The Eater of the Dead is a newly-revealed enemy of La Réunion. It seems to be a powerful Negatively-aligned Sea Creature that, according to the results of the interrogation of the few mermen we could capture, subjugated multiple mermen tribes in recent years. Its origin and appearance are unknown, but it seems able to utilize other beings, alive or dead, as vessels of its power. Its actual name is , but under the Sire of the Garden's recommendation, we shall not use it.

Preliminary report on the solstice celebration attack on Saint-Louis by Colonel Reynaud.

Names have power, and octopus ink isn't the best substance to write about that creature with.

Addendum to the report from an unknown author added to the original document. Warning suspected to be from the Lord of the Garden

“Not a failure, then.”

The old Elf whispered, pleasantly surprised. Damien was still pulsating with the enormous amount of Mana and Essence he had exposed himself to. The boy had been delivered to his Garden less than an hour ago. His father had been desperate, knowing full well that the damage his son had inflicted on his own Astral Body was too great for the human non-magical doctors to heal. The island’s Intendant had begged for his help through the Mirrors before being forcefully removed from the Vaults.

Of course, he would have ignored most pleas for help, especially from a man whose family still owed a blood debt to him, but Lëordan’s curiosity had been piqued by the circumstances of the boy’s mutilation, and he had to consider his own links to him.

He began undressing Damien, noting expansive burns along his arms and his hands, as well as shards of steel and horn. However, this wasn’t his gravest concern.

“Why did that young fool carry my first total success with him while carrying out a Ritual that was obviously going to blow up in his face?” The Elf asked himself in a falsely calm tone, livid with rage.

The baby -Halla, was it? - had taken the brunt of Damien’s failure. When the Enchanter’s parody of a Spellsword couldn’t bear the pressure of Essence and Mana, its metal shattered, and the artifact’s keystone, the Horn of a local Crowned Boa, violently exploded, its shards grievously injuring the infant Half-Elf and the boy.

The Archdruid sighed and began his work, stabilizing Damien in a Stasis before beginning to work on Halla. The Pine would have to wait.

Damien woke up with a start, feeling atrociously painful pins and needle in both his arms. An aged voice welcomed him back into the world of the living. “You have succeeded, blood of my blood. The Eater of the Dead retreated.”

The young Mage looked around, recognizing the place from his father’s description. The pine trees, the smell, the tug he felt in his heart… “Am I in the Garden?”

“Yes. Do not try to bow, you’d undo hours of work, young imprudent.” The voice answered. Lëordan entered Damien’s field of view. He’d never seen the unofficial Master of the island before, but upon seeing him, he felt… unimpressed somehow. The Demi-Human before him looked distinctly old, in a way that didn’t impugn the fabled handsomeness of all the subspecies of Elves, but was strangely familiar.

“You’re as restless as your damned ancestor. You’d think an Ember-caller would be calm and able to await his hour, but you’re both hungry for the world… If only my sister could have fled your Divine bootlicker of an ancestor, none of us would be here today.” The Elf remarked, his voice sorrowful.

“Your… sister?” Damien, slightly overwhelmed, asked.

“Ah, yes, you wouldn’t know, I suppose… My people didn’t treat Half-Bloods kindly, at the time. Your House De Carné’s founder, Domitius Ahenobarbus, is also your mother’s faraway ancestor, through the rape of my dearly departed sister,” The Elf casually explained. “As such, you would be something of a nephew to me, though your Elven blood is so diluted that only your heart is close to resembling a Half-Elf’s. Here, to show your affiliation.” He said, showing him a peculiar wooden orb and putting it at the boy’s side.

Damien, for once, had no idea what to say. He looked around, hoping to find Halla.

“The baby is safe for now. She will need to spend most of her childhood here to fully recuperate.” Lëordan explained, having swiftly guessed the cause of Damien’s concerns.

A wave of guilt and shame washed over the boy. Without Halla’s Essence resonating with his own, he would have failed to send his Elementals to the harbor. However, it seemed that that success had cost the innocent Halla dearly. Between her injuries and the loss of her parents, that he still felt -knew- he could have prevented, Damien decided that he owed too much to her.

“May I see her?” He asked the Elven Archdruid.

“I will entomb her shortly. You may watch, but not interrupt me. The ritual is more than exacting.” Before Damien could react to that, roots surged from the ground and immobilized him, carefully avoiding his burned arms.

Meanwhile, Lëordan shuffled behind the incapacitated teen and delicately embraced an unconscious Halla that laid on an operating table of sorts all the while. The roots, decidedly vivid, dragged Damien in a half-turn, allowing him to see a Pine sapling alone in a clearing. Unlike all the other trees in the Garden, which appeared mundane or quasi-magical at most, this one felt to Damien’s newly-attuned senses like a beacon of Magical might, comparable to the dread presence that had hidden behind the undying mermen. Lëordan knelt before it with a measure of respect that felt unusual to Damien. Then he shoved Halla into it. The baby and the Archdruid’s hands disappeared near the trunk. Damien blinked. Lëordan withdrew his hands from inside the tree, but the little girl had disappeared.

“What have you done?!” Damien screamed in horror. Before he could insult the Archdruid, more roots gagged him.

“Nothing I haven’t lived through myself,” Lëordan replied, his tone bleak. “When a Druid is grievously wounded, if he knows the correct rituals, he may rest inside the greatest tree of a place of power. I should know... I spent a millennium and a half in such a hibernation after failing to exact retribution on your ancestor and his patron Cacus, the Ruin of the Wilds. An abomination of Ash and Faith”

Damien spent the next week tied up in his bed of grass. After a few hours, it had become evident to Lëordan that he would not get the young mage to stop trying to move around. The Archdruid resolved soon to renew the restraints he’d first cast on Damien when he consigned Halla to the Tree if only to prevent him from hurting himself. To occupy him, he subjected the Conjurer-Enchanter to an intensive course on the Garden version of Conjure Familiar.

“Unlike the usual version used by most mages before the Beast Tides, this variation of the Spell is attuned to be cast here and only here,” Lëordan explained. “It uses the confluence of Leylines that the Tree feeds on to assist in the shaping of the Familiar, making them smarter, and more likely to change with time. That spell’s the result of the works of a young Wood Mage I met a few decades ago, about four and a quarter-century after I woke up from my regenerative sleep.”

Damien nodded, impressed by the anonymous mage’s competence. Conjure Familiar was an ancient spell, that had been improved upon and iterated over for centuries, even before the advent of Spellcraft. That someone had managed to improve it so much and shared the Spell-Formulae with an Elven Archdruid, was an impressive feat indeed. Learning the Spell, even if it was Tier 1, kept him occupied for two full weeks.

“Excuse me, Damien.”A familiar voice made the teen jump. For the first time, Lëordan had actually let him stand up. He turned on his feet to behold Colonel Raynaud and Roland.

“What are you two doing here… sirs?”

“Well, we came to observe your first Conjure Familiar, of course.” The Colonel answered, visibly surprised by the question. “We wouldn’t let a Garden Invocation proceed unsupervised.”

“Ah, I see you arrived” Lëordan’s voice resounded in the Garden. “We are ready to proceed, the Circle is drawn. Damien knows the Spell as well as he ever will.”

The trees parted, leaving a trail open to Tree’s clearing. A Circle was drawn around the shining Pine, more complex than the ones that controlled Saint-Louis’ defenses as far as Damien could determine.

“That Summoning Circle keeps getting more complex… Did you alter the Spell’s Formula further, my lord?” The old Colonel asked as his training as a consummate Conjurer took over.

“I haven’t, Colonel. Don’t you remember what I told you? Magic is alive. Ignoring this is one of the failings of the Imperial Magic System, for all the boons it grants your species.” Lëordan explained, his voice dismissive. “Even your friend Sinoë could tell you this… Where is she? I trust she wasn’t hurt by the Eater of the Dead?”

With a sigh, The old Conjurer bid the Molten Oreade to manifest. Predictably, her appearance triggered a small fire, that the Archdruid smothered with a gesture.

“We shall speak later, young one. For now, let us begin. Damien, enter the Circle, and begin with what you called Sun-fire.”

Damien entered one of the Summoning Circle’s satellite Protection Rings and began channeling his Sunfire mana, shaping it into the relatively simple Spell. The Circle illuminated itself, emitting warm, golden light that concentrated itself on one of the Pine’s smallest branches -almost a twig- before slowly taking a more discrete shape. First to materialize were a pair of white-feathered wings. Then came the – three? - golden feet, small, but each tipped with four shining talons. The bird’s body took form, then its golden beak. The eyes of the strange, albino crow opened. They were two pools of radiant, almost liquid light. Just as it opened its beak to croak, it lost its balance. Damien, seeing an opportunity, began to cast the second part of the spell, seeking to establish an Empathic Link with his prospective Familiar.

… The being ignored the attempted connection, standing back on its legs without even making eye contact.

Damien tried again to establish a link, but the little white bird simply didn’t bother to acknowledge the Conjurer’s efforts. Damien turned toward the maker of the Summoning Circle, who was observing the scene with an amused expression, the corner of his lips trembling slightly.

“Do you know what’s going on, Sire? It’s like it ignores my Emphatic Links! It shouldn’t be able to do that!” Damien asked, trying to hide his irritation at the Archdruid’s badly-concealed mirth.

“It seems to be a property of your Sun-fire… That little bird is emitting quite the amount of heat, too, though the Circle is protecting us against that. I would wager something in it is protecting it from the second part of the Spell. Happily, there’s a simple way to weaken it…” He winked at Damien. “Call the other, and let us see how this goes, hmm?”

Damien looked at his tutor and the Colonel, hoping they would intervene, maybe even explain what was going on. Roland simply shrugged, while the old soldier coughed and looked aside, not eager to contradict the Elven Archdruid in the least.

With a sigh, Damien channeled his Conjure Familiar a second time, filling the Invocation Circle with Ember mana. Once again, the mana, this time a mass of dark red, almost solid light, took to circling around the Pine, forming a rope-like structure whose extremity reached the same branch the three-legged crow was resting on.

Seemingly offended by the yet-unformed invader, the bird attempted to peck at the mass of unformed Ember. The mass of mana hissed at the aggression, its surface brutally changing from elemental mana into triangular scales. The Familiar’s extremity – a triangular head reminiscent of a viper’s – opened itself wide, revealing a pair of fangs shining with a warm glow.

The scales on the head of the snake bristled and stood up. It lunged, trying to catch the crow’s head in its maw.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Damien said, sending an emphatic order to cease to the serpent. To his surprise, it actually worked. He touched the arcane process that served as the creature’s mind, feeling its surprise and its will to be left in peace by the shiny, noisy bird… Or else. The black-and-red eyes of the viper shimmered at the last thought.

I need you to rough up the bird a little, Damien thought at it. It’ll stop you from napping, otherwise, he added hesitantly.

The incentive proved effective. The snake immediately requested more mana from Damien via their link, and once sated, a crimson glow suffused it from under its scales before it lunged another time at the tripedal bird with a furious ‘hssssssssssss’ that reminded Damien of the sound of droplets of water on a campfire.

Lëordan burst out laughing at the sight of the furious snake chasing the helpless crow into the air. First, it tried taking refuge on top of the Pine sapling, but the snake seemed more than proficient enough to scale it, and when the bird tried to fly off, the snake jumped and took it in its coils. Panicking, the crow finally ceased to ignore Damien’s entreaties.

Where the snake’s mind had been a simple thing, seeking respite or satisfaction, the crow’s was both more or less. The being was made of certainty, and seeing itself challenged was beginning to seriously damage it, not to mention the wounds the snake was inflicting to its physical manifestation.

Submit, and I’ll help you escape it, Damien told it through the Empathic Link.

Just when it was going to finally bow its proud head, something shiny flew into the Circle, just in front of the two entangled Familiars. Humans and Familiars blinked, looking at the golden little objects. Damien examined them from his attending ring, then recognized them. “Burn-pine nuts?” He exclaimed. He turned, observing the Elf, who was affecting to ignore his insistent gaze.

His eyes returned o the pair of Familiars. They were taking turns gobbling up the Fire-tainted nuts, hissing, and cawing happily. Observing the rapidly-diminishing pile, Damien felt a sense of dread. “There’s an uneven number of nuts” He murmured.

Just as he anticipated a spat between the Familiars for the last delicacy, the crow moved, lightning-quick. One of its talons split the nut in two. It devoured a half and nudged the snake to take the other. Seeing that, Damien finally let out a laugh at their antics.

“Well, now I know what to call them,” he guffawed. Reestablishing and consolidating the Links with both creatures, he deactivated the Shield and petted the bird on top of the head.

“You’ll be Solomon, since you like cutting things in half so much.” He turned to the snake and tickled it under the maw. “And you will be Sheba, since you like waiting for it to solve the problem for you… Don’t think I haven’t felt that!”

Laughing, Damien turned his back to the Pine, and asked the two men. “Is it time for us to go home?”