Silver Stars, Ch 20: Verdant (Patreon)

Alora’s world, Verdant, was a shining green gem in the Void. It was a different hue from Emerald, warmer and full of life.

It had been a long time since he’d seen it and as he headed for it, a slight smile quirked his lips. He’d promised Alora he would return, so he was looking forward to her reaction when he showed up unannounced.

With the time compression, it had been nearly two centuries since he’d last left, so hopefully she and her world both were flourishing. 

They’d been on the brink the last time with barely any Fourth Evolution defenders, much less Fifth or higher, but the defenses he’d given them to protect the world should have helped.

He’d left an entire flotilla of warships, each of them linked to the inexhaustible energy of the WIld Tree. They couldn’t travel very far beyond the world’s edge, but while they were next to Verdant, they were nearly indestructible.

His arrival should be a good surprise.

He was expecting a wild and flourishing world and the branches of the Wild Tree reaching out across the Void as they touched the nearby dimensions, ready to welcome him.

As he stepped off the astral path, however, it was something else that greeted his gaze.

A flotilla of foreign ships stretched across the system, completely surrounding Verdant.

They were all a short distance away, but that distance exactly matched the range of the warships he’d left.

His eyes narrowed and he paused in the Void, standing between the dimensions as he studied them. 

The last time he’d come back, ships had been assaulting Verdant too, but this was different.

He saw some of the same symbols on these ships that marked the Blood Hunters, the race that had attacked before, but this time they were not the only race.

More importantly, these ships had been here for a long time. 

There were a few new ones, but he could read the traces in the Void and the remnant energies that said most of them had been here for decades, and some for over a century.

Some had been converted into sprawling rings of wood and enchantment, changing their shapes into an outpost near the world. 

He scanned them, counting the total number, and by the time he was done, a sense of anger rumbled in his heart.

There were over three hundred ships from a dozen races here and they’d built more than twenty semi-permanent outposts.

He already understood what had happened, but he continued to scan the energies of the system, reading its full history. 

All that had happened was recorded in the chaos winds and the light of the sun. It only took him a little while to find the rest of it.

When he was done, he folded his arms across his chest. Silver stars burned in his aura, flaring and spreading outward as they merged with the Void.

The last time, he’d commanded the Blood Hunters to leave and warned them that if they wanted to access the Evolutionary Node that was part of the Wild Tree, they would have to seek Alora’s permission. 

Then he’d built the ships to give her some defenses and to support that command. He hadn’t been strong enough back then to enchant the world with stronger spells or to leave behind powerful golems, but the ships should have been enough against the Blood Hunters.

That race had decided to spread the word, however, and to seek allies of their own.

Then they’d come back en masse, threatening Alora with their presence and a couple of Fifth Evolution supporters they’d found, but not crossing that final line.

The ships were still working, but Alora’s people had been effectively trapped on the world.

These races had followed the letter of his law to seek Alora’s permission, but they’d broken the spirit of it.

They were laying siege to the world, blocking the entrance and preventing anyone from exiting as they tried to force her to let them use the Wild Tree.

They had been for a century.

The Wild Tree was fine, but he could see where some enchanters had tried to take control of it at a distance. 

A mix of domains, artifacts, and spells were entangled throughout the flotilla, all of them targeting its dimensional branches.

The tree’s aura extended throughout a large section of the local Void, which made it a good target when the attackers couldn’t get closer to the world.

Fortunately, it had a Sixth Evolution defense against high-level domains. It was too rooted in the local reality for these weaklings to bend its branches or shake its leaves. 

It was also able to defend the world from domains, but it had no offensive abilities. 

The ships did, but they were limited by their range.

So the Wild Spirits had ended up trapped here, confined to Verdant until they agreed to let these other races take over the Wild Tree and use it as they wished.

And for a century, they had refused.

There was no way Alora would give up the Wild Tree to invaders. It was the heritage of her people and their most sacred site, as well as the home of her grandmother’s spirit, who had turned into a dryad that was bonded with it.

As soon as she let the Blood Hunters and other races onto the world, they would try to take control of the Wild Grove for themselves, probably demanding that the Wild Spirits not even come close.

Alora would never allow that.

Some people just don’t learn... The thought rumbled in his mind. 

He debated destroying everything in front of him, but a momentary thought made him turn to look at the world first.

Then he disappeared.

When he stepped back into reality, he was standing at the edge of the Wild Grove.

He’d changed his height to seven feet tall, so the Wild Trees branches arched above him like the vault of the sky. The saplings that were connected to its root system stretched out in every direction, creating a forest of green and golden leaves.

Inlays of golden vitality and emerald Wood energy shone from the bark of the trees, forming into runes and natural enchantments that drifted in the air. Wisps of light in all the hues of the rainbow drifted below the leaves, turning the forest into a hazy dreamland.

Just ahead of him, the grove opened onto the clearing at the center and the Wild Tree’s massive trunk was visible in the center. At the base of it, he could see the slender back of a young woman.

Her green dress clung to her shoulders and hips like a cloud, its edge drifting just above her ankles as it touched the grass. Her hair was green-gold as well, touched with the same emerald as the leaves, and her skin was fair.

She looked like a young forest spirit.

“Alora,” he said softly as a smile broke through the stern expression he’d become so used to. “It’s been a long time.”

***

Alora’s Perspective

Alora was tending to the Wild Tree,  when she felt a whisper of essence rush through the tree’s branches.

It was like an ocean of essence had suddenly appeared in the Void, swamping the tree’s connection to its dimensions and the elements.

As the Verdant Priestess of the Wild Tree, she was intimately attuned to the tree’s awareness and the flow of energy through it. Its connection to the elements of the Void meant that even small changes were obvious, but this one was the most dramatic she’d ever sensed. 

Something enormously powerful had just appeared. 

Despite the force of it, it didn’t seem threatening. It just made the tree hum in recognition.

A spark of hope ignited in her heart and she froze in place, trying to determine what it could be, and if it was what she thought.

Before she let herself think about it, a voice full of power made her turn around. 

It was quiet, but as she turned to look, she felt her heart leap as that spark turned into a raging bonfire.

There was no need to ask who it was. She knew that voice.

“Sam.”
Her lips spoke the words for her as she turned around. It was an involuntary reflex, something she’d thought of many times.

Now and then she’d dreamed of seeing him again and of turning in a crowd to spot him suddenly across the way, and then she would have said that, and he would have heard her somehow across the distance. 

But it had only been a dream.

She thought for a moment that she might have fallen asleep and this was a dream too. But then she saw him, and she knew that it wasn’t.

His aura was a hundred times greater than she remembered. Silver flames burned across his skin, just at the edge of sight, and starlight pooled in his eyes. His skin was golden and shone like the sun. 

Strength and confidence poured off of him, radiating out so powerfully that the grass at his feet grew taller in welcome and the boughs of the Wild Tree dipped lower to reach him. The entire world was trying to curl around him.

His clothing was elegant and stately, a loose white shirt and breeches with a rich black cloak that drifted over his shoulders and fluttered on the wind. There was a simple black metal bracer on his right arm, one that matched his cloak. He had a silver bracelet hugging his other wrist, a pair of polished black boots, and a golden leather belt, but that was all.

It was almost unadorned, but something about each bit of his clothing merged with the elements, as if they were part of the world, and she could sense the power they held.

But it was his smile where her attention stopped, and an answering one broke out across her lips as she looked into his eyes.

“You came back,” she said quietly. “I knew you would.”

She barely managed to get the words out with her heart in her throat. Her eyes were fixed on him, memorizing every line of him in case he left again.

Ever since he’d saved her in the Void, she’d been entranced by him, and then he’d saved her world and her grandmother. He’d helped to put her family back together, restoring a peace between her father and uncle that had driven her away from home in the first place and opened the door to the enemies that had never given up.

Without him, none of this would have been possible.

When he promised to return, she had devoted herself to improving her home world and waited for him.

“I promised,” he said as his smile became wider. “You look the same as before, but happier.”

“You look bigger,” she said with a laugh. She began to think more easily as the surprise left her, so she walked toward him. “I didn’t think you would be able to come back for another couple of hundred years. You said it was a long journey.”

As she approached him, she reached out and met his hand in the air, weaving her fingers between his. His hand radiated heat like sun-warmed stone. She could feel it in her bones and instantly relaxed. He was much taller than her, which made her tilt her head back as she looked at him.

“You have some unwanted visitors,” he said as he looked down at her. “Would you like me to get rid of them?”

“They’ve been here for a century,” she said as she shook her head. “They can wait a little longer. Walk with me?”

She tugged on his hand as she headed deeper in the Wild Grove, pulling him along.

***

A few days later, Alora laughed as she looked out at the depths of the Wild Grove, appreciating the play of the colorful wisps darting through the branches.

But mostly, her eyes were on Sam. 

He was watching the wisps again...or perhaps the energy of the trees. He could see it in a different way, like runes and enchantments rising up from the bark. To her, it was a warm glow of vitality like a mist, which filled everything with a soft golden haze.

He was more serious than she remembered, but whenever he looked at her, there was a brilliant smile. She’d been working to keep it there.

“The last time you were here, I never got a chance to show you my home the way I wanted,” she said as she walked over to him and tucked herself under his arm. “I’m glad I finally did.”

She felt a bit possessive whenever she looked at him. She was fairly sure he felt the same toward her, but time would tell.

Fortunately, they should have a lot of it.

“Someday, we will be able to spend many years here,” he said softly as he looked at her. “Once Aster Fall is protected, and when Verdant has better defenses, which it will soon.”

He’d been working over the past few days on a massive enchantment for Verdant, but she hadn’t seen many traces of it yet. All she could tell was that a river of essence was running around him and there were subtle shifts in the world’s power.

Even the Wild Tree’s energy was shifting.

Normally that would have alarmed her, but she could tell it wasn’t a threat. It felt like the tree’s roots were growing deeper.

Whatever he was doing, it was big.

It was a gift of her race to see essence, but she couldn’t manipulate it like this. If it had been chaotic essence, she might have felt an urge to balance it with the Void, but his energy was as primal as the Wild Tree’s.

Perhaps even more, although her connection to the tree made her reluctant to admit it.

It was still hard to believe he was an Astral Titan, even though she’d known it for hundreds of years. His race was so distant in the memory of the galaxy that they were only legends.

Most of the time, she thought of him as a Wild Spirit.

“How have you spent all these years while I was away?” he asked. “For me, it’s only been a short while, but for you it was much longer. Why did your enemies come back?”

“After you left, things were calm for a while, fifty or sixty years,” she answered with a sigh. “The Blood Hunters were scared off and no one came to disturb us. Verdant recovered quickly under the branches of the tree, and we began to hunt more widely, since we’d learned our lesson about gathering strength. 

“Things improved and more of us reached the Fourth Evolution, while the ancestor’s memory in the Wild Tree guided us toward higher realms. My father and uncle, and then I broke through to the Fifth Evolution at close to the century mark, and others were approaching it quickly, but that speed is also what brought back the Blood Hunters, who somehow found out and couldn’t resist trying again.

“This time, they brought allies with them, other local races from worlds that were within reach of their ships. They saw us reaching the Fifth Evolution and wanted it for themselves, as well as safer guidance to reach the Third and Fourth. They lose a number of their people to badly designed Paths each year, and some of them go insane.

“They refused to follow the rules I laid down to help them, insisting that they had to have control of the node for themselves.” She shook her head. “They attacked and our forces drove them off, especially with our new strength and the ships you built for us, but they didn’t give up.

“At first, they just watched us and tested the borders, but over time they got more confident that we weren’t able to attack them and began this siege. My people haven’t been able to leave the world for the last eighty years. They only end up as prisoners.”

She’d had to bargain for the release of more than one, and it left a bad taste in her mouth. All the Blood Hunters and their allies wanted was power and to seize the tree for themselves.

“Our hunters’ growth has stagnated again. At least our crafters and other classes like mine that do not need to hunt have still been able to advance slowly. A century is not that long in the life of a Wild Spirit, so I’ve counseled everyone to bide their time. I didn’t want to lose more people in this war. 

“Staying on Verdant is limiting in some ways, but it’s safe enough, since the Blood Hunters cannot come down here. Our guards and the ships make sure of it.”

She added a few more details to fill in the full story, and Sam’s expression hardened as he listened to her.

“Then now is a good time to deal with them,” he said as he raised his hand.

Runes flickered across his aura and she felt something settle into place across the world, tying itself brightly to the roots of the Wild Tree.

Information on what he’d done flooded into her awareness, communicated directly to her by the Wild Tree, and her eyes widened.

“The defenses are done,” he said. “You should be able to feel them. I’ve linked them to the Wild Tree, so you and any priestess who follows you will be able to control them, as well as your grandmother.”

He nodded at the trunk of the tree where her grandmother often appeared in her dryad form.

“Let’s go get rid of your unwanted guests.”

Sam held out his hand and she placed hers in it. 

A moment later, they were rising into the Void.