Chapter 74: The Abble Tree Root Cellar 2 – The Vengeful Orchard

  “That was something.”

  Theo and Grace were once more wandering through the winding tunnels, following the mixing roots in front of them. They’d left behind the safety of the calm cavern, though anywhere would feel safe with Grace around.

  “It was,” Grace beamed. “I’ve never felt so…liberated. Is my shirt on the right way?”

  Theo looked her over as they walked, his eyes lingering too long where her shirt met her chest.

  “You could take it off to make sure. Is there a label on there?” he teased.

  “You wish. You’ve been staring enough for a week already.”

  “How about me, are my trousers on the right way?” he asked, chuckling.

  She returned the look he’d given her earlier, her gaze scanning his body from his head to his feet. “I remember it looking better on the ground,” she snickered. “But they seem the right way around.”

  “So, do you think the dungeon will grow even more difficult after we found the second acorn?”

  “It seems to be an escalating challenge, so it wouldn’t surprise me.”

  Theo magicked out the second acorn again and eyed it.

  Item: Abble Tree Acorn

  He fidgeted with it for a moment, gaining Grace’s attention.

  “Do you think this one will grow green abbles, then?” He poofed it away again.

  “They may, or they might be keys to a puzzle inside the dungeon. I’d be surprised if the dungeon has expanded into a puzzle-dungeon, but you never know. They’re fickle. Just don’t be too sad if you won’t be leaving with them.”

  “In that case, let’s look for a third one. Things often come in tree, right?”

  “No, don’t!”

  Theo laughed.

  The pair wandered on for only a minute more before a group of four Treens came charging from around the corner of the tunnel. It was the regular variety, with red abbles hidden in their green crowns. Grace seemed to take her time with this grouping, spending more time evading their branching blows than fighting back.

  Theo wasn’t worried—Grace had shown more weakness in the past few hours they’d spent down here than he thought she’d done since those torturous engraving sessions when she was younger. If feeling powerful against weaker opponents gave her a much-needed confidence boost, then he wouldn’t deprive her of that.

  In fact, as they were fighting, Theo snuck past them all and waited on the other side. The Treens didn’t notice him in their unending assault on Grace. From the other side, he could see her face as she fought, her smile as precise attacks became near hits thanks to her masterful dodging and happy eyes as she spared the time to meet his admiring gaze.

  When she eventually rid herself of the pests, Theo looked over their broken trunks for another looting sigil whilst Grace harvested their head-fruits. He found nothing, and soon they were back on their way again, chatting amongst themselves.

  The sizes of the enemy groups rose again, growing ever larger the deeper they went—and they couldn’t help but notice that the dungeon seemed longer, as well—but they enjoyed their time together, and the enemies weren’t all that dangerous with Grace around. Theo still had questions regarding her engraved glyphs, and as they’d taken their relationship to another level while delving the dungeon, he didn’t hesitate as much to ask.

  “Well, after the Church of the Magician had made several glyphs on me, and after the events involving Chaste, the study year was once more over, and I was sent away once more. This time, the churches made no play to involve me in the study group, but they made sure to teach me the ways of their church all the same—just in less flattering circumstances. Each church engraved its known spells on me over a few years. As I grew older, I suppose it stopped bothering me as much: this was my purpose—this was how I could best serve Arcana.

  “The final glyph was the worst. For that one, an old man did the work, one that wasn’t clad in any church garb I’d seen before. He treated me well, all things considered. He seemed kind and wanted me to stay comfortable despite the torture he’d be inflicting on me. The High-Clerics—more of them had gathered that time to watch—seemed to revere him, but I‘ve never heard of anyone they would look up to collectively.

  “My diaphragm…did you see the glyph there? That was the last one. The one that would’ve hurt you, maybe even killed you, if you hadn’t been so…”

  “Lucky?” Theo asked.

  “Protected.”

  He smiled. “So that one was somehow divine magic?”

  She nodded. Her hand hovered over her centre, tracing the invisible glyph carved into her being. “The man gave his life to give me that glyph. He died just from being near me when he finished it. He’d been the only one to treat me like a person for years, and he was dead because of me. I swore I’d never use the glyph, though I never knew what it did in the first place. No one told me what any of them did.

  “After that, I broke away from them all. I ran away. They couldn’t stop me, and they feared to reveal me, so they couldn’t launch a big search or anything. They didn’t chase me down the streets of the big city once I made my way out. I left and never looked back. While I left the churches, though, I’d never throw my beliefs away. I’m a cleric; a servant of Arcana, and I always will be.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  “Now that I’m here, with you, I can’t help but think it was Arcana that brought me here. You invited me into your home the first time we were down here. You gave me a church to lead, and I will make it a better church than all those I’ve been associated with in the past. This is the town where Arcana showed me how similar she and I are—her effigy that stands against the one who scorned her also stands against those who tortured me for years. I’m meant to be here with you, Theo. I know I am. And…I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else than with you.”

  Theo pulled her close to him as they walked, their steps slowing to a crawl, but not stopping. Her arms reached around his waist as her head leaned against the side of his chest. And then they came upon another cavern filled with a roaming forest of noisy trees. They stopped, and Grace looked up at him with a comforting smile. He returned it and went in for a kiss.

  “There might be another acorn here. I’ll bet those things have another surprise in store other than their numbers. Give me two minutes,” she beamed, pecked his lips, and blinked away.

  He watched as she appeared in the centre of the cavern, though it was hard to tell with all the flailing branches and rustling leaves. The outside Treens huddled together, surrounding both her and their brethren Treens, forming one large canopy above them while their trunks stood as prison bars, barring her way back through. Theo suspected she could blink out of the wooden cage whenever she wanted, though he wasn’t sure how the spell worked. Judging by what he’d seen, it was somewhat limited by range and sight, none of which should stop her from escaping the living barrier now.

  Then the prison-Treens started merging, becoming a single tree prison rather than several constituent parts. Bark shifted as branches and roots grew together. From the outside, Theo couldn’t tell what was happening to the ones on the inside, though their shadows flailed even then. The green roof became a colourful meadow of green, purple, pink and red as flowers bloomed atop it. The inside then grew silent as the thick trunks joined into a wall.

  Thump!

  A hollow bang sounded, silenced by the barrier standing between him and Grace.

  Thump!

  The circular prison shook, and the bark shifted, but it only seemed to grow thicker from the minute movements. Roots slithered as more pounding sounds started shaking the walls.

  Thump! Thump! Thump!

  The man grew more worried. If the sounds were Grace trying to get out, then she might be in trouble. But if even she couldn’t get out, could Theo burst his way in? He could create fire on them, and he had a decent Fireball spell ready to go…but he could also cause Grace harm if he used them. Saving her was more important than Theo’s aversion to giving the Treens a painful death, though. He’d use it if he needed to.

  A crack sounded, then a loud, monstrous groan. The ground shook yet again, but this time it was a long-winded rumble rather than a burst, and the prison started untangling itself, once more separating into smaller pieces. Vines, roots, and branches flitted apart, whipping through the air and separating from each other, revealing a ragged woman with heavy breaths inside. Her right shoulder stuck out like a sore thumb through a hole in the fabric, her skin red and bruised.

  Theo ran closer, but before he reached her the canopy above started raining abbles down on her. The first one bumped her head, and she released a cute ooph before she jumped out of the fruity shower. She rubbed her head when Theo approached.

  “Capturing me and attacking from all angles at once? Nice move, Dungeon,” she said, smiling as she looked at the giant abbles falling. There seemed to be hundreds of them, more than would otherwise be the case judging from the number of Treens. Grace stepped away from the fruity shower, watching from the other side.

  “Are you okay?” Theo asked, his voice loud to throw it across the chamber mid-abblelanche.

  She raised her thumb up with a smile and continued watching.

  Amidst the vibrant red onslaught of spheres, dashes of verdant green also fell. What was more surprising was the sheer size of each globe, though. The dungeon abbles were plenty big enough already, but this time, they were melon-sized. They’d grown to a size where they would no longer be easy to consume by one person alone—too big to fit a piece in someone’s mouth without the rest of the fruit pushing against their nose, forehead, and chin. Theo grinned. This haul would make a decent batch for Wen and Chef.

  The rainfall stopped some time later, and Grace jumped into the mound of red and green, arms and legs wide. If Theo had asked, she would’ve answered that it was simply to pick as many of them into her storage space as possible. The smile on her face mixing with the trilling laugh escaping her mouth, however, told a different story, and he’d leave it at that.

  After looting the full harvest, Theo touched a shiny sigil dancing on the ground below the centre of the once-tall mound. A third acorn flashed into being in his hand, just like the other two, and he stashed it away after making sure it was identical to the others.

  “Three down,” he confirmed.

  “We should be close to the boss room. What do you say we finally find out what this dungeon delve has been all about?”

  It wasn’t as if Theo intended to go back the way they’d come to get out of the dungeon, so he gestured to her to march onward. Still, she waited across the cavern for him so they could walk side-by-side.

  She hadn’t been mistaken: close to the abble-fall cavern, just past a few winding turns, stood the door to the boss room looming—bigger than ever before—and guarded by a forest of menacing Treens in both their regular and bigger form. They stood still, watching their approach without moving a muscle…or the wooden equivalent of one, anyway.

  “I’m not sure I have enough space to gather all the abbles from this dungeon run,” Grace complained, though through a battle-ready grin. Her fists were ready, her legs already in a wide stance.

  “Just be careful,” Theo replied.

  She looked at him, the grin on her face melting into a gentler smile.

  “I’d hate to return to town without all those abbles.”

  She punched him. “Jerk.”

  As he laughed, the Treens and their bigger Abble-bodied Treens shifted. Their rooty legs crashed into the ground, sending a loud bang throughout the entire dungeon. They slammed back down a moment later, sending another cacophonous wave through the walls and the ground. Their feet continued this in exact intervals as their arms moved next, slapping into each other like clapping, except with a wooden, hollow ring. Leaves rustled; the cherry on top needed for Theo to understand what was happening—they were dancing.

  Boom-slap-slap. Boom-slap-slap, rustle rustle. Boom-slap-slap. Boom-slap-slap, rustle rustle.

  After several repeats, the foremost Treens slid across the ground to the opposite side of the tunnel, crossing each other as rows of their brethren did the same. Every second, more Treens did the same, the line going further back through the rows of trees. In a moment, all Treens stood in a wooden salute, their bodies tight against the wall to leave room to walk past them. They seemed…calm.

  “Now, this is a dungeon we won’t regret keeping around,” Grace said. “It’s developed a culture!”

  “One more reason for me not to kill them, then,” Theo said. “Doesn’t that mean they’re more like us than you thought?”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  Theo did a double-take at the sudden harshness of her voice.

  “Dungeons and delvers have a parasitic relationship: the dungeon generates creatures with unique, harvestable ingredients or loot you won’t find elsewhere. Delvers defeat their creatures, letting the dungeon reabsorb the mana they were made from while also absorbing the mana from the delvers. It’s a win-win for both parties—unless the delvers die, of course.”

  “Right…still doesn’t sit right with me.”

  “And that’s why you’re the gardener, not the delver, or warrior, or mercenary. The world is filled with men and women who won’t care about these things. Seems to me there’s only one you, and I wouldn’t want you to change for anything.”

  “Aw,” he said, smiling. “Samesies!”

  “You ass,” she smiled, punching his shoulder again. “Now let’s go see what the hell the dungeon has done to the boss.”