The Tale of One-Tree, Chapter VII: Proving Grounds
After the group’s return from Glimmerwood and the change induced by the firefly-like creatures in Samira as well as William, Toothy Trudy, the old one-legged gatorman chief, advised William to go to the ruins of Yokté and seek out the vaults of the old bokors in the area to gain their favour, and maybe gain some advice and insight that the living no longer remembered. William readily agreed, with the idea having been growing on him for a while that some magical weapons might also be found in the vaults that could aid the group in the future, especially considering William and his bodyguard Odrys were the only members of the group without access to such powerful items.
After taking a brief rest, the group set out for Widower’s Wood again. The journey was unsurprisingly uneventful, as the group had slain the most dangerous predators in the area not too long ago, and after half a day of walking across the grassy plain the adventurers began finding the ground under their feet increasingly spongy and boggy, until the foliage of Widower’s Wood’s trees closed over them and they were trudging through the pools and pits of the swamp.
Night eventually fell, but was darker than before, with no more fireflies buzzing about, and William and Samira wondered at what had brought about this change. After spending a quiet night on a small dry islet in the bog, the group continued on their way towards where the ruins of Yokté once were. The swamp was even more unforgiving to the works of man or gator than the wilds of Glimmerwood, of course, so they expected to find little of the wooden huts left, if anything, but William did remember the approximate layout of the little dry outcroppings that had used to house the gatormen of Yokté, and the sacral vaults of the old bokors should be scattered about the surrounding area.
When the group was confident they had reached the correct spot – not really far away from where they had killed the swamp horror a few weeks earlier – William and Odrys began searching the bog for hidden entrances, their gatorman constitution and powerful tails serving them well while swimming and diving, while Samira and Roza, who were much less at home under water kept watch. But even after the gatormen had spent the rest of the day searching, they had not found an entrance to a sacral vault yet, and the group settled down for the night, feeling more than a little frustrated and exhausted.
It was during the following night that Roza noticed movement in the darkness, however, and quickly roused the others as hump-backed figures began to emerge from the deep darkness, the water sloshing quietly around their bodies as they advanced, spears in hand. Recognising a party of bog trog raiders, Odrys rushed to stand between the adventurers and their attackers and bellowed a challenge into the night, and so powerful as the gatorman warrior’s cry that the bog trogs immediately froze and, after a moment’s hesitation, quickly ducked underwater and beat a hasty retreat into the sanctuary of the night. Grumbling at having been denied the joy of a fight, Odrys returned to the rest of the group, who didn’t quite share their companion’s disappointment.
But Odrys would not be denied his fun for long, as the group had barely settled down and managed to find sleep again when there was more clumsy movement in the dark waters. This time there would not be a challenge, because this time it was the unliving remains of those who had died in the clammy embrace of the swamp that had begun to encircle the campsite. With raised bottled light in hand the adventures met their foes, and even though the undead were fearless and hardy, they did not long endure the onslaught of tooth, blade, stone and spell, and soon the last body stopped twitching. But it was then that the adventurers became aware of one more figure standing motionless among the mangrove trees – the lambent form of a lone feralgeist had emerged, and it was its eyes that drew William’s and Samira’s attention, as they blazed wit the same pale cold luminescence that they saw when they looked at each other’s faces.
The feralgeist remained motionless initially, but when the group warily approached, it began to retreat further into the swamp as if wanting to lead the group. Noting the creature’s uncharacteristic behaviour, as well as confident in their own prowess, the group decided to follow, and after a short trek through night-dark waters and over grass-covered islets a taller shape emerged from the dark, a shape that William immediately recognised as a sacral vault so covered in vines and plants that it was barely recognisable.
Climbing the sacral vault’s steep stairs after the feralgeist effortlessly floating to the top, the group arrived at a strangely shaped mound, and after clearing away most of the plants, an altar was revealed, with runnels leading away into holes cut into the top of the vault. His bokor training easily allowed William to deduce that this was a sacrificial altar, and the group immediately agreed they wanted to hunt prey worthy of being sacrificed to Kossk, rather than pour just any kind of blood over the altar’s carved stone surface.
The group spent the rest of the night on the sacral vault’s roof, with the feralgeist fading to a barely visible green shimmer in the air as daylight began to penetrate the morning mist. After a quick breakfast, the group then set out into the swamp again, with Roza and Odrys as the experienced hunters, and William as a skilled bone grinder, leading the way looking for tracks left by a beast that would prove a worthy sacrifice. They had been searching for most of the day when they spotted bits of shed skin, examining which told them that a truly great pale tatzylwurm must be in the area.
The group decided to set up a trap for their prey, as they wished to capture it alive in order to sacrifice it to Kossk on the sacral vault’s altar. Odrys and Roza deduced a spot that the tatzylwurm would likely pass on its wanderings, where Samira concealed her wold under vines and plants while William caught a few small snakes and prepared wriggleworm charms from their stripped skeletons to catch the predator’s attention. Samira, Roza and Odrys then climbed into the trees surrounding the site, while William concealed himself in the swamp nearby, and then they waited.
Odrys and Roza had indeed chosen the spot well, as after a few hours a monstrously large pale tatzylwurm indeed approached, drawn to the trap by the noise and movement of William’s wriggling charms. The beast slithered towards the movement and had just begun to inspect it when the trap was sprung, with the wold rising to wrap its arms around the serpentine body and Roza and Odrys leaping from their concealment to aid the construct. Though the wold appeared tiny compared to the titanic serpent, it must have got an astoundingly solid grip on the tatzylwurm’s jaws, as the creature struggled futilely to escape, and then Odrys and Roza pounced and had smashed the beast to the ground even before William could arrive at the site of the battle.
Quickly confirming that the tatzylwurm was not dead yet, the group quickly tied its jaws and began to drag it towards the sacral vault, glad to have the strength of two grown gatormen and an untiring wold to aid them. Even so dragging the tatzylwurm was slow and wearisome work, and the creature began struggling awake just as the sacral vault had come into view again. Desperate not to lose their sacrifice this close to their destination, the group put their backs into their work and managed just in time to breathlessly haul the beast up the sacral vault’s steep slope and throw it over the altar, where Odrys and the wold held it down while William slashed its throat to allow the blood to gush out over the stone under the watchful eyes of the waiting feralgeist’s pale presence.
As its blood soaked the stone, flowed along the runnels and finally disappeared into the vault, the tatzylwurm’s struggles grew increasingly faint, and the beast eventually lay still. But just as the beast had gasped its last, the group became aware of a faint tremor under their feet, and then the sides of the sacral vault erupted into a whirlwind of bones sweeping from small concealed openings. The whirling bones then converged on the platform at the top of the sacral vault and coalesced into a clattering, towering boneswarm, but rather than attack, the creature’s many skeletal hands reached under and around the altar and lifted it off its foundations, revealing rungs leading down into the sacral vault’s dark and dank interior. The boneswarm then retreated to slowly circle around the sacral vault’s platform, while the feralgeist descended into the darkness, its incorporeal form gaining stronger luminescence in the inky blackness down below.
Having climbed down the rungs of the sacral vault, William, Samira, Roza and Odrys found themselves in a small chamber. There were many shelves and niches around them, but they were empty, and the ground was covered with scattered beads, mouldy feathers, and decaying bones. Only one niche was occupied by the hunched skeleton of a masked gatorman, and it was next to that osseous form that the lambent feralgeist was patiently waiting.
Reverently approaching the long-dead bokor, William offered a praise to Kossk, and then began to concentrate on casting the spell that would allow the dead to speak once again. A quavering deep voice immediately filled the vault, announcing itself to be the voice of Amuruk the Nightwalker. Asking the dead bokor for guidance about the strange possession that had come over Samira and William, as well as the ailment that had befallen One-Tree, Amuruk could offer little, unfortunately, though he recalled the gatormen of the area once having been in alliance with a spirit called Manylights until strange men in armour of screaming iron faces had come out of the west and raided the sacral vaults of the gatormen of Widower’s Wood. Immediately noting the similarity of Amuruk’s description to the glaring masks on the steles the group had found in Glimmerwood, they beseeched Amuruk for aid, and he pointed them towards two weapons he had been able to recover and conceal in the vault before his death, the axe Manyfangs and the staff Corpse-Eater. Amuruk also bequeathed his feathered headdress to William, wishing for a new generation of bokors to wear his mask of office once again.
Thanking the spirit of the old bokor for his aid and advice, William concluded his spell, and after the group had retrieved the axe and the staff from their hiding places and reverently accepted the dead bokor’s mask, they prepared for climbing the rungs to the opening at the top of the vault again. Just before they left, however, the feralgeist came forward to face them one last time. The lights then went out of its eyes and filtered down into its translucent chest, where they formed a configuration of four blazing dots for a few moments, with one in the middle and the three others arrayed equidistantly around it, with one of them directly to the right of the central dot, one above and to the left, and the last underneath. Then the lights winked out, and the feralgeist shook itself as if awakening from some form of slumber before quickly retreating into the solid stone of the sacral vault’s walls.
Puzzled by this last display but seeing no way towards figuring out its meaning at present, the group proceeded to climb the sacral vault’s rungs and emerged back into daylight, where the clattering boneswarm still surged and circled. Once the last of them had emerged, the boneswarm immediately rushed towards the platform once more, and after shifting the altar back into its former position the creature begun to split into individual bones again, which within a few more minutes had disappeared completely into the sacral vault through all those tiny openings and slits they had emerged from earlier. Silence again settled over the sacral vault then, with only the faint buzz of mosquitoes and the distant calls of swamp creatures disturbing the place’s sombre serenity.
The journey back to One-Tree after the group’s audience at the sacral vault was uneventful and easily accomplished, what with William and Samira simply having to follow the pull drawing them back to the giant ghost willow at the village’s centre. As they approached the lakeshore, they were met by the slight form of their Iosan guest, Terys Lloryrr, who inquired about their latest adventures in his halting way, carefully picking his words from a book. The elf’s curiosity roused the adventurers’ curiosity in turn, but he seemed unable to shed any further light on what the adventurers told him about their encounters in Widower’s Wood. The adventurers did notice, though, that something about their encounter with Amuruk’s spirit seemed to trigger a particular interest in the man, and when they did not stop prodding, he finally relented and revealed that the lingering existence of spirits held a particular fascination for him because he was certain he was denied the same. Taking off his goggles, Terys then revealed the black-in-black pits of his eyes, and told the adventurers that they were the mark of the soulless among his people, marking him as one of those who would not leave a spiritual presence after death. Terys also told the adventurers that he had come to One-Tree after having received a prophecy by an Iosan priest in his homeland, which said that the empty vessel must travel to a lake that glowed in the light of a lone tree.
Having made these revelations, Terys then offered to leave One-Tree, knowing his presence was likely unsettling, but the group decided to allow the Iosan to stay, only asking him to take on sentry duties along with the Tharn and gatormen of the village.
Epilogue:
Over the course of the following days, William figured out how to raise the power in the axe and staff recovered from the sacral vault. The axe Manyfangs, its blade engraved to look like the open jaws of a gatorman, was given to Odrys, not only granting his swings greater force but also bursts of exceptionally swift strikes, while William claimed the staff Corpse-Eater, which augmented his spells with the power to end even the hardiest of the restless dead at once, and extended the same offer of final destruction to those struck by the staff’s gnarly length.
Seeing William now not only bearing the staff recovered from the sacral vault but also wearing the mask of the long-dead bokor, Toothy Trudy then approached the young gatorman and offered him her position as one of the two chieftains of One-Tree, a position which William accepted, both out of justified pride at his own accomplishments and out of respect for the age and infirmity of body of the one-legged herbalist, who gladly retreated to the role of an advisor.