Steve wasn’t thrilled to be fodder for this dungeons boss.
He looked his body over – the chestnut fur, bushy tail, and skinny limbs didn’t do him any good, nor did the blunt, useless claws on the tips of his fingers – or the buck teeth that occupied the front of his mouth. No, the squirrel ranger was as close to useless as he could be.
Which wasn’t to say he was the only weak ranger in the corp, but the other prey races all had some sort of sensory advantage that made them useful. Bernie the rabbit had excellent hearing, while Hoots the owl had telescopic vision. No, the only thing that Steve’s body was good at was climbing. That certainly did have some limited use out in the forest, but down in this underground dungeon it was completely useless.
In fact, the only reason the group had taken him here – against his own protests – was because he had to be taken everywhere. That was, after all, what the other rangers thought the forest god had told them to do.
Steve sighed.
That wasn’t what the forest god had wanted, not that Steve actually knew what that thing wanted, nor whether it was actually a god or just something… else. All Steve knew was that it had saved him from his previous life, which wasn’t a bad thing, but it was a life he’d wished he’d never had to live in the first place.
You see, Steve wasn’t a native to this world. No, he was native to a world called Earth, not that any of the other rangers took that part of his story seriously. But he’d been born a human in a world where anthropomorphic animals, magic, and all of the other craziness of this world didn’t exist. The only thing from Earth that had seemed to carry over was the dragons.
That was how this had started, after all. Steve had gotten a job going from neighborhood to neighborhood sticking placards on the houses’ doors advertising a local tree service. He knew that the job hadn’t paid well enough to go to the dragon’s estate, but the company that hired him had told him to go so he did. He’d been nervous at first, just sitting in his car while he stared out at the palatial palace that sat ostentatiously in the middle of an otherwise middle class neighborhood.
But he’d worked up the courage, gotten out, walked up to the door, and reached out to stick the placard on the handle. Then the door had yanked open and a small kobold had asked “what you want human?”
“Just handing out placards for Mendoza Tree Service, sir.” He’d said.
The kobold had grabbed the placard out of his hand and told him to wait there, but Steve hadn’t been stupid enough to hand around to meet the boss of the place.
Turning, he’d made a beeline towards his car, but when he took a shortcut through the grass, he’d found his foot sticking into the dirt. He’d tried to look down, only to find that his spine had already transformed into a solid wooden core that then rapidly expanded into the rest of his body.
His toes and heels had stretched out, becoming long, wirey roots that grew through the nearby soil. And that was the weird part about it – the feeling of his body, which was rigid an immobile, snaking through moist, rich soil. He’d realized he could taste it, for lack of a better word, and the feeling of moisture diffusing into his roots was one of sublime contentment. Like drinking a tall glass of water on a hot summer day, except the feeling never went away as the water continued to be absorbed into his former feet.
Then his arms had raised up above his head as his fingers split and elongated into hundreds of new branches, each of which was filled with bushy leaves.
The last thing he had seem before his eyes turned to bark was the word around him seeming to blur away. Then darkness, silence, and warmth.
His roots were still in moist, delicious soil, but he could feel them wrapping around other tentacle like masses that could only be the roots from other, nearby trees. Then there was the feeling of the sun hitting the leaves at the top of his new branches, while those lower down, as well as his torso turned trunk felt cooler.
It wasn’t long before he could feel animals crawling up his bark, birds building their nests in his branches, or an owl take up residence in a hole that formed in his back over…
Well, he wasn’t sure how long it took for the knothole to form in his back. Time passed oddly as a tree. He couldn’t see or hear, so all he had to go on was the feelings coming from his new body. His upper leaves would alternate feeling warm and cold, which he assumed correspondended to the days turning into nights and back again.
Then there was the rain – the feeling of thousands of droplets of cold water impacting on his leaves and branches, then rolling down his trunk before being soaked up by his roots was hard to miss.
But the more difficult thing was the seasonal changes. It would get colder, and he could feel some of his leaves fall out, and while there was certainly a short cold time and a long warm time, there were also brief periods of cold that caused some of his leaves to fall out. He wasn’t sure if those were short winters, cold snaps, or what. And through all of it, the animals that used him as their home never seemed to hibernate or really reduce their level of activity, which meant that he wasn’t even sure if the big cold times were winter.
And for his limited ability to perceive the world around him, remembering the changes to that world in enough detail to build a timeline was impossible. Unlike his time as a human, where he would have major life events to keep track of, his time as a tree was… boring.
It was the same experience day in and day out – the feeling of animals climbing and crawling around, the warmth then cold, the occasional patter of rain. It all just blurred into itself and made keeping track of it impossible. He wasn’t completely aloof to the passage of time, and he knew that he had spent a long time as a tree, but how many decades was beyond him. Then came a voice.
“Gruiw Soski”
It was faint, and weak, but it was the first voice, hell the first thing that Steve had heard since being trapped in his tree body. It kept talking to him, and while he couldn’t understand what it was saying, he did get a sense of what it wanted.
The voice belonged to a being that had once been powerful in the first place.
Its power had been reduced, and it was reaching out to look for help. Somehow it had realized that Steve wasn’t a normal tree, he was a tree with a soul, and it had latched onto that. He’d focused his mind on one of the squirrels walking along his branch, trying to tell the being that if he could just move and see like that animal could, that perhaps he could help.
Then a jolt of magic ran through his bark, and the squirrel began to merge into his branch. Wood converted to flesh, bark to skin and fur, while branches and roots turned into arms and legs. It wasn’t long before Steve the tree was Steve the anthro squirrel, the rangers came along him, and the rest was history.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
“He has the blessing of the forest god.” Oswin had said. “He should go in first, if anyone will have protection from this monster, it will be him.”
After the wolf adventurer had beaten Charlon, Steve and the other rangers had set out to find Rodrigo. It didn’t take them very long, as he had trapped himself in the close in menagerie down the stairs. Fortunately, that wolf adventurer had let loose the animals in here the day before and now it was empty of both the animals who had been caged in here and the golems that attended them. Steve didn’t want to think of what would have happened to Rodrigo if those golems were still in here.
They’d brought Rodrigo back, tied and gagged him, then Oswin and a few senior rangers had met with the adventurers to formulate a plan. At first, Steve had hoped he wouldn’t be a part of it – he was useless after all. But then Oswin had beckoned him over, explained that he and some of the other prey animals would be going in first, and assured him that he had nothing to fear since the forest god would protect him.
Steve knew better than to believe that a crusty old god, who only had enough power to stick him in this weak body, was going to have the ability to save him from whatever evil was hiding at the end of this dungeon. But Steve also knew he didn’t have a choice in the matter, so he’d skulked off into a corner, brought his soft, bushy tail up through the front of his legs, and pressed it against his chest.
The feeling of his own plush tail fur pressing into his own… plush chest fur was comforting in a certain sense, like holding a teddy bear of sorts, except for the fact that the comforting toy was his own body. So he just sat there, slowly rocking back and forth as he held his own tail and pondered his new life.
Would he ever find a way to get back to Earth? Or was this some version of Earth, twisted by the dragon while Steve had spent decades trapped as a tree? And what about these adventurers? Something seemed off about them, almost like they didn’t belong here. His brief time with the rangers had shown him that his stories of Earth only managed to get him laughed at, so he’d given up trying to convince other people that he was from another world, but perhaps these adventurers might have heard of it, or know something?
When all of this was over he’d half to ask. But for now, they were clearly preoccupied with discussing the parts of the plan that would take place after Steve and other weak rangers had served themselves up as sacrificial lambs to be transformed by the boss of this place.
At least one of them was a tailor. Steve might not know much about this world, but the rangers hadn’t shut up about tailoring since the minute he’d joined up with them, so while Steve wasn’t an expert in the subject, he knew that whatever horror the boss inflicted upon him, that fox adventurer would be able to undo it.
“Alright rangers, we’re moving out!” Oswin shouted.
The last few hours had dragged on, and Steve was almost glad to be done with the anxiety of wondering what was about to happen to him. Waiting for something like that was always the worst, but now it was time to find out what fate held for him.
The thin squirrel jumped to his feet and formed up with Bernie the rabbit and Anton the hamster. Their bodies were ordinarily useless in a fight, but now they would find some value as a distraction for the rest of the party members.
The wolf adventurer had taken the lead as they walked out into the hallway and then up the stairs. Steve found it relaxing to watch as the wolf worked to disarm the traps on the stairway – the slow, methodical movements of the wolfs arm and brushing back and forth of his black furred tail, this wolf was an expert in his craft.
A half dozen disarmed traps later and they had reached the top of the stairs. The wolf poked his head around the corner, scanned for more traps, then made a motion with his hand that Steve knew meant that he and the other bait were to move up.
“Alright you guys,” the wolf said in an cold, frightening voice, “its clear of traps, run in and we’ll be right behind you.”
Steve and the others walked past the wolf, to the corner, then peered around. Just around the corner, the otherwise tight hallway opened up into a large room that appeared to be a balcony overlooking an arena of some sort. From Steve’s limited vantage point, he could see the back of tall marble chair near the edge of the balcony, next to which sat an impressive golden gauntlet. A thickly muscled, white furred arm was visible sticking out of the side of the chair, and it was obvious who it belonged to – the boss of this place.
Steve took a took breath, closed his eyes, then heard Bernie shout, “for the forest!” before taking off running.
Opening his eyes, Steve saw that Bernie and Anton were both booking it at full speed towards the chair. Steve momentarily froze up, but then the wolf adventurer’s paw gave a slight push on his back, and Steve found his own legs carrying him into the room.
Bernie and Anton were ahead of him, almost to the chair, as a large anthro pitbull, dressed in an purple leather regalia that would make a Roman Emperor proud, swung out from the chair and turned to face them.
Steve kept running, kept pumping his legs, past the entryway, out into the room, closing the gap between him and Bernie, getting ready to draw his sword and…
There was a bright flash of light from below Steve and his body came to an immediate halt. He tried to move his arms, his legs, even his bushy tail, but while he could still feel everything, nothing responded. But he couldn’t give up, not now, not when the pitbull was staring straight at him. Steve kept trying to move, to strain his muscles, to elicit even the slight twitch, only for every command that his mind relayed to run into a mental brick wall. Although his current, squirrelly body was made of flesh and blood, it felt like it was back to the wood and sap of the tree.
The light continued to glow under him as Steve heard a reptilian voice hiss out from the stairway behind him, “not go forward, trap is still active, freeze you too!”
“Dispel it!” the wolf shouted.
“No!” came another, more refined voice, “this isn’t a normal magic spell, it’s a physical item that could, itself, be trapped, dispelling it could cause a backlash that would affect us. We should look for the source of the trap and destroy that!”
For all of the debate going on behind him, nothing was being done to help Steve – or Bernie and Anton, both of whom had come to a sudden stop in front of the pitbull.
The huge dog held a paw out towards the other two rangers, wiggling his fingers as though puppeting a marionette.
He walked over to Bernie, looked the rabbit straight in the eyes and said, “its interesting what you find out about people when you read the threads of their life. Did you know that your ranger friends think that you’re garbage?”
The pitbull waved to the stairway behind Steve, “well, perhaps you and your hamster friend should more accurately reflect that sentiment.”
With a snap of his fingers, the dog caused both Bernie and Anton to snap back to reality.
“What did you-“ Bernie tried to call out, only for his jaw to deform into a brown morass of decayed meat and chicken bones.
It wasn’t long until the rest of Bernie’s body followed – his white fur turned into tattered scraps of cloth, his legs became brown and rigid as they turned into the broken poles of two shovels. His torso turned into cracked egg shells, yellow, rotten eggs, and a pile of half eaten apples.
Less than ten seconds after Bernie had regained his senses, his entire body had degenerated into a pile of old, spoiled food and discarded household items, while the rotting pile next to him told Steve that Anton hadn’t faired any better.
The voices behind Steve were still debating how to handle the light that was holding him in place when the pitbull turned to him.
“So, you decided to hang back did you? Did you think that would improve your chances? That maybe I would only be able to subdue your two friends before draining my power, allowing you an easy kill?”
The pitbull shook his head, “you must be a chicken. Or perhaps a rat? Oh, or maybe pond scum? So, mister squirrel, tell me, have you ever wanted to lay an egg? Or perhaps your former friends there will end up being a tasty treat for you. You better hope its one of the two, because the third option… well, there’s no pond around here for you to live in.”
Winking, the dog held its hand out towards Steve, then began to wiggle its fingers around, just like it had before.
“Oh!” the pitbull exclaimed, “this is interesting. You might not have been a good ranger, but you will certainly make a good barrier!”
There was a pulse through Steven’s body, and then it started happening again.
He felt his spine seize and straighten as bone and tendon turned into solid wood. His toes and heels grew out into long, tentacle like roots that tried to burrow into the stone below – and that was when things started to go wrong.
There was no soil here, and while he could feel hair like tubers sprout off of his growing roots and find their way into the small cracks and crevices in the floor, his roots themselves couldn’t break through the stone. They just grew outwards, but not downwards, thickening as more tubers and shoots grew out into the warm, dry air.
His arms raised up above his head, fingers elongating as leaves grew out. Bark began to cover his torse as it thickened and grew, pushing his head and his arms up. Then he felt his leaves begin to compress against the stone roof above him, pressing his growing branches back down towards his body. The room grew smaller as his vantage point in it kept getting pushed higher and higher by his lengthening trunk.
Small twigs began to grow out of his fingers, pressing into the ceiling, before bending and snapping, sending pain shooting through his body. But he just kept growing, his trunk getting taller and wider, his branches longer and thicker. Every single one of his branches was pressed flat against the ceiling, his leaves compressed into a thick matte of foliage, when he felt the bark growing on the top of his head begin to press up into the thick stone as well.
“There!” Steve heard from behind as the world began to grow more mute as bark covered his former ears, and the flesh that had once provided him with a sense of sound converted into animate wood.
“Magic missile” came a muffled voice.
The light that had previously been holding his body in place vanished, and as his eyes turned to bark and the world grew dim, the last thing that Steve saw was the wolf adventurer rush past him.
The world went dark and mute, but that wasn’t Steve’s concern right now. He could feel his roots starving in the air, could feel his branches snapping as his trunk continued to press up into the ceiling, and could feel a pressure begin to form in his center.
He knew what was happening.
Steve might not have been a particularly large tree when he had been teleported to this world, but after decades of growth he’d probably stood over a hundred feet tall. The ceiling of this room was, at most, a dozen or so feet high, and as his body reverted back to the tree, there just wasn’t enough room for it.
The top of his trunk was burrowing into the stone above, but the ceiling was stronger than the wood that made up his body, which was beginning to flex under the force. He could feel the strain developing about midway up his trunk – the more he grew, the more he began to strain. But unlike the soft flesh of his squirrel body, that could easily bend itself over, the inflexible wood of his tree body could only bend so much before it would begin to crack and splinter.
His body continued to grow into the ceiling, the force continued to build in his mid section, and his trunk bent more and more until…
There was a sudden, painful explosion as his body bend in half and the wood ripped itself apart. And then, calmness.
His body was whole. His roots, which had just seconds ago been burning in the dry air, were now surrounded by cool, moist soil. He could feel his branches stretching upwards into endless sky, while warmth permeated through the leaves at the top of his canopy.
Had he been teleported to the surface? Or perhaps the forest god had transferred his soul into that other body, and now that it had died he had transferred back into his old one? Or perhaps he had just died and gone to tree heaven?
That latter thought hit as a soft breeze blew through his branches, causing his body to gently sway in a manner that would have been appropriate for the shudder he would have experienced had he been made of flesh instead of wood.
The thought of dying and then spending the rest of eternity as a blind, deaf tree, forever rooted in place as he passively experienced the feelings of the world around him was frightening to say the least. So what had happened, and where was he?
-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Charlie darted past the growing tree. Just seconds ago it had been a squirrel ranger, but there was no time to think about that now – Shadowblur in hand, Charlie was focused on the five black threads emanating from the tips of the pitbull’s outstretched fingers, each of which was going into that tree.
For a moment, Charlie considered cutting them and reverting the tree back to a ranger – but what if that didn’t actually destroy the threads? What if they would just immediately regrow, and this time focus on Charlie?
The ranger was a sacrifice. He was doing his job, which meant that it was time for Charlie to do his. And besides, Veles would fix the ranger when this was over.
Ducking underneath the snapping foliage, Charlie bounded over the exposed roots, hopping on top of one that was growing out towards the pitbull, and running around it as he closed the gap.
Spying the dagger in Charlie’s hand, the pitbull exclaimed, “no you don’t. Iron Shield!”
A transparent, silver kite shield shimmered into existence over the pitbull’s free hand, and he brought it up to protect the hand that was actively working to rewrite the ranger’s body.
The pitbull was clearly trying to prevent Charlie from lopping the thread producing hand off, seemingly unaware of the dagger’s power – or of the two threads that emanated from the tops of the pitbull’s own pawns and extended upwards before vanishing into the air above him.
Charlie ran towards the pitbull in a half-crouched position, making him think that Charlie’s plan was to try to cut through the magical shield. The pitbull braced, ready to slam that shield into Charlie’s chest the minute that his telegraphed “plan” failed.
Then, at the last minute, Charlie pressed down on his feet, extending his knees, and hopping up into a standing position. He lunged up, thrust the dagger over the shield, and cut clean through the pitbull’s own marionette like threads.
There was a puff of black smoke as the threads disintegrated and then… nothing. Looking down, where one had been a hulk of a dungeon boss, there was now a strange white, featureless flesh mannequin. Its face was round and ended in a short, blunt muzzle, the remainder of its body otherwise featureless except for a thin tube of a tail that extended out from its butt. It had no eyes, no nose, no ears, no mouth, no fur, no gender – it was like its entire existence had been erased, and all that was left was a blank, nondescript mass.
Charlie even nudged it a bit with his foot, only to feet his claws press effortlessly into it, like there were no bones or anything else of substance inside.
*POP*
A loud snap came from behind Charlie, followed shortly there after by the telltale sound of wood snapping apart and leaves and branches rustling as they crashed to ground.
Turning, Charlie saw that the trunk of the former ranger had snapped cleanly in half, causing the top half of the tree to fall over towards the side of the room, while its growth had come to a premature halt.
“Veles!” Charlie shouted, to be answered by the rustling of leaves as Veles pushed his way through the collapsed foliage.
“What are you waiting for?” Charlie sneered, “tailor him before he dies!”
“Oh? Oh!” Veles responded in shock, “of course I didn’t realize! Tailor!”
There was a green flash of light in Veles’ eyes, but that was all it was – a flash. Veles turned to look at Charlie, then to the sound of more rustling as another body worked its way through the branches.
“Well?” Oswin shouted as the stag’s body emerged into the room, “why isn’t he reverting?”
Veles looked down at his own paws, sighed, and somberly intoned, “he’s dead.”
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
“I wish I could just know where I was!”
The text popped up on Finn’s screen. Looking through one of the mansion’s many windows into the yard beyond, Finn was watching the serene scene of nature that had recently appeared in his backyard.
Sitting by itself in the middle of the grass was a tall, old oak. Its roots were dug deep into the earth, and its branches swayed in the gentle wind. The local fauna had even begun to take notice and a squirrel was slowly climbing up the trunk as it explored a potential new home, all while a robin probed a small knothole about halfway up.
“I just wish I could see.”
“Or hear.”
“Or move.”
Hah, Finn laughed to himself as he watched the words appear on his tablet. He was in a generous mood, and he was inclined to grant one of those wishes. But would good would any one of them to do for a tree?
If it could see or hear, it wouldn’t be able to do anything with any of that information. And if it could move, well… where would it go? It would either still be rooted in place or, if he let it rips its own roots up, it would quickly die from dehydration.
No, he wasn’t that cruel. That tree had obviously been a player at some point, but Finn didn’t recognize the name Steve. There had been a number of new groups that he’d recently sent into the world, so perhaps Steve was from one of those?
Regardless, this “Steve” wasn’t one of Finn’s friends, which meant there were no do-overs for him. Finn had made sure that all of the new players fully understood that if they got transformed in the game, they got transformed in real life. No take backs, and no do-overs. If you screw up badly enough to get turned into a tree, then you had better hope you enjoy living rent free in Finn’s backyard.
Perhaps Steve would come to enjoy his new life. Or perhaps not. Finn saw a string of curse words begin to scroll across the tablet and closed out the profile. Enough of that. Whatever was going on inside of that tree, the world would never know and Finn would never care.
From where Finn was sitting, the internal begging, the struggling to move even a single leaf, or the impotent rage boiling in the tree’s sap were all hidden from view.
Finn just sat on his expertly crafted, fireproof beanbag chair and watched as the robin flew off to gather leaves for its new, knothole nest. Yes, this tree was the perfect thing to help Finn relax, and he was going to make sure that it stayed around for a long time.