Chapter 18: Cassian’s Tree

When Cassian woke up, the remnants of a dream still clung to him like the lingering smell of smoke after a wildfire. He sat up on his cot, the sour taste still on his tongue, and found that Gareth was seated on a chair next to him.

“Feeling rested?” Gareth asks, his tone light hearted, though with an undercurrent of tiredness. “You ought to be after sleeping for three days straight.”

“What?” Cassian asked, putting his head in his hands. He remembered the battle with the spider monkeys, and Isolde’s bloody neck.. He shot up and took Gareth roughly by the shoulders, feeling a sense of painful urgency. “Where’s Isolde, is she alright?”

Gareth’s nonchalance was a kind of answer in itself, but he wanted to hear it said. His friend pushed Cassian gently away. “Hold your horses there, champ. She was just here a little while ago watching you sleep. My shift just started, so lucky me I don’t have to spend another half day with the most boring job at base camp.”

Cassian relaxed and sat back on the bed, hard, the rest of the memories returning to him. Not the dream’s—which he suddenly had the feeling was important—but the final moments of the battle. He had succeeded. He had saved Isolde.

“I’d love to let you sit there looking like you do,” Gareth waved ambiguously at all of him, then pinched his nose. “...and smelling like you do—but Thorne ordered you to be brought to his tent the very moment you woke. You get to assault him with your perfume.”

Cassian lifted an arm and sniffed his armpit. There was a little BO, but nothing so dramatic as what Gareth implied—he hoped. Gareth patted him on the shoulder.

“Glad you’re back, bro. Had us worried for a minute.”

The first thing Cassian noticed after leaving his cot and stepping out of the tent, was an enormous gnarled tree composed of thick trunks braided together, with a glowing core at its center. Its roots were thick and twisted, and threaded their way like veins.

“What’s that about?” Cassian asked, pointing at the tree.

“I imagine that’s one of the first questions Thorne can’t wait to ask you.”

“Why me?”

Gareth raised an eyebrow. Then Cassian remembered. The layout of the camp may have been different, but he had the certainty that the location of the tree was the exact spot his roots had slain the chief spider monkey.

Indeed, the camp had transformed since he fell unconscious. Their basecamp had transformed into a compact fortress. The tents had been rearranged to make them more easily accessible to one another, and there was a thick wooden fence that encircled the camp. Also, there were towers that stood just above the fence with sentries posted.

“This is wild.” Cassian said. He couldn’t believe he was responsible for the tree. It was unfathomable.

On the short walk to Thorne’s tent, Gareth explained that after Cassian had passed out, Captain Nolan and his team had returned from the forest haggard but alive. They had failed to find the medical officer. Due to the fact that the wards had been breached so badly with that spider monkey swarm, the security had worked nonstop to take more mundane measures. He gestured to the fence and tower.

There hadn’t been any more attacks since that first night, but that hadn’t stopped everyone from being on edge. Staying at a basecamp so deep in the Forest of Whispers without wards to protect them, especially at night when monster activity was lethal to groups their size, was not the most ideal situation. Admirably, Thorne had been the one to advocate for their staying, despite Captain Nolan and him getting into heated arguments that everyone at camp heard. Thorne refused to abandon the medical officer. Until thy had definitive proof, or the time allotted for their expedition expired, they would remain. Thorne had nailed the terms of Nolan’s and the security team’s contract on a post in the center of camp. It had since been taken down, but there had been no more dissent since then.

It helped that there hadn’t been any further attacks. Aside from the skirmishes the search teams got into while fruitlessly looking for the medical officer’s remains—no one believed by this point that she was still alive—there had been no monster activity near basecamp.

Some people had started attributing this to Cassian’s Tree, which is what the people of the camp had taken to calling that monstrosity.

“Maybe the wards are working again?” Cassian asked his friend, somewhat mortified that people had named that ugly thing after him.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Gareth shook his head. “Once they figured out what to look for, the research team confirmed that any and all magic designed to keep chaos at bay gets overwhelmed after a few minutes. The wards just won’t work.”

It might be a good idea to talk to the researchers the first chance he got.

Thorne’s tent was relatively spartan on the inside. There were a few books on his desk, a token skull (of course), and several arcane devices, which Cassian guessed, based on the holographic map they projected, with little dots moving around in it, were designed to keep track of the people in and out of camp.

When Thorne became aware of Gareth and Cassian’s presence, he stood up immediately and glided across the room to tower over Cassian. The man’s eyes were bloodshot and framed by heavy bags. He didn’t look like he had gotten much sleep recently, if any at all.

Immediately, Thorne waved a hand over Cassian and began casting diagnostic spell after diagnostic spell. Once he was satisfied, he turned and headed back to his desk. With his back still to him and Gareth, he said, “You may leave us, Ra’Sinclaire. Varn, sit.”

Thorne pulled out his grimoire. Cassian recognized this one as the same he used last time to record his notes about his bond. The professor opened to an empty page. His pen hovered over the page, and he opened his mouth to speak—and then stopped. He seemed to be looking at Cassian with a rather pained expression. His tone was tempered, gruff, but his words were anything but. “Mr. Varn, before we begin, I would like to extend to you my apologies that I was unable to protect you or your friends from harm, for the work you did healing the defense team as we made our stand against the swarm, for slaying the leader of the spider monkeys, and finally, for rescuing Miss Wyrmbane from the brink of death. Our expedition may have been an even greater failure without your contribution. Please close your mouth, Mr. Varn, it is unbecoming.”

Cassian realized his jaw had dropped. He did as Thorne asked, swallowed, then cleared his throat. “You’re welcome?” It was a side of Thorne that he never imagined he would see, and one he never imagined existed. He didn’t know what else to say.

There was an awkward moment of silence between them, and then like donning a familiar set of clothes, Thorne’s demeanor hardened, his back straightened and his voice grew brusque.

“Mr. Varn, tell me what magic you used to slay the chief, and what its relationship is with Cassian’s Tree. I’m sure you saw it growing outside on your way here.” The way Thorn said the name of the tree as if it was its official name, without a drop of derision or contempt, was another surprise. Given his uncharacteristic candor earlier, Cassian accepted it as a nod to him. If only he didn’t sound, in general, so…Thorny?

Cassian focused on the debrief that felt more like an interrogation. “I don’t know exactly how it happened. When I saw Isolde hurt, I just—” He paused to look for the words, but Thorne seemed satisfied with that answer and moved on to the next.

“I suspect your desire to protect Miss Wyrmbane was the catalyst, and perhaps a clue as to the nature of the tree. What else can you tell me about it?”

“It’s big and ugly.”

“Indeed. What can you tell me about the magic you used? Try to stay concise and don’t make me repeat my questions.”

Cassian did his best to describe what he remembered about the moment he drew on the mana from the forest. His awareness of the chaotic nature of the mana, and how it flooded him. Thorne took notes with furious speed that Cassian guessed he must be recording his words verbatim. I’m sure he would just love a tape recorder from Earth. There has to be something similar in this world, right?

“One final question, Mr. Varn. Is the tree replacing the function of our wards?”

Cassian understood the real question underneath. Thorne wanted to know if he could get some sleep. Typically the wards around a basecamp were infallible. While it was standard practice to keep a token guard and patrol, one could usually sleep easy behind the wards, knowing that no monsters could bypass them. Since that sense of security had been shattered, Thorne was asking if there was real reason to believe that Cassian’s Tree could be trusted to prevent a large-scale assault. It occurred to Cassian that it wouldn’t be unreasonable to believe that this lull in monster activity was just the forest gathering its strength, biding its time until it had rallied enough strength to trample over them like a veritable tsunami.

Cassian opened his mouth to say that he didn’t know, but stopped. Instead, he opened his senses again, spreading them out, trying to adjust to the changes in his senses.

He could feel…a bubble. A dome of clean space that spread as far as a football field beyond the walls. Cassian could still sense the chaotic mana. But it was the difference in volume between sitting in front of a car when it blows its horn—which represented the space beyond the dome— and suddenly paying attention to the traffic outside your apartment building that you realize you’ve been ignoring the whole time—which was what the chaotic mana inside the The epicenter of the dome, was of course, the gnarled tree outside.

Something about the metaphor he’d invented to understand what he was experiencing tickled his memory.

Cassian let go of the awareness, letting the static fade into the background once more. Finally, he said, “I think so, Professor Thorne.”

He explained what he had sensed, and, this too, Thorne recorded in his grimoire. Then he put his pen down, and dismissed Cassian, ordering him to rendezvous with the research team at the first available moment. They apparently had just as many questions, and they especially wanted to pick his brain about Cassian’s Tree. That sounds like a swell time.

Additionally, Thorne told Cassian he might like to know that his friend Miss Wyrmbane was resting in her quarters. He gave Cassian permission to pay her a visit if he felt so inclined.

“However, Mr. Varn…” Thorne rubbed his nose with a knuckle. “It is my recommendation that you do so after a bath.”

Cassian reddend, and as he exited the tent, he resolved to do just that.