Heart of Oak

The New Oakengrove

The home tree was alive with activity. It had been months since Castias attacked, since the danger-close encounter with the dracolich, and since Falcher had left for Huma. The last adventurer raid that came by scattered into the winds. Oakengrove's defenses were holding for the time being, but he dared not rest upon his laurels. The quiet times always preceded the storm.

The books he'd collected from the Dracolich's monastery had proven useful. Within the texts, there was talk of necromancy from an almost scientific standpoint, as if someone had dedicated their whole life to understanding it rather than using it. It gave him new insights into the destructive magic and potentially new methods to use it to his advantage without suffering from the corruption it caused.

For weeks, he'd isolated himself in his room and without Saea to break his concentration, the rest of those living in the tree hadn't seen him the entire time. They knew he was up there but hadn't felt a need to interrupt him. Day and night, they all could feel the magic in the air, even more of it than they'd grown used to. To them, Oakengrove was preparing something big.

The reality was that Oakengrove was flubbing spell after spell, trying to chain effects together against a dummy target he had Frida make. In his left hand, he held a spell book with a chain of incantations strung together like a poorly written song, and the other hand held out in front of him, palm facing the training dummy. He spoke the massive incantation and, despite feeling the magic course through him; it did nothing. "Son of a bitch," he groaned. "So I can't chain these together, at least not in this order. If I can't chain a lingering effect after a binding, then that really hampers my abilities." He mumbled, and through the mess of crossed-out words, scribbles, and bizarre shapes, he'd compiled a small curated selection of potentially lethal spell chains. It was a tiny list.

In frustration, he chucked the spell book onto the desk and sat down on the floor with a heavy thump. He breathed slowly and heavily, trying to meditate his frustration away. His mind wandered with his gaze. It was the Month of Harvest and Falcher still hadn't returned. Simadger had been gone for a month as well. Sending mail overseas was not a reliable method of messaging and it only worsened his disgruntled mood. He rubbed his eyes and eyed a handwritten note he had pinned to the wall. It was a situation update from Saea and it spoke about her initial success with getting settled in Anslo. She wrote about the Adventurer's Guild and how she'd joined it.

He found it weird. A memory came running back to him, causing a mental whiplash effect similar to being knocked in the skull with a cast iron pan. The memory was from a time before he reincarnated, a much smaller and younger version of himself. For a moment, he saw it in perfect clarity. However, when he tried to focus on it, it not only disappeared from his mind's eye, but the memory vanished without a trace, only a lingering feeling of something that was lost. "Fuck's sake," he groaned again.

He pulled himself back onto his feet and left his room. The downstairs section of the home tree was relatively quiet. Kateda had gone with Khar and Frida to the village to do trade for the weekend. Ciez was on guard duty and Cedrik was patrolling the deeper forest. He was, for the time being, by himself in the home tree. The open doorway had a different figure standing in it. He turned to look at it and standing before him was an olive-skinned nirillin in tan gambeson with red embroidered borders. She held a wood staff like a walking stick and seemed to be by herself. "Can I help you?" He asked.

Sedel set the staff against the doorway. "I've come on behalf of the Green Thorn Warband."

The familiarity of the wood elf now made sense. He had indeed seen her before. "All by yourself? That's unusual," he commented. "Very well. You have my attention."

"I request protection for our warband leader, Roderick," she said, dropping to one knee with a bowed head.

"A bold request indeed." He wanted to pry into the reasoning behind it. "Why should I grant a gift of protection to the warband who brought a murderous serpent to my house?"