This is the first time I feel as if I am back in that day again. As the boughs of the giant tree creak, swaying ever so softly in the warm breeze, the memory grows like a gnawing insect in the back of my brain. Turning, I see it there, a monster made of gnarled wood, the only vestiges left of its face a wide mouth with long and flat teeth.

Near me, the rank three commander groans. She stretches, eyes still closed as she tries to move, only to end up slumping over and sprawling on the wooden ground. The monster stands in front of Jor'Mari and I as we stand frozen by its presence. It looks off, its faceless gaze turned toward the city behind us.

I am back there again, standing on the ramp leading to the highest chamber of the tower. A creature of rusted iron sits in the center of the room, munching on a severed limb, madness ranging all around it. Before, when facing Ferro, I never fully fell back into that sense. But the memory is present now, the same sense of fear stirred by a creature merely standing there, unbothered by my presence.

My back connects with Jor'Mari's chest, and I realize I have been backing away. He stands behind me, shaking. Whether it is from rage or terror, I can't say. The thought of taking my eyes off the monster in front of me to check is impossible.

The creature's neck creaks as it looks down. It waits a moment, taking all the time it wishes to stare down at the city. There is a boom of sound somewhere far below. The monster's full body seems to creak as it peers over the edge. "A little early," it mutters.

The attack comes without preamble. The light of its soul presence explodes off of its wooden skin, racing to eat up the distance between us. In less than a second, it pours toward us, a wave of different colored flowers growing along the tree behind it. I take to the air, releasing a torrent of dragonfire at the approaching bloom as I force my aura out.

The flowers take in the magic, some wilting and charring as heat is poured upon them, but others drink up the dragonfire like sunlight. I only make it ten feet off the ground before a wedge of the flowers detonates, sending shards of wood flying like shrapnel. The splinters plink off my hardened skin, leaving me unharmed, but that is only the first attack. A shadow blocks out the light from above as a gargantuan limb of the dead tree lashes down toward me. The speed of the branch belies its size, cutting through the air far faster than anything that size should be able to. Yet, I am still faster.

The body of the demon below is flattened to paste as the branch slaps down. It is like watching a bull whip a fly. There is a cry below me, Jor'Mari yelling as he leaps forward with the still-infused weapon. The monster still lingers, looking over the edge of the tree at something we can't see. The grains of sand I summon from my vault turn into useless mush as they appear in the air around me. I'm still inside the monster's presence; my sand is useless to me inside of it.

As he swings his sword, the monster finally turns its attention away from the city. The motion is slight, just an almost imperceptible turning of its head. Then it moves, flowing backward without any apparent use of its body at all. I realize at the same time as Jor'Mari does that the tree itself moved the monster, the bark rippling and flowing as it stands upon it. Jor'Mari's swing cuts down, the edge of the sword burying deep into the flesh of the tree.

He is already moving before I see the kick coming, ripping the sword from the ground and putting his hand behind the flat of the blade. The bark creature's foot connects with the flat of Jor'Mari's greatsword. The enchanted metal bends, a wave travelling through the sword as the enchanted steel ripples from taking the blow. Jor'Mari manages to hold the strike on the blade, manages to save himself from the monster putting its foot through his stomach, but the weight behind the blow is too much to absorb.

His feet leave the ground as he sails back. Jor'Mari travels in a straight line for nearly a hundred feet before he begins to drop into open air, the greatsword spinning and falling to some place far away. My eyes meet his as he begins to plummet. Now, there is fear in them, but I don't think it is for himself.

That is when my attacks arrive. Two blasts of dragonfire erupt on the tree, the plumes of blue fire forming domes for the brief spans of their lives. When the light fades an instant later, the flowers littering the spot stand frozen, their petals made brittle. None explode.

The monster isn't there. Moving inside my soul presence, I never lose track of its movements. More beams of dragonfire rip from my palms as it slithers across the tree below me, racing in my direction. I try to lead the creature, flying back and away from it as fast as my wings can carry me, but I can't manage to compensate enough. It weaves as it moves, flowing easily to the sides to avoid the clustered blasts. It runs along the twisting branches of the tree as if they were ground.

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For ten whole seconds, I climb and spiral through the twisting and grasping limbs of the tree around me, channeling as much magic as I possibly can to burn away the approaching monster. I never manage to land a hit.

Ten paces away from me, it jerks, turning at a sudden angle as I vomit forth fire, avoiding me completely. As it runs over the limb of a tree, I notice the position of the branch, just too late. The branch releases the tension of bending, swinging forward like a catapult, its payload the eyeless monster. Then, it is in front of me, so close I can see the splinters in its teeth, its armed cocked back to deliver a punch that will crack my head open like an egg.

A barrier of shimmering force surrounds me as I use the charge in my crown to protect myself. At the same time, a literal half-ton of sand appears in the air around me. In the fraction of a second I still hold connection to the sand, I pour in as much dragonfire as possible.

A wooden fist appears from the cloud of blue light around me. As the knuckles crack into the field of force surrounding me, I watch as the barrier magic flexes, distorting around the raw power inside that hand. Then, the world explodes.

The shell of the barrier hits me in the legs as it is launched at me, and I feel like I just fell forty feet to land on locked knees. The spherical barrier sails upward, exiting out of the cloud of blue dragonfire. It cracks away in the air. Still dazed, I only realize my wings have vanished, somehow dismissed by the spherical barrier enclosing me. Before I can recover, my back hits the lip of another wooden platform. I flip, tumbling over the edge of the long platform, sliding to a stop with a face full of splinters.

My hand doesn't move when I try to push myself up. There's something broken inside. I can feel the rush of my vital energies converging on the damage, but I can't conjure the picture of it in my mind. I can't even tell if the sensation of ice on the back of my neck is from blood trickling down my skin or if it is a trick of a damaged brain. My fingers wiggle, just enough to help me turn my head.

I'm not alone up here. Forcing an inhale, I see through my returning vision vague shapes of yellow light. The light solidifies into a man standing in the center of a runic circle. Sweat runs down his face as he holds his hands together, as if in prayer. He watches me from one eye, his other still screwed shut in concentration as magic ripples around him. Before the man, a pillar of crimson metal stands. On either side of the pillar, two walls of light fidget in the air, flashing, fading, and reappearing, inching toward the crimson pillar. There is something about the pillar, something in it that tugs at my soul, trying to suck me in and downward. That thing is dangerous.

The wooden monster lands in front of the man, not even a hint of the wood shuddering at it thunders down. My vision begins to tunnel, and I think that I might be passing out for a moment, only for me to realize that I am sliding away. The dead tree I lay upon ripples, carrying my body nearly a hundred feet away before coming to a rest. It is injured, obvious scorch marks slowly healing on its edges, and pockets of black on its wooden skin, holes bored through deep enough to expose muscle and bone to the air.

Still, I can hear them. The wooden monster looks at the man with the glowing walls, no doubt another one of these creatures in disguise. It says something to him in a tongue I don't know, one I have never heard before. Their conversation is quick, the man answering back in the same language to obvious demands.

The entire tree shifts beneath me as the monster turns to look at me. I manage to get a hand up, pushing myself up. My wings won't manifest no matter how hard I call on them, no matter how desperately I try to force the magic. I still can't feel my back.

The wooden monster moves strangely, wiggling its flat hand forward as if pushing through water. Then I see it, a branch as wide across as a city street, twisting in the air like one of the tentacles of the slain demon, copying the monster's movements exactly. When the creature chops forward, it strikes, cutting through the air like a spear right at me.

More sand spills onto the ground around me. My soul presence presses down, but it continues to stab forward. My wings won't come. My legs won't move. I stare down the point of the branch, desperate plans flashing through my mind. I gather magic in my hands, preparing to blow myself off the side of the tree and hope to survive the fall to the city below.

A shadow passes in front of me before I can detonate my magic, a tall form blocking out the crimson light shining down from overhead. The tip of the branch meets the figure, and the shaking from the collision is like the world ending. The branch splits on the crossed blades swung forward, splitting down the middle beneath its momentum. Two halves of the wooden limb slide past me, cutting a groove into the bark, the sound and ungodly screech of horrifically heavy wood cutting across itself. The cry of the splitting wood and the shaking of the injured tree seems to drag on forever, but it can't be more than a second or two.

When the noise finally dies, when the ground stops convulsing, the figure standing over me turns into the light, looking down at me. I can't understand what I am seeing. The confusion is too much that I call upon Volaash's Eye to tell me I'm not hallucinating this, damn the migraine that will follow. A window appears above the tall man, somehow framing him in the red light of the moon.

Halford Devardem<Level 112>(Rank Three) Avatar Conflux<Strength Specialist><Speed Specialist>

"Hello, Charlie," my brother says.

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