Mike followed Crosse, watching around him as the whole village burst into motion. He could see villagers on the other trees, each of them was dashing for the nearest opening or doorway Scooping up kids and leaving behind objects in their wake.
He focused on following Crosse down the flights of stairs on the hunter’s barracks. These stairs were precarious enough without going down them distracted. After two more flights of stairs, they arrived at the level in the middle of the tree, where Mike was surprised to find a gathering of more than 30 people in hunters attire.
They were men and women, varying from Mike’s age to Crosse’s none appeared much older or younger here. “Stay with me and keep out of the way. Those eyes of yours could come in very handy, but you aren’t a hunter and don’t know our protocols,” Crosse said softly to Mike.
He nodded in assent as they reached the group. Wanting to ask what was going on but staying quiet as Crosse had said. The hunters stood in a loose group, not making ranks or standing orderly like Mike imagined soldiers would on a staging ground, which is what he assumed this was. They were all quiet however and watching Ina’s tree.
No new hunters joined the group and Mike kept his eyes on Ina’s tree as the hunters did. There was soon another pulse of Light magic that ran from the tree and across the bridge, this one much weaker than the previous ones, not having triggered Mikes attunement sense by making waves in the aether as the last one had.
It progressed to the next tree and spread out, this time not enveloping the whole tree in its path, instead, splitting and going straight to the bridges and running to the next trees. Mike watched as the Light Magic ran from tree to tree across the bridges, they didn’t follow every bridge and seemed to be heading in a specific direction.
Mike glanced down at the back of his hand, which was once again disguised by the AI. As he looked though, the compass of the Navigation system appeared. It had changed slightly, a cartoon-like rendition of one of the Inasholme trees sitting at the centre of the compass. There was a black gemstone slightly off centre to the south.
Mike thought of the pouch in his coat pocket. There was a backpack symbol just behind him but it looked smaller, to indicate elevation? He looked at the Light Magic as it made its way across the village. If Ina’s Trees was the one at the centre...
“West,” He said under his breath. Right after he said it one of the split Light spells sunk into one of the trees on the west side of the village and Mike heard that telltale gong sound.
All of the hunters started moving at once, running towards the bridge, bows in hand. Mike lagged dumbly for a second, not having expected such synchronization from the disorganized group. He started to run then too, lagging only a second behind the hunters.
Crosse slowed slightly to move back beside him but he obviously expected Mike to keep up with the pack, not something he had a lot of experience with. As they made their way towards the tree that had sounded the gong, Mike heard another two gong sound from trees nearby that one.
As they reached the tree that had first signalled, the pack split. One group of hunters, including Crosse and thus Mike, went for the stairs on this tree. The other group continuing on. When he reached the next level, Mike was able to see that the Pack had split again, going over two different Bridges connected to this tree to reach two trees on either side of it.
Mike continued following Cross as the group made their way, still running, up the stairs of this tree to its top level. He could feel his legs getting tired halfway and the ache starting to set in again at the top of the next flight. He was struggling to keep up, puffing his breath by the time they reached the top of this tree.
The hunters Ran around the walkway to a point that faced away from the village, the other two trees and hunter teams at their peaks visible from here. When Mike looked and saw that the hunter teams to either side of them were just getting in position there was once again another sound of a gong, this time from down below on the forest floor.
Mike approached the railing with all of the hunters, who made a straight line against the railing. “Who is the skeleton?” Mike heard a Feminine voice ask, and turned his head to look. He found a woman who could be anywhere from five to ten years his senior looking him over. Her eyebrows red-tinted blonde eyebrows rose as she got a clearer look at his face, “and who did that to his poor head. It looks like someone tried to cut his hair with a cleaver.”
Crosse responded in Gildaic. Which Mike realised the woman was speaking only as Crosse replied, explaining why he had understood her at all.
“The skeleton, as you so aptly dubbed him, is a stray I picked up in the forest while on a hunt. He was with me when the alarm sounded and he hasn’t been around long enough to know the protocols here, and I trust him to not be dumb enough to get in the way up here. He can also understand you. You picked the wrong language to talk behind his back with,” Crosse replied with a wry tone to the woman.
The woman’s pale face flushed slightly at being called out and caught, she didn’t seem to phased otherwise though, and just shrugged and said something in Manish this time, “He doesn’t speak Manish?” She asked.
“He speaks Manish very poorly,” Crosse replied in the same language. Last night after Mike had explained himself and asked for a dictionary. Crosse confessed to not having one, but he had been willing to help Mike progress his verbal understanding of Manish, just to see how it worked. Language hadn’t levelled up, but Mike could now actually speak Manish, sort of, Crosse said he sounded like either a five-year-old and had a worse vocabulary.
As the two continued to talk in Manish, Mike now only understanding a few words each sentence, He finally took the chance to look over the railing towards the ground, his eyes were immediately drawn to something incredible.
Standing on the ground between the three huge trees was a slim figure, who still managed to draw all of Mike’s attention. Ina stood there, her hair bound behind her in a long silver ponytail. She was dressed in elaborate robes, though of a very different style to the ones he had seen in the Facility.
They were white, as those had been, but these were embellished with plates of polished reflective metal. They covered her shoulders and ran down her arms, and were so polished as to be mirrors. As Mike finished inspecting her, she began to speak.
“Come forth, Mad Spirit, born wrongly into this realm of mortals. Driven mad by your hunger for Magic, come and face me, a Sun-Gazer, if you wish to pass through this village and wreak havoc as you desire!” She bellowed at a volume impossible for her tiny frame. Mike was able to see the waves of Light Mana that carried her voice out as an illusion of sound.
In response to her declaration, the ground shook.
There was the sound of creaking wood and thin metal brushing together. Then there was a thunderclap. It was so loud that it rocked back Mike and the hunters. Another pulse of Magic spread out from Ina, It reached the bases of the trees and then vanished.
The ground shook again and Mike could hear the sound of electricity. Not the sound of a static shock or a live wire, no, he had only heard this sound a few times. While watching videos of active tesla coils and standing near high voltage power lines.
The warbling and sharp sound of arcing electricity grew closer and Mike could now see the shape in the forest, moving towards them the cobalt glow of electricity lighting it to his eyes.
As the Beast, or Mad Spirit as Ina had called it, came into view, Mike got flashbacks of watching The Two Towers for the first time, of building a model for a fantasy table-top wargame. It was a Treant, one formed from a gild-leaf tree of this forest. It thankfully stood only half as tall as the surrounding trees, and only a third as tall as one of the Inasholme trees.
But between its metal leaves arced lightning, that was the only way that Mike could think of it. All of its golden leaves were charged with blue electricity and it jumped and arc between them as the tree walked on two legs as thick as hardwood trees back on earth.
As it drew closer two limbs lowered from among its crown of branches, they were charred on the surface and covered with golden leaves but made for approximations of arms that arced with the lightning of the canopy of leaves.
It clapped them together at what looked like it forearms, in movement much faster than Mike imagined such a creature could move, and there was another thunderclap. Mike braced himself for it, but this time the sound was muted, audible, but almost fake sounding as if… reproduced.
The spell Ina had cast after the first must have been an Illusion that both dampened the sound around the trees and reproduced it at non-threatening levels, or so Mike assumed.
As Mike thought this the branch crown of the Lightning Treant, as that was all Mike could think to call it, tiled back and revealed a split in the bar under it that vaguely resembled a mouth, and from it issued a roar that sounded like a mix between shattering wood and thunder.
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