Chapter Four - The Apple That Falls Far

He had taken a week to prepare. A week with little rest, with only the complete darkness of night conspiring to stop him from working at his new art.

Oak had progressed. He learned and developed new forms with the spear until it became like an extension of his arm. He could pin a leaf with his bow from a dozen paces, and he now knew the shape and form an arrow should take.

New ideas came, and with them he created new tools. Many were failures, some had promise but would take more time to learn. Of all of them the one Wisp had called a shield was the most practical.

The dryad could feel it, deep in his core. He was ready to face the Destroyer once more.

Still, he was no spring sapling. He had considered and thought and learned as he practiced.

When Oak stepped onto the field of battle once more it was nearing dusk, the sun dipping towards the horizon and painting the far sky in orange and pink. There was an hour of light left, perhaps a little more.

Across the barren field of weeping trunks was his quarry. The Destroyer and his men, perhaps twenty in all. They carried axes and saws--the tools of their destructive trade--as they made their way back to their camp.

Oak had plotted this, to strike in the moment when his opponent was at his weakest. This was the way of the Sombral and the ambushing Abomination. This too, was a tool of sorts.

He moved into the open field and slung his bow off of his shoulder in one smooth motion. Arrows sprouted before him with his next step. Long and thin and perfectly shaped, their leafy fletching stiff and straight. He plucked one as one might pluck a flower and nocked it to his string.

The twang of his bow echoed out, but soon it was drowned in the Destroyer's scream.

The man, the monster, turned towards him, anger and pain warring in his eyes. He had a hand clutched over the wound in his shoulder.

A missed strike, but only barely.

The next arrow flew just as true, but this time the Destroyer was ready, and it was met with the head of his vile axe.

The next, too, was split out of the air.

That was fine. Oak could grow new arrows until his pool of mana was dry, and that would take some time. Even with the natural mana of the forest fluctuating as much as it had been lately, there was still plenty enough that he could absorb and use for his revenge.

The Destroyer roared and rushed over, but he was far away still, and Oak’s arrows continued to rain down on him. Soon, the Destroyer’s luck would run out.

Then Oak had to jump to the side as a rock flew through the air where his head had been. He blinked, breaking his all consuming focus on the Destroyer.

The other men were there too, and they were not pleased.

Twenty humans, with axes and poles and knives sometimes just rocks. He hesitated at the sight of them all. He hesitated too long.

The Destroyer swung and with nimbleness he did not have a week prior, Oak dodged the violent swing. A spear sprouted from the ground, and the next blow was parried, then the next.

Oak wasn’t stronger, but he was faster.

He felt the strange tremble of a cut into flesh running through the haft of his spear as he cut into the Destroyer’s leg once more.

The man screamed, but it did nothing to stop the next cut, this one along the upper arm on the side where an arrow still hung.

The Destroyer swung, his axehead glowing, but a tap to the side sent the blow digging into the dirt by Oak’s side.

This was it. His chance to end the Destroyer.

The man’s eyes were wide as Oak took a wide stance, like Winter turning to Spring, his next strike would be inevitable.

Then a rock hit him in the head, an axe buried itself into his leg, and a man pulled the Destroyer back and out of the range of his strike.

Oak grunted as he batted aside a wooden mallet. The motion left him open for a strike in the chest by a long pole. A weak strike. All of them, even the axe to his leg. Weak strikes, but many, and from all directions at once.

Oak watched as the Destroyer was carried away in a hurry. He wanted to go after the man, to kill him at least, but it was too late.

He roared, the noise the sound of a great tree crashing to the ground, and with a wave of his arm thorny bushes tore out of the ground all around him.

The men screamed, some caught in the brambles and thorns. He couldn’t find it in himself to care.

Oak walked back to his forest home, aware of the jeering and call behind him, and ignoring the occasional tossed rock.

He had failed again. Not because of a lack of forethought, but because the Destroyer was not alone.

Perhaps Sister Broccoli’s words about friendship had more meaning than he had ascribed to them.

“Are you okay?”

Oak looked up to fine Wisp sitting upon the boughs of a tree.

Perhaps it was not too late.

***