The|MULTIVERSE

EPISODE 19: The One Blade

Divindale howled.

Not in its entirety, fortunately enough. Actually, forests can't howl—or could it? What wailed heavily through the trees like a hedge witch's banshee swelled Yuka's pretty-tipped ears with an ugly malice to gnarl at her bones. She couldn't stand it. The cries of war now ripped through her precious forest like a grove-hating pestilence and it forced her to race for her slow-aging life towards the Moon Tree. She clutched the back of a racing Basil as pure chaos thrashed her druidic senses like a high war drum.

Lucky for her, the greatest tree of all of Divindale stood untouched from the dangers that crawled near.

She and Basil arrived at the heart of the forest; a proud tree of lush brilliance that reached above in its tranquil beacon of great health. As the forest embraced the chaos of Mertta, the Moon Tree sat stoic upon many fat roots providing refuge away from the war. Tucked behind its numerous blossoms silvery green, the terrified of Divindale peeped upon an arriving Yuka, who made haste into the Moon Tree's depths.

She journeyed Basil into the Moon Tree's core, swift between its thick under-roots and plunged into the perennial corridor that bridged the way into the Moon Hollow Shrine, heart of the forest. Here, the elf must forge the only weapon capable of ending Mertta forever, Copsebane, and she had to do it fast.

She hurled herself off of Basil and scurried about the shrine's walls, scoring both vine and wood from the Moon Tree's innards. From the stone about her feet, she pulled with druidic might, and as she waved her hand in a commanding grace, the stone cracked out of its place, losing its form in chunks of floating rock until a perfect shard was born. She morphed the shard into a blade as wide as her hand—as long as her forearm, and as sharp as anything she had ever forged.

Another swift gesture, the stony blade found its double edge. On the final weave of her delicate fingers, she fashioned her wood and vine about it, fastening the blade to its pristine form.

Perfect, but far from over. The full moon's light was all that remained, and to her unfortunate discovery, as her eyes weighed with deep dismay, the light of the moon shone dimly through the shrine's lofty shaft above, a crippled limelight thanks to crazily clouds of darkness scarfing the moon.

But the moon shined brighter than she had anticipated.

It could get none the worse, but it sure the hell did.

Basil roared up a storm outside.

Somewhere in between her speedy arrival and hasty forge, the burly lynx had ventured to the surface, leaving Yuka to her mission, for something wicked approached the base of the great tree. Manical sounds clashed against the snarling beast; hideous cackles and disturbing grunts...

And like a bitter blow to the comely gut, Yuka, froze-footed in unwanted anticipation, screeched Basil's name as the big cat came tumbling back into the shrine—slashed and beaten.

Rixxa, bloodied, ugly, and crazier-eyed than ever before, strode into the shrine with his vile sword dragging behind, dashed with the blood of Basil on its murderous edge. The goblin endured a horrible time. Having been clobbered by Divindale's makeshift taskforce was to blame, but evidently, and hopefully, to no one's surprise, he emerged from that massive beating alive...bruised and alone.

He crept towards Yuka like a crazed bat in the whacked-out belfry. The kind of look befitting of dysfunctional madness.

Yuka broke from her hysteria and raced to Basil's aid. To her very eyes, the lynx suffered a nasty cut that tore across his ribs and ended at his back leg. It was one hell of a slice that did the great lynx in real good; it would take more than a lucky swipe of Rixxa's sword to end the exceptional Basil, who, in all of his pained might, tried to lift in attempt to go another round, but he slumped before Yuka in an angry groan.