The Revenge of Rondhol
The Crann Bethadh
Briars & Their Betters
She lopes through the idling mob of sisters, over to the odd rock they have come upon. A dryad is sat on her haunches beside it, looking from the stone to the approaching branchwych and back. This one is the sister who first spotted the stone, and the great tree beyond it. This stone is not alone, there are others relatively nearby, partially visible through gaps in the dense foliage, forming a circle around the tree. There is something ominous about this circle, which has thus far kept the brood from crossing into it.
She stops in front of the rock, looking over the inscription carved upon it. None of her sisters can read what is written there, yet with the greenwood scythe clutched in her talons, she can. Strangely, the words come to her far more quickly than she is accustomed to, and she is immediately aware that this is an archaic dialect of the sylvaneth tongue.
The inscription reads: “He poured his life’s blood like that from a cup, so that evil is contained.”
She cannot fathom the meaning of this phrase, and is honestly more concerned about the alacrity with which she was able to decipher the foreign sentence. It once again occurs to her to wonder about the origins of her weapon, that it should be so familiar with such an ancient language.
She turns her gaze past the stone, her eyes lingering upon the enormous tree within the circle, contemplating whether this plant is the evil that the stone speaks of. It certainly does have an intense aura. With the mystical powers bestowed upon her as the brood’s current matriarch, she can sense that the ring of waystones do form some sort of arcane seal, yet the energies emanating from the tree do not seem impeded by it.
A part of her is drawn towards that energy. It feels soft and gentle, loving, caring. Not the Waaagh!-energy of relentless brutality and ruthless cunning, but a power of tranquillity, fertility and growth.
But just as strongly, another part of her is repulsed by it. The peace which the flourishing tree promises is anathema to the constant struggle of life in Ghur. Here, everything must be a predator to survive. To simply sit and grow is not an option, cannot be an option, must not be permitted. The part of her soul that so recently revelled in communion with Rondhol during the attack on the Gaping Portal now screams at her to tear down this great plant, which stands as an affront to all that should be in this harsh, ferocious realm.
She raises a foot, making to step past the rock, towards the tree-
“No…” the low, deep groan sounds from very close by.
-she freezes, as the loud noise sends flocks of birds scattering, squawking in panic. Her brood are likewise taken aback, and quickly turn to face outwards from their loose gathering, talons raised in defiance of whatever might be out there.
It was a noise like the creaking of branches in the wind, overlaid by a slight rustling of leaves. And yet, the relic which she clutches in her hands insists that that sound was a word. Not a word in any language she has ever heard spoken before, but the same bygone variant of sylvaneth as was carved upon the waystones. As with those written words, understanding comes to her with much greater alacrity than is typically the case when she listens to someone speak.
“No… further…”
These most recent words clearly originate from a point directly to her right. She slowly turns to face the speaker, carefully setting down her roots outside the stone circle. She finds herself peering at a tree trunk. She looks up, searching for a speaker in the tree’s branches. She looks up further, and further, until at last she realises what she is observing here. Her jaw falls open and the bloodsap chills in her veins.
With a creaking, cracking noise as loud as a thunderclap, the titanic treelord bends over to get a closer look at her. Behind her, her sisters shriek and cry in fright, huddling closer together, utterly unprepared to confront such a behemoth. The bravest of them manage to raise clawed hands and hiss or snarl their defiance, though, and that meagre show of bravado somehow bolsters her own faltering courage.
She backs away from the circle of stones around the life-tree, positioning herself between the treelord and her sisters. She straightens her hunched form, standing tall and puffing out her chest in an instinctive effort at making herself look big — utterly laughable though that may be given the scale of the one she is confronting — and gnashes her teeth at the titan, in her own display of bold recalcitrance.
She is unsure what sort of response she expects from it — perhaps for it to stomp upon her, smashing her frail body to splinters in an instant — but what she gets is laughter, “Ha… ha… ha…, such… a… crude…, simple… thing… Ghur… has… made… of… you…, little… twig…”
Each word is a long, drawn-out affair, followed by a lengthy pause. Only after she is sure it is finally finished does it occur to her that the phrase ‘little twig’ is intended as a moniker for her. She gnashes her teeth again, shakes her head furiously, and staps a foot, before spitting out, “No twig!”
Thanks to the lightning-quick responses of her scythe to this antiquated dialect, speaking it comes almost easily to her. And yet, being so much smaller than the gargantuan treelord, the words sound entirely different coming from her. Relative to its deep, sonorous tones, her voice is high and reedy. Even to her own ears, she comes across sounding like a petulant child.
The treelord laughs again, “Ha… ha… ha…, what… is… that…? You… do… not… wish… to… be… called… ‘little… twig’…? Then… tell… me…, primitive… creature…, have… you… a… name…?”
“No name!” she snarls, again vehemently shaking her head from side-to-side. Names are things for civilised beings, she knows. The wild beasts of Rondhol’s jungles and forests have no need of names, and so the Brashbriar Brood have no need of them either. But despite the ease with which this old language comes to her, she does not try to explain this to the titan looming over her.
She has been able to keep up her defiant attitude so far, but doubts that she could manage a full sentence without her voice cracking, and showing it the fear she feels, which she is fighting hard to conceal. She is determined not to give it that satisfaction.
That immense head nods interminably slowly, “As… I… thought…, and… so… I… shall… call… you… ‘little… twig’… for… that… is… all… you… are…, just… one… more… little… twig… in… a… forest… of… them…”
“No! Branchwych!” she interjects, trying to get the titan to use her proper title, only to be completely ignored.
“And… you…, little… twig…, may… call… me… ‘elder’…” it instructs her, then stops and stares, waiting with the patience of a mountain.
She remains silent, glaring up at the giant with every ounce of bravado she can muster.
Several long minutes pass like this, then the treelord smiles softly, serenely, and says in that low groaning, creaking of wood that is its voice, “Screech.”
For the briefest instant, puzzlement crosses her features, and she thinks that she must have misheard, or else that her scythe must not be so accustomed to this archaic tongue as she had believed, for this word seems to have no place in their current conversation.
Then banshee wails resound all around her, from every direction, and she feels as if her head is about to split open. She is dimly aware of falling to her knees, her mouth open in a howl of pain and confusion which she cannot hear, as sap fills her eyes, clouding her vision. Her grip on the scythe tightens to such an extent that any ordinary branch of its width would certainly have broken.
Then it’s over.
For several seconds, she kneels there, tremors running through her body which she cannot suppress. If she had to breathe in the manner of humans, aelves and duardin, she would surely be hyperventilating.
Eventually she manages to regain enough self-control to — with one shaking hand — wipe the tears of sap from her eyes. She turns and looks upon her sisters, who are either sprawled helplessly upon the soil, clutching their heads, or else curled up in foetal positions. Almost all them have trails of sap running from their eyes, as she knows she must, and many of those whose facial features include ears or nostrils likewise have sap trickling from those orifices.
But her fallen fellows are not all she sees when she turns, and it is the other sight that truly disturbs her. Involuntarily, she gives a small mewl of fear.
Towering over her sisters are dryads the size of kurnoth hunters, and kurnoth hunters the size of treelords. And of course, even with her gaze averted from its magnificence, she cannot ignore their leader, the treelord of such scale that even a mega-gargant would seem puny by comparison.
A small part of her mind notes that these sylvaneth seem oddly stationary, compared to she and her brood; appearing deeply rooted to the ground in the manner of regular trees, rather than standing upon it, as the forest folk generally do. Yet that is of little consequence now; they are all already within striking distance. Like a bug crawling along the leaf of a fly-trap plant, she has foolishly strutted into the jaws of an immobile predator, the life-magic emanating from that stone-circled tree drawing her in as the scent of sweet nectar calls to an insect.
She turns back to the treelord, shoulders slumped and head hanging dejectedly, all trace of resistance robbed from her by those horrific shrieks, and by the realisation that its forces can effortlessly end not just her own life, but her entire brood, should they be so inclined. She awaits her judgement.
Something slams into her with the force of an ogor’s club, drawing an involuntary cry of pain from her jagged maw, and sending her flying several feet back, to land in a tangled, crumpled mess of branches upon one of her sisters. She finds herself staring up at the titan, which has one immense hand held out before it. From the positions of its digits, understanding comes quickly. She realises that what sent her sprawling was the treelord flicking her away with one finger, as she might an errant beetle which she found scuttling across her bark.
“Say… it…” the titan rumbles, and only now does she recall that it is still waiting to be properly addressed.
“Elder.” she mumbles meekly.
“What… was… that…? Speak… up…, little… twig…, these… old… ears… are… not… what… they… once… were…” it insists, and despite her unfamiliarity with speech in general, she has no difficulty discerning the clear note of smugness in that deep, booming groan. Not that there’s anything she can do about it.
“Elder!” she shouts — though her thin rasp still pales in comparison to the volume of the treelord’s stentorian rumble — as she begins untangling herself from her sister.
“Good…, that… is… better…” it says that, but rather than allowing her to stand on her own two feet, and so preserve some tiny shred of dignity, with a forefinger and thumb, it plucks her from the ground by her left ankle. She lets out a sharp shriek of panic, which is ignored. The titan holds her upside-down for several long moments before speaking again, and when at last it does, she can hear the satisfaction in its tone, “Did… no… one… ever… teach… you… to… respect… your… elders…, little… twig…?”
She thinks back to her predecessor as branchwych. That dryad had been the oldest amongst the brood, but that was not why they followed her. She held the greenwood scythe, and so she was their matriarch. None amongst them had needed to be taught to respect the matriarch, and as for their branch nymphs, those sisters earned their authority through displays of strength and savagery, not due to their age. Mutely, she shakes her head.
“No…? How… strange…” with its free hand, the treelord strokes a beard of leaves and vines so large that it contains its own ecosystem, for which this simple gesture constitutes an extinction event, “Young… sylvaneth… must… not… disrespect… their… elders…”
“Never… forget… that…, little… twig…”
The ancient then turns its rheumy eyes on the cowering group of feral dryads on the forest floor, and seems to come to some sort of realisation, “Hm…, of… course…, I… see…”
A prolonged period of silence marks the end of its sentence, “You… have… not… been… taught… at… all…, have… you…, little… twig…?”
“Perhaps… I… ought… to… take… this… opportunity… to… educate… you…”
“At… least…, about… this… place…” the treelord ancient then proceeds to do exactly as it has said, though given its ponderous manner of speech, this process takes an excruciatingly long time.
Several arduous hours of listening later, she is still being held upside-down, with all her sap long ago having run to her head, and her left leg screaming at her from the strain of bearing her entire weight for such an extended period. Despite this, she tries to keep her squirming to a minimum, lest she upset the elder again, and find herself — or worse, her sisters — dashed to pieces.
Although her scythe’s apparent familiarity with the treelord’s dialect makes it much easier to comprehend, she is still unaccustomed to conversations which last longer than a sentence or two, so enduring such a lecture is as much mentally taxing for her as her position is physically painful. All told, she is utterly exhausted by the experience.
Down below, the rest of the brood fare much better. The other oversized sylvaneth returned to a state of immobility as soon as it became clear that their leader did not mean for the intruders to be destroyed immediately — now once again all but impossible to distinguish from the ordinary trees around them — and since then, her fellows have been lounging around aimlessly, some even taking naps, lulled to sleep by the droning speech of the ancient.
And in exchange for all of her suffering, what has she learned?
A long, long time ago, a gargant wight came to this sacred place with conquest in mind, only to be slain and lain to rest in that circle by a chivalrous knight, who gave his own blessed blood to water a tree upon her grave, the roots of which would grow thick and strong, intertwining with her buried bones, keeping the wight from ever reforming to terrorise the realms again.
In other words, ancient history. She does now know why it would be a bad idea to approach the tree, and why it would be especially foolish to attack it, as she had originally contemplated, but otherwise she feels that she has gotten nothing useful from the interminable address.
At least, this is her impression right up until the elder finally reaches the conclusion of its spiel, when it tells her something that rouses her from the anguished stupor into which she has fallen. It talks of portals scattered all around this glade, which can take travellers deeper into the Dell, bypassing dangers that would otherwise have to be faced. It calls these things “Queen’s Gates”.
The obvious implication is that the elder does not care if they make use of the portals, so long as they depart without approaching its precious tree. Being keenly aware of the knife-edge upon which she is currently balancing, the branchwych is quick to assure her captor that they will do just that. This seems to satisfy the titanic treelord, who at long last sets her down on the forest floor, with more gentleness than she expects from it.
Her first act as soon as she is free of its grasp is to hug her left leg to her chest — the sudden movement eliciting a pained sob from her — and curl up around the aching limb. After allowing herself a few moments of self-pity, she forces her weary body to stagger upright, using her scythe as a walking aid, to reduce as much as possible the amount of weight she has to put on her weakened leg.
As she is doing so, she sees that her sisters are taking that as their cue to ready themselves to depart as well, and likewise rising. In particular, she watches as a certain one-eyed branch nymph uncurls her body, waking from a peaceful nap, gives a protracted yawn, and stretches like a cat. She glowers at her sister, radiating an aura of such intense malevolence that the nymph takes notice and hurriedly shies away.
The branchwych groans and shakes her head. She doesn’t truly blame her sisters for enjoying a restful sleep whilst she suffered; she would certainly prefer that than to have had them hurt along with her. She understands that in their simple minds, they simply do not have much capacity for empathy. Nonetheless, such blatant displays of comfort and contentment are like salt rubbed in a fresh wound to the exhausted matriarch.
“Go… now…, little… twig…, and… stay… safe…”
She opens her mouth to respond to the ancient, but hesitates. Despite the great length of their conversation, it was all one-sided. It had never enquired as to what had brought them here, and so she had not told it that she did not expect any of them to survive their trek through the Furyoth Dell.
Instead of broaching the issue now, she turns back to face it one last time, bows her head and simply says, “Yes, elder.”
As she departs, in search of one of the Queen’s Gates which will bring her closer to the fallen Xarlanth, she is surprised to feel the strange sensation of guilt once again. This is the second time since becoming branchwych that she has felt this way, and she likes it no more now than on the first occasion. If anything, it bothers her more this time around.
What has the greenwood scythe done to her mind to prompt such feelings, and why? Why does it matter to some ancient relic of bygone times that she should be honest and obedient towards a treelord?
Her role as the Briarbrood Branchwych is to lead her dryads on successful hunts, to honour Ghur and Rondhol by proving the brood’s strength, time and again, until at last they meet a foe beyond their ability to overcome. Of course, she loves her sisters, but this is the way of things in the Realm of Beasts, and she knows beyond doubt that none of them expect any more from her than this. It is not her role to keep her gaggle of adorable fools from getting themselves killed, no matter what some towering treelord wishes.
She increases her pace as best she can without stumbling, eager to be away from this place.
