??? POV

 

“This mistake, was mine… It was a terrible mistake. I did not mean for the children to be harmed in this way. I acted too quickly and without thinking it through enough” The once Majestic and imposing fey dragon spoke in a weak voice. When the fey dragon Everon had first shown up in the village, his presence and his voice were overpowering, his communications through spirit energy resounded through everyone’s mind like a yell. Now, with the dragon himself broken and bound by vines, which had now lowered to place him on his belly on the ground, every last shred of his former majesty had been stripped from him and he seemed like nothing but a broken beast waiting for his death.

 

In front of him was the spirit projection of the newly born dryad, the undisputed true ruler of this entire area. This dryad was the same one who had reduced this once noble beast that served the queen into a common snake crawling on the ground, and this dryad looked on with scorn and disapproval at the creature on the ground before them, contemplating him as though they were considering whether or not to press his face into the ground with their foot.

 

This dragon, who for the past two weeks had taken control of and ruled over this village, was now completely at the mercy of the dryad, the true ruler of the forest. The people of the village could only stare as this contest between these two creatures that were seen as so far above them that they might as well be divine existences participated in a contest of wills. This was not something that did not concern them though. The dragon’s guilt in this situation was obvious for everyone to see. There was absolutely no point in this exercise of humiliation if it were just to verify this fact. The problem was, this entire village was implicated in the dragon’s guilt as well. The entire point of this humiliation was for the dragon to take all the responsibility onto himself.

 

In this grim ritual, there was only one person who dared stand between the dragon and the dryad. It was the man who had proposed this little show trial to begin with. It was a man who had not even been a part of this village and who was only just seen for the first time right before the event that precipitated all of this began. However, he was trying as best he could to make certain that little to none of these events reflected on the villagers in the dryad’s eyes.

 

This man’s appearance was bizarre. He had long white hair, pale blue skin, and large black eyes. There were very few among the villagers who knew what this man was, but the whispers had gradually spread through the crowd that this was what a changeling looked like. Changelings were rarely seen this far out in the villages, at least not in their natural form. A hunter out here might be lucky to see one disguised as a human while out in human lands, but they would never know it to see them. For most of them, this would be their first time ever laying eyes on a changeling.

 

This changeling man stood in front of and a little off to the side of the crippled dragon, standing in such a way that he could keep both the dragon and dryad in his sights if he were to look straight ahead. However, right now, he was turned toward the dragon who had just spoke his groveling words to take responsibility onto himself.

 

“Everon,” he said, “can you tell us what you were trying to do by sending that man into master Eirlathion’s house?”

 

“I… I ordered him to take the elf children.. and.. to bring them to me.” He labored to project his thoughts.

 

“So, what happened in there was not your intention?”

 

“N.. no. I… do not know what went wrong.”

 

The dragon’s expression of ignorance seemed to enrage the dryad scornfully looking down at him. “What do you THINK went wrong!? How could you think it appropriate to just send a person crashing in through the window!?” The vines wrapped around the dragon tightened, lifting him off the ground by the neck, causing him to let out a strangled and frightened sound.

 

“I would like to hear that as well,” The changeling man said. He seemed to get very agitated to see the dragon lifted up like this, but upon seeing that the dryad was still restraining themself and wasn’t going to take further action immediately, he used that opportunity to take back some control of the situation by continuing the interrogation of the dragon as someone similarly agitated at him in agreement with the dryad’s anger. “Such an invasion of a person’s house, especially the magus of the village, I do not see where the rational would be appropriate for this.”

 

“I… I…” The fey dragon stammered under the pressure of the situation. With all the people against him and his already damaged body being abused further in this way, it was entirely reasonable that he would be unable to form a coherent sentence. “It was foolish. I thought… I knew if I asked the magus, he would deny it. I needed to… to see them myself.”

 

The changeling sent an uneasy look back to the dryad, but he quickly turned back to the fey dragon with a look of resolution in his eyes. “And then? What did you plan to do after you had them dragged out in front of you!? Did you even think this through!?” He raged at the dragon, allowing his own expressions of anger to act as a catharsis for the dryad so they didn’t have to. Because, if it was the dryad yelling in a rage, several things could happen, all of them varying degrees of bad for everyone here.

 

“I… didn’t.” The dragon responded in a mournful and ashamed tone.

 

“You may have thought they were grey elves, but here it turns out they were exactly what the magus had told you! Sick! Children! … New! Born! Infants! You put them under this kind of stress! What did you THINK was going to happen!?”

 

The changeling turned away from the dragon in disgust and walked toward the dryad, bowing his head respectfully upon getting a respectful distance in front of them. “Once again, I can only express my sincere apologies for what our stupid representative did when he violated your domain. As you can see, this was not a case of malice, but of stupidity. He is a foolish and impulsive sub-dragon. We ought to have sent better to an esteemed dryad such as yourself. I have already taken steps to rectify the situation as best I can, and will intercede with the queen personally in order to make this situation right. Please, house of the master Eirlation. This dragon’s foolishness deserves to be righted, but let it end with him. It was nobody else’s fault but his.”

 

“hmm… I thought that was probably your game.” The dryad responded to the changeling’s effort with cold eyes. “You put on a pretty good performance, I enjoyed watching you lay into him like that. However, you’re not fooling anyone. It was still the rumors around the town saying that the girls were grey elves that brought this about in the first place. This foolish dragon’s… Impulsiveness… caused things to play out in the worst possible way. But they are still the ones who set the girls within his sights.”

 

A bolt of fear ran through the gathered villagers as the crowd realized for the first time what it was the changeling was really trying to do in all of this. This dryad, this ruler of the forest, the one who brutally tore apart a fey dragon, had them in their sights next. This changeling was trying to divert the dryad’s sights away from them, but he had failed. What would this mean for them? Unrest and panicked whispers were spreading rapidly throughout the crowd. If this dryad could do that to a fey dragon, mere elves such as them did not stand a chance.

 

Elves lived in harmony with the spirits and with the plants. They knew how to navigate the trees, and the tree spirits responded to their mana. However, now that this part of the forest was ruled by a dryad, every single tree in this entire area could turn against them. Every single tree was under the dryad’s control. They would no longer answer the villagers’ calls to open a path, they could no longer enter or leave their homes without the dryad’s good graces, and if they decided to try to make a run for it then the dryad could block their path as easily as breathing. Elves, no matter how strong they tried to become, were just ants in front of a dryad.

 

Some of the weaker ones among the crowd already had tears of fear falling down their face. Others eyed their neighbors with suspicion, running through their minds about everyone who had said something about the girls being grey elves in the past as they considered forcing them to kneel in front of the dryad so that the rest of the people might just be able to get back in the good graces of the forest’s ruler at least long enough that they could leave this part of the woods in peace.

 

A sadistic grin appeared on the dryad’s face as their eyes swept across the crowd. “Well then, you are right about one thing.” The spirit of this part of the forest said with a tone dripping in poison. “Punishing that dragon really will make me feel a lot better.” A glimmer of hope fluttered in the peoples’ hearts at this declaration. Maybe they really could get off better if this caused the dryad to calm down.

 

The dryad’s projection walked up to the dragon, dangling limply from his neck. The vines lowered him until the bloody tatters from where his lower half was ripped from his body scraped against the ground, causing his angular face to show an expression of pain that could not be mistaken despite the difference in the physiology of his head. The pale dryad hand, glowing a faint green, reached up and rested on the dragon’s cheek as everyone looked on with baited breath.

 

“I have the perfect punishment for you.” The dryad said. “I’m going to give you something, as I was evolving into this form I also picked up several memories that were not my own.” As the dryad spoke, their hand began to have a slight white glow to it. “There was a great deal of information inside of these memories. Among it was the ability to transfer pure spirit energy and the thoughts and memories contained in it to someone else.”

 

“AHHHHHHH!!!!” The dragon let out a sudden scream and began thrashing against the vines holding him in place. At the same time, a wave of pure terror erupted across the crowd. Some of the wiser members of the crowd realized the dragon was echoing the contents of whatever “memory” the dryad was giving him. Knowing did not help though. In fact, as the contents of the memory started to become more and more clear, knowing only made it worse.

 

“Have you figured out what this memory is yet?” The dryad sneered. “This… THIS is exactly what that baby was feeling before she entered the state she’s in now. How are you going to handle it dragon!” As the dryad’s eyes swept over the crowd after this declaration, the onlookers realized what this punishment really meant. It was clear, they were counting on the dragon to be bad at controlling his spirit energy in this state. It was intentional that he echoed everything he felt to them.

 

“NO PLEASE!!!! IT HUUURTS!!!” A sadistic smile from the dryad was all this cry got him. A green energy began spreading up the vines, emanating from the dragon’s body. “NO NOOOOO!!! IT… AHHH-” The scream suddenly went silent and the vines that once held the dragon dropped to the ground, the dragon himself no longer present.

 

The onlookers were still reeling from the memory of the pain and the fear. If that was what the dryad had felt vicariously from that infant, it was completely understandable why they were so angry. The hope they had felt a moment ago that doing this would help calm their anger had been destroyed completely. Some of the children around were now loudly crying inconsolably, but their parents were unable to tend to them. Everyone in the crowd had all the strength in them destroyed merely by their exposure to those memories echoed as the fey dragon Everon began to feel them as though they were his own.

 

They had only gotten an echo of it though. What they felt had only been the stray energies let off by Everon. It was nothing like what he had felt first hand, which in turn was only a second hand repeat the dryad had maintained of what the baby had felt. And even that… just the memory of the experience was enough to damage the fey dragon’s spirit badly enough that he had lost his physical form. In other words, the memory of a damaged spirit had caused real damage to his spirit, damage severe enough to kill him.

 

Now, along with the understanding that taking out the anger on that dragon was not going to be enough to calm this dryad’s anger, this event also triggered an entirely new degree of fear toward this powerful entity. A dryad could cause the forest to come to life with a thought, and nobody would be safe from their wrath if you got them angry. Everyone knew this much. However, now it had just been made painfully clear that getting killed by a tree or some vines would be a mercy before this particular dryad. They had a far more fearsome way of killing any member of a fey race such as an elf like each of them. A few people had lost control of their bladders while witnessing the event from before. The realization of what it meant nearly tripled the number of people sharing that situation.

 

The few people still able to look at the dryad, who's eyes were not filled with tears of fear and did not have their minds gripped with panic, saw that the dryad had a very displeased look on their face. A sharp glare was directed at the poor changeling who was collapsed at the feet of the dryad’s spirit projection. Nobody envied him for being so dangerously close to this visage of pure threat incarnate. “I am going to need you to come inside. We need to talk about the real reasons behind the queen moving the capital, my master needs to hear every last word of it.”

 

The changeling’s head weakly nods and he scrapes himself off the ground and places himself upright on his unsteady feet. Just when the people think they were about to have a moment to breathe, that the dryad’s oppressive attention was going to be away from them for a moment, their projection cast its gaze over the crowd. “Well then, nobody is going to be allowed to leave while I’m dealing with him and my family. I would like for all of you to decide who is guilty and who is not while I’m putting my attention toward more important matters.”

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Author's note

Errr... yeah. This is Dryad everybody.