(Originally published on 09/15/2020 at AO3. Original Author's Notes will be mostly preserved and shown below.)

Author's Note: Done for the third USOE 24-hour Ficjam Challenge! The given prompt was "panic".

Worked all night to make the deadline for this one, haha. But I'm proud of the concept I managed to come up with.

(I promise I'll come back and rehaul Aves, the fic that this is technically supposed to be the sequel to. I promise.)

I hope you enjoy!

They're organized this time, you note to yourself about the group of uniformed humans trampling a path through you, a chink in your defenses that you've ignored for just a bit too long.

You would've muttered an expletive at that moment, but you hadn't grown a mouth for your main tree in years and you just didn't have the energy to bother. You had more pressing concerns, like trying to stop the squad of humans from getting any further.

Spotting them in the first place was child's play. Nothing really escaped your notice anymore, not since you had finally managed to sink your roots deep enough into the earth and merged your innate magic with that of the land's, like a human hand fitting perfectly into a glove. After that, you were no longer a mere child of Held and his designated successor, or "some upstart brown-noser who thought they were too good for the rest of us", as the now-renegade spirits had once said. No, you were now truly the Lord of the Earth and all that grew from it, and you quickly learned that you weren't just the God of the Forest.

You were the Forest.

You were now aware of everything that lived and bred and died within you. Every fungal colony and patch of moss that sprouted on your surface. Every stick, leaf, flower, and fruit that fell to the ground, and every plant where they had come from. Every herbivore grazing on your greenery, and every carnivore stalking their next meal. Every single animal and insect that burrowed inside you, from the largest fox to the tiniest springtail. You felt every rock kicked aside and every vine that wrapped around the branches and trunks of all your trees. The Lake of Amusement was now yours too, and you felt every windswept wave crash against your shores, felt fishes of all shapes and sizes swim through your waters and every bit of aquatic plant life be buffeted by the currents. With your new level of divine magic, the whole forest was now completely yours to observe and control at your will. All of this, you became aware of, all at once.

It was incredibly overwhelming, those first few years. You began to understand why Lord Held had adored his sleep so much.

But sleep was not for you. Centuries later, you felt her enter the forest with that man, felt them dig into you and disturb old bones, and build a massive theater and clocktower that stood over the nearby trees. You didn't understand its purpose at first, until that man, that rather lonely-looking man, carried those familiar Vessels one by one into the theater.

The Deadly Sins had finally been brought home to roost.

And roost they did. One by one, they awakened, and soon no human who entered your borders was safe. The Theater and its inhabitants rooted themselves in your center like a flytrap, waiting for any unlucky human to stumble across them so they could then close their jaws around their prey. The gluttonous woman in red, you noticed, was a particularly ferocious predator.

You could hear every single one of their screams and pleas for mercy. You couldn't forget them, not even with all the divine magic you had.

You knew it had to stop, or you wouldn't be able live with yourself otherwise.

So, you began to change things.

First, you sprouted a thick wall of briars surrounding the Theater, almost completely enclosing it save for a small enough gap so the inhabitants could enter and exit as they wished. If you had your way, you would've sealed them off completely, were it not for the fact that that woman burnt through the wall effortlessly and threatened to do the same to the rest of the forest if you didn't leave the wall open.

At that threat, you were practically itching to smite her, rules or no rules, and anyway the rules were already falling apart as they were. But you remembered the gentle red eyes of your beloved and her tale of how she had shown mercy despite everything, and you stood down.

You changed your approach. If you couldn't keep the Theater away from humans, you had to keep humans away from the Theater.

You had creeping vines and underbrush reclaim paths that human travelers had beaten down over centuries. You had your tree branches grow increasingly gnarled and entangled, making it near impossible for any human to see or walk through. You thickened the canopies, not letting any light from above through. You grew poisonous plants along the borders, to discourage entry. You even coated the lake in disgusting-looking scum.

This did not go without consequences.

Your once-fellow spirits were not happy with you. They weren't happy in the first place, given Elphegort's sudden turn to tearing down trees en masse and constructing countless buildings that belched smoke into the sky. But this interference from you, this sudden change to countless habitats and territories, was too much.

You knew already that not everyone liked you. Some had it out for you from the start, back when you were a cocky young bird always flying themselves into trouble. Others only started resenting you when you came back dead, the prodigal child, only to be chosen as their Lord's successor. And because what, because you happened to care for humans?

Spirits began to talk among each other. To whine. To protest when you upset yet another burrow because of your little "protect the humans" project. What had humans ever done for them anyhow? All they did was trample around, hunting the spirits down and cutting away more and more of the forest, and you were sacrificing every spirit's comfort and safety for their sake? Why were you even put in charge in the first place?

You tried to persuade them as much as you could. Tried to get them to have some empathy for the poor souls who wandered in who would surely die if they reached the Theater. Racked your mind for what Lord Held would say to calm them down.

(If you had only known your history, you should've known that even Lord Held didn't have the best track record with doing that.)

Half the spirits began to rebel within a year.

Most of the renegades just left without a word. Took their chances and walked and swam and crawled and flew away, hoping to find some other forest where you didn't reign. You don't know if any still existed, and neither did they, but they counted on finding some small patch of wild that hadn't been paved over and built on by humans yet. All you could do was wish them good luck and safe travels, even if they probably wouldn't appreciate it coming from you.

The others though, they stayed out of pure spite. They no longer listened to a word you said, and formed new bodies for themselves- Lich's legacy. Their new bodies were specifically designed to hunt Man, to rip and tear at their flesh. They became yet another thing you had to protect humans from, spirits determined to make you fail at your goal.

Such as the one stalking the squad of humans right now.

It was once a wolf spirit, you think, only now it looked like a wolf crafted from a nightmare. It was almost as large as a horse, with oversized fangs hanging over the lower lip of its foaming mouth. Its claws were long, almost talon-like, as it slowly made its way closer to the humans.

You suddenly recognize them as one of Dex's old packmates. You haven't talked to that old wolf in a while, but you still remember that one packmate of theirs who always snorted at them whenever Dex went off to talk to you, a silly songbird they honestly had no business associating with but still did. Even now, after the rebellion.

You wonder what old Dex would think of this, as you accelerate the growth of a certain species of vine that luckily happened to be nearby. A vine that humans countless centuries ago had named "Shaman's Snare".

The length of vine grew and thickened, writhing like a nest of snakes as it curled in all directions and spread out across the ground. But the the once-wolf didn't notice, senses entirely focused on its prey. It pressed forward, and forward again, and finally stepped onto the tangle of vine.

Instantly, the carnivorous plant reacted, completely entangling the beast in seconds. It yelped in surprise, trying to slash at it with its claws and failing because all its limbs were wrapped too tight. In desperation, it opened its mouth, and a jet of magic flame shot out onto the vines on its legs.

That was its fatal mistake.

Instead of burning away, the vine absorbed the magical energy like a sponge, the flames simply glancing off it as if it were made of stone. And then, it grew even thicker, more loops of vine appearing as it grew larger, wrapping the beast even tighter. The beast was now completely in a frenzy, spewing fire every which way it could turn, but the vine only grew stronger and stronger from its magic, until a loop finally managed to wrap around its muzzle. The beast could then do nothing but whimper helplessly as the vine continued to grow around it.

All this you watched, almost entranced, as the Shaman's Snare did its job, completely enclosing the beast until nothing left could be seen of it but a lumpy sphere of entangled vine.

You wonder if Dex would ever forgive you.

You realize that you've gotten too distracted again. While you were watching Dex's old packmate die, the humans have long since left the area. Snapping yourself out of it, you observe them again.

They were now at a particularly dense part of the forest, now hacking away with it with axes and machetes as they made slow but worryingly continual progress. Too much progress for your liking.

You notice that in the absence of moon or starlight, the humans have been using lanterns to light the way. It was time to change that.

With only a thought, you make dozens of mushrooms sprout around the soldiers, just out of sight. The magic of these particular mushrooms worked almost instantly, and the area the soldiers were in was immediately plunged into pitch darkness- exactly how the mushrooms liked it.

If you were still human (and you weren't), then you would be smiling in satisfaction. Let the humans try to get through that darkness. Even back in the days when mages ruled the land, not even magic could pierce through it.

None of the humans, however, seemed unfazed. To your complete shock, one of them barked orders to the rest, and they all took out a strange device from each of their packs. A few clicks, and the area they were cutting away at was suddenly awash with several thick beams of light. The same human, the leader apparently, barked more orders to the other soldiers (Soldiers, it hits you at that point. They're soldiers.) and they continued cutting their way forward as if the darkness-loving mushrooms weren't there at all.

These people were organized, you remind yourself again firmly. These weren't just some random treasure hunters. These were soldiers. Soldiers on a mission. You had to get serious.

So, you got serious.

And yet, hours later, you found yourself at your wits end.

You had tried everything. You had tried every trick you had and even some you had come up with on the spot. You cracked the ground in some places to make treacherous terrain filled with crevasses, and liquefied it in others to make impassible leg-trapping sandy mud. You toppled massive trees in front of them, one of them even inches from the leader's nose. Bushes and shrubs got up and walked to replant themselves right where they were supposed to step. Vines, safe vines you controlled yourself and not those like Shaman's Snare, looped around their feet and tripped them up every few minutes.

You were somewhat limited by the fact that you didn't want to kill them, just scare them enough to turn back, but at this point you were willing to bend your own rules to hurt them if it meant they would still escape certain death.

You had sent them through patches of poisonous ivies and stinging nettles, had trees explode just far enough for them to not get caught in the blast but close enough for them to jump.

You enlisted the help of the spirits who took the form of ants and bees, mosquitoes and centipedes, and pointed them all in the soldiers' direction. The bees swarmed and the ants and mosquitoes bit, and the centipedes crawled all over their pants and boots.

Whatever the Hellish Yard looked like, you made sure to recreate it in loving detail, just for them, just so they didn't get to see it for real.

All this, while you were fending off real dangers like all the renegade spirits who wanted to pick off the soldiers one by one in the dark, or other lurking carnivorous plants that had grown wild and were in the humans' way.

By the end of it, they looked like the sorriest group of soldiers you had ever seen, but they still. Kept. Going.

And now, they were only an hour away from the theater.

Who even were these people?! The last time you had encountered someone this stubborn was that one man with long dark hair and the strangest attire you'd ever seen a human wear. The lucky one. The only other survivor.

You check back on the Theater out of habit, just to see if he was still alive, and he was. He was pruning the rose bushes in the Theater garden, completely oblivious to the struggle going on outside. Riliane, or whatever she called herself now, was currently yelling at him, as she did most the time she was with the man.

You wonder if the soldiers and the man were in any way connected.

You suddenly wonder what would happen to the man if the soldiers ever reached the Theater. Would his luck finally run out? Would he finally be consumed like he was supposed to have been, when he had first arrived?

Or maybe, you allow yourself to consider, as the beaten-up soldiers trudged forward in the mud, maybe he would finally be rescued. That these soldiers were the ones who could finally defeat the theater inhabitants and escape their clutches. Maybe.

You think of the gauntlet you have run these soldiers through in the past few hours. You think of the Vessels of Deadly Sin, awake and hungry and at the peak of their power. You think of the man, still tenuously alive. You think of how in all the years since that cursed Theater was built, no one but two men had seen the Court and lived to tell the tale.

Would you risk it? Were you willing to gamble with these humans' lives?

No, no you weren't.

But they were close now, way too close. If you were human, and you're not anymore, you're not, you would be clenching your teeth in fear.

You only had one option left. You had to personally make sure they would never reach the Theater.

In a small hidden corner of the forest, you magically form a pair of hands and begin to sculpt with a special pool of mud..

An hour later, the soldiers reach the briar wall, the final barrier between them and their goal. Thankfully, they were on the far side of the entrance that witch had burnt through, but that didn't seem to matter to the soldiers, who had fire and blades of their own.

It would still take time though, and that was enough.

You walk towards the soldiers, and the ground rumbles beneath your feet. Your body isn't that heavy, but you make the ground rumble, because you are the Lord of the Earth and everything that grows from it, and it is well within your magical power to do that.

The soldiers take notice, and soon point their guns at you, as if you could be hunted down like a common deer. You keep walking at a slow and steady pace, until you can see the whites of their eyes, their tremble of their arms, and their bruised, pale, swollen faces.

They're young, you realize. They're all so very young.

They shake harder as you get closer, and you understand why. If you were one of them, you know exactly what they would be seeing:

You have the massive body of a bear, with your claws as long as kitchen knives. Your legs are those of a goat, right down to your cloven hooves. And now, you look through the eyes of a wolf as you snarl at the group, your oversized fangs razor-sharp. On your head are the antlers of a moose that scrape the upper forest canopy, and even the horns of a ram, which you had added for good measure.

A haphazard, slapped-together body? Yes. But if you still managed to look like a demon from the olden tales, the forest monster in every Elphe child's nightmare, then it was good enough for you.

You have their full attention now. Neither of you move.

You then open your wolf mouth, and roar.

The soldiers drop their guns. Some even fall to their knees.

But you're not done. With your divine magic, you reach out to grab their already heightened emotions, and twist.

Their will finally breaks. The soldiers scream in terror and flee in every direction, as long as it's far far away from you.

And far far away from the Theater.

Long after they are gone, you leave the body with a small sigh. It falls to the ground, lifeless like the puppet it always was, and crumbles back into mud.

You look around the forest. Your forest. Your home for nearly a millennium and half. The gnarled trees, the dense underbrush, the carnivorous vines, the layer of scum floating on the surface of the lake.

You look at the Theater that a very lonely man built in the center of your home. Riliane is shouting at the long-haired gardener again, for an entirely different reason this time. The gluttonous woman is sampling a half-rotten fruit from the ground, relishing in its flavor. Neither seemed to have noticed anything at all.

You wonder if any of this was worth it.

You look at the pile of mud that was once a monster's body, and wonder why you can't just sculpt the small body of a songbird, wear wings again like you did centuries ago, and fly off into the smoky sky to find a patch of wild that might still exist, far far away from here.

But you remember that you gave that all up. You gave it all up for her, and you remember not regretting it at all, despite everything that happened after.

You wonder what Clarith would think of you now.

You wonder if she would ever forgive you.

You leave the forest alone to grow without you for a while, and retreat to your main tree. You fall asleep and try, once again, to dream of flight.

fin.