Lerko hadn't been able to go into the tunnels in days with any of the Delver teams. There were only eight of those in the entire camp, and they'd cleared out all of the surrounding tunnels already.

  This meant that he had to work with the Attacker teams now, which was much less thrilling. They'd just killed a swarm of ants. Lerko, with his twin blades and empowered body, had done the most killing on the team. Even the team lead, a handsome woman with an Enkiith accent, had only fallen four of the ants, compared to Lerko's six. Many of the members of his team were watching him with respect, acknowledging him for the killing machine that he was.

  This was nothing compared to the tunnels. Lerko adjusted his enchanted goggles that allowed him to see better in low light. His decent affinities on Gleam and Body helped that along all the more. He drank freely from his waterskin and wiped his mouth.

  “Ants up ahead!” someone in the Attacker team called. “At the base of that tree.”

  “There’s no Cutter team there, though.”

  Lerko turned to see what they were pointing at. A group of ants… loitered about the base of an awakened tree, chittering. It was very unusual behavior. Even as he watched, a few more ants ran towards the same tree, whose flexible branches were uncharacteristically still, and that was when he knew something was wrong. He'd come across a countless number of these trees by now and knew that their branches twitched and swayed softly all the time.

  “There is person caught by tree,” the team lead said in accented Thermish. “Inside branches.”

  Lerko saw it and was shocked. He adjusted his goggle, squinting. There was actually someone up there, trapped by the branches. He shook his head at the combatant who had most likely just been careless.

  "The poor fool's as good as dead," Lerko said grimly in a heavy, gruff voice. There weren't many instances of people getting themselves killed in this Plane, but it did happen.

  Several members of his team let out sounds of dismay. One woman even began moving towards the tree as though she could do anything about it.

  The team lead grabbed her by the arm. “Stop. Nothing can do for them.” She looked around her team, a firm expression on her face. “We move as one. Best we can do is kill ants and hope person dies quickly.”

  They all nodded somberly and began walking towards the awakened tree in question. Due to their light sources, an ant or two peeled away to attack them. A few surrounding ants joined in as well. Their team put those down with brutal efficiency.

  But Lerko kept his eyes on the trapped combat in the distance, and his morbid fascination morphed back into shock. He adjusted his goggles just to make sure he was seeing right.

  It was a man. Helmeted and wearing goggles of his own. White hair spilled around his shoulders from beneath the helmet. And he wasn't trapped in the branches. He was sitting in the midst of them. Legs crossed in a lotus position, even! Why weren't the branches moving? Why weren't the branches doing anything?

  “Wait!” the team lead said, halting their group. She had very sharp eyes.

  There were still ants chittering at the base of the tree, and the man was sitting above all that quietly. A weapon—was that a glaive?—stuck out from behind him at an angle.

  “H-he's still alive!” someone else declared.

  An ant began climbing up the tree. Lerko had never seen them do that outside of the tunnels before.

  Nobody in the Attacker team shouted to alert the man up there, and Lerko himself was not inclined to.

  The man slowly lifted his hand to the glaive at his back. Lerko didn't even notice how he'd taken a few steps closer in his mesmerized state. He wasn't the only one.

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  Lerko vaguely recognized this person, though he couldn't say where from. The helmet, the goggles, the white hair. It all tickled his memory.

  The strange man took out the glaive from his back. He twirled it in his hand. Then cut downwards, tearing through the head of the ant that had nearly reached him. The ant fell. The man twirled his glaive again before returning it to its place at his back.

  Lerko was not as baffled by this as he might have been a few weeks ago. There were all sorts of bloodlines capable of achieving the most unbelievable results. Here at the Odaton camp, he’d met a woman who could walk right up to the creatures of this Plane without them reacting to her presence. But watching this man on the tree still made him blink in astonishment.

  The silence in their group was spoiled by one of their members letting out a curse.

  “I know that guy. He's the healing-tent killer.” He spoke in a sharp whisper as though he feared the white-haired man would hear him.

  “What nonsense are you spouting now?”

  “I'm serious. He went into the healing tents and killed four people who owed him meal tokens. It was a big deal a few weeks back. I'd recognize those goggles anywhere.”

  Lerko scoffed. “As if the Chancellery would allow something like that to happen.”

  “Well, his father is a mage! I'm telling you. And a High Priest of the Edict Church.”

  Those words caused everything to click into place in Lerko's mind. He did recognize this man. He'd seen him weeks ago with the High Priest Sakturaha.

  Lerko had gotten the privilege to go into a tunnel with one of the better-equipped Delver teams, and the High Priest had accompanied them. This man had joined their group at some point and started speaking quietly with the High Priest—though Lerko had been too busy soaking up the respect and envious looks of surrounding combatants to notice what they'd said to one another.

  Another ant climbed up the tree again. The white-haired man killed it in the same way he'd killed the other one. Almost as though it were choreographed.

  He flourished his glaive. Cut. Flourished his glaive. Returned it.

  “Wasn't he one of those people who got trapped in the tunnels?” someone asked quietly.

  “No,” Lerko said. “I was there when they came back. Two women and a man with brown hair.”

  “Well, I heard that he was actually present at the assassination attempt. Killed all the soldiers that attacked the Major and even—”

  The team lead smacked the speaker on the head. “Don't spread rumors. We move.”

  They complied, but Lerko and several other members of the team couldn't help but glance back a few times.

  * * *

  Caen focused on making one branch move very slowly. So slowly that even with his speculon he could barely tell that it was moving. Applying so many modifiers to the spells he'd learned was a delicate process, and his precision and finesse were still lacking, but time would remedy that.

  Every few careful hours, Caen would stop to replenish his mana for an hour. Flora magic wasn't nearly as mana-intensive as Blood-healing, but he'd been stacking modifiers and using spell chains, which was much more costly. Caen never even used up to a fifth of his reserves, but that alone would take him nearly four hours to replenish in his abjection. He only spent an hour on this, though; he preferred to do most of his attunement with a boosted affinity these days.

  Attuning mana did not interfere with whether or not he was using Mimicry on a target, so he remained connected to the tree, his Blood-healing affinity boosted. Once the paralysis spell started to wear off, he would cast it again and then continue attuning ambient mana. It was a good thing that he'd packed himself lunch and dinner in preparation for this.

  After an hour of attunement, he would return to practicing Flora. He worked on improving his fine control of the branches. It was slow but rewarding work. The absence of passive augmentations made this all the harder, though. He carefully wrapped branches along other branches and around the trunk of the tree a few times before deeming it safe enough to move to himself. After reapplying the paralysis spell, he wrapped a girthy branch around his torso and tried to lift himself with it. He almost fell from the tree several times and needed to stop occasionally after squeezing himself too hard.

  As the hours wore on, he was finally able to lift himself off the tree with a branch and roughly place himself back down. He let out a cheer as soon as he did, and continued practicing some more.

  Eventually, he used a branch to deposit himself back onto the ground awkwardly. He stumbled and quickly dispatched the few ants waiting there.

  That landing needs more work, he mused, smiling to himself as he walked back to the front zone.

  [Zeris, are you ready?] he sent over the telepathic link.

  [Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm on my way there now.]