LSRO: Chapter 103 - Hostile Copse (Patreon)

Yep Copse... you have no idea how often spell checkers think that's not a word.

Okay so... this might be a bit of an almost gorey chapter? Maybe? I think. I don't know I love writing these types of scenes so like... is it bad?

It's not a cliffy - but it's expectant

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Chapter 103

Hostile Copse

Quinn, Malakai, Geneva, and Aradie stared at the bloody-barked tree. Quinn's response to its request for them to stay a while sat on the tip of her tongue. She had to fight against saying, 'No, I don't really want to stay a while, thanks so much.' Instead, she took a deep breath and concentrated on cataloging their surroundings while she tried to think of a somewhat more diplomatic approach to telling the creature in front of her to sod off.

Even as she studied their surroundings, she noticed that the forest floor was full of blood-soaked leaves. If she inspected the bark on the tree closer, she could see the pale, ghostlike wing membranes sticking out from between the cracks, bloodied and tattered, some hair here and there, the occasional toe or finger. It was all she could do to not gag.

A sinister pulse rippled out from the tree, causing Quinn to shudder.

Shadowy figures emerged from the surrounding trees that now appeared to be much farther behind them. It made the copse appear much larger than she'd originally thought, as if they'd somehow traversed a great distance. With time slowed outside of her mind as she rapidly observed everything around them, Quinn realized that the Esposians might have been sacrifices for whatever this was.

This tree wasn't natural on any world.

She paused. A breeze had ventured through its branches. Through its dead, partially broken, some of them dripping bloody sap, branches.

That's when she noticed the rustling, which was strange on a bloody tree that had absolutely no foliage whatsoever. Instead, she realized there was a book embedded into it. And its pages were what rustled in the wind.

She gulped and wished she hadn't, from the stench of blood in the air, of rotting corpses, and of rotting vegetation. She had to keep it together, even though she could feel the color already draining out of her face. The pale and ghost-like wings that hung in tatters from the tree leaked very slight power, as if they'd almost been completely drained.

They weren't alive as such, as far as she could tell. It was an amalgamation of spirits that turned into one, that fueled the tree and the book. It had power in it, locked in place by the branches, as if perhaps at one stage, maybe it had been a wooden altar. Perhaps whoever was using the book didn't understand how to.

"Well, Librarian, you haven't answered me yet." There was a hint of ego in that voice, of impatience, as if the tree honestly thought it was a person.

The shadowy figures behind them shouldn't have been able to exist. Quinn glanced around and observed through Aradie's own projected images into her mind. These shadows weren't people. They were extensions of the creature in front of them. Vaguely humanoid, sluggish movement. But everything their blood touched withered away. Quinn made a mental note that coming within their reach was probably a very bad idea.

Them. The tree. The fact that the book was horribly stained and obviously damaged. Not to mention the fact that the tree was filled with rotting corpses.

Something inside Quinn snapped into place.

It was a sudden anger and yet a cold calm that suffused her entire body. She knew without a shadow of a doubt that she possessed the power to get this figured out. To bring this whole fiasco here to a close. Confidence returned to her where she'd been nervous only moments earlier.

She faced the tree and put her hands on her hips, cocked her head to one side and said, "No."

Malakai tried to tap her arm but she pulled it away.

She glared at him and then she glared at the tree again for good measure. "I said, no." Her voice was clearer this time, ringing out through the clearing. "We will not be staying a while. I have far too much to do to waste too much time here with you."

The tree rumbled. It was a low, guttural growl. Like it had also swallowed a tiger. "What did you say?" Its voice practically screeched.

An explosive silence settled over the clearing.

Even the shadow figures were shaking, which made Quinn even more positive they were an extension of the tree standing in front of her. With her senses, she could see that they did belong to it and yet didn't quite understand how. There were no roots sticking up to fuel them. They didn't have runic carvings or insignias engraved into them either.

It made her wonder if it was a form of telekinetic magic or perhaps... and that's when she noticed, that in the center of the creatures was a group of leaves, bloody leaves, that gave them their core of power. Knowing the location should make them somewhat easier to destroy.

Quinn sighed again. The sound was very loud in the hostile copse. "We are needed elsewhere. Somewhere that is more important and I am certain you're aware that you. Don't. Belong. Here." She clipped every last word that she said in that last sentence for impact because the tree was easily baited.

The rumbling started to shake the ground, like an earthquake, far beneath Quinn's feet. It moved up to reverberate through her entire body. Only the shielding she had around her managed to keep her completely safe. Even then, she almost lost her balance. The tree's voice mumbled, the loud, some of the high-pitched screech portion of its voice now gone.

"I am a creature of chaos," it said. There was certainty in its voice, knowledge in what it was.

Quinn raised an eyebrow. "Are you really, though?" she asked. She had no clue where this newfound, deadly calm inside her came from. This absolute knowledge and certainty that she was right and would be able to deal with what was in front of them. Because she could, because of who she was, what she was, and the fact that she could now draw on the Library's strength, on its knowledge, on its vast age and experience. It lent her a confidence she'd never had back on Earth.

Unease rang through her from the rumbling in the ground that slowly subsided. Finally, the tree spoke again.

"What did you say?" it asked, stumped.

If it had had a face that was visible, Quinn thought it would have been looking at her skeptically, confused. As it was, it was just a gnarly, bloody, twisted death tree.

"I said, are you really a creature of chaos? Because you kind of seem like more of a thing than a creature," she said.

Quinn wasn't entirely certain whether it was wise to be taunting a tree that had obviously massacred hundreds of people, somehow. And yet, here she was.

Power began to swell all around them, reacting to what she'd said, reaching around her whole group. The shadow figures began to move again as the power swelled, filling them, reaching the core inside. They moved toward the group.

Quinn sighed. She'd really been hoping to avoid any type of combat. Then again, had she hoped to talk it into the ground? That was never going to happen.

Aradie launched herself up into the air with a loud hoot. Quinn pushed her shielding outwards to encompass each and every member of her team, to lend them strength and make sure they weren't going to be harmed more than absolutely necessary. It wasn't something she'd been aware she could do even ten days ago. But now? Quinn realized that every book she absorbed was a guideline, a sense of how to initiate something.

All she had to do was push the boundaries. She knew there had to be a catch, but for now she'd just be cautious.

Her owl familiar dive-bombed one of the closest shadows, aiming directly for the bunch of leaves that made up its core in its chest. Only, she discovered that there wasn't as much give in the walking shadows as they'd assumed. Aradie turned tail and darted back into the sky, getting ready for another attempt as Malakai readied his bow and began loosing arrows.

"Where am I aiming for?" He asked Quinn.

"They have a core, approximately where a human heart would be."

"I know where you guys have hearts," he muttered, but the arrows didn't appear to bite deep enough into the shadows.

Quinn kept her focus on maintaining the shielding until it had completely surrounded each of their bodies in a fine layer of defense. She focused on the tree in front of her, pulling from books that she'd read, like Mastering Your Reality Through Chaos, Mental Manipulation and Recognising Mental Manipulation and Its Effects.

Despite everything else, how the power felt that emanated from this tree, how it looked, the blood that seeped through every single portion of its being... The aura spoke of tortured souls, of barely conscious remnants of life that gave it blood power. This monstrosity must have pulled some sort of mind trick over its victims, over the people it sacrificed.

There was a deep chuckle from the tree. There was none of that chalk-on-a-blackboard sound from it anymore. No, when it spoke, it was deep intonation.

Commanding.

Terrifying.

"You think you've figured me out," it said. The voice was deep and resonant. Nothing like the Serpensiril she had encountered. None of that sibilance to it. This... this was a voice she had never heard before. Something was speaking to her through the tree as if through a medium. "I see you understand the situation now."

Quinn raised an eyebrow and began to form an ice ball in her hands. She wasn't doing it to distract herself or calm herself. This time, she had a more offensive idea in mind.

"Tell me," she said, "who are you?"

"Ah, Miss Librarian, that would be giving it away, wouldn't it?"

"Well yes, that's why I asked you to tell me," she said, as if he was five years old.

There was a derisive snort from the tree and it shook like it was laughing. Blood dripped down as it did so, plopping onto the ground with sounds that shouldn't have resounded through the clearing but did. Shadows leaked from its branches in vague shapes that resembled the Esposians as they had been in life. The shadow bodies slowly filled with blood, overflowing to the extent that it dripped from their wings and their fingers.

Geneva was pale, but being as resilient as she could, she too was attacking the shadows all around them. The corpse-like blood dolls of the Esposians and the tree, they were all focused on Quinn.

"So what do you want?" she asked, making the ball in her hands rounder and rounder and larger and larger, until it was almost the size of a basketball.

"I want you to disappear," the tree's new voice said.

Quinn was certain the voice was being projected into it. She wanted to know more about voice and presence projection, she was certain there were books on that back at the Library.

"Get rid of me, haven't heard that today yet, but the whole concept is getting old," she said. "So how were you going to do that? Got a villain monologue for me?"

The tree practically roared at her. "Villain! We are no villains. It is you who seek to contain the true power of the universe, who seek to limit chaos. You are the misguided ones."

Quinn raised an eyebrow. "Guess I hit a sore spot, eh?"

Three of the shadow people around them had already fallen, Aradie used an ability Quinn didn't understand, it was almost as if she had laser eyes. She was going to sit down and have a talk with that owl, one of these days, in all the time that she seemed to have.

"You located their weak point?" Even the possessing voice held incredulity.

Quinn paused and smiled, "Like it was hard."

There was a guttural roar from the tree, a mixture of whatever was channeling through it and the tree itself.

"See, I knew it wasn't really a creature, you're just a puppet, aren't you," Quinn said, taunting the thing even more than she had before.

She went on autopilot as the tree lashed out and shadows and blood-puppets attacked. She knew the other three could handle themselves, but still spared a glance as she watched Malakai cleave one of them in two with his sword, favoring it over his bow for the close-quarter's contact.

Aradie dive-bombed, and shot out her ability clearing some of the way for Geneva to finish them off by piercing them through the heart with surprisingly accurate throwing stars.

Quinn, on the other hand, raised her arm, and threw the solid ball of ice to float up into the air.

Meanwhile, she tackled the puppets that the tree sent out for her. The remnants of the Esposians, who were already dead, long-gone. It still saddened her to have to blast them away with ice and water. The latter of which was very effective at diluting the blood and dissipating the entire corpse puppet.

She didn't feel any exhilaration, only sadness underneath the anger at the sheer audacity to have sacrificed so many lives like that. The more of them came at her, the more she realized just how many had been sacrificed to create the tree. And the thing was too busy flinging out puppets at her that she hadn't gotten a definitive answer as to why.

And no villain monologue either.

But with each puppet she dissipated, with each one that she destroyed, the tree grew lesser. It had less power, less presence, and less clout.

And then, just as the branches holding the book began to lose cohesion, she allowed the ice ball to drop. It cast blizzard over the entire trunk, freezing it solid in one go. The tree couldn't move. The last remaining blood puppets splashed to the ground.

"You will pay for this." The terrifying voice said through the ice.

Quinn shrugged as she walked forward to delicately gently begin freeing the book from the frozen, dead branches. "You know... I don't think I'll be paying for anything."

Reaching up, Quinn had to stand on her tiptoes to reach where the book was resting and was only able to because it had shrunk significantly as it withered under the ice.

Just as she was about to touch the pages, Malakai called out. “Don’t touch it with your bare hands!”

Quinn paused and looked back, frowning. He made sense. Why hadn’t she thought to protect herself. After all the crap they’d just gone through to cleanse the Library from the infection of chaos sludge, she’d almost, potentially, contaminated herself.

She examined her train of thought, finding a fog there she hadn’t noticed. Perhaps the puppet master had an effect on her after all. Next set of books she needed to absorb were going to be all about possession.

They were probably in the restricted vault.

Quinn concentrated for a second, sheathing herself completely in a layer of shielding. “Thanks. Should be safe now.”

Malakai nodded, a frown on his face, like he still wanted to warn her from danger.

Boosting herself up with a bit of earth manipulation, Quinn went about the delicate task of extracting the book from the evil tree.

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TADAAAA Hope you enjoyed this one.

I had a blast writing it.

I think the fighting might be too passive and I'll have to beef up the fight scene a bit in edits. What do you think?

Much love

KT