The figure pulling Grant away from the side of the pillar was a bear, or at least, that’s what he thought at first. This person was not a wild-shifted druid, but an Arctrosi, ursine people native of Clydeth alongside the canine Latranians, like Pawa. He was wearing nothing but leather and loincloth over his stocky build, armed with nothing more than a wooden club.
“What are you doing?! You can’t just enter the structure! It’s going to eat you the moment you stepped through the arch!” reprimanded the Arctrosi.
“Hence the barrier,” said a nonchalant Grant. “If the monster’s going to attack me again, it has to go through the barrier first.”
“That barrier’s nothing but thin paper against that thing! It will erode that barrier faster than you can sustain it. Just stop and listen for a moment, will you? I know you are sent here by the druids to check on this structure. The leader informed us that you and that spiritwalker entered the forbidden forest. I'm just like you. I'm not drawing nature's energy, so I'm alright.”
This intrigued Grant, who dispelled his barrier and sword.
“I’m listening,” said the half-elf.
“The druids sent people into this forest, chosen volunteers who embodied the best of the community, and importantly, not druids themselves, but well-versed in magick. We are tasked with keeping a barrier that stops whatever’s inside from breaking free. This ancient structure is a prison.”
“You're not doing a very good job for a warden,” concluded Grant, eliciting a growl from the bear person.
"Try and maintain a barrier on a rotation for once, and you'll know how fucking hard it is."
"Okay, okay, calm down. Don't get cross at me. I'm just voicing my thoughts."
The ursine person let out a grunt, voicing his displeasure. “Then just as we thought nothing's going to happen, somebody gone and fucking sabotaged us. I thought he was one of the chosen volunteers like me. Nobody would come in here unless the leader has a say about it. He must be from a rival druid faction. Why else would he come in here to sabotage us?”
“Why do you think he came from a rival faction?”
“Why not? He wild-shifted into a reptilian creature and went on a rampage. He managed to kill one of us and injured the others. We dealt with him swiftly, but the barrier’s gone. I can't maintain the barrier more than an hour alone."
The Arctrosi looked at Grant, pondering on the sword and barrier he conjured earlier. "You look like you know your way with barrier spells. Care to help me maintain this barrier until someone can take over for us?"
“I have a much better idea,” proposed Grant. “I am going in there and kill whatever’s inside.”
The Arctrosi eyes widened in shock
“Did you listen to what I said?! That thing—”
“Is going to eat me the moment I went inside. Yes, I heard it the first time,” said Grant. “Your idea has merit, but whatever’s in there is a monster that needs to be slain, not imprisoned. I don’t give a fuck about keeping it contained. That thing's going to wither this whole goddamn forest, so we have no choice but to kill it."
“Have you been listening to me at all?!” lashed the Arctrosi. “That thing in there is fucking dangerous! If we can't keep it contained, we're all dead meat!”
“Then tell me if someone knows what's in there instead of us standing around here looking like idiots!" yelled Grant. "Every second we waste here is every second we lose! Everyone's going to fucking die!"
The Arctrosi, despite his hefty size, was taken aback by Grant’s outburst. Grant, being an emotional person, was not against saying what he had in mind if the situation demanded it. A life and death situation warranted such an outburst.
That did not work all the time. The ursine warrior-mage was unable to give Grant the answer, simply because he did not know what answer to give the demanding half-elf. All he could do was stammer a semblance of an answer, unable to come up with something. He had never been inside and his every being, whether it was his experience or his beast person instinct, told him that whatever’s inside the structure was dangerous, and without the protection of the barrier imprisoning it, it would eventually be set free.
The standoff was soon broken by someone else’s voice.
“It’s this forest’s mother tree.”
Grant turned towards the voice, helping Arrabi up. The spiritwalker was out of breath and exhausted, though that wasn't the one that caught Grant's attention. It was the person who helped her up. She looked like a beast person of a kind Grant had never seen before: a rabbit or a hare person, with the antlers of a deer and hoofed legs. Grant’s first thought was that she was a chimera, but chimeras were animals, not beast people.
“The druids are unable to kill it because it will corrupt them as well,” continued the person. “Thus the community employed capable warriors to vanquish it. None ever succeeded, so they resorted in asking volunteers to keep it imprisoned behind a barrier not sourced from natural energy. Those who fell victim to the corrupted mother tree could never rest in peace, for their tortured soul fueled the mother tree. Their bodies still remained inside."
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“She’s telling the truth, Grant,” said Arrabi, her expression sad. “The corrupted spirits that attacked me were screaming in anguish. They blamed everyone who could not get them out. The corruption took them, so I had no choice but to destroy them. They can never be reincarnated. They're gone."
Grant could understand Arrabi's anguish. All he could say was, "I'm sorry."
"We'll grief when we've dealt with that tree. It must go."
"Then tell me something, uh, rabbit-deer woman."
"I'm a jackalope," said the leporine woman.
"Thanks for clarifying. Tell me, will it devour me the moment I step in? Will the shadows consume me like primordial darkness?"
The leporine woman paused for a moment, choosing her words carefully. It wasn’t a long pause.
“No, it won’t,” she said.
This answer was the answer Grant seek. He gave her a sincere, "thank you."
Grant then turned towards the arch. "Let's see if this is the darkness I can deal with." He summoned his sword. "I just hope I'm wrong."
“Wait. What do you mean by that?”
The Arctrosi’s question came just as Grant threw his sword into the darkness. Suddenly, there was a creaking sound, just as blue flame burst from among the darkness, momentarily illuminating the dark room. There was a silhouette of something within resembling an overgrown tree.
“Fuck,” lamented Grant. “Just my luck.” He then shrugged. “Well. No time to test it like the present.”
The others did not have the time to ask what he meant by that when Grant said, “Cover me while I prepare a spell. You're good with barrier spells, right?”
“Do as he said,” commanded the leporine woman, who sensed that Grant really knew what he was doing asking such a request towards the Arctrosi.
The ursine warrior-mage nodded and cast a translucent yellow shield as Grant stood in front of the arch. He started his incantation, which was longer than the usual, combat-oriented ones. He held out his hands and started to incantate in elvish, preparing a spell that could end this whole problem in one fell swoop. His hands started to glow.
The corrupted tree, sensing what Grant was trying to do, furiously attacked the mage with its tendrils, which was revealed to be wooden branches. The barrier around Grant cracked the moment the full force of the branches hit it. The half-elf turned towards the Arctrosi, silently telling him not to screw up, while he kept incantating his spell.
The relentless attacks from the mother tree was enough to overwhelm the barrier, causing it to crack more and more. The Arctrosi seemed to be struggling to keep it strong. It was soon reinforced by the the trees all around them, courtesy of the leporine woman's druidic command. I bought Grant more time, who kept himself focused. He couldn't make an error, or he must start over. Drops of sweat filled his eyes and mouth as he murmured the long incantation. It hadn't been a minute since he started, but it felt like forever when a dark force was trying to kill him.
That worry was soon alleviated when the wooden barrier and the barrier were holding on. He would thank the people casting them if he wasn’t too focused on finishing his incantation.
Unknown to Grant, but known to the leporine druid, Arrabi commanded the spirits in the forest to form a spectral guardian that only she could see. As the spirits were hardier than pure natural energy, they held back the corruption much longer than nature’s barrier. However, Arrabi could see that they were still susceptible to the corrupting effects of the mother tree, baffling even her.
She instead directed her surprise into encouraging Grant, knowing that worrying about it would only distract him, the only person who seemed to know what he was doing against such a dangerous enemy.
“Finish the spell, Grant! Quickly!” demanded Arrabi.
Her worry pushed Grant to finish the incantation immediately. He skipped a word here and there, but he did not need them. All he needed was to see if this counterspell would work in the scope he was hoping for.
“I’ve done it!” declared Grant. “Let down your barriers!”
“What?!” exclaimed a baffled Arrabi. “After all we did to protect you?!”
“Listen to me and do it now!”
The leporine druid was the only one who realized what Grant was attempting. She quickly let the wooden barrier go, exposing Grant to a relentless assault by the branches, only protected by the Arctrosi's barrier and Arrabi's spirit guardian.
“Do as he say,” she commanded.
Arrabi was reluctant, but she also knew she had no idea how to counter this. Reluctantly, she let the spirits disperse, letting the branches to hit the barrier, its full force caused it to crack. Grant was already prepared for this as he held his hand out to one of the branches that managed to break through.
What happened next happened in an instant, to the astonishment of everyone who witnessed it.
The branches that were so intent in skewering the hapless mage immediately withered the moment they touched his palm, though not without one of them successfully impaling his hand due to residual force. Grant grunted, but he knew the injury was negligible when he felt joy upon realizing that the spell that he dedicated his life to perfect was a success.
The counterspell coursed through the tendril, disintegrating them in a flash, until they reached the mother tree, which let out a terrible creak as it withered away from the counterspell. The feedback from the counterspell also released light energy that destroyed parts of the structure, causing both Grant and the Arctrosi scampering into safety before chunks of marble could crush them. The others shield themselves from the dust and rubble. The structure, surprisingly, was still standing despite the energy feedback.
And within it was the husk of a quickly disintegrating, centuries-old tree, which was nothing more than a withered tree that was kept alive by the corruptive energy. Bodies of unfortunate adventurers scattered around it, all in different state of decomposition.
Everyone was unsure what to expect from the conclusion, but one thing was clear. There was no corruptive energy detected around them, though lingering corruption were still there. It would still spread, but not at an alarming rate. It could be easily cut off.
“I didn’t think that would work,” said Grant, followed with a hearty laugh. “Then the next step would be to make it combat-ready. I am not going to risk myself like that again.”
“What…was that spell?” asked an astonished Arrabi. “It looks like it was made out of pure light.”
“It was a purification counterspell specifically made to combat a very specific dark magick. A simple counterspell will not do against such a big, concentrated source of magick.” He winced from the pain of his hand, which had a big, gaping hole from where one of the branches hit him. “And the only way for it to work is by touch. Projectiles won’t have enough concentration, as do an area effect. It’s incredibly risky and takes too long to cast, so it's only good for one purpose only."
"Why is it in elvish?"
"Why not? I developed it with an elf."
“You said it was to combat a very specific dark magick,” asked the leporine woman. “How do you know your spell will work against it.”
"Because your mother tree was corrupted by the same magick that put me here in the first place,” said Grant. He then turned to Arrabi. “And frankly, Arrabi, too.”
His expression darkened, knowing what he was going to say was something he never thought he would say.
“It’s Vyrnian Magick,” said Grant. “Which means Rogaria is just the start. This is not over. Not by a long shot."
