"Sound the alarm," I ordered Eran, as we watched the dryad stomp slowly across the flat plain toward the town.

The hunter nodded his head, while picking up his bow and pulling out a clunky looking arrow. He pulled it back, then released the arrow up into the air in the general vicinity of the plain. While it arced through the air it emitted a high-pitched screech that warbled randomly, and became all the worst when at the tail end of the arc before it hit the ground.

The dryad continued the slow approach, an approach that I knew was nothing more than a lie. It was far faster than that, in truth it could probably reach the wall before I could respond in time to stop it. Yet there it was, almost nonchalantly strolling forward over the grass while tilting it's head left and right.

"Why's it taking it's time?" I muttered, while I hunched over near the edge of the wall. The Shatterblade had remained in the form of a spear, I felt that cutting would be unreliable against the dryad and hoped penetration was all I needed.

"Well you said they were sitting back and letting you run away didn't you?" Eran asked, while he pulled out a steel-tipped arrow, and stared out at the dryad. "Seems like it's playing games."

"Maybe," I responded, though I felt like there was still something wrong about that idea. "Alright well once it gets within leaping range I'm going to try and attack it, once I jump try to shoot it in the eyehole."

"Easy," Eran commented, his gaze almost permanently locked on the dryad.

From the south end of town we could clearly hear the alarm arrow of another hunter, as it was fired up into the air. That meant they too had encountered at least one dryad, which would leave Rudicus and Jesson as the main fighters against it. Nala was still working on healing Braddicus, and so had opted out of fighting.

A small group of local hunters began to gather nearby the bottom of the northern wall, they all yelled up if we needed help and I gave a shake of my head. "Check for any dryads sneaking in, this one might be a decoy!" I called out to them, before returning my attention to the matter at hand.

The hunters yelled up a confirmation and split up, one group heading along the eastern part of the wall and the other to the western end. Hopefully they would be smart enough to then head south and follow it all the way to the southern end of town. A sharp hiss came from Eran and it made me focus hard on the dryad, who had made one of those unusual jumps when I wasn't watching.

The distance to the wall had almost cut in half, and Eran began to lift his bow up in preparation of drawing back the arrow. I leaned forward, my right leg muscles bunched up and I summoned as much power as I could, letting it build. When the sensation felt right I unleashed the power, causing a small chunk of the top of the wall to rip free and fly backward. My own body was thrown forward with enough force that I reached the dryad before Eran could even let his arrow loose, and my spear rammed hard dead center on the creature.

The dryad rocked backward from the impact, the spear penetrated into the right side of the chest and poked out the back. Green liquid poured from the wound as I ripped free the Shatterblade, then leapt back away from it. Upon landing I was in a crouch, one hand braced against the ground while the other gripped my weapon.

What came from the dryad was not the strange shriek from before but a harsh cracking noise. The way it sounded called to mind when I was younger and camping near a forest while training with the Legion. A bolt of lightning had come down during the middle of a storm and splintered a tree apart somewhere within a mile of us. The raw power behind the cracking noise had been enough to cause shivers throughout my whole body.

The left arm swung out and sent a shower of needles, a move that caught me entirely by surprise and left me with only the option of raising my arms and spear to guard. The needles drove home, digging into my flesh while a few bounced loudly off of the metal spear. At first the pain in my left arm was severe, enough that I hissed loud enough for even Eran atop the wall to hear.

Then the pain in the arm began to numb, and my eyes widened as I remembered the odd liquid I had seen dripping from one of the dryads previously. The spear was stabbed blade first into the ground, and then I ripped the spikes out of my left arm and threw them as far away as possible.

By the time that the spikes had all been removed my arm was already limp, non-responsive as it dangled pointlessly at my side like dead weight. With my right hand I tore the spear from the ground, and then pointed it in the direction of the wounded dryad.

The creature had taken a few steps toward me, though the body shook violently while green liquid continued to ooze constantly from the hole that went through it. The hands swung up again, but no spikes emerged and instead it could only wiggle little tentacles at me. Once more one of those painfully high-pitched shrieks came from the dryad, and then an arrow sprouted in it's left eyehole.

The shot was well placed, it came in from above and ended up landing at an angle that barely fit into the exposed hole. The shaft of the arrow along with the feathers were clearly visible, while the arrowhead was completely submerged into the darkness of the dryad's eye. With the arrow having struck home the dryad could only screech again in pain, that loud splintering noise.

Before the monster could fully recover I threw the spear at what I assumed would be the stomach, and the silver-colored weapon slammed hard into the exposed body of the dryad. The creature doubled over and was tossed backward, along with the embedded spear, due to the sheer force of the attack.

"Ho! You okay down there?" came the voice of Eran, as he leaned over the wall and yelled down to me.

"I'm fine, it applied some sort of poison to my arm! I can't move it at all!" I shouted back up, though I dared not to look away from the dryad who had been lain out on the ground.

It rested there on it's back, the shaft of the spear jutted out from the body to announce where it was amongst the grass. A slight shudder came from the spear, and then it began to sway wildly as the dryad began to move once more. A cry of surprise came from above, which was followed by the sound of a bow firing once more.

Another steel-tipped arrow sank into the dryad, though this time the monster did not cry out. Instead it merely laid still on the ground as though accepting the fate it had been dealt. A few more arrows slammed down into the body from a high angle, nicely placed by Eran from atop the wall.

After a few minutes I walked forward to the potentially dead dryad, and ripped the spear from the body yet again. This time it made no movements nor noises and instead laid there, while the flow of green liquid from within had begun to taper off. One arrow had embedded itself into each of the eye sockets, while the other arrows were shallowly stuck into the chest.

Better safe than sorry I decided to ram the spear into the head and body of the dryad a few more times, though no reaction came from what was apparently a corpse. With one final stab into the dead center of the body I yanked it back and forth, widening the wound, and then ripped free my weapon once more.

A few moments later I was back on the wall, having leapt up from the ground and landed next to Eran. Upon landing I immediately sagged to the ground, using the spear to keep from falling all the way down. The numb sensation in my left arm had spread a little bit, but seemed for the most part concentrated where the thorns had impaled my flesh.

"Are you going to be okay?" the hunter asked, as he pulled out a flask and offered it to me.

My hand immediately went up and blocked off that potential reward for killing a dryad. "I'll be fine so long as you don't force that stuff down my throat," I told him bluntly. Then I pointed to the chair which he had been using. "Mind if I take a rest break on that?"

Eran nodded his head, before taking a short drink from his flask. "Don't know why you don't like this," he muttered, before turning to look out at the plain. He squatted down, while humming quietly to himself.

♪ ♫ ♬ ♫ ♪

"You should go see a doctor about that," Taryn said, as he stood next to the chair and looked out at the field. "You might be tougher than the normal person, but don't get lazy in taking care of yourself."

I waved at him dismissively with my right hand, though the fact that the injuries to my left arm persisted in the dream bothered me. While I could actually wiggle the fingers and move the arm, the obvious bloody holes drilled in by the thorns were enough to draw Taryn's attention immediately.

"Don't worry, it's just a scratch. We managed to kill one dryad, I'm expecting General Rudicus handled the one to the south as well," I told him, getting him up to date on the happenings.

For some odd reason Taryn stiffened at the mention of Rudicus, before he stepped over to the edge of the wall and peered over it. "Interesting place you dragged me. Well, on my end I arrived at your home earlier today and I was in the middle of talking with your mother," Taryn told me, before turning about to face me. "Then you pulled me in, hopefully your mother is lenient in regard to people going comatose in front of her."

"Wait...I dragged you in?" I asked, recalling how he had started to say something along those lines previously but never fully explained.

"Figures you didn't know," Taryn commented, before he sighed. "I don't know why but you keep grabbing onto me and yanking me in. Sometimes I'm asleep when you do it and sometimes I'm not asleep."

It was information that made me feel quite uncomfortable, and I looked down at the ground to avoid looking into Taryn's eyes. "I'm sorry. You said you're at my home, though? Why did Alise send you there?"

"Dryads are apparently something that Alise considers too dangerous to allow anywhere close to the empire. The only reason she fought them in the past was because Mathias wanted her to have experience against them," Taryn told me, before he started to walk over to me. "She wants me to inform Esmeralda about their presence, and to spread the information about them along with a few other monsters to the Legion. This is the first time Nixi has ever actively maneuvered her pawns into absorbing whole towns, as well as using something on the level of the dryads."

"You don't think it's because of what we did, do you?" I asked, as I finally lifted my gaze up to look at Taryn's face.

"You're the first person to ever be cured, I'm sure she's furious," Taryn said, before he gently patted my head. "I need to step out now, before your mother gets angry enough to punch me awake. Anything you want me to tell her?"

"Let her know I killed one of the dryads," I replied, with a smile on my face. "I'm sure she'll be happy to hear that."

"Strange though...they're supposed to work in groups and not alone," Taryn murmured as he turned away and walked toward the edge of the wall. "Keep your eyes wide and ears open, something is still off."

Before I could respond he was already gone, leaving me alone within the confines of my own dream. For the first time in a while I yearned to wake up, and curled up into the little chair that belonged to Eran.

♪ ♫ ♬ ♫ ♪

Later that day Eran and I were relieved from our guard duty on the north wall. Eran waved bye to me, he headed off into the western part of town where his house was located. I on the other hand headed toward the center and where the poorly designed barracks could be found.

It had taken a few hours of rest for my wounds from the dryad to properly heal, and we had received a quick message from the south wall that everything was under control. So when I walked into the barrack and Nala's makeshift hospital I was taken aback by the condition of some of the people within, the obviously broken arm of Rudicus' and the fact that Jesson had his head wrapped up while he slept on a cot.

"What happened!" I cried out at the sight of my injured companions. I walked into the room and gently closed the door behind me, before crossing my arms in front.

"It was a bit faster than we expected," Rudicus admitted, as he tentatively touched at his arm and winced. "I'll be fine in a few weeks, Nala said Jesson will be good to go in a day. What about on your end?"

"Eran, the hunter I was paired with, and I managed to kill the dryad that showed up at the north gate. It was acting weird, though, I figured it'd just rush in and kill instead of slowly approaching," I commented. "Oh, it has an ability to shoot out spikes which have some sort of paralytic and numbing agent."

"I know, one of the hunters who was helping us got hit with it and went down, spike hit him in the chest and he wasn't able to breath."

While we talked I began to scan the interior of the room, and noted that Nala was huddled up in a corner on her own cot. Her face was buried into her arms, while her knees were pulled in while she sat rather than laid on the makeshift bed. Nearby her, laid out on the floor, were two exhausted looking legionnaires who had been terrorized by her since our arrival.

"Before I split up with Eran I talked about making some sort of ballista. He said he'd talk to some friends, given the legionnaires here we can probably get one or two up in no time," I said, before looking to Rudicus for his opinion.

"A ballista would be good, I noticed that the ordinary arrows worked on the dryads. If they move in as slow as this time then they'll be easy to handle," he responded, before he nodded his head. "I'll have that useless idiot Tiltain help construct it. Some hard labor would probably help shape him into someone better."

"How'd someone that bad end up being the leader of a garrison?" I wondered aloud.

"Simple, his family is rich so they probably bribed someone to give him an easy job," Rudicus explained. "Sometimes I think it'd be nice to gut the people who are constantly bribing one another."

A quick laugh was my reply to that comment, before I shook my head and turned to the door. "Alright, Eran offered me a nice place to sleep so I'll be close to the north wall in case something odd happens. If you need something send a messenger."

"Good luck out there, I'll need to sit back and let the younger kids handle the fighting for a while," Rudicus told me. "It seems like the south side will need the main bulk of our forces given how capable you are."

With a wave of my hand as my only means of saying goodbye, I stepped out of the room and shortly thereafter the barracks. While I stepped through the town I noted how quiet it had become with the fall of the sun, and wondered if it was a common change for the place.

♪ ♫ ♬ ♫ ♪

"Two days," Eran muttered from his favorite chair, placed once more on top of the north wall of the town. He glared out at the plain in front of us, and the forest which rustled in the distance whenever the breeze swept past.

"It is weird isn't it?" I asked of him, while I leaned once more against my Shatterblade. It was in the shape of a spear, I had found the form fitting for the durable foe we should be facing at that very moment.

"The last one just walked up and basically let us kill it, yet now there's none? Are you sure there's more than just the two that have been killed so far?" Eran inquired. "Maybe your source was mistaken?"

"Doubtful, it's one of the few people who has faced the dryads before," I told him. I sighed while shoving away from where I stood, taking the spear with me. The path I took was a short circle that paced around the chair Eran sat on, something he found annoying but had opted out of openly complaining about. "Nothing about any of this is making sense to me. They're so fast yet sometimes they're not, they follow us and don't attack and then sometimes they randomly do. They'll steal horses, but is it planned or mere coincidence? They attack the walls and yet only do it once, and one at a time on top of that?"

"Plus those rumors lately, how people are going missing in town," Eran pointed out. He pulled out one of his many flasks and began to drain it, the conversation had brought out the thirst in him. "Those aren't dumb families either, they know better than to walk around without weapons when monsters are nearby."

"Yet no dryads are sighted in town or near it, there are no entry points beside the north and south gate," I pointed out, before I paused in my walk and glared out at the forest. "You don't think they can fly do you?"

"No wings, plus they look a bit too heavy for that," Eran stated. He rubbed at his chin with his free hand, while putting his flask away on his belt. "Something though...there is something. What was it..."

"Well we know they don't have catapults, I think we'd notice something like that being rolled up outside the walls," I told Eran, though I chose to ignore his random words near the end. If he was trying to remember something any attempt at helpful comments would probably worsen it.

Eran stood up from his chair, his fingers snapped loudly before he looked at me with wide eyes. "I can't believe I forgot it! This is a town on the fringe, it's the only place you can come that has legionnaires in it so tons of merchants love to swing down here and buy and sell goods."

Before he could continue speaking a noise came from the south, a familiar noise that made my hair stand on end. The screech of a dryad that sounded so close it could only come from within the walls of the town. Another screech came forth from the depths of the town, then more followed suit two seconds later. Before long all I could hear was the loud cry of the dryads as they began their invasion. The only thing that managed to sound out over the screeching was the cry of Eran, as he tried desperately to explain something.

"There's a smuggling tunnel that leads outside!"