Chapter 462 Percieved Threat



"Wilhelm is coming any minute to help me kick your ass!" Sindre's jeering voice echoed from far down the cavern, past Ver Dilen, up the ruin, emerging through the ruin's opening, and echoing throughout the forest.

Wilhelm kneeled atop the tallest tree in the forest canopy, the same tree which housed the ruin, with a white, flaming aura. He took a deep breath and steeled himself. 'I need to borrow your strength,' he thought.

Ver Dilen yelled out, "Where is your hero now?" Wilhelm picked up the words as a whisper, yet they rang loudly in the depths of his past. His aura flickered, and he flinched.

Sindre screamed out once more, "He's coming to kick your ass!" They struck that same chord.

Wilhelm inhaled the stench of his charred village, the once nostalgic dirt and corn and family now an acrid odor filling his nostrils. As corpses rose up, his hand reflexively reached for his necklace, reminding him of the promise he made to them. With a slow exhale, he brought himself back to the present, savoring the strong, earthy-pine, a welcome distraction. He thanked Ver Dilen's choice of location. The monastery's incense had been just as distracting, before he'd gotten used to it.

Gently placing the necklace back under his shirt, Sindre's screams demanded his attention. Wilhelm stole a glance at the ruin's entrance; however, he remained, cursing both his own weakness and Ver Dilen. His wounds had long healed. Unlike Merlin and Dag, he was allowed to fight again, but the fresh blood clung to his broken armor.

Ver Dilen held back, but still he was too fast, too strong, and too experienced, no matter what Wilhelm threw at him. Everyone looked to heroes in times like these. To Wilhelm.

"Sooner than later Wilhelm!" Sindre's desperate cry got swept up with a sudden breeze.

Wilhelm couldn't look towards heroes. He couldn't afford that luxury. He tore his gaze away from the ruin, placed a palm against the ancient tree, and called upon his aura.

Faded into blackness, Wilhelm stood as a small, insignificant spark atop a roaring bonfire - the ancient tree. 'I need to borrow your strength,' Wilhelm thought once more to himself. His aura reached out, bridging the invisible gap between himself and the tree, becoming a conduit for power. A surge of energy flooded through him. Then, fear.

Fire fought fire as the bonfire burned brighter than the spark. The bridge shuttered and creaked under its immense weight. Wilhelm's vessel combusted, transitioning from absorbing the tree's energy to using it to keep himself together. He tried to retract his aura, yet the tree seemed to refuse his will. He didn't notice the tree's sentience amongst his panic because he only ever absorbed energy when his back was against a wall, furthermore he was always the one in control. He flailed out and screamed as the bridge finally collapsed; he was absorbed inside the mass, the bonfire still burning, a pair of distant, unseen eyes growing closer.

Mind-numbing pain tore through Wilhelm's very soul because, although his time came to an end, death did not await him, rather the erasure of his existence itself - or so it seemed.

Mouthless, eyeless, and earless, his limbs swayed in the gentle breeze - his body basking in the warm sunlight. He was the tallest tree in the forest, incapable of shock or surprise or conscious thought, only a detached "observation" through alien sensations.

A breeze swept by, birds whistling on branches, ants ticklishly crawling under their newborns. It passed over and down through the entrance of the ruin, like a painful thorn in the tree's core, and howled in the caverns where Ghouls dwelled, crawled, and moaned. A man walked unseen amongst the Ghouls with the same rhythm and sound as the man who introduced the tree to pain by gouging out its insides to hide a ruin.

Amidst the cacophony of sensations, a single name surfaced in Wilhelm's consciousness: Maximus Draken. "I beg of you," Maximus Draken's voice rang loud enough that even the trees and the dead could hear its sorrow. "Protect this place from the damned gods!"

The tree had only known pain around the man, but for some reason his voice stirred it into action. Ghouls all let out a shrill cry. The man vanished without a trace. Time passed.

Trees bloomed and withered with the changing seasons, hosting generations of critters from year to year, decade to decade, century to century, until at last a new set of feet touched down within the tree - a boy. He walked with the same rhythm as Maximus, almost instinctively finding his way into the forbidden chamber. Penance for the tree's and Ghouls' failure bloomed from within the tree as a wrenching, painful light, ascending into the heavens.

"It said you'd be here, Wilhelm," a familiar voice suddenly called out, though Wilhelm couldn't remember where he'd heard it before.

Wilhelm awoke as himself, a spark within the bonfire, as if snapping out of a dream. An ethereal hand suddenly plucked him from his suffering, severing his connection to the bonfire, which flew into the ethereal hand, becoming its strength as power exploded within it.

Wilhelm stood in the forest with his eyes closed, blood gushing down his nose while he remembered what it meant to be alive. Dreams within abstract dimensions warped his sense of reality, and his sense of self wrestled against the tree's centuries of memories.

'Maximus Draken was the first hero if I recall,' he thought. 'There are only two gods, but he said gods plural, which means he wanted to protect this place from the goddess? Why? What happened to him? I've seen that light before. What is this place? Why am I…What's going on? Who am I again? Where? My…my name is Wilhelm.'

"Can I kill him?" another voice asked, unfamiliar.

"You can try," the familiar voice replied. "Remember, Dogma is out here too, and you can't fight Finlish alone."

'Dogma?' Wilhelm thought. 'What are followers of the Mumbling Prophet doing out here?' He frowned. Citrus's voice still maintained its thick, elven accent, yet the unfamiliar voice was neither Dogma nor Ignus.

The low, metallic hum of blade rang out, slowly coming to a dead silence. A few moments later, one of them snorted. "Let us focus on my king."

"Thank you, general," said the familiar voice. "By the way, does he look like he's breathing?"

Wilhelm finally remembered his vision, or more specifically that he was no longer an "observing" tree, but a human with human senses. He opened his eyes, wincing as the light stabbed at him. As his vision cleared, two, silhouetted figures vanished within puffs of golden life essence.

"Wait," Wilhelm called out far too late. He stood up, immediately falling down as the tree shook, its bark blackening and decaying. Leaves and branches curled up and withered away.

A sea of questions flooded Wilhelm's thoughts about the tree, Maximus Draken, the boy, the two figures, and what they all meant. It gave him a headache just trying to comprehend them all at once, however he couldn't dwell on it, for now at least. Whatever those memories were and meant, he could sort them out later unlike, however, the immediate problem; the ancient tree was withering and falling.

Wilhelm moved faster than he'd ever moved before. Appearing above the ruin's entrance within the blink of an eye, he leapt down through it. As he dashed towards the source of Sindre's echoing screams, more thoughts whizzed by. If he moved this fast with only a portion of the tree's strength, how strong would his savior get? Why did they show up?

Sindre's screaming echoed throughout the ruin, and he forced himself to put his worries away, focusing on the task at hand.