Chapter 4

John

John started pacing as he considered his mission for the day. They were going to try and remove a weeping willow. Even though he did not see too many of them on his first day out, It turned out that he just hadn’t gotten good enough at spotting them yet. In the last week he had explored the area around camp every day and learned that weeping willows were everywhere. His previous plan of ignoring them and plant elsewhere would leave half of their arable land blocked by a creature they don’t know much about, so killing them was their new option.

The plan was for Sam and Camille to go with John to the weeping willow nearest to camp and to figure out the best way to kill it. They left planning to go fast. The camp’s defense would be understaffed the entire time they were gone, and just because the camp hadn’t been attacked yet didn’t mean it wouldn't be in the future. They hiked the five minutes it took to get there, and then started to try various tactics.

The first thing they tried was flaming arrows. Unfortunately, green wood was green wood even if it came from a monster. The flaming oil smeared arrows stuck in the bark and burned, but the fire did not spread at all. If they wanted to burn it down then they would probably need to start a fire big enough to burn down the whole forest. Since it didn’t look like the easy way was going to work, they started trying to chop it down with axes. To even start this john had to ground himself with an earth and act as bait for the branches while Sam and Camille cut the branches down. After an exhausting few minutes all the branches that could reach them were cut and they could set about chopping down the trunk. Before they were even a third of the way through their first axe shattered as it was brought down. They continued cutting with the other two axes, and succeeded cutting down the tree at the cost of both of them breaking.

After that the three of them started to get ready to head back to camp, but before they left they noticed another problem. The grass had started dying in a circle around the stump of the weeping willow. They stayed to watch how far it spread and saw that the grass stopped dying after around a thousand feet. The trees within the circle were still alive, but they had obviously been affected by whatever killed the grass. The trees trunks had taken on a greenish hue and were dropping leaves despite the season. The trio quickly examined the ground and made sure it wasn’t dangerous for the settlers, and then went back to camp to report.

They went straight to Olivia and John started off the conversation by saying

“We might have a problem. I think the weeping willows are going to be a lot harder to remove than we hoped.”

Olivia put down the paper she was working on and looked at John.

“That's unfortunate. Just tell me what the problems are so we can start figuring them out.”

John quickly got to the specifics

“ I see three main problems. First I don’t think we can burn them down without starting a fire big enough to destroy the entire forest. Secondly their sap does something weird to metal; it took all three of our axes just to cut down this one. Lastly, they do something to the ground when they die. There is a circle of dead grass and withering trees a thousand feet across centered on the stump. My guess is we won’t be able to plant anything there anytime soon.”

Olivia brushed her hair over her ears while in thought and then said

“ In that case I want the three of you to mark every weeping willow within a few miles. We need to get people out there logging and prepping fields as soon as possible, and we can’t do that when they might just get eaten by a tree. I’ll update you guys if anything changes after some of the experienced farmers have a look at the area left behind by the one you killed.”

Seeing that Olivia didn’t have anything else to say, Camille, Sam and John divided the area around camp before heading out to mark the weeping willows. John started going through his area methodically. He would mark each weeping willow he found. Once he had gone the requisite distance out, he walked back towards camp again marking any trees he saw along the way.

John repeated this a few times, before he ran into a problem. When he tried to mark a weeping willow on the far edge of his area a screaming demi-human charged out from behind it. It was covered in fur and only knee height so normally he would probably think it was a monster, but it was wielding a sharpened wooden stick as a spear and its screams had enough structure to them he would bet it was communicating. He pulled out his sword and deflected its spear before swinging at the demi-human.

To his surprise he missed. The demi-human was short enough that swinging his sword at it was extremely awkward, and the creature itself was surprisingly good at dodging. John looked up to see that more of the demi-humans were starting to come out of the far side of the treeline. There were enough of them that they could just swarm him, so he decided to end his current fight quickly even if it was a bit tiring. He channeled his earth rune to toughen himself, and punted the demi-human that had dodged his swing. Now that the threat of a spear to the back was gone he started to run away. The tribe of demi-humans chased him. They threw stones, pinecones, and whatever else they could find, giving him a few good welts before his longer legs took him out of their range.

He kept running till his lungs burned and his legs felt like lead. He sat down against a tree after making sure it wasn’t going to kill him, and then rested for a few minutes before deciding it was time to get back to camp. When he tried to move he realized that the adrenaline rush from the fight had been covering a whole host of aches and pains. He was covered in scratches from thorns he ran through while sprinting in the forest, and he could feel welts growing on his back. He did not relish the hike back, so he tried to motivate himself, but the most upbeat thing that went through his head was “At least it won’t get any worse.”

Olivia

Olivia’s day just kept getting worse. It started with a bunch of minor inconveniences. Things like the carpenters arguing for hours over what the best joint was for the wood they were using or a fistfight among some bored farmers who did not have enough work to do, but after that she started to get real bad news. First John, Camille, and Sam told her that the weeping willows were going to be damn near impossible to remove, and then when she sent her best farmers to go figure out what the aftermath of cutting down a weeping willow is like one of them managed to get himself killed just in time to interrupt her lunch. Apparently the weeping willows will keep grabbing at people even after they have been cut down. The farmer had gone up to see if the tree had any useful wood and was pulled straight into the knot in the tree. By the time his companions got him out the tree had eaten away his entire face in what must have been a horrifying death. The worst part of it was that she hadn’t even informed the family yet. She had to go to them soon; or they would hear about it from the rumors she was sure were already spreading around the camp. After that, she had to perform the first funeral of their journey. She knew it was just the first of many, but she really hoped that they would get big enough to have their own dedicated priest before she had to conduct too many.

On top of dealing with all that, she also learned the area that was corrupted by the weeping willow was useless, and would probably continue to be so for years. That area had been the first area they wanted to start farming. The land had seemed fertile, it was close to the settlement, and the wood was needed to build housing. Now they would have to harvest their wood and grow their crops farther away from the settlement without the help of one of their best farmers. Trying to figure out how to deal with all this without putting the settlement's construction behind schedule or making the settlers too scared to go into the woods was giving her a migraine big enough that she wanted to curse whatever god was supposed to be in charge of her luck today. She resisted the urge, because you never knew who might take offense or who might be listening, but she did cut through her food with a bit more zeal than was strictly necessary.

She took her time eating, and was just starting to feel her migraine go away when she saw John limping back into camp covered in blood. She jumped up and sprinted over, nearly knocking the table over in the process. As soon as she got there John gave her one of his joking salutes despite his terrible looking condition. As soon as he finished that he started talking before she even had the time to ask what happened.

“ I’m afraid i’ve got a bit of bad news. When I was out marking the weeping willows I ran into a demi-human tribe. They weren’t too strong, but they don’t seem very friendly and there are quite a lot of them.”

Olivia took a deep breath and said

“ Is there any chance that they followed you?”

John shook his head

“I’m pretty sure I lost them. The bastards are so short that when I started to run away I just left them in the dust.”

Olivia nodded

“ In that case go to the healer and get yourself fixed up. You can give a more detailed report when you don’t look dead on your feet.”

John saluted again, and then walked off as Olivia called for the other adventurers. She cancelled all of their current tasks and set them all to patrolling the perimeter. As they all left she felt her migraine was coming back in force and decided that whoever her guardian deity was today deserved it as she said

“Damn it all to hells”

Snud

Snud lead the rest of the drybolds back to their home. He had been rudely awoken from his nap by bees and had accidentally run straight at an intruder when trying to get away from them. Luckily, the rest of the tribe took his pained cries as battlecries, and his blind running as a fearless charge. They believed that he successfully defended the sacred tree with courage and skill which made his position among the tribe skyrocket. Unfortunately, his blind charge had only managed to chase the intruder off, not killed him. If he had killed the intruder then he may have even been promoted directly to chief. Of course chasing off a normal intruder would never give him such benefits, but this intruder was smothered in the scent of death. This meant they had killed at least one sacred tree recently. Who knows what would have happened if Snud had not been there.

Snud continued patting himself on the back and basking in his newfound authority. The females were eying him with desire in their eyes and his rivals were cowering before him. Once back at the tribe Snud walked up to the chieftain eager to receive his reward. He was confused when the chieftain handed him their best weapon instead of the tender meat or magical fruit he had been expecting. This quickly changed to horror when the chieftain pronounced his reward saying

“Snud Strong. Scare off intruder. Snud chief warrior. Protect tribe”

Snud thought

“No way, Snud not warrior. Snud need to make chief give different prize.”

but before he managed to express those thoughts, he heard the females talking about him. Next he saw Mav; the prettiest female in all of camp beckoning him towards her bed, and before he knew it he had grabbed the spear and accepted his new role.