Tooth and Claw, Part 21
The three of you walk deeper into the grove, the otherworldly silence weighing heavier on you and Juri with each step. You reach down to take the orc girl's hand, holding it tight as you approach your destination.
After a while you see a clearing up ahead, with a ring of a dozen trees at its center. These trees are even older than the ones you've seen so far, gnarled almost beyond belief, their overgrown roots a bulging tangle, spreading out through the clearing.
Looking through the gaps in the trees, you mange to catch glimpses of hunched, venerable figures within that inner ring. Each of the trees has one such figure sitting at their foot, the roots winding around them until its unclear where the tree ends and where the figures begin. Their heads are bowed in slumber, their graying skin as wrinkled and gnarled as the trees at their backs. Their long, unkempt hair hangs moss-like about them, spilling down across the nearby roots.
Fallhazel leads you forward. As you enter the ring of trees yourself, you see that the roots fill the interior of the circle almost completely, to the point that many of them have even begun to grow into each other, fusing together. You walk on the unsteady footing toward the center of the circle, turning as you take a long look around yourself. You can feel the quiet power of this place. A mystical connection to everything that surrounds it, one more subtle and time-tested than any deliberate enchantment.
"Old Mothers indeed..." you murmur. "And the Heart of the Forest. Did all of it really come from here?"
The druid nods. She looks at the ancient, sleeping dryads with surprising tenderness. "This place... was the beginning," she says. "Back when this world was very different. They were the ones who found me. The ones who protected and nurtured me. And in my gratitude, I protected and nurtured their small grove. Until it grew into the Great Forest that you know today."
Your eyebrows rise, as you consider just how long ago that must have been. "They found you?" you ask. "Were you abandoned here?"
"I do not know," Fallhazel admits quietly. Her eyes are still on the Old Mothers, not on you. Then she looks down at her hands, shifting quickly between dryad, human, wyvern, elf and back to dryad again. "Nor did they, when they took me in. Even from my first memory, I could already take the form of any animal I desired. I do not know who might have abandoned me, or what my original race might have been. But... whoever they were... they long ago lost any claim to me. I am of the forest now. I am of them."
She kneels down, reaching out to caress the cheek of one of the sleeping figures. The ancient dryad stirs at the touch, her eyes blinking open... and that awakening quickly ripples out to the other dryads in the circle, as they shake themselves awake as well.
"Ah, Fallhazel dear..." the Old Mother she touched says in a scratchy voice, reaching up with a thin hand and placing it atop the druid's. "You've come to visit us again. But... oh, you look worried, child. Is something the matter?"
"I... need your wisdom, Mothers," Fallhazel says. "There are visitors in the forest. And one of them... she was able to..." The druid hesitates, conflicted, then thinks better of what she was going to say. "She has a strange power that I... do not understand. I was hoping that you might share your wisdom."
"Oho..." says a different one of the Old Mothers, looking both you and Juri up and down. "It has been some time indeed since we have had such interesting guests... Tell us, incubus. Who is your summoner? Did this child actually call you up from Hell as her guardian?"
You incline your head in a show of respect. "Not quite," you say. "But my summoner did ask me to keep her safe. The Church of Melca has already expended immense effort to kill Juri. But my mistress—the new Witch Queen—does not agree with their decision. We brought her here in hopes that we could learn more, in a place where she would be safe."
Now that surprises the Old Mothers, causing them to glance quickly between each other. Finally, one of them turns back to Juri. Her voice is still kindly... but you can detect a focused intent there that wasn't present before. "Show us, child. Show us this power of which our Fallhazel speaks."
Juri swallows, then steps forward, kneeling in front of some simple moss that lies atop the thick interplay of roots beneath your feet. You can see how nervous she is. Especially since—on top of everything else—her power hasn't worked since it cut off without warning in the middle of her previous demonstration. Still, even if there isn't any outward effect, the Old Mothers may be able to learn something just from watching the incantation alone.
With a faltering voice, Juri begins to chant. She holds her hands above the moss as she invokes the fragmentary ritual, passed down from generation to generation. She closes her eyes, willing it to work. Praying for it to work.
And it does. The moment she starts to chant, her palms come alight with green radiance, without any delay at all.
Nor is it just the feeble flickering that you saw before. The effect this time is far stronger than you've ever seen Juri manage. The moss she was focusing on grows and spreads before your very eyes, like water pouring from a cup. The orc child gasps, jerking her hands back and staring at them in shock, before looking up at the Old Mothers, wide-eyed.
A dead silence falls over the small glade, as all the ancient dryads stare at what Juri has done. Finally, one of them speaks. "That was not Nature Magic..." she says in a hushed voice. "That was a prayer. A divine invocation. An invocation we have not seen since... since we were but saplings."
"It is Feyal..." breathes another one of the Old Mothers. "It must be! Melca failed to kill our goddess completely!"
You'd had your own suspicions, of course. Still... there's too much that doesn't add up yet. "I don't understand," you say, frowning. "If Feyal still lives, then her very existence would pose a grave risk to Melca's power. And Melca would stop at nothing to finish the job. Why would Feyal let it be known that she had survived by heeding such small requests? Especially granting them in Kovora, where Melca could so easily learn of it?"
"It may not be so simple," says another of the Old Mothers. "Even if Feyal escaped complete destruction at Melca's hands... what survived the trap may not have been any more than a tiny fragment of her Divine Essence. She may not realize that she is in danger. In fact—depending on what form that spark of divinity took—the fragment may not even be conscious at all."
Another of the dryads gestures toward Juri, continuing the explanation. "The child's prayers may have had an effect precisely because they were so very simple and small," she says. "Simple enough to be granted reflexively, without requiring any awareness. And small enough that the power sent to the petitioner would barely even be noticeable."
You stroke your chin in thought. As theories go, you suppose it's... plausible, at least. You can imagine how granting simple, commonplace blessings to their faithful could become "second nature" to a goddess, if she'd been overseeing countless souls across an entire world for millennia. A tiny trickle of power unconsciously released along the ancient bond linking Divinity and worshiper.
But then... why did Juri's blessing stop so suddenly?
Could it have something to do with your location inside the forest? No, that doesn't make sense. The power was working just as it always had, right up until it was cut off. And the power returned for this demonstration to the Old Mothers, even stronger than before. The only thing that makes sense is if the interruption had something to do with Juri's demonstration to the younger dryads.
Except... it wasn't just the younger dryads, was it? There was one other observer, watching from hiding.
Fallhazel.
It only takes a tiny fraction of a second for you to trace that entire chain of reasoning from beginning to end. But once you do, it takes every last bit of your ironclad willpower to keep a level face, not letting even a hint of your emotions show through to your expression. In that moment everything fits into place, every puzzling incongruity now making sense.
Why has Fallhazel been so desperate to understand Juri's power all this time? For the same reason that the flow of power was interrupted right in the middle of Juri's demonstration. Because only after carefully studying what the orc girl was doing did Fallhazel notice that the tiny trickle of power Juri was using was coming from her.
Once Fallhazel did realize what Juri was doing, she cut off the connection. And all this time, she's been trying to figure out how a young orc child was able to do that to her. And all this time she's been denying Juri any further access to her power... until just now, when she wanted the Old Mothers to observe the phenomenon.
It's exactly as the Old Mothers said. The tiny surviving remnant of the murdered nature goddess truly didn't realize what was going on. Because she had spent untold centuries safely hidden here in the forest. Her true nature unknown and unsuspected, even to herself.
But not any longer. Because if you've figured this out... then it's a safe bet that Fallhazel has as well.
You force yourself not to turn look over at her. You do not allow yourself to make even the slightest wrong movement, nothing that might even hint at your newfound realization. Still, your inhuman senses can hear her breathing start to speed up, and you can tell that the druid is rattled. Rattled in a way that is so unlike he usual proud, unflappable demeanor.
Even now, with all the evidence laid out so clearly as to be unassailable, she is still having trouble accepting such a fundamental challenge to the sense of self she'd had until mere moments ago. Fears and uncertainties, all of them swirling endlessly around each other in her soul.
Is she really just a piece of a dead goddess? What does that mean for her? What will happen now?
You glance up. "Hmmm... that does make sense," you say smoothly, doing your best to draw all attention to you... and to keep it away from Fallhazel. "If there really is some mindless fragment of Feyal's power still lying around somewhere, I can understand why Melca would consider it a threat. If anyone acquired it, it would give them a link to the rest of that stolen power."
"Indeed," says Fallhazel. You resist the urge to wince. She just isn't as good an actor as you are, even at the best of times. And it's clear to you that she's still shaken by what she's learned. Still, she does her best to keep a stony face, not giving anything away. And thankfully, she's sharp enough to grasp the importance of doing so. "Mothers, I... would ask that you continue to look after Juri. Anything else you can learn about her... connection... would be helpful. I must go. Melca's creatures are still pursuing us. And I... wish to prepare for their arrival."
Without waiting for a reply, she turns and strides off. You kneel down beside Juri, telling her not to worry, telling her that the Old Mothers will take good care of her. Then you stand, jogging after the druid who has just had her entire life and identity turned upside-down.
The question is, what will you do when you catch up to her?
Fallhazel is tired. She just ran straight through the entire night, and her emotional state is volatile as well. In such a place of vulnerability, she might be particularly susceptible to your charms. Not to mention that she was already right on the edge of falling even beforehand. You could take the opportunity to try and seal the deal, capturing the heroine's affections and putting her firmly on your side before anything else can go wrong.
Alternatively, you did make a point of building up trust with her on the ride over here. Thanks to that, you might be able to convince her to let down her guard enough to get some sleep in the interval before Melca's beasts catch up to you. That could also allow you to Dreamwalk with her... which is the only way you could have a conversation about your next steps that might actually be private, albeit at the cost of some Lust.
Finally, if you wanted to put all that off until later, you could go along with what she told the Old Mothers, and just prepare for the arrival of Melca's beasts with her. That would allow you to focus on setting up your defenses against the coming attack to the utmost extent possible.
