Angel Tongue

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For one stray moment, Isaac froze, not knowing what to do. His eyes darted quickly to his left, but the elf in between him and Pax had disappeared, as though he was not even there in the first place. Meanwhile, Pax seemed to have forgotten his fear from before as he stepped forward.

"You knew then, Elder Aesculus, about him?" he spoke, throwing a short glance Isaac's way.

Aesculus regarded him, slowly, deliberately, not even bothering to stand, before speaking. "All I am aware of was what I said when I was at your Sanctuary." He looked at Isaac then, and Isaac felt chills erupt in his spine. "I sensed the darkness wrapped around you, squeezing your soul in its grip." His attention then went back to Pax, as though unaware (or uncaring) of the gravity of his words, and he let out a strange noise, which Isaac realized later was laughter. "What about you, boy? You are quite young. I am surprised they would tell you anything."

At that, Pax shrunk, almost imperceptibly, but visibly all the same.

"I did not kill those people," Isaac spoke up suddenly, half an attempt to change the topic, and half to tell the faun that no, he was not completely right in his assumption of Isaac's guilt. He took a step forward, but then he remembered all that had happened that day, the discovery of who he truly was, and faltered. He continued though, after a moment, letting the sound of his sandal making contact with the floor travel through the wood of the small chamber. "I swear it."

"I would like to imagine so," the faun shot back, his otherworldly tone patronizing as he feigned a solemn nod. "If you did, you would have known not to dare to show your face in my presence and chosen to ally yourself with the shadows instead."

He shut his mouth at that, unable to come up with a reply to the faun's barely veiled hostility. He chose instead to look around the room, anywhere but at Aesculus. Just like the passages that they went through, most of the room was made out of wood, the sole exception being the upholstery on the seat, colored a deep green, like the moss that grew on the north plane of the trees. On the far side, one of the glass-filled circles that Isaac spotted before they came in indicated that they were still above ground. Meanwhile, on both sides, shelves lined the walls, filled with books of a uniform earthen color. They looked so old that Isaac could have sworn that a simple touch would pulverize them. "What is this place?" The words found themselves slipping out of his mouth before he could stop them, his soft voice sounding like a shout in the silence that hung around them.

Pax turned his head and opened his mouth, but he was beaten to it by Aesculus.

"I would tell you we are in the commune, but I believe you know that already, so I will assume you are talking about the tree" he said, before gesturing simply to the things that surrounded him, a movement so simple in execution, but deeply hypnotic, as Isaac's eyes followed the path of his hands. "There has been a multitude of names for this tree, many of which we have lost to the passage of the centuries. In the east, they called it Fusang, and in the north they said its name was Yggdrasil. The people to the west called it the World Tree, the center of the universe, that connected the three worlds. It is also known by another name, one that you might be familiar with."

Recognition dawned in Isaac's eyes then, the kind that opened doors in one's mind to old memories that all of a sudden made sense. The World Tree. His tutor, a scholar of the world's civilizations, had mentioned it once. He called it the axis mundi, a point of connection between Heaven, Earth and Hell, worshipped by the people who lived all the way across the Sea That Stands. He had likened it to a concept they taught at the temples of the Faith, from which was hewn all that lives, all the life that roamed the world.

"The Tree of Life," his voice was breathless, as if he had held his breath the entire time that he remembered his tutor's words, the lines in his old books that spoke of the sacred tree. "You say this is the Tree of Life?"