NOVEL NEXT Chapter Thirty-Five – The Grimm Tree
Reality is trying to bite...
A dreadwood. Really?
The last of the Hags had sent out a flock of blood ravens to see what happened at her sister’s little hut. None of them had come back, which was an answer all its own.
There were thorn golems out there, some very nervous ogres and trolls, two surviving drak-wolves who were equally nervous, the giant toad that was her Familiar, a really big snake swimming in the vicinity (Seriously, how did she feed all these things? Eesh!), and the monstrous dead tree under whose hollowed-out roots she was living.
That tree was a dreadwood. Its root system was huge, and gave a clear idea of just how big the tree itself must have been when it was alive. It only took a little bit of stimulus from my paranoid self swishing water currents past them to make those dead roots twitch and start moving by themselves. I realized all the other guards were just distractions for the rotted, massive trunk of that tree, and the killer root system waiting to grab and crush interlopers from down below.
Its tremorsense extended for at least forty yards in all directions. It didn’t occupy the island it was on, it WAS the island. There was no way to approach it in the water without being sensed, and of course being above the water meant having no cover at all, not that I could walk on water as of yet.
That was fine, just fine. It just meant I had to be a little creative. After all, there were no instant resurrections at Renewal, unlike my time in Nightmare. I was a terrifying little shit, yes, but I wasn’t stupid. It would be years before I reclaimed everything from Nightmare, let alone here.
Killing the shellycoat had let me loot her hut. There was a lot of Cursed and trapped shit in there, and I was pretty sure she’d moved some out to the Shrine I had yet to revisit, but it was more than enough for me to thoroughly condemn whatever form of filing system for alchemical components she had, and make some interesting surprises.
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Her guards, of course, did not have tremorsense. Her guards were also posted around the tree, not ON the tree. Because become lunch, you know.
And I could cover sixty yards with a Spirited Charge. It was more than enough to take care of any of them, if I could get moving.
I spent the night inflicting new agony on myself, as I Tattooed my Cloudstepping Sandals onto my feet.
These were aesthetically pleasing white and light blue curls, winding and flowing over my feet, heels, and shins. Like all my Tats, they had to be exposed or sharing space with a Chakra item to work, so no magic Boots for Sama anytime soon.
I had to do them at QL 35, and it was a good thing I was really flexible and had full body awareness with a Diamond Vajra while I was working on them.
It was also good that I had a Fort Save exceeding +20, because poking a chakra point open while making a Tat was just like in Nightmare, the mother of all blisters getting lanced as my soul squirted out this tiny little opening in my ki, just so it could fill up this Runic art I’d been stabbing in below my skin, allowing me to pump in some Essence and manifest the first couple levels of the Sandals.
Walking on air didn’t come until Mastery/5, being a Nine. Walking on water, however, kicked in at /2, and two Essence.
It was called being able to make Gear. I might be an undersized little cockroach now, but ah, with the right Gear, complementing my own abilities and Tremble, I was going to be a freaking nightmare to these Hags.
Ignoring how incredibly loudly my feet were complaining right now, I allocated my Essence, stepped out onto the surface of the water, and unending streams of mist poured out of my soles, supporting me on top of it without problem.
I could end the effect with a thought if I needed to dive, pinching off the presence of my soul to power down the Tats. They were glowing softly and blowing over my feet and lower legs, felt kinda cool and ticklish, actually.
Tremble couldn’t talk yet, but that was changing soon. There was work to be done, and humming along was no problem at all.
It was time to be a direct and very fast terror in the night. Spirited Charge would do everything I needed, and my speed would make up for the rest.
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I picked them off with hit and runs.
Blooding did for the trolls. They couldn’t regenerate from the wounds it inflicted, so punching a hole through their hearts was as lethal as it was to anyone else. I came skating in out of the night and fog, a blur out of the shadows, and with restricted visibility they had very little time to respond to me before I leapt in, clearing the grasping roots that couldn’t sense me, and driving Tremble hilt-deep into their chests.
The three Trolls died about a minute apart. No, scratch that, the last one tried to flee for his lair instead of standing guard, and I cut him down out in the darkness.
The six ogres tried to back up and cover one another. That just helped me pounce off the dead ones and on to the next, shredding them all as they screamed.
Tremble couldn’t sing quite yet, but his drone was mmm-mmm ominous.
Tree roots scrabbled for me, and I chopped through them in passing, fully able to see them in my Trembling Domain and play the sunder game.
She didn’t come out as I chopped apart her guards. Thorn golems were violently disassembled as sprays of razor-point poisoned thorns went everywhere. My Penetrate Damage Reduction was at 10 and could totally deal with their Hardness, and I had no good experiences with golems, which I proceeded to share with them.
Even I could feel the gaping evil of what the greenhag was bringing forth in there, an inhuman howl that seemed filled with subtle mockery and dominance as it belted forth eagerly.
Even the ogres turned around after they heard it. It was truly a skin-crawling kind of thing. The thing that came out of the entrance to the greenhag’s cave was worth the look.
It was all black, like it was made out of slick plastic or something. It didn’t have eyes, just a kind of bulb head and jaws that went all the way across it, massive and made for chewing. It was probably about eight feet tall, but had limbs more like a gorilla, so it could move on all four oversized feet and claws.
It radiated evil a Fiend would respect. I was a little impressed that she could bring something like this out, and figured she must have had a little something saved up for a long time in order to be able to Summon a Grimm.
Of course, it didn’t stop me from moving. Dumb distracted ogre #1 got Tremble in the side of the head. I twisted my Sword around as I stepped across his back with misting feet. As the last one jerked back around, I sliced him up and down and sent a fountain of his insides into the outsides, ducking the spray of blood, sliding past as chopchopchopchop I hacked down some big dead roots that wanted to grab me impolitely, and skated back exactly six inches out of the dreadwood’s reach.
I could see its trunk quivering in frustration. It had been trying to throw some mind-reaming spells at me, but I ignored them and it. This wasn’t Nightmare, where all the spellcasters were horribly overpowered.
The grimm seemed to find my antics amusing, and the slow fall of the ogre as it grabbed its insides and tried to stop them from falling out, laughable.
“Oh, oh, you are going to be a fine one to play with,” it purred, in a sibilant voice that did not match that mouth, or how weirdly expressive the lips of those jaws could be.
“A grimm, huh.” I saw a finger twitch at my total disdain, which the Fey language conveyed with infinite hauteur. “Couldn’t find anything better, aye? I was hoping one of the Tarn, at least. A bandersnatch might have given me a run for my money, at least. Well, if you have to go dumpster diving, I suppose the bottom of the dumpster is best.”
It hissed, not at all pleased at my scorn. “Oh?” it asked, sidling forwards onto a run of roots, moving closer to my position. “You speak like you have met one of my kind before?”
“In Nightmare, I met grimm like you many, many times on my runs. As a matter of fact, your kinfolk managed to kill me thirteen times, over time, mostly because they were opportunistic pissants who gangbanged me when I was fighting giants or vampires.”
“Thirteen times in Nightmare, and you have not come to fear us? You have courage!” it mocked me. “But this, this is not Nightmare, little one…”
“Oh, that’s because of the other side of the equation. I killed three hundred and twenty-nine of you pissants before you got too terrified to come out anymore!” My voice rose, and Tremble’s drone had an awful, ominous beat, even as the grimm froze.
Tha-thump, thum-thump!
“From the shadows crawled the grimm,
Full of vigor, full of vim.
Venom, hate, fat on sin,
Mocking claws, a coward’s grin.
They struck from the rear,
Hunting pain and fear…
And were gutted, shattered, jaws split wide,
Fed to the Land, and cast aside.
Every day, a grimm to slay,
Until they dared not come to play!
TREMBLE, SHE COMES!”
I figured anything that goddamn Evil had to be tied into the metaphysics of the Alignment, and Fey were huge gossipers, anyways. Their Akasha had to be swimming with the damn beating I had put on these absolutely miserable bastards, and this, the most purely devoted to Evil of all the Fey, had a quiver run through it at the notes, at the words.
At the mocking hunger and disdain. Send me more!!
It was sooooo damn gratifying.
And I was coming for it. No fear, only death in my eyes, and Tremble hissing for its soul, wreathed in vivus and golden soulfire. It tried to howl, and spread its claws to meet me, but Tremble’s drone totally cut through it and delivered me unto it like the Wrath of Aethra.
Spirited Charge’s triple damage is nothing to sneeze at, even when you’re a preincarnate entity of absolute Evil vomited out from the sewers of existence. I smashed into its chest, inserting my Sword exactly where it needed to go (as a Courtier of Death knew from bountiful experience), and this thing screamed as its days of endless incarnations came to an unwhite burning end.
Way of Fire and Water x3, Crystal Caldera Swordplay. Furious Focus, ignore TH penalty on first Power Attack in a given combat cycle. Improved Power Attack. Profound Artisan, powering it all.
I smashed into it, and vivic fire blew through it as the greasy flesh ignited like cheap tinder as the flames blew past any threshold of magic it had keeping its spirit tied to this life… and then the vivus went after the spirit behind it.
I ignored the red scratches across my back, just Soak damage, as the grimm fell to the ground, and a veritable geyser of vivus spewed out from its front and back, raging as it consumed the incarnated essence of Evil within it.
The roots around it, instead of writhing to the attack, hastily retreated as the vivic flames began to lick at the necroic-infested ruin of the dreadwood.
Which naturally gave me an idea.
I sucked down a quick Potion I’d mixed up, and the world got much smaller around me. I stumbled for one step as I adjusted to the new proportions, but if there was one thing Nightmare had taught me it was how to adjust to shifting relative sizes.
I grabbed the burning carcass of the grimm and bolted for the trunk of the dreadwood, dragging it along with me with the help of being twice as tall, eight times as heavy, and quite a bit stronger.
It would only last a couple minutes, but that was enough.
Roots began to shift and bulge, but my Cloudstepping Sandals flowed right over them easily, turning the writhing ground into a smooth road for me, and they certainly didn’t want to grab the burning grimm. Leap, leap, spin and throw in a ki-aided Twin Moon toss, right into the hollow trunk of the dreadwood above me.
The burning corpse arced through the air and vanished within the stump, leaving a trail of vivus burning behind.
I jumped right after it, Tremble circling non-stop as I hacked away roots in all directions, and then arced over the three-meter-high stump, twisting off Tremble’s walnut pommelstone and emptying out the Hilt Chamber within.
The crockpot full of alchemical lightning juice fell down, shattering as it bounced off the wooden sides, and spread ten vials-worth of 2d6-lightning-damage-each-vial reactive alchemicals all over the damn place.
The grimm’s body blew apart, vivus shredding it and then wrapping around the lightning as it followed the path of least resistance. That path happened to be the path the vivus was eating away in the necroic energies empowering this mostly-dead plant abomination. Driven by the lightning, vivus blew through the dreadwood, and the whole body of the thing suddenly lit up the night as discharging alchemicals and vivic fire combined for a merry tree roast for all.
I hit the ground on the other side, or rather, hit a finger above it, despite my size, and watched that massive network of roots quivering in shock, sparks purple and unwhite sparkling over everything.
Two rounds-worth of discharge followed before the alchemicals exhausted themselves, and there was not much the damn tree could do about it.
I walked around towards the entryway. Beneath my feet, the massive roots began to crumble away into white ash as vivic lightning tore them apart.
There was a shriek from within, and the greenhag came scuttling out of her hovel as the trunk started to come down on the chambers within and below it, totally disrupting any Wards she had made and forcing her out into the open.
She looked up just in time for all three meters of me to come crashing down on her. I still didn’t weigh all that much, given my build, but ki makes up for a lot of things.
So did the Sword splitting her skull.
A number of magical effects shattered as my Null hit them, including the invisibility that she thought was concealing her, and at least four different body-enhancing spells.
Her eyes fixed on me on either side of Tremble, and she tried to spit out something.
“Death Curse? Is it stronger than the Curse of the Hag?” I asked, and her eyes focused on the side of my face. “I’ll take that as a no. Go on, try it, just so I can mock you in the end.”
A very big tongue came lashing at me from the side, and I leaned back to let it snap past, flicking up a hand. As it withdrew, it came across my arm, and cut itself off as smoothly as if my limb was a ready blade. The cow-sized toad twitched despite itself, but that didn’t stop it from leaping at me.
I tugged out Tremble and spun into the jump and down, a flick of my Null ending the Growth Potion, and cut up as the toad jumped right over my abruptly-shrunken self, opening it up along the full length of its underside.
It hit the ground, and guts went splattering all over the place. It tried to turn around, only managed to move its head and turn back to look at its mistress with big bulging eyes before it slumped in place.
Yeah, enjoy that feeling of watching your Familiar die with you and mucking up your concentration, Auntie.
I watched her bleed out, and sighed despite myself. I glanced back at the rumble as the top of her root-hovel fell in completely, and then opened her up vertically.
I had a use for her skeleton, and I didn’t need to be hauling a few hundred pounds of her innards around. They could burn with the tree.
I hooked my nails into her mouth, breaking off a few of those iron-spike teeth, and hauled her after me resolutely as I headed for the exit to the valley.
The Hags’ Wards held the corruption of their valley back from spreading out into the forest beyond. If they hadn’t done so, it was likely there would have been a mass invasion to clean this place out before the entire forest decayed.
On the flip side, the built-up corruption was a massive threat. If those Wards weren’t renewed, these waters would flood out into the forest, doing all sorts of nasty stuff to the woodlands beyond, which heartily discouraged anyone from messing with them.
So, before those Wards went down- which might be really soon, who knew? - I had to do something to take care of it.
This Hag and her iron-hard bones were my solution. My Ivorycrafting Ranks were going to be important right soon.
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As I dragged her gutted carcass through the muck, I reflected that I had a LOT of work ahead of me, cleaning this place up. Tremble’s point, trailing through the inky water beneath me, was burning a small swathe of clarity around him, but it was soon swallowed by the necroic energies around and dissipated.
I had to find the loci of their Wards, the other undead burial places they were harnessing negative energy from… and I had to rework this entire valley back to its original, simpler form, instead of this freaking unnatural swamp.
Just eyeballing it, it was going to take me years.
That was fine. The Hags had left behind lots of raw materials for me to play with for a while, and I needed time to get physically into proper condition… and to get older. I could use this as a conditioning and building experience until I was more settled, and had more Gear to use.
There was no automatic rez at Renewal any more. I had to be more cautious now, more careful of who and what I fought, because I absolutely could not afford to go down right now. I needed reserves, and I needed options.
The flip side was, I didn’t have a new fight coming in every two minutes after I finished one. The flip side to THAT was… I didn’t have a fight coming in every two minutes. More precisely, I didn’t have any idea when my opponents would be coming, and who or what they were.
Also, nothing said the Hags wouldn’t have more people investigating, especially if they were talking to other covens who doubtless would be interested in inheriting this place.
My troubles hadn’t ended, or even started, really. Because Dear Hagmom, the Annis I was sure was my mother, hadn’t been here. The Curse would know her, and definitely none of these Hags had been her, while it had reacted to my Hagspawn brother.
She might or might not learn of what had happened here. She might or might not come back to investigate. She might or might not bring friends.
So, life was going to be interesting.
In the meantime, I was going to turn this greenhag into a skeletal font of vivic flames that would burn the corruption out of the waters flowing out of here, and then I would go around destroying all the stuff that made new corruption.
Once that was done, it was just a matter of time and vivic fonts before this place was burned clean. The physical labor to clean it up, that was extra.
But I had a Girdle of Giant Power coming, so doing all the work definitely was not beyond me.