War Beneath the Roots - 1

-Prologue-

It was supposed to be a pilgrimage.

They sent her west, to the central landmass.  Where the wildlands still breathe. Where the old trees bent low with wisdom, and rivers sang songs from before there were names for things. Where no nation’s banner flew, and few cities dared cut the earth.

She kept moving westward, toward a stretch of wild where the enemy troops of Midborg had recently made landfall. A deepwood grove said to have survived the axes of men and fires of Midborg alike.  

But when she arrived, the trees did not sway.

The birds did not sing.

No wind moved.

No insects. No decay.

No life.

She knelt in the loam and placed her hand to the roots.

And they wept.

Not with water, but with something thicker—a black, fungal sludge pulsing from beneath, sticky with warmth like fresh blood. Her breath caught. Her communion faltered. The Weave rippled. The ground… shifted.

Beneath her palm, the tree’s roots twitched.

She pulled away.  The bark stuck to her—not cracked, not broken—peeled, revealing soft, black flesh beneath—a velvet fungus, pulsing faintly with breath.

A ring of fungus bloomed around her—grew around her—too fast, too eager.

And then… she heard it.

Not with her ears. With her marrow. A sound like wind through a hollowed skull. A whisper so ancient it had no tongue to shape it.

“Closer.”

She ran.

Three days. No food. No sleep. She burned her journal and her clothes.

She cut the growth that bloomed from her arm where it had kissed her skin.

She left the blade.

When she returned to the outpost, she could only speak the words, 

“It’s here”.

The commander assumed she meant Midborg.

And he was wrong. 

-1-

Markin Treefoot knelt in the mud, knuckles pale where he gripped his bow, trying to steady the tremble that had infected his body since the morning. The overcast sky bled a cold, indifferent light across the clearing. His breath fogged, shallow and quick, the taste of salt sharp in his mouth. Ahead, the crumbling ruin of an old watchtower slouched against the horizon, its broken stones jagged like rotten teeth.

They’d made camp just a few miles outside Qita’s walls last night. Markin, Aldric and Eliza, novices with Qita’s adventurers’ guild, promoted due to a lack of options with the veterans away at war with Midborg.  

Citizenship in Qita would mean a steady income for Markin’s mother and sister, currently living in the tent city beyond the gates.  Proving your worth to the city council was the path to citizenship.  This hobgoblin raid was their first real contract: stop them from ambushing the merchant routes, collecting their fee, and edging one step closer to Qita’s council chamber.

He had overheard the two strangers — the monstrous Minotaur called Blue, and the impossible root-man — murmuring by the fire, though "murmuring" was generous. Blue spoke in a deep, gravel rumble that matched his form: towering, broad as a cart, with curling horns marked with blue vein-shaped markings and thick, slate-gray skin marred by old scars. His eyes glowed faintly with an inner fire, like banked coals.

The creature of branches, who they'd come to call Beam, said nothing at all. He barely moved, a silent sentinel wrapped in gnarled bark and twisting vines, his body more tree than man. One of his arms looked petrified, part fungus and part root, pulsing softly with bioluminescent veins. He wore armor that looked to be made of stone, perhaps for protection. Perhaps to conceal himself.  Beam’s spores had filled the air like an unseen mist, and emotions—regret, anger, longing—whispered into Markin’s mind without words. Markin wondered why Beam and Blue had approached their camp.

Blue, the Minotaur, had mentioned something about a dragon. About slavery. About vengeance. Markin hadn’t pressed for more. He didn't need another tangle of mysteries. He needed coin, standing, and survival. Nothing else.

Now, crouched in the muck with his two guildmates, Aldric and Eliza, Markin wondered if he'd live long enough to regret that decision.

The hobgoblins had dug in around the watchtower, a score of armored shapes prowling the perimeter. Their crude armor was rusted but serviceable. Their weapons, jagged and blackened, looked stolen from a dozen different fields of battle.

Markin pulled an arrow from his quiver. His fingers slipped on the shaft; he wiped them on his tunic, leaving streaks of grime.

"Ready?" Aldric hissed beside him.

Markin swallowed. It felt like swallowing broken glass. "No."

Eliza gave a sharp, humorless smile. "Good. Means you won't do anything stupid."

She rose, quick and low, and knocked her own arrow. Aldric followed, shield lifted. Markin moved with them, heart hammering.

The plan was simple. Distract the sentries, draw them out. Beam and Blue would handle the rest.

Simple plans were the first to fail.

Aldric’s war cry split the gray air, and the three of them rushed the clearing’s edge. Arrows sang. Markin’s first shot buried itself in a hobgoblin’s throat, the creature collapsing with a wet gurgle. He barely had time to celebrate before the air turned to chaos — the clash of steel, the shriek of dying men.

It happened so fast Markin almost missed it: As Beam slammed the ground with his staff, the ground heaved and split, thick roots lashing upward, catching a charging hobgoblin midstride. Bones cracked with a wet pop as Beam's grasp crushed the life from it. Another root whipped sideways, yanking a second foe off his feet and slamming him into a jagged stump hard enough to snap his spine.

Markin fired again and again, but they kept coming. He barely registered the blurred motion as Blue hurled past him, an avalanche of fur and horn. The Minotaur's axe — a slab of iron the size of a wagon door — cleaved two hobgoblins in half with a single roar and swing. Their blood sprayed in a fine mist, the air choking with the stink of copper and bile.

Markin turned just in time to see Aldric go down.

A blade punched through Aldric’s gut with a sound like tearing cloth. The man’s mouth opened in a silent scream, blood bubbling from his lips. Eliza screamed, lunging to reach him, but three more hobgoblins crashed into her, dragging her down under a tide of snarling rage.

Markin froze. The world narrowed to a pinprick. His fingers forgot the bow. His legs forgot to move. It was Beam who saved him — the air thickened, and a warm, fungal scent filled

Markin’s nose as spores flooded the clearing. They brushed against his mind: urgency, grief, the cold inevitability of death.

Beam’s roots tore the ground open like a wound. Hobgoblins screamed as they were dragged underground, their screams muffled by the earth.

Blue carved through the battlefield like a storm given flesh. His axe never slowed, only rose and fell in a brutal rhythm, each impact another body broken, another spray of gore slicking the stones.

Markin staggered backward, bile rising again in his throat. He tripped over something soft and wet. Aldric’s body. The man’s eyes were wide, glassy. His mouth worked soundlessly, the last of his life leaking from the ragged hole in his belly.

"I'm sorry," Markin whispered, useless words spilling into the ruin.

Something cracked the air behind him. A smell like burning sulfur flooded Markin’s nose. He turned, bow half-raised.

Atop the hill overlooking the watchtower, a tear in the world opened—a ragged spiral of golden light spinning backward, the edges fraying like burning parchment. From it stumbled a figure wrapped in a battered cloak, one boot catching on the uneven ground as he tumbled out of the portal.

The stranger's eyes were wrong—shot through with threads of gold, spinning slowly like clockwork. Strange, broken clock hands formed around his fists and unwound backward through the air. Hobgoblins clutched their heads, screaming, as time itself seemed to bend and knot around them.

"Don't worry!" the man shouted, voice reedy but cheerful. "I'm fairly certain this is the right hill!"

Blue gored the last standing hobgoblin through the chest with a roar, lifting the corpse high before casting it aside.

Silence fell. They all stared at the stranger.

Only the wet drip of blood from Beam's roots and the labored, rattled breath of the dying remained.   

Markin stood rooted, unable to move, unable to speak. His bow hung limp in his hand. The weight of it, once familiar, now felt alien and cold.

The stranger—the old man of twisting clock-magic—hopped down the hill, landing with an ungainly thump. He stumbled, righted himself with a twirl, and approached, arms spread wide.

"Hello, friends!" he said brightly, as if they hadn't just waded through a charnel house. "I’m… well, no, wait…"

He tapped his forehead several times.

"Mister… yes. Mr. E. That'll do. Short for… something."

Beam released a fresh cloud of spores. Markin felt them whisper across his mind: confusion, wariness, deep suspicion.

Blue simply crossed his massive arms and glowered.

Markin finally found his voice, rough and thin. "Who are you?"

"Oh, I'm here to help!" Mr. E beamed, entirely unaffected by the corpses littering the ground. "At least, I think I am."

He peered at Markin, frowning slightly, as if measuring him against some invisible memory.

"You," Mr. E said, pointing a finger at Markin like a weapon, "you are very important. Probably. Possibly. Definitely maybe."

–

Markin wanted to scream. Wanted to run. Instead, he stared at the bloody field, at Eliza's twisted body, at Aldric's wide, dead eyes, and swallowed his fear.

If he fled now, he would likely die alone.

Instead, he clenched his jaw and nodded, feeling something heavy settle in his chest. A weight that would never quite leave him again.

The boy he'd been this morning had died in the mud alongside Aldric and Eliza.

Whatever he was now, whatever he would become—it started here, standing ankle-deep in blood beside a monster of roots, a broken Minotaur, and an old madman.