Tessia Eralith
I descended from Hoofy's back, my boots landing on the soft undergrowth with a sound that seemed too loud in the stillness of the Colour Timberland.
The carpet of fallen leaves crackled beneath my feet, autumn's handiwork, the slow surrender of summer to the inevitable turn of the seasons. I glanced down at the glint of my armor, the silver steel that Lady Auddyr had gifted me, polished to a mirror shine that reflected the grey sky above.
It was beautiful, this armor. It made me look like a warrior, like someone who belonged on a battlefield, like a princess out of a story.
Everything, everything to not look up at the Colour Timberland.
But I forced myself. I forced myself to return here, to this place where I had been so afraid, where I had been so helpless, where I had watched my brother disappear into amber mist and thought—for one terrible, endless moment—that I would never see him again.
I was a princess. I was the heir to the Elshire. I could not let fear rule me. A true princess faced her fears. A true princess conquered them.
So, I raised my head.
The Colour Timberland was transformed. Without that sickly amber mist that had choked the air and clouded my vision, it revealed itself for what it truly was: a large, well-maintained garden nestled in the heart of the Elshire Forest.
The trees surrounded it on all sides—oaks and maples and birches, their leaves a riot of red and gold and orange, showering the ground with color.
Below, a vast expanse of flowers still held their blossoms, their petals bright and defiant against the chill of autumn. It was beautiful. It was peaceful. It was nothing like the nightmare I remembered.
It had changed so much since I summoned that Elderwood Guardian.
The forest had healed itself, the way forests always did, given time and peace. But I could still see them: the roots growing from the ground where no trees stood, forming strange yet beautiful formations. They twisted and curved, rising from the earth like the bones of some buried leviathan.
All of those were the limbs, the torso and the head of the Elderwood Guardian sleeping beneath this garden. Waiting. Watching. Ready to rise again if the forest needed it.
If Dad or Mom knew I was here, if they knew what lurked beneath my feet, they would never let me hear the end of it.
They would lock me in my room and never let me out of their sight again; I couldn't manage, but smile at the thought. Was this how Corvis felt with his Unraveler's Company?
Luckily, Grandpa was quite good at giving me a few precious hours to go unnoticed by them. The same thing he had been doing for Corvis, all these years.
Hiding our adventures from our overprotective parents. I had not understood, when I was younger, why he did it. Now I did. He trusted us. He believed in us. He knew that we could not grow if we were never allowed to leave the nest.
Luckily, I seemed to have convinced Aya that I was skilled enough to go alone. Otherwise, the Grephin lady would have stopped me. She had tried, at first. She had listed all the reasons why this was a bad idea, all the dangers that lurked in the Elshire Forest, all the things that could go wrong.
But I had stood my ground. I had met her black eyes with my teal ones, and I had told her that I was not asking for permission. I was telling her what I was going to do.
She had smiled at that. A small, approving smile. And she had let me go.
I had to be here alone. That was the only way this would work. The Elderwood Guardian had not risen for Aya, no matter how powerful she was. It had risen for me. It had answered my call, my desperation, my plea.
And if I wanted to understand why, if I wanted to claim whatever it was offering me, I had to face it myself.
I made a step forward. And for a second, I imagined it all again—the amber mist, thick and choking, the snarls of the monsters, the way their red eyes had glowed in the darkness.
I saw Alwyn's face, pale with fear, his leg soaked in blood. I heard my own voice, shouting for Corvis, begging him to come back. And I saw my brother disappearing into the fog, never to return.
I grabbed my chest and gritted my teeth. The memory was a knife, twisting in my gut. It had been months, but the wound was still fresh. The fear was still there, coiled in the pit of my stomach, waiting for a moment of weakness to strike.
"Princesses," I said, forcing the words out between clenched teeth. "Do. Not. Have. Panic. Attacks."
None of that was real. I was here now, alive and well. Corvis was in Zestier, alive and well. The amber mist was gone, the monsters were dead, and I was standing in a sunlit garden with the autumn wind on my face.
I made another step toward the lonely tombstone at the center of the Colour Timberland.
Around my left wrist, I had a "bandage" made of grass blades—woven tight, almost invisible against my skin.
I used it to conjure a surprise sword with plant magic, a trick Aya had taught me even though she was not a plant mage herself. She always said that having hidden or concealed weapons was a must in a fight.
Surprise was often the difference between victory and death.
I had a lot of respect for my multi-tasking instructor. Grandpa himself had vouched for Aya as a magic teacher. I never really understood how strong she was, but if Grandpa spoke well of her, she must have been strong.
Very, very strong.
I looked at the structure at the center of the garden. The tomb was made of ancient stone, its surface worn smooth by centuries of wind and rain. The headstone stood at the center, surrounded by a low stone fence that had been smoldered by time, its edges crumbling, its surface covered in moss.
It was a suggestive view—a perfectly curated garden, a tomb for someone who had died so long ago that no one remembered their name.
I shook my head. I was not here to gawk at ruined architecture like Corvis would have. I was not here to think about people who had been gone for too long. I was here to prove something. To myself, if no one else.
My heart was still hammering in my chest, but I forced myself to keep moving. I took my wand-sword from its sheath, the blade singing as it cleared the leather.
Holding it with the point downward, I raised it until the tip caught the light.
I called for my plant magic. Mana answered. Core churning.
"Sprout!" I exclaimed, digging the point of my wand-sword into the ground. I fed it my mana, pouring everything I had into the earth.
My orange core—newly achieved, still unfamiliar—was far more able to sustain this than my red core had ever been. The power flowed from me like water from a spring, and I felt the ground begin to tremble.
The earth shook, as if an earthquake were ravaging the land. Roots burst from the soil, thick and ancient, coiling like serpents. Vines rose from the flowers, weaving together into something larger, something stronger, something that had been sleeping for centuries and was finally waking.
The Elderwood Guardian emerged from the ground like a titan awakened from a slumber.
I felt the atmospheric magic tremble at the presence of such a mana beast. Its mana core pulsed like a heart, slow and steady, each beat sending waves of power through the air.
The vines and roots rose and rose, twisting and growing, until the creature loomed over me—an ant before a giant.
The Elderwood Guardian was as tall as the tallest trees that surrounded this lonely tomb. I had to raise my head so high that my neck ached, but now I could see that infinitely lethal mana beast in all its splendor.
It was majestic. Majestic in the way only a dangerous, deadly thing could be so majestic. There was no warmth in its presence, no comfort. There was only power, ancient and absolute, and something that stirred in my gut—a primal wonder and wariness, the kind of feeling that had kept my ancestors alive in a world that had not yet learned to be safe.
The only other tree-like thing that had ever caused such a reaction from me was that giant Watchful Willow that Aya had taken me to train in.
The Hallowed Hollow, they called it. A place of secrets, of ancient magic, of things that the Royal Family kept hidden from the rest of the world. But the Elderwood Guardian in front of me was moving. Breathing.
Or at least mimicking the act.
I raised my wand-sword and boldly pointed it upward at the mana beast. I swallowed my fear, swallowed my anxiety, swallowed every doubt that told me I was too young, too weak, too small for this.
"K-kneel," I ordered.
The command sounded quite embarrassing on my lips. I was ordering around an S-Class mana beast. A creature that could crush me without even noticing. A being that had been guarding this forest since before my ancestors had built the first Watchful Willow.
But it was still a plant, right? Plants obeyed the princess. The Verticil taught that. The Spring Lizard bestowed the forest to the Eralith family and Elderwood Guardians were part of the forest.
Everything shook as the giant of vines and thorns moved. Slowly, deliberately, it descended on one knee—just as I had commanded.
"I did not truly..." I made a few steps back, my heart pounding, my breath catching in my throat.
But then I shook my head. I faced the Elderwood Guardian again. I gathered up my courage, pulled it around myself like a cloak, and I said:
"Relinquish your mana core!"
Once again, the command was quite embarrassing to my ears. It was naïve. It was the kind of thing a princess who did not know how the world around her worked would say. A child's demand, born of stories and fairy tales, not of reality. But still—I ordered it.
The Elderwood Guardian recoiled. Its foliage shook, like the leaves of a tree during a storm.
Was it... laughing? Elderwood Guardians were famous for their high intelligence. Many stories, stories that Grandma Rinia had told me and Corvis during our early childhood, described how they were the ones who had taught elvenkind so much about the forest.
They were unable to speak, but that did not mean they were unable to communicate. The Verticil taught that Elderwood Guardians were the very scales of the Spring Lizard, given life on their own, set to tend the garden where the lizard once "cultivated" its most precious creatures—the elves—and later bestowed it upon my family.
That, obviously, was just a story. A myth. An attempt to explain the peculiarities of Elderwood Guardians. I did not believe it. Not fully, at least. How could a creature like this be the scale of a dragon? Of the Spring Lizard?
The massive tree-like creature then attacked.
It happened frighteningly fast. The mana beast raised one of its branch-like limbs, and in a swift, rapid movement, it fell toward me like an axe. My eyes had barely enough time to register what was happening before I heard the arm crash to my right, the impact shaking the ground, sending a shockwave through my body.
The Elderwood Guardian stared at me from high above, as if it were mocking me.
"You want me to fight you?" I asked, and I did not know if I was being brave or just stupid. "Then a fight is what you are going to get!"
The enormous mana beast raised its arms to the sky. I looked around me and realized that this clearing was the worst possible field for such a battle. I needed the height of the trees to reach it. I could not jump that high, could not hope to climb it—not fast enough, at least.
But before I could devise a plan, vines came sprouting through the flowers. Thick green roots, coiling like serpents, trying to bind me, to trap me, to hold me in place.
My grassword took shape in my hand as my own plant magic fought against that of the Elderwood Guardian. The blade was green and living, woven from the grass around my wrist, and it hummed with mana as I swung it.
I noticed, in that moment, that using plant magic against plant magic was far more effective than using any other element—save for fire, of course. But fire was not going to be a problem. Not here, not now.
So, my grassword, made of magical grass invigorated by my mana, was the perfect weapon against these attacks. I mowed down the approaching roots, avoiding them by rolling away from their grip.
The Elderwood Guardian then came down with its fist, which morphed into a cage—its fingers multiplying and becoming the bars of a prison.
It was trying to catch me. Not kill me. I sighed in relief, despite a certain annoyance deep within me about not being taken seriously.
I rolled away, using wind magic to make the movement more graceful, faster. Then I raised my right hand and pointed my finger at the creature, calling to the air currents of the Elshire Forest. The mist began to dissipate as I channeled my spell.
Galeshot.
Around me, a vortex of wind began to swirl, rapidly coalescing into a projectile of pure wind magic in front of my index finger. As the fist-cage of the Elderwood Guardian came down again, I shot.
My Galeshot and the cage crashed mid-air. The hand of the Elderwood Guardian—huge and wood-solid—splintered into a hundred smaller chippings, each still as large as the leg of a table, each as dangerous as a needle.
With my grassword, I deflected the splinters coming my way, batting them aside like a fencer parrying thrusts. Then I mentally ordered the blades of grass that made my weapon to return to my arm, taking back the shape of a cloth covering my left wrist.
I retrieved my wand-sword. Seizing the momentary distraction of the Elderwood Guardian, I launched myself against it, wind propelling me upward. The tip of my wand-sword connected with the back of the Elderwood Guardian's trunk-like body.
But before the creature could send me away like a fly annoying it, I forced my mana throughout its whole body. I made my mana core roar in unison with the Elderwood Guardian's.
The two cores sang together, a dissonant harmony, and I felt something shift between us.
"You are a guardian of the forest?" I asked through gritted teeth, my body trembling with the effort of maintaining the connection. "Then you will submit to the will of its Princess! Your Princess!"
My mana reserves were insignificant compared to those of the Elderwood Guardian. They were a candle next to a bonfire, a stream next to an ocean. But they were... willing. The Elderwood Guardian's mana was willing to submit to me. Willing to let me draw it as if it were my own. As if it were just an external mana core. My external mana core.
I cried out as I forced my own core to its limits. My mana crashed against the mana inside the Elderwood Guardian, and like ivy climbing a wall—like the decorative ivies of the Royal Palace, climbing the white stone, reaching for the sun—my mana conquered the Elderwood Guardian's, making it my own.
And the more mana I conquered, the more mana I had to conquer the rest.
The Elderwood Guardian sprawled its limbs. It fell to the ground, slumping across the garden, its massive body shaking the earth. Not defeated—I was nowhere near powerful enough to defeat a creature like this—but I had accomplished something else. Something far more incredible.
I jumped from the back of the colossus and tiredly pushed myself over to the front of the Elderwood Guardian. The creature kept its head low as I approached it, its wooden face—if it could be called a face—tilted toward the ground.
I opened my palm. "So," I said, my voice hoarse, my body trembling with exhaustion. "Did I win your mana core?"
The Elderwood Guardian laughed. The strange sound of amusement reverberated from the chest of the wooden creature, a deep, rumbling vibration that I felt in my bones.
"I beat you fair and square, like you asked me to," I said, my frustration mounting. "I fail to see what is to lau—"
My complaint was cut short as the Elderwood Guardian's finger—gnarled like the stem of an old rose, ancient and wise—touched my forehead.
I did not defeat the Elderwood Guardian. I understood that now. I had not overpowered it, had not broken it, had not proven myself its superior in any way. What I had done was something else. Something stranger. I had made it relinquish something to me. Something that was a Beast Will, but not its own.
Yes. I had managed to make the Elderwood Guardian give up what it was guarding the most. A Will of the Elshire Forest itself. The accumulated knowledge, the ancient wisdom, the power of a place that had existed long before the first elf drew breath.
The Elderwood Guardian withdrew its finger. The garden was still.
The autumn wind blew through the trees, scattering leaves across the grass. And I stood there, a ten-year-old princess in silver armor, holding something I did not yet understand.