Adrean alucard's Arc

Chapter 25 of 28

The dark rune stone left Adrean cold. Zephyr Nightvolt had declared war. The elven gods wanted his trees, and he had bonded only two of eight. He needed the one at the city's heart most of all. So he walked to it, Aphrodisia at his side, and pressed his palm to its scarred bark. The tree pulled him in. One moment he stood on its roots. The next he stood inside its mind. Blood-red light ran through wooden veins above him. Green earth-magic coiled at his feet. The great tree had a face now, formed in the grain of the trunk, old and slow and watching. "You are hunted," the tree said. Its voice moved through the ground, not the air. "The silver one and his masters come for me. My blood is your power. If they cut me, you lose what I gave you." Adrean folded his arms. "Then I defend you." "You cannot hold this land and eight trees at once." The face shifted in the wood. "There is another way. Let me pull you into me. Store your body and your power in my roots, where no god can reach. You wait. You heal. You wake when the danger passes." The offer hung between them. Safe inside the tree, hidden from Zephyr, hidden from the council. Adrean saw the shape of it at once. Sleep, and wake to a land already lost. Wake with no court, no wives, no trees but this one. The elves would carve the other seven while he dreamed. Aphrodisia would face her old masters alone. "No," Adrean said. The red light dimmed. "You will die out there." "I did not cross Lucifer's door to hide in a tree." Adrean stepped closer to the face in the bark. "You said your blood is my power. Then give me more. Not shelter. Strength." The tree was quiet for a long breath. "You would spend yourself instead of saving yourself." "I would grow. Storage is death that waits." He pressed both hands flat to the trunk. "Bind deeper with me. Make me able to hold the war." Roots stirred around his ankles. The green magic climbed his legs, then the red. Pain lit his blood like fire under skin. He did not pull back. He fed it, the way he had fed it before, letting the tree drink and give at once. When Adrean opened his eyes, he stood on the roots again. Aphrodisia gripped his arm. Blood ran from both his palms and dripped into the soil. But his hands hummed with new force. The tree's presence sat inside him now, awake, not asleep. "You refused it," Aphrodisia said. "I felt the tree ask." "It offered a grave." Adrean flexed his bleeding fingers. The land answered, roots shifting for a mile around. "Now it fights beside me instead. Six trees left. Zephyr comes for this one first." He turned toward the city's edge. "Let him."