The Forest For the Trees, Chapter 1: In Which a Hero Is Called for, and Seed Will Have to Do

The Forest for the Trees

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The creature’s joints creaked, and the fire surged through them, and filled them with the strength to hold up the armored being. The flame that ran along its mandibles reached its way around the trunk. He closed his jaws; the trunk shattered to the pressure and the heat. The air around the creature was alive with the pale trembling of the heat off his armored back, and the swarm of beetles that followed it around, floating in the air like bombers and clinging to its legs as it trampled through the wood.

It halted at the tree. This was not like the other trees. It was a pine tree, completely straight. In the dark woods, it pulsed with foreign magic, endless magic. Magic that, as the monster stripped the bark and burnt and ground the wood away, dripped from the tree like sap into its fiery mouth.

Its black eyes glittered in the fire-light, and the swarm around it buzzed. The drone rose higher and higher into the night.

That foreign tree…Was so delicious. The forest where it came from… The darkness behind the creature’s eyes urged it onward.

Chapter 1: In Which a Hero is Called for, and Seed Will Have to Do

Once upon a time, there was once a tree who grew in the purple flowers, and grew lonely, and came to the Twin Gods and asked him to take his loneliness away by transforming him into a deer. And so they did, and he was more-or-less happy, and had many life experiences. And the other trees weren’t sure that they liked this, and eventually it came to pass that they tried to get him back. While they failed, the deer and the collective of trees eventually reconciled.
There; that’s the very short version. The long versions are stories in and of themselves, and fine stories, too. This begins well, well, after all of that. It begins with that little tree-turned-deer, balancing on the lake.

Or, rather, falling. As the water splashed up around him and the magic turned him into a frog, Seed chuckled slightly. He never could stick standing up from sitting on the water – and here he was, dripping and setless yet again. He swam to shore and shook off, sending droplets of water off his fur and into the air. The vista of the forest was uninterrupted by other deer today; everything around him was quiet, and the peripheral of his senses was still and silent. The golden light that fell, unhindered by trees, onto the bright surface of the lake dried the stag out and warmed him up from his bones. A smile fell on his lips as warmly and as delicately, as the sun’s light.

”Seed, we would like a word.””Would like a word.””A word, Seed?” The not-quite-voice of the collective of the trees filtered down like the light, as well. The collective of trees, composed of the weaker-willed and less individual trees of the forest – the ones without supernatural spirits and without the strength of mind to be their own “people” – didn’t exactly speak in the way of deer; they had no lips, no lungs, no throat, no tongue. But they had the information that moved beneath the ground, root-to-root, and the rustling of the wind in their leaves, sharing their feelings with the world, who largely didn’t know what it meant. To Seed, it became something like and unlike a language; it was his first, without need of a mental translation. It meant what it meant, the knowledge of the “words” rustling its way into his brain.

“Well, I do know a lot of them,” He replied in his own voice. They understood deer-language well enough, and the flowers on his antlers were just for show. He had no leaves to rustle, anyway. He felt deeply pleased today, maybe even confident. Unusual.

He was met with...Not exactly silent, but the rustling was confused, and didn’t want to put forward a concrete word.

”Nevermind. What is it you want?” In the years since he had reconciled, he often had to do small errands for the trees. It was slightly irritating.

”Something is coming.” “Something.” “It’s coming!”

“What’s coming, exactly?”

”Death.” They didn’t chorus it, passing the word from branch to branch until they all tasted it. They said it in unison, so powerful leaves went snapping and tumbling away from the canopy, raining down onto Seed’s green back.
”W-we need you. Only you can help.” “You can help,” “Can you help?” The last voice in the chorus sounded very worried.

”Why me?” Seed’s confident feeling had already bottomed out. This sounded like bad news… But the fact of the matter was, he was not the hero-ing kind. Let others go forth and work miracles of will. Let him write odes to their courage.

”You possess….Useful skills.” “Useful skills.” “It will make this possible.”

Well, the flattery was nice – it sent a blush to Seed’s cheeks, and he fumbled about for words to deny it.
”What, you think death will stop for a ballad? You need my apparently unusual knowledge of forest minutiae or my wit or my philosophy?” Actually, the flattery was exciting. Something he could do.

”No. “ Gee, how swell. ”We need you for your ability to walk.” “Your ability to walk.” “You got legs,” a small pine piped up at the end.
”All deer have legs.”
”But not all deer can hear us.” “Hear us.” “Help us!” Sang the trees.

Seed looked up at the canopy, at the green array of branches, criss-crossing, that formed the ceiling of great stretches of the world.
Deep down, he knew: they were his family. Whatever he said, he’d want to help them, hero or no hero. He’d want to help them even if he couldn’t.

”Well…I’ll do my best. What is this ‘death’?”

The trees rustled, hesitating. At last, they answered:
”It is a great beetle, made of flame and darkness. It is the devourer of forests and leader of a swarm of endless elm beetles.” “Endless.” “Devourerer.”“Unless you destroy it before it gets too close…. Its swarm will suck the life from our heartwood, and nothing shall remain.”

“Destroy?” Seed didn’t fight. Seed didn’t destroy. Seed was at best a useless shield, his relation to the physics of combat loose and hazy, because his heart was never near it. He was at best a casual sparring partner, easily overwhelmed by the rush of his own blood in his ears.

And he had said that he would do his best, and he had meant it.
“It will destroy us.” “Burn us.” “Consume us.”
“Deer of our wood, Seed of our fruit…Help us.”