Glaze spent the rest of the day with Frey as they played with odd material. After the wood had turned translucent, it retained it’s absurd strength but under certain temperatures and pressure, it folded like paper. Jake watched the pair play around with the wood trying to figure out what temperature was needed for the wood to become translucent.
On deck, both Wolf and John spared with various weapons that Frey had dulled and their bare fists. He didn’t know where Lilly was, but he last saw here collecting samples of various things from the forest and playing with them. Looking at the sky, it was slowly approaching sunset which considering everything seems to go bad after dark prompted everyone to go aboard.
As they slowly made their way to the cabin, Lilly runs onto the deck holding a crystal-clear pot plant that had a very small white twig sticking out of it.
“Lilly, did you just shove a stick into blue soil that’s trapped in a piece of wood.?” He asked sarcastically.
“No, I didn’t find a random twig, I found a sapling.” She said shoving the base of the pot into Jakes face. “Can you see the roots?”
“Hu, so it is. How did you even spot it in the grass, its like half the height?”
“Turns out my station not only has surveillance, but also scanners.” Lilly joyfully said. “It scanned the surrounding area and after I selected tree, it highlighted on the cameras all the surrounding ones in view. I saw a tiny red line on the grass, and I found this little fella.” She said holding up the tiny plant. Jake had to admit, if they ever found their way out of here, that plant could be useful if it could be planted and spread.
“What’s the holdup out there” John yelled from inside the bridge. “We leaving or what? I don’t want to find out what lives here at night.” With that, the Valkyrie rose and sat about twenty meters into the sky. The time ticked by as the first moon rose over the horizon and the first thing went wrong. The Valkyrie was suddenly slammed from below and as Jake tried to fly higher, even with the ships impressive power, it didn’t budge. What was most frighting was that on radar at Lilly’s station, their ship was covered in a massive red dot as dozens slowly appeared ranging from the size of the Valkyrie to tiny specks barely noticeable. Wolf went to activate the weapons, but they wouldn’t extend into the firing positions almost as if they were blocked.
John precedes to leave his station and fly out the see what’s around them and the trees themselves came to life. He flies right back into the cabin and yells “THE TREES ARE FUCKING ALIVE AND ONE IS HOLDING US!” This causes everyone to panic as Glaze charges up the shields to no affect. It was after ten seconds the windshield went dark and a large silver eye stared right into where the group was standing.
“So, you are the ones responsible for killing one of our brethren and taking another.” Said a large ominous voice which seemed to come from the thing staring at them. “Do you know how long it takes to grow as large as the tree you murdered?” All of them stared in disbelief and shock their heads. “To get to a meter tall, it takes longer than any of you would live to see. I should kill all of you for even just attacking my brethren to begin with, but you are tagged. It would be a pain to cross your master so, if Discovery would return my child, I will spare your pathetic lives.”
This brought confusion among everyone but Jake looked to Lilly and she suddenly realised he meant her.
“Yes, you” The voice said in an impatient tone.
Lilly left her station and grabbed her potted plant and placed in on the deck. The eye left the bridge only to gaze at Lilly, she saw that his skin colour,? wood colour,? was a dark black covered in silver lines and the leaves were a blood red. But the most astonishing thing was its size. The ent was easily kilometres in height and that wasn’t even his full size as he had to lay down to peer into the cabin and you couldn’t see the end of him even with the light of a massive moon on him.
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Lilly wanted to ask something but shied away from it but the tree picked up on it.
“What is it you wish to ask human?” He spoke.
“Well, I have several questions. What is your name, what are you, how did you get so big, where are we?” She blurted out in fear, surprise, and enjoyment. “But first up, why did you call me Discovery?”
“Well then, no wonder she tagged you with it but to answer your question.” He paused for a moment, “And likely what your fellow tagged are also questioning, is what your symbol means as clearly your master hasn’t explained a fucken thing.” He quickly shouted in slight rage, “Your symbol on your back stands for discovery. I won’t tell you the rest, but all of the symbols stand for something and will serve a purpose.” The while group suddenly was trying to work out what each symbol meant before the massive tree spoke once again.
“As for your early question. My name is Trevenant and if you couldn’t work it out which clearly you simpletons haven’t, I am an ent, in particular a spectre ent. As for why I have grown to such large proportions, it’s a combination of being an alpha and time. But no more questions, I will leave you with warning as to not damage the trees but I shall return to my rest.” Trevenat said as he crept away from the ship but as everyone suddenly was calming down, he yelled one last thing. “Oh, and if you see your master, tell that bitch to educate you properly or so help me I will pummel her into the fucking ground and drop her broken body into the Abyssal Ocean!”
The group just stared in shock before all the signatures on the radar vanished.
**********
“What in the seven circles of hell was that?” Wolf said trying to cope.
The morning sun has long since risen as the group sat in the ship trying the comprehend what just happened. The shocking revelation that each of their symbols meant something to their personality and their ‘master’ was holding out information and something as large as Trevenant could exist was astounding.
“So wh-what was my symbol again?’ Frey quietly asked
“A hammer and a piece of crystal.” Glaze responded.
“So, mine might mean crafting as that’s what I did. Is that right?”
“How would I know?” Gaze angerly stated. Seeing her flinch, “Sorry, I’m just stressed.”
“Well, how bout we try figure it out together?” John asked the group. “Mine is obviously something to do with navigation as when I was young, I enjoyed cartography and when doing rescue and relief, I needed to be able to navigate properly.” The group agreed to this and then looked at Glaze.
“Stop starring so intently, its weirding me out.” Glaze said.” But as for what mine might be, I am too young to get any proficient magical attribute and like most others of my age or younger, study all sorts of magics so they are somewhat prepared for whatever they get.” Looking around, no one had any ideas other than just magic.
Wolf was difficult. He was clearly skilled at combat but he had no memories, so his intricate claws had nothing to go on other than soldier or warrior.
The problem came when it was Jake’s turn. With the minds of 6 people running overtime, nothing was thought of so his is still completely unknown. Lilly suggested change as his but despite how fitting it was, it felt wrong.
**********
The figure during the confrontation between her tagged and Trevenant had her worried sick. She hadn’t expected him to show up at all but rather send out one of the powerful beta’s. She hated that immortal piece of bulletproof wood so much, but she knew while she could beat the shit out of him, she wasn’t able to do any significant damage to him.
Not even a barrage from three Reaver hunter killer warships harmed him other than a small sent and scorch marks, and the thought of falling into the Abyssal ocean was downright horrifying. Good thing that while spectre ents are quite magical, they don’t have the best magical scenes outside of nature affinities so he couldn’t see her cloaking field, but he was close to crossing the barrier accidently and shrinking it would of cause problems when he was that close as he would of definitely sense a shift in mana near his hand.
But despite all that, it probably was about time she revealed herself properly to her group and at least then she wouldn’t be in danger of drowning for however long it takes to be killed.