Page 17 of Cruel As A Tree

I turned to face the tree I had been communing with.

It took more time and energy than I desired to spend to get the connection to the new branch of the forest anchored. It would cause a slowdown in my expansion here to grow into the mundane realm in this way, but the cost didn't matter. What mattered was that it was ready.

"I'm not held back," Lillian said, a note of panic in her voice, as her body language went from sorrow to fear for reasons I didn't understand.

I didn't need to understand. I only needed to react as I felt a wave of aggression roll through me, as my fingers lengthened into claws.

I grinned at her, showing her my fangs.

She let out a shriek as I leapt, carrying her straight into the trunk of the tree. The trunk enveloped us as if it were made of water; the changes I had made to it while communing allowed me to carry the foreign body of the mundane human through the web of life that made up my forest. We slid through the connective tissue of my roots, across the narrow branch that crossed the great scar that had torn the mundane realm from the magic one, creating two from where there had once been one.

We emerged into sunlight, my feet sinking into deep green grass threaded with moss. I could feel the infusion of my magic running through it, bleeding off from my trees as my forest expanded inwards towards the house. The trees fully encircled it now, creating a protective ring that would hide the home from any hostile being that wished to harm those within.

Any being except for me.

I set Lillian down and let go of her.

"No," she gasped as she saw the back of the house.

"Let us end this," I snarled, feeling the words curling around with edges of my aggression. This problem was about to be solved. I strode towards the back of the house, ready to find those within.

"NO!" Lillian shrieked.

I felt her slam into my back as one of her arms went around my neck, her knees gripping at my ribcage. She had jumped on me. I had just enough time to register her sudden shift from fear to aggression before I felt one of her hands on the back of myneck. The arm around the front of my neck was pinned in the elbow of the one on the back of my neck, creating a lever that increased the pressure on the front of my throat to the point where I was unable to take in a breath.

She was attempting to cut off the blood supply to my brain.

Except she was pitifully weak.

"I won't let you hurt her!" she snarled in my ear.

Chapter

Nine

LILLIAN

Ihad to kill him.

In one horrible moment, he had confirmed my worst fear, that he wasn't some gorgeous savior to rescue me from an agonizing death, but another trap that I had fallen into because of my ignorance of this world and its inhabitants. His talk of pruning my branches could only mean one thing—he was going to kill my family. My mom's house was in front of me, so close and yet so far, separated by the sudden realization that I had put them in danger by the simple act of missing them.

I didn't know what to do, but my body and my instincts did as I leaped up on the monster's back and wrapped my arm around his neck, trying to squeeze the life out of him.

"I won't let you hurt her!" I snarled in his ear.

He jumped backward into the tree, and the house vanished, swirling away as it had appeared, vanishing as the thick tree trunk reappeared before my eyes. He landed, light on his feet, but I lost my grip around his neck and tumbled back down onto the moss.

I rolled and scrambled back up to my feet, the terror of losing the two people most important to me in the entire worlds giving me no time to lie there and suffer. I had to fight a forest lord! I had to... oh shit.

He was a monster.

He had grown several feet taller, jet black fur erupting all over his body, climbing up his shoulders to erupt in even longer strands as it enveloped the top of his head like a hood. His face was gone, replaced by a skull-like mask that hid any human-like features, his eyes replaced by glowing orbs of red light.

He let out a snarl that echoed through my bones with the aftershocks of pure, existential terror.

I had made a huge mistake.

Veveron told me that he would change based on how I interacted with him. When I was horny, he became a seductive fiend. When I acted all high and mighty, even his outfit changed to reflect a more refined and polished appearance. Now that I attacked him, treating him like a monster, he became one.

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