IM SO SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG.

BLESS SPRING BREAK.

all right ill stop talking and please enjoy

He wasn't quite certain how long it had been since he heard new information, but General Ronin had a good gut feeling that it had been at least three days. Three days since he had last seen the outside or heard of what had become of his soldiers. The Boggans didn't feel the need to update him on anything that happened outside of his prison cell.

At the moment, the general was lying on the cot he was allowed to have, staring at the ceiling with half-closed blue eyes. Though his body was completely still and his face expressionless, his mind was whirling with thoughts and questions and worries that have been consuming him ever since he had been locked in here three days prior.

After he and the Leafmen had surrendered, the Boggans immediately stripped them of weapons and armor, all under the beady-eyed guard of hundreds of spiders. Having all the warriors' armaments thrown in a one great pile, the Boggans further divided them up and marched them in groups. Then they brought out the chains. Long links of them shackled the men and womens' wrists and ankles together. At this point, some chose to resist before they could be restrained to their comrades. It did not end well. They were killed before any defiance could spread through the rest and spark a revolt.

During all this, the dark, masked Boggan leader made Ronin watch his army be stripped of their dignity at sword-point. Ronin could still see anger burning in the eyes of his soldiers but seeing their bravest cut down in front of them stopped them from trying anything. They were outnumbered and completely helpless. Most crippling of all, they were afraid of death- a natural, animal fear. At that time, they were not a proud, undaunted army but cornered and trapped people trying their best not to get killed.

Ronin had been paraded though the invaders, his wrists bounded with chains, like a victory prize. Boggans screeched, growled, sneered, and spat at him. As he was marched past his men, he tried his best to make eye contact with each of them. Some kept their heads down, ashamed. Many stared back at him with determination, dipping their heads in respect since their hands were chained and they couldn't salute. Still, some had fear or fury in their eyes, like they were accusing of him of not fighting to the death, for submitting to the Boggan leader's ultimatum without a fight. When he walked past Finn, his loyal second gave him a small smile. Good old Finn, trying to remain positive for his superior and friend, but it didn't alleviate Ronin's growing unease.

That was the last he had seen of his Leafmen before being locked in this room and chained by one ankle to a nail secured in the back wall. They brought him two meals a day, in army rations, so Ronin knew that they had plundered Moonhaven's stores. They certainly would have taken anything of value by now, but what about the Leafmen and women? He assumed they were being kept outside, chained together and constantly guarded. Moonhaven didn't really have a dungeon, just some rooms with strong doors and no windows like the one Ronin was currently in. What did this Lord Batlash plan to do with his warriors?

When he had no answer to one question, he moved on to another. Ronin wondered where Nod, M.K., and their friends were, if they were safe and alive. Did they know that Ronin had failed them or were they waiting for him to send word of his success in beating back the siege? If they knew the situation, the general was certain that they would plan a rescue attempt. The logical part of him hoped they could retake the forest, which conflicted with his parental feeling of wanting them to stay safe. But he knew Nod and M.K. wouldn't abandon him or the Leafmen.

"Your move kids," he murmured quietly to himself. "Make it a smart one." And with that, he closed his eyes for a nap since there was nothing else to do, confident that his sixth sense would wake him if someone came for him.

They woke up the next day feeling fresh and alert, the fear-induced chase that happened yesterday a faraway memory. Wanikiy assured them that it was highly unlikely the Boggan patrols would come looking for them around the area due to the conspicuous Bald eagle nest. At the mention of this, Nod asked if it was okay if he could get a safe look at the giant raptors living above their heads and inadvertently guarding them.

"I had a feeling you would ask," the tree dragon chuckled. "Yes, it should be fine as long as a sylph goes with you. The mates don't mind us but try not to get too close to the eggs."

After breakfast, Patamon led the teenagers up a winding staircase to the nest. "If we fly up, your birds won't want to go near the parents," he commented. Until at last, they finally reached the top which ended in a trapdoor. Patamon moved aside so Nod could push it open. Daylight spilled in, making them squint their eyes at the sudden stab of it. Carefully, Nod climbed up through the door onto the highest branch of the tree. The others followed him out.

"Here we are," Patamon announced as he swept into the open air. The young forest dwellers turned away from the clear view of the landscape and saw behind them a massive, towering pile of sticks. "Just climb over the edge and stay quiet."

Heart nearly bursting with excitement, Nod swiftly jumped up the mountain of sticks. For a bird enthusiast like him, this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to be close to the biggest birds that flew through the skies without the risks of getting snapped up by their beaks. Maybe he would even get the chance to look at the size of their eggs...

When he reached the top, he couldn't help but gasp like a child. The nest was even bigger close up, it could probably fit the whole entire Leafmen army comfortably. The bottom was cushioned with moss, pine needles, and piles of fluffy down feathers. In the center, resting and preening her primaries was the mother eagle.

A thousand different ways to describe her raced through Nod's head. She was...gigantic, gorgeous, dangerous, and deadly. Her yellow beak brushed expertly through the dark brown plumage of her wing, removing dirt and dead feathers deftly. She fluffed up her neck feathers, the morning light catching the pure whiteness of it. Nod barely noticed the others coming up behind him until Jason spoke.

"Wow...," he breathed. "He's...amazing."

Mason glanced at Nod and smiled at how the statement brought the other boy out of his daze. He ticked off his fingers. "Three, two, one..."

"That's actually the female," Nod replied. "You can tell by her bulkiness since the females are bigger than the males. The female uses her size to guard the nest while the male uses his sleeker build to hunt for food to bring back to her and the chicks. Their normal diet is fish but have been known to hunt for mammals, reptiles, amphibians and have stolen catches from other predators-"

Jason took a step away from Nod as he prattled on about eagles and did not seem to notice that he was babbling. "Did I set him off or something?" Jason asked Mason out of the corner of his mouth.

"He's just real passionate about birds, if you haven't noticed," Mason replied with a smirk. "He can go on for hours if you don't stop him early."

"Bird nerd," Thryn muttered. The others began laughing and it was only then did Nod realize that he had launched into one his long-winded lectures on birds and he cut himself off quickly before he could keep going. Blushing madly in embarrassment, he turned his back on them to look at the mother eagle and tried to ignore his friends' snickers.

The eagle finally taken notice of them on the edge of her nest, and she fixed her glaring yellow eyes upon them like they were invaders. The others stopped laughing and went ominously still. She wouldn't attack them, right? Not while they had Patamon with them.

As if reading their thoughts, the wind bird whispered, "I'm trying to communicate to her an 'air of calm,' so to speak. Don't make any sudden movements. She must get used to seeing you in a nonthreatening state."

To Nod, this was a logical explanation and patiently waited like a statue, constantly making eye contact with the eagle and breaking it. He tried his best to exude a calm sate of emotions like what he did when he first met Flitterbite. The memory suddenly gave him an idea. He was almost positive that the rose had communicated to Flit on the day of the race, and even with Nod's innate skills with birds, it was only because of the rose's intervention that Flit trusted him enough to let Nod ride him without to much protest. Does it work on all birds, including eagles?

Without thinking it through long enough, without thinking that maybe this was really stupid and he could get killed, Nod took a step forward and began to trek down into the valley of the nest. His friends gasped in horror and he heard Patamon hiss, "What do you think you're doing?!"

He ignored them, determined to keep his grip on his calming energy even as his heart rate sped up at the prospect of getting close to a viscous predator. The mother eagle fluffed up her neck feathers, either in surprise at his audacious approach or in an attempt to make herself look bigger, though that would have been pointless.

He walked as boldly and as relaxing as he could and stopped only when he was just within reach if she stretched out her neck. The eagle eyed him like he was an interesting morsel that she was judging if he was worth the effort. Nod held her gaze for a few seconds then slowly lifted his left hand to her. She followed the movement as the rose uncoiled and rose its bud as if to meet her eye. Do your magic or whatever, Nod thought. Maybe if the rose could talk silently to birds, it could read his mind.

For a few tense moments, the rose and the eagle simply sat still and stared at each other (if that's what you could call it since the rose had no eyes), while Nod waited with bated breath and his friends and Patamon froze in anticipation and fear. Finally, the mother eagle blinked and lowered her great white head toward him. Nod's knees locked in fear as his instincts screamed at him to run but the eagle simply stared. Nod couldn't help but examine her closely; how many bird enthusiast like himself got this close to a raptor without being bitten in half? Her yellow eye was five times bigger than his head, her sharp beak ten times longer than his body. To his relief, she made a cooing noise in the back of her throat, a sign of friendliness.

Nod began to reach out his hand but hesitated. Was he allowed to touch her? She wasn't like the songbirds you could pet for hours in Bufo's tree but a queen of all birds. It was like trying to decide if he should kiss the hand of a goddess or just grovel at her feet.

Before he could decide, the mother eagle closed the remaining distance between them like she was impatient of his indecision. Nod gasped in shock as he sank up to his elbow in white feathers; her plumage was so thick! Numbly, he started stroking the expansive feathers and she cooed in happiness. Relief and amazement spread through Nod and he smiled and laughed. He almost couldn't believe that he was actually touching an eagle!

"Hey guys! I think she likes me!"

"Well, I'll be damned," Ross murmured, shaking his head in utter shock. Thryn and Jason gaped dumbly at him and Lex was literally shaking, from fear or joy, Nod could not tell.

"Nod..." M.K. inhaled heavily since she was holding her breath the whole time. Nod grinned sheepishly but this seemed to tick her off. "What the hell was that for?! Showing off, you idiot, you could have been eaten!"

His grin evaporated. "Aw, calm down M.K. it was all under control-"

"Whose control?! Certainly not yours, if you had any sort of control, you wouldn't have started walking up to it like it was tame! Do you have brain damage or something?!"

The mother eagle had raised her head again to look back and forth between Nod and M.K., perplexed, but not threatened, by their shouting. The others stared on as awkward spectators as the red-head raged while the brunette tried in vain to placate her.

"You lot are crazy," Patamon commented.

"No really, the rest of us are normal," Thryn assured. "It's just those two."

After Nod apologized to M.K. ten times over, Patamon suggested they leave before the male returned, for he could not predict how the father would react to their company. He spent the rest of the morning giving them a tour of the pine tree. He showed them an open, large room that he suggested could serve as their training area although it lacked any sort of weapons since spirits had no need for it. Luckily, almost all of them still possessed the weapons they fled with, except for Nod who lost his sword to the cat and M.K. and Jason, who didn't have ones to begin with.

"Are we really going to learn how to fight with swords?" Jason asked curiously when they brought up the subject of sparring sessions. They had returned to the common room to wait for lunch. Jason looked a little apprehensive at the prospect of sharp weapons.

"Well, we'll teach you how to fight unarmed first," Lex explained. "Then we can move on to weapons, and we'll see which ones you're best at. It may not be a sword, you could be great at archery like me or knife fighting like Mason."

M.K. was frowning slightly as she stared off into space and Nod knew that this meant she was in deep thought. Maybe she was nervous about training. "Hey, M.K.," he assured. "Don't worry about it, collectively we're all good teachers and you'll be swinging a blade in no time."

"That's not what I'm worried about. You just said 'in no time.' But isn't that what we're short on?"

"What do you mean?" Thryn asked, pausing in her stroking of Sterling's wings.

"The longer we take to drive back the Boggans, the more likely the chance that we won't succeed, isn't that right? So do we even have time to train two green horns in the art of armed fighting? Does that not take years to master or even months to become adequate enough for a real fight?"

"You bring up an important point, my dear," Wanikiy said as he materialized from the pine wall, forming quickly into his dragon form. Everybody present jumped at his sudden appearance. He lumbered toward them and settled himself on the rug of eagle feathers, curling his creaking wooden tail around his feet like a cat. "It is true that you don't have all the leisure time in the world to act, but two of your number cannot go into battle without the means to defend themselves properly. However, due to the fact that there is only seven of you, it is impossible for you to take back Moonhaven by a frontal assault. It would never work."

"But we also have the Queen," Ross countered. "And she may be a kid but she's pretty powerful by herself."

"I do not doubt her skill or any of yours. But more than half of the Boggan army occupies Moonhaven and is roaming the surrounding forest, doing whatever they please. The Jinn have fled in terror or have hidden themselves so deep that you will not find them. The Leafmen and their leaders are imprisoned within the palace, and for reasons unknown, have not been executed yet."

"How do you know all this?" Nod inquired, surprised at the stream of knowledge coming from something that didn't leave the pine tree.

"Gnomes and undines, the water spirits, that reside in your territory have been giving my sylphs reports of the Boggans' activities. I thought you might find the information useful."

"Did they mention a General Ronin?" Nod asked quickly. "A man with silver-white hair cut short, blue eyes, and a crescent-horned helmet?"

But to his disappointment, Wanikiy shook his head. "No, they must not have seen him or if they did, they didn't realize his importance. But I will send a sylph to inform them to keep a look-out."

"We appreciate it," Thryn said. "And your right, even with Queen Ariel's powers, a frontal isn't going to work. We'll need to be more stealthy than that. What we need to do is take out their leader and free the Leafmen and Ronin."

The others nodded in accordance with this plan and Ross didn't look so put out by agreeing with Thryn. Nowadays, he seemed the most comfortable discussing battle tactics, even if it was with someone that he didn't really like that much. "That will call for some reconnaissance," he added. "Not that I don't trust your intelligence Wanikiy, but to make a concrete plan, we'll have to see it all for ourselves."

"Of course. But I have yet to share my most disturbing intelligence with you." The group sat rigid in their seats and waited tensely for him to continue. "This new leader of the Boggans had outside help in his takeover. Somehow, he had recruited a sizable cluster of spiders to his cause, aided by their leader Madam Belladonna."

Outbursts met this claim and Sterling zipped out to escape the noise. Over the others, Ross's question rang out the loudest. "How the hell did he get the spider Jinn gypsies to fight for him? Especially Belladonna, when has she ever cared about the politics between us and the Boggans?"

"Spider Jinn gypsies?" M.K. questioned to Nod, Jason leaning in to hear the explanation since he was the most ignorant of them all of the 'politics' of the forest.

"Most spider Jinns are nomads," Nod replied. "They travel around and teach their spider brethren how to weave webs and catch their own food." At the perplexed looks that they gave him, he muttered, "What, did you think the bugs know how to do all that themselves? Anyway, they're usually indifferent to our wars since they never really belonged to either side, though they like us best because we pay good money for their silk. Madam Belladonna is our most frequent visitor at Moonhaven."

"But unfortunately, she has decided to take arms against us," Wanikiy said gravely. "And where the spider gypsies go, their hoards of loyal arachnids will follow."

"But that makes no sense," Thryn argued. "When I was eleven, my dad and I bought some silk 0from her at the market. She was proud of her nomadic heritage but she was also a business woman. Why would she want to help disable her most high-paying customer?"

"The Boggan leader must have offered her something in return, something that was worth more than Moonhaven's money," Nod said.

"In any case, this is something to watch out for when you return," Wanikiy said. "But before any plan can take place, your comrades here must have a degree of training and you Nod must look into the rose. You cannot return to Moonhaven without any knowledge of its powers."

"I get that and I know this new bad guy really wants the thing. But the longer we stay here, the more danger Ronin could be in! And the only source of research I have is an old journal we found in a hidden room under the Rings of Knowledge. I don't think there's much solving we can do from here."

For a minute, the tree dragon contemplated this in silence. Nod felt the rose shift and he glanced down to study it. The stem had grown thicker since it first attached itself to him. The dark green leaves were wider, the white roots underneath his skin were longer and had seemed to grow even more extensively into his arm. Though the bud was still enclosed within its green capsule, it was bulkier and heavier. Nod wished it could give him answers and make all this go faster. The pod certainly didn't take this long to act on what it was meant to do.

Wanikiy's creaky voice brought him out of his thoughts. "Let us give ourselves two weeks. Jason and M.K. will be taught in the basics of combat by a gnome that resides here, she is more than capable of teaching them. I also encourage the rest of you to keep your skills sharp. Nod, I will assist you in solving the mystery of the King's rose. It is ancient in age as I am, perhaps I can recall from my old mind something about it."

The teenagers all said their thanks and at that moment, sylphs swooped in with lunch on the platters they carried and Ariel and Fara entered to join them. The others got up to eat and Lex went to fill the young Queen in on the meeting, but M.K. stayed behind to ask Wanikiy a question that she had been burning to ask since that morning.

"I just want to know why you're helping us so much," M.K. said without preamble. "Not that I'm not grateful, but it isn't your home in danger and yet you saved us from capture, sent your spirits to spy, and have offered to teach me and Jason how to fight. Why?"

The tree dragon chuckled, his wooden chest vibrating from the action. "For many of the same reasons you do, my dear. There are people in need and if we don't stop the Boggans' actions now, who's to say they won't spread their Rot all the way to here? Then it would be my home in danger as well. However, the rose is my main reason..."

At this, his glowing green eyes glanced away and M.K. followed his gaze to where Nod gathered with the others and was already helping himself to the water pitcher. Wanikiy hummed in contemplation. "I'm sure you've realized by now that I am ancient. Centuries old actually though I've lost track of how old, stopped counting after two-hundred. Try and understand that since time does not apply to a spirit the same way it does to a living being, my memory has become as foggy and fluid as pond scum. Especially, my former life, the one where I was alive."

"You don't remember anything when you were alive?" the girl asked, as she felt a surge of sympathy for the gnome.

"Oh, it's not forgotten, just foggy. I remember my name and what I looked like. When I died and how it happened but everything in between is like an elusive dream that one needs to sit in silence for a long time before recalling a small portion of what it was about. Or I need a trigger, like a certain sound, to bring a memory back to me. I have this funny feeling that the rose was once a part of my former living self. Aiding young Nod in deciphering its secrets may jog my memory."

"I really hope it does," M.K. replied, feeling hope rise within her. "When you were still alive, was there a king ruling along side of a queen or was he by himself on the throne-"

"Like I said before, my dear," he interjected, amusement dancing in his voice. "It's foggy, but do not worry, I have faith that the answer will come with time. I apologize for rambling on like this while you stand there, hungry. Please, pass on what I have said to Nod and enjoy your lunch."

With that, the tree dragon bowed his head to her and his spirit withdrew back into the tree, leaving behind an odd pile of pine bark and green needles, which was promptly swept outside by a passing sylph. Troubled, M.K. turned away to join the others for lunch. The answers will come with time, she thought. Maybe, but we don't have much of that. Can we figure out this mystery, train, and plan all in time to save Moonhaven?

I AM WORKING ON THE NEXT ONE, I PROMISE!