

Jareth nodded in agreement, then strode to a wall with Jonathan’s staff in hand. He placed the ice runed weapon against the wall and poured frigid cold into it. The roots in that location immediately began to expand from the freezing moisture within them and halted their movement on that end of the circle. Jareth kept pouring ice into the roots, expanding the area until it was as large as a door. Then he pulled the weapon away and made his fist turn green, empowering his strike so he could burst the frozen roots. He pulled his arm back to strike when vines started entangling his arm, stopping him from landing the blow.

All around them, vines had grown from the ceiling, falling in a straight line until they touched something. Once they touched something, they would wrap around it, intent on choking the life out of whatever it touched. Stein quickly became a mass of vines, thickening as they wrapped around her lifeless stone body. Izreea had managed to duck down and roll until she was under Jareth and was using the blade of her scythes to swipe at vines trying to wrap around his body.

Jareth’s empowered arm pulled down, breaking the vines while dissipating the single-use spell. Jareth changed tactics and put the staff directly in the air against the thick wooden beams overhead, using ice again to his advantage. The vines stopped growing and began to break off from the cold. The beam began to crack from its weight, breaking away from the living part of the root.

Izreea grabbed Jareth’s arm and dragged him out of the way of the frozen ceiling just as the frozen ring of wood crashed into the enclosure. The roof was several feet thick at this point, which explained why the frozen part had been too heavy and broke when it began to crack. The opening slowly began filling with other roots as the two scrambled for the hole.

Jareth reached it first and quickly turned, holding his hands out for Izreea to step on. She didn’t hesitate, and the two of them worked in unison, her jumping and him throwing, to launch her out of the hole. He followed, using a spell to enhance his jump, landing next to her on top of the roof of their enclosure.

The roof was still part of the tree, which meant it felt their landing and changed tactics. The circle of roots making up the walls of the enclosure shifted outward as the roof's edge thinned. The combined action caused the ceiling to collapse into the center of the enclosure, slanted by the frozen part of the wall that had not moved, and the lump in its center was Stein's stone body.

The slanted fall made Jareth lose his balance, and he rolled along the roof until he hit the side of the enclosure. Roots launched from the wall, wrapping around him to squeeze the life out of him. Izreea purposefully slid down until she was beside him, then put her scythes against the roots. She had intended to move the runes to fire once she touched them and roasted the roots alive, but in her panic to help Jareth, she stopped on green life runes. When the green scythes touched the root, it recoiled away. Izreea didn’t understand it, but she didn’t need to. She enhanced the life runes, causing their power to emanate like an aura, and slammed them into the roots around Jareth. The roots shot away from him, backing out of the aura quickly.

Jareth gasped for breath as he scrambled away from the wall. Both tried climbing up the hill, but roots kept tripping them before backing away from her scythes. The wall pulled away from them, creating a small circle of dirt to stand on so it wouldn’t have to touch their aura. The slanted roof stayed in place, no doubt to mock them. They were trapped against the slanting roof and the wall, but the roots left them alone as long as the aura was activated.

The energy of the runes was fading slowly, but they had some time to think.

“Why is it afraid … to touch Life’s runes?” Jareth asked between pants as he recovered from nearly suffocating, ignoring the unspoken question of why it was trying to kill them in the first place?

“I have no idea,” was all she could reply with, and it was the truth. Nothing made sense about this situation, and she worried more about surviving it than understanding it. Then a thought hit her.

“But we are no longer enclosed, so back to our first idea,” she said as she rolled the scythes to fire. As soon as the aura of life was canceled, the roots started cautiously creeping toward them again. Jareth made a protective wall of ice around himself with his staff, strong enough to withstand what was coming, and enhanced it with his own shields against the arcane.

Izreea didn’t hesitate. She hit the scythes together, and a pool of magma appeared in the air between the two of them. She projected fire hot enough to melt stone at the wall of roots around them. The air hissed as the tree screamed in pain. Torrents of steam and black smoke rose into the sky as the wet roots evaporated. The wall was quickly gone, and Jareth stepped through it first, cooling the ground with his staff of ice. Izreea followed, holding the magma in front of her to fire at any other roots that tried to get in their way.

A small hummingbird flew up to them and landed on the ground nearby. In an instant, Jonathan was standing next to them. His staff was gone, and he looked disheveled but otherwise unharmed.

“Jareth, Izreea, you guys are alright!” Jonathan shouted in greeting, the relief clear upon his face. “Come on! Grey needs our help!”

Before they could go anywhere, the broken enclosure behind them exploded into the air. Massive roots lifted pieces of the wall and roof away, throwing them as discarded garbage no longer needed. Stein was in the center of the enclosure, but her eyes glowed an eerie red. A massive net of roots protruded from her back, holding her body in the air, flowing along the ground until the roots disappeared within the bark of the Elder tree.

“Imagine my luck when I found dirt inside this construct of stone. Now, Jonathan, this is your last chance to uphold your end of the bargain. Give me the shell, and walk away,” Stein’s stone form said without moving its lips.

“Your bargain was with someone else, not even of this world. I owe you nothing,” Jonathan said firmly.

“So be it,” was Stein’s only response before attacking.

Keeping Drock alive was no longer an issue for the Elder tree, and its attacks became deadly with the ability to see its enemies. Large roots erupted from the ground around them, battering the earth like massive whips. They were slow because of their size, but the craters they left in the dirt made dodging difficult. Each member of the group used their talents to survive.

Izreea was more agile than the other two and easily handled the changing landscape. She used her skill to dodge while rotating her scythes to the glowing runes of light. She knew her life and fire runes were partially worn down, and she wanted to save those powers as a last resort. The lightning runes had been destroyed in their last great battle, so light was all she had left. She had never used those runes in combat, only for healing, but thoughts and skills flowed into her mind when she activated them. Izreea swung the scythes, and arcs of light energy flung from her swing like a bladed boomerang. They were razor sharp and sliced through the roots like air.

Jareth used his staff to put rigid ice over holes in the ground as he ran, leveling the ground so he wouldn’t need to climb or jump over mounds of dirt or craters. He decided the simple, if powerful, use of the ice-runed staff wasn’t suited to this situation. He is a powerful mage of the most prestigious arcane school, and it is time to use that knowledge and power. He used the staff only for survival and began casting a spell as he ran. It would take time to finish casting, but he hoped the others would keep the tree distracted until he could close the trap.

Jonathan knew he could transform into another animal if need be, but he also knew he couldn’t use magic in animal form, so he wouldn’t be able to do anything but stay alive. Then he heard a familiar chanting from Jareth, building up a complicated spell. It was a mind trap, a powerful one. Few could cast such a spell on a normal person, and fewer still could cast it on an ancient transient consciousness with success. Jonathan knew that Jareth had cast a similar spell before when he saved a tribe of Dardwain. The spell was rarely used in combat because of how long it took to cast. You couldn’t counterattack or defend yourself from anything while casting the spell, and any mistake and the spell would fail.

Jonathan knew he needed to distract the Elder tree and buy Jareth time. He smiled as he remembered other animals the druid had turned himself into and transformed into a large drake, and he had no interest in using the form to run from tree roots. Jonathan roared savagely as he attacked Stein directly, intent on cutting the vines that allowed the Elder tree to use Stein’s body for vision. His mouth closed around her, and he violently chewed and began shaking her in his massive jaw like a rag doll. All of the vines simultaneously turned on Jonathan, slamming into him as he continued to shake and pull, intent on ripping Stein from the tree’s grasp.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Izreea and Jareth took advantage of the distraction. Jareth held still and put all his effort into the mind trap spell, ensuring it was perfect on all layers. The spell was visible to the naked eye in front of him now, which looked like a massive entanglement of flat spider webs laid perfectly over one another in an intricate pattern. When he was finished, it would look like a sphere of webbing. He still needed a few more layers but was close to finishing it.

With the roots distracted, Izreea turned her attention to the trunk of the tree with her scythes of light energy. It did not cut as the roots did, but wood exploded from the trunk whenever the light energy slammed into the tree. The trunk was massive, though, and it would take her some time to finish the task. She knew the tree could potentially still live as long as it had roots, but without leaves to draw energy from the sun, it would quickly lose its power.

The Elder tree changed tactics, wrapped its massive roots around Jonathan’s drake body, and lifted him in the air, preventing him from using his weight as leverage to shake his head. He had blood covering his body from sharp roots trying to pierce his thick scales, but they seemed superficial. With Jonathan in the air, the tree finally pulled Stein from his mouth. The stone construct had holes in it from where Jonathon’s teeth had clamped down on her, and most of the vines sticking out of its back were severed, but a few remained attached.

The elder tree wrapped a root around Stein and used the stone body like a mallet, slamming it into Jonathan’s face. The powerful blow landed across his face and destroyed his left eye. Jonathan turned back into a human as he flitted in and out of consciousness. The tree let him fall hard, hitting the ground with the sound of bone breaking. He screamed in pain as Stein let out a laugh.

Without wasting a moment, all the roots lifted in the air to crush Jonathan, but a boomerang of light sliced through the vines on Stein's back. The roots froze, shocked from the sudden loss of vision, giving Jareth the moment he needed to cast his spell over the tree. He threw the perfect sphere of spider webbing at the tree, which entered as if passing through a hanging sheet, disappearing into the bark. All the roots froze in the air, some even beginning to change color as the life holding them in position faded, hardening them to the less-than-pliable wood they started out as.

Izreea rushed to Jonathan with her scythes to inspect his injuries. She could see that his eye was beyond repair and could sense that much of the damage on his face would take too much time to heal quickly. The break from his fall had been the small bones of his legs, and she quickly healed those injuries and stopped the bleeding along his body. She holstered her weapons and helped him to his feet so they could limp out of the shadows of the massive roots that had almost ended him.

Jareth was at their side, grabbing Jonathan’s other arm to help walk him away from the tree. They didn’t look back as they hurriedly limped down the hill toward their old camp. They were intent on finding Grey, collecting Drock, and getting as far away from this tree as possible.

As they strode down the hill, they suddenly halted in unison as they saw Grey. She was standing in the path awkwardly, slumped over at an odd angle. Her red hair hung over her face, and blood was pooling on her feet. Jonathan broke free of the others and hobbled to Grey as fast as his injured body could move. When he reached her, he could see that she had been stabbed with a root jutting from the ground, which had entered her abdomen, gone through her body, and out her shoulder, piercing her heart in its path. The blow must have been moments before Jareth’s spell had landed … that or the Elder tree had left her on purpose for them to find if it had failed to free itself.

Jonathan was stunned. He pushed back her beautiful red hair and could see the last moment of shock on her face. There was a tear still upon her cheek. He cast a spell to break the root holding her in the air and gently laid her on the ground. He closed her eyes, then cupped her face in his hands as he memorized her face, committing each feature to memory. He was surprised he held no tears for this moment but assumed they would come later. They might come later, but only if he survived his next action.

Jonathan stood and floated in the air as a dark aura surrounded him. He embraced the form of a death-lich, transforming him into the monstrosity that Jareth had turned into whenever he took control of his body from him. His skin became thin and taught over his bones, and his hair fell off in one big chunk. His single eye glowed purple as his undead powers activated.

Jonathan reached down with his bony hand and picked up the green runed staff Grey had dropped. Previously the runes on this staff altered depending on if Jareth was holding the staff or Jonathan controlling Jareth’s body was holding it. However, there was no transformation this time when Jonathan touched the staff. The powers of life resented the touch of his lich hand and began burning his hand, but he ignored it. He felt nothing in this form, and he needed all the power he could get at this moment, even if that power resented him for using it.

With his hand smoking, Jonathan floated back to Jareth and Izreea. There was shock and pity on their faces, yet also confusion. They knew the Elder tree was defeated, or at the least, this tree was cut off from the Great Road, so they wondered why Jonathan would transform into a lich, accepting the consequences of it for no reason.

Without a word, Jonathan took the staff of ice from Jareth, its cold powers harmonized well with a lich, and he could use it far better in this form than his brother could. Jareth held his hand out, expecting Jonathan to give him the green runed staff, but instead, Jonathan placed the two staffs side by side in his left hand and held his bony right hand out to Izreea. The staff’s energy pushed against one another, and more smoke started to rise along the staffs. His hand was starting to feel weak, as if the energy was beginning to soften his skin, but Jonathan ignored that as well.

Izreea hesitated. Clearly, Jonathan wanted all of their empowered runes, and she had no idea why, and he was not explaining himself. Her curiosity and sympathy got the better of her, and she handed over the scythes. The handle of the scythes had a material that prevented direct contact with Jonathan’s skin, so there was no adverse reaction to the runes when he touched the weapons.

Jareth and Izreea thought Jonathan was heading back up the hill to the tree, but instead, he turned down the hill and floated toward their old camp. Not a word was said as Izreea put her arm through Jareth’s, and the two followed him. They were in no shape to try and carry Grey, so Izreea put a ward of protection over her to block insects and animals before they could return and followed Jonathan. They would return and give her a proper burial after they helped Jonathan move through his grief and become human again. Then they would deal with their own emotions over her death.

As they entered the camp, they saw a fire orb in the air surrounding a floating Drock, who stared straight ahead as if nothing was happening. Roots were all around the fire in the air. It appeared that they had been waiting for the energy to dissipate so they could link to Drock like before, but when the Elder tree was defeated, they froze in place. The amplification spell was still in the center of camp, churning away as it enhanced itself in a pointless circle.

Jonathan sliced through the fire spell and the spell holding Drock in the air with a simple wave of his hand. He let Drock fall, not caring if he was injured. He wasn’t even a person and was technically the one to blame for all of this. Without him in their party, the Elder Tree would have had no motivation to draw them in or attack them. Once Jonathan had separated the tree from Stein, it would have gone its way, seeking another powerful entity to steal a body from.

Jonathan grabbed Drock in an enhanced grip, strong enough to crush bone if he wished, and dragged him to the center of the camp. He halted a few paces from the amplification spell, which was still churning away. Then he ripped Drock’s shirt off his body, discarded it, and put his long, sickly finger on Drock’s bare chest. Jonathan used the memory of the familiar who had taken his body from him to draw arcane runes of power on Drock’s chest. The flesh sizzled as he wrote from right to left, and tears welled up in Drock’s eyes as if instinct told him that was expected. He made no other reaction, not even a flinch of pain.

“Jon, maybe w-“ his brother started to say, but Jonathan knew his morally driven brother would try to stop him if he explained himself, and he literally didn’t have time to explain anything. Jonathan quickly turned and struck him with a powerful sleeping spell. Not expecting his brother to assault him, Jareth had no defense prepared and crumbled.

Izreea helped him fall with a glare at Jonathan, letting him know exactly what she thought of his tactic and that it would not work a second time.

“Worry not, sister. Your morality is not of his caliber. I do not fear your interference,” Jonathan said in his airy lich voice, which sounded like two people speaking simultaneously.

Izreea almost attacked him at that moment but realized that would only make his statement all the more accurate. She settled with sitting next to her husband’s sleeping form and watching whatever action Jonathan was driven to in his unexpected show of grief.

Jonathan turned back to Drock and finished writing the runes. He could only spell what he remembered seeing when the familiar communicated with the Elder tree and didn’t even know what it meant. All he knew for sure was it drew raw energy from another plane, and that was exactly what he needed. He needed as much energy as he could gather.

Jonathan activated every rune on all the weapons and poured his soul into them, pouring everything he had as a mage and a lich. He thought of a point in time right before the battle, as close in the past as he thought he could reach and still influence the outcome of the fight. Holding onto the thought, Jonathan shoved the end of the two staffs in his left hand into the amplification spell and sunk the point of both of the scythes in his right hand directly into Drock’s arm, connecting the spell and its power source.

The energy connected with Drock and flowed into him, increased by the amplification spell. Colors bled from the runes as energy was sucked from the weapons and into Drock. Eventually, the runes faded on all the weapons, and the spell was still incomplete. Jonathan rotated the runes on the scythes with his finger and thumb, bleeding each rune until all the runes were drained. Then purple energy started draining from Jonathan directly, pouring out of him as the powers of a lich were sucked into the spell.

Drock was brilliant with energy, too bright to look directly at and growing stronger. Jonathan began to gain hope, something he had been putting off until that point. Then his power drain began to slow as Jonathan transformed into his human self, losing the power of a lich to the spell. It looked like he had failed again, and this time there was no guardian to appear and save the day.

Then Izreea was by his side, sobbing as she took action. She had put everything together, at least enough to know what Jonathan was trying to do. She recognized that he didn’t have time for her to get to safety, as time was working against him. The longer he waited to cast the spell, the more energy was needed to reverse time to that point. As it was, the explosion, if they failed, would be massive and surely kill them all. She didn’t have a choice but to make the hardest decision a dardwain woman could make. Helping him reset time was the only way to save the unborn child in her womb, as they would surely die if she did nothing.

Izreea did the hardest thing she would ever do in her life, praying she wouldn’t remember having to make this decision. Hoping it would end her entire existence, including her soul if it failed. Izreea tapped into her mathenetal, the stored energy supplying magic to her unborn child, and began pouring it into Jonathan, which, in turn, flowed into Drock. Decades of stored magic from a powerful mage was possibly enough to tip the scales. She refused to use all of it, leaving just enough for her child to survive, although most likely with side effects.

Jonathan gasped as he felt the energy flow into him, much more energy than he thought possible to exist in one person, in ten people even. He finally began crying when he realized she was using her mathenetal to complete the spell. He had been such a burden on his family and caused so much pain to his brother and sister-in-law that he could hardly stand himself. He thought of canceling the spell and letting them die from the explosion. At least then, he wouldn’t have to feel anything anymore.

Then there was a flash of light.

*****

“Wow, what happened here?” Jonathan asked while looking around the camp with his hands on his hips.

Jonathan noticed Grey had stopped walking, so he turned back to look at her, expecting a frosty stare and a sarcastic quip. Her expression caused him to stop in his tracks, unsure of what was happening. She looked white as a ghost and about as confused as a person could get without a head injury. She stared at him with wide eyes and an emotion he had never seen before, its cause and meaning lost on him.

Grey turned her head to see something past him, and her eyes went even wider as an audible gasp escaped her throat …

… after a moment,

she seemed to calm down, and her color returned.

Jonathan was completely bewildered, his thoughts racing … he had so many questions and didn’t know where to begin, and before he could voice any of them, Grey spoke.

“You … you don’t remember what happened … do you?” She asked shakily.

“Remember? Remember what?” he asked.