Chapter 41: 40. The Ilethian

Corvo blinked, and Mother was upright again, a foot away from the tree monster, staring at it. It stumbled forward at the disappearance of her weight; she stepped aside and raised a hand, and from her fingertips sprouted green flame. The forest erupted in brilliant emerald as the darkness of the never-ending night was replaced with enchanted fire. Its light flickered across every fern, leaf, and blade of grass around their camp while the monster was enveloped completely.

Yet the fire did not burn it. Instead, as it reached the creature and twisted around its sides, the magic dissipated harmlessly. Like fog meeting a bonfire.

The countless branches and twigs sprouting from the monster’s body shuddered. The purple leaves that covered it like hair began to glow, and it took a heavy step forward.

Corvo stood near, paralyzed with fear. Mother glanced back at him while she drew the sword at her hip. He caught a quick glimpse of the shredded wood that was streaked down her stomach and across her wrists—the chain armor she wore had kept her uninjured. Its Arkwi iron bands much harder than the flesh of this ligneous monstrosity, no matter how huge it was.

“Run!” she shouted as their eyes met.

He listened. He sprinted back to where their tent had been pitched and bumped into Dorian.

Trito rushed past him. Then Aletheia with her bow. Dorian seemed to want to follow them, but he stopped with his sword in hand and brought it down to Corvo’s side.

They did nothing but watch.

The tree monster lumbered forward. It was the size of a tree—not a man, but a real tree. It kicked at Trito as it came near, but he evaded it easily; Mother swung her sword at its trunk-like leg, and Trito stuck it with his spear; but the bark of its flesh deflected both easily, and it was unharmed.

Aletheia shot it twice with her bow. Both times arrows became lodged in its chest, its central trunk, but it did not seem to notice.

They backed up in unison as it continued its approach.

Dorian pulled Corvo in the same direction. “Come with me, chicklet,” he said, and they retreated toward a large tree.

“It is an ilethian,” Tirto shouted. “It feeds on mana.”

Mother shot at it with another spell: this time lightning flashed from the top of her staff, and a thunderous crack echoed throughout the woods. But though she aimed at the ilethian’s body, the arc of the bolt seemed to miss its target, instead snapping to a nearby pine with yellow leaves. A length of wood exploded and splinters rained down on the forest, and a branch was cleaved from its trunk. It fell down near the ilethian’s feet.

Aletheia shot it again. It continued forward without regard.

“Get the horses!” she shouted.

Dorian hesitated. But he nodded and sprinted to the other side of their camp; the four horses there were panicked, and he did his best to calm them and gather them together.

“Corvo! Stay with me!” he yelled.

But Corvo couldn’t look away from the battle.

“Your spells make it stronger,” Trito said.

“Then how do we kill it?” Aletheia said.

“Aim for its leaves.”

The ilethian reached the place where their tent had been only an hour earlier. Its foot stomped down on the indentation left by their bodies in the grass. Mother hacked at it again, but it was no use; she swore, sheathed her sword, and turned and ran to Corvo. She picked him up.

As he was whisked away, he saw the ilethian come down with all its weight on Aletheia. She leaped to the side and fell into mud. She nocked another arrow. This time she put her hand briefly to the head, holding it until the metal glowed hot red, and she aimed as she rose to her feet, and she shot it at one of the small branches that sprawled from the monster’s upper torso.

The arrow sparked as it was buried out of sight and down to the fletching in bark. But this time the ilethian hesitated, stopping for a moment as though in pain.

“Run, you idiots!” Mother shouted. She loaded Corvo upon Sinir’s saddle. “It is a tree! It cannot chase us!”

Trito didn’t listen. He jumped at the ilethian’s trunk and grabbed hold of the branches along its body, heaving himself up onto it. He dropped his spear and let it fall to the ground, then drew a new sword he had received from the Boyar’s forges.

The tree’s clawed hands reached to grab him, but he moved far faster than the lumbering monstrosity, and he made it up to its featureless head—to the place where it had the most leaves hanging from twigs and small branches that shuddered with its every movement.

He hacked at them with his blade. One fell, and another, limbs of wood twisting in the air, purple leaves fluttering before impacting the silvery grass underfoot.

Aletheia dodged a falling limb and scrambled back toward her bedroll. She fell into the fabric as Trito distracted the ilethian. There she pulled a dagger.

He looked from her, to Trito, to her, to Trito, when Mother pulled herself into Sinir’s saddle.

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“You have to help!” Corvo said.

“There is nothing to be done!” she said. “Dorian! Come!”

Dorian hesitated, but soon he had mounted, too. But they didn’t leave as Corvo had expected.

Mother turned to watch the battle again.

Aletheia sliced away at her sheets. She took one strand and wrapped it around the head of a new arrow, while the other was tossed to the ground.

She touched it, and it immolated. A brief flame consumed it—golden, as gold as Mother’s fire was green, but as it burned, it slowly darkened to a normal shade of orange-red.

When it had, Aletheia lowered her arrow into it. The flame jumped from one slip of fabric to another, and when she next raised her bow, it was with a flaming arrow nocked.

But she had the ilethian’s attention. The spell of fire drew its focus, and it turned her way, stomping with a huge foot in her direction. Trito nearly fell from its back; and while he tried to slice away at its branches, most were too thick to cut easily with a bronze blade. The small limbs that lined its upper body came alive as its main arms had, swiping at him and fighting him for every inch.

Aletheia drew back her bow, but she waited too long to look up. The ilethian was already upon her.

Mother conjured a light into the air. It radiated blinding blue, the color of the crystals beneath the floating islands Corvo had seen as they disembarked, and she sent it from her staff to hover near Aletheia—to distract the creature before it reached her.

And it did. The ilethian had no face, but its body was almost human in shape, and it twisted itself toward this new light. All of its other concerns disappeared as it lurched after it.

Mother sent it out into the forest.

“Get off!” Aletheia shouted to Trito, and as the ilethian had its back to her, she shot her arrow into its back.

Corvo watched a shooting star of fire streak through his vision in the dark and eternal night of Seneria. Yet unlike Mother’s fire, when this flame landed against the ilethian’s trunk, it spread.

It spread, and quickly. Down its back. To its arms. Up to its head, and to the place where Trito fought off its writhing uppermost branches. When the fire reached him, he finally dropped down to the ground, landing deftly as a cat.

Corvo heard the roaring of open flame, but the ilethian made no noise as red consumed its body.

It retreated As it became too bright to look upon, as it burned like a torch dropped from an invisible giant, it stumbled its way out into the forest, until soon not even the trailing black smoke off its back could be seen, and all was dark again.

The party was silent for a long while. After a few moments they gathered the rest of their things, and without further word they set out once again.

They rested for lunch in a ruin. From a distance Corvo had mistaken it for a ridge, or a natural cave in a mountainside; it was strewn everywhere with kudzu and writhing vines, and a stream waterfalled from its top. But past two huge trees and over at toppled log, they found a staircase up into a large atrium.

It was very dark within. Mother began casting a spell of light, but Trito stopped her. Instead he used the strange device that was, until now, only for lighting his pipe, and ignited a torch for each of them (except Corvo).

Columns and bricks lay toppled and fractured across the ground. Corvo climbed atop one as he ate.

Aletheia broke the long silence: “So… what’s an ilethian?”

“It’s a tree-man!” Corvo said.

She scrunched her lips and eyes together. “That was a tree?”

Corvo nodded. She smiled, coming near to him, checking the darkness, and sitting down at his side. But she looked to Trito.

“How did it find us?” she asked.

“It is immune to magic because it consumes magic,” Trito said. “And it can smell it, like any predator.”

“But her flaming arrow did the trick,” Dorian said. “Wasn’t that magic?”

“A spell was used to start that fire,” Trito said. “But thereafter it was mundane. While Eris’ flames were never anything but burning mana.”

“That’s shit,” Dorian said. “That doesn’t make any sense. Fire’s fire. It felt hot to me, both times.”

Trito shrugged. “Perhaps. Yet it is so.”

“It is my fault,” Mother said.

They all looked to her. She was quieter than usual. She seemed alert, tired, and withdrawn. Her chain armor was smeared with glowing grass, and the rings on her torso were still lodged with shreddings of tree bark. She had a cut on her forehead.

“It is my fault,” she said again. “I drew it to us with a spell.”

“What spell did you use?” Trito said.

“A light in our tent. We heard the Shadow Man’s voice, late at night, and I could not stand to go without it.”

“Do you regret your decision?”

Mother shook her head. “I spared my son from one peril by thrusting another upon him.” She looked up at the elf with her golden eyes glinting in the torchlight. “No, I do not regret it. But I think I must be more careful.”

“I foresaw this,” Trito said. “And thus brought candles. I recommend using one tomorrow night. I know such mundane things are not in your nature as a magician, but sometimes the light off a wick is needed to peel away darkness cast by magic.”

Mother stared at him, frowning. “Candles.”

Dorian laughed. He shook his head. “The great sorceress Eris. Never thought to use a candle, huh?”

She laughed, but she did not seem to think this was funny. “No. I—believe that even I have some things left to learn.”

“Will it be back?” Aletheia asked. “How can we navigate this place without magic?”

“We were unlucky,” Trito said to her. “It must have been near our camp when we set to rest. An ilethian is slow and basks in the aurora; the paltry mana in a spell of light is hardly a meal. I do not expect it to follow us far. But there will be other creatures like it.”

His gaze shifted back to Mother.

“You were prepared to leave us,” he added.

“Yes,” she admitted plainly. “There was nothing for me to do. You could have run as well as I did.”

“Yet you didn’t run. And you did do something.”

“You are fortunate it worked,” she said. “And that my wit was so quick.”

“I understand. Your duty is to your son. Not me, nor Aletheia. But you did stay. Why? Is it only because you had an idea?”

She looked at him for a long time before answering. That always meant Mother didn’t know what to say, or felt that she was wrong, but this time she seemed confident as she said, “Aletheia has spent long enough in recuperation on this adventure. We do not have time to treat her wounds once again.”

“Thanks,” Aletheia said. “But it doesn’t matter. We should try to focus on what comes next. And what else we’ll face.”

Corvo took a bite of jerky.

“There will be time to explore the answer to that question fully when we arrive at the City,” Trito said.

“When,” said a voice from the entrance to the atrium. It spoke Regal with an accent nothing like Mother’s, so that Corvo barely understood it. He turned to look at its source as the whole party startled and went for weapons.

There was nothing there. No source to the voice at all. It seemed to come from nowhere.

Yet only for a moment, because then she appeared.

A woman. First her feet, then her torso, and finally her cloaked head; she materialized as though her flesh had been the color of the dark forest behind her. She was taller than Mother and held a bow with an arrow nocked.

The party jumped to action. Corvo fell from his perch and cowered at Aletheia’s side. Aletheia nocked an arrow of her own; Mother raised her staff; Dorian drew his sword; yet Trito did nothing except gaze onward.

Another woman appeared by the first. Then a man, closer to Mother. Each with a bow. Each as tall as Trito.

They were elves.

“You say ‘when’, as though it is bound to happen,” the woman said. “But you should say ‘if’.”