Chapter 26: Chapter 25: Witness to carnage

The vines carried us up through a bubble of wood. It made me think of vesicular transfer through the membrane of a cell. The manner in which I was encased in a small moving pocket of air inside the wood in order to move me through the larger wood “membrane” of Nymph’s body seemed exactly like how cells wrap things in pieces of their membranes in order to take things into or out of their cell bodies.

Of course, this meant that I was surrounded in complete darkness, for the moment. My grey-elf dark vision, though, still allowed me to see the grain of the wood that made up Nymph’s body as it passed by. It felt weird. I had seen the wooden grain on the walls of the room we spent our lives in, but being in such a small space made it feel somehow more intimate. The fact I was actually looking at the inside of Nymph’s body really struck home as I suddenly saw all those dark and light spots in the wood the same way I would a bunch of blood vessels. This led me to suddenly imagine being inside a person’s abdominal cavity, staring at the peritoneum that lined the organs.

Fortunately, I did not have to live with that image for too long. It wasn’t long at all before II found myself surfacing, and having to protect my face against Nymph’s leafy upper branches.

I could hear the panicked shouts of the village defenders now. I could hardly see past Nymph’s foliage, the only thing easily visible was the orange glow from the frequent flame-thrower belches of flame that created a strobe-light like effect.

“Kikash akabzum, tii-ada zattier.”

I head someone say that chant that Nymph said was for a spell to put out fires. Now that I was hearing it more clearly, and Nymph had told me what the words meant, I was starting to understand the literal phrasing of it better. ‘Kikash’ was supposed to mean wood magic. I also recognized the word ‘abzum’ meaning power, so the ‘ak’ prefix must be ‘aki,’ which means to give.

I have to shake my head over the fact I’m thinking about language at a time like this, where we’re literally surrounded by fighting and death. There’s just something that doesn’t really feel real about it, even though it’s happening right in front of me. My own sensei had prepared me for it several times, that when you are present as a violent attack is going on, it won’t even feel real. This normally causes people to freeze and not respond well.

The truth of the matter is, being chased down by someone with a knife wanting to kill you doesn’t really feel all that different from being chased by a kid who’s ‘it’ in a game of tag trying to tag you. The only difference is the presence of danger, and whether or not you recognize that danger. Failing to recognize it could even have you dead or critically injured before you even know what’s going on.

I’d been involved in about three serious incidents over the course of my life. That’s one incident for every 20 years I was alive. I wasn’t working in a corrections facility or anywhere I would encounter violent individuals regularly, so I was sheltered from it, as many people in our day were. In those few serious incidents one might experience, some form of mental preparation is necessary to break the malaise of complacency that our western culture had encouraged.

Right now, I was looking down at people fighting and killing each other from on top of a tree. There was chaotic shouting. There were the sounds of a few people screaming in agony. It was slowly starting to creep into my mind what it really meant. The reality that people were being injured, most likely in a deadly manner. A lot of them would be burn victims. I can understand those horrific injuries. I was not a wound-care nurse, but I know enough about burns to realize they are complicated and cause a great deal of life-long pain for the victims.

Gradually, as the sounds and sights of battle were processed by my brain one by one, my stomach started to churn and I felt unwell. Even as my consciousness began to process the fact that this was, indeed, very real, there was still some deeper part of me that wanted to absolutely reject what was happening all around me and still pretend it was fake. It gave the entire moment a strange ethereal quality, as though my head was floating. In a way, it felt almost as if I was drunk or had received a head injury.

I looked to the others who had surfaced at the same time as me. Tia seemed indifferent. As a goddess, divine beast, or whatever, she had likely seen people fighting and killing each other countless times before. Levin seemed confused. He was coming into this a lot more like me, but he didn’t even have the life experience I did to help him ground himself.

Rolwen was the one I was really looking to for some kind of direction, seeing as he had been an actual military veteran. He looked down through Nymph’s branches with a frown. Up until now, I wouldn’t have known what a ‘grim look’ would even look like on the face of a 2 year old. Thanks to the power of reincarnation, though, I’d just found out while I was looking at Rolwen.

“Rolwen, you’re the most experienced in this sorta thing, how bad would you say this is?” I asked him. His face grew even more fierce. If the situation wasn’t so serious, that face might even look funny. I was not compelled to laugh in the slightest, though.

“Really bad,” he said. “I don’t have a good enough read of the situation here. If we assume the ones throwing fire are all the enemy, though, I would say they are the ones with the upper hand. They are running around and just causing havoc. The villagers are not doing an effective job of containing them. Best case scenario, the enemy is uncoordinated and just out to cause a bunch of destruction and each one of them are operating independently. This would make them harder to contain, but it also means that they are not supporting each other and should be easier for the villagers to individually pick off.

“Worst case, though,” he continued, “if the enemy is operating in a coordinated manner, then they are the ones who really have control of the situation down there. They’re backing the villagers into a corner with large amounts of overwhelming suppressive fire.”

“The elves are all running around down there,” Nymph suddenly popped in and said. “I don’t really know which of the two scenarios Rolwen just said is more like what’s really happening. Maybe something between the two?”

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“Heh,” Rolwen scoffed and shook his head.

“I can’t speak from experience the same way Rolwen can, but I’d guess things would never fall perfectly into one extreme or the other,” I said.

“Bout right,” Rolwen said coldly.

“Wh-what do we do?” Levin asked in a trembling voice. He looked down at the orange flowers of flame blossoming all over the area, and then back up at us with a pleading look. “Can’t Asa snipe them with that air bullet like Rolwen said?”

“No way!” Rolwen was the one to reject it immediately. “I thought so before, but the tree cover is too damn thick! There’s no way there’s gonna be a clean shot in this, unless Dryad can get her down closer. There’s gotta be something else, though! All this magic stuff… Ah! That’s it! I know! All Nymph has to do is find a way to trip them! If we’ve got the villagers down there actively fighting, that moment of disruption might be all they need to get the upper hand and put them down!”

“There’s not enough ivy vines down there for that,” Nymph protested. “That means I would have to give the energy to the other tree spirits and have them use their roots. I can’t control all the trees. Asa or Tia might be able to, though.”

“How would I control another tree?” I asked.

“Well, the same way I give the energy to the other trees. You would just be the one in control and I would help pass the energy along. That’s how the spell to change things inside my body works. You give a lot of mana for power, and a little bit of spirit energy for instructions. All of us have our roots and some branches touching, so we can work together to get the mana and spirit energy to where it needs to go so long as there’s a lot of both.”

“Alright,” I said. “If you can get the signal to wherever it needs to go, then I can do this. Tripping tactics and disrupting our adversary’s footing was actually one of the main focuses of my style.”

After experiencing the spell to change things inside of Nymph’s body a few times, I think it should be within the realm of possibility to do this without even having to see my target. The spell essentially allows you to manipulate a part of the tree as though it’s your own body. Turning on the lights or sealing the route to the lower floor involves about as much thought as lifting your arm. There’s definitely a lot of fine detail that’s managed by the tree spirit as well. If the intent is just to grab the foot of one of those people shooting flames while they are mid-step, it should work.

The spell allows the trees to carry out your intent, and proper use of intent is another key aspect taught in my school. While unfooting tactics are a technique, utilizing intent is something that’s woven into the very fabric of the martial style I practiced. All I gotta do is form a clear enough picture in my mind of what I’m trying to do, and then send out a will that is certain my intent will be achieved without fail.

As I was about to start putting our plan into motion, Tia suddenly let out a very irritated sounding groan.

“All this is making me hungry,” she complained.

“Huh?” Levin responded. “Don’t you normally not get hungry? You usually get all that spirit energy stuff you need from the three of us, right?”

“No! I don’t want more spirit energy!” She complained. “I finally got my teeth back! I want…” She started hungrily eyeing the people on the ground as she began crawling out onto a branch. “I gotta get down there!” she muttered to herself.

“TIA!” I yelled, but it didn’t seem like words were getting through to her anymore. She dropped off the side of the tree and bashed herself against one of the lower branches in a manner that looked quite painful. With my heart in my throat, the boys and I all rushed over to look down at what had happened. Despite the fact that she just practically did a face-plant into a tree branch, she was now sitting on top of it as relaxed as a panther while eyeing the ground and getting ready to pounce.

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