— CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE —

  The Heart of the Woodsea

  +Leo+

  I just had to get curious about Sylvia, didn't I? It took me a week to gather everything we had about the Woodsea. It was a level 50 zone! Barely anyone had been out there yet, so all we had were some uncorroborated scraps about what immediately surrounded the main roads, and what reports there were were not promising. It was rough terrain with a lot of verticality - not great for a search. I also didn't know how precise of an indicator Sylvia's arena would be, so I aimed for a large town as close to the center of the zone as possible.

  On November 12th, I rode out from Celestia Grand heading southeast. The trees started growing the farther I went, and they just didn't stop. Redwoods as wide as city blocks and so tall I couldn't even tell if there was a top - they could have made the canopy part of the sky box for all I knew. Their roots, thick as car tunnels, spread across the ground - forming archways and impassable barriers and transforming the earth into a jagged mess of cliffs.

  The road I was on rode along a root like a highway leading up to a gateway carved into the side of one of those redwoods. Passing through it, my eyes adjusted to the darkness, and I was suddenly in the middle of a metropolis. The city was inside the tree! In the hallowed-out core, pathways spiraled up the inner walls and bridges crisscrossed the space. Storefronts, homes, and side-passages honeycombed the trunk's perimeter while basket-shaped elevators on pulley systems ferried folks up and down between levels.

  Snapping some pictures for my report, I started up the main ramp.

  The arterial paths branched off into a labyrinth of back alleys with more secluded residences and hole-in-the-wall shops. I followed the winding tunnels all the way to the exterior of the tree, where rickety wooden platforms had been grafted onto the mammoth branches. It was a vertigo-inducing view, an ocean of forest stretching to the horizon in every direction, both incredibly open, yet closed in on all sides by those pillar-like trees. I got some pictures of that view, as well.

  As I stood there, an NPC ambled by - a heavily bearded man in a patchwork robe.

  Turning to him, I said, "Quite the view, eh? Great place for lunch, unless there's wind."

  The man grunted. "S'pose so."

  "Whose idea was it to build this high up anyway?"

  "Oh, we didn't make the tunnels." he said. "Giant beetles plague the trees, they bore 'em out for their nests. You'll find hollows like this all over the forest."

  "Sounds freaky."

  "Aye, but they've been dyin' off as folk push deeper into the woods and set up farms, drivin' the bugs back."

  "Interesting. Is that causing any problems with overgrowth or anything?"

  "I mean, a little." he shrugged. "We've had an uptick in the bugs' food - little leaf-munchin' critters. Rough on the farmers. Some worry what'll happen if the trees get too damaged."

  "Could you... tame or domesticate the big beetles that eat the little ones?" I asked.

  The man snorted. "Now you're soundin' like one o' them Beetle Riders - bunch o' loons that harness the bugs and ride 'em 'round the forest. Use 'em like flyin' lawnmowers to clear out infested crops."

  "Well that's good, isn't it?"

  "They're wild beasts!" he exclaimed. "Every other week y'hear about riders gettin' thrown off mid-flight or gored or gobbled up by their own mounts! Beetles ain't no friend o' ours."

  But the gears in my head were already turning. If there were trainable pegasus and dragon mounts, why not giant beetles too? But how would someone even begin that chain of events?

  "How can I get in contact with one of these Beetle Riders?" I asked eagerly. "I'd like to ask them some questions."

  The man shook his head. "Not a clue. Might run into one flyin' about, but they fancy themselves 'free spirits' - no proper home or allegiance to nobody."

  I whipped out my notebook and jotted down everything I'd just learned. "Thanks much." I said, snapping the book shut. "Could you point me to an inn? I've got some planning to do."

  Moving on to the tavern, and now that it had been pointed out, I could see the signs of the tunnels' original inhabitants - the ceilings were strangely short for how wide they were, and the corners were imprecisely rounded. The interior of the tavern, however, had been done up professionally - neatly sanded and polished walls, furniture carved from monolithic pieces of heartwood.

  I got myself a pint and mingled with the NPCs. Sliding on over to join a couple of fellas playing cards at a long table, I asked, "'Scuse me, mind if I ask a quick question?"

  The older of the two, a stout, balding chap, looked up with a grunt. The younger, a reedy teenager, kept focused on his hand of cards.

  I said, "I'm looking into places where 'corruption' has been seeping into the world. Heard there might be something like that around these parts."

  Baldy harrumphed. "Dunno where you heard that load of guff, but things've been business as usual long as I can remember - goin' on ten years now."

  Reedy leaned in, a impish gleam in his eye. "Maybe he's talking about... the Underserver!"

  I blinked. "... The what?"

  Baldy rolled his eyes. "You kiddin' me? That's just a tall tale adventurers are stirrin' up."

  But Reedy was on a roll now, wiggling his fingers dramatically. "The Underserver! They say beneath our very feet lies a mirror world, a dark reflection where up is down and facts turn false! Oooooh!"

  I blinked. Of course I knew the rumor - any lorehound worth their salt knew about the Underserver stories. They were a series of letters sent into the Celestial Daily. But... this was an NPC bringing it up. Did the NPCs osmose the story from the players? Or was there an actual basis to it in the game?

  "Have you been there?" I asked.

  Baldy threw down his cards in disgust. "Bah! Course he hasn't! Buncha codswallop. If that's the nonsense you wanna natter on about, I'm gettin' a fresh one."

  He stumped off to the bar.

  Reedy called after him, "You're just runnin' 'cause you knew I had you beat!" Then he turned back to me. "I ain't been there myself, but my buddy Grady, he saw one of the numah."

  "Numah?" I blinked.

  "Yeah, the inhabitants of the Underserver! Mirror reflections of us surface folk, they are - spittin' images, but twisted opposites. Grady ran into his own! Nearly got himself strangled! Came limpin' into town half-dead, coughing and rasping, welts 'round his neck. He was out for a week! Healers patched him up best they could, but when he came to he was babbling mad. Sent him off to an institution back in the plains, they did. Doubt all you like, but there's somethin' real down there!"

  I leaned forward eagerly. "Do you know where the attack occurred, exactly? Could you show me on a map?"

  I pulled up my UI map and slid it across to him. Reedy hummed, zooming and scrolling, before finally jabbing a finger at a spot.

  "'Round abouts here, at the base level of the forest. Bit southeast of Grady's old carrotte ranch, before he got sent off."

  "Carrottes?" I asked. "What're those?"

  "Our local delicacy! Like carrots, ya see, but they walk 'round on four legs. Only grow in the Woodsea! Get to be about the size of a hefty hound. Ornery brutes, they are - you don't wanna get caught in a carrotte stampede, no sir."

  I stared at him. "... I'm sorry, what?"

  Reedy cocked an eyebrow. "You new to the Woodsea? Everything grows a mite wilder out here."

  I sat back, sipping my beer pensively. Huh. Maybe things hadn't changed much in the past decade... but ambulatory root vegetables sounded an awful lot like corruption to me. This definitely warranted further investigation.

  "So what's going on with the ranch now?" I asked.

  "Aw, they rounded up a posse and went out there. Carrottes had busted loose, runnin' wild. Managed to wrangle most of 'em, divided 'em up 'tween the other ranchers for safekeeping. Can't rightly say they got every last one though. So you watch yourself if you go pokin' around out there - big ole orange things."

  I nodded. "Thanks for the heads up."

  This place sounded dangerous, so I quadruple checked my supplies and made a quick stop at the adventuring supply shop to browse for things that might have slipped my mind. Some ice crystals for rooting mobs - could always use a couple more. Plenty of rope - it was only a matter of time before I needed to scale one of those trees. I'd already had a devil of a time navigating the rough terrain on horseback; some of the ridges I'd had to dismount and climb on foot. I added some climbing gear to my haul, along with a bunch of wooden planks for bridging gaps.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  As I was shopping, the bell over the door chimed. I glanced up to see a teenage girl shepherding a young boy into the shop. The kid - Captain Galactic - wore a horned helmet over his mop of shaggy black hair, his chainmail clinking as he scampered excitedly down the aisles. The girl - Lily of the Valley - wearing a mage robe over a swordfighter's leathers, followed him closely, her sharp green eyes tracking the boy's every move.

  The boy made a beeline for the weapons display, jabbing a finger at a rifle hanging on the wall. "Lily! Lily, look! We gotta get that gun! I could help you fight with that!"

  "Absolutely not." she said. "We can't afford it, and I am not letting you have a gun. Period."

  I chimed in, "To be fair, guns are pretty safe here."

  Lily fixed me with a polite but decidedly irritated smile. "Is that so?"

  "I'm just saying, they're one of the most non-lethal weapons in the game. Heck, I got shot in the head the other day, and I was right as rain a few hours later!"

  "That's fascinating."

  "Whoa!" The boy's eyes widened. "How'd that happen?!"

  "Ah. Well... I peeked over a wall while one of my friends was aiming down range."

  "That sounds real safe."

  I chuckled awkwardly, withering under her glare. "Yeah, I, uh, can miss some obvious thing sometimes. Anyway, you two stay safe out there. I recommend the ice crystals!" I quickly ran out of there feeling like an ass.

  With a sigh, I found a quiet corner and took a final inventory. Looked like everything was in place, so I was ready to go - tomorrow. It was getting late, so I headed for the inn and rented a room for the night.

  - Nov. 13th -

  The next morning, I set out from the city and ventured into the tangled depths of the Woodsea. The trees towered overhead, their canopies filtering the sunlight into mottled patches on the forest floor, not unlike a very cloudy day. It was slow going, picking my way through the oversized forest. I felt like a little ant crawling through someone's garden. Or Chibi-Robo.

  Anyway, I made my way southeast, following the NPC's directions to the ranch. After about an hour, I found it. It was tucked in a low, flat basin surrounded by craggy cliffs. A once-sturdy house was built into a shadowy crook beneath a massive, arching redwood root.

  When I got there, the place was in ruins. The metal gate had been torn off its hinges and was lying in the dirt, twisted and cratered by numerous heavy impacts. The perimeter fencing was in a similar state - bent from repeated blows from the inside. I did not want to meet one of those carrotte creatures, though I had to wonder what they tasted like to be worth the danger of ranching them. I'd have to hunt through the restaurants back in the city.

  For now though, an eerie silence hung over the abandoned ranch. The only sounds were the distant drone of monstrous insects in the deep woods and the crunch of my boots on dry leaves.

  I cautiously made my way over to the house. It was built snug against the base of the tree and the cliff face, fortified behind a double layer of barbed wire. Seemed the rampaging carrottes hadn't breached that final defense - the walls were untouched except for a single shattered window.

  I opened the gate, its rusty hinges screeching in protest, and tried the door. It swung open with a groan.

  Inside, the house was dark, meagerly furnished, and utterly abandoned. A cave-like gloom shrouded the rear rooms, the only light falling from the doorway at my back. As my eyes adjusted, I spotted the shards of the broken window glinting on the floor. Lying among them was a single red brick.

  I picked up the brick. It looked like the same kind used to support the fence posts outside. Strange though - who would have thrown it? The posse needing to get inside when they were searching the place? But the window wasn't near the door - there were easier places for that. It looked like it was in the living room - could it have been aimed at the resident? Is that how the supposed 'numah' attacked?

  Walking outside, I started to take another look at the fencing, but I was interrupted when a shrill scream tore through the forest - a terrified human scream. I dropped the brick and bolted in the direction of the cry, leaping over gnarled roots and ducking under low-hanging boughs.

  I scrambled up a steep embankment. Cresting the top of the ridge, I found myself looking down into another basin. There, dangling from a vine as thick as a mooring line, were Lily and the Captain. The vine hung from a branch high overhead, swaying under their combined weight.

  "Keep climbing, Robbie!" Lily shouted up to her little brother. "Don't look down!"

  Below them, where the tip of the vine almost brushed the ground, a carrotte was waiting. It was a bulky, thick, carrot-like creature with a limp green sprig drooping out of where its face may have been. Its bulbous orange body was supported by four stubby, blunt legs that pounded divots in the soil - like someone took a carrot, jacked it full of growth hormone, than taped some baby carrots on for legs. It's stem whipped back and forth as it furiously stamped and galloped around the base of the vine.

  I shifted my stance, trying to get a better look at the 'beast', but my boot slipped on the loose stones. A cascade of pebbles clattered noisily down the face of the ridge.

  The carrotte froze, then turned to 'look' at me. It had no eyes or mouth - nothing to eat with. It didn't hunt humans for survival - it was for sport. It simply desired destruction for the sake of it.

  Whelp. I drew my sword and took a steady stance.

  The carrotte stamped its forelegs, churning up the earth, then charged at me. I leapt down from the ridge to meet it head on. Pulling an ice crystal out of my belt, I hurled it at the carrotte's feet.

  The crystal shattered, and a slick of ice raced across the ground, freezing the beast in place. But not for long. It broke through the frost with a flex of its trunk-like legs and kept barreling towards me. It was too high level for me to CC.

  I dove aside at the last moment, narrowly avoiding its battering ram charge. The carrotte, carried by its momentum, smashed 'face'-first into the rocky wall of the basin. It may have had the meat, but it was still as smart as a vegetable.

  Shaking its sprout-head groggily, the carrotte turned to face me again. I seized the opening and pounced while it was dazed, leaping onto its back. Gripping tight with my knees, I drove my sword down into its thick 'hide'.

  The carrotte bucked violently, sending me flying. I hit the ground hard, tumbling head over heels, my sword clattering away. Spots swam in my vision as I scrambled to my feet.

  The beast was already beating the ground with its feet, readying another charge. But before it could launch forward, a wall of earth suddenly burst up between us. The carrotte thudded into it with a dull thump.

  I glanced over to see Lily sliding down the vine like it was a fireman's pole, her hand outstretched from casting the spell.

  I drew my greataxe from my belt. "Get away while I've got its attention!"

  "Are you mad?!" she shouted. "It was about to trample you!"

  "I've seen someone do this before; trust me! I'll be right behind you!"

  Lily looked like she wanted to argue, but a crash interrupted her. The carrotte punched through the earthen wall, pulverizing it to rubble.

  "Robbie, jump the rest of the way!" Lily called up to her brother, holding her arms up to catch him. The boy had frozen about twenty feet up the vine, clinging to it white-knuckled. He shook his head vigorously, too terrified to let go.

  I stepped forward to face the carrotte as it emerged through the crumbling wall, snorting clods of dirt. I hefted my greataxe, preparing to use the leap ability to vault over the beast.

  The carrotte lowered its head and charged. I kicked off hard from the ground, triggering my leap - but suddenly another wall of earth shot up right in front of me.

  Too late to stop, the carrotte and I both slammed into it with matching squelches. I peeled off and fell to the ground, my ears ringing.

  The carrotte shook itself and turned, its eyeless face now directed at Lily. "Robbie, stay where you are!" She grabbed for the vine again, but the beast was already galloping toward her.

  I scrambled to my feet and sprinted around the remnants of the wall, greataxe in hand. With a desperate yell, I leapt and brought the blade down with both hands right where the carrotte's neck would be. The axe cleaved clean through, and the carrotte collapsed, its legs going slack. As I watched, breathing hard, the body began to disintegrate into glimmering flecks that scattered on the breeze.

  "Jesus, that's what the basic mobs are like out here?!"

  Lily and the Captain climbed down from the vine. "Thanks for the help." she said, though her tone made it feel slightly accusatory.

  The Captain ran over and hugged her waist, burying his face in her robe. "I don't like this place anymore."

  Lily sighed and stroked his hair. "What did I tell you before? It's too dangerous out here."

  The boy lifted his head, lower lip trembling. "I'm sorry."

  She smiled reassuringly and patted his back. "Come on, let's head back to town where it's safe."

  The Captain perked up suddenly. "But what about the beetle? We have to help it!"

  Lily hesitated, clearly torn between keeping her brother happy and getting him out of harm's way.

  "What kind of beetle?" I stepped forward.

  She looked at me, pushing hair out of her eyes. "We found a giant beetle a ways back in the forest. It was injured and we were trying to get a closer look when that carrot thing ambushed us."

  "Why don't I come with you to check on it?" I offered. "Safety in numbers, right?"

  Doubt flickered across Lily's face, but the Captain was now bouncing on his heels, tugging her hand eagerly.

  "Alright, fine." she sighed in capitulation. "But stay right next to me, got it?"

  She led us a short way through the trees to a small glade carpeted in ferns. There, lying on its belly in a patch of flattened foliage, was the biggest beetle I'd ever seen. Its glossy black carapace gleamed in the dappled sunlight and a massive barbed horn curved from its head. One of its wing casings was cracked, the delicate wing beneath clearly damaged.

  Up close, the thing was pretty disgusting; I did not feel safe. Its beady black eyes staring at me, the chittering mandible, and there was so much more hair than I expected. It looked like it could skewer me with that horn and start chowing down at any second.

  Right now though, it was struggling to move - scrabbling in the dirt, lurching closer inch by inch.

  "We have to do something!" The Captain cried out. He tried to rush forward but Lily yanked him back.

  "Robbie, no! That thing is dangerous! Let's just... leave it be. Don't mess with nature."

  But the Captain wrenched free of her grasp. "You've gotta help! A real hero wouldn't abandon someone in need!" He turned pleading eyes on his sister.

  Lily wavered, looking from her brother to the beetle and back again. Finally, she sighed heavily and made some signs with her hand. Golden light gathered around her fingers. "I can't believe I'm doing this." Some golden bolts splashed over the beetle's cracked carapace and torn wing.

  The beetle gave a creaky, rattling chirp. Slowly, it heaved itself onto its legs, still clearly favoring one side, and began to plod toward us.

  "Yahoo! You did it!" The Captain cheered.

  "Robbie, get back!" Lily lunged forward and pulled her brother behind her. "Do NOT go near that thing's mouth!"

  "But Betty's friendly! Look, she wants to thank us!" The Captain protested, straining against his sister's arm.

  "It's a giant bug, Robbie!" Lily snapped. "It will literally eat you!" Holding the Captain back with one arm, she drew a gladius with the other and leveled it at Betty. "Back off, bub!"

  Betty stopped, it's jaw still clacking.

  "Don't be mean to Betty!" The Captain said.

  The beetle took another step forward, and Lily took another step back.

  "I'll try an ice crystal." I said.

  I reached into my belt pouch and got a crystal, but before I could throw it, I caught a flicker of movement in my peripheral vision. A person, I thought. But they were way back in the shadow of a root bridge, watching us. I squinted to get a better look, but Betty suddenly scampered forward. She bashed into us, sending all three of us tumbling over the edge of an embankment.

  We hit a slope and rolled, bouncing off rocks and saplings, the world spinning into a dizzy blur. Light vanished as we plunged into one of the deep gorges carved by the massive roots, and we were surrounded by complete darkness.