Chapter 62 — First Contact
They moved out before dawn, the forest still deep in shadow, following Wren’s careful route toward the suspected den site with the same measured caution the party had maintained since their arrival.
"Formation," Halvard said quietly, once they’d drawn close enough to the ancient, moss-covered stretch of woodland Wren had identified the previous evening. "Cass, you hold back, wards ready. Wren, eyes on approach vectors. Arlen and I take point."
They advanced slowly through the old growth, the trees here noticeably larger and older than anything closer to the logging camp, thick moss carpeting the ground in a way that muffled their footsteps almost entirely. Arlen kept his attention widened the way Yorin’s old lesson had taught him, watching not just the ground ahead but the canopy, the underbrush, every subtle sign that something massive might be settled nearby.
Wren froze first, one hand raised in sharp signal, and the party went still as one.
"There," she breathed, barely audible, pointing toward a section of forest perhaps thirty yards ahead where the shadows seemed to hold an unusually solid, unmoving shape.
Arlen studied it carefully, and understood immediately why the loggers had mistaken it for an ordinary tree until it moved. The Iron-Bark Treant stood easily twice the height of a grown man, its bark-covered form so still and weathered that it blended almost seamlessly into the surrounding old growth, only the faint, irregular texture of what might have been limbs and a vaguely suggested head distinguishing it from the genuine trees around it.
"Sleeping, maybe," Halvard murmured. "Or simply still. Hard to tell with something this old."
"Approach carefully," Cass whispered, already beginning the low, careful murmur of a preparatory ward spell. "If Tobias’s account holds, it wakes fast once it notices intrusion."
They crept closer, every step deliberate, until they’d closed nearly half the remaining distance — and then the treant’s form shifted, subtle at first, a slow, grinding creak of bark against bark as something that had appeared entirely inanimate revealed itself, all at once, to be very much awake.
It turned toward them with ponderous, deliberate motion, deep-set hollows that might have been eyes fixing on the intruding party with unmistakable, if slow, awareness.
"Positions," Halvard called, no longer bothering with quiet as the element of surprise evaporated entirely.
The treant moved with a speed that belied its earlier stillness, one massive limb sweeping toward them in a wide, crushing arc that sent Arlen and Halvard both diving clear, the impact splintering the ground where they’d stood a heartbeat before with a force that confirmed every warning Tobias had given them about its raw power.
"Cass, ward!" Halvard shouted, rolling back to his feet.
A shimmering barrier snapped into place around the party’s immediate position, and the treant’s second swing crashed against it with a force that visibly strained the ward’s edges, though it held.
Arlen drew on Enduring Vitality’s familiar warmth, steadying himself, and moved in alongside Halvard as the two of them attempted a coordinated strike against the creature’s exposed flank while Wren circled wide, bow already drawn.
Halvard’s blade connected first, Aura flaring along its edge, though the strike, for all its evident power, merely scored a shallow groove across the treant’s bark rather than the deep, decisive wound they’d hoped for.
"Barely marked it," Halvard grunted, already repositioning. "This thing’s denser than anything I’ve faced before."
Arlen pressed his own attack, channeling Edgeline Strike as cleanly as months of grinding practice had taught him, and felt the technique connect — a marginally deeper cut than Halvard’s, but still nowhere near the kind of wound that would meaningfully threaten a creature this size.
The treant retaliated with a low, grinding roar, swinging its massive limb in a wide arc that forced both of them back, and Wren’s arrows, striking in quick succession along its exposed side, seemed to do little more than lodge harmlessly into the dense bark without penetrating deep enough to matter.
"Conventional approach isn’t working fast enough," Cass called, maintaining the ward with visible strain evident in her tightened expression.
"Cass, hit it with fire!" Arlen shouted. "Wood burns — forget the ward for a moment, we need something that actually threatens it!"
Cass abandoned the barrier and thrust both hands forward, a lance of flame roaring from her palms into the same shallow groove Halvard’s blade had opened. The treant shrieked, smoke curling from the wound as fire bit deeper than steel alone had managed.
For one brief, hopeful moment, it seemed the tide had turned.
Then the treant’s remaining limbs erupted into motion, faster and more violent than anything it had shown before — not retreating from the pain, but reacting to it with sudden, desperate fury. It surged forward past Halvard’s guard entirely, catching him across the chest with a glancing blow that sent him crashing into a nearby tree hard enough that he didn’t immediately rise.
"Halvard’s down!" Wren shouted, already loosing another arrow, though the treant barely seemed to register the impact.
Without the ward to absorb the follow-through, the creature’s next swing caught Arlen fully across the shoulder before he could fully brace, the force of it lifting him clean off his feet and driving the breath from his lungs as he struck the ground hard several yards away. Enduring Vitality flared automatically, dulling what should have been shattering pain into something merely agonizing, but the impact left him disoriented, vision swimming, one arm refusing to properly respond when he tried to push himself upright.
"Arlen!" Cass’s voice, sharp with alarm, cut through the ringing in his ears.
He forced his eyes to focus. The treant loomed over him, wounded and burning at one flank but very much still standing, very much still capable of finishing what its last blow had started. Wren’s arrows continued striking its exposed side, but too slow, too little, buying seconds rather than any real reprieve.
Cass had thrown herself between Arlen and the creature, another casting already gathering at her palms, but exhaustion showed plainly in the tremor of her hands, the flame building smaller and less certain than her previous efforts.
"I can’t hold much longer," she said, voice tight with strain. "Halvard’s not moving. We need—"
The treant raised its uninjured limb, preparing another crushing strike, and Arlen, still struggling to force his battered body upright, understood with cold, sinking clarity that the fight had turned decisively against them — that whatever came next would happen before help could possibly arrive, and that the careful, disciplined preparation he’d trusted to carry him through this engagement had, for the moment, not been nearly enough.