Chapter 3
Cecilia looked at Kida in confusion. “What do you mean, the forest wants to play?”
“Do people not fear the forest anymore?”
“We avoid the forest because it’s easy to get lost. I don’t know if people fear it.”
Kida shook her head. “The forest is alive. You’ve heard of hamadryads, right? The spirits of trees?” Cecilia nodded, and Kida continued, “The forest is essentially one hamadryad, or a lot of hamadryads who think and act in tandem. They have reason to fear the two-leggers, and try to keep them out by getting the trespassers lost and eventually dead. They understand the two-leggers enough to know that they are superstitious and stay away from that which they fear. And that’s how Longorn Forest has survived this far.”
Cecilia rested her hands on her sword and dagger. “So what? We have to fight our way out?”
Kida sighed. “That’s why you got lost in the first place. Hamadryads, especially these ancient ones, are sensitive to emotions radiating off of people. They left me alone because they didn’t sense hostility from me; I just wanted to catch a couple rabbits for our supper. But my guess is that you came in here all ready to fight me because you thought I was breaking my promise, and they sensed it. They thought you were a threat, so they shifted the forest to get us lost in the depths. But we should probably hurry up so that the others don’t get lost here. That’ll just take forever to sort out.”
Cecilia gritted her teeth. “Then what do you suggest we do?”
Kida looked at Cecilia, and pointed to her own jaw. “If you keep gritting your teeth like that, you’ll just wear down your teeth and it’ll get hard to chew. Not to mention, you’ll have lots of jaw, neck and head pain. That won’t be good for you in the long run.”
“I don’t care!” Cecilia exploded, words rushing out like a torrent. “My entire life has been spent to kill you. My parents were so poor that they sold me to the priests to be raised as a weapon! I have no other purpose. If I can’t kill you, then I need to die so the blessing can pass on to the next Hero. And you just act like you’re on a vacation and everything is right in the world? That’s such a lie. You’re the main problem in the world, so why can’t you just kill me instead of acting like you’re my big sister?”
She finally stopped, her lips quivering as she sucked in air in deep pants. She watched as Kida rubbed the back of her neck.
Kida finally let out a deep breath, and said quietly, “I’m sorry, but I’m actually not the main problem in the world. I know you don’t believe me, but the Demon Lord is not the cause of the monsters appearing and killing people. It has been happening for… centuries, far longer than I’ve lived. The Saint and her party decided that in order to unite people into a cohesive force, they needed a concrete figure to put the blame on, rather than just random groups of monsters to attack and destroy. So… they decided to curse me. I didn’t volunteer for it. It was decided for me, much as your being the Hero. I never wanted to kill any of the Heroes, but they never listened to me. And I don’t want to kill you, or your Party members. And you can’t kill me, because I literally can’t be killed right now.”
“Wait, hold up a minute.” Cecilia held up her hand. “Before, you said that your sister and friends betrayed you. Now you’re saying the Saint and her party…”
“The Saint, Yasmin Adoré, was my bond sister. We grew up in the same orphanage, and formed a party with the First Hero’s party. They betrayed me, cursed me, etc. Can we move on from that?” Kida sighed. “I was trying to say I know a little bit of what you’re probably going through, but never mind. Regardless, let’s get back to the others.”
Kida handed the dead rabbits to Cecilia, who grabbed them on reflex. Kida then turned slowly in a circle, eyes closed and arms outstretched at her sides. She quietly spoke, each word weighed with magic, like invisible crystalline daggers. “North, south, east and west, hear my wish and help my quest. Arrow spin and point the way, guide my path without delay.”
The air immediately shimmered around Kida, then coalesced into a single point. A silver beam shot out from the point, like a thick thread, and went through the trees. Kida reached behind her and took Cecilia’s hand, and pulled her forward. They started walking through the trees, Kida holding one hand in front of her to hold the thread, and the other pulling Cecilia directly behind her.
Cecilia glanced around her as they walked. The trees constantly shifted, blurring together like wet paint on a rainy day. She could have sworn that she saw eyes peeking at her from between leaves, then she stumbled and almost fell, except for Kida’s hand holding her up.
“Eyes front, please,” Kida said tersely. “I need to focus on the spell.”
Cecilia bit back a retort, and instead focused on walking directly behind Kida. Long dead leaves crunched underfoot, and their feet sank into deep loam. Rather than the trees getting newer and sunlight being more abundant, they seemed to be going deeper into the ancient forest. Trees grew larger and closer together, holding each other up as they had collapsed from damage or age. The air grew more dark and more still.
Kida finally stopped and let out an angry sigh, and the silver thread vanished. “This is absolutely ridiculous.”
“What?” Cecilia asked quietly.
“The forest doesn’t want us to leave. And it seems worse than normal. Like it’s deliberately trying to take us to the heart of the forest. Typically, it would just get us lost and leave us alone. I’m getting tired and hungry and angry.”
“Didn’t you say they can sense emotions? Isn’t it better to–”
“Yes, I said that.” Kida’s voice was loud enough to echo through the trees. “I also was willing to leave the forest and not start a fire. But right now, I’m starting to rethink that.”
Nothing happened for a few seconds, then a creature stepped out of a nearby tree. It looked like a beautiful young woman, but made of flexible wood. Cecilia knew the tree to be a copper beech, so the hamadryad’s coppery hair flowing down to the ground made sense. But the face was expressionless and the eyes were simply the shape of eyes, with no pupils or emotion visible.
“What do you want?” Kida asked. Cecilia shivered slightly at her tone and aura.
The hamadryad raised a hand and pointed to its left. “Danger. Help.” The voice was barely audible, like someone trying to speak with a dry throat.
“You want my help?”
“Yes. You are friend.”
Kida cocked her head to the side. “Am I?”
“Few two-leggers friendly. You are. We remember you.”
Cecilia blinked in surprise, then was pulled forward as Kida walked in the direction the hamadryad was pointing in. “Wait, where are we–”
“If we do what it wants, then we can leave without burning the whole forest down and probably getting you killed in the process.” Kida marched over the protruding roots and finally stopped in a clearing. Sunlight poured down from above and reflected off of an enormous crystal protruding from the ground. The crystal was clearly magical; even Cecilia could tell that. Fragments had broken off of it and were almost covered in the tall grass. Colors swirled around the crystal’s surface: black, orange, brown, blue, scarlet, and white.
“I see,” Kida said. She let go of Cecilia’s hand, walked over to the crystal, and crouched down, inspecting the base. “The forest hasn’t been purified of miasma for a long time. A very long time, maybe a couple centuries. The crystal has only so much that it can absorb before it needs outside assistance.”
“Like purification from the Saint’s magic?”
“Yeah, or a similar tier-10 level magic. I can do it… but it’ll take a few minutes to cast.”
“Why would it take a few minutes? Can’t you just chant something like before?”
Kida sat down and looked up at Cecilia, squinting from the sunlight. “So… remembering you saying that you didn’t need to know about magic because you’re a swordswoman. Sit down and let me explain a couple things.”
“Do we have time for it?”
“We’ll make time, so there’s less chance of the spell messing up because you do something. Okay, so tier-1 to tier-3 are basic elemental spells. They use the elemental spirits of fire, water, wind, earth, to manipulate the magic around them into offense or defense. Yeah? If you’re sufficiently advanced in magic, you can use these spells simply by saying the element and the effect. Higher tier magics require concentration, sufficient magic power in yourself, and words that shape the spell. I use rhyming stanzas because they’re easy for me to remember. Other people might like more impressive sounding spells, but that’s them. Regardless, the higher the tier is, the more magic is required and the more dangerous it becomes if it breaks. I’ve seen plenty of explosions and deaths because the mage lost control.”
“Same here.”
“Okay, good to know. Now, the highest tiers often require objects. Think of them like ingredients in something you’re cooking. The words and magic are parts of the whole. Successful healing is successful because the patient’s body is like ingredients used to repair the wound. Teleportation magic requires locations and objects at the locations. Ummm, purification, for instance. It requires somewhere for the miasma to go. That’s one reason it’s difficult to do, because where do you put the poisonous element that causes animals to go berserk, humans to die, and vegetation to mutate? The Saint has an innate purification magic that only the Saint has ever been able to do. So she can take the miasma into her own body, and purify it there. Anyone else has to be able to put the miasma in something that can contain it.”
“Can you just put it in the pieces of crystal that are lying on the ground?” Cecilia said, as Kida paused for breath.
“I’m gonna have to, but there’s a chance that there’s going to be crystal shards flying around. And a chance that the crystal itself may shatter. If I …use Common to speak the spell, I think it might be too powerful at once. That’s the tricky thing about higher-tier magic. Using another language can give some distance between the magic and the activation, but you still need to choose the words carefully in order to create the magic properly.” Kida scratched her head furiously. “I know that you won’t want to, but if the forest allows you, could you go get Lycert for me? I mean, you can bring all of them, but Lycert can create a barrier around the clearing while I do the magic, try to limit the damage.”
Cecilia thought for a couple minutes, then slowly nodded. “Yes. I may not trust you fully, but so far you’ve kept your word. Although I’m pretty sure that location spell wasn’t tier-1.”
Cecilia stood up as Kida grinned sheepishly. “That is true. It was tier-8.”
“But you did it to help us, so I’ll go out on a limb and do it for now. Provided the forest is okay with it.”
The hamadryad, who had been standing by silently, pointed ahead of Cecilia. The trees blurred and shifted, then there was an abrupt short passage to the land outside the Forest. At a distance, they could see Lycert, Macdougall and X, still lounging in the positions they had been when Cecilia charged into the forest.
“I’ll be back soon. Don’t get lost without me.”
Kida nodded as Cecilia walked away. The hamadryad walked over to Kida, and Kida looked up at it, and said, “I know the forest is important, but I wish you could have waited.”
“Yasmin has abandoned the forest,” the hamadryad said, her tone and voice as impassive as ever. “You are the only one who still remembers us.”
“Yeah, I know. And you’re probably the only one who remembers me.” Kida turned her gaze back towards the Hero’s Party coming through the trees. “I just wish I could travel with them for a while longer. It was nice to not be alone for a while.”
Cecilia walked ahead of the others to say, “Hey, they say I entered the forest just a minute ago. Haven’t we been in here for at least an hour?”
Kida shrugged. “The forest has a way of twisting space and time. And affecting one’s perception. I thought they seemed really relaxed when I said I was going in the forest.”
“So what, you cast magic on them or something?” Cecilia demanded from the hamadryad.
“Purification is necessary for our continued existence. The minds of a few two-leggers are simple to manipulate.”
Kida winced and hastily interjected, “Look, we’re here now. So let’s just do this and be on our way. Earth shift.”
The ground around her rippled and moved the crystal fragments to be in a circle around the big crystal, separated by a few centimeters of space. Knowing now what she did about tiered magic, Cecilia could appreciate how easily Kida could use basic level magic without chanting a spell like Lycert did.
Kida stood up and engaged in a technical conversation with Lycert about strengths and diameters of the barrier. The Hero’s Party were instructed to stand just outside the clearing, while Lycert murmured words in another language to construct a shimmering golden sphere to cover the entire clearing. Kida looked around in approval, then gave him a thumbs-up before turning back to the crystal. She let out a raspberry, then started speaking in a different language, one that sounded a little familiar to Cecilia, but different all the same.
“Are we really going to let her do this?” Macdougall murmured.
“A little late to be asking, don’t you think?” Cecilia asked.
“I wasn’t given a chance to say anything earlier, with everyone else yammering away.”
Lycert didn’t look away from Kida. “The language sounds like one from the Northern lands, but I’m guessing it must be an ancient form of it? I can’t really understand it at all.”
Cecilia turned her attention back to Kida, who had finished speaking. The colors inside the crystal swirled frantically around, then appeared to shoot into Kida. Then Kida appeared to… shrink? She was getting smaller.
“Lycert, what’s going on?” Cecilia demanded.
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen a spell like that. She shouldn’t be… wait. What? Who is that?”
Cecilia looked at him in alarm, and saw him slide down to the ground, and then realized that Macdougall and X were also collapsing in slow motion, their eyes closed. Then she looked back at the shield spell, and saw a large crystal amongst some trees, and a person standing there, covered in white light. Who was that? She knew, somewhere, who that was.
“Cecilia, please don’t fight. It’ll be okay, I promise. I won’t hurt you.”
Who was saying this? Why?
Then there was nothing but blackness.
Cecilia woke up and stretched, feeling rested and content. She hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but it had been a nice nap. The sun was high in the afternoon sky, and the grass in the plains had been surprisingly comfortable.
“Wakey wakey, sleeping beauty,” Macdougall teased. “If we hurry, we might get to Alexandria in time to enter at dawn for some fresh caught breakfast.”
“What’s the rush?” Lycert asked. “It’s not like we’re in a hurry or anything.”
“I want something besides jerky and bread,” X said, brushing grass off of her clothes.
“Me too,” Macdougall said. “Besides, we can send word to the Capital sooner from there. I understand they’ve got a communication crystal at the church. Maybe they’ll even tell the town elders to throw a party for us. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
Cecilia got to her feet and pulled on her bag. “Well, let’s get going then. I want to tell the Church that we’ve defeated the Demon Lord.”
Macdougall started leading the group westward, laughing as he said, “I can’t wait to see the faces on those nobles in Lord Thornton’s group. Remember? They were making bets that we wouldn’t even be able to get to the cursed plains before monsters felled us.”
The hamadryad watched from the safety of the Longorn Forest, watched the Hero’s Party walk away and to a well-deserved rest. She stepped into a nearby tree, and out of another, into the clearing where the crystal now shone pure white. The air was cleaner, and the trees looked more whole and less sickly.
A young woman sat on the ground, wearing clothes too large for her. Her body had shrunk to that of a young teenager, and her once-silver hair had turned black from the absorbed miasma. She looked up at the hamadryad with a somber expression.
“They’ve left,” the hamadryad said. “I heard them mention Alexandria.”
“All right,” Kida said. She raised a shaky hand to push hair out of her face, then frowned. “Ignite.”
Flames erupted from the ends of her hair, devouring the black strands until they reached a length by her ears, then died out. Kida then ran her hands through her now-short hair, breaking off the sizzled ends. “Even if they come looking for me, they probably won’t recognize me now, right?”
“You knew that entering the forest in the first place could lead to something like this.” The hamadryad tilted her head to the side. “Why then do you grieve this parting?”
“Humans have something called emotions, and that makes things messy.” Kida leaned her head back against the crystal. “I could also have killed the Hero’s Party, but that would be… wrong. And tragic. They didn’t deserve that. I’ve seen enough people die because of my sister.”
“What will you do now? You can stay here, if you so desire.”
She shook her head. “I’d prefer a place with a bed. Lycert told me that they have Adventurer’s Guilds, and it’s become a lot more organized than in my day. So I think I might look into that. Where’s the nearest big city, outside of Alexandria?”
The hamadryad pointed to her right, and the trees blurred and moved again, revealing hills and a town in the distance. It then reached into a tree, and pulled out a bag, a little bigger than a man’s fist. “Two-leggers have sometimes become lost and died in here. We kept the shiny objects, in case you ever returned. We know that two-leggers desire these.”
“Thank you.” Kida opened the pouch and saw some coins and jewelry, mostly rings and a random bracelet. “I can use this. I’ll get out of your way now, if you don’t mind.”
The hamadryad watched impassively as Kida made her way out of the forest.
~end chapter 3~
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