“Darien, why are we walking through a primeval forest, skipping our grandpa’s stupid corpse-gnawing party, and making every family member mad today?”
“We technically mutilated a corpse. I didn’t really want to be there for that.” He still felt some guilt over having put pressure on Missy for that, but it was strange that she volunteered to come along with them. The bugs are more of a mist of mosquitos, but Missy’s arcane shield keeps most of them at bay–and there are little tiny zaps as each one lands and is turned into a fried pile of protein and a burning mote in the wind. He tried not to think of the impact of that barrier on less troublesome items like people.
In his hand is the waystone that he had grabbed from Grandpa’s study after talking to his father. It was strange how his father had not said a single word. It was like he knew the lengths his son was going to get answers to something that others seemingly didn’t care about. There had been a mild uproar about the break-in in the morning, and the Alderman had stormed to the house, looking red-faced and livid like an angered bull.
He also had no proof or a rationale for why someone would perform an autopsy on a person who had died for literally no reason. His notable silence on the state of the corpse was also telling. Darien had grabbed Marielle and gotten out of there as soon as it didn’t raise suspicions. His mother gave him a wayward sigh when she saw them depart.
He really couldn’t keep anything from his parents, it seemed. The waystone vibrates in his hand, a shard of green crystallized sap from the sapling that Grandpa had planted on his twentieth winter. There is still latent magic in the amber, and when he lets it rest in his palm, it rotates slightly to point the sharp tip toward the source:
Home.
Darien led the way with his sister and Missy in tow, and they were well off the beaten path in the early afternoon, a few hours into their trek. The trees towered overhead–limbs as thick as cars, trunks as wide as a dwelling for six or more wildlings. Maybe they lacked the scale of some human towers and skyscrapers, but these were organic. You couldn’t make steel grow like this and reach to the heavens. Not even the dwarves had magic like that.
“So, tell me about this theory of yours,” Missy inquired with a hint of spice. “And why am I the designated bug zapper?”
“Because you can’t bulls-eye giant armor-scaled predators at five hundred meters. Though that doesn’t count for much considering the…close quarters,” he muttered. Smaller trees dot the intervals between the titans of wood and bark, lush ferns, and colorful plants reaching for what sunlight filtered down from the canopy above. Everything almost had a yellow-green tint to it, and the sun glowed through the leaves. The biggest predators–dragons–kept to the skies and the canopy. The more dangerous you were, the higher up you typically lived, was the general rule.
Some predators like nagas broke that rule. He didn’t want to be dealing with snake-people right now, considering their taste for human and wildling flesh. And they were primal–intelligent, but lacking speech and sentience.
That’s what the bolt action rifle with the scope is for, chambered in .338 lapua magnum–an armor-piercing round that would annoy a dragon, but would devastate most smaller predators with a precise shot.
Bows really were only so effective against giant monsters–despite what TV would say about elves being elite snipers with arrows that could punch through armor plating, and could slide down staircases on shields while shooting. That was just silly.
They could do it while dancing. The rifle simplified matters and took some risks out of the equation, and Garrus had trained all his children in their use, and so hadn’t Grandpa Verner. Keeping that rifle slung over his shoulder gave him confidence that they were prepared enough for this trek. The waystone jiggles a little in his hand and course-corrects.
“Marielle! Don’t get too far ahead!” Missy says in a light reprimand, but she’s darted ahead already, dancing off of sprawling roots and swishing playfully at the low limbs of the smaller trees and humming. “It’s dangerous!”
“That's what you’re here for!”
“I hardly look scary enough to frighten anything out here,” he sighed contentedly. He missed being that young. Getting older really didn’t have as much benefit as it would for a human where age was given a berth of respect. Survivors and hardened men got old.
Old elves were seen as soft. It was a bit of a strange clash of cultures when he thought back to his discussions with his dwarven friend Jake, one of his fellow researchers.”Stay close. I saw Panthera tracks not far away. They generally will go after single targets, but they’ll snack on a dancing wildling if she’s not careful! They’ll carry you right off and gnaw on you later!”
“Hey, don’t be mean!” she protested.
“I’m being careful. There’s a difference. Besides, with our hearing, there’s rarely a predator that could catch us off-guard.”
The waystone jiggled agitatedly and shifted lightly. He pointed towards the right, and they followed. “Sorry Missy, got distracted. The theory is that there is a…bond between elf and tree. We’ve always treated it as a ritualistic thing, and the elders did note that strong trees were cultivated by strong wildlings. Not just the physical sense either. There was a theory that the tallest, oldest trees were seedlings planted by the most powerful of the wildling mages, back in the day. Some of those trees still stand at the center of the groves, testament to their might, even after their original seed-bound partner expires due to circumstance, war, accidents, or disease.”
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“It’s a bunch of mumbo-jumbo,” Missy complained. “There’s nothing that binds us to the trees, that’s a myth! Sure we’ve told the tale for thousands of years and now it’s something of a joke to most of us Darien, come on! Science and rationale and logic are the wave of the future!”
“That’s what I thought. But magic is a science in itself. There are rules. Patterns in the data. Theories that can be inference and fundamentals established that allow us to make sense of some of it.” He taps the waystone gently. “The crystallized amber allows a wildling to find their tree even if they get lost. This one works for me–sort of–because of my relation to Grandpa. It’s why family members volunteer if a tree can’t be tended by its seed-bond. It is a little…jittery. Perhaps I should have asked Father…”
“Dad’s in pieces over Grandpa. We aren’t far behind him,” Marielle huffed. “I’m okay because I’m helping hunt clues. Because Grandpa would have wanted us to.”
“Yep. That’s what’s keeping me going too,” Darien replied softly. “You know, I remember dinners with the grandparents were always fun. They stuck to old cast irons using the ironwood of the tree–metal-infused wood that served effectively for most of their needs, drawn from metal deep in the earth. Sometimes dwarves would ‘seed’ ore in the surrounding areas to help break up ore more readily, a sort of begrudging symbiotic bond between elves, trees, and hole diggers.”
“Pfft. Hole diggers? How flattering,” Missy laughed.
“Hey, Jake said it first!” Darien protested. “They call us pointy-eared, or antennaed humans. The jovial name-calling goes in every direction, as long as it's good fun. Still, I wouldn’t say that to someone I didn’t know on a very personal level, and never to be mean.”
“No, you just use bad words for the rest.” Marielle teased. “Is that it?” she points at a mid-sized colossus tree just ahead, obscured by a small set of shorter colossus saplings. They tended to form groves around the tallest, strongest tree, almost as if the big one warded off things the smaller ones couldn’t–
“Darien? Where’s the leaves?”
He looked up. The tree was almost bare, with a few colorful but sickly-looking leaves floating down–leaves the size of his torso that made more of a flop than a gentle rustling sound in the breeze. He looks down in dread.
It’s not just early autumn. The leaves look riddled with holes, and small bits of sap seem to be leaching out. “Stay back. Let me take a sample." He takes a vial with a premixed solution and takes a bit of the sap on a sample stick. After mixing it, he shook the now-closed vial and observed it after a moment. “Mana coming out of solution. Just like Grandpa.”
“You’re sure that's–” Missy stopped talking when the waystone jiggled and pointed at the tree, and there’s something else that fills him with concern. The bark is peeling in patches. He silently moved in, Missy and Marielle close behind him.
The tree isn’t healthy. It was dying, if it wasn't already dead. “This makes no sense. This tree shouldn’t be this degraded already, it’s like it’s been in a dying state for years. It couldn’t have been that long since he revisited, and grandpa would have sent help to tend to the tree, reinforce the roots–”
He stopped himself and simply grabbed his notebook and a pen. He sketched the picture of the tree as best he could. He really needed to get one of those ‘disposable cameras’ that Jake had mentioned before. Technology would replace pen and paper, but it couldn’t replace a creative mind and a skilled hand, for the moment. Not with those ancient bricks of automaton calculators that he lugged around in a suitcase.
Those automatons would never catch on. They were so impractical.
“Darien, set down that stupid rifle, you’re trying to do too much,” Missy sighed before gently grabbing the strap and removing it. He continued sketching and noting details. His alchemical kit should tell him a few more things. Soil samples, air readings on particulate data, all those eventually get pulled out to take measurements.
And the last one is a core sample. One he’s rather loath to do, so he vows to be gentle. “Old girl, know I do this with the utmost respect,” he spoke to the barreled girth of the trunk and Marielle snickers.
“You think the tree listens?”
“I think we’d be wise to listen if they say something back,” he responded softly. After a little effort, he has his core sample of the tree. The growth of the last hundred years is…concerning. It tapered off significantly in growth, and the past decade had seen virtually no growth on the outer rings. He plugged the hole with resin–if the tree was still alive, and there were still signs of life. “People pooh-pooh and say we’re stuck to old traditions. I still say that we can have tech, and respect the old ways. I do think the trees talk to us. And this one is telling us it’s sick.”
“But…why? Parasites? Dragon fire? I see a little charring on the upper level, maybe a dragon roosted up there at one point, but…” Missy trailed off. “Not the level of damage to compromise a tree of this size.”
“No. Something more fundamental. I need to get all these samples back to my lab. I’m really starting to worry the trees aren’t as eternal as we once believed. Or if something else is going on that is rendering that assertion moot.”
He has more questions spawning the more answers he gets. It's a runaway race of questions. But the biggest one remained:
Why?
“C’mon. Let’s gear up and go home.” the waystone jiggled in his pocket again, and he frowned before taking it out. It spun wildly, in a different direction now. It pointed to the 2 o’clock position, where the setting sun was currently. “Hold up a second. Marielle, stay put?”
“Sure thing, Darry,” she says with a cute salute. He stepped past the crumpled and otherwise unhealthy leaves, the waystone now vibrating almost. What is it pointing to?
He pulled a series of low-lying bushes aside to investigate. He was surprised that there's a single seed pod from the tree–perfectly intact. The waystone was shaking in his hand violently now. And there’s something else. A voice almost carrying in the wind. He didn’t hear the words, but he knew their intent.
Protect.
“Darien why is–”
“I need to get this planted. Fast. This seed pod is likely a week old, if I can get it in mana-infused soil, I might be able to save it. The waystone is shaking like crazy around it, it must mean something.”
“Or it’s broken,” Marielle huffed.
“I wish it were only broken. I think there’s still more to the tale. Let’s hope I can do right by Grandpa.” He took the football-sized seed pod and gently placed it in his day pack.
Hopefully, they can make it back to the main path before nightfall. He didn’t want to be out in the woods this far out with minimal defenses.
Dragons weren’t the scariest things out here. That much he knew for certain.