44: Pacts and Portents

Noah threw the last of the recently deceased demonic animals into the maw of our tree—that was now forty metres tall—and leapt up into the air on fluttering wings. The tree gobbled them up with gusto, and we all watched with hopeful expectation. Today should be the day that our tree evolved, for lack of a better term. Did that make the tree a pokemon?

“How does this work?” I asked Paisley, who was standing beside me.

She shrugged her slim shoulders. “I have no idea. I’m going off what my class knowledge tooltips are telling me.”

I noticed her shoulders way too much. Why was I so hung up on them? Mine were the same! God I was weird.

The tree gave a gurgling rumble, and the whole trunk undulated. Like some sort of enormous beast preparing to vomit, the undulations and gurgling sounds increased in frequency, until there was a massive crack.

As one, the roots of the tree all snapped off at the trunk. It looked like the tree was about to topple over, but instead, four massive root legs ripped up out of the ground to crash down onto the earth. The taproot had split in four to create the huge legs that were now pulling it up further into the sky.

It towered over us, a full fifty metres in height now, and with a frightening display of power, roared. Something clanged to the ground beside me, and I felt my heart drop into my stomach. Oh fuck. That was one of the control pins.

“Oh no,” Paisley gasped, staring at the same pin. Moving quickly, she bent and picked it up, running for the tree like a heroic soldier getting ready to dive on a live grenade.

“STOP,” a low, earthquake of a voice bellowed.

Everyone froze, and we stared at the tree in a mix of fascination and fear. It had just spoken to us.

After almost fifteen seconds, the tree continued in its strange chanting mode of speech. “There is no need for your controlling magicks anymore. I have awoken. You have fed me well, and thus, I shall cooperate, for trees learn the value of a symbiotic relationship early in their lifetimes. I have long since been disconnected from my kin by death, but perhaps I can weave a new root network with you two-legs. Build your house amongst my branches, and they shall provide shelter. Like the pollinators who were once my companions, you shall swarm around me and defend the both of us as we wander this world in search of meat and knowledge. Is this acceptable?”

Holy shit. The tree was offering to help us in our plans? Just like that, even after we stuck stakes of metal into it and stuff?

“Oh great spirit-tree,” Paisley began slowly, her brows furrowed as she raced to think of a response. “I think this will work, but what about… what about our nails and ropes? Won’t they hurt you while we build?”

The huge, faceless spirit rumbled like a rock slide, and I had to fight the urge to duck and cover. Except it wasn’t a rock slide, obviously, it was the tree laughing. “You are worried for the pain I might feel? Your concern is appreciated, but nevertheless unnecessary. I feel no pain, save for the pain of a belly gone too long without the meat of a dead soul. You may drive your splinters of iron into my hide without fear. I will slumber most days, and speech is tiring, so even during those few times where I will rouse myself, I will follow the direction you give with your enchantments.”

“On behalf of myself and my friends, I accept,” Paisley replied eagerly. Ethan looked like he wanted to say something, but she shushed him with a wave of her hand. I had to agree with her. Yeah, it was a little unnerving to just trust the tree not to eat us, but what other choice did we have? The damn thing was a raid boss now. It’d rip us to shreds and eat us without breaking a sweat.

I glanced over the rest of our group and saw varying degrees of approval on everyone’s face. Good enough for me.

“Good. Then I shall slumber once more,” The tree said, and just like that, it’d plopped itself back down into the dirt.

Everyone was quiet for several long seconds, until Mum clapped her hands once and said, “Well then, I guess we’d better get started on that foundation now, hadn’t we?”

And so we began to construct our new home in earnest. We started with the foundation, obviously. We soon ran into a problem that our new architect pointed out to us within seconds of hearing what our available building materials were.

I believe his indignant response was, “You want to use stone for a building material on a giant walking tree? You’re fucking dreaming mate.”

Unfortunately, we didn’t really have many alternative options, so he suggested we search for some sort of flexible glue-like mortar. Did we rush off into the dusty libraries of the world and research the matter? Nope. We googled it.

It was Elena who hit upon the eventual solution, although it took a bit of developing. The source of our solution? Giant man-eating toads. A dungeon nearby contained a whole bunch of them, and their saliva was perfect for the job, once mixed with a species of faerie moss found in that same dungeon. The actual forum post she found was people complaining about getting glued to the ground when they got covered in goo and sat on the moss. Trust her to connect the dots between glued butts and flexible mortar.

Our trip into the dungeon put me from level 25 to 27, and I assigned the accompanying four stat points into Focus. I needed the boost to my perception if I was going to get into the dragon-tracking business. Was there a business for tracking dragons? Whatever, I’d create it if not.

My stats were looking a little lopsided, with every single one of my magical stats still at one, but it was actually somewhat balanced for the role I was taking on. A melee DPS needed to be fast, strong, and have the reaction times to get the hell out of the way if an enemy was taking a swing at them.

Plus, most of my abilities scaled off the physical stats anyway. It just wasn't a priority to work on the magical ones.

Speaking of abilities…

I had three to choose from, and they all sounded fun. Draconic Battlecry and Twin Claw Duplicity were both buffs that I’d probably end up taking now, but once I had a chance to work on my magic stats a little, Steelfeather Dart would be exceptionally useful down the line. After all, it was pretty hard to slash people with a sword while potentially riding a dragon.

"Hey, you awake, Keiko?"

Tilting my head, I looked up to see Paisley smiling at me from around my privacy screen. I motioned for her to come up into my bedroom nook with a wave of my hand and dismissed my menus.

"Hey Paisley," I said, returning the smile, while my gut did a little flip flop.

She shuffled up the stairs with a wryly apologetic expression. "Sorry for disturbing you. I um, I was just bored so I came to see what you were up to."

I watched her all but tiptoe over to my bed and hover there, looking unsure, like she wanted to sit down but didn't know if she was imposing.

"Sit," I said. "I was just allocating my stats and ability points. My new class evolution is a little strange so I'm just thinking how to get the most out of it."

Perching on the edge of the bed, asked, "What's the evo about? As far as I know, you're the only person with your class."

"I am," I agreed, watching the way her hands were squeezing each other. She looked… stressed out, but like she was actively trying to hide it. Hopefully she'd tell me what was wrong.

"The abilities are all fairy dragon themed, like I told you earlier, but it's got this strange element swapping mechanic," I explained further. "Damage types that change depending on the element of the dragon my class item came from, that kind of thing."

Some of the stress in her features faded as she became curious about my class. "Huh… that's really powerful. Always being able to swap to get past resistances. Well, it's useful for PvE anyway…"

Well shit. The trail of silence at the end of her sentence was just a little heavy.

I reached out to squeeze her arm softly. "What's up, Pay?"

"Just the old guild being dickheads," she sighed. Her eyes trailed down my arm from where I was touching her, until our gazes met. "They're talking on the forums about hunting us down when the expansion releases. Especially you. I mean, not you Keiko, but the… you know. The person they think you still are. Someone over there connected the dots between us leaving the guild and our updated story about what happened when you were kicked."

"Wait…" I said, stalling her with a wave. My stomach was all tied up with sudden onset anxiety. "I'm confused. So… they know that I'm Keiko now?"

She shook her head quickly. "No, no, that's not… I mean they've realised that Ethan and I are in contact with you again. They don't realise that the cute fairy girl used to be Rascal the Ranger."

Relieved, I settled back down a little. "Phew. Hopefully they don't realise I'm now Rascal the Ronin."

Paisley laughed at my dorky alliteration skills and we shared a look that was nice and tension-easing. I mean, things with Marlon and co were still worrying, but way less so than if they knew who I was.

Plus… when it came down to it… "You know, they're still a PvE guild. If we build ourselves for the oncoming storm of probable PvP as everyone rushes to get to the new zone, we'll probably be able to hold our own against Marlon and the sausage-fest."

She considered my words for a moment, then said, “Yeah, I get that. It still sucks that we might have to fight old friends.”

“Think of it like getting revenge on new enemies,” I replied, smiling in a way I hoped was reassuring. If I was honest, though, the idea of facing them had me a little anxious.

“I guess,” pouted Paisley, picking at my bed covers with thumb and forefinger.

Sitting up, I shuffled over to her and gave her a brief hug. “Remember, this is still a game, okay? Yeah, it’s also a world we can live our whole lives in if we want, but it’s still a game. We respawn, we can’t be hurt at all outside of the small amount that the game lets through the pain settings. Everything will be okay, one way or another. I mean, shit, worst case scenario, we just pack up and move to one of the other expansion zones and leave the asshole brigade to their corner of the world. Everything will be okay.”

That seemed to do the trick, and her ears wiggled when she smiled and said, “Thanks, Keiko. I uh… I should also be getting to bed. I’ll be putting the preservation enchantments on the foundation tomorrow and it’s good to get the Rested buff for mana regen.”

“For sure,” I said, and watched her reluctantly leave my room. “Goodnight, Paisley.”

QuietValerie

Hey everyone! Hope you're all excited to be back in Lieforged with me! I have no backlog of chapters to release so things are going to be erratic for a while until I get into a new groove. I'm also going to spend some time developing Coven's Rebellion for my patrons. Anyway uh, yeah. Have a good day everyone!