Chapter 22: The Green's Answer
Sorry this update took so long. D'nemy went on vacation. He's back now and needs more encouragement!
Lilian charged her brother, slashing her blade downward. Gabriel’s skills as a brawler served him well, as he deftly feinted to Lilian’s side at the last moment, evading her attack.
She spun at him, seething.
A venomous, dark howl slashed through the cries of the growing wind as Gothgul raised his hands to the heavens.
Filtering through what prayers I had that could aid us, I called out to Canaan to bless us. What little help it would provide might just be what was required.
The next moment I questioned that assertion, as a wide bolt of blinding lightning licked down from the clouds, immersing Gabriel in its deadly spike. A deafening thunder bellowed, drowning out his scream as his body convulsed from the deadly force.
He crumpled to the ground, his robe smoking and his wooden leg laced with burns. Both Lilian and the Tree crowed with delight.
“No!” I screamed. “Lilian! Fight it! Fight her!”
I called out to Canaan to grant me sanctuary. An instant later I felt the protective essence of the Almighty gauntleting around me, sequestering me from nearly all aggressions.
Another blinding bolt of lightning crashed down to the ground as I raced over to wedge myself between Gabriel and the beguiled Lilian. I felt the horrid, numbing tingling of the lightning’s awesome power, but managed to evade the brunt of its destructiveness.
The Witch Tree’s whispers continued to drone on the fringes of my consciousness.
“Canaan has no power here.” She kept repeating. “You venture into the realm of the Fae, the abode of the Green. She is older. She is wiser. She is what was before and what shall remain when the Great Thief, the Grand Interloper, is vanquished and lay sleeping along side His brethren in Shuuth.”
Lies. All lies. The Witch Tree’s wickedness was boundless. She would dare evoke the purity of the Green to legitimize her decadence? The thought stabbed through the wall of whispers and I felt a sharp hiss, like a recoiling serpent.
It was immediately followed by a scream.
I was on top of Gabriel. The winds conjured by Gothgul served to impede my movement, but I fought through them, praying to Canaan for His healing grace. My hands vanished under globes of white and I gently laid them on Gabriel’s singed body.
I heard another scream in the back of my head. It tore through me like a dagger, smote in the fires of a blacksmith’s hearth. I glanced around to spot Lilian, on her knees, hands to her ears, the wind and thunder drowning out her screams of agony. Gothgul lunged at her.
A third scream seemed to split my head in twain. Lilian’s whole countenance twisted in rage and pain. Gothgul, too, wrenched at the shrilling. Then I remembered. The pixie’s boon, the copper nails, now in the hands of the shrouded monk, Talon, who had secreted himself around the back of the Witch Tree to drive the nails into her trunk. The pixies told us the ancient magic trapped in the nails was the only remedy to the Witch Tree’s power.
Clearly, Talon had begun.
Gabriel’s eyes shot open. He looked up at me and I helped him to his feet.
“Help Talon.” I told him. “He has started. The Witch Tree’s strength is compromised. Aid him is quickly finishing what he has begun. I will help Lilian vanquish Gothgul.”
The wind began to subsist. The lightning strikes grew erratic and weak.
Gabriel nodded to me and raced around the back of the Witch Tree, disappearing from my view.
Gothgul’s howl broke over the dying wind. Lilian was still kneeling on the muddy ground, her sword on the ground next to her. Gothgul raised his gleaming scimitar and lunged at Lilian, striking her deeply through the shoulder. She let loose a horrible cry of agony.
I prayed to Canaan, asking Him to bestow His power unto me to smite His enemy. A blazing celestial sword, wreathed in white fire, appeared above Gothgul’s head. I commanded it to strike down. Caught off guard, Gothgul offered up no defense and the spiritual weapon cut deep into the werewolf’s hide.
The Witch Tree let out another wail of pain, but it was faded, weakened. Fear fled me like a rabbit loosed from the jaws of a lion.
Lilian rolled onto her feet, her blade in her hand, blood seeping through her armor. She gritted her teeth and girded her strength.
“It is over Gothgul.” She said with commanding grace and courage. “Your mistress’s hold on me is gone. Her power weakens. Renounce her and live.”
“Curse you, paladin!” Gothgul growled. “She is eternal, as is our Union! You are without power here!”
He slashed at Lilian, but she evaded the onslaught. At that moment, a gleam caught my eye. Ensnared in the roots of the Witch Tree was a sickle, its blade made entirely of silver.
Lilian returned Gothgul’s attack with a deep cut of her sword. The villain only laughed as the wound she cut closed instantly.
The wind subsided entirely. The bloated clouds began to roll back, revealing sapphire, afternoon radiance.
Gothgul bayed in rage and slashed at Lilian, his scimitar cutting a shallow trough in the ground beside her.
“Lilian!” I called out. “There! The sickle!”
Gothgul turned to me, his eyes burning golden embers of wrath. I seized the moment to call upon Canaan to bestow His immortal power into my mace, transforming it into a magic weapon capable of harming this beast. My dancing spiritual weapon whipped about Gothgul’s frame, but the creature managed to evade each blow as he bounded for me, fangs bared in ravenous hatred, begging to be fed.
I ended my prayer and the head of my mace glimmered with divine enchantment. I glimpsed Lilian racing for the foot of the Witch Tree and the silver sickle.
Gothgul’s scimitar slashed at me, but my mace met the blow with a great clang. His strength was immense, but I was girded by Canaan’s might and held my stance.
“You shall make an ample meal for me, priest!” Gothgul growled. “I shall begin with your throat and end with your heart!”
The flaming sword of Canaan slashed down at Gothgul one more time, cutting into his hide. The werewolf howled with pain.
The spell was spent and the spiritual weapon vanished.
I slammed my mace downward, aiming for the beast’s head, but he stepped cleanly aside from my clumsy offensive and was spared more pain.
But the distraction worked. Lilian took up the silver sickle and without a word raced over to our melee.
“Sacrilege!” Gothgul growled as he turned to face Lilian. She ignored his rebuke and struck. The sickles blade bit deep. Gothgul reeled backward, sprouting smoking blood that sizzled when it struck the ground like heated metal when it plunges into water.
Gothgul swallowed down all pain and slashed madly at Lilian. I came around to the opposite side of the melee, allowing the Champion to flank the fallen druid.
“You are beaten.” She said to him. “Surrender, or perish.”
“Yuindr will have you, heathen!” Was his answer as he took hold of his scimitar with both hands and leapt at her.
Lilian twisted clear of the attack and slashed upwards with the sickle. It met Gothgul’s throat.
The werewolf landed on the ground in a bent, twitching heap as blood pooled out around his beaten corpse, fed from the gash in his neck.
Gabriel and Talon came about from behind the Witch Tree, now grayed with rot and decay. The wicked face in the trunk’s bark had flaked off, revealing countless maggot infested fissures that bubbled out unspeakably foul juices.
“It is done.” Talon said with solemnity.
“No.” Said Lilian, looking on at the sickle in her grasp. “We also need to find the golden cauldron.”
Gothgul’s lycanthropic mien had faded away, revealing the man he once was, naked but for a cloak. His flesh was sallow and yellowed. His muscles had atrophied nearly to the bone, proving that his strength was bestowed by a wickedness that had poisoned as it bolstered.
The barter, in the end, proved fatal.
Gabriel healed his sister’s wounds, and we searched the whole of the Witch Tree’s glade but found no trace of any cauldron.
“We should consult Corday.” Talon suggested after the exhausted search. “Perhaps she knows of the cauldron’s location.”
We all agreed.
We left the clearing and headed west, back toward the nymph’s secluded pool. When we grew close, we stopped and Talon lit another candle until it melted enough wax to sufficiently fill his, Gabriel’s and my ears from Corday’s beguiling music. Knowing only Lilian would be unaffected by the Fae’s magic, she would once again be our spokesperson.
We approached the pool to once again see the beauty blissfully bathing in the center of it. When she spotted us her contented demeanor melted into annoyance. After a brief conversation, Lilian turned to the rest of us, and with a nod led us back west. When we were safely away, we removed the wax from our ears.
“There is a clump of mounds just to the east.” Lilian told us. “Within one of them is a cave that the werewolves call home. She believes the cauldron might be hidden there.”
Following Corday’s directions we soon came upon the mounds. Though my prayers were all but exhausted, Lilian had the silver sickle and Talon, for the time, took up Yuindr, Gothgul’s scimitar. We agreed we needed to act quickly and had not the luxury of time to rest.
Immediately upon spotting the cave in one of the mounds, two werewolves, all that was left of Gothgul’s paltry army, leapt from the shadowed opening and attacked in a blind rage.
Lilian and Talon made quick work of them with the sickle and scimitar. Before Gabriel or I could react, the werewolves were slain.
Within the cave, tucked into a pile of other stolen treasures, we discovered the golden cauldron. It was amazingly light, despite its size. Clearly this artifact was infused, like the silver sickle and the copper nails that felled the Witch Tree, with a power of the Green far more ancient than I could imagine.
Talon burdened himself with the care of the cauldron as the rest of us carried off what we could of the werewolves’ cache.
The day’s light began to fade as night’s embrace took hold. Exhausted as we were, we hurried back to Master Baern’s sanctuary to the north. When we arrived, he met us with a wide and relieved grin.
“The silver sickle!” He exclaimed. “And the golden cauldron! You have done it! Life will once again return to the Wiltangle Forest. And you have Yuindr! Thank the Green! Thank Canaan! We are saved!”
Baern said no more. Eschewing our attempts to assist him with terse waves of his hands, Lilian, Talon, Gabriel and myself simply watched in wonder as Baern set Shale’s corpse in the center of the grove and using the sickle and cauldron began a intense ceremony filled with chanting, the burning of pleasing, if pungent herbs, dancing and deep trances.
After nearly an hour, Shale’s beaten corpse began to sink into the earth. The grass enveloped him until nothing remained but a verdant, gleaming quilt that shimmered in the moonlight.
Baern, layered in sweat, and greatly weakened from the ceremony’s effort, opened his eyes and smiled at us.
“It is done.” He whispered.
A minute or two passed. We looked at each other with puzzled expressions, while Baern sat serenely with his eyes closed.
I finally got up the courage to ask, “so, did it work?” I asked.
Baern’s eyes remained closed. “yes. It did.”
Confused, I decided to risk inquiring further, looking around I asked, “where is he?”
Baern opened his eyes then. “The Green must decide what form his soul will take on his return. He must then find his way back here. It could take some time.”
We decided to pass the time with a meal. In its midst, there was a stirring in the woods around us. Wind, warm and inviting filled the sanctuary. Subtle odors, like that of a spring dawn after a night of cool rains, danced on the back of the wind.
Then out of the shadow of a tree came a tall, gaunt figure. It was entirely encased in what appeared to be scales, but as it moved closer, the scales revealed themselves to be leaves. The face, too, was covered in leaves.
It bore no resemblance to anyone or anything I had ever seen before. What was this creature? An avatar? A herald?
Talon suddenly gasped. We all turned to him, startled by his anomalous display of emotion.
“Shale?” The ascetic asked the creature.
It turned to him and its eyes narrowed, as if seriously considering the merits of the inquiry. Then its gaze swept over us, eyes glowing with a deep, almost blackened, green. It nodded saying…
“Hunter, destroyer, and keeper of ancient knowledge; I am Her answer to the rising power of man and fiend. Shale is no more. I am Shallahai of The Green.”
