Chapter 4-114: The Owl Woman

“The forest walked, the trees talked,

Of Ages Gone, Times Past.

The Land stirred at the Sun unseen,

Seeking Light at long last.

Fire and thunder of a new age,

Magic and oil, steel and toil,

Asphalt and cement cutting the lines

Of magic and life ‘neath the soil.

Progress. Civilization. Science. Technology...

Tremble, Tremble, oh ohhhh, Tremble, it comes...”

“Days past are the future’s bones,

The world changes and time marches on.

It is a new age... and now, now it screams,

At a Haze in the sky, stealing light and dreams.

Think the Green that the Crimson can sate

Its thirst for Light and Life with hate?

Roots seek for the Blue, Leaves turn to Sky,

And fall and turn as the Black gathers nigh...

Whispers, whispers, the Black in your ear...

Tremble, Tremble, oh ohhhh Tremble, it comes...”

Two-tones rang in precision meter, as vengeful tree after tree went still, and returned to its silent vigilance and life, extending up once more for a grip on the light and life that filtered through the Haze...

“Your dream is a nightmare

What fools stirred an Ancient’s wrath?

Who gains when your power claws at the Land?

Where is the ending, how ends this path?

In FIRE. Fire to destroy spirit and soul,

Fire eating the Land, Green and Red whole!

Rage you, rage, feed your despair,

Doom is whelming, Time is not fair...

You will end in Fire.

Tremble... Tremble... oh, ohhhhh Tremble, it comes...”

The trees all around her were closing slowly and steadily on her position, even as she cut them through and they planted themselves once more. Some true forest giants were coming this way, and getting through their tangles of roots was going to be interesting, at the least...

Or perhaps not...

“Who are you?”

The voice was in the oldest dialect of Fey, reserved for some true nobility of the nature spirits. Even hamadryads and erlkings didn’t get to speak in exactly that dialect.

She looked like a copper-skinned woman with the head of a barn owl, perhaps unsurprisingly. She was clad in traditional Sioux garb, replete with beads and bone carvings that definitely held all kinds of meaning and power. She was about twice human height, her great eyes huge and luminous as they focused on Sama.

Tremble softened its two-tones as Sama kicked off two trees, somersaulted through the air, slid down an arching root and to the grass there, and skated another thirty feet to end up right in front of the angry spirit.

“My name is Sama Rantha, Great Elder.” Sama Rantha bowed low and formally, musing to herself that one day she’d be able to stand with things like this as an equal... but that was not today. “I was born several days’ riding to the north and west, and if I am not of the people you favor... I was born of this land and soil, and it is my home as much as it is theirs.”

“You are saying I will end in fire.” Her eyes were starting to go very dark indeed as she looked at the golden blade of Tremble, and waffled between anger and trust. “Is this something you will deliver?” Her challenge was real and apparent.

Sama laughed with the cackling only a Hag could do so well. “You have dwelt apart from the new Age. You do not know of the weapons that humanity has developed using the power of science and technology, of understanding the true natural, non-magical laws of the world.

“Imagine, if you will, a great crater, ending here, centered on the entrance to your realm, and extending in all directions therefrom. This crater is fused black, by a heat so intense the soil is fused to glass, and all that remains of the green is ash scattered by the fires of the sun brought to the Land and unleashed directly upon it.”

I looked directly at those luminous eyes. “They are called atomic bombs, and their power is based exactly on the power of the sun itself. The humans of this land control hundreds of such bombs!”

“Trust her not, Elder!” a shrieking cry came from above, and Sama turned with narrow eyes as a plunging hawk came down from the sky, growing and expanding into the form of a great dire wolf. He hit the ground heavily, snarling and glowering at Sama with massive fangs exposed.

Sama was completely unimpressed. “Oh, my, look, it’s one of the twats who drew the forces there, hoping you’d wake up and get angry, maybe deal with them and a whole lot more humans who had nothing to do with this whole mess.” Tremble’s tones sharpened expectantly as Sama flicked it, and the Banefires and Enmity on it shifted abruptly. “Show me the color of your soul, wolf. She can already see the color of my mine!”

The wolfwere had frozen at the shifting of Tremble, feeling the very sudden anathema her Sword presented to him. He could smell her utter lack of fear of him, and despite himself, it gave him pause.

“Meaningless tricks of humans!” the wolfwere spat.

“The Alignments define the universe, and you think they are meaningless tricks?” Sama asked archly. “You need to go to school, fuzzball.”

“You dare-,“ the wolfwere snapped, and would have lunged forward if the Owl Woman hadn’t lifted her arm.

Magic swirled in the air, seizing both of them into immobility... except Tremble twitched, and the spell aiming to encapsulate Sama was sliced apart, leaving her perfectly free to move.

The Owl Woman blinked as Sama turned to look at her, arching an eyebrow, but said nothing.

Just moving was like a scream. What more needed to be said? Sama could cut apart her magic. The scores of unmoving trees that had lost their Animation behind her were searing proof of that.

“Continue with your tale,” the Owl Woman said calmly.

“To the north and west of here is a land of fire, were volcanoes spew out the liquid rock of the furnace at the Earth’s core. All that dwell there are creatures of fire, and those weapons are useless against them.

“Great Shroudzones of death, where countless undead spirits are enslaved forever to hunger for the living, extend across every Land of the world entire. Kill them with fire, and they are merely reborn at the next dusk, the same as they were before, cursed to never leave their domains, yet never dying.

“You are neither undead, nor born of fire.”

Sama straightened to her full height. “You have mobilized a massive army, a living forest of impossible strength and stature for any truly mortal forces to withstand. But trees are not immune to fires that burn as hot as the surface of the sun... they are TINDER. They will be burned away to ash and less on the tempest of the mushroom cloud that will sweep them ten miles into the air and disperse them on the winds all over the planet... while the radiations and energies of the bomb pump mutation and cancer into everything living in the area, which will require years to clean up.

“Humanity cannot do anything about the Firezone. They cannot do anything about the many Shroudzones.

“They can do something about you, and they will. Bombs girt in Greyfields will be dropped on your trees, and if you are caught too close to one... the radiant fires therein can even burn away the spirit of an immortal!

“Continue with this path, and you will End in Fire!”

“And why I should trust your words?” the Owl Woman demanded of her sensibly.

She shrugged and lifted Tremble’s glowing golden edge. “This is a soulsword. It is the color of its wielder’s soul, and this is a universal rule, it cannot be changed or faked. On my word and honor and the Doom my Curse can sense building everywhere here, if you continue with this course, you will accomplish no vengeance, and you will End in Fire!”

The Owl Woman stared at her, considering this matter, and then turned to gaze at the paralyzed wolfwere. “And you have enmity with the Wolf?”

Sama laughed softly. “Never met him before, but I know his people. They think of themselves as great and powerful spirits and servants of Nature, when they are simply creatures empowered by the Curse of the Beast.

“They have not adjusted well to the rise of Man, and seek a return to the times and ages when they were mighty and powerful, ruling all over the world. The only way to do that is kill all of humanity... for humanity has magic and power now, and grows more powerful more broadly by the day and hour.

“They have killed humans in scattered areas, and their activities have been noticed. They are aware of this attention and so sought to use it to draw you into their fight. They must have been aware of your ability to Animate a whole forest, and thought you might use it to deal humanity a great killing blow, driving them forth from this land, perhaps all lands, with the power of the Green.

“As I noted, they are total idiots who have no idea what humanity is truly capable of. The only ending will be in fire, and they will fail in their crude scheme, mere pawns of those among humanity who wanted such a thing to happen.”

The Owl Woman turned her great eyes on the wolfwere again, who seemed to want to writhe and protest Sama’s words, but obviously the Owl Woman was able to look right into his thoughts and see exactly what he wanted to say... and what he did not.

She swept out an arm festooned with feathers, and a ripple flew through the trees around her, faster than sound. With a groan and creaking and rustling on a massive scale, the trees began to flow away on their carpet of roots, heading for their original rooting sites... even the ones that Sama had de-Animated...