Chapter 51: 50. Tree's Return

The walls went on forever. They arose suddenly from the forest, as though they had been invisible until only feet away, yet they were the height of mountains stretching to either horizon. Black bricks, unreachable ramparts: they were the same as the Oldwalls connected to the Spire in Veshod, or in countless other places across Esenia. They were the Oldwalls, millennia ago, all leading back to this ancient city.

They had been invisible until only a few feet away, because the glowing forests of Seneria grew across them in dense murals. Trees sprouted from holes in the masonry like the space between rocks in a cliffside. Thus they were indistinguishable from any other hill or mountain or stretch of the forest except from very close.

Trito held his hand to a wall, his shadow cast beneath him by an overhanging tree with luminescent red branches.

“How does it feel to be home?” Dorian asked.

The elf glanced over his shoulder. “We have a long way left to go. Come.”

The journey from Waterrest had taken what felt like days already. How long exactly had passed, Corvo didn’t know. No one knew. It was impossible to tell in Seneria. They had set camp five times, but he was always tired; he often tried to sleep in Mother’s arms, yet the dangerous forest was much too frightening to find rest in for long.

But as the long length of the walls came into view, as they walked for mile after mile without seeing any gate or hole, he wondered if Trito wasn’t right. They seemed to have a long way yet to go.

It rained endlessly. Streams ran between obelisks and ruined towers and fallen statues, flowing around the trunks of trees and sparkling in the light off nearby leaves. The forests around Waterrest had been interspersed with ancient structures, but here, beyond the walls, was the sunken remnant of a true city. Boulevards buried beneath mud and grass still took shape during floods, as water coursed down roads set forth thousands of years ago.

They camped within the confines of an empty but still-walled building. A staircase led up to nothing but the dark sky, but beneath it was enough ceiling to keep dry—for a change.

Dorian and Corvo set a fire together by mundane means. They had been practicing, and despite the wetness of the environs had become good at keeping a flame burning all night. Although he at first resented being made to go without arcane fire, Corvo quickly became convinced that firestarting was his true calling.

“I’m the best at starting fires,” he said. He poked Aletheia. “You can’t start fires as good as me. Dorian says.”

She had a distant look in her golden eyes, but she nodded. “He’s right. Pretty soon you’ll be in charge of us, huh?”

It wasn’t until a decade later that Mother informed him that Elektronos plants, those that fed on mana like in Seneria, were especially combustible when dried. It had never seemed strange, to a child, that a leaf should erupt in plumes of fire at the smallest spark.

For the time being he lived in ignorance, convinced he had some subtle kind of magic after all.

He had remarkable confidence for one who spent most of every second in terror.

Huddled there together, the horses nearby, watching the rain fall and feeling the fire’s warmth, Corvo felt haunted by the ghosts of the past. The wind howled endlessly past them. He was cold even when warm.

Trito always kept watch. Aletheia often joined him. Mother held Corvo close, her back to the wall, her chin on his head.

“I wonder if Katharos will end up just like this someday,” Dorian said. “Nothing but bones. Forgotten in a forest. Like an old grave, overgrown.”

“It will,” Mother said.

“It hasn’t so far.”

“Yet one day, it will.” She cupped Corvo’s cheek. He watched her cloudy breath in the cold air leave her lips above him. “We will be fortunate if our civilization leaves bones half so impressive as these, and for half as long.”

“That’s gloomy.”

“It is true.”

“Maybe. I suppose. But it’s not just death. It’s—the end of everything. I’ve never thought about it before.”

“You’re old,” Aletheia said from the stairs. “You must think about the end sometimes.”

He laughed, hanging his head. “No. No, I’ve never been smart enough to be morbid. But maybe I’m at the age to start.”

“We will reach the gates tomorrow,” Trito said, interjecting and cutting the conversation short. “The City will be more dangerous than these woods. Rest while you can.”

“He is right,” Mother said. “We near the one part of Seneria I have seen before. I do not anticipate a kind welcome.”

“We’re going through the front gates?” Aletheia asked.

“No. We’ll have to scale a crumbled section of wall,” Trito said.

“Will the horses be able to follow?” Dorian asked.

“No.”

“We can’t get out of this place without horses,” Dorian said. “We can’t abandon them.”

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“I am confident Eris will be able to return you to your home without any pack animals,” Trito said.

They all looked to Mother. Corvo did, too, expecting some revelation. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pressed his cheek to her chest.

She nodded, and she reached into the backpack at her side. From it she retrieved a scroll. Corvo saw it only from the rear, but the Regal script characters glowed through the paper.

This was a spell in written form.

“Is that from the vault?” Dorian asked.

“What is it?” Aletheia said. “I didn’t notice—I didn’t see you take it. What is it?”

“Magic too valuable to pass by,” Mother said.

“Tell them,” Trito said. “There is no reason to keep this a secret.”

Mother seemed to disagree, because she hesitated. But finally she said, “It is a scroll of Mass Recall.”

Aletheia perked up. “That was Pyraz’s spell. It’s for teleportation.”

“Yes. I was not certain how we would escape before, but now I am. I will learn this spell and use it once the Shadow Man is dead. We will then be transported to any location of our choice.”

“Any?” Dorian asked.

“Any location I have visited, yes. It is ancient and powerful magic. But it will also require a great expenditure of energy. I would not trust myself to use it except in a place like this.” She turned her glare toward Trito. “How did you know of it?”

“It is a spell I know,” Trito said. “I sensed its presence the moment we rendezvoused.”

They fell silent. The rain pattered beyond the ruin’s walls.

“You could have teleported us here,” Dorian said. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“I thought you didn’t use magic,” Aletheia said.

“I don’t, but I once did. And I could have teleported us here, with a supply of mana.” He said this and nothing further, like it was a satisfactory explanation.

Corvo reached for the scroll. Mother frowned and kept it out of reach, but he chased after it, saying, “Trito says we can’t have magic. The tree-man will find us.”

“It won’t be drawn to a spell scroll,” Trito said. “But learning it will not be safe here. If the ilethian still pursues us, that would be enough to earn its focus again.”

Mother nodded. “Hence why I have not studied it yet. I will. And do not worry about these things, my little crow. I will keep you safe. Do not fret over me.”

She kissed him on the forehead.

With that they settled to bed. But Corvo spent all night wondering if that scroll was safe, and if he wouldn’t wake up with the tree-man—the ilethian—over him again.

Corvo awoke with the ilethian over him again.

A branch crashed through the wall beside him. He was shaken awake by the foundation of the ruins rumbling in an earthquake, and at his head ancient bricks, undisturbed for an eternity, crumpled downward.

He screamed. Dust covered him, and suddenly his protection from the wind disappeared. A torrent of water splashed across his face.

Arms embraced him. He saw a second of clouds blowing fast against the full moon, and he blinked.

He teleported across the ruin. He had no idea where he was, but when he looked he saw that he stood in the flooded boulevard beyond their camp, and Mother was over him, shepherding him away from the branches.

The branches.

The ilethian.

It stood over the two-story ruin. Its hand raked through the bricks and knocked them aside as though they were sticks. The leaves around its head blew like fur; those at the top of its ligneous torso, on the left side, hadn’t regrown from Trito’s trimming during their last battle. Along its torso were black striations on the bark from a terrible burn.

Mother swore. She looked back and forth, but she did not know what to do.

Aletheia jumped from the staircase where she kept watch. Dorian rolled from his bedroll. He narrowly avoided being stepped on, and he climbed to his feet, stumbling out toward Corvo.

“Set a fire!” he screamed. “Drive it off!”

“It’s too wet!” Aletheia shouted back. She ran toward one of the ilethian’s legs with her sword drawn and hacked at it; the edge bit in an inch, but not nearly far enough to cut through.

It kicked at her, forcing her backward, and continued in Corvo’s direction.

Mother grabbed him and ran into the flooded street, toward the wall looming over this part of the forest. It was freezing in the rain, and they both shivered within seconds. They had to trudge through the deep water, splashing as they went, and in the eternal night, Corvo could barely see anything at all.

“Don’t stop!” Mother shouted. “Come!”

But when he tripped into the water, submerging himself to his shoulders, she tossed aside her staff and grabbed him. She heaved him upward, and they both stopped—as she turned to see what the ilethian was doing behind them.

It hadn’t pursued them. Instead, its focused was on Dorian. No matter what Aletheia did, no matter where he went, it followed him.

“Where’s Trito?” he yelled, ducking between gaps in a ruined building wall.

The ilethian tore through it.

“Where’s the damn elf?” he yelled.

Mother stood by idly. She was torn between lingering to help and fleeing, but she eventually set Corvo down again. She grabbed her staff and conjured a light, just like she had in the last battle, and sent it to the creature’s head.

Its eyeless face twisted along with the whole of its body. It turned from Dorian for the first time.

Mother made a gesture with her hand. The light spun around the ilethian’s head. Again and again, like a firefly making circles in the sky.

The ilethian span in a circle as it tried to catch the spell. Yet when it reached out for it, Mother always pulled it away.

Aletheia seized the opportunity. She waited until the tree-man had stumbled into an open area of flooded water, and she lowered a hand to the surface at the creature’s feet.

White cascaded from her hand. The air itself froze at her fingertips, and the water turned to ice.

The creature was invulnerable to magic. But its feet became lodged in the ice.

It didn’t notice at first. It continued to pursue the light, until at last it reached up and brushed its wooden hand through the immaterial arcane sphere.

The moment it did, the light disappeared. Mother gasped. She fell to her knees, and Corvo had to grab hold of her. But he still watched what happened next.

“Help me!” Aletheia yelled.

She scrambled around to the ilethian’s side. The frozen water thawed quickly in the rain, despite the cold, but she lowered her hand again and again released more cold.

The freeze held.

Dorian followed her. They came to the ilethian’s left leg, and while it struggled to reach out for them, they hacked at its leg with their swords. One strike, and another, and another, and another, until at last it splintered.

They cut through. The creature buckled under its own weight and fell straight into the water, its other leg cracking partway in half.

They finished that one next, slicing at it until there was nothing left, and the ilethian became completely submerged in the flooded street.

Aletheia froze it over entirely, until it was entombed in a coffin of ice beneath the surface.

Mother shook as she stood. She took Coro’s hand and led him back to the others.

“Is it dead?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Aletheia said. “I don’t know.”

“Where’s Trito, damn it?” Dorian said.

“He went ahead! He left me—he left me on watch,” Aletheia said.

“You did not see the tree on approach?” Mother said, shouting to be heard over the rain.

“I—I,” she stuttered, but she pointed back toward a nearby building. “We need to warm up! Come on!”

Mother couldn’t argue with that. Corvo felt as frozen as the tree-man. So she followed Aletheia back into cover, and there she used a handful of spells to quickly dry their clothes, light a fire, and warm them up.

“Something else will find us after all that,” Dorian said, still shivering. “Using magic like this.”

“We will freeze without it,” Mother said. “We will make do.”

They all huddled together. Close, like they were weathering the storm, like they would stay this way until night ended and then no longer.

But of course night never ended in Seneria. They would have to settle for merely until warm instead.