Stealthcaster Read online

  Side Saddle

  Part of the Amazon Warrior Skill Tree

  (+4 to Accuracy)

  (+2 to Damage)

  “Yes!” Megyn shouted, lifting her arm and extending the bow toward the sky. “Yes yes yes!”

  Ella laughed aloud, proud of her friend’s accomplishment, and she released the reins for a moment, clapping wildly.

  “Kick ass, girl!” she said happily, all the while, thinking back to her morning session and wondering if maybe she’d be learning a new skill herself somewhere along the way.

  Chapter 28 - Ancient Illusion

  * * *

  “How long have we been walking in this section of the woods?” Megyn asked, looking up and around at the trees running alongside the dirt path. The path was wide enough for the three of them to travel in a staggered formation, but the trees were thick and full on each side, the tall branches growing inward to create a canopy of sorts. At times it felt more like they were walking through a tunnel than a forest and as they moved deeper into the woods, the trees all looked very much the same.

  For the past hour or so, the air had gotten noticeably cooler, a brisk chill cutting through them as they progressed. Not a breeze or wind necessarily, just a drop in temperature, a strange, unsettling frigidity that seemed to drill right down to their bones. It was a cold that came from the inside out, and Megyn shivered as she gripped harder onto Tyson’s silver/white fur.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Ella asked, looking over at her friend.

  “What?” Megyn replied. “About the cold or about the fact that all of these trees look the same?”

  “Yeah, pretty much,” Ella replied, looking around. “I could have sworn I’ve seen these exact same leaves three times already.”

  Kydel looked around as well, following the directions of their gaze.

  “Legends tell of the enchantment of the Ancient Oak Grove,” she said quietly.

  “Wait, what?” Megyn asked. “Legends tell of this enchantment, but nobody thought to tell us?”

  Kydel shrugged. “I’m not sure, young ones. The wood within this section of the forest has unique, magical properties. There are those who would seek to hide it. And protect it.”

  Megyn tugged gently on Tyson’s fur, slowing the creature. He drew to a steady trot, looking around, then sat down in the grass as his rider dismounted. Both horses stopped as well, Ella and Kydel vaulting from their backs. Ella walked over to the ring of trees along the left side of the worn, dirt path and looked at them, studying the patterns of their bark, running her hand up and down the rough surface of their hewn, wooden skin.

  Megyn strode along the right side of the path, looking at the trees herself, checking them at a much higher level, looking at their widths, their heights, the patterns of their leaves. Tyson pressed his nose to the grass and snuffled as if searching for something.

  “Look,” Megyn said, pointing to one of the trees a few layers deep. Ella came over and glanced over her shoulder. There was a narrow tree a few layers deep in the side forest, and there was an arrow embedded in the wooden trunk.

  “That’s the arrow you shot,” she said, turning to Kydel, who walked over to join them, eyes narrowed.

  “That was at least a few hours ago,” Ella whispered. “We’ve been going in circles since then?”

  “No, that’s impossible,” Kydel pointed out, walking toward the row of trees. She checked out the bark of the tree with the arrow jutting out of it, looked at the impact point, then stepped back, glancing at it again. Megyn strode down quite a way, remaining on the right side of the path, squinting into the leaves. Ella walked out into the path, between the two horses, who were scuffing at the ground with their hooves and making low grunting noises of impatience.

  She knelt down to the ground, pressing her palm against the rough surface, letting her mind wander, trying to feel the energy beneath. She was a low level Druid, but she was still a Druid, a magical being supposedly in tune with nature, and when the evil darkness had been encroaching on Gallowind, she’d felt it.

  But she couldn’t feel anything here. No strange, dark malice, no roiling infection seeping into the purity of the wood. Everything felt… normal. Everything felt… perfect?

  Ella looked over to the others, eyes narrowed on the trees. Perfect seemed to be the right term. Nature, by its very structure, was imperfect, and that’s part of what made it so beautiful, but here, in this stretch of the forest, it was not that way. The trees weren’t grown, they were constructed. That was odd of her to say considering this entire world was a virtual land constructed by lines of computer code, but where some sort of artificial intelligence seemed to be governing most of this planet, replicating the imperfect design of nature, this portion was not that way at all. Almost as if it were… an illusion.

  “Something isn’t right here,” she whispered, standing. “Wherever we are, it’s not where we think.”

  “Over here!” shouted Megyn, who had walked several yards down the path. Ella and Kydel came toward her, walking at a swift pace. They reached her and she pointed into the trees. “Look.”

  They followed her finger and sure enough, a few rows back was another tree with another arrow.

  But…that wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t another tree with another arrow, it was the same tree with the same arrow, only about a hundred yards further down the path.

  “The trees are repeating,” whispered Kydel. “Over and over again.”

  “We’re caught in some kind of magical loop,” Ella replied. “A spell of some sort. An illusion.”

  “It’s a trick, obviously, a distraction to keep intruders from finding their way to the Ancient Oak Grove,” Kydel pointed out.

  “But I thought you always got your wood here to construct your weapons,” Megyn replied.

  “We have in the past, but that was before the Sharak-Ku were so prevalent. Before G’Lorath and Rulaaz infected much of Gallowind with their evil magic. Perhaps this is a guard against those forces, we were just unfortunate enough to get caught in its web?”

  “However it happened,” Megyn said, “we need to get out. We can’t just keep walking through the same stretch of forest over and over again, just hoping to get clear.”

  “You mean like them?” Ella asked, pointing deeper into the woods. This time it was Megyn who followed the direction of her finger, extended and pointing into the rich, green leaves of the too-perfect trees. A few yards into the forest, they saw them there. Bones. A scattering of skeletons mixed among the foliage. Wanderers who had ventured into this part of Gallowind and kept right on walking until they keeled over and died.

  “Okay, that’s gross,” Megyn replied.

  “Can we turn around? Go back the way we came?” Kydel asked, glancing behind her.

  Megyn shook her head. “I don’t think so. I think whatever magical spell this is, it will continue on behind us just as it does ahead. We’re caught inside.”

  “You’re a Druid, right?” the Amazon asked Ella. “Can’t you figure something out? Aren’t you all about this natural magic?”

  Ella closed her eyes, pressing her gray-skinned eyelids down and let the warm sun bake on her face. She tried to shut down her mind, empty her thoughts, just reach into the natural world and see what she could find. All around them, she sensed the perfect flatness of this strange magical obscurity, it was like a smooth sheet of calm water, a still pond underneath the hot summer sun, no wind, no fish, just a pane of wet glass, glistening with the light of morning. She felt it and followed it along in her mind, chasing it down the length of the path, imagining it in her head, this smooth glass, one consistent wall, no disturbance, no—

  She stopped, her eyes still closed, standing there. A ripple had appeared. As she’d passed a certain point in the still water of this magical illusion, there had been a definite ripple. It started as a tiny plop, a single water-born insect landing in the water, sending tiny ripples in a circle around him. This small bug was followed by a sli
ghtly larger ripple, a fish coming to the surface, eating that bug, pushing the water apart in slightly larger, round waves. Then there was a bird swooping down and snatching the fish from the pond, the ripples becoming a sudden blast of foamy water.

  “Right there!” she shouted, extending an opened palm, pulling back her other hand, mana energy already collecting, a vibrant green power rippling around her wrists. Kydel and Megyn turned to where she was directing her attention, and they could see it now, a strange disturbance in the tree line, as if the trees themselves where shimmering, waving as if printed on top of a curtain.

  “Yarrrgh!” Ella shouted for no apparent reason, throwing both arms forward, the green energy around her wrists shooting into her hands, then exploding outward into a thick spear of green light. It shot out and struck that spot in the illusion, that strange warbling image of trees, and it erupted, green energy and hot, sizzling acid. There was a muffled, angry snarl, a growl of rage and fury, and the illusion split apart, cracks bursting from the point of the Acid Arrow’s impact, stretching out like spider web cracks in glass.

  Then everything fell apart. The forest on the side of the path quivered, crack separating pieces of it, then it split, and shook, splintering away and falling down into broken, shattered pieces, spraying all over the forest floor.

  Behind the false wall of forest there was an oblong clearing, an opening in the forest, enshrouded by a strange darkness that should not have been there in this sunny, bright afternoon. The clearing was mostly flattened grass and scattered rocks, some sparse remnants of trees torn from their roots and discarded, and standing in the center was some sort of being.

  Ella assumed it was a being because it stood upright, its lower half separated into two limb-like appendages, but if it hadn’t moved, she would have thought it was just another tree. The creature’s skin was rugged and rough like bark, its limbs twisted like withered pine branches, and it stood tall and wide, a thick trunk, and two spindly, but tough looking branches for arms. The entire body of the thing creaked as it moved, the sound of aged wood, and as they looked upon it, the bark split against the near side of its trunk, two pale white slits forming. A third split revealed the gaping maw of a strange, opened mouth, ragged, wooden teeth extended from the sinister lipless grin. By the time the creature took full form, fully revealed to them in the clearing, it stood at least twelve feet tall, its arms and legs made up of multiple different branches formed and twisted together into powerful looking limbs.

  Treant

  (An ancient treefolk, very protective of the wood)

  Level: 09

  HP: 330/330

  MP: 225/225

  Skills:

  Natural Disguise

  Root Thrash

  “Congratulations,” the voice said in an echoing growl. “You have seen through my magic.” It took a lumbering step toward them, its root-twisted foot peeling away, then slamming back down on the ground so hard it shook beneath them. “Your reward for such cleverness… is death.”

  Chapter 29 - Danger comes in Trees

  * * *

  For such a large, lumbering creature, the treant was scary fast. With hardly a warning it bolted forward, moving as if powered by lightning, one of its gnarled, tree bark arms lashing out in a vicious, swift backwards strike. The twisted wood struck Kydel headlong in the torso, lifting her from her feet and tossing her back through the air, her arms and legs sprawling. Ella ducked and broke into a run, whipping her staff from its sheath and swinging it forward, crashing it into the legs of the tall, gnarled tree folk. Her staff clattered against the creature’s wooden leg, reverberating in her hands as she continued running. There was still a darkly stained mark on the treant’s left shoulder, sizzling softly as the Acid Arrow ate gently away at the creature, burning away layers of bark, but doing no real significant damage.

  “You don’t belong here,” the creature bellowed in a thick, echoing voice, taking a swift step forward, trying to crush Ella beneath his huge, rooted foot. The Druid threw herself forward into a tight somersault, narrowly avoiding the crashing stomp and Megyn let fly with an arrow, thunking it deep into the creature’s chest. A scant handful of HP drifted away from its total, but it barely even reacted, continuing it forward charge, lifting both massive, wooden fists over its head. Megyn darted right as Ella came up on her feet, spinning toward the creature. Twin bunches of clenched branches acted as fingers, whamming down into the grass with a shuddering boom, sending Megyn stumbling with the impact. She dropped her bow and went for the short sword she kept in her sheath, coming back around toward the treant as Ella launched another Acid Arrow, splashing magic over its opposite side. Even as its flesh smoldered from it, the treant continued its advance on Megyn, lunging at her. Instead of withdrawing, she charged forward, dodging one grasp and swept her sword down hard, cleaving it through the narrow wooden wrist of the tree creature. Wood splintered and snapped, the ‘hand’ springing away, leaves and shredded bark flying from the strike.

  The treant whirled on her, its hand already starting to reform from the twisted, knotted wood of its forearm, but as it turned, Tyson leaped, latching onto its other arm with thick, canine jaws.

  Megyn looked over at Ella, who had turned to Kydel and was lowering herself near her. As the ranger looked on, Ella’s hands glowed a pale, shimmering blue, a thin coat of energy settling down around the prone form of the Amazon warrior, setting her aglow. The treant hesitated its approach, turning back to Tyson, shaking its arm furiously, trying to toss him free. To his credit, the wolf clung to his arm, holding tight and hard, refusing to release, keeping him just distracted enough. Megyn activated Weak Point, searching the body of the ancient being, looking for a place to strike, some magical part of it that might bring the whole thing crashing down.

  Nothing obvious jumped out at her even as the treant reared back, almost tossing Tyson through the air. The wolf held on remarkably well, even as his back half thrashed around, its grip tightened and held, teeth digging into the broken wood and whatever strange magic that was holding this creature together. Megyn lunged forward again, swinging her sword, knocking a chunk of wood from the creature’s leg as it whirled and sent its wooden arm whipping just over the top of her ducking head. Its dramatic movement left it momentarily exposed and she ran forward, planting a foot on its bent knee, then leaped and swung, the sword raking across the chest and throat of the huge creature. Snapping wood broke free and flung into the air in a tight arc of spraying chips, the treant grunting and stepping backwards. With one final thrash, it wrenched its arm free of the white wolf, sending Tyson rolling onto the ground, reached over and wrapped its tangle of twigs and leaf fingers around Megyn, squeezing as it peeled her off of it and tossed her away. Trying to roll and somersault through the air, Megyn dropped, striking the ground in an ungainly crouch and fall, her sword flying away as she rolled clumsily, end over end, legs kicking.

  “Are you okay?” Ella asked Kydel, who was starting to clamor to her feet.

  Kydel nodded. “Yes, thank you.”

  Ella stared at her hands with a soft smile. She’d healed her. It had felt… great. She felt a natural energy inside of her, a sense of curative restoration, and it warmed her entire body from the inside out, a soothing reminder of who she was and how connected she was to this world. The worm of doubt worked its way into her as she got settled, however, reminding her that no matter how ‘natural’ she felt within this world that it wasn’t really that way, it was a complex interwoven series of code that made her think it. She wasn’t connected to this natural world at all, because the world she was in was completely disconnected from nature itself. It was all artificial.

  “Ella! Whatever you’re in, snap out!” Megyn’s voice cut through her inner questions like a hard-edged knife and her eyes sprang open just as the treant loomed above her, reaching toward her. The creature was well over ten feet tall, maybe as tall as twelve feet and although she wouldn’t classify it as giant, it was certainly huge enough to scoop
her up and rip her apart. A shoulder plowed hard into her, knocking her aside, sending her stumbling as Kydel leaped to her feet, swords out. Along with her trusty bow, the armored Queen’s guard also carried twin swords, gently curved gleaming blades embedded within a contoured pummel that twisted into a natural grip. These two swords were out and flashing as Kydel worked her way between Ella and the tree monster, flashing streaks of metal cracking hard against the rough, resistant surface of the creature’s tree bark skin. Chunks and splinters of wood peeled away and scattered into the air under the volley of swift strikes and darts, Kydel lurching forward, slashing, darting left, jumping right, then turning and swinging again, raking both swords in jagged hacks along the treant’s gnarled spine.

  With a thundering growl, the creature turned, wood twisting and creaking, the split maw snapping open in its elongated face.

  “You don’t belong here!” the creature bellowed again, lurching left, reaching for the Amazon, and Kydel bent forward, then pushed back, scrambling away. Megyn had recovered, though she still remained at half health, and she charged forward, twisting and slashing with her short sword, cracking it against the arm of the creature again, only this time the twisted roots that made up the lower limb held fast, not giving way under the sharp-edged metal.

  The treant glared at her, shifting his attention slightly, and Kydel moved in, whacking at the creature with her own narrow, straight blades, the handles flush with the gently curved steel. Kydel moved with a speed and grace that would have been beautiful if it wasn’t so brutal, her sweeping movements gentle and choreographed right up until the point when hard steel slammed hard wood, splintering skin and snapping twigs and branches.

  Ella shifted right, trying to get an angle, watching as more slivers of HP slipped from the treant’s total, an accumulation that was starting to become meaningful, though with Megyn at half health already, and with Kydel’s attacks doing little damage, she wasn’t sure how much longer they could hold out. At the rear of the lumbering creature, Megyn drew her bow up again, glaring at the wooden beast, trying again to find its weakness. She let an arrow fly, which punched through the ancient creature’s narrow head, sending him lurching forward, but ultimately only a handful of health dropped away, and all she accomplished was making him mad. Ella drew in some mana, twisting her hands together as if she were making a snowball, then shot it forward in a narrow pale blue shaft, a streaking Ice Dagger hurtling toward the creature’s back. It rammed hard and deep into the bark and spread a thin shine of ice along a small segment of wooden skin, but as with most of her other magic, did no serious harm.