SPOILERS FOR C3E38! Turn back now or face the ugly specter of Spoilers!
Wonders and Woes
He remembers everything.
Perks of being a tree, he supposes.
Everything moves so slow, yet so fast, all at the same time.
Seasons bleed into each other, from sleep-touched winter bleeding into vibrant summers.
People, though, can get muddled.
One day they are there. The next month vanished on their journey to another place, whether it be a town, life, or sleep eternal.
If they reached out, though, their names would never be forgotten.
So it is fitting, then, that when an old friend passes his way, he senses something more.
Keyleth gently places a hand on his bark as she leads several new faces away, all of them looking up at his crown with trepidation and anger.
Something with them feels…familiar.
But it doesn't click until she stands before him.
He knows she can't hear him, but he speaks anyway.
"Hey there, Tilly." his leaves whisper.
She had danced beneath his bows as a young child, racing amongst his roots, seeking bugs and twigs, crafting little dolls, telling winding stories that often he was the only listener for.
She rested in his shadow, finding comfort in his gifted darkness.
She places a cold hand on his trunk, and he reaches out as best she can, wishing to amend in his way what had been forced on both of them.
The Briarwoods, not worthy of the name if you asked him, though not many did. They'd killed so many in their rise to power, slaughtering the kin of those first peoples that had stumbled across him.
The first de Rolo had taken to him as an Omen sent from Heaven, which…well, Nirvana is one step over, but it wasn't exactly wrong.
Their blood seeped into his roots, and he had begun to choke as more and more was added to that festering pit ensnared by him.
She'd visited him briefly in those days, but now the scrounging was born of desperation, bark taken in the hopes of gifting survival. It was all he could give, so he gave gladly, even as he withered, her soft ramblings offering the smallest of peace.
She had hung from his branches.
He knows that.
At his numbest, he had felt her body alight his broken crown.
Her life had been choked out of her, and he had wanted nothing more to raise root and wrench the beasts at his base deep into the earth.
"Cut her down." he'd rasped, unheard by the Last Son of Whitestone and his companions as they had slipped into town, "Cut them down."
Only later had he gotten to pay them back for their cruelty.
Never prod sleeping Titans.
The full might of the dawn had been brought to bear by the hands of a Druid fresh to her path.
Yet, the woman before him had hung still, and maybe it was luck, or fate, or defiance of it all, but her branch had snapped, sending her rolling to the ground, and not long after, she had awoken, fleeing her home, feral in her fear, bereaved by her being.
But she was here again.
She was safe.
Safe with Him, once more.
He fights to convey that, a single leaf spiraling down before her eyes, and she rests her head on his trunk, shedding seasons of her own.
"Welcome home, Tilly," he mutters, aware of the curious Raven peering down from his crown.
He remembers everything.
Every misstep.
Every failure.
Every victory.
He finishes inking the last letter, carefully folding it, and sliding the envelope into his lockbox. Placing it carefully beneath his bed, he turns.
They'd been skulking outside his home for hours.
His time was up.
But hopefully, he'd already given the Hells all the help he could offer.
They'd arrived too soon after the Hell's departure. He could only believe they sought them as well as his blood.
He'd give the young ones all the time he had left. Focus the intent of Thull and her followers on him while they seek to battle Death.
Shutting the door to his room, he shifts around his traps.
Making his way down the stairs.
He pauses as he can see the front door beginning to inch open.
Quietly as he can, he rushes down the steps, sliding into the dining room and waiting.
The first trap twangs and muffled gasps of pain erupt as bolts lance into the intruders.
One stumbles into his path, and he lances out, piercing them clean through the neck and whirling as a dagger bits into the door frame.
His attacker takes a ram directly to the head, the front of his skull cracking in, more twangs, more weapons racing about him as he pivots and moves, looking back to see several shades seeping up from the floor, and behind them, he spots the lither menace that is Otohan Thull.
"This is the Legend of the Peak?" he barks, as the specters and several of her remaining men launch towards him, "Hiding behind shadows?"
She laughs, "Where are they?"
He grunts and removes his foot off another trap blade, sending a hail of daggers cutting into her followers.
The shades dart toward him, and even as he fights to elude them, they move too fluidly, and one cuts a gash across his outer thigh.
Grimacing, he lunges for the stares, taking his cane to the side of one of the Call's heads, spattering blood along the wall.
As he races up the steps, the careful placement of his feet triggers another barrage of traps, further confounding his pursuers.
Thull watches him and, with a flurry of movement, appears in the place of one of her copies. A dagger flies free of her hand.
It digs into his back, and even as he wrenches it free, he can feel something vile begin to slither into his veins.
Several of her men move past her as she stands on the steps, just watching him with a cunning smile.
" You're the one that set them after Treshi." she notes, "You just couldn't leave well enough alone."
"Never." he returns, with a harsh grin, as one of her men catches an axe to the center of his face, tumbling down the steps in a heap.
"What a waste," she mutters, slowly stalking up the steps.
She stalks him like a panther, waiting for an opening as he dashes her copies to oozing powder, and her men to blood heaps on the ground.
Yet the weapons find their mark, and with each cut, he feels himself weakening further, his blood seeping out more freely than it should, but she doesn't move, just observing him.
Her echoes and her last standing man push him into a corner, and only then does he let his rage take over.
His cane bludgeons clean through the head of one of her echoes, but his eyes stay locked on her. The other darts for him, and with a careful kick, he brings down the armoire on top of it.
Her last man charges and knocks his cane aside, the blade piercing clean through Ariks' torso.
With a roar, the elderly Orc wraps his arms around the man's waste and, with all his strength, sends his assailant head first into the back of the armoire.
He hears Otohan move, and she triggers another of his traps, but only one of the bolts catches her, to his annoyance.
And as he fights to rise, her blade finds his back.
He stumbles, and she kicks him to the ground, then stabs him once more, and as he fights to reach his cane, it skitters away as if pushed by an unseen force, clattering down the steps far out of reach.
"I heard you were tenacious." Thull taunts, stalking around him.
"Speak up or come closer." he spits, blood wetting his lips, looking up at her, "I am hard of hearing."
Snorting, she kneels, several echoes appearing behind her as a light pulse about her, "Fine."
Her echoes stab, cutting calf, back and shoulders, adding to his wounds, but his sneering grimace never fails.
"Where are they?" Otohand demands.
"What makes you think that I know?" Ariks remarks coldly.
Her blade bites into the side of his neck, and he feels her begin to press into his mind.
He batters against her assault, but as one of her echoes' blades slips through his ribs, she worms her way through.
"So, they couldn't accept what I did." she mutters, with a soft grin, "The girl is just opening herself up to further heartache."
Eshtreross snorts at her, chuckling wetly.
Thull sneers, "Your end, as I am guessing you can tell, will be much more final."
"As it always was going to be." Ariks returns, looking up at her, "I do not fear Death, Thull. Do you?"
He lifts his palm off one of the pressure plates, grinning madly as the floor beneath both of them erupted in a flurry of blades.
Her echoes are shredded apart, and more gashes open across his body as he rolls away. For a moment, his world goes dark, but he struggles to his feet while Otohan finds her way barred.
More of her men emerge on the stairs behind her, but she holds them back.
"He's on borrowed time." Thull states, "She isn't here. Dispose of the dead and gather the wounded."
"You're leaving?" Ariks demands, "I'm still standing."
"You were a loose thread, Eshteross." Thull states, "We both know you've already been cut out of the picture.
His vision blurs, and he stumbles as she vanishes down the stairs.
With the last of his strength, he hears a sound from within his room and pushes himself toward the doors.
Standing within, tossing the room, is another of Otohan's followers. Dressed all in grey.
It turns on him, drawing its blade.
Eshteross snarls, charging them, and even though the intruder's blade finds his chest, his teeth find their neck.
It had been long since he had made this move, but it was all he had left.
And he wrenches his head back, tearing out the man's neck and collapsing on top of them as their legs give out, but they falter even further, dissipating into nothing beneath his haggardly breathing body.
Reaching out, hoping beyond hope, he gingerly reaches for the box beneath his bed…and finds it secure.
Breathing out a deep sigh, he allows himself to relax for the first time in decades.
The end was here.
But the Bells would have what they need.
They might not be safe, not as long as they continued on this path.
But they would be better prepared now, hopefully with Laudna in tow, a gift waiting for her inevitable return.
And that would have to be enough.
The Hells would have to be enough.
And as his vision begins to fade, he sees a flair of red at the edge of his sight, the confused face of Imogen Temult, and a winged man desperately reaching out his hand as the red coloration grows deeper.
Did I just write about counterpointed stories about Tree and an Elderly Orc, yes, yes I did.
Goodbye, Eshteross. I hope he finds the peace he deserves.