Chapter 10: The Roots Resist

Roots of Desire

Chapter 10: The Roots Resist

The forest ached.

Woodward pressed a wide hand; fingers knotted with living bark; against the roots of a withering oak, his towering Treant form hunched beneath the weight of twilight. The tree shuddered at his touch, leaves trembling like frightened breath. It wasn’t age or storm that sickened it, but something deeper; something festering. A corruption, slow and insidious, leeching up from the village like poison drawn through roots. Soil soured beneath his feet, the once-whole spirit of the land fractured. He had tried; spells cast in Druidic tongue, old rituals whispered through root and leaf; but the blight resisted. It spread like rot in a wounded beast, feeding off the land’s quiet suffering.

He shifted with a groan of wood and sinew, his body creaking like a storm-worn tree. The glade whispered back; cries in the rustle of leaves, warnings in the twitching underbrush. Broken roots. Twisted growth. Something foreign nestled deep within the earth. Something is wrong.

Then it came; the summons. Ancient magic crawled up through the roots, wrapping tight around his core like a vine-strangled command. It pulled. Urged. The Guardians were calling.

With a slow, steady exhale, Woodward let the bulk of his form melt away, his limbs reshaping, shrinking; still bark, still rooted in the old ways, but clothed now in a shape more familiar. Humanoid. Almost. The forest watched him in silence as he turned and strode toward the Stone Circle, his steps heavy with purpose.

The monoliths loomed, tall and solemn as the bones of long-dead gods. Beneath the waning sky, three figures stood within the circle’s embrace; sentinels of ancient law and older secrets. Pine, unmoving; a monument in his own right. Yarrow, sharp-eyed and tense, her presence coiled like a blade half-drawn. And Briar, her silver gaze unreadable beneath a hood of shadow and moss.

“You took your time,” Yarrow said, her voice flat, cold as the stone beneath their feet. “The forest is suffering,” Woodward answered, stepping between the stones. “And its sickness flows from the village.”

“You waste your strength on mortals,” Pine intoned, eyes narrowing like slow-falling dusk. “This is not our concern.”

“It should be,” he growled. “The Steward’s corruption seeps into the land. If we do nothing; ”

“There is more at work than you see,” Pine said, quiet and immovable. “To interfere further is to risk imbalance.”

Woodward’s jaw clenched. Behind his eyes, a name echoed like thunder. Iveyna. Her presence lingered in him like the scent of crushed sage. “And what of the balance when the roots rot and the trees fall silent? Will you wait until the forest is nothing but memory?”

Yarrow stepped forward, sharp with warning. “You overstep. Interference risks exposure. We are watchers, not warriors. If you break the old ways; ”

“Then stop me,” he said, his voice low and steady. Daring. Silence cracked between them, taut as a drawn bowstring. Then pain; sharp, sudden, not his own; tore through him.

It lanced through his senses like a jagged scream. Ropes. Darkness. Panic that tightened like a noose. He felt her; Iveyna; not as a memory, but as a presence. Raw. Real. Afraid. She was close. Not alone.

“She’s been taken,” he said, breath catching.

“She is not yours to protect,” Yarrow warned, though her voice had lost some of its edge. Woodward turned from them, already shifting, the old bark rising through his skin.

“Then she is mine to save.”

The forest blurred around him as he ran, shadow and bark melding into a seamless sprint. Roots gave way beneath his feet, the land guiding him like blood through veins. The pull between them; an invisible tether; grew tighter with every step, and though her spirit trembled, it did not fracture. She was still fighting. Still alive.

The Steward’s manor rose from the earth like a wound; a place that repelled the forest, its foundation slick with rot. Even the roots shrank from it, unwilling to touch what lay within. He reached through the soil, through the pulse of earth, and felt them. Not just her. Others. Buried voices. Hidden pain.

A scream tore through the air; another girl, not Iveyna; and his senses reeled. Below. A place beneath the manor, stone-choked and cold, soaked in fear. He pressed closer, listening.

Inside, Iveyna was being led down narrow stairs. The air grew colder, thickening with each descent. Her steps were unsteady; not from force, but from dread. The corridors twisted like intestines; deliberate in their design to disorient, to isolate. The place below was not a dungeon, but it might as well have been. Silence clung to the stone like frost.

Beyond a door, she saw them; girls. Her age. Silent. Watching. Afraid to speak. She was not alone, but their presence only deepened the hollow in her chest. The Steward's gaze pinned her from across the room, steady and sure, as if he already owned her. “You’ll learn quickly,” he said, as if it were a comfort. “The rest did.” Iveyna said nothing. Her voice wasn’t gone, merely buried; tight in her throat, coiled like a spring. Waiting. The cell door opened beside her, yawning like a mouth meant to devour.

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She didn’t move. Didn’t step in.

When the foreman reached for her again, something inside her tore free; not fear, not panic; but something older. Wilder. A breath. A choice. A spark that whispered no.

And then she moved.

Her heart thundered as she sprang forward, driven by raw instinct and a pulse-deep desperation that silenced all thought. She barely registered the foreman’s shout before her legs were moving, carrying her toward the stairs with reckless speed. The cold slap of stone against her bare feet grounded her just enough to realize she was racing for a door she hadn’t seen opened since she was thrown in; still, she ran. Behind her, chaos erupted. Boots clattered. Orders barked off damp walls. “Do not let her leave this house,” came the Steward’s voice, too calm for the violence it summoned. It chilled her deeper than the floor beneath her feet.

The stairwell blurred as she scrambled upward, blood pounding in her ears. Her hands reached the door. Locked. She jiggled the handle, cursed under her breath, then spun on her heel just as the foreman thundered up after her. She didn’t pause. She launched herself into him, shoulder-first, with all the force she could muster. He reeled, more from surprise than pain, and she struck again; an elbow to his nose, sharp and precise. She felt the cartilage crack, heard him howl. Blood sprayed across her cheek like war paint. He stumbled, off balance, and her fingers shot toward the key ring at his belt. They brushed cool metal;

But a second hand snatched her wrist mid-motion. Strong. Unforgiving. She hadn’t seen Lyric creeping up behind. “No,” she hissed through gritted teeth, twisting hard, slamming her heel into a shin, elbow into ribs, clawing like a wildcat. The foreman roared and surged forward, grabbing her by the waist and slamming her back against the stone wall so hard the impact stole the breath from her lungs. The key ring hit the ground near her outstretched fingers; close enough to hope.

She lunged for it, her whole body straining toward that sliver of salvation; but a boot came down hard, crushing her hand beneath it. A scream tore from her throat. Pain lanced through her wrist, down into her elbow, hot and white and blinding. She thrashed, but the boot didn’t budge. “She bites,” the foreman growled, towering over her with blood smeared across his face like a twisted badge of pride. Lyric laughed, low and breathless. Below them, the Steward’s voice curled up the stairwell like smoke.

“Bring her down. Gently, if she allows. If not… break what you must. Just don’t mar the face.”

Her stomach turned. They dragged her; one by her arms, the other by her legs; ignoring the kicks and curses she hurled in every direction. Her body betrayed her, bruised and throbbing, fingers swelling, vision swaying from the pain in her crushed hand. Still, she didn’t stop fighting. Not even when they hauled her through the dark again, nor when the cold air of the basement clung to her skin like damp sheets.

The cage stood open, its iron bars wide like jaws. She caught a glimpse of it through the blur of movement, dread knotting in her gut. The moment they threw her inside, she twisted upright, hurling herself at the bars; but they slammed shut before she could scream. The lock turned with a heavy click that echoed like the sealing of a tomb. She pressed her forehead to the bars, breathing hard, heart bruised and beating. Outside the cage, the foreman and Lyric stood in silence, bloodied and winded. And farther back, at the top of the stairs, the Steward lingered in the shadows. Watching.

Watching like he’d just broken a creature he meant to tame.

The wind turned sour.

Woodward dropped to one knee in the underbrush, bark-skinned fingers digging into the loam as the forest pulsed beneath him. The scream; hers; still rang in his core. Not a memory. Not a dream. Real. Immediate. He could taste her pain in the air, sharp as iron and salt. Roots whispered, winding tighter around his feet like bracing hands. They knew. They remembered her too.

He reached deeper; into the soil, into the rhythm of rot and growth. Her presence flickered far below, suffocated by stone and shadow. Still alive. Still resisting. But dimming. The forest had limits. Its reach thinned near the manor, where stone choked the land and unnatural hands had severed sacred lines. He would have to go the rest alone.

A storm rolled inside him. He welcomed it. He rose, his skin shifting, bark thickening into armor as his form twisted again; no longer fully Treant, no longer quite human. This shape was meant for war. Eight feet of gnarled wrath, eyes aglow with primal green. Antlers of splintered oak crowned his head. His breath misted in the air like sap steaming from wounded bark.

He stalked toward the manor with purpose in every step, each stride causing the ground to tremble. The forest bent around him, trees parting in deference. Even the animals had gone silent. Then came the smell; burnt oil, blood, and perfume meant to hide worse things.

He reached the edge of the trees and paused in the shadow of a dying elm, watching the manor loom ahead like a carcass left to rot in the sun. Stone walls climbed high, ringed in wrought iron, torches guttering in sconces along the perimeter. Guards lingered near the doors, their movements lazy, unaware of the force creeping toward them through the dark.

Woodward exhaled, and leaves curled with the sound. He dropped his hand to the ground again and whispered to the roots.

Mark them.

From beneath the soil, the roots stirred; twisting, crawling, mapping footsteps. Two patrols. One near the east wall. Another circling toward the back. Neither had any sense of what stalked them. But his focus sharpened as the roots led him deeper; beneath the stone, below the foundation; where the veins of the land barely reached. He felt her pain like a drumbeat. He felt her breath, ragged and fast. He felt the bars of her cage.

And he felt something else.

Another presence. Not like her. Darker. Watching her through slitted eyes and a polished smile. The one called Lyric. Woodward’s growl rolled low in his throat, the moss on his shoulders bristling with fury. He would not let them keep her.

From the shadows, a fox emerged; small, silent, its eyes bright with knowing. It paused before him, sniffed the air, then nodded once. A silent scout. Another watcher of the old ways. Woodward met its gaze, and the fox darted ahead, slipping through a crack in the outer wall.

Inside the cage, she was waiting.

Not passively. Not broken.

He felt it now; how she braced herself against despair, teeth gritted, breath steadying. Not giving in. She didn’t know he was coming. But the forest did. Woodward placed one bark-armored hand to his chest and bowed his head; not in reverence, but in a silent vow.

Let them try to stop me.

And then he moved. Through the dark. Toward stone. Toward steel. Toward blood.

Toward her.