Chapter 7

 

 

Tully was standing at the base of the largest tree and had been staring up at the treehouse platform above. His focus shifted and turned in my direction at the crunching sound of my boots on the smaller pebbles before the soil and vegetation reestablished their dominance of the environment.

“Any sign of them coming down?” I asked him.

“Nope. But I’ve not made much of an attempt to contact them apart from standing down here as nonthreateningly as I can. They’ve not shot any of those seeds in my direction either which I’ve taken as a halfway decent sign. Decided to wait for you to be ready before taking any further measures.”

I nodded in acknowledgement and turned my attention to the treehouse and platforms above. They didn’t look to be in tip-top condition. There were holes in the flooring and not all the damage and missing parts seemed to be a direct result of the recent fighting. Weathering of the wooden beams and planks suggested the treehouse had been up there for several years. I briefly wondered if it had been created that way or if this section of Pandaemonium had been around for much longer than half a year or so since this craziness began on Earth.

There were a couple of weary faces who observed us through those holes in the platform. I also spotted a sizeable trapdoor not far from where I was standing. There was a frame of machinery at the section which suggested to me it was a lift of some kind.

“Hello up there in the tree!” I shouted to them. “My name is Jackson Templeton and I represent the Shattered Storm. We come in peace; I suppose.”

A head leaned over the balcony and forced me to take a few steps back to see them properly. It was a man in his late forties with a thick brown beard that was slightly greying. “What the hell is the Shattered Storm when it’s at home? You look like some damn kid in over his head who thinks this is all some type of game with your silly green robes. Who is the adult in charge down there? Has the government finally pulled its collective fingers from its ass and restored some damned order.”

“Oh, great, an arrogant boomer,” Amber grouched and came to a stop beside me. She had seen we were making contact and wandered over for the show.

“He’s not old enough to be a boomer,” Tully corrected her with a soft chuckle. “More likely Gen X.”

Amber shrugged her shoulders uncaring of the proper designation. It was all the same to her.

I motioned for them to hush. The guy above already seemed prickly enough.

“I’m the one in charge,” I called back up to him with as much authority as I could muster. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the government didn’t survive the turmoil of the Darkwyrld's arrival. We’re on our own and the Shattered Strom is the largest and most dominant group to emerge in Michigan. We do have the backing of what remains of the state legislature if that helps.”

There was no answer coming from the man above, but I could make out enough that a heated conversation was taking place. I only caught snippets, but they were illuminating.

“…are you doing, Boyd?”

“…the one in charge. I decide.”

“…the druid lass wouldn’t approve. We owe…”

“…fuck that, she ain’t awake. The decision falls to me.”

“…you’ve never been happy, always agitating. For God’s sake, we’re on our last legs. We need their help, Boyd.”

“I don’t trust them! You remember that motherfucker, Tanner. He approached us, nice and all. You and the town council said we should follow him, and he led us straight to those fucking goat monsters. They killed my wife, my sister, her husband and ate the bodies in front of me and Tanner joined in the fucking feast. Never again. I won’t be taken for a fool twice. Never again.”

The last couple of parts of the discussion carried clearly as the exchange above escalated from lowered voices to outright shouting. Boyd, the bearded man I’d talked to first was afraid and his harsh words silenced any further dissent from his companions. Honestly, I couldn’t entirely blame him for the caution. Therefore, I decided to try and reason with him one more time.

“Look, Boyd, is it? We’re not part of the Hooved Horde. On the contrary, we’ve fought against them. Killed quite a few and have managed to keep them off the mainland.” The last part was a bit of a fudge. The connecting bridge had been destroyed and from what we could tell the Hooved Horde hadn’t made any attempt to cross the ice in the depths of winter. They had furry bodies but even they didn’t appreciate the extreme cold of this unusual bitterly frigid season. “We’ve got some wounded down here and would appreciate the opportunity to get them somewhere safer, like up there with you.”

My attempt at negotiation did not go as well as I’d hoped. “See,” Boyd shouted to his companions and pointed over to where Tommy and the other healer treated our wounded. “What did I say? It’s a fucking trap set by those rat bastards. No different from the goats. Those people down there are bit and infected. We bring them up, they turn, and then kill us in our sleep. I fucking knew it.”

“Boyd, come on, be reasonable,” I called up. “Do you honestly think we’re working with the rat king? You were on the verge of being overrun when we arrived. And we killed over a hundred of them in the fight. You must have seen that. The entire scenario you’ve come up with is too convoluted to be true. Come on, what you’re saying makes no sense.”

“Screw off!” The rude command was the only answer I received from Boyd.

“You’re wasting your time, Jackson,” Amber snorted. “The guy is delusional and paranoid. You can’t talk sense into people like that. Logic has taken a permanent vacation from their minds.”

“I hate to say it, but I agree with Amber,” Tully added. “Boyd doesn’t sound like he’s fully in his right mind. The stress of the situation has got to him and warped his perception beyond repair. We will have to force our way in.”

I took a moment to think things over. “I’m not willing to resort to violence just yet. Tully, take five men and climb the tree next to them. See if it has a similar lift and pulley system that can be repaired. Once we are up there and secure, we can get some rest and reassess our options. We need several hours to recuperate anyway, and it seems like the light is fading. Maybe a bit of time to think things through will change the minds of Boyd and his people.”

“I’ll get it done.” Tully raced off to organise his team.

I returned my attention to the group above us. “If you aren’t prepared to cooperate with us, that is your decision. But we are helping ourselves to one of the vacated treehouses next to you.” I summoned my spear and allowed the beginnings of another firebomb to form on its tip. “If you try and interfere or endanger my people in any way, I will not hesitate to burn your platform down to keep us safe. I trust you witnessed what I’m capable of during the battle.”

We didn’t get an answer and the hushed conversation between the few defenders up there was too low for either me or Amber to make out.

“Are you really going to leave them behind, Jackson?” Amber asked me.

“No. I want your squad to gather up any other bridge parts on the down low. I think it will be dark soon, we’ve lost a bit of the light in this habitat already. If they don’t come around, we’ll cross over in the dark when they can’t see us.”

 

***

 

In the end, Boyd and his people didn’t make a fuss about our activities nearby beyond a bit of evil eye. Tully and his team scampered up the trees and checked a few of the smaller emplacements which surrounded the main multi-level treehouse and found one a little deeper into the jungle with a lift and pulley that hadn’t been smashed beyond repair.

By the time we got the life fixed and got everyone off the ground, the Pandaemonium version of night had fallen. It was dark, but not a full blackout and there were various insects with similar bioluminescence to fireflies which helped illuminate the treetop structure sufficiently. They made it possible to navigate without falling over the edge or down one of the holes.

Boyd had stared at us sullenly for most of the time but he neither said nor did anything precipitous and I merely returned the glare occasionally.

There were dozens of hut buildings built on our platform. Inside were wooden frame beds and tough leaves or reeds which had been used to make a lattice-style mattress. None of whatever bedding or padding used to be here had survived, but that wasn’t a major issue as we’d brought sleeping bags and blankets of our own.

After setting a watch, I ordered most of our party to get some shut-eye for a few hours. We’d rise later and see what we could do about crossing over to the distrusting survivors. I followed my own orders, found an empty hut, got comfortable, and drifted off to sleep.

I was awoken from my deep slumber by a sudden weight on my chest. My first instinct upon rousing was to reach for the frames of my glasses at my bedside, even though I hadn’t removed them before going dozing off. An old habit ingrained by years of repetition. The attempt revealed my hands and fingers had been restrained. A couple of leg pumps confirmed all my limbs were tied down.

I blinked in bewilderment and as my eyes adjusted to the low light, got a good view of what had landed on my chest and stirred me from slumber.

It was a young woman who straddled me. She was slight in frame and didn’t weigh very much but looked much larger from my current position because her long hair poofed out wildly and expansively like a lion’s mane. But this wasn’t someone emulating bad eighties hairstyles that required the use of an entire can of hairspray. The hair was a lush, thick, woody brown. And seemed to be interspersed with vines, strands of grass, and flowers. The sum of which combined into an impressive display.

Her golden-hued eyes blazed in the faux-night. The armour she wore was constructed from hardened bark that moulded itself to her petite form and appeared to flow with her movements like mail. She was stunningly pretty and left me instantly smitten.

I had a happy flashback to a few mornings earlier with Britney and Celeste and a similar scene unfolded. But my dopey grin died in its infancy when the reality of the situation came crashing home. The golden orbs that punctuated her face had tightened with rancour. This young lady did not look pleased to see me and there was something around my neck that tightened the moment my pupils focused on her.

“Do not move a muscle,” she whispered to me angrily. “You are bound by my vines and fully in my power. If you touch your mana or try anything, I will know, and snap your neck like a twig. I’m told your name is Jackson. And that you threatened to burn me and my people alive. That did not make me very happy. Just because the rats withdrew when you appeared, don’t think that means you can take advantage of us.”

{This looks like a tricky situation} Quincy calmly commented in my head.

Aren’t you supposed to be keeping a watch and warn me about things like this? I thought back at him. The throttling vine around my neck reminded me I didn’t need to speak to him aloud.

{I think you've already forgotten I’m not an imp or fairy. I'm not present in your physical body and only know what you know about your surroundings.}

Then what bloody use are you? I spat back angrily at his unhelpful response.

{Watch your tone, young man, or I will happily watch you walk yourself into an early grave. As it happens, I can and have already been helping you by channelling your mana use. This has made it more efficient and flow faster, quickening your mana-shaping. Fast enough that if you call upon your flames, they will answer before this dryad druidess can react and command her vines to do their deadly work.}

To be fair to the sprite, I had noted that my sorcerous mana-shaping had felt crisper and more energetic since he’d been placed in my service. It hadn’t stuck out all that much because quick casting was already the big advantage sorcerers like me possessed. Wizards could cast proper spells, but that always took longer with spoken words and gestures required in some manner. Sorcerous types converted mana into raw energy. Calling upon it and moulding it into form. For me that energy was fire and heat.

But we sacrificed versatility for speed. I could shape the bursts of fire into darts, firebombs, or cones of belched flame. However, the ability to do anything more sophisticated had to come from outside our class abilities.

A wizard who specialised in Fire Magic might have spells that could conjure a flaming sword, or armour that retaliated against attacks with heat damage or created flame barriers. Not to mention summoning fire elementals of various kinds to serve you in combat and many other useful magical effects. All those spells took time, though, which is why I pursued the much faster sorcerous path during integration. The principle of the quick and the dead.

{Additionally, based on what I’ve observed through your eyes, she appears to still be under the influence of prolonged mana exhaustion. No doubt a result of repeatedly over-extending herself during the siege against the rat army. She can't keep this up for long, draw things out for a bit and the problem will solve itself.}

Now that Quincy mentioned it, and after I managed to pull my assessment away from how entrancing her golden eyes were, I could see the signs of her exhaustion. Also, and this might have been my imagination, but with us in physical contact, I could feel how drained and close to collapse she was. Another boon to having a sprite follow me around perhaps.

For that reason, I elected not to jump straight to burning the living ropes which bound my limbs and decided to analyse what she’d said to me before responding. Elements of the half-heard conversation from earlier now made a bit more sense. Something about a druid lass not approving and that she was not awake.

As I thought things through quickly, a conclusion came to fruition. It had been this woman who had done all the heavy lifting when it came to the defence of the main treehouse. Using the dual connection to nature being a druid and dryad gave her, she animated the vines and knocked away the climbing rats. She had likely done this many times before we arrived and had been on the verge of collapse, perhaps had even done so before we showed ourselves and engaged the rats.

That was quite likely. I replayed my recollection of our approach and was quite sure the rats had almost reached the lowest platform of the main treehouse when we jogged across the stream. The vines that were wrapped around that part of the tree had ceased knocking them away.

Everything became crystal clear.

She had been overcome by mana exhaustion before we joined the fray, that is why Boyd said she wasn’t awake. Her attention would have been entirely on defence until she dropped. She probably didn’t even know about us or what happened until hearing whatever paranoid nonsense Boyd had related.

Which led us to the here and now.

“Whoa, there. I think there has been some kind of miscommunication,” I managed to rasp out. The vines around my throat had tightened around my vocal cords to prevent anything more than a whisper from escaping. “My warning and that is what it was, a warning, not a threat, was solely about the response which should be expected if your people took any hostile action against mine when we established our camp.”

“That is not what I was told,” she whisper-growled back, but there was a hint of unspoken doubt in her response. She'd tried very hard to present a front of confidence made of iron, but like iron, it could be brittle in the right conditions. That and I detected fluctuations in what I’d decided to call her mana signature. Her latest bout of mana exhaustion was not that long ago, and she was on the verge of collapsing again. Even the minor effort of keeping the vines in place was costing her dearly.

“Do I look like the lying kind to you?” I asked her.

“No, you look like a guy who’d be more at home in a comic shop than on a battlefield. However, looks can be deceiving as we’ve learned the hard way.”

I tried to nod, but my head was yanked back sharply. “I overheard Boyd earlier. Something about someone called Tanner who was a secret cultist. That he betrayed you and led you into the Hooved Horde’s hands. We aren’t some secret group trying to hide our allegiance.

“Like I told your friend, Boyd. We are part of the Shattered Storm. A new faction that started on the Beaver Island archipelago. But we’ve been expanding to the mainland and started to investigate Pandaemonium to see if we could use it to secure safe travelling routes between our various strongholds. Then we got stuck down here, much like yourselves, I assume. We don’t mean you any harm.”

“Boyd isn’t my friend,” she snorted and rolled her eyes. “He’s an ever-present pain in my ass, but that doesn’t mean he is lying about you.”

Despite her words of suspicion, the vines which held my throat relaxed a little, but the fluctuations in her mana signature did not improve. If anything, it became more chaotic.

{It won’t be long now.} Quincy confirmed.

“I feel at a disadvantage here. You know who I am, but I’m still in the dark. Would you care to introduce yourself?”

With her mana signature fluctuating wildly, the longer I could keep this conversation going, the harder it would be for her to act against me. Things would go much smoother if I didn’t have to overpower her to extricate myself from this situation.

“Piper,” she answered after a moment’s hesitation.

“Nice to meet you, Piper. Would you consider letting me free and us starting over, talking this through like adults?”

“You’ve shown yourself to be perfectly capable of talking plenty right where you are,” Piper shot back, but there was a hint of playfulness to her retort that had been lacking earlier. We were making progress, and I was reasonably confident that she wouldn't try and kill me. Well, not unless I did something to provoke her.

“Comfy up there, are you?”

“Very,” was her reply. “How about you?” Piper punctuated her remark by lifting her butt a little from midriff and then flopping back down. Before integration that might have been enough to wind me if I’d been caught by surprise, but not any longer.

I smiled back up at her. “Not so bad. I’ve had a bit of experience in this position with my girlfriends back home.”

“Girlfriends? Plural? Who’d have thought I’d catch such a player in my web,” she giggled as if drunk and leaned forward, putting both of her forearms on my shoulders and moving her face in close to mine for inspection. “Hmmm, I must admit you are cute and not too scrawny either. Just my type.”

Her pursed lips hovered just above mine and I felt her breath on mine, hot and heavy. It had an unexpected sweet, floral scent. Not that I was complaining, but I had no idea what was going on here. Piper’s behaviour had pulled almost a complete one-eighty in a couple of heartbeats.

The vines holding me loosened a bit further, enough that I could casually slip my hands loose, and her mana signature went completely haywire. The oscillations were on a level that didn't look good.

Suddenly, Piper blinked rapidly, her upper body started to lose strength and I had to hold her up. “What? Who? Where a...am I,” she slurred, and her eyes started to roll into the back of her head.

I let loose with a bout of flashfire around my ankles to free my legs, swung up on the bed and cradled the dryad woman who had started to shake in my arms.

{The loop closes and the mighty fall} Quincy commented nonchalantly. {The loss of lucidity and confusion is the first sign of mana poisoning. You did a good job keeping her engaged and distracted, it won’t be too long now with how rapidly her symptoms are progressing.}

“Too long for what?” I asked with an edge of concern.

I’d pushed myself past the safe points of mana usage before but hadn’t heard of mana poisoning.

 {Until the inevitable happens and she perishes. The dryad has pushed herself too far. She has unwittingly broken down the safeguards the Framework installs to protect characters from accidentally killing themselves like this. Her body is burning through Hit Points to replenish her mana pool and expending the mana to keep her plant control magic operating. Not that she can command the vines to do anything while she is unconscious. But that is why we have the safeguards. In a couple of minutes, she’ll no longer be a problem.}

“What the hell, Quincy!” I yelled. “Why didn't you tell me this would kill her.”

{I’m confused. Wasn’t she just about to throttle you? I’d have thought you wanted to prevent that?}

“Not by killing her, you amoral idiot. She was just looking out for her people. We have to do something. Turn off her mana use some way.”

{Too late for that now.}

“Tommy!” I shouted out the hut entrance. “Tommy, get in here.”

My shouting had awakened the camp and people were moving towards the hut I was in. At the same time, I bathed Piper in my white flames.

{That will only replenish her Hit Points and delay the end by a minute or two. She can’t regain consciousness if she continues to use her mana and she can't stop using it until she wakes up. A vicious and terminal cycle.}

“Come on, Jackson, think; there must be a method you can use to switch her mana off,” I urged myself.

{Well, there is one way. Impossible for most, but being a sprite, I can pull it off, of course.}

“What is it, you smug ass,” I practically snarled in annoyance which confused Tommy who had just pushed his way into the hut and had been about to check on Piper’s condition. “Not you, Tommy, the sprite in my head.”

“Righto,” Tommy said with feigned understanding and put his hand on Piper’s forehead. “Damn, she’s not got long. A couple of minutes tops.”

{You would need to grant me access to your character details. Don’t worry, I can’t harm you or do any mischief without your express permission. I need it to switch off the safeguards for you in the same way Piper has. Then with my assistance, you can intertwine your mana pools, which will allow you to shut her expenditure down.}

“Why didn’t you suggest this already?”

{This is not a risk-free operation. Disentangling you afterwards will be tricky and not without a few downsides until you’re fully separated. The least of which is that the safeguards around mana-use can’t be turned back on until that has been completed. It will also require my entire concentration for the duration, lest I misstep and do something which damages you irreversibly. We won’t be able to communicate. There might be other issues I can’t predict too. This is not something that has been performed often.}

“How long will it take you to finish the job?”

{Hard to say. A week, perhaps two. It certainly won’t be done before your friend D-Ball meets his scagly end.}

I glanced down at Piper in my arms. The cold, rational call would be to let her go. If it had been Boyd in this position, I would have let him die.

No question.

But it wasn’t Boyd. It was a pretty girl I barely knew, who nevertheless, had told me in a moment of unexpected intimacy that I was just her type.

This must be what it felt like to be the captain.

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and flushed doubt from my mind. This was not an ‘either-or’ question, I could save them both and I would.

“Do it.”