I threw a javelin after our fleeing prisoner, but my aim was off this time, and my spear bore into the soil harmlessly. Beldrak’s mote of fire likewise missed, and the man was already at the base of the giant beech, touched it, then disappeared into it. The monstrous tree shook violently as if it awoke from its slumber. Its golden and crimson leaves started maliciously whisper.

We all three came to the same decision instantly, and we ran to the tree ourselves.

“Who knew druids can do that?” I grumbled.

“I should have,” Trueanvil shook his head. “Though I think it was not an ordinary spell, and I doubt our man has any magic left in him for now.”

“Now the question is, how do we get in?” Jim asked.

“Here!” the dwarf’s sharp and practised eyes have already uncovered the traces of an ordinary door. “Arnold, that’s a task for your sword.”

Before he finished his sentence, Shatterspike already bit into the wood, then I pulled it back and thrust again. Soon, there was a big enough hole for my arm to get through. As I pushed my hand into the opening, there was a shriek, and I felt a tiny jaw trying to tear into my gauntleted hand.

By Jove, how I hate these bloody rodents!

Before the squirrel could chew through my armour, I found a handle and pressed it down. The door opened, Beldrak shouted, and the flames spreading from his palm cooked every single squirrel waiting for us.

“This forest should soon run out of squirrels,” I said hopefully.

“It’s a big bloody forest, lad,” sighed Trueanvil. “Don’t be delusional.”

The room that was hollowed into the tree’s inside was circular, dark and not dry at all. Moist, cold air streamed out through the opened door. Not even Beldrak’s flames heated up the room too much.

“Well, we won’t set that on fire with some kindling,” I remarked.

The room walls were crudely made, and so were the massive spiral stars that run around on the walls.

“Arnold, you go first,” Jim said. “Since you already love the squirrels so much, it’s only fair that you get to be bitten by all the ones lying in wait.”

“Who needs enemies with friends like these?” I asked, then started climbing the stairs.

As it turned out, squirrels did lie in wait. To my extreme delight, none of them attacked me, though. Now that the spirit tree awoke from its slumber, it must have instructed its minions to go for the more lightly armoured enemies first because Jim and Beldrak were getting all the love from the little rodents this time.

Of course, since they also wore proper mail, the squirrels were barely more effective than against me.

We fought our way upwards with fire and steel, barely slowing for the rodents springing ambushes on us. There were chambers carved into the wood at some places. At others, the stairs were like a dark, narrow tunnel that could have been a mile under the earth. At a few places, the sap of the tree dripped into small puddles. The liquid was cold as ice, sticky and black, like dried blood.

Meanwhile, we all felt the spirit tree’s malicious will tightening around our minds. The beech was wide awake now, there was no doubt about it, and now we were racing against time. The druid, no doubt, was getting ready to make some mischief. The tree itself was not strong enough to deal with us yet, but that could change any moment.

We panted, sweated and climbed. We had a long day of arduous march and heavy fighting behind us, and now the exertion of this mad rush towards the top of the giant tree put us at our limits. I felt that we have been climbing for hours in this sombre, moist shaft carved into the living tree. My legs were made of lead. Raising them and putting them to the next step was almost an agony now, but if I wanted to live, I had to keep moving.

Suddenly, when I felt that I could not take one step upwards anymore, I saw the moon and the stars’ light.

The beech’s tip was a great, flat circle, still at least ten paces in diameter. There were six giant branches stemming from the trunk, colossal silver arms stretching into the starry night. The distance was perfectly the same between the branches. Even to my untrained eyes, it was evident that this place was shaped to accommodate magic, and when Beldrak glimpsed the top, he gasped as if punched in the gut.

The druid stood on a branch reaching northwards from where we stood. He was chanting something with closed eyes, a hangman’s knot tight around his neck.

“Don’t let him finish!” Trueanvil cried desperately. Jim and I lurched forward, but too slow, too late. The druid opened his eyes, flashed a mad smile on us, then jumped. The rope tightened, there was a loud snap, and suddenly strange patterns started glowing all around us. The thin lines were forming insanely intricate designs, and we stood dumbstruck for a moment, marvelling the glistening markings.

Then, with a loud thud, the opening which we came through grew shut. Our escape route was closed off.

“What is this?!” I cried.

“Blood magic…” answered the wizard. Even in the moonlight, I saw that he paled under his long beard. “It channels the life-energy into a sacrifice. We have to break the patterns, but I have no idea which ones!”

He didn’t even finish, and the tiefling was already hacking away at the lines while I started to cut off the branch where the druid killed himself.

“Set the crown on fire!” I shouted, as Shatterspike bit into the wood, hopefully disrupting the flow of magical energy. “It’s full of dried leaves!”

The tree shuddered and murmured angrily beneath us, but Beldrak has already regained his usual firm composure and set out to turn the marvellous crimson-gold treetop beneath us into a fiery hell.

The branch I was hacking at had a diameter of a pace at the base. Maybe it was even thicker than that. Even with Shatterspike, there was no hope to severe the branch hole, so I contented myself with sheering off the bark, disrupting the magical streaks, and then cutting deep into the tree’s flesh out of pure malice. I suspect it didn’t cause as much trouble as the destruction of the glowing patterns, but it did make me feel better.

Our combined onslaught started to have an effect. The tree was not called a spirit tree for nothing because its smaller branches started gushing water, trying to put out the fires that Beldrak started in the crown. Simultaneously, the wounds Jim and I opened on the tree’s bark begun to grow close, the intricate lighting patterns glowing on the newly created skin on the tree.

But we have caught the tree off-guard in a dangerous moment, and the destruction we caused had a cascade effect. The fire below is spread much faster than the tree was able to put it out. Where Jim broke the drawing, the magical energy drained into the air, and some threads stopped glistening altogether.

And where I sheared off the bark, the magic’s flow was stuck in the branch of the tree. The lines leading towards the hanged druid became brighter and brighter, soon it was a white smoulder, and smoke rose from the wood.

“The tree will die, or it will not, but for us, it’s time to leave!” said Beldrak, echoing our thoughts. The problem was that we were fifty paces above the crown of any other tree, and the crown below us was mostly aflame already.

“Get your ropes! We have to bind them together!” cried Jim.

I produced my coil of rope, Beldrak his, and we frantically started to bind them to each other with the best knots we knew, while Jim ran out to the tip of the southern branch and looped the end of his rope around it.

Then he started to let down our makeshift cable. He worked speedily but with care so that our rope did not entangle into the lower branches of the tree.

“I go last,” I announced. “I have my gauntlet on. I can slide down quickly.”

My comrades nodded. Beldrak was already gripping the rope, then climbing downwards, the branch hiding his shape from my sight.

Jim counted to ten to give some space to the dwarf, then he started his descent. I counted to ten too and was just about to start myself when there was a tremendous explosion, and the tree shuddered as if in pain. I lost my balance, fell on my back, desperately flailed, and somehow staved off the fall that would have been my death. I sat and looked with wonderment. The disrupted flow of the magical energies tore off the northern branch of the beech!

Then I felt the heat as flames licked my branch at the point where I sat and remembered that I had to make a speedy escape. I grabbed the rope and saw with horror that it already caught fire in one place. I had no time to waste!

Making up for my dallying, I didn’t bother with climbing downwards. I started sliding instead. In my gauntlet, I barely felt any pain from that, and in five heartbeats, I was through the fiery inferno that was the beech’s crown now. Nothing on me was set on fire, though my armour grew painfully hot.

I was hanging in the starry night now, halfway between earth and sky. For a moment, I felt weightless. I even lost my sense of direction. I closed my grip around the rope, and with a sudden, unpleasant jerk, my weight returned.

I climbed as fast as I could without starting to slide again. I looked upwards, couldn’t tear my eyes from the flames that might have spelt my demise any moment now. In my mind’s eye, I clearly saw the fire eating into the branch that we were all hanging on, into the rope that kept us in the air, and in every moment, I braced for a snapping sound, and then the weightless fall into my death.

My arms burned, I sweated, and if possible, those few minutes on the rope seemed to take even longer then our ascent to the top of the spirit tree. Suddenly Jim’s cry stopped me in my tracks. I heard again the night breeze playing between leaves, and looking down, I saw that I was just a foot above an oak’s green crown. Jim guided my legs onto a branch, then I let the rope go.

We all sat for minutes, not speaking a word, just panting and sucking our waterskins dry.

“We have to climb down now,” said Beldrak finally. “The fire could spread here at any moment. I am surprised no flaming twig fell on our head till now.”

He was right, of course. Luckily, the oak we were sitting on was much more accomodating than a beech would have been. Its lower branches were barely a few feet above the ground. We got down, then started marching, away from the beech that was one giant column of flames by now. It was brighter than the moon, more brilliant than any star, and we were doing our best to get far enough from it. But we barely made a few hundred steps before we literally collapsed from exhaustion. Forgetting fires, blood-squirrels and druids, we fell asleep.