Isarnfur

Chapter 4

I woke up a dozen hours later, Will now sleeping, around us was a crude lean-to and a small campfire. He stripped off his shirt along with the breastplate and was using the oddly patterned shirt as a cushion for his head. He had the common brown black hair, his eyes, if I could remember correctly, was an odd metallic white. His height was a tad shorter than the usual height around here.

His pants were of the same odd pattern of his shirt, was it like the plaid of the south-eastern plainsmen? No, they used geometric patterns and this was more of splotches on a shirt. "I should honestly ask later," I thought to myself . His boots were of desert sand yellow and maroon red. The boots were that of mostly some sort of cloth akin to the burlap of this world. This cloth mostly made the shoe but the sole was made of something different, with an odd fake foot-pedal piece of metal. It seemed to be a good boost to his speed in combat, a spring-quality steel if my senses were right during our scuffles.

Another thing was interesting about his set of stuff was his breastplate that he wore, it was sleeveless and had fasteners that wern't normal, having some on the shoulders and a couple under the arm where the pelvis started. It had a myriad of pockets. Those pockets mostly contained little metal containers that had an odd resin on them along with some wax-like containers which had food, I think, in it.

"I can ask later" I thought to myself, pushing my attention to the humid forest that surrounded us. In fact it was so humid I was worrying if the anti-rain and underwater runes might collide and try to activate at the same time. Which causes water to do a weird fogging thing and sometimes pushes water towards the bracer.

The trees of this forest were old, or at least most were. This particular forest was so old, in fact, that I could still recall which ones were where in my memory, I was once brought through this forest during some battle between elves and a band of orcs. So with this knowledge I found most were still there from a battle 50 years ago.

I suspect that the ones that weren't there were lumberjacked for the high quality wood. Considering only the bigger trees were cut down. Then I double checked these new trees that were coincidentally grown in the same spots that the other trees were cut, most were there normal oaks but some of them were...the best word would be "spies", intentionally planted in spots where they could see the most.

You see, treants,elves,gnomes,low fairies, and a few specialized humans all can use ways of making leaves into light-recorders. What was slightly intimidating is that, even for well practised experts, it is hard to master that kind of magic, since you have to use special runes and spells on a young sapling, with its apparent consent. The reason why one couldnt use older trees was something about how the leaves used the light, using the more established pathways instead of the new ones.

The tip off to if a tree was a light recorder was something that most people wouldn't notice, a more geometrically patterned bark around the leafs, although they are very subdued and spread out. But these new trees near me most definitely had them, the marks growing ever so longer the older the tree got.

Which meant they were Elven spies, surrounding us. The Treants had a code that they could only do that on their lands, the Low-faires only had an interest on rocky plains of the south east, near the border to The Dragon's Scourge. Lastly any human magician that could do this couldn't do as many that was done here.

I felt at unease at that thought. Elves were unpredictable as a group. Something I wanted to pin down on the medical herbs that they grew and use. It was my conclusion that the doses that they used to treat things were too large when it came to any kind of treatment of wound. Granted that wasn't every single Elf was like that, there was just such a large component of that was. This group was large enough to have done a couple drug-frenzied raids against human settlements, claiming that "the humans will destroy anything blessed, with true malice intention." or "they will burn our forest to the ground if we don't destroy them first!" which admittedly did seem a legitimate concern since humans tended to be the most aggressive colniezer.

Something distracted me from my ponderings. The ground shuffled a little bit, at the edge of my perception. Which meant someone was coming. Since I was now up against Will's skin, I could ever so slightly have sway over the fringe blood vessels that fed the skin. I used this to make his skin feel wrong, making him fly up awake.

He thankfully woke up in a mostly lucid state, two thirds lucid I'd say. He reached for his leg, apparently not finding whatever blade he was used to there. "What woke me up?" Will asked through his thoughts.

"I did" I thought to him, "I had to wake you up because someone is coming" I told him, he nodded, thinking his thanks to me. He then grabbed handfuls of the now exposed dirt and threw it on. It took only a quick two seconds and two more handfuls of dirt to get the desired result.

Next, I slowly helped Will shulk away from the campsite, in a path opposite of the intruder, some sort of three legged reptile, a Hollones. "Can we fight it?" Will asked. Mentally shook my head. "They are tougher than boars" I told him, he understood. I aided him in shulking away. We had to make plenty of false trails because the thing was a carnivore. But when we were away, we ran towards the main travelling road.

The road most definitely caught my interest once the shadow of the Hollones faded away. Thee one that I had WIll travelling looked unused, something that had put me into panic, no would just leave this path untended, only massively large problems made it so that there became no new travels. THat was feeding on me until I noticed something to the left of us. It was a straighter and newer road, I mentally laughed and Will physically eased. We traveled in a more relaxed manner after that