Page 54 of Bound and Tide

“Thought there was supposed to be a village here,” said Maia as she cradled the imps’ jar once again.

“Oh, there is. The forest is just taking it back.” Red stalked up the bank, gracefully avoiding the figure of a man baiting a hook with neither bait nor hook. She reached the nearest tree and laid her palm flat against it. “So young,” she breathed in wonder, the cold air swirling before her mouth as she gazed up its length, “but so big.”

“Are they dead too?” Xander went to stand beside her, squinting at the black, gnarled bark.

“Undead,” she said, a frown creasing her face. “They were ironwood seeds not so long ago, but the forest is growing at an alarming rate yet it’s somehow not alive at the same time? It’s trying to fix this place.”

Xander sighed. “Doing a shit job of it.”

When Red scowled at him, it was like the entire Kvesari Wood scowled with her. Xander shivered, expectant pleasure nestled beneath a heap of unease.

“Apologies to you both, but you needn’t worry—your salvation has arrived.” Xander patted the tree that Red still touched. “Or possibly your doom, but either way, it’ll be a relief, I wager. Now, would you mind showing us to the temple?”

“It does mind,” sighed Red, “but it’s reluctantly agreeing. Seems you’re less annoying than whatever’s inside.”

He waggled his brows with a smirk, and Red led them in, zigzagging through the unnatural thickness of the ironwoods. Like in the lake, Xander wondered how he might have traversed the wood without the elven, arcane assistance that forced him to bring it along as he was even more disoriented by the unintelligible screaming in the back of his mind. The thick, black trunks were too close together to have grown naturally—their leaves would have blotted out the needed sun when fully bloomed. Instead, the naked, crossing branches did a similar job, what dim light they had on the shore now struck through with many shadows.

If one squinted, one could spy what the village of Ironwood Hollow had been. Once carved out of the Kvesari Wood’s edge, the forest had taken it all back, trees breaking up through the center of shops and thickets growing over the roadways. Bits of wall and chimney were swallowed and lifted into the trees like hands bursting up through the soil to raise the village toward Empyrea. It was an apparently failed attempt, though, the place as stagnant as the smattering of villagers they came across, the source of that knocking finally found.

Axehead-less sticks were being swung against the ironwood trunks to no avail by more ghostlike beings, their only purpose an impossibility as magic had strengthened the trees. Here and there a rusted axehead lay on the ground, but most were half swallowed by roots and none had done any damage. So focused on their work or perhaps just incapable of any other task, the reanimated bodies chopped endlessly and paid no heed to the four walking past. They maneuvered over a disheveled fence and right through the middle of a general store split in half by a whole copse.

“There it is,” murmured Red, not that she had to.

The temple was massive. A bright spot in the midst of the black trees, its symbol of Osurehm no longer adorned the roof, the facade crumbling and dusted in snow, but the old stone building still had its god-like aura. The forest tried, but it remained untouched by the ironwoods, their taking-back task halted right along the fenced-in courtyard.

“I don’t like it.” Maia poked her head between Xander and Red, Costa looming just at her back.

“Nor do I.” Xander didn’t complain about either of them being too close. His noxscura did, though, crawling under his skin like a thousand little crabs, pinching to be free.

They crept forward, all of them, because even Xander knew that now was the time to creep. Using the fence as a shield, they peeked through gaps in the stones, and of course there were more phantom villagers, but these ones were…bigger. The bodies that strode across the temple’s courtyard were not nearly as worn as the rest, these ones thickly muscled in life like it was their job. And from their ratty tabbards, Xander reckoned it was.

“Fucking holy knights,” he groused under his breath.

The four watched as one of the overgrown undead staggered through a divot in the courtyard’s snow toward a pile of large rocks. His movements were stilted and odd as he picked up an unwieldy stone and returned to where he began, placing his burden down on a stack of similar rocks. Another knight followed, lifting that same stone and returning it to the original pile.

A third attempted to do much the same, but his quarry was larger. When he straightened, there was a horrible tearing sound, and the stone was left behind along with his arms.

Xander grinned in silent joy, immediately eyeing Maia who returned his elated look. Costa and Red were quick to cover their mouths to muffle horrified gasps.

With gaping holes where his biceps ought to have been, the unholy knight trudged across the courtyard and then came to a halt, looking down and utterly perplexed at his lack of a burden. The stringy sinew that hung from the wounds quivered in the breeze but barely bled.

There was a grunt from where his limbs were left as another knight was roused from his perpetual task of picking up heavy things and moving them about. He poked at the arms still clinging to the stone, stiff as if they were frozen. The wounded one trudged back, and with the extremely uncoordinated help of two others, the arms were held aloft for reattachment.

The air changed as the heavy arcana shifted, silvery sparks jumping out of the severed limbs and sealing them to the unholy knight’s skin as his entire body jolted.

“Gloom’s out,” said one of the helpers in a ragged, strained voice, and he raised a hand.

“Doom’s out,” replied the repaired one who then attempted to slap the first’s hand in triumph, but apparently they’d switched where his left and his right ought to have been, and he only managed to spin in a disorienting circle. Finally, they both returned to their unending duties a little worse than when they started.

“What an awful existence,” Red whispered from behind her hand.

Xander’s amusement trickled away. “I do not think these men were good when they were alive,” he said, remembering when he’d kept Tea Cakes holed up in the Chthonic Tower and how easily she winced when he raised his voice. She’d spoken briefly of the temple she’d been abused in and had a disdain for Osurehm knights and priests she didn’t hold for anyone else. He sighed, shaking away the thought that he really should have been a little more sympathetic to her and trudged to the break in the fence. “Regardless, they’re none of our concern. We—”

A rock sailed past Xander’s head just as his foot crossed the threshold into the courtyard.

“Oh, of bloody course.”

The dozen or so holy knights had all come to a stop, eyes that were mostly dead sparking anew with the tiniest glint of arcana. With their proximity to the temple and the magic their bodies cultivated in life, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that these undead imbeciles had a little more oomph to their questionable carcasses. Thankfully, most of them no longer had swords, some drawing hilts with only rusty nubbins left, but others armed themselves with lengths of metal or jagged rock. And even without weapons, one had to take into account their size.

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