Chapter 100 - Crate Expectations

It took one swipe of a massive branch for me to completely reconsider my original, and admittedly hastily considered strategy, and I motioned for everyone to follow me. There was a pile of crates left over from whatever the knights had been up to, and we hunkered down behind it.

"Well, that was perhaps one of my stupider plans." I chided myself.

"Well, at least we can tell you're still you. You can handle dungeons fine enough, but your open combat plans leave much to be desired." Cori nodded in agreement.

"Thanks for the support there. You humans are so kind." I rolled my eyes.

"Could you all stow it for a bit? That is easily the biggest monster I have ever seen, and quite frankly, it's scaring the shit out of me!" Mariana's eyes were practically bugging out of her head.

"It's definitely unlike any Dryad, queen or not, that I've ever seen. I'm stumped here." Myth added, clearly trying to keep a temper on her growing panic.

"Ok, let's think for a second. What do we know about dryads? Alta, you said you took out that one with ice and then fire magic, right?" Eira chimed in, trying to wrangle us.

"Yes! Yes! Ice to slow it down and then fire! But it was mobile. This one seems pretty rooted in place, pun intended. We also have these herbicide canisters that Danica gave us. If it's the same stuff she used earlier, it weakened the dryad, but I'm not entirely sure if that's all it did." I ran through everything I could remember about that battle.

"We also got that thing in the center of the dryad. It looks like a false core, but I dunno about the rest of you, but I don't feel any dungeon mana or anything coming out of it. Gods above and below, this is the worst." Myth started to curl up in the fetal position.

The rest of them started rapidly discussing ideas and strategies, getting increasingly heated, while Smitty just sat there.

"Smitty, you're awfully quiet right now," I said to the kobold.

"Smitty not the best at st-str-battle think. Smitty fight. Smitty protect. See enemy, hit enemy with shield or spear. If Smitty win, good! If Smitty lose, not live long enough to feel bad about it. Smitty wait for party to tell Smitty what she need do." She shrugged.

"You're awesome, you know that, Smitty." I laughed and shook my head.

"Smitty knows! Smitty best." She nodded seriously, before lolling her tongue out, the kobold equivalent of a laugh.

Something occurred to me just then.

It was quiet. The roaring and thrashing had stopped.

"That actually makes me even more nervous," Eira noted, looking at me.

"Agreed. I'm going to take a look." I said, steeling my nerves.

"Be careful, please. I'm getting very tired of you having near-death experiences." My raven-haired paramour said.

"I'm always careful! The success of my being careful is questionable." I said with a wry smile, before crawling towards the edge of the crate and peeking my head around the corner of it.

The massive tree was there, but it was still, and the branches were starting to droop. More concerning was that the red core was beginning to get very bright.

It thrummed and pulsed, like a gemstone heart in the midst of a panic attack. I noted, however, that every time it pulsed, it got smaller by fractions. Pulse, shrink. Pulse, shrink.

I watched it do this several more times before turning back to the group.

"Um...I have no idea what is going on here. I am completely out of my depth." I shrugged.

"Nothing new there, but what is going on, Marchesi?" Mariana hissed at me. "What level of screwed are we here?"

"I...I have no idea. The core thing is shrinking, and the tree looks like it's dying. I'm so confused here!" I admitted, throwing up my hands.

"Do we attack now? If it's weakened, no matter the reason, we should make a move." Cori suggested.

"What if it damages that core thing? It's clearly different than the weird cores we've encountered already, and I don't want to be responsible for blowing up the whole damn city!" Myth snapped, getting ever closer to her breaking point.

"I can hear you whispering, meat. Come out, and let me take measure of you properly." A voice that was at once graceful and inhuman cut over our panicked discussion, which shut us up immediately.

Every single one of us had a look of fear on our faces. Even Smitty had her ears plastered against her head. We all tried to keep as quiet as possible and not make a move.

"Either reveal yourself, or I will reveal you. You wouldn't like it if I did that." The voice had a regal air to it, but was also breathy in the way the wind through the trees would be.

"What do we do?" Cori nudged me.

"I guess we'd better meet this face to face. They're right. If they drag us out in the open by force, we'll be at a big disadvantage. Might as well control as much as we can." I said as I stood. "I'll go out first, and we'll play it from there."

Before anyone could protest, I stepped out into the open from around the corner to see what fresh hell we were dealing with here.

As I cleared the edge of the crates, I saw the tree continuing to wither, but where it had been was a shape, a very humanoid one, that seemed to float in the air.

"A good. At least one of the meat has a modicum of bravery." It said as it began to descend. Small tendrils stretched in every direction from its body, like wooden spider webs.

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The figure finally set foot on the ground, touching down with every bit the grace of a dancer.

The figure was feminine, but lithe, again reminding me much of a dancer. Their skin had the pattern of wood grain and strategic mossy coverings, forming some kind of pretension of modesty. The creature's face was human, save for emerald colored eyes with no whites or pupils, and it had long, grass-like hair. And sprouting from their head were leaves, looking every bit like leafy bunny ears. Set in the center of their chest, pulsing with a crimson light, looking every bit like a heart, was a crystal. It gave a soft feel of mana, similar to dungeon mana but not quite. I realized that this is what the core had shrunk to.

More concerning was how tall they were. They were easily three to four times the height of a normal person. I had heard tales of giants, and this was about the height I imagine them.

"I'm going to take a stab in the dark here and assume you're a dryad. The queen of them, I would say, would be a fair guess." I said, trying to keep my voice conversational.

Every instinct I had was screaming at me that I was looking at a true monster. The lich I had fought on the mountain was bad enough, but this was a whole other level entirely. The lich had been intelligent, but worked alone, and had been limited by the nature of the curse of undeath.

I knew nothing about dryads and their queens, and from what I had been told and everything we had found, this wasn't a typical example of one anyway. I was in deeply unfamiliar territory, and I knew it. One wrong move could mean death. Even a right move wasn't a guarantee against it.

"I can sense you are afraid of me, meat. This is wise. Your kind has been rather duplicitous and cunning, and I'm of a mind to seek revenge against your entire species. Promises were made, deals struck, sacrifices allowed, and it led to pain. I greatly dislike pain." The dryad said as her eyes flashed.

I held my hands out and bowed, pulling my etiquette lessons from my brain. It was worth a shot!

"My apologies for that, your majesty. I can assure you that my companions and I had nothing to do with their undoubtedly myriad sins."

"You lie beautifully, meat. I know what happened to my daughter in the manor above. But no matter. She had begun to become arrogant, and I would've had to deal with her one day. As for the rest of it? Well..." She sauntered closer, and a tendril grew from her body and reached for something to the side of my vision.

I realized that it was a corpse. Worse, it was the corpse of Carter. I had wondered what happened to his body in that little burst of chaos.

The tendril lifted his body, and the dryad looked at it with an unreadable expression. She squeezed it momentarily, and Carter's body shuddered and began coughing.

The damn bastard was still hanging on to life! Either he was tough, or there was some other nonsense going on.

"Do you know this scoundrel, meat?" The queen turned to look at me.

"Unfortunately, I do," I replied, unable to hide the contempt from my voice. Might as well be as honest as I can.

"I sense your distaste for this walking offal. He and his grove, his knights, I suppose your meat language calls them, promised me much. One they called Magister promised me a grove, meat, and blood to fertilize my daughters' soil. With the power they would grant us, our pollen would conquer minds, and we would grow and be powerful! No longer would the threat of cold limit us! It was a beautiful dream!" She sighed, closing her eyes, and smiled at the thought.

She squeezed Carter again, and he let out a pitiful gurgle that I could only guess was supposed to be a scream. He had a lot of blood coming out of that hole in his chest.

The dryad queen continued. I looked out the corner of my eye, seeing movement from just beyond the crates. My crew was planning something.

"And what exactly went wrong, your majesty? Suddenly, there is much chaos in the depths, and in the city above." I pressed, trying to keep the dryad busy. She seemed to like talking.

"The fertilizer they gave us was strange, but it gave us power; we could control the mind of the meat with little issue. We just had to help them take over the city. The meat schemes much, but I cared nothing for this. They granted me a gemstone, a powerful thing, to increase my power even further. They said it was to increase their learning. All it gave me instead was pain and rage!" She snarled at Carter.

"You...were...supposed...to obey us. You..." Carter croaked out.

"Yes...that is what the crystal turned out to be, didn't it? A leash. You gave me the power to control, and then tried to control me? Seems it didn't work out so well for you, did it? You, your other knight, and the Magister tried to turn me into a slave, and now I have become this! Now your sad little army is fighting MY little army of meat!" She let out a bitter laugh.

She dropped Carter with a sick and wet clatter of flesh and metal as he hit the ground. He coughed and twitched. Still alive, the sturdy bastard. I kind of hope he lives, so I can see some modicum of justice visited on him.

"Such fragile meat. Pathetic. But your attempts at controlling me gave me blessings. This crystal heart, the strange fertilizer, has turned me into the most powerful dryad ever! My roots will pierce through the heart of the world, and my children will grow tall and strong enough to feast on the sun itself! We will no longer need the blood of the meat to live and spread! The dryad queen's eyes began to shift from their emerald color to a red that matched that of the crystal in her chest.

From her body, more tendrils started to sprout and twist. Her humanoid form was shifting into something indistinct and almost gnarled. It reminded me of the things Cavendish had turned into during the wedding, but infinitely worse. The core glowed bright enough that it hurt my eyes, before it was subsumed in a wooden core, though I could still see its light. I felt a wave of dungeon mana begin to flood from it, but thankfully, nowhere near the levels of the core in the manor.

The dryad queen began to cackle like mad, her voice turning more and more monstrous as she continued to warp, growing more mouths, branches, and eyes. She had gone from a dryad to some kind of wooden horror.

I had planned on running at that point, but a branch lashed at me faster than I could even blink, and I tripped over my foot, knocking me to my rear. I closed my eyes, expecting to feel the pain of being run through, just like Carter, but instead I felt a warm and fuzzy presence, punctuated by the sound of struck metal.

I opened my eyes to see Smitty in front of me, shield at the ready, holding strong against the onslaught from the dryad queen.

"Friend Alta makes silly choices, but Smitty help! We all help!" She nodded at me.

I felt Mariana and Eira help me to my feet. Looking around, I realized what everyone had done.

Myth was atop the crates, casting fireballs at a rapid pace, much quicker than I had ever seen from her before, causing the dryad to wince and balk at every blow. Behind her, just behind the limited protection of the crates, Cori was tinkering with something like mad. It looked like she had the remaining canisters with her.

"Thanks," I said, steadying myself.

"No problem. Did you ever come up with a plan?" Eira asked.

"And I hope to all the gods that it's a good one," Mariana added.

"In short? We need to keep the thing distracted till Cori is ready with whatever she's working on. I'm going to guess it's something to deal some serious damage to Little Miss Shrubbery there." I am getting my sword ready.

"Ok, and how do you plan to do that?" Mariana sounded exasperated with me.

"We're going to have to do as much damage as possible to it, and try to get at that core it's got inside it. I have no idea exactly what makes it different than the other false cores, but it's gotta be the key to this! Shiny cores are always important! As for you, Mariana, I have a special task for you." I pointed at the still twitching body of Carter.

The blonde elf looked at me with undisguised disgust. "You have got to be kidding me!"

"I kid you not! We need him alive, or as alive as possible! He's got a lot to answer for! Get him away from imminent death and tie him up or something, I guess! Figure it out, Togalli! As much as I don't care for you, you're smart, and I trust you to get this done!" I snapped at her.

Togalli actually looked taken aback by that. I meant every word of it, too.

"I guess I can do that." She huffed and got ready.

"Smitty, Eira? We're going to be front line here. Just hit it, and keep hitting it as hard as you can, alright?" I ordered.

"Got it! Spells and Punching are ready to go!" Eira smiled and cracked her knuckles.

"Smitty protect! And stab! Smitty want to stab!" The kobold grinned excitedly!

I took a deep breath and steadied my nerves, as the monster thrashed and screamed at the flames dancing on its body from Myth's assault.

"And....go!" I shouted.