hotmtlnovel Chapter 118: The Dryad
Chapter 118: The Dryad
Chapter 118: The Dryad- Excerpt from, Ziba Malek, Elorthian Empire Royal Scholar, Translated.
Calen
Calen sprang lightly from rock to rock as he followed the narrow mountain trail, careful not to disturb the tracks with his steps. Something had come this way, and it was a Kobold. He stooped down to study the confusing signs once again.
Malika had been right, they were unwelcome in town, which had made resupplying far more challenging. They were running low on food now after several days of
Calen unleashed his arrows. Like Malika’s foot, his arrows seemed to pass through the spectral wolves’ bodies unless he made a clean strike as if they were not quite Only his light magic seemed to have its normal effect.
“Load up on magic,” he shouted. “They’re incorporeal.”
Taking his own advice, he lit up his Righteous Fury skill. Mana burned him from within, brightening everything he could see. The cavern grew dramatically brighter as his perception skills surged with power: even the smallest detail became crystal clear to his eyes. He fired a rapid stream of fully enchanted arrows, focusing on the wolf Mato had pinned down with his roots. An immobile target versus his ignited mana. Although even now, it was shaking off the bindings by drawing its legs the gnarled roots.
Even with its powerful resistance to physical damage, his enhanced magic made short work of the undead monster, burning it down as he flew through his rapidly dwindling supply of arrows.
He ignored the notification, downing a precious mana potion and redirecting the remainder of his short-duration skill to the second wolf, trying to do as much damage as he could while he had the advantage. His skill expired, but with Malika and Mato focused on the remaining wolf, and it no longer having any flanking advantage, they made quick work of it.
Calen sprinted over to the dryad lying in a pool of her own sap and leaves, keeping a wary eye out for Kobolds. She was in far worse shape than he had expected. While the wolves had badly mauled her, she showed large black patches of necrosis that stank of rotting wood. Her leaves were almost all wilted and brown, and her cheeks were sunken and hollow. But it was the deep anguish in her eyes, far beyond even what matched her dire physical condition, that gripped his attention.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with her, I keep healing but she’s not getting any better,” Malika exclaimed with frantic worry. It was not strictly true, the rents and tears in her flesh closed up and she stopped leaking sap onto the ground, but the blight and affliction remained.
“Let it go, child…” The dryad spoke with a shaky voice that rasped and crackled like dry leaves in a soft breeze but still carried the faint hints of the beautiful resonance it must have had in full health. “What I have cannot be healed.” She sighed, clearly in a great deal of pain, and Malika seemed beside herself that she was unable to heal her.
“What do you have? And why is a dryad out here in the mountains?” Calen asked. She was clearly far from home, and dryads supposedly did not do very well separated from their trees.
“Alexander Gray,” she answered, her eyes snapping open, flashing with fierce anger before she sagged back down, exhausted from the effort.
Calen did not understand her unexpected response.
“Who?” Mato asked.
“He is a necromancer most foul. He deceived me with pretty words, gifts, and promises of love. While I was vulnerable, he poisoned me and destroyed my precious forest,” she sobbed, before catching herself. “I am cursed. I have the undead blight, the same he inflicted on my forest, and I am dying from domain withdrawal.”
“A necromancer?” Mato spat, his face wrinkled with disgust.
“You are talking about the Lirasian Forest to the south?” Calen asked. Vivian had mentioned a blight from the south, but if this dryad was to be believed, the problems were far more urgent than the Guildmaster knew.
“Yes, young half-elf, you are quite perceptive. You honor your patron. I am Lirasia, and my forest is no more.”
As he registered his surprise, his notification chime sounded.
+12 to Perception.
+2 to Perception skills.
Blessing – Duration: 1 day.
“The forest is gone?” Mato asked aghast.
“Yes, my home is no more,” she said. She paused; her body wracked with feeble coughing. “In its place is only undeath now.” She reached out her hand and touched Mato on the chest. “You have a beautiful aura, young druid,” she murmured, “but you are not the source I seek.”
“Why did you come all the way here then? What is it that you are seeking?” Calen demanded, his breath catching in his throat.
“Without my domain, I will wither and die,” she answered. “I require an oak tree in an area rich in nature mana to recover. Some time ago I scented a beautiful new mana aura coming from this area. In pain and agony, and driven from my home, I had only thoughts of finding the mana aura and saving myself. But it seems in this too, I was played by the necromancer’s puppet strings.” She pointed meaningfully to the two spectral wolf corpses. “He probably sought the mana for his own foul purposes.”
Calen glanced meaningfully at Malika and Mato, catching their eyes.
“But it matters not,” the dryad continued. “The precious mana dried up about four days ago, gone like a fleeting mirage in a desert. I will perish a few hours hence, and if you do not burn my corpse, the blight will raise me as a zombie. I fear for what damage I will cause with my death. Promise me you will not allow this to come to pass.” She sounded mortified by the idea, so much so that she was pleading with strangers to burn her body.
“It fits. Ali’s forest was burnt by the Town Watch four days ago,” Malika said quietly.
Mato coughed, drawing up straighter. “If only we could find her,” he said.
“We’re right here,” Calen answered, getting up and looking around. They’d been tracking out in the mountains for ages, but his sense of direction and spatial awareness placed him directly over the library. It took but a few moments for him to find the low squat stone building that, by his reckoning, capped the gigantic, ruined library and the city below. “There,” he pointed to it. “That’s the library.”
“Can we trust her?” Malika asked, glancing at Lirasia.
“She’s going to die if we don’t help her,” Mato said.
“She is too weak. If she had the means to hurt Ali, she would have used it against those wolves,” Calen answered.
As if they’d been waiting for a reason, Malika leapt to her feet and Mato leaned over to help the Dryad.
“You mustn’t touch me, young Druid,” Lirasia said. “You may catch the blight.”
“You can’t walk,” Mato growled, gruffly. “I’m not going to leave you here to die. The Kobolds will kill you.” He scooped the Dryad up into his arms and they followed Calen to the building.
While Calen kept a sharp eye out for the Kobolds that still lurked among the dark boulders, he checked the notifications that had chimed at the end of the fight.
Without missing a step, he dumped three points each into dexterity, intelligence, and perception, and spent the final point on raising his strength, hoping against hope that he wouldn’t need it for whatever they found below.
Alexander Gray
Alexander smiled as he wove his dark magic, stitching and melding the dead flesh together. It had been a productive day.
He had surprisingly run into a small logging village this afternoon, similar in size to Lyton, but he hadn’t cared to find out the name of this one. It had, however, provided him with an abundance of new skeletons, and a few more volunteers for his sacrifice gang.
With his surplus, he had left a sizeable contingent of his undead in the village to harvest some of the enormous mana-rich trees before pressing onward.
“You guys are the privileged few,” he continued, explaining their good fortune to his sacrifice gang. “Your life energy will be sacrificed at the right time to empower my skills. Isn’t trading a meaningless life for that something to be proud of?”
The recruits just stood there, prohibited from moving or speaking by the compulsion collars he had forced on them. In his experience, worthless farmers and laborers like them seldom saw value in the greater purpose. At least on this point he and Roderik saw eye to eye.
They had been due to meet a day ago, and the noble still hadn’t shown up.
Suddenly, he felt the sensation of his mana connection releasing and he snapped his perception into his remaining spectral wolf. He was facing a bear and a monk, while an archer shone like the sun in a deep cavern, firing a furious stream of glowing arrows at him. With the few moments he had left with this specter, he glanced around quickly, spying the dryad dying in a pool of her own sap.
he thought as the connection severed. His plaything had led him right to the doorstep of Myrin’s Keep.
“Come, everyone,” he announced. “It’s time to move out.”