I took a good look at our surroundings and saw that beyond the withered forest’s curtain of broken branches and discolored leaves, there was a huge old tree. Its height wasn’t so different from the trees surrounding it, but it was obviously thicker. In fact, its trunk was so big and so thick that when I attempted to estimate its circumference by imagining my arms wrapped around it, I immediately felt foolish for even trying. Once we got closer, it would probably look like nothing more or less than a sheer wall of rock.
“Menel.”
“Yeah. That’s the Lord of Holly. He rules over this region of forest in winter.”
Around the old tree, roots as thick as bridges undulated like waves on the ocean’s surface. They were stained black half along their length, probably affected by the poisonous swamp that was covering the ground. Surrounded by those enormous, heaving black roots, there was a stone altar.
“That’s gotta be it,” Menel said.
As we approached, I could hear a Word of Creation booming out. I could tell just by the way it resonated: this was a hex. It was blasphemy. It sounded like a pot boiling and bubbling with all the world’s negative emotions — hatred, resentment, anger, contempt, mockery…
It was a Taboo Word, a type of Word which good sorcerers kept sealed away in the recesses of libraries, concealed from the eyes, and which they treated as strictly outside their fields of study. They were cursed Words that could make air and water go bad, earth parch, and fire weaken and die.
Something was there, speaking that which should never be spoken.
I approached it slowly, remaining alert to my surroundings. With the art of Waterwalk, my feet floated above the poisonous bog and created ripples on its surface as I moved.
The demon standing atop the enormous altar, its arms spread wide as it recited Words, looked like a person, for the most part. It had a burly, muscular body that was covered with hair, and a rugged face that looked as though it had been roughly chiseled out of a rock wall. The strangest thing about it, however, was the huge pair of antlers that were growing from its head; they reminded me of a moose. The demon looked at us, and its recitation slowed to a stop.
“What happened to the gatekeepers?” it asked in fluent Western Common Speech.
“What do you think?” Menel asked back.
Seeing the longsword in Menel’s hands, the horned demon nodded and hummed in understanding.
I was growing increasingly tense.
“I see. If I’m not mistaken… you are Sir William, the Faraway Paladin. And you are Meneldor, of Swift Wings.”
He had intelligence and the ability to gather and process information. This demon was in a completely different class than those that were ranked Soldier or Commander.
“A General…” I muttered. “It’s a horned wilderdemon… a cernunnos.”
The wilderdemon heard me and grinned. “So two noble warriors are here…
This will speed things along.”
The moment he said it, I sensed things rising all around us. Menel and I had both been roughly aware of their presence, but all the same, this was an ambush.
Bizarrely shaped demons appeared from the shadows of the tree’s enormous roots. Some were a cross between a buck and a bull, while others were snake-lizard hybrids.
“They must die here,” the wilderdemon said. Following his words, the other demons prepared to attack.
“Menel, is this distance okay?”
“More than enough. Back me up.”
Menel slowly touched one of the Lord of Holly’s blackened roots. “Lord of Holly, half of the Twins and he who rules the woods from the summer to the winter solstice…”
An oak-leaf pattern had formed on the back of Menel’s pale white hand. With both his hands on the root and his eyes closed, Menel looked almost like a priest in the middle of prayer. Realizing something, the cernunnos tried to give an order to the demons, but it was too late.
“Thy Twin, the Lord of Oak, entrusted me with this…”
A mysterious power flowed from his hand into the root. Although it had blackened and lost its strength, the root now began to hear a pulse, almost like a heartbeat, from the trunk of the old tree.
“The power that makes a lord a lord. I bestow it now upon thee.”
The ground shook and slowly, the roots of the old tree began to move. They ensnared the terrible demons and dragged them into the bog. Squelching sounds and the screams of demons echoed for a while, and then there was silence.
“You pests… So the Lord of Oak was already yours…” The cernunnos had been watching over this from atop the altar. He was quick at regaining his composure; he’d already contained the anger and unease I’d seen on his face for just an instant. “But unless you defeat me, it all amounts to the same.”
The cernunnos muttered a Word, and a halberd formed in his hands. He stood ready for battle.
“I will,” I replied. “For the sake of these woods—” I drew a breath, then held my spear at the ready as I spoke the next words. “—I swear it on the flame of Gracefeel, goddess of eternal flux!”
I charged headlong towards him.
A roar filled the air. The halberd smashed against a corner of the altar, sending countless shards of stone flying towards me. I knocked them away with my shield by reflex, defending myself and Menel, who was behind me.
Right now, Menel was in the middle of transferring the sovereignty of the woods to the Lord of Holly after having received it from the Lord of Oak. He wasn’t completely defenseless, but he was very vulnerable, and there was nothing he could do about it.
“Flame, repel the darkness!” I offered a prayer, constructing a shining barrier around Menel. This cernunnos was a strong enemy. If he suddenly turned his attacks on Menel during the battle, it was possible that I might not be able to fully protect him.
I’d given up the initiative to erect that shield. Intending to take advantage, the cernunnos’s decision was to incant a Word.
“De fumo ad fla—”
But that was a bad move.
“Tacere, os!! ”
My words, uttered with the best timing I could manage, shut the cernunnos’s mouth tight. The next moment, there was a deep boom, and an angry storm of toxic smoke and furious fire erupted around the cernunnos with a force that could have been mistaken for an explosion. Its Word had misfired, just as I’d intended it to.
— The single best opportunity to kill a powerful sorcerer is when thatsorcerer casts a large spell.
That was what Gus had taught me. Long incantations were not something to do unless you were confident you could recite them in their entirety.
But it seemed that my opponent had been anticipating this move as well.
As the smoke spread to the left and right, I chose the right and ran towards the cernunnos, thrusting my spear into the fog. There was the high-pitched squeal of metal grating on metal. The halberd and the spear caught on each other, and groaned under each other’s pressure.
“Hmm. You switched instantly from concentrating on prayer to discerning the nature of my Word and interrupting. Very good, very good.”
There was a gust of wind, and the smoke dissipated. I frowned; I couldn’t see any obvious wounds on the cernunnos at all.
He probably had an almost complete resistance to poison and fire, or maybe all magical phenomena. I guessed that the reason he’d been able to incant without hesitation was because he knew there would be no problem even if it backfired on him. If he could speak the whole thing, so much the better; but it would serve as a smokescreen even if he couldn’t. It was a no-lose decision, and he had ended up using the smoke to draw even closer.
He knew he had an extremely powerful resistance, and he knew that I was a user of blessings and magic. He had read the situation well; it was no wonder he was so composed. It was probably fair to call him a strong opponent. But I had ways to deal with strong opponents, too.