My world-tree system-Chapter 39 - 38 : Art of war

The moon, high and indifferent, barely lit the undergrowth with a pale, spectral glow. The elves of Vollua were no more than a breeze in the shadows, an elusive presence melted into the thickness of the forest. And yet, with every heartbeat, their blade came down, mowing down an enemy before disappearing as quickly as a mirage.

Foster watched the bustle of the enemy camp from a high branch, hidden by the canopy. The obscurus swarmed below, trampling the earth, snarling, tearing bits of flesh from one another. Beastly creatures, hungry, misdirected. But in numbers. Numbers that overwhelmed all logic.

The smell of blood and charred flesh rose in the night air. Below, a tent collapsed in a raging inferno, consumed by the flames his men had unleashed before evaporating into the darkness. This was their strategy: harassment, sabotage, terror.

The forest was their terrain. And they had become its vengeful shadows.

The war of attrition had been going on for nearly three days.

Every night, the elves sabotaged the supply wagons, burning the food and potion stores. Trees were felled with precision to crush the columns of monsters, and trapped pits covered in branches engulfed those who dared to venture too far.

But it was the nights when there was no attack that instilled the most fear.

The obscurus would spend hours nervously listening for an invisible enemy. A silence that was too perfect, too oppressive. A silence that made them shudder.

Arguments broke out among them. Indiscipline, mistrust. Brute force had no intelligence. And Foster exploited this.

The enemy camp was adapting.

More patrols were now scouring the forest, their pace becoming unpredictable. The monsters travelled in groups, their fires were strategically placed, sentries with sharpened senses scanned the darkness.

Then tragedy struck.

That night, a team of elven saboteurs were attempting to booby-trap a stockpile of weapons.

Lorie and Känn were part of the group.

They had almost finished when a tiny but fatal cracking sound betrayed their presence.

- They’re here!’ shouted an obscurus in its dialect of gurgles and growls (for the reader’s convenience I’ll translate their words, don’t thank me it’s normal, I know I’m being too generous, ahhh stop it "-").

In an instant, the darkness exploded with movement. Dozens of beastly figures leapt into the shadows, their glowing eyes reflecting the fire that had just erupted.

Lorie reacted immediately, brandishing her sword.

- ’Fall back!’

But it was too late for everyone.

Elorïn, a young and inexperienced elf, slipped on a root. Before he could right himself, a huge claw slammed into him, piercing his chest with a sharp blow.

His scream echoed through the forest.

Känn wanted to rush forward helplessly, but Lorie grabbed him.

- There’s nothing we can do!

Köflik arrived just in time to see the monster tear its claws from Elorïn’s body, leaving her entrails spilling out onto the ground.

The whole forest seemed to freeze.

The surviving elves retreated. But the image of their comrade’s mutilated corpse would haunt them for a long time.

Foster’s point of view from another place:

The pain hit him like a thunderclap.

Foster stopped in his tracks, his breath coming in sharp gasps. His heart exploded in his chest, a vice of fire crushing his ribcage. An icy sensation ripped through him, an abyssal void opening up inside him.

He fell to his knees, clutching his chest as if his very soul were trying to escape.

- ’What the...’

Her gaze was lost in nothingness as a wave of pure pain radiated throughout her being. It wasn’t a physical wound. It wasn’t him who was hurt.

It was something else.

Deep in his mind, where his inner World Tree resided, a morbid shudder ran through its branches. One of his roots had just been brutally ripped out.

A loss. Irreversible. Permanent.

Elorïn.

Foster felt him die.

A root woven into the network of his World Tree withered, shrivelled and broke into a thousand fragments.

The link was broken.

A howl echoed through the immensity of his inner world. It wasn’t his.

It was Elorn’s.

Her last cry, her last breath, her last fragment of existence disappearing into the abyss of nothingness.

A wave of blackness poured into the space around him, staining the fertile soil of his inner world with a corrupted stain, oozing with pain and emptiness.

Foster suffocated. His whole body screamed at him that a part of him had just been destroyed.

Then nothing.

Just silence.

A silence worse than anything else.

He opened his eyes again.

The forest around him was still there, bathed in darkness. But everything seemed duller. Duller. As if a nuance of the world had disappeared with Elorïn.

Foster rose slowly to his feet, his body trembling. His hand grazed his chest, where he had felt it being ripped away.

A dead root. A gaping hole in his soul.

Then he felt something else.

A dull anger. A furious murmur.

His World Tree was still vibrating, rumbling under the loss of one of his children. An ancient pulse, a promise of vengeance.

He inhaled deeply.

The next day, silence hung over Vollua.

The elves had never been so few, and yet... they had lost one of their own.

The first to die.

Foster, his fists clenched, sat at the head of the war council. Around him sat Köflik, Giovanni, Yänn, Lorie and Känn.

With a serious look on his face, Köflik broke the silence.

- They’re adapting.

He crossed his arms.

- ’If we carry on like this, we’ll be the ones who’ll be decimated.

- ’They’ve learned how to counter us,’ added Giovanni. ’Their discipline is getting stronger. We can no longer harass them with impunity.’

Foster sighed. He knew it. The enemy no longer feared shadows. He knew these shadows were real.

He raised his head. His eyes shone with a cold, sharp gleam.

- We have reached our limit,’ he said clearly. ’We must eliminate their leaders.’

Silence.

Yänn, leaning against the table, nodded slowly.

- ’We won’t be able to face them together.’

- ’No,’ agreed Foster. ’That’s why we’re going to separate them.’

Köflik understood immediately.

- ’You’re planning to lure them onto our turf.’

- ’Exactly.’

Foster stood up, placing his hands on the table.

- ’Every night those generals go to the edge of the forest to inspect their progress. We’ll wait for them there.’

He pointed to a map of the area.

- ’The first general will be lured to the Dead Root Marsh. A land where sylvan magic is strongest. I’ll be there alone.’

Giovanni raised an eyebrow.

- ’Alone? Are you serious?’

Foster’s gaze locked with his.

- ’I’ve already faced one of their kind and I know how to kill it.’

Then he continued.

- ’The second general will be lured here, to the Glade of Green Tears. Köflik, you and your men will trap him.’

Köflik smiled. A toothy grin.

- Five against one. We can do this.’

Foster nodded.

- Even if you can’t take him down, you’ll have to buy enough time for me to join you. The other elves will have to attack the Obscrus army so the generals don’t have reinforcements, the last thing we want is a thousand of those things pouring down on us.

- ’If we fail, Vollua will fall,’ Lorie reminded him.

He closed his eyes for a second, letting his thoughts sink into his determination.

Then he opened his eyelids.

- ’Then we must not fail.’

Night was falling again.

Foster stood on a high branch, watching the massive figures advancing towards the edge. The two obscure generals.

One of them stopped, sniffing the air, before moving off into the clearing.

The second marched straight towards the swamp.

As expected.

Foster leapt from his branch, slipping into the shadows of the trees.

Behind him, Köflik and the others waited for the right moment.

Through his link with each of the elves in the world-tree, Foster sent the signal.

..................

Hello everyone... I’ve reversed the Chapters and I can’t delete more than 100 words unfortunately, so I need to fill in two hundred words.

Foster is going to tell you a funny joke : A sylvan elf stealthily approaches his friend, a mischievous smile on his lips. He clears his throat and says:

- Tell me, frail-bris, do you know why humans never get lost in the forest?

- Why not?

- Because there’s always a sign saying ’deforestation in progress’!

What a comedian this elf is, wait for another one, soon on tour all over the world, come one, come all:

The woodland elf approaches his companion, a dark smile on his face.

- Tell me, Dark Leaf, do you know why we never find lumberjacks who venture too far into our forest?

- No, why?

- Because trees have excellent digestion.

A sinister crack echoes behind them, a thousand-year-old oak quivering as if it too were laughing... or digesting.

This is getting annoying, I’ll stop here...

See you soon !