They approached within stone’s throw of the tree-wall, there being a small clearing with several distinct paths deeper into the jungle.

“Now, answer me - where is Zelsys?” Karmesin demanded.

“In the city.”

“Then tell her I am waiting.”

“Why not come to her yourself?”

“I cannot!” the red woman snapped. “The barriers which shield the city will not let me pass. I know not why.”

Yvonne cut in: “Have you visited any of the jungle settlements? Keflavik, perhaps?”

“...Yes, I have. Why do you ask?” Red questioned.

“When a Borean is sentenced to outlawry and exile cursed runes are placed upon him, ones which cause any Borean settlement’s protective barriers to reject him. The cursed marks given to particularly dangerous exiles will temporarily “stain” anyone interacting with the outlaw as a precautionary measure. Dealing with one such outlaw may have marked you… Mantis-woman,” the witch said.

“And who might you be, that you know so much?” the mantis asked indignantly. The slight tilt of Red’s head was enough to suggest a raised eyebrow.

“Merely a witch with sharp eyes for people. I am impressed that you survived Eisengeist, even with that… Truly extreme form of immortality you possess,” the witch smiled.

“Cease peering into that which does not concern you or I will-” Red began, raising the black octagon in her hand as if to aim at Yvonne, but she didn’t get to finish her threat. The ground shook. There came a groan akin to a gigantic tree bending, yet guttural and organic all the same. Then, it echoed again, and its source did reveal itself.

Fifteen meters tall, the figure of a gaunt old man with skin of bark, with a beard of moss and antlers upon his brow, a cloak of vines hanging from his shoulders; he looked not like the leshy Zefaris remembered. Though covered in moss and other natural growth, the foundation of his form was meticulous and artistic, meticulous knotwork and runes alike chiseled into his wooden body. His face was covered by a mask, one not overgrown by moss or worn away by time, one wrought from materials antithetical to a forest guardian. Iron. His eyes, they did burn with an angry, blood-red glow, and from the charred undergrowth sprung forth new life wherever he stepped, yet it was twisted and malicious, thorned and gnarled, and in his wake there came the doers of his wrathful will. Beasts and man alike, wreathed in and snaked-through by vines, overgrown by plants, made puppets for the leshy’s will.

“Accursed beast, I thought I’d gotten that thing to go elsewhere. It will not let us pass or leave,” Karmesin hissed before glancing at the Expeditionary Force. As if to prove her right, the way they had come here closed off behind them, roots and plants filling the gap.

“What… What’s wrong with it? That’s not how a leshy should move. It… It looks like it’s in pain. That mask, it must be the mask. But… What do we do? We cannot strike down a leshy. It is impossible. Even should we damage it, the plant-shepherd will simply rebuild itself from surrounding plant matter.”

“We don’t need to kill it to remove the mask. Red, can you make a miniature Black Rod?”

The mantis froze in place.

“...Physically yes, but it would not do anything.”

“It doesn’t matter. I will create its functional components you just fill in the gaps. How many Subcores do you have?”

“How do you-”

“Zelsys told me, how many?”

“Three.”

“I will include spaces for the three of them, slot them in as appropriate.”

Quickly picking up on what was going on, Yvonne whipped the rest of the expeditionary force into battle-ready state, barking orders and tactics. By what little of the woman’s words she could make out, Zefaris understood that the others would be buying time for her and Red’s plan.

“Are you certain whatever you are planning will work?” Yvonne asked as half a dozen powerful men and women charged off to do battle with the mad leshy.

“Absolutely.”

“Then be quick about it. Gunnar!”

At Yvonne’s call, her husband ran off, pulling axes from his back. His silhouette changed and his run became more akin to the bounding of a wild beast, and soon he was locked in battle with the leshy, relentlessly hacking away at it even as its injuries near-instantly mended. Jorfr was eager to make use of his repaired hammer, smashing plant-puppets into the ground with single strokes and repeatedly freezing and breaking the leshy’s legs while himself defending against any and all attacks. In the span of ten seconds he summoned four different instances of Wide-wuth of the Unbroken Shield. Zefaris could swear that the statues moved in place and struck at the foe in retaliation, impaling plant-puppets with their iceborne spears. Through the rancor of battle, she managed to pick up barks of approval from Gunnar, or at least they sounded like that. Was he… Laughing?

Meanwhile, Yvonne wielded a genuinely unsettling level of snow magic in a support role, creating snow-servitors, illusions, and dazzling arrays of reflected light that blinded and confused their bioarboribous foes.

Zefaris did as Yvonne asked in being quick about her plan, fixing her mask to her face. She projected out her mental image of the miniature black rod, scaling it to be no longer than a meter and a half before she began filling in the skeleton of its arcane circuitry with black ice, adjusting on the fly to make space for Red’s subcores as the rod’s main power source. Its shape was a long, chisel-like triangular prism, with three forward-pointed spikes at its base that would both act as stabilizing fins and prevent overpenetration.

The entire time, she also provided fire support to the Boreans, albeit at a substantially slower rate of fire than was her normal, with most of her focus being taken up by forming the Black Rod. Red did just the same, conjuring huge, spiked blackstone pillars with simple gestures of her hand to impale and impede the mad leshy and its minions. Red’s constructs crumbled near-instantly, yet they were immensely effective nonetheless, clearly an optimized combat application of her abilities.