Runolf,
Champion of The World Tree
The Prison Halls
The World Tree
Runolf was losing the fight. Even with the power of the World Tree at his command, he still could not match the strength of the Blood Knight. At best, all he was doing was frustrating the creature by not making it an easy fight—but that came with its own consequences.
With every passing minute, the anger of the Blood Knight only grew, his discipline slipped, and the concussive blows he railed against Runolf only became more and more savage.
“Did you really think that you could beat me?” The Blood Knight laughed. “I don’t care who your matron is! And I don’t care what powers she’s given you! I will pound you into dust! We will take our fill of the Elves in this tree, we will slaughter any Man that gets in our way, and then we’ll raze this tree right down to the ground! Any survivors will be begging us to spare their lives, and then we’ll gather them up and add them to the rest of our livestock! Death to this wretched tree! Death to the Elves! AND DEATH TO ANYONE WHO GETS IN OUR WAY!”
What looked like a thousand large bats suddenly swarmed them both and began scratching and pulling at the Blood Knight’s armour, saving Runolf from having his face caved in with the former’s mace. Together, the bats pulled the helmet off of the Knight’s head, and began clawing and biting at his face, taking special aim for his eyes it seemed, sending the monster into shouting fits of agony.
Runolf took the opportunity to pick himself up from the ground and put some distance between him and the Knight. When he was far enough away, his mind set to work on trying to find a way out of this situation. The Magnussons had come back—that was unexpected—but would their help be enough to turn the tide of this battle?
His head was pounding so hard that his skull felt like it might explode. He could feel himself fading away and in his place, a savage nature of his own kept trying to bubble up to the surface and take complete control of him—reducing him to some deranged creature.
It’s these gauntlets. Aslauga’s hands! They’re fuelling me with her own sort of blood-lust. I need to get them off! NO! Keep them! We—I need them…need them, need them, need them!
A cruel laughter disrupted Runolf’s argument with himself.
“Looks like you’re dealing with quite the turmoil in that head of yours.” the Blood Knight chuckled.
Runolf wasn’t sure how long he had been spiralling into madness, but it must have been for quite some time; all the Magnussons were sprawled on the floor not too far away from them. Whether they were dead or merely unconscious, though, he couldn’t say.
Embrace my power! Feel my rage! Fell this Knight! Came the war chant of the slumbering Dryad Queen.
“…Alright…alright…ALRIGHT! FINE!” Runolf screamed at Aslauga’s disembodied voice. “You want me? You want all of me?! THEN TAKE ME! Twist me into something that can kill this blasted mosquito once and for all!”
A surge of biting electricity then lit his body on fire as his wish was brutally granted: Runoff’s limbs expanded and bent in unnatural directions. The moss of the gauntlets remoulded him into something beyond recognition at first. Each of his arms elongated before splitting open into two separate writhing, three-pronged mouth-flaps that looked like a cross between mandibles and tentacles—each arm lined with razor-sharp teeth and several eyes, and Runolf could feel his head undergoing a similar transformation where it morphed into his torso which split open to form its own murderous mouth full of teeth. Finally, the bark on his skin grew a thick coat of fur, and his transformation was complete.
Runolf had become a massive Man-Eating-Tree Ent. A monster brimming to the teeth with the full patronage of the World Tree herself.
Without bothering to waste anymore time, Runolf unleashed his fury by charging headfirst at the Blood Knight, whose already pale face had somehow changed a shade whiter at the sight of him. No longer capable of speech in this ultimate form, Runolf roared, gargled, and gnashed his teeth as he pinned the vampire to the ground, trying to wrap his new, foaming, wriggling mouths around the vampire’s head.
“No! NO NO NO!” screamed the Blood Knight. “This can’t be! I can’t die like this—I won’t!” He tried to beat Runolf with his mace once more, but Runolf ripped it out of his hands and swallowed it whole. “No!”
His thoughts too scattered to think straight, Runolf’s heartbeat raced as adrenaline course through his body and he wheezed. He was giggling. This new monstrous form was laughing apart from his own commands. It was odd. It was thrilling…and he was famished.
The Man-Eating-Tree Ent ripped apart the Blood Knight’s armour piece by piece. As a result, for the first time, the Blood Knight’s shouts of anger quickly turned to pleas of desperation as the Ent’s teeth nibbled into his flesh as it became exposed.
“NO! Stop it! Let me go! You can’t do this to me! I won’t let you! I WON’T LET YOU!” The Blood Knight slammed his free fist on the floor, and Runolf’s new array of unaccustomed eyes widened when bright red sparks flew from it.
The Blood Knight noticed this too, and for a moment the two froze in their amazement, then they looked back at each other, and the Blood Knight laughed again.
“Well, well,” a cruel grin wrapped across the vampire’s face. “It looks like your precious tree queen really isn’t doing all that well, is she?”
Rather than waiting for an answer, the Blood Knight shoved his free hand into one of Runolf’s arm-mouths with a fearsome roar and before he could fully process it, Runolf’s left arm-mouth erupted in magical, crimson red fire that was ripping through the insides of his new tree body with lightning speed.
It was Runolf’s turn to roar in pain then. He jumped off the vampire and desperately tried to snuff out the fire, but it just kept burning, and soon the stables were filled with a strange smell that was a cross between rotting meat and foul smelling cheese.
Runolf could feel the force of each spell as it collided with his body, while the echoing laughter of the Blood Knight reverberated through the air.
“When I first saw the dryad you call queen, she was wearing a lavish coat made of the fur of a man-eating-tree. It looked wonderful.” Said the Blood Knight. He held up his hands, and he conjured up two long spears made of his own black blood that floated just above his palms. “Once I’ve pinned you down, and I’m skinning you alive, I think I might make my own fur coat out of you! It’ll be a wonderful addition to my other trophies when I’m not wearing it and showing it—”
Out of nowhere, a long, wooden staff of some sort had punctured right through the vampire’s heart. The Blood Knight looked down at it, and as he did, someone behind him shouted and an axe-head came from behind and buried itself in the vampire’s neck, causing a mess of black blood to spray wildly from the wound. The axe-head was then quickly removed for a moment, before being swung again, cutting deeper into the Knight’s neck until his head was completely severed from his body and toppled to the floor.
As the Blood Knight’s lifeless body slumped to the ground, the man-eating-tree ent that was still Runolf got a look at who it was that had saved him: it was the Pendles. They had returned.
Eddie Pendle was the one that held the axe that had felled their shared adversary. Where he got the axe from, Runolf didn’t know. The grey elf’s siblings tended to the Magnussons, who were only just stirring from their state of unconsciousness. Each of them also kept a very wary eye on the monster that Runolf had become.
When the Blood Knight died, so did his magic, and the burning that had consumed Runolf’s innards had not only faded already, but he already felt himself healing rapidly. Through a very painful process, Runolf did what little he could at that moment to morph the innards of his body so that he could give his new ent-form the ability to utter words. When he had contorted said insides for a few minutes, he gurgled to Eddie, “L-Leave…GO! Safety in….you’ll be safe in…skies! Fly Northwest! Fly until you find an old Dwarven city called Urdfjall. You’ll be safe there! Go! NOW!”
While the lad might not have been the most adept at understanding the Jördic tongue, he nodded to show that he understood all the same, and began helping his people get back onto their fluff-moos before taking off into the night again. And once they took off again, Runolf turned and began employing his new inhuman speed to rushing through the halls in his new monstrous form to aid the people of the World Tree against the rest of the invaders.
A part of himself wondered why he had told Pendle where he and the Magnussons could hide out safely in the Jördlands, but deep down he knew why: if the past day or two were any indication, the vampires of the Dark Province had reached a level of desperation to leave their prison that was higher than ever seen before. Also, if the visions he experienced of the memories of the Blood Knight’s mistress were any indicator, the vampires were looking outwards for the means to leave behind the tyranny of the sunlight’s power over them. That meant more elves would be at monumental risk no matter where they were across the continent—he couldn’t imagine that they would go to such great lengths to catch the Pendles and silence the Magnussons if there was an abundance of grey elves in their homeland. And should enough elves fall to the vampires’ hunts, the rest of the peoples of the world would be next.
So while the City of Urdfjall might not be the land of eternal sunlight that the Magnussons and Pendle were hoping for, it would be a safe enough place for them to lie low for a while. In the end, Runolf could live with that. Because in the days ahead, he might not get to be so picky about who he could claim as an ally should the vampires ever truly break free of their chain en mass.
*
Aslauga’s Bed Chamber
Days Later.
“And you don’t know how long she’ll be asleep for?” Ingrid asked hopefully.
“No, I don’t.” Esko replied, wearily. “No one does, Miss. It’s dreamblight. No one ever knows how long a case of it may last…I’ve even heard tales of a person being asleep for as long as a hundred years.”
Runolf watched as Ingrid’s entire being visibly sank upon hearing the Chief Horticulturist’s words.
“I don’t understand.” Ingrid went on. “She’s complained about feeling week—well, for as long as anyone’s known, but it’s never been so pronounced. It’s been a tough couple of days, but she should have been back on her feet by now. And dreamblight? She has powers against this—against any magical ailment! What kind of force—magical or otherwise—could overwhelm anti-magic?”
“…I think it may be time for us to accept that she’s just getting too old for the kind of excitement that has consumed Vinterlund these past few days, Ingrid.” Said Esko. “She is an ancient tree, after all…”
“No, but that doesn’t sit right with me, Ingrid. It just doesn’t sit right.” Runolf began pacing back and forth, stroking the moss that was covering one of his forearms—a habit that he had picked up since the first day that he had put on the gauntlets. “I don’t know how to explain it, but I’ve just got this feeling in my gut that there’s something wrong with her—something unresolved. It’s like there’s been something wrong for ages and it’s only now just dawning on me…”
He had been feeling like this ever since the invasion. After the Pendles and Magnussons flew off with the rest of their grey elf party the Knight that the World Tree was attacked, Runolf—alongside the rest of his men once they realized who he was, despite his monstrous new appearance—worked to clear out all the remaining thralls that were kidnapping the elves amongst their people.
They eventually dispensed of the thralls, but weren’t able to save every elf. The final number Runolf received was that there were just under four hundred elves missing from their homes and families—four hundred. Most of them taken away via portals once the magical nullification of the World Tree sputtered as if it was going to fade away entirely, and it still hadn’t stopped sputtering, which only added to the people’s stress levels. And after searching all of Vinterlund for the place where the vampires’ thralls might be camped out, they could find no trace of them.
Runolf’s train of thought was disrupted when Ingrid stepped in front of him and took hold of one of his armoured hands.
“Maybe it’s these that are giving you this feeling.” Said Ingrid, as she examined the gauntlet. “The weapons that she gives to her champions typically connect her to them somehow—probably this strange moss. Perhaps that’s why you’re feeling that way. Maybe these gauntlets are letting you feel something that no one else can sense—not even the healers.”
“Hmm…perhaps.” Runolf replied.
He looked back at Aslauga for a moment. The good news was that all the burns and other wounds that covered her body had almost completely healed, leaving little trace of them ever existing. Runolf once again tried to use the mental connection between them—a privilege that he had been so quick to shake off and block in the past—and a tinge of regret struck at his heart again when no response came.
“Having said all of that, it’ll be essential now to rally the border patrols and put in place safeguards against any potential magical threats, as well as making sure those safeguards are maintained going forward.” Runolf sighed. “Well…if nothing else, Esko, perhaps that errand you sent Sylvi on the other day could solve this mystery for us in the long run. Speaking of which, any luck putting that grub to work?”
Both Esko and Ingrid turned to look at him—both of them clearly puzzled.
“Errand?” said Esko.
“What errand?” Ingrid pressed. “And my Sylvi? What are you talking about, Runolf?”
Runolf looked between them both with a growing tingling sense in the moss covering his limbs and a tightness in his chest. “Just the other day, I found Sylvi trying to sneak off with some supplies and a horse and—”
“She what?!”
“And she told me that you, Esko, had told her about some grub—some kind of insect that might be used for treating Aslauga—that it could help somehow. I…I sent her off to go get it, but I made sure that she had enough supplies and a couple other souls to go with her so that she wasn’t all on her own but…but that was just before the attack. I haven’t seen her since. I thought she had long since come back by now…”
Ingrid’s jaw dropped, and she spun around, her eyes narrowing in on Esko, who seemed completely taken aback by everything he had just heard.
“Ingrid,” Esko sputtered. “Runolf, I…I have no idea what you’re talking about. I spoke to Sylvi a while ago, yes, but I said nothing about a special grub! And I definitely would never send her after it all on her own!”
Runolf tried to speak—to offer up some kind of explanation, but his voice failed him completely as Ingrid’s tearful eyes once again turned back to him.
“Runolf?! Where is she? Where is Sylvi? WHERE IS MY GRANDDAUGHTER?!”
