BT - Book 1 - Chapter 61 (Patreon)

Micah’s spear passed through the dryad as the tiny humanoid lunged toward him, letting the wood of the haft slip through its body like it was a mirage.  He winced under the wet rag draped across his mouth as the monster giggled, letting out a puff of red pollen from the flowers wreathing its head as it reached toward him with a thorn covered claw.

He kicked out with his right foot, exploding into motion with every point of his enhanced body and agility.  The dryad squeaked, trying to twist its body away from the blow only for the sole of Micah’s foot to catch it in the torso and send it flying through the air.

With a wave of his hand and a muttered word, he caught the monster with updraft, preventing it from hitting the ground or a tree where it could take advantage of its wood magic.

Micah sprinted forward, ignoring the cloud of red pollen as the wet rag around his mouth hopefully filtered out the spores.  With his body attribute they wouldn’t harm him too much, but he certainly didn’t want to find himself talking to things that weren’t there in the middle of a life or death fight.

He caught up to the dryad as it floated, squirming in the air.  With a blur of motion, his spearhead caught it in the chest.  There was a moment of resistance as its wooden body tried to rebuff the spear head.  Then, the enchantment activated, pulsing destructive energy into the flailing monster as the razor sharp blade of the spear pushed all the way through the dryad’s tough form.

The small wooden being went slack, and Micah turned to look for another target.  Nearby, Trevor struggled with a pair of dryads, barely holding them off with a flurry of air knives and violent swings of a spear coated in swirling clouds of green air magic.

After ensuring that Trevor wasn’t in immediate danger, Micah made a note to ask him about the ability he was using later.  Trevor had never been terribly forthcoming about the wind based martial art he received as part of his blessing, but if Micah was going to integrate him into a team for the journey into the Great Depths, he would need to know everything that Trevor was capable of.

Despite the deer’s practiced indifference toward the juvenile panther, the two of them made a good team.  The buck agilely interposed itself between the large cat and the dryads, fending them off with its antlers.  Every time one of the half dozen monsters around them made a move, the deer would almost teleport in front of it, in position to gore the diminutive wooden monster if it followed through with its intended action.

The panther would use the openings created by the stag to pounce, swatting dryads aside with casual ease or dragging them past the deer to savage them at its leisure.

Even as he watched, a pair of dryads rushed toward the stag, only for it to fend one off with its lowered head while it slammed the other with a hoof.  The kicked monster staggered woozily for a fraction of a second before the panther flowed around its companion with practiced ease and clamped down on the monster’s head with its massive jaws.

Before any of its companions could come to its aid, the giant cat flicked its head to the side, cracking the wood of the dryad’s neck while its limbs flailed futilely.  Even as its thorny claws tried to find purchase on the panther’s thick fur, she leapt backwards, interposing the deer between herself and the monsters once more.

With a crunch, the panther’s jaw flexed, crushing the dryad.  Its companions chittered and squealed as they tried to circle around the stag to get at the panther.  Almost dismissively, it dropped the wooden corpse next to a small pile of its similarly deceased associates.

Smiling, Micah fired a pressure spear into one of the dryads.  The wind magic wasn’t terribly damaging, only cracking the creature’s bark and sending it flying, but that was all the opening he needed.

Micah stepped into the gap in the dryad’s formation, triggering the time enchantment in his spear.  A rainbow of possibilities surrounded his quarry as it expertly-side stepped his thrust.

He adjusted his grip, yanking backward on the spear as the monster danced inside his guard, a cloud of spores trailing in its wake.  Just as it pulled back its claw, thorns glowing brown with some sort of spell, the crossbar of his spear head slammed into its back, pulling it toward him.  Its strangely expressive eyes widened as Micah triggered the sonic enchantment.  The spear head blurred, pulsing as the vibrations tore deeply into the dryad.

Micah’s off hand left the haft of his spear as he grabbed the disoriented monster’s extended arm, ignoring the fading motes of wood mana after his enchantment disrupted the spell.  His fingers closed around its wrist at the same time as his right leg planted itself in the dryad’s tiny chest.

The time enchantment wore off just as Micah pulled with the entirety of his enhanced body attribute.  For a moment, the dryad screeched as its shoulder creaked ominously.  Then, with a crack, he pulled the arm free in a spray of dark green sap.

It wobbled backward, screaming incoherently, its remaining thorny claw clutching the literal stump on its shoulder.  Micah discarded its arm, wiping some of the sap on his thigh before he grabbed his spear with both hands and impaled the monster.

“A little help Micah!” Trevor’s frantic voice pulled his attention away from the four remaining dryads that the animals had well in hand.

He turned, just in time to see Trevor trip over a root that glowed with a dryad’s mana.  One of the two monsters fighting him pounced, the other extended a glowing claw, its magic forcing a cocoon of roots to grow from the ground, intent on immobilizing Trevor.

Micah didn’t even think.  He triggered the time enchantment, taking advantage of the world slowing to a snail’s pace to analyze the rainbow pathways traveled by the airborne dryad.

The spear left his hand with the speed of a swooping hawk and struck the monster with the force of a runaway carriage.  Even without the sonic enchantment pumping the throw’s damage, the razor sharp blade cut through the dryad’s hardened exterior digging through the monster’s heartwood only to explode out of its back.

The other dryad turned to Micah just in time for him to reach it, unarmed but for the skinning knife he’d whipped from his belt.  It spread its arms wide, screeching its hatred at Micah as he charged it.

It swung at Micah, trying to dissuade his attack, but he simply ignored the swipe.  The dryad’s advantage was in its size and magically enhanced mobility.  If it would sacrifice that advantage to stand and fight, Micah would happily trade blows with it.  He could heal himself later, a small price to pay in order to protect his helpless brother.

Its claws dug into his skin, injecting burning streaks of poison and disease into his muscles.  Micah barked out a word and felt augmented healing slow the spread of the dryad’s magic.  He couldn’t hope to match its skill with wood magic, but if there wasn’t a consciousness to guide the spell, it would be a simple matter to root it out later.

The dryad’s eyes widened as it realized its mistake.  The monster tried to step backwards only for Micah’s left hand to grab it by the back of its neck, preventing it from moving.  The knife stabbed into its stomach, barely punching through the hardened bark armor.

The second stab broke his knife, the ordinary steel blade unable to cope with the magically enhanced ‘skin’ of the dryad.

It didn’t stop Micah.  Even as the creature’s claws drew ribbons of blood down his flanks, he dropped the hilt of the knife and grabbed the front of its head.  His fingers dug into its bark skin as he triggered sonic bolt.

The air mana coursed through his body, settling into the well worn form of the spell.  Almost on instinct, Micah twisted.  Something inside his mind snapped, unleashing a wave of vertigo and dissociation.

The mana changed form as it was leaving his hands.  Rather than a glob of mana that leaked energy until it pulsed just before striking a foe, it became a sphere.  His hands defined the outer limits of the new spell, its boundaries reflecting back any mana that sought to escape.  It still felt like sonic bolt, but without the spell’s instability and chaos.

Micah blinked, an orb of energy engulfing the monster’s head in a tempest of energy.  Faintly, he heard a dissonant screech of static as the dryad twitched twice in his grip before going slack.

The spell dissipated and the dryad dropped limply from Micah’s grip.  The bark covering its face and head were split and pitted, revealing the tender heartwood beneath.  All of its orifices leaked dark sap freely.

He kicked the body, hissing in pain as the motion reopened the gashes on his sides.  The dryad didn’t move, and already he could feel its poisons lose their focus and edge.

Satisfied that his foe was dead, Micah cast refresh and augmented mending in short succession.  Despite his low mana, the spells did their work, cleansing the wood magic induced ailments from his system and closing the wounds.

Trevor broke free from the roots and vines surrounding him, tearing and ripping at the plants until he rolled out onto the grass of the grove.  Micah nodded to him as he picked up his spear and turned back to the fight between the animals and the remaining dryads.

There were only three left, and between Micah and Trevor the battle ended quickly.  Their spears restricted the dryad’s movements, landing deep blows on the creatures each time they tried to dodge or retreat from the panther’s attacks.

The stag stood firm as the brothers pushed the surviving dryads up against it, giving the juvenile shade panther every opportunity in the world to dart into the fray and kill the distracted wooden monsters.

Finally, Trevor was twisting his spear in the last of the dryads while the panther batted a severed head, chasing after it like it were a fleeing rabbit.  Micah smiled slightly, leaning on his spear.  The battle had been a lot harder without Onkert support, but he wasn’t going to risk summoning another daemon until he had access to the trees and a proper opportunity to investigate his resonance with Elsewhere from the last timeline.

He suspected that he could still summon the daemons normally so long as his body didn’t pass into Elsewhere and mark him with its taint, but that was a risk he was unwilling to take without further research.

Still, he frowned slightly.  It almost felt like he was casting a ritual when he’d altered sonic bolt on the fly, and that wasn’t something that happened.  Sure, spellcasters could research and create new spells, but that was a matter of research and calculation.  Even Karrin Dakkora couldn’t change a spell as she was casting it.

He opened his status and the frown grew noticeably as he reviewed the changes.  He’d gained two points of arcana, one point in spellcasting, two moon attunement and a new third tier spell titled sonic orb.

Even the pitched battle against the dryads couldn’t explain those gains on his own.  Especially the points in arcana.  He’d only ever earned arcana after doing something profoundly stupid involving Elsewhere.

Micah bit his lip.  Whatever he’d done, the new spell was incredibly powerful, dealing intense sonic damage at very close range over the course of a couple seconds.  As far as he could tell, he hadn’t interacted with Elsewhere, but that moment of vertigo during the battle wasn’t normal.

“Hey Micah,” Trevor called out as he pulled his spear from the downed dryad.  “I’m not trying to complain about the experience.  The gods know that I basically gained a full level in just this fight, but you said you could raise my affinity if I helped you clear out the grove and uh-”

He paused, blushing slightly before clearing his throat.

“I kind of wanted to spend some time with Claire once we finished up out here,” he continued, itching the back of his neck nervously.  “Do you think you could do whatever that ritual thing was so I can get back to Basil’s Cove?”