A Binding of Bark and Blade

The rot had a scent. It was the smell of damp earth turned sour, of leaf-mold curdling into something venomous. I tasted it on the wind, a bitter tang that coated my tongue and sent a shiver through the leaves of my birch-kin. Pain, sharp and splintered, lanced up from the forest floor, a symphony of silent screams from roots being choked by a creeping, black ichor.

My feet, bare and tough as bark, made no sound as I moved through the undergrowth. I was the forest’s vengeance, its silent hunter. My skin, the pale silver of new moonlight on bark, was dappled with the shifting shadows of the canopy. My hair, a cascade of moss and ivy, tangled with the low-hanging ferns. When a thing came to the Wood that did not belong, a thing that brought with it the gnawing sickness, I was the antibody. I was the blade in the dark.

The epicenter of the pain pulsed from the clearing of the Cradlewood, the ancient, monolithic oak that was the anchor of my soul. Fear, cold and sharp as a winter frost, pierced the haze of my anger. The Cradlewood was inviolate. It was me, and I was it. If it fell, the soul of this forest would wither into dust.

I broke through the final screen of ferns and froze.

A man lay sprawled at the base of the Cradlewood.

He was an outsider, that much was clear from the stench of iron and tanned leather that clung to him even now. But it was the other scent, the sickness, that made the air around him shimmer with wrongness. It poured from him, a visible miasma of decay that caused the grass around him to blacken and curl. He was the source.

My hand went to the obsidian dagger sheathed at my hip. Its hilt was smooth, worn river stone, cool against my palm. One step. Two. The moss at the Cradlewood’s base recoiled from his touch, turning a sickly, weeping grey. My jaw tightened, a grinding pressure that ached into my skull. He was poisoning my heart just by lying there.

I stood over him. He was young, his face smeared with dirt and sweat, all sharp angles and stubbled shadow. A deep gash ran across his forehead, matting his dark hair with blood. But it was his arm that held my gaze. From the wrist to the elbow of his right arm, his skin was a lattice of black, spidery veins, pulsing with a faint, malevolent light. The rot wasn't just on him; it was in him.

My fingers tightened on the hilt. The forest screamed for his blood. It was a simple calculus. One life to save ten thousand. A quick, clean end. I raised the dagger, the obsidian edge drinking the dim light of the clearing.

His eyes fluttered open.

They weren't black or brown, but the startling, impossible blue of a mountain lake just after the ice melts. They were clouded with pain, unfocused, but they found me. His lips parted, a dry rasp of a sound, not a word, but a breath of pure agony. And in that moment, the calculus failed. Beneath the overwhelming tide of sickness, I felt a flicker of something else. A core of heat. A life-force that burned clean and defiant, raging against the poison that consumed him.

My own breath hitched. My arm trembled, the dagger’s point wavering. The forest howled in my mind, a chorus of betrayal and fear. Kill him! He is the plague!

But I lowered my hand.

He tried to push himself up, his body shuddering with the effort. A groan was torn from his throat, raw and guttural. "Who...?"

"Be still," I commanded. My voice sounded alien in the clearing, like the creak of ancient branches.

I knelt, ignoring the protest of the corrupted ground. My fingers, light as moth wings, brushed against his forehead. He flinched, but the fever raging through him was a furnace. The black veins on his arm seemed to pulse in time with his racing heart. This was no ordinary wound. This was a curse, a shard of profound darkness embedded in his flesh.

"You bring a plague to this place," I said, my voice flat. It wasn't an accusation. It was a fact.

His blue eyes focused, a spark of defiance igniting in their depths. "I didn't… bring it. I was fighting it." His words were a ragged whisper. "A sorcerer… in the Black Fens. He marked me."

The Black Fens. A place even I avoided, where the water was poison and the trees grew in screaming, twisted shapes. The pain in my own roots intensified. The rot was spreading. This man wasn't the source. He was a vessel. A walking contagion.

The stakes changed, becoming heavier, sharper. Killing him now would be a mercy, but it would tell me nothing. The sorcerer would still be out there, brewing his filth.

"You will not die here," I decided, the words leaving a strange taste in my mouth. "Not yet."

His head fell back against the gnarled root of the Cradlewood. "Then what? Your prisoner?" The corner of his mouth twitched, a ghost of a smirk.

"You are a poison," I stated, my gaze locking with his. "And I will not let you spread."

My hands went to his blighted arm. He tensed, his muscles cording beneath my touch. "Don't," he hissed, a tremor in his voice. "When it's touched… it spreads faster."

"I am not like you." I let my own life-force flow from my palms, the cool, green energy of the Wood itself. It was the essence of new growth, of clean water and deep roots. When it met the corruption in his arm, the collision was violent. A jolt, like lightning, shot up my arms, and a wave of nausea crested within me. I felt the rot's hunger, its insatiable need to consume, to unmake. And through it, I felt him.

A flash of steel on steel under a blood-red sky. The weight of a king's command. The gut-wrenching grief of a fallen comrade. His life, his memories, his pain, bled into me. His name was Kenric.

He cried out, his back arching, his teeth gritted. He was feeling me, too. The slow, patient life of the forest. The deep, silent communion of root and stone. The timeless turning of seasons. The sheer, crushing loneliness of it all.

Our eyes met, and the world fell away. The clearing, the sickness, the impending doom—it all narrowed to the space between us. I saw not a vessel of disease, but a man drowning, his defiance a desperate gasp for air. He saw not a monster of the woods, but something ancient and wild, and in the depths of his gaze, I saw a flicker of awe.

I poured more of myself into him, pushing back the black veins, forcing them to recede a fraction of an inch. The effort was immense. It felt like holding back the tide with my bare hands. Sweat beaded on my brow, and the world began to grey at the edges.

"Enough," he gasped, trying to pull his arm away. "It's hurting you."

"It is killing you," I countered, my voice strained. I held on, my knuckles white. A strange, fierce protectiveness surged through me, so powerful it stole my breath. It was an emotion I had never felt for an outsider, for anything other than the forest itself.

Suddenly, a howl echoed through the trees. It was not the cry of a wolf. It was a sound of splintering wood and mindless rage. The ground beneath us trembled. Kenric struggled to sit up, his hand instinctively going for the sword that wasn't there.

"What was that?" he demanded.

"The rot," I said, my blood turning to ice. "It senses you. It's coming for you."

From the edge of the clearing, the shadows deepened and coalesced. Twisted shapes of branch and vine lurched into the light. They were the forest's dead, animated by the sorcerer's curse, their bodies weeping the same black ichor that stained Kenric's arm. Their

eyes were hollow knots in the wood, burning with a cold, dead light. They moved with a horrifying, jerking gait, the snap of their twig-like limbs echoing in the sudden silence.

I rose, pulling my dagger. My body felt drained, the battle for Kenric's arm having taken a heavy toll. "Stay behind the Cradlewood," I ordered.

Kenric pushed himself to his feet, swaying, using the ancient oak for support. His face was pale, but his jaw was set like granite. "I don't hide." He ripped a strip of cloth from his tunic and wrapped it tightly around his blighted forearm, as if he could bind the curse by will alone.

"You can barely stand," I snapped, my fear for him sharpening my tone.

"I can still fight."

There was no time to argue. The first creature, a gnarled thing that looked like a man made of dead hawthorn, lunged. I met it, my obsidian dagger a blur. The blade sank into its woody chest with a wet crunch. It shuddered, the light in its eyes dying, and collapsed into a pile of blighted kindling.

But there were more. A dozen, at least. They swarmed the clearing. Kenric, with a roar of effort, shoved himself off the tree and tackled one of the shambling horrors, bearing it to the ground. He drove the heel of his boot into its skull until it shattered.

We fought back-to-back, a desperate island in a sea of corruption. I moved with the grace of the wind, my dagger finding the dead Cradlewood of each creature. He fought with the brutal efficiency of a trained soldier, using his strength and weight to splinter and break. The air filled with the stench of rot and the sharp crack of breaking wood.

I spun, dispatching another foe, and saw Kenric go down. A massive creature, formed from the corpse of a fallen pine, had wrapped its root-like tendrils around his leg and pulled. He landed hard, the air knocked from his lungs. The thing loomed over him, its branch-like arms raised to smash him into the earth.

A cry I didn't recognize as my own tore from my throat. I threw my dagger. It spun end over end, a dark sliver of night, and buried itself in the creature's eye-knot. It staggered back, roaring in frustration, giving Kenric the second he needed. He scrambled away, but his cursed arm flared with blinding black light. The veins erupted across his skin, climbing his bicep, reaching for his shoulder. He screamed, a sound of pure, unadulterated agony.

The Blight was claiming him.

The creatures, drawn by the surge of power, ignored me completely. They converged on him, a tide of death.

I had no choice. There was only one way.

"Kenric!" I screamed. He looked up, his face a mask of torment, his blue eyes nearly swallowed by his dilating pupils. "Trust me!"

I slammed my palms against the trunk of the Cradlewood. "Wake!" I begged, pouring every last drop of my will, my essence, myself into the ancient tree. He is not the enemy. He is the bait. But he is mine.

The Cradlewood responded. A deep, groaning hum vibrated through the clearing. The ground shook. All around us, roots thick as pythons erupted from the earth. They were not the dead, corrupted things we fought, but living wood, glowing with a soft, green light. They smashed into the blighted creatures, crushing them, tearing them apart, dragging them down into the soil to be cleansed. In seconds, the clearing was silent save for Kenric’s ragged breaths.

I collapsed to my knees, my connection to the forest frayed and thin. The world spun.

Kenric lay on the ground, panting. The black veins had receded, but they were darker now, more defined. The curse had rooted itself deeper. We had won the battle, but I could feel the war for his soul being lost.

I crawled to his side. He looked at me, his eyes clear for a moment. "You saved me," he whispered.

"I've only delayed it," I said, my voice hollow. I placed my hand on his chest, over his heart. It beat like a frantic drum. "The curse is anchored now. It will consume you. And when it does, you will become its champion. A monster far worse than those things."

His hand came up, covering mine. His skin was cold. "Then you have to kill me." The words were calm, a soldier's acceptance. There was no fear in his eyes, only a profound sadness. "Before that happens. You have to promise me."

I looked at his face, at the impossible blue of his eyes, at the strength in the line of his jaw. I thought of the flash of his memories—the loyalty, the honor, the grief. Killing him would be like cutting down the last healthy tree in a dying forest.

"No," I said, the word a stone in my throat. "There is another way. A... binding."

He frowned, confused. "What kind of binding?"

"I can sever the curse's connection to the sorcerer. But its energy needs an anchor. I can bind it to the Cradlewood. And to me." I took a shuddering breath, the consequences of my words settling over me like a shroud. "You would live. The curse would be rendered dormant, a scar instead of a festering wound."

Relief washed over his features, but I held up a hand. "But you would be bound here. To this grove. You would be a part of this forest, as I am. You could never leave. Ever."

His eyes widened as he understood. A cage, no matter how beautiful, was still a cage. He would lose his life, his king, his duty. He would lose everything he was. A life sentence.

He looked from my face to the ancient canopy of the Cradlewood, then back to me. The sounds of the living forest returned—the gentle rustle of leaves, the distant call of a bird. Life. He searched my eyes, and I let him see everything—my terrifying loneliness, my fierce love for this place, and the strange, aching need that had bloomed in my chest for him.

"A life of imprisonment," he murmured, his voice rough with emotion.

"A life," I confirmed, my heart hammering against my ribs.

He was silent for a long time. Then, his fingers tightened around mine. He wasn't looking at the trees, or the sky, or the promise of a long, quiet life. He was looking only at me.

"Bind me," he said.