On Death's Honor

Chapter 25: The Importance of Vengeance

~ Warning: Disturbing Content Ahead ~

Meditation used to piss me off when I was younger. It was something they had us do constantly in the beginning years of learning how to do contracts, claiming that it was one of few surefire ways to cope with the evil that would now be ever constant in our lives. For once one stepped into the Reftin Circle, there were no kingdoms, no boundaries within the civil law to keep us in one place. We were called to go wherever the violence went.

We were the swords and champions of the land, meant to hold the balance between mankind and everything else. If a beast didn't tear you up first, madness was often close behind. So, they'd have us spend hours exposed to the elements - hail, wind, snow, sleet, you name it - and practice clearing out heads while we wore nothing but a sackcloth over our bodies.

Recently, it's changed in my case. There was no simple clearing of my head. Meditation was the first thing I ran to when the foreign entities took shelter inside my mind. Many weeks were wasted fighting for control. Peace of mind was something of a distant memory, now.

Yet, that was what I spent the following four days doing. Sitting cross-legged within a cave I'd found not too far into the woods from Canden, willing time to release its hold on me while I drowned in the everlasting roaring inside my head. The runes I'd drawn around myself helped keep me awake. I'd filled a waterskin each evening, using the moment to stretch my legs as well as to get a sense of the wary woods around me. Each day, I wondered if I should warn the Tremple family that'd taken me in after I escaped the wayfolds. Tell them not to go to Canden.

I didn't, though. Each day was spent the same. At night, I clung to the shadows between the line of trees and the open countryside, watching for the telltale signs of ominous red smoke in the distance. Craen was upset with me for not staying inside the city; I'd caught a group of guards asking around before heading in my direction. I wasn't sure if this meant she knew I was still in the area and wanted to send me a warning or if she'd simply forgotten how well an erla who didn't want to be found hid their tracks.

Must be nice, living in a city where generally no harm was done - unless one counted the odd execution or two.

The nymphtan waited for the still hour of the night to make her presence, long after people retired from the Ruve festivities. I felt it long before I noted the eerie, glowing smoke that rose from all sides of the treeline, which confirmed my suspicions that this was an attack long planned out. Igna didn't just come through here to steal from farmers and stablehands. She'd come to tie the will of young wood to that of her mistress.

I pulled my cloak tighter around myself, careful not to let the odorless phenomena touch me as it rose out of the trees that faced the old city. Even crouched as I was, I could feel the heat on my skin, feel the familiar sting inside my lungs. There would be no one retreating in this direction. Not if they wanted to keep their organs inside their bodies, though I suspected that this would be a lesson cruelly learned before the night's end.

The ground trembled slightly, moving as if there was something deep below trying to escape. That was when the first of the startled screams began. Pairs of gnarled, crooked hands made of root and wood broke free from the surface in groups, clutching onto the falling loose dirt to pull out the rest of their body. All at once, the trees standing between the countryside and the rest of the woodland - including the ones next to me - groaned, shifting forward as if something big and mighty was trying to topple it over.

As I watched a small horde of creatures pull themselves out from the ground, there was a collective snap! and pop! as trees lurched forward, their roots tearing free from the soil that clung to them. I lowered my head as dirt and debris flew, but I still kept my eyes raised enough to watch hundreds upon hundreds of trees hit the ground. Splintered wood and branches shot forth everywhere, snapping against each other in angry, desperate cries that only trees could manage.