Chapter Three
To War!!!
Slowly the hours of the afternoon drifted by until at last Korva returned. She paused at the base of the tree as if asking permission and resignedly Thomanalin nodded. With ease and with as little use of her powerful claws as she could manage Korva, ascended until she was upon the sturdy branch where the boy lay. She gazed at him for a long moment before turning her gaze to glance down to Thomanalin’s uplifted one.
“Do they know?” She huffed out in question.
“Aye, Miss Korva they do.”
Tiredly Korva reclined down upon the branch and glanced at the sun that was dipping down toward the horizon.
“I’ll do what I can Korva, but it will be a nip and tuck thing at best.”
“I know.” Korva said not lifting her head from off her paws.
“You’re a goodhearted shebeast you are. Got a heart of gold ya do missy.”
Korva growled slightly and a branch descended to swap her tail in response. Her ears curled backward, but she made no further move to protest such treatment. She let herself go into a deep sleep, but her senses remained fully alert to even the slightest of interruptions in the daily rituals of the surrounding forest.
*******
I came awake with a start and gripped the branch beneath me reflexively. My momentary panic at my surroundings abated as I took in the sleeping form of Korva bathed in newly risen moonlight.
She’d returned after all, but the temporary lull of knowing that I wasn’t all alone except for a talking tree disintegrated fast in the light of the fact that it was quite dark and the forest around me was wreathed in a dreadful silence as if nothing dared to breathe for fear of giving away position.
The forest was so dark and creepy with its hidden portends of danger and uncertainty that my eyes drifted to the shifting grass heads of the savanna just beyond the sheltering boughs of the trees that grew along it. Abruptly the sea of grass had all my attention and the forest behind me was forgotten.
The grass of this inland savanna glowed!
Even the myriads of wildflowers caught up in the grass here and there glowed in the hue of their principal colors of decoration, but predominantly the grass tinted a bluish light green dominated over everything else. I had never seen so beautiful a sight as this before.
The wind swirled stronger in a deep downdraft from the heavens above and the grass rippled from the actions of the strange down pressed breeze as if enthusiastic to receive it. In awe I watched as the breeze grew stronger and then oddly I felt a clammy moisture in the air and in bewilderment I looked up into the dark sky only to behold a freefalling wonder beyond any imagination to have ever thought possible.
An iridescent sheen of vibrant blue touched off by the silvery glints of a full moon was falling like a cascading wave down out of the sky. Shocked to the core of all I knew or thought I had known, I beheld an ocean’s worth of water so light as to be air descend upon the seas of grass and immerse them in a glimmering barrage of color and swirling current.
The shimmery haze of this sea fallen out of the sky bathed up against the branches of the surrounding forest as if in replica of waves upon a beach. I felt the mist spray with each crashing glimmer of moonlight.
To my surprise I breathed it as if it was air. What manner of miracle was this?
My gaze broke from the sea of grass to glance at Korva. Her eyes were open and with a bright look to them she huffed out quietly, “Watch what comes next.”
My gaze turned back and I almost fell off of my seat on the branch at the sight of fish and larger creatures floating down out of the sky as if on a fast-moving current only to abruptly disperse among the fronds of grass that now featured a panoply of bright dots rising up and out towards the sky. The bright dots of color seemed to be a food source and abruptly shoals of the sky fish separated apart in hot pursuit after each one of them.
It was all too much to take in, but I tried my best. Beyond the sounds of the misty waves breaking against the forest boundaries I couldn’t hear much until suddenly I did.
Sharp perturbed clicks so close together that they formed a staccato beat sounding out and then in disbelief I watched a whale, longer and more massive than the tree I clung to part through the upswept mists coming off the savanna grass. His clicks and whistles sounded loud as he swept by the forest edge right in front of me.
Never had I heard of such a thing as this! The very air I breathed had become an ocean in the heart of a forest. I just didn’t understand how any of this was possible!
I looked to Korva and blinking her eyes knowingly she said, “There is much that man does not know of the land of Angarta. You are privileged to see the mysteries that the forest yet holds.”
Desperately I whispered, “I don’t understand any of this!”
“There are dimensions to life. You’ve lived in a fixed dimension all your life, until now. Now you see that movement between dimensions is possible even as all that was created by Eloah, to my knowledge, borrows from the same matter of existence. Even as the beauty you see is sharply so in reference to its Creator, know also, that evil’s handiwork is at play constantly in the sought for corruption of all of it.”
Just then a blaring cry rent through the night air and a quiver of awareness shot through me. Korva abruptly got up and looked off into the forest even as pig-like squeals erupted in great number that completely shattered the peace of the night which had been brought on by the tranquility of the sky ocean upon the savanna.
The sound of the disturbance in the forest sent the shoals of fish in this inland sea of air fleeing and with concern I glanced into the dark understory of the forest far below us as the awareness of Korva’s concern drew the tension I felt in the moment to a fever pitch. The squeals in the undergrowth had stopped and now all that remained was a silence so pervasive that it had a resonance all of its own.
My focus on what could be going on below was shattered by Thomanalin’s voice, “Look to the trees, the traitorous swine of my own heritage!”
I gazed up and across and I saw eyes. Unhuman eyes and then apart from the eyes of silently watching menacing figures of shadowy darkness tree branches began reaching out towards me. There was nowhere to draw back to, but there was no need to.
The broad beam of the branch below me shook as Thomanalin’s own branches snapped back and forth mightily as he fended off the outreaching arms of all the surrounding trees, who as one had turned traitorous against us. Thomanalin’s deep voice was one resounding echo of anger and tumult as he railed against those of his own tree-like kind arrayed all about him, but lacking of his finer stature in that they had given in to the whims of darkness’s demands.
The eyes watching me moved and glancing down I saw bunches more of the creatures congregating at the base of the treebeast. They were almost humanlike, but only to clearly weren’t upon closer inspection. They had the faces of lizards and row after row of glimmering teeth to prove it!
With horror I watched as with calculated ease they moved for the trunk of the treebeast and it was then that I realized that the surrounding trees were but a diversion to tie up Thomanalin’s considerable capabilities of self-defense. My horror ridden gaze rose to Korva as she spoke tensely, “Tarik, don’t be afraid. You have a future. Never forget that as I don’t doubt my own purpose for being in this moment. Now hold on brave boy and don’t let go!” Then with a roar of overwhelming ferocity I watched her turn and lunge out into space.
Down she fell through air only to land with all claws churning upon the heads of the gathered enemy below. A slim branch twirled around my middle and brought me up securely against a stouter limb and in horror I felt the branch I stood upon shudder and heave even as the ground below seethed as boulders of great size went flying.
Deep pressed roots that had grown for a millennia undisturbed ripped themselves up and out of the rich loamy dirt of the forest floor and in the rain of debris and thrown boulders I beheld the spectacle of Korva lunging left and right about the base of Thomanalin’s trunk attacking the shifting mass of pressed in demonic entities that now struggled for breath and the ability to remain standing as Thomanalin’s roots broke free of the ground he had occupied for as many years as any tree about could remember.
Thomanalin’s roars of rage had become bellows of a deep-seated wrath, ages in the making, as with intensity of focus he freed himself from the ground all the while fending off a dozen attacking trees once friends, but now overruled by evil’s desires. Valiantly he fought to be free and with tears streaking down my face I beheld his broken off root ends too well buried to be freed and so he had twisted free of them as if severing off his own legs.
Korva was latched into and knocked down again and again, but again she rose up, the blood of her enemies dripping from fang and claw to be mixed with her own in a terrible onslaught of shared viciousness that I was only too well aware of as I had seen but a days’ time before, the deaths of all that I had ever known played out in much the same fashion as the warriors of my people had fought against the overwhelming odds presented against them. They too had fought to hold back evil’s desires, only they had failed as even now so did Korva.
I saw her go down under a mob of the chortling lizards and this time she did not rise back up. “Noooo!” I wailed out, but it did no good.
The pack of slavering reptiles leaped upon the huddle in order to get a bite of the strength that had held them at bay from their desired goal and somehow intrinsically I knew that these creatures fed off the strength of others that were more noble than themselves, as if some ravening horde that got high off of the destruction of the spirit as well. With a roar greater than all others before Thomanalin jumped and my whole sense of life changed to slow motion as the treebeast of immense girth and size arced upward and toward the horde of bloody feasting creatures as all his remaining roots flailed viciously.
In horrified wonder I saw the blood red eyes of my sworn enemies from this day forward rise upward to gaze in fearful amazement in the illuminated darkness as Thomanalin began to come down. Some tried to run, but those were snapped off their feet by whip like fibrous roots that reached out and cracked with the echo of a bull whip.
Thomanalin landed and it was to the sound of crunching bone and flesh as Thomanalin’s great statured figure descended upon the mass of feeding hell spawn. I was jerked back and forth viciously as Thomanalin twisted with grinding intensity everything beneath him to a bloody pulp of sheer gore.
I had no time then to gather any thought as abruptly Thomanalin let out a bullish roar and began to run. Trees not given over to darkness’s command bowed out of his way, but those obstinate to their new course of fallen acceptance remained as a bar to his escape.
It did not matter though, because Thomanalin destroyed them as he found them, all the while deflecting every one of the outreaching branches that shot out trying to reach at me and grab me away. The destruction on display all around me was too unreal to even begin to define as the night lit up with howls and the sounds of shattering wood.
It was only too apparent that the forest about me was one of mixed loyalties as one by one trees made their stance known whether they be friend or foe. Three strong oaks bristled in Thomanalin’s path of willful destruction and he charged forward with a will towards them calling them all sorts of names even as the three trees interlaced their branches in order to stop the onrushing treebeast whose snapped off roots twisted like the many legs of a centipede in combination to carry the great bulk of his trunk across the forest floor at high speed.
The three oaks were almost the same size as Thomanalin and I saw the end of our flight in the night fast approaching. I glanced back along the way we had come through the wake of twisted off trees only to feel the icy grip of fear squeeze about my heart at the sight of even more of the reptilian beings running on all fours across the debris of traitorous trees and upturned boulders in their pursuit to get me.
There seemed to be no escape from this night of hellish horrors and grimly I accepted it. A bugled roar that matched the intensity of several voices shouted out with harmonic intensity completely stopped the beating of my heart.
My head whipped forward once more and in awe I watched the knobby limbs of three great treebeasts such as Thomanalin each grip around a trunk of one of the three oaks and then pull with a twisting grip that shucked off the heavy armored bark of their victims who reacted in complete surprise of having been attacked from the rear. The trees, that had forsook their honor in favor of the praises offered to them by fallen whisperers of vanities, mourned now audibly as with resounding cracks they were twisted free of their base trunks and hurled off to the side to bleed out all of their life-sustaining sap. Their mournful wails were quickly forgotten even as their sap continued to run free to stain the ground with their impurity of tree stock.
On Thomanalin rushed and like saluting sentinels of shared wrath the three treebeasts of Thomanalin’s kind, though of different tree species, drew back majestically to let us pass by completely undiminished in speed. My eyes took in the long face of one of them that had the appearance of an ash tree. He spoke with a rumbling echo that sounded like a hollow log bumbling over rocks, “Remember us boy!”
The other two spoke aloud as their principal branches reached down and twisted off branches from the fallen oaks only to form oaken clubs of them, “Aye, and so let the War of Reclamation begin!”
“Aye!” The first one bellowed forth with as he shaped up his own oaken club from the oak that he had dismantled before crying out, “To war!”
All three bellowed so loudly that the treetops of the forest before them waved back and even through the jumbling passage of Thomanalin’s great bulk across it I felt the forest shiver. Branches and darkness half obscured my view, but the sight of the three treebeasts with tree arms swinging away upon the coldhearted enemy at our backs was a sight that brought a comfort all of its own.
I turned my head forward only to see that every tree made way before us now with not a one resisting us. We were going to get away!
A boulder the size of a hay cart came hurling into view and try as he might Thomanalin was unable to avoid it as it crashed into his trunk near the base. Thomanalin grunted aloud and with a totter forward he began to fall.
The branch about my waist seemed almost to cut me in half as Thomanalin’s great bulk fell to land with a crack of branches upon the forest floor. The branch about my waist released and I fell a short distance to the forest floor along with my father’s sword.
I wheeled around my vision obscured once more by tears. Thomanalin’s eyes blinked open and I saw the finality of what would soon be his fate written in them.
Screaming at the top of my lungs I cried out, “Why?”
His age worn features twisted with concern as he huffed out sounding both out of breath and of a diminished life force, “Why what, son?”
“Why does everyone have to die? My parents! My friends! My people! Korva! You!!!”
Thomanalin’s face twisted into a wry smile, “Son, the answer you seek is simple. Seek it and you will find it. I’m really not the right one to answer it for you. Now run lad! Run and don’t look back!”
Nodding and tugging on my father’s sword I did that which the treebeast, who had all my respect in the world, commanded even though I understood nothing of what was happening or why such loss of life should occur all on account of me. In the distance I heard the demented roar of a giant bellow out victoriously even as I, all too, well remembered the roar of their war cries as a contingent of them had battered away at the doors of the Citadel of Vortraya, until they had pulverized the iron reinforced timbers to toothpicks and smash their way into the Citadel. They had gone down under the piercing strength of wave after wave of drug tipped arrows fired at them, but with the Citadel gate smashed the fate of the Citadel had been sealed and I had been sent down an escape tunnel too small for adults even to follow behind in.
The cries of the giant and the feel of his heavy footed landings upon the forest floor aided me all the more in my flight through the forest to escape. Escape to what though?
*******
The giant came to a stop beside the fallen treebeast and Thomanalin gave him a baleful upward cast glare. The giant grinned viciously and kicked out savagely and the already smashed wood of Thomanalin’s trunk splintered apart even further. Thomanalin’s eyes blinked closed with pain.
Laughing the giant sniffed the air and lumbered forward in pursuit of the boy whose scared sent freshened the night air with the promise of how sweet his flesh would taste. A root whipped about the giant’s ankle and with a displeased roar the giant wheeled around to finish off the old treebeast, but in so doing he gave the momentum needed to start the bole of Thomanalin’s trunk mass to start rolling down the slight grade. Thomanalin’s trunk bowled into the giant’s shins and with an unsteady wobble for stability the giant fell forward with a loud crash upon the boulder strewn forest floor.
Silence reigned for only a moment before being broken by the giant’s rageful curses. He had started to rise only to feel the encircling grip of Thomanalin’s remaining roots fasten about his legs even as Thomanalin’s remaining branches gripped a hold upon the giant wherever they could find purchase as one sturdy branch wrapped about the giant’s throat in a constricting ring of squeezing intensity.
The giant’s roar was gagged off abruptly and then he began to fight in earnest to be free as all his breath remained choked from him, but Thomanalin’s grip about his throat remained even as the giant tore restraining branch after branch free of Thomanalin’s trunk. Steadily the giant’s efforts grew diminished, until they became no more at all.
With a weary sigh Thomanalin relaxed his grip upon the corrupted flesh of one of the fallen orders and half turned away to roll face upright so that he could stare at the star laden skies overhead. The surrounding branches of the trees about the scene of battle that had obscured his view withdrew in order for his gaze of the sky to be free of interruption.
“Aye, thank you for that. You’ll all make fine trees someday. Just don’t forget. Don’t ever forget that ya was made and who it was that made you. That’s all I ask. Be good and feed off the essence of what I grew to be in life and now willingly give back as once more I return to the dirt I lived upon all these many years that I’ve been blessed to see. Grow strong and never forget! I haven’t. I remember from whence I came and so will you.” Thomanalin’s words fell silent, even as silence reigned in the forest around where he lay. He lay as a mighty log upon the ground and in silent mourning of the loss of one of the greatest of his kind, every tree about the scene sealed forever the memory of his words and actions within their growth rings.