ALL NOVEL Ch. 13 Rift Guardian pt. 2
The ent was on him faster than Santi thought something that large could move. Its arms swinging down in a brutal chop meant to pulverize him. Santi dove forward, refusing to retreat against the monstrosity. His body was growing numb, limbs heavier by the moment. He didn’t have the strength left to try to kite the monster. Instead he threw himself at it with a reckless fury.
The red eye was now in range and Santi was swinging for it. The tree twisted as it saw the wedge of sharpened steel aiming for its eye. Santi was moving too fast to redirect his aim to chase the eye, he had to settle for burying the axe head to the side of the eye. The trunk may have thickened, but it was still rotten. Bark exploded outward in a spray, pelting him with black bark and white ichor. Santi could taste the bitter sap in his mouth, causing his jaw and tongue to begin to numb.
The ent spun and Santi wasn’t fast enough. One of its thick club-like arms caught him in the stomach, picking him up and tossing him through the air like he was leaf in the wind. As he flew weightless in the air, Santi had a brief moment of peace. Memories of floating on the air currents flashed behind his eyes. Then he was crashing and rolling, axe lost, until his momentum was dispersed. Something felt wrong, his left wrist was hanging awkwardly and his right leg wasn’t working properly. He couldn’t feel any of it though.
Sheer will drove him to his feet and started him limping toward his lost weapon. The ent was moving cautiously, sap weeping from the deep gash by its eye. Santi knew that he was hurt badly, but his thoughts had become as muddled as his body was numb. He knew that eye needed to come out. There was an axe at his feet. A goal he could accomplish. Worry, anxiety, pain, and everything else had vanished. He was just a man with a plan. Axe into eye. Santi could do that, he was sure of it.
He held the axe close to the head, his left wrist unable to hold any of the weight. He shambled forward, his right leg dragging behind him as he fearlessly attacked. He swayed and an arm missed him. He fell to a knee and rolled awkwardly and dodged a crashing limb. He was in amongst the roots, the legs stamping down slowly as the ent tried to crush him.
Santi lashed out over and over, using the axe more like a knife. Each cut severed roots from the legs, weakening them. He was covered in the ents ichor, head to toe, but he kept up his steady assault. It was like he was floating, an out of body experience, as he slowly cut his way up.
A leg folded, cut nearly in half, unable to bear the weight of the main trunk. The ent listed to the side and Santi slammed the axe into the base of the trunk and hauled himself up. The sharp metal dug deep into the ents bark, holding while Santi started to inch his way up. He kept his body wedged against the ents trunk, the ent unable to hit him with its long inflexible arms. A crack resounded as another wounded leg buckled and the ent toppled down to the ground.
The crash rattled Santi’s hold, nearly throwing him off the trunk and in range of the lashing limbs. The ent was trying to get up, beneath Santi’s feet, the root network was trying to recombine and make new legs. The ents arms swept the floor like a demented snow angel, sending bone chips and flowers flying through the air. He had a chance now and he was going to use it. He struggled to pull the axe out of the bark, but once it came clear he aimed at the foot long eye a few feet above him.
The eye was positioned right beneath the canopy and Santi was striking from near the base. He had to throw himself forward as he swung to get close enough. Time slowed for Santi. The moment stretched on as he hung above the rough bark of the ent. The maul had become white with flecks of black bark sticking to it. The red eye was wide with panic, the slit pupil no more than a hair wide. Its arms had gotten underneath it, ready to push up and regain its feet.
Then the maul fell and time resumed. The soft eye squelched as Santi drove it down. The ent shook like it was having a seizure and Santi found himself once again being tossed through the air. His landing drove the air out of his lungs but he didn’t really notice. He was staring up at the blue ceiling, his mind drifting away. Santi didn’t know how long he lay there. It could have been minutes. Maybe hours or days. Eventually, the numbness started to fade and his brain started to work.
“Owwww,” Santi groaned out as he slowly rolled to his side to look at the ent. It was still, the yellow handle of the axe protruding from its trunk. A pool of white sap was slowly expanding out from its corpse. Its many branches were shattered, laying around it in heaps of twigs. The woven roots were now just knots without meaning, the weight of the ents intent having been lost. It looked like a weird tree that had been felled by a storm that someone had buried their axe into. Not a murderous carnivorous tree.
“Told you. Kindling,” Santi gasped as he worked his way to his feet. Everything ached, pulsing blasts of pain that radiated through him and threatened to steal his breath. Not in pain was his wrist. He looked at what should have been a broken wrist and was confused to see that it was perfectly fine. A hint of suspicion was all Santi needed to check his other wounds. His pants were little more than tatters of cloth, making it easy to pull the soiled gauze off. His deep cut was just a thin scar now.
“That’s convenient.” Santi knew that some monsters had healing properties, a symbiotic relationship they’d build with others. The ents sap could heal, in return the kobolds likely had brought it fresh meat. Times had been lean and the kobolds had been bringing others of their tribe down here for the sap though.
His knee had been dislocated and was now fine. The claw marks on his shoulder no longer hurt, nor what he was sure had been a series of broken ribs from that powerful strike the ent had landed. Pulled muscles, strains, cuts, scrapes, and everything in-between. All healed.
Santi stared at the natural healing elixir that was slowly draining away into the cracks of the cavern. He was starting to wish he had kept those empty water bottles now. By the time he went up and got them, the sap would be gone. The many flowers were growing in front of his eyes and there were so many small little crevices in the floor that it wouldn’t work. There was something he could take though.
He went to the ents eye and retrieved his axe and began to get to work. Each blow took another chunk of the rotten outer wood. Minutes went by as Santi hacked away, splinters flying around him, until the axe rebounded. The center of an ent was its heartwood. A super dense knot of wood that was valuable for how sturdy and light it was. With the right crafters, it could become a near impervious shield. It took Santi the majority of an hour to cut around the heartwood, until he had the rough shape of it.
As the minutes marched on and Santi parsed more and more of the ent away, the faster the ent degraded. The bark and wood was melting around the heartwood and maybe ten minutes past the hour, only the heartwood remained. The remnants of the ent were nothing more than a black sludge that coated his shoes. The heartwood was a matte black, drinking in the light of the blue moss. About two feet long, a foot wide, and six inches thick. More like a stubby plank.
Santi had seen good crafters work with less before. He pulled his shirt off and bundled the heartwood in the shirt, which was torn to shreds and soaked in blood, ichor, and dirt. It could be used as a temporary bag until he got back to his abandoned pack. With that done, Santi moved toward the much smaller rift heart and cursed.
“Lot bigger last time. Can’t believe you could empower the guardian like that, nearly got me killed,” Santi told the inanimate object. His embarrassment about talking to himself was long gone.
“Listen, I’m going to pull you out of the wall now. Later, I’ll use you in a powerful potion that will increase my potential. Just thought you should know. You tried to kill me, failed, and now I’m going to eat you. Well, not eat, but…you're a stone. I’m talking to a stone. I need to go to sleep,” Santi groused as he grabbed the amber stone and pulled it away from the wall it was nestled in.
It came freely and was added to the temporary bag and then Santi was headed back to the stairs. He had done it, cleared a rift without a class. A title was likely, maybe even a reward of potential. More advanced classes offered were nearly a certainty. All that remained was getting out of the rift, back to the dorm, and surviving the rest of the night.