This time even I get to fight. We have taken casualties. We have pulled into a parking lot. The tree has been patient. After about 8 minutes it opened up with a shower of bark needles and acorn exploding into dusty clouds actively searching victims. Now, as the initial shock has worn off we are wearing gas masks. The clouds are rendered harmless. The spikes have taken out two police cars, but the armor on military vehicles is withstanding them, although for something biological in origin it is quite disturbing that some penetrate enough to stick in the armor plating. Ulrike is right. I cannot get out without being peppered with needles. Being large and strong is useless.

Pumping bullets from a heavy machine gun does damage. After the first long burst of bullets that would have killed an elephant, I overcome the resistance. I yank our communications guy behind the gun, open a firing port and conjure my heavy anti-vehicle weapon. It is awkward to handle inside a vehicle, but the projectiles, which I hesitate to call bullets, do real damage.

Tentacles break out of the ground and get another police car, whose crew has already fled.

The captain has a very loud voice: Ignore those roots, go for the trunk! Incendiaries and hand grenades!

They men afflicted by the clouds were still shacking as if having a seizure, but have fallen silent. One of the police officers is running in to retrieve a fallen comrade, pinned to a fence through a leg. I have no idea what he is planning. Does he want to rip out a spike that pierces armor plate with his bare hands? It does not matter. Spikes hit him and to an immobile target the root-tentacles are no longer harmless. They must have hidden cutting edges. Arterial blood sprays in two pulsating jets from his neck.

The police men equipped with tear gas launchers use them. Do they really think tear gas will work on a magical tree?

One of the more distant vehicles fires an RPG. A delicious infusion of power hits me. I switch to my assault rifle and go full auto. The tree escalates. Whole branches go into a whiplash motion flinging leafy twigs onto our vehicles. A second RPG hits. The twigs landed on armored vehicles develop tendrils probing for openings. I take out my magic knife and start cutting while still firing in an uneasy grip. It does not work. I push the firing port closed.

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A third RPG hits. The trunk splits in two and starts burning. Only one half of the tree is still launching needles. I take the machine gun over again. The tree gains a symbolic triumph and waves the severed head of the police offer fallen to his tentacles in the air on one of them. Three minutes later it is over. Amassed gun fire does the job. The tree not just dies, but its wood turns soft and it slowly flops to the ground forming two archways to either side of the split trunk.

I get out. The captain yells at me to get back. That man must have vocal cords made from titanium.

„It is dead. I can tell when anything I have shot at and hit dies“

The medic trusted me enough to take my word and rushes forward.

He dismisses the men fallen victim to the clouds. „I would need an antidote“. He and his two assistants efficiently get to work on the men hit by needles. Those have lost their rigidity with the tree they came from. I hesitate. I would like to have kept these items and the capability that allowed me to securely carry them a secret. But Dejan and Thomas have been poisoned. I pull the potions I have left out of the „place“ I can store my clothing and, it turns out, some other equipment.

I open their mouths starting with Dejan, pop the plastic lid from a vial and carefully insert the content. Could they choke? Probably. But they were basically left to die. I hardly can do more damage. But magic medication is magic. It finds its way to the place it is needed, whereever that be. Both return to a healthier color but remain unconcious. I hand the two remaining vials to the captain.

Five poisoned men are down. He looks at me. I shake my head.

--

The medevac helicopters retrieve six corpses besides the wounded. We are assured that Dejan and Thomas would be brought to our next major stop in a safe base. It would take the rest of the day to get the tendrils out of all crevices and to fix the pierced tires.

I draw a looting ritual in spray paint around the trunk of the tree. Strike! The awakening stone looks like somebody packed a thicket into a glass orb. Twigs and leaves everywhere.

„Don’t you feel like profiting from the war?“ - a soldier from the crowd calls out to me.

I hesitate a bit. „No, I am like a native picking up the rifle of an invader“

That actually silences the man.