Chapter 99 - Behold The Tree of Woe

We walked towards the light, passing dozens of bodies in the unnatural repose of their cocoon prisons. It was haunting, and the slight pulsing and writhing of the tendrils was sickening to me. It all just felt so terribly wrong.

Eventually, we left the tunnel, and our eyes adjusted to the sudden swell of brightness. As our eyes adjusted, I felt a twinge of grim marvel as I looked out at the foul spectacle before us.

The Revenstahd undercity was an apt term for it. It was more than a simple sewer. It was a veritable jungle of pipes and machinery suspended over a lake of filth and sewage, with rivers of the same disgusting sludge flowing down channels in every direction.

The pipes clanked, hissed, and hummed as doubtless tons of the horrific slurry flowed through them, their purpose beyond any knowledge I held. It was all terribly hot and humid as well. I was going to need more than a bath after this. I would neat to be positively decontaminated. Ugh, I swear I could feel the damp stink soaking into my hair. This was quite literally the worst.

On top of all that, the whole space was massive. As I scanned the view, I noticed that there were more of those strange vines and tendrils weaving their way through the maze of plumbing. There were large roots that reached into the filthy liquid, and I shuddered to think what they were doing.

And through the web of pipes and vines, sitting across a bridge on a stone and metal island in the center of it all, inexplicably, was a massive tree. It was taller than any tree I had ever seen before.

"That is a lot of tree." Cori piped up, as if speaking my very thoughts aloud.

"I've seen bigger." Myth shrugged.

"Of course you have, little Miss Wood Elf." Mariana added with barely disguised yet playful sass.

"So is that what I think it is?" I interrupted their banter, asking Noah and Adhara about it.

"It certainly looks like a dryad queen's tree. Its the wrong color, but that's probably due to whatever experiments they were doing with the fertilizer. And whatever its feeding on." Noah replied with a shudder as he looked over it.

"Sewage dryads aren't unheard of, but they tend to be the nastiest and meanest versions of a dryad you could hope to encounter. The druids of the world tree work very hard to make sure dryad seeds never make it into the waste systems of the Middenveldt cities. Because of this exact thing happening." Adhara added, her voice thick with disgust.

"So what would be the best play here? Set it on fire?" I asked.

"Oh for- that would be the worst idea, you fancy pants elf. You know gas traps, right? The ones that pair with the flame traps?" Cori sputtered at my suggestion.

"Of course I have! So what?" I asked indignantly. I was getting irritated at people acting smarter than me today, even if it was true in these limited circumstances.

"It's a very similar gas. Very, very similar." She explained.

"Oh. OH. Well, shit, that kills that plan. We don't want to explode the whole sewer system. How the hell do they keep fires from starting down here, anyway?" I asked, genuinely curious.

"Do I look like a sanitation guilder to you?" Cori snapped back at me.

"Sorry, I was just asking!" I held my hand up in a gesture of surrender.

"Sanitation guild use venting system to send gas into special chambers to turn into mage stuff. Any extra get released outside city. Crews burn off the little bit of gas left. Done daily, to keep build. Venting not done in long time though. Dangerous." Smitty piped up.

We all turned to look at her in surprise.

"Smitty, how did you know that?" Cori asked.

"Smitty spend a few weeks in the sanitation guild before school start. Awful job, good pay, but stinky and gross." She shook her head as though remembering it. "Dungeon better money, smell better, fighting better than cleaning."

"You are just a wealth of surprises aren't you, Smitty?" I said, with a chuckle.

I turned back towards our target.

"I guess there's no helping it. Let's get closer and try to get an idea of what exactly we're looking at and try to devise a strategy."

We carefully maneuvered our way through the undercity pipes and structures till we found ourselves a good vantage point to see across the central hub area.

My initial thoughts of it being a sewage lake were absolutely correct, complete with small barges floating on it. There were several metal bridges stretching all the way to a large platform in the middle, where the huge dryad tree grew. The tree was almost the size of the Lord's Manor. Either dryads grew insanely quickly, or this had been going on a lot longer than we had thought.

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"There is absolutely no way nobody knew about this. This is way too much to hide unless people were in on it. Was this here when you worked down here Smitty?" Cori asked, as she looked through a small spy glass she had produced from her gear bag.

"Don't know. Never made it to central hub. Working on wall pipes. Quit before I got here." The kobold shrugged.

"Dryad trees grow really fast normally, queen trees especially so, but to be this big requires magical manipulation, some kind of alchemic nonsense, or some combination of all of the above. Which, given what we've seen, seems very likely." Noah said as Cori handed him the spyglass.

"That is true. Especially with the succubi venom they mixed with the fertilizer. That could have all kinds of strange effects." Myth added.

"As much as I'm sure you're all fascinated by the strange horticulture, we've got a bit of a problem that might be worse than trees." Mariana pointed at the base of the queen tree.

Noah passed the spyglass to me, and I peered through it.

There were people at the base of it. Not people bound like in the tunnels, but armored figures that were clearly knights, along with robed ones. Likely mages. And they seemed to be in some sort of panic.

Amongst the ones panicking, there was one person I recognized, in shining black armor, and an arrogance I could sense even though I could barely make him out.

"Knight Captain Carter," I growled, not even bothering to hide my disgust.

I watched him for a moment longer, and he seemed to be arguing with someone in green armor. They were wide person, but clearly not from muscle. They were fat, with a mustache that reminded me of a brush. Their armor was ornately decorated, so I assumed they were someone important.

"Do you know who the other person is that Carter is yelling at?" I handed the spyglass towards Noah, but Adhara intercepted it.

She looked through it for a long moment. "That's Felestil, alright. No idea what is going on, but him and Carter are arguing. The other knights seem to be grabbing things and running around."

"Something must have happened in the city. Or something. We might need to move, or they might destroy evidence we need to figure out what they're doing." Noah started to move before I stopped him.

"We haven't even figured out a plan yet. We've got the knights, mages, and dryads to deal with!"

"Uh, ya'll? The tendrils are starting to do something." Cori pointed at the wooden vines around us, fear creeping into her voice.

"I think the dryads have spotted us!" I could hear Myth start to hyperventilate.

"Shit shit shit no time to plan!" I swore. This whole thing was going amazingly wrong in a big hurry. But that wasn't anything new at this point.

My mind searched for something resembling an idea as the vines started to reach towards us.

Eira made the decision for me. I heard a ping of metal, and saw a cylinder roll towards the central mass of the approaching vines.

"RUN!" She yelled, grabbing me and pushing me in the direction of the bridge towards the queen tree.

The cylinder exploded in a puff of mist with a thud, and I saw the great dryad in the distance shudder like a tree in the wind as the tendrils touched the herbicide Danica had made for us.

That confirmed its effectiveness, I guess.

"What's the plan?!" I asked Eira as we all ran.

"No idea! We'll have to play this by ear! Monsters after us, knights and mages escaping for who knows what reason? This might be the only chance to move. We'll use the chaos to our advantage. Or die. One of the two." She replied with a thumbs up.

"You are absolutely insane, and I love it!" I laughed as we charged across the bridge.

As we approached, the tree thrashed even harder, and the knights and mages scrambled and screamed as tendrils whipped about, tossing them into the disgusting slurry around the platform. Whatever was in Danica's herbicide was wreaking havoc on the queen tree.

Or so I thought.

As the trunk thrashed, I saw a glint of red inside it, followed by a thrum of queasiness in my mana. A false core? Something else? It was larger than any I had seen before, and wasn't putting out nearly the same amount of foul mana.

What the hells above and below was I looking at?

As soon as we crossed the last bit of the bridge, the air inexplicably cleared. There wasn't even a hint of humidity, no ghost of stink that snuck past our mask. That explained why their faces weren't covered.

The fat knight in green pointed at us as we approached.

"Oh great, look what you've done, Carter, you idiot! I told you the tree wasn't ready, and now we've got company from the reprobates that infect this dung hill of a city state!" The man Noah had identified as Felestil shouted, his voice all too familiar to me.

Carter whipped towards us, his stupid cape twirling in the air. I could see his face fall as soon as he saw me.

"I know that red hair anywhere. Alta Alba Marchesi. You have been an absolute thorn in my side too many times this last many months, you know that!" He shouted.

"I'm happy to be of service, you arrogant bastard!" I retorted.

He stalked towards me, drawing a blade.

"You ruined my plans to install a Knight outpost in the city, embarrassing me in the process. You ruined the alliance with the nobles of Burgotova to sieze the royal treasury to fund my ambitions, and now you're here to ruin my plans with the Everspring and Mage Concord! Every time I try to complete some plan, you show up with your stupid friends and your stupid red hair and make a mockery of me!" He roared.

"I don't need any help making a mockery of you, Carter. Why don't you tell me exactly what's going on, before I show you what the asskicking I gave Cavendish feels like." I held my blade ready, waiting for his strike.

He laughed before shaking his head. "No, I don't think I will. No monologues for you. I will enjoy running you through and leaving your body in the filth where you belong, elf." He grinned cruelly.

"Fine. Don't talk. We'll see if your friend is more cooperativ- what the hell is that tree doing?" I said, looking up.

"Please, I'm not an idiot. That is the oldest trick in the- ow?" He said, confused. He looked down and stared at the tendril that had just torn right through his armor and his flesh, his blood soaking into the fibers of the vine.

He looked back at me with a confused look just before he was pulled back forcefully, slamming into the tree, and being pulled inside the darkening wood.

"Glory and riches be damned, I'm not dying for this!" Felestil shouted, his voice quivering with fear, and he began to run away towards one of the sludge boats.

"We've got him, Alta! You all take care of the scary tree!" Noah yelled as he and Adhara chased after the fat knight general.

I looked up at the writhing wooden mass and then looked back at my team.

"I guess we're doing this. C'mon girls! Do you want to live forever?!" I gave the best battle cry I could think of in the moment.

"I do, yes." Myth replied.

"Too damn bad, now help me prune a damn tree!" I snapped back and advanced on the horror before us.