Prologue to the End
The Sanctum
The Sanctum rose high beyond the rest of the village.
It was perched on the tallest hill, with the complex draped atop like a king upon his throne, and to greet him one had to walk up the steps from the foot of the hill to its peak. The ascent took around half an hour. At the top, one could see far beyond just the village, beyond to the mountains the outsiders named the Carrhan, the hints of plains, and a grey speck.
Outsiders called it Terstein.
The Sanctum was built as a temple to the Eldertrees. They stood at the centre of the complex, and below the simple wood and carvings were rooms with equipment, libraries stuffed with tomes from the ages before trees, and they were the treasures of the village.
No one would return to those rooms until two years from this day passed.
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three hours before his awakening
Lepius
The Sanctum was a beehive.
A hum of chatter greeted them at their entry, punctuated by the occasional cry, and his back touched stone as his father left with words he couldn’t hear. His head lolled back against a pillar, and someone propped it upright. There were soft whispers of what he hoped was encouragement, but the tides were coming in and he couldn’t anchor himself at any point.
Why is it all happening… now?
First it was his home, then Nurma, and Rosemary and Father... his mind felt like strips of bark pulled thin and unable to hold anything other than a light gust. He felt adrift.
So he drifted away into darkness.
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It was a strange dream he intruded into.
Tendrils of smoke slithered up his arms and legs, and what wriggling he tried stopped when a pair of eyes from within the darkness ahead twinkled at him. He whipped his head around. Everything other than those eyes, the tendrils around him, and he himself… was total, all-encompassing black.
He was in the abyss.
And there was a pair of eyes to keep him company.
“Young dryad, a new toy… it has been so long.”
As Lepius struggled, the glowing eyes wrinkled in delight and a laugh emerged from the abyss. It sounded like burning, crackling wood.
“You are so angry… so despaired… succumb to your desires. You know you want to…”
Something was squirming close to him, and it burrowed into his left ear, and he jerked back -
And then a sinister voice giggled in his head, and said, “Yes, yes, of course,” and now something was climbing up his throat. His face burned as he tried to silence it. The taste of bile rose up at whatever that little voice was saying, and he struggled harder against the tendrils.
“Resist it all you want… I shall find you again, my toy. Try to remember me. My name is-”
The fog collapsed, and he was sent to the dark again. As much as tried to cling onto those eyes, for fear more than anything, the memory was already fading away, like any another dream.
He returned to drifting.
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His eyes opened.
For the first seconds after he woke up, he recalled the eyes, the dark, and the smell of charcoal. His brows furrowed as he tried to put the dream in order, but it was already slipping away.
By tenth second, it was gone.
He sat up and looked around. The hall was now silent, and the villagers hushed any nearby whispers. A few were praying. There was not one wailing sapling, for even the babes seemed to be too fascinated by what was happening outside.
And outside, everything seemed to be happening.
Through the window, flashes of light lit up the interior, then faded away. A towering plant snatched up a mage only to be scorched by an inferno, while a whirlpool swirled three humans around like an unplugged drain. A wing of the Sanctum was ablaze with blue fire.
So, it was true. Invasion.
But why? They had nothing, nothing to give or take. Only the happiness of being content with it all, of the trees and the sky, and almost he shouted, to relieve the pressure building within. And he wasn’t even sure what was building it. All he was sure of was that if he didn’t do something, it might all erupt.
But what was he to do against this?
A fireball charged at the Sanctum doors, but bounced off an invisible wall. Spires of oak shot up from the hillside. A mana-construct of a hand slapped down a hooded mage and tossed him far beyond the village boundary.
Then light flooded into the hall again, and he could see Andura.
She had set her bark in tight lines across her face, and had even taken off her ring to fiddle with both hands. Was it a trick of the light, or were her eyes bleeding?
“Andura…?” and she busied him with a mouthful of springwater, “Where is Mother? Father?”
The light faded, and the dark covered her face. But there was no mistaking her voice, even if hoarse like she had been crying for days.
“I… I-”
“What is it?”
She took a breath.
“There are temporary healing quarters in the Sanctum – sit down, you imbecile!”
“Where is it?”
“Seriously?”
“They might need me.”
His voice was clearer now, and garnered looks and hushes from the others.
She sighed, “Second floor. You can’t miss it.”
He hopped up and started barging through the herd of women and children. Andura yelped as he dragged her along with him. “What-”
“What? You think I’m leaving you in that crowd? We stick together. We’ve… we’ve lost…” and then his pace slowed as his mind refitted the broken pieces, “… we’ve lost her.”
How quiet he was now. Look at him. He could not even say her name. Rosemary. Say it.
Or I will forget.
Luckily, there was Andura, and she knew what do to with him: she pressed herself into his side and muted her complaints.
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Overlooking the first floor were the temporary healing quarters.
It was a room once meant for prayer. Dryads would come and go on days of importance, like Eldertree Evensong, and often the entire village would show up, so it was less of a room, and more of a hall. And to house all who came on those days, wooden pews lined the hall from front to end.
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Those pews were now cots, and laid down on most were dryads.
As he passed, his eyes skimmed over each patient: burns, internal bleeding, burns, burns. The air was thick with sap. He turned Andura away from a dryad with an arm missing, but he couldn’t cover her ears to hide away those cries. Neither did he linger too long on the bodies covered up.
Those were beyond any magic.
He hurried Andura and himself to Mother, who was sorting through boxes of dried herbs and salves. She sat at the far end of the room, and for the first second when they approached, all he wanted to do was yell at her. He wanted to throw a tantrum. He wanted to demand Rosemary, ransom a life lost somehow, but then his mother looked up, and those reddened eyes burnt themselves into him. Her hands shook as she added a branch of olive to the pile on the left.
No words needed to be said. He had an inkling when he first saw Andura after waking.
Father…
His voice was softer now, boyish. “Do you need help, Mother?”
Then his mother smiled, and he thought she must have been stronger than him, maybe all the dryads in the world.
“Come here.”
She pulled him into a hug, and below the acrid tang of smoke and blood he could still pick out the apples and roses of her perfume. He latched onto it. If he could tie a rope to this and never let go, he would’ve had one already readied.
“Your father was brave. Remember him.”
Just thinking about it brought the tears back. “I… the last thing I ever did was defy him… and the last thing he ever did was hit-”
A warm hand covered his eyes, and wiped them away.
“The last thing you did was try to save a kind spirit dear to us, and the last thing he did was carry you a hundred steps up to the Sanctum.”
Andura said, “Yeah. He told us he loved us. Well, you were… in and out of it. But I’d like to think you heard it.”
He would like to think so, too.
But he did not.
And without a warning all that had occurred came crashing down on him, him sinking on his mother’s shoulder crying bitter tears and angry tears, but his mother gathered them up and instead whispered blessings in his ear. But they did not stop coming. When he looked to the sun outside it was through blurry eyes and the radiance did not seem as dazzling as it had any other day and he felt as though he had been thrust into some strange twisted nightmare where the light did not illuminate and his father… his mind gasped for air.
Stop… I need to stop…
He buried himself into his mother, and Andura into him, and it was so that he was not the only one crying.
When they parted, his mother handed him the staff his family had kept through the generations. It was still glowing. And with it now in his shaking hands, he tried mustering up some anger at the impudent thing, just to turn his mind to anything else. But he could not. It was only a staff, not a creator of miracles.
It was lighter than he had expected, and what he thought would be discomforting was pleasantly not. The brown roots were soft and gave the staff a comfortable grip.
“It was never a staff for combat. Our family is one of healers. Your father was the odd one, loving his carvings so much.”
“Is he… here?”
Lepius glanced around at the covered bodies.
“No.”
Of course. Reality was doubly cruel as imagination. He almost sank, again, but he resurfaced when he heard a weak groan from behind him, then the mana calling from within.
He knew what he had to do.
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When he woke up from that half-forgotten dream in the Sanctum, he had felt it.
It was a rushing to his fingertips, like a flame fed with oil and wood – mana, healing mana, and he was overflowing with it. He didn’t know where it came from, but it called for him, gathering in his hands.
The priestesses had no issues with another healer, come to help.
There were many injured, so they waved him on, and he did not hesitate or think when he set his hands down to cure the first body, then the second, then third. He smoothened over burns and brushed the scabs off. The world melded into both imagination and reality as he conjured up the visions in his mind – happy, beaming dryads showing off unblemished bark.
Just like the High Priestess had said.
Understand your concept, or feel your emotion. Gather the WILL.
FOCUS it. Think of nothing else.
Use your CREATIVITY to form mana-constructs, or direct pure mana.
The newfound mana pool made him giddy, and so his hand moved from one patient to the next without a break in between. He was drunk on this novelty. But as the patients flew by, he felt as if something was draining him, with his limbs heavier and more sluggish.
What was happening?
When he turned around, a priestess grabbed him and shook his shoulders, then shouted something he could make nothing of but a low buzzing. Her leaves were frail around her face.
“- are you stupid? Why are you healing those with burns instead of those without their organs?”
An ugggh left his mouth as the mana dilation tore through him, the first time he had ever used enough mana to experience it.
“Eldertrees, we taught you triaging in your second week, oh sprouts, I have no time for- ”
She didn’t get to finish her sentence before he collapsed in a heap at her feet. At some point he was aware of his limp body being dragged, closer and closer to a fountain at the edge of the room. The coolness of the water restarted his mind.
And after a while resting his head against the wood, he managed to look up.
Before him sat his mother and Andura… watching him with those eyes only reserved for when he returned to the grove at midnight, drunk and half-naked. Mother glared at him before pulling his head into her lap. And soon the world swam back as her mana coaxed it closer, sharp edges making themselves clear, and as it did there was a deep blush that rose to his bark across his arms and legs – how could he forget triaging, Eldertrees’ sake?
His hands gripped the staff, and he tried to rise to a knee.
“Can I-”
“No.” World’s roots. His mother was too good. “You are not using that staff again and passing out. Do you want both parents whacking you in the head?”
Andura tried at humour, “I would.”
There was some polite chuckling, and then it was quiet. There was plenty to think about and not enough words to convey it, so instead Mother brought over her box of herbs, and their hands moved, sorting leaves and shifting boxes.
It was easy, mechanical work.
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Whatever lullaby they were gifted did not last long.
The roars of battle neared the entrance to the Sanctum, the waiting were restless, and the bodies kept coming, worsening with every minute. Soon there was no space without stacking them, so the hopeless and dead were gathered in a great pile in the corner, and then the priestesses began to fall, too. There were too few of them.
And as more of them fell, the reality of it all was too loud to ignore.
They could not stay here a moment longer. The ones with a chance needed to be elsewhere, and the ones that didn’t warranted no further attention. But where would they go?
It turned out the choice was not his to make.
Something caught his ear. Outside, a rhythmic clanking quickened, and Lepius likened it to one of those artefacts from the outsiders: a ticking clock, with hands that moved of its own. Tick, tock.
Tick, t-
Ah. Here it was. It was bound to happen soon.
An armoured monster tore through the doors. A crude pillar of iron hung off its back, and had it stood straight, it would have cleared the wooden archway. It was twice as broad across as Lepius was. And alternating across that broadness was more iron, all in black, and blood painted it all over. Fresh, red blood. A steel face shaped in the crude likeness of a human covered the face behind the metal.
If there ever was a great god of battle, Lepius would’ve laughed, pointed at the monster, and asked, “Have you fought this yet?”
Andura scampered back as Lepius, who was holding the hand of a dying elder, picked up the staff with trembling hands. He glanced at the stick in his hand, then the iron of that beast, and almost dropped it. But then the elder coughed up sap.
An instinct gripped him.
He jerked the crystal forward, directing it at the monster, and he almost laughed, for what was he really to do against this incarnation of war? It took a step forward. Lepius tensed… and then it moved towards an empty cot.
As it did, he saw the shivering dryad in the monster’s arms.
“Picked her up outside the Sanctum. Got hit by the backlash of one of the ice constructs from the mages.”
That was certainly not the voice he expected from the bowels of hell – it was light, with a upwards tint that got Andura to stop shaking. No… it was a human. An armoured human, if only helpful, and they had a word for that, didn’t they?
Knight.
The knight eased the dryad onto the cot and wrapped her up in his cape. Lepius noticed he had taken off his gauntlets, and as the instinct faded, he lowered the staff a little.
A voice, barely a whisper, was muttering something. He tried to focus on it, but the knight’s clanking smothered the sound. He put it out of mind for now.
“What’s a human knight doing here at this time?”
The knight lifted his visor and shone a smile down at him. The sight of that cherubic, beaming face and those blonde curls pushed down any instinct to run. He looked like a baby in armour.
“Why, does a knight need a reason to help the innocent? Sir Reidhammon of Schiltigheim. Honour above all,” and then he added, as an afterthought, “A Second-class adventurer, at your service.”
“Lepius.” He set the staff aside, “Adventurer, huh? You must’ve been battling outside. How does it look?”
“Not so well. Your elders are doing well, but their wellsprings are drying up. I would recommend evacuation. I can hold them off for a while, but it is no ordinary group of ruffians. I am recommending this to the High Priestess of your village, but she is a stubborn one.”
Lepius looked about at the needy injured, at the solemn dead, and finally to the priestesses. Most were on the floor, and the ones that weren’t were one or two more patients away.
“Then I shall go with you. I think we should evacuate too, and the High Priestess might listen to me.”
He watched, bemused, as the knight pushed up his thumbs on both hands and gave him another smile.
“Andura, stay with Mother.”
Reidhammon’s gait was long, and he crossed the hallway in a few strides. Lepius had to jog to keep up, “I do not mean to bring your hopes down, but this is a losing battle. We are not a village of war.”
“A knight, giving up? Hah! My, I don’t think I’ll hear the end of it!”
They slowed as they approached the High Priestess’s solar. Within, there should’ve been loud voices and arguments.
Instead, they came upon a cremation.
There were marks of scorching fire savaged upon the walls, and the furniture was either in disarray or burnt, or both. The occupants were little more than dust held in shape of a dryad. It must’ve happened so quickly, and Lepius muttered a little prayer out of instinct that it had, for there were many methods of death, but aflame and drawn out had to be one of the worst. Especially for a dryad.
Reidhammon shook his head. “I’ve seen this before. A clever trick. All the mages came back coated with fire mana from the inferno outside. They would never have detected the firebeetle.”
The sight of all his elders, the pillars of the village, the way they were sent Lepius' heart into a spiral. “What do we do?”
There was only a moment to decide. Reidhammon turned and leaned over the balcony overlooking the first floor. Even with his heart thunderous, Lepius could still detect a flow of mana as it ambled towards Reidhammon, and in particular, his throat.
Magic… his own responded, and it slowed his heart down.
And when enough had gathered at his throat and Reidhammon did speak, it was as if his terrifying armour had done so itself. How it echoed throughout the hall.
“Evacuate! To the south exit! I shall delay them!”
Something solemn was apparent now, something he didn't wish to think of, but couldn’t turn his mind from. It was a simple question.
Is this... the end of my village?