The army advanced, crushing all in its path and rolling over hills and through marshy soil.

Perhaps, Oak reasoned as he looked over a shoulder at the dozen or so dryads following him, ‘army’ wasn’t the correct term.

Sure, he had spent an entire week training his force, and sure, they were now all equipped for battle, but to call it an army was perhaps an exaggeration.

He had seen many armies in his time.

The army of termites advancing towards fresh growths, the floods of ants matching in their zig-zag formations, and of course the great flocks of birds overhead, flaunting the skies as theirs until they remembered that even the gift of flight wasn’t eternal, and that they too set down their roots for the night.

This wasn’t quite an army, but they were a group of warriors, or would-be warriors, and they were moving towards a war.

“I can hear the crying,” Wisp said.

He nodded. He could hear it too, now. The cries of recently felled brothers and sisters. They were growing close to the enemy.

“Be ready,” he instructed his companions.

They reached the very edge of the woods and paused, all ten of them looking over the field of fallen stumps. The humans were there.

Oak paused, eyes narrowing as he looked across the groups of axe-carriers and big men carrying logs atop their shoulders. They were wary though, more so than any other time where he moved to push their intrusion away. Some were stationed around the edges of the forest, large spears in hand, yawning as they looked into the woods.

He looked to his dryads. No two were equipped the same way. Some carried longer spears, others shorter ones. Some had elongated the blade of their spears while shortening the handles, and some had curved their blades into strange shapes. Long narrow blades and fork-like ends like the split of a branch.

None had anything that looked like an axe, of course.

There were also coverings. Wisp had taken to these. Cloth woven of leaves and vines and slats of fresh green wood, used to cover and bounce off the blows they earned in practice like the thick hide of some of the beasts of the forest.

Oak bent his neck back and took in the sun sitting high overhead. It was the warm hours, when the day was bright and the birdsong paused as the creatures of the sky hid from the mother son’s warm embrace.

He felt the leaves atop his head aching for that light, light that was denied to so many that had been felled.

“We begin,” Oak said. ‘Walk slow.”

Oak had come to realize a few things, about himself, about his enemies, about the world. Things were not as simple as he had once thought.

If he ever found Sister Broccoli again, he would thank her for the knowledge, and curse her for it as well. It was a painful thing to know that you knew so little.

Oak stepped out of the woods to the started calls of the humans set to guarding their kin. Heads turned his way, axes and poles were grabbed in a hurry.

The Destroyer was there, leaning against the shaft of one of his axes. The man glared across the field, then began to bark orders to those around him in the harsh human tongue.

When Oak’s companions moved out of the forests the noises from the humans changed in pitch and tone.

Oak wasn’t alone anymore. This time, this time he would win.

***