Chapter 171 — Something Else Was Already Afraid

Chapter 171: Chapter 171 — Something Else Was Already Afraid

He gave the Guardian’s chamber a wide, deliberate berth the following morning, retracing his steps toward the basin and choosing a different passage entirely rather than risk another glimpse of something he had no intention of provoking.

Plenty of floor left that doesn’t involve waking up whatever that was, he told himself, moving with considerably more caution than he’d carried in days.

Nightsight made the going easier than it would have been even a day earlier, the cavern’s oppressive dark resolving into clear, navigable detail without demanding the constant, deliberate effort Hawk’s Eye would have cost him. He moved quickly through the gloom, curious about a passage branching away from the Guardian’s territory that seemed, from the pattern of disturbed earth along its edge, to see considerably less traffic than anywhere else nearby.

Quieter, this way. Good. Quiet’s what I want today.

The passage widened gradually into a smaller, more contained chamber, the massive roots overhead thinning into something closer to ordinary undergrowth, and Arlen felt himself relax, fractionally, at the more familiar scale of it.

That was when he heard it — a low, splintering groan, the sound of old wood under sudden, violent stress, followed by a heavy, crashing impact that shook loose earth from the ceiling in a fine, drifting rain.

He went still, senses sharpening immediately.

That’s not the Guardian. Different sound. Something smaller, but not small.

He crept forward carefully, keeping to the chamber’s shadowed edge, and found the source a short distance further on — a massive, twisted shape tearing at the earth with root-like limbs, bark-covered and ancient-looking, considerably more animated than any ordinary tree had any right to be.

Treant. Rotwood, from the color of that bark. Rank Five, if the guild notes hold.

It wasn’t hunting, he realized, watching it a moment longer. It was digging, frantic and disorganized, tearing through the chamber’s soft earth with a kind of desperate urgency that struck him as strange for something normally described as slow and territorial.

Displaced, he thought, recalling Osric’s old theory about the goblin colony weeks earlier. Something’s pushed it out of wherever it actually belongs. The Guardian, probably, expanding its own territory.

He considered, for a long moment, simply leaving it be. Whatever had unsettled it clearly wasn’t his business, and a Rank Five Treant, regeneration and all, was nothing he needed to go looking for on a floor that had already shown him exactly how far above his comfortable footing real danger could sit.

The Treant noticed him before he could properly decide.

It spun with a speed that defied its considerable bulk, root-limbs whipping toward him in a wide, indiscriminate arc, and Arlen threw himself sideways on pure reflex, Hawk’s Eye tracking the strike’s full length even through the chamber’s uneven dark.

Didn’t want a fight. Getting one anyway, apparently.

He rolled to his feet, sword already rising, and found the creature bearing down on him with a fury that felt less calculated than simply desperate — a cornered animal lashing out at whatever crossed its path rather than a predator hunting deliberately.

Doesn’t make it less dangerous. Might make it more, honestly.

He backed a step, assessing, and called on Weaver’s Mastery the instant it lunged again, spinning a length of fine, strong silk to catch one of its striking limbs mid-arc. The thread held, barely, the limb’s considerable force straining it near to breaking before the Treant wrenched free entirely, splintering bark where the silk had bitten deep.

Stronger than Web-Silk Binding ever would have managed. Still not strong enough to actually hold it.

He gave ground rather than press forward, circling to keep the creature’s bulk between himself and the chamber’s narrower exit, buying himself room rather than committing to anything reckless.

It came at him again, root-limbs converging from two directions at once, and Arlen called on Storm Step to close the gap rather than widen it — inside its reach felt safer, suddenly, than anywhere its longest limbs could still find him.

He drove Edgeline Strike into the trunk’s exposed flank, and felt the blade bite deep, sap welling dark and thick from the wound. The Treant shrieked, a dry, splintering sound utterly unlike any animal cry, and its wound, even as he watched, began visibly, stubbornly knitting closed.

There it is. Regeneration. Guild notes weren’t exaggerating.

He pressed the opening anyway, gathering heat along his blade, and drove Ember Touch’s concentrated warmth into the same wound before it could fully close. Smoke curled from the blackening bark, and the healing, at least for the moment, visibly slowed.

Fire. Fire actually costs it something. Good to know.

The Treant retaliated before he could press the advantage further, a root-limb catching his shoulder with enough force to send him sprawling hard across the chamber floor, his sword skittering from his grip on impact.

He scrambled upright, gasping, Vitalflow Endurance already working beneath the pain to keep his body answering when every instinct screamed for it to simply stay down, and dove for his fallen blade a half-second before another strike would have caught him fully exposed.

This isn’t going the way I planned. Isn’t going the way anything’s gone in weeks.

He caught his footing, sword back in hand, and found the Treant already recovering, its earlier wound half-healed despite the fire’s earlier interruption, considerably less impressed by his efforts than he’d hoped.

He backed toward the chamber’s exit again, breathing hard, and understood, with the same cold, settled clarity that had once carried him through Millbrook’s terrible night, that this fight had not yet decided which way it intended to go.

Regeneration outpaces what I’ve managed so far. Fire slows it, doesn’t stop it. I need something better than what I’ve thrown at it, or I need to change the shape of the fight entirely before it wears me down instead.

The Treant surged forward again, root-limbs dragging furrows through the earth as it came, and Arlen planted his feet, Stonebound Stance settling grounded and immovable beneath him, and prepared to meet whatever came next on terms he’d actually chosen rather than terms the creature’s desperate, cornered fury kept forcing on him.