Finally, she could see the tree she had only heard stories about. The one with all the lights in it. The largest tree in the world. So big it contained an entire city! The largest city of all of the Forest Elf cities in the southern forests. Perhaps the only one truly worthy of being called a city! They called it the Mother Tree, the Tree of Life, The City Within A Tree, and the more modern (also her personal favorite) Citytree.
As she walked on, she wondered, Just how big could this tree really be? Even trees must have limits, right?
She found her answer in the miles of walking and the growing size of the tree. As she arrived, she had to check her earlier ideas about the size of this tree. What she thought were branches with glowing lights were whole city sectors with clusters of individual lights. These seemed to haphazardly spiral around the tree and she could see, at least on the lower levels, that each had access to the inside of the tree. As her head tilted upward, she reasoned some of them must have been at least hundreds of meters from the forest floor.
A forest floor she realized was rapidly descending toward the tree’s roots as she found herself walking down a steeper and steeper incline.
A new noise reached her ears. The sound of grinding rope against wood combined with an effervescent popping sound. She looked to the source to see a man in a purple vest with gold trim, a pair of matching, nearly-ridiculous-looking poofy purple pants accented with shiny golden boots. And a matching purple bycocket with an impossibly gold feather. He was faced directly at her, smiling in a way that would be endearing if not for the eerie way he appeared to enlarge in size as some external force propelled him from the tree’s root toward her so directly.
It was a tunnel! A tunnel was being formed in only the span of two minutes and this man was at its entrance!
“Helloooo!” his booming voice rang, “I am here to greet you! I see by garb you are Hunter Elf, but I do not believe we’ve met!” boomed out with a sing-songy upswing as he sped toward her, using no movement on his own, at the end of an ever-expanding wooden tunnel.
It stopped only a few yards in front of her. His voice easily adjusted to the distance as he repeated, “I do not believe we’ve met,” with alternating emphasis, as if to make the phrase easier to understand.
She had to shake herself out of her silent awe. She had never seen anything like that! Woodshaping she had encountered before had never been so… explosive.
“Ah, sorry! We’ve never met,” she walked closer and extended her arms in front of her in peace. “I’m Mas’ildran, she/her, but Mas is fine.”
His arms mirrored hers, in peace, “Welcome to Nah’shil, friend! My name is Leo’nardo, he/him, but you can call me Leo”
Right, there was another name for it, it’s real name: Nah’shil.
“Well then, you wish access to the city, Mas, come right on in,” he motioned with his arm as he turned around. She followed behind, trusting in his apparent nonchalance about this root-tunnel holding them. “What brings you?” It sounded less like interrogation and more like friendly conversation, but she knew better. Under this friendly guise, Leo could be guarding the city, screening out those who would seek it harm.
“Ah, well, you see”, she dodged, feeling a little embarrassed. “I’m twenty-five and I don’t know my --”
“You seek Ish’tara!” He exclaimed with the slightest hint of relief. “You wish to ask her Gift!”
“I do,” she agreed, appreciating his indirectness but lamenting the fact he still somehow managed to be vaguely rude. As it’s bad manners to ask an elf about their Gift (knowing the nature of one’s Gift leaves one vulnerable to those willing to exploit it), it’s also considered embarrassing for younger elves to admit they haven’t encountered their Gift. Here, Leo managed to turn the whole concept of manners and embarrassment on its head. Asking Ish’tara about her Gift is technically rude, but Ish’tara’s Gift is purposefully well-known, because it is used to help those who haven’t encountered their Gift. She kinda admired his clever wordplay.
“Wanna know my Gift?” he grinned as he walked along, leading her from one tunnel to the next, but always up. If someone offers to tell you about their Gift, it’s not considered rude to accept or decline. Knowing can be a bonding moment, but it can also make you the target of their enemies.
“What’s your Gift?” she asked curiously. She had never declined to know.
“No one can lie to me,” he stated flatly.
“Really?” her curiosity was hooked.
“Yep, I mean, I have to focus on it, like everyone does.” He turned down another tunnel with Mas right next to him. “Wanna try it? Lie to me”
She wanted to trip him up, so she decided to say something obviously true first: “My name is MmmmMMmMm--” she tried to say her name, but her mouth simply wouldn’t open.
“That too! It’s really helpful for people finding their names!” He was enthusiastic at how much his Gift had helped her. Frustrated, she didn’t understand why he was so enthusiastic or why her mouth just WOULDN’T OPEN! “It has more uses than you’d think”, he blinked.
Her jaw flew open as if all of her effort to open her mouth had been stored and suddenly applied. It hurt and she rubbed the sides of her face, processing what just happened. “So, wait, Mas’ildran isn’t my name? Is that what that means?”
“Not exactly,” he ducked under a low ceiling. “It’s your name but it’s not your True Name.”
“My True Name? What’s the difference?” she asked, ducking just behind him. She had never heard of such a thing, but her library at home was small.
“It’s the name that you’re most comfortable with. You can spend a few weeks or months figuring it out yourself or we can do it together in a few days,” he explained, stopping in front of a wall. A dead end.
“Is it magical?” she asked, suddenly alert, looking for why they stopped at a dead end when Leo seemed like he knew where he was going.
“Magical?” he chided, “No, but people do say it makes them much happier to be called by the name their soul feels. Maybe to me, that happiness, that’s magic.” He performed a small rhythm on the wall of living wood using his hands. The wall began to part, revealing the city inside of the tree and one of those sectors sprouting from a giant opening in the wall of the trunk. Lights were everywhere and so were the people, moving about their day. “You’re looking to get up to the third level where Ish’tara is. This is the first level. I’ll help you get in and out of the city, but for now,” he held out his left hand and watched his fingers twitch, “I have another new visitor to greet already! Tell Ish’tara that Leo said ‘Hi!’” he walked off into another tunnel, leaving her to be.
“So wait, who was doing the woodshaping if it wasn’t him?” she found herself wondering aloud.
Testing Gifts
Mas found that the levels of Nas'hil, while separate, are connected by an inner spiral and that Leo had taken her up just to where the spiral started on the first level. She asked this helpful stranger how it was possible to accomplish Woodshaping without actually having Woodshaping for a Gift, she simply smiled, "Oh there are lots of those little spots if you know 'em! They're part of the tree. There's not woodshaping because it's just the tree moving like how we move, but tree."
The simplicity of it really struck her. Are plants full of valves like animals are? Are we just tapping on some tree-equivalent for a nerve ending and twitching wood open? These questions haunted her as she navigated to the third level, where she Ishtara was. Ishtara the seamstress, fortune teller, and Gift diviner.
Masildran stepped into the wooden enclosure where Ishtara made and displayed garnments for sale. The sign outside said Seams & Stars. Ishtara herself sat inspecting a cut of cloth before looking up to see Mas. She was shorter, stockier, and she looked older than many of the elves that Mas had encountered, complete with graying hair and the beginning of wrinkles. She smiled over her spectacles as Mas as she said, "Come in! Are you looking for anything in particular?"
"Well, you see I recently turned 25," Mas started as she navigated through the clothing stands displaying beautiful outfits, all likely made by Ishtara herself.
Ishtara had heard it before, "Of course, come in." She set the cloth down and walked over to a wall of drawers and shelves. From there, she grabbed a box, tapped out a rhythm on the wall that resulted in the door to this chamber closing, and sat down at the working table. "For privacy," she said. "Come, sit," she gestured to the chair on the opposite side of the working table. Mas sat.
The table was cleared all except for the box. Ishtara opened the box and pulled out a deck of cards, thick paper with art and symbols like Mas had never seen. She shuffled the cards without saying anything. Mas wasn't sure if this was normal, but trusted this stranger.
Suddenly, she threw the whole deck into the air. Cards came falling, spinning, fluttering all around. Some landing on the table, some landing on the floor, one landing directly in front of Ishtara. She looked over them carefuly. Mas waited patiently, confused, but feeling so close to finally understanding her Gift.
"It doesn't tell me everything about your Gift," Ishtara explained, not looking up from the cards, but not touching them either. She seemed to be studying the relationship between them, turning one over occassionally to see the other side. "Usually it tells me something you can do with your Gift. Almost a signpost, if you will."
"What does it say," Mas took the bait. Her heart was racing. Even a signpost was more than she knew about her Gift now. This was it. She was finally going to learn the thing that made her special.
"The cup, the inverted branch, spilled blood, the snake's fang...," Mas realized that Ishtara must have been listing the names of the cards, as she was following along with Ishtara's eyes. "If poison or venom were to find its way into your blood, I don't think it would affect you. I have some if you'd like to test."
Mas thought it over. Was this... real? Could Ishtara's Gift be throwing a deck of cards in the air and interpreting the results? Getting bitten by a snake wouldn't hurt her, that's all? "Let's do it," she said. She wanted to challenge this.
Ishtara made another short trip to her wall of drawers to grab a few vials. "I have both the poison and the antidote on hand. It's a helpful test," she smiled as she sat back down and handed Mas a vial. "Swallow just a drop." Mas did it, she uncorked the vial, extracted a drop on her finger, and swallowed it. She waited to see what would happen. Ishtara watched, waiting.
Mas's stomach felt like it turned inside out. Her heart beat once, but not the second time. Again, once, but not the second time. And hard. Was she dying? Her muscles seized as she fell out of the chair. Ishtara, still sitting apparently unphased, said, "Give it a moment dear."
She was right. Her heart thuded once more and the whole thing cleared. Her heart returned to normal, her muscles relaxed, her stomach felt like a slowly unwinding cold ball of iron. She picked herself up off the ground and got back into the chair. The whole experience was over so quickly it could have been a hallucination, a daydream, but really a nightmare. She was staring into the distance and processing when Ishtara chimed in, "I think there's a lot more to it than that, but I think that's a good start."
Again, she was right. The experience had planted a seed of new awareness in Masyldran. She felt her Gift and she felt that it was much bigger than clearing poisons out of her system. But, she didn't remember what she did to activate it. She'd have to meditate on this later. Gifts had to be activated, that's how they worked. Still partially in shock, she thanked Ishtara, who wished her well.
Setting out
It'd finally happened. After years of training to fight and hunt monsters, journeying across the southern forests to discover her gift, Masildran was joining an adventuring party, following in her teacher Yumanea's footsteps. In fact, Yumanea had been a founding member of the so-called Menagerie. They all met outside the great City-Tree of Nashil, north, in the direction of their next target.
At the campfire that first night, they introduced themselves and swapped stories.
"Hammer, Smash, why don't we hear about your tragic backstory first?" Yumanea joked, her face twisted in an unusual smirk.
"Love to!" Hammer replied. Or was that Smash? Yumanea's somber tone contrast with his enthusiasm piqued Masildran's curiosity. He continued:
"I'm Smash," he gestured to himself, "This is Hammer," he gestured to the identical giant of an elf on his left. "We're identical twins, so everyone has a hard time telling us apart."
"Twins?" Masilydran interrupted right on cue. "I thought they were really rare."
"We are," Smash grinned widely, "we're the only set of twins left, actually."
"That we know of," Hammer corrected. His voice was similar, but somehow just a bit different.
"That we know of," Smash concurred. "You see, we were born in the desert far to the northeast of here. Where we were born, that area of land is controlled by the Sun Elves. They have a very rigid religion. A cult some might say. They believe their leader is both a god and the living incarnation of the sun. The very one in the sky. He rules through this religious doctrine and enforces it with an iron grasp of highly trained soldiers. There, being different is not just frowned upon, but shunned. And, of course, reinforced by those soldiers, who fancy themselves "Rays" of the sun. Of course, being twins, we were their targets all the time. Growing up, we only had each other. Some of the less "rigid doctrine" of the Sun Elves sometimes gave us table scraps or old clothes. We got really good at finding useful things in the desert that we could sell to scrappers and traders and we made our way like that for seventy-five years.
"Until it came time for The Beast to have a new host. They never said what happened to the old one, but when you're looking for a body to cage a demon, apparently you give it to your society's most unwanted and the die landed on us. Specifically, Smash.
"He was abducted by Rays, subject to a profane ritual, and dropped on the outskirts of the city. Before that, we had hardly ever been apart. After that, all I could do was protect him while he fought himself.
"You see, the whole thing is that demons can't die. So any prison you throw them, they'll eventually get out. Eventually, someone came up with the idea of using a living prison. Naturally, an animal would die of old age rather quickly, but an immortal elf could mean you don't have to deal with this problem again for a very long time. The problem is that its a fucking demon stuck inside my brother, constantly tormenting him from the inside. No one should be subjected to that kind of suffering. Except maybe the Sun himself, but I digress.
"That was a few hundred years ago. We left to never return, becoming mercenaries and monster hunters using our Gift. We found that we have a high tolerance to the Anxiety, so we often stay in the forest, with the Menagerie, hunting monsters. Obviously, we use these giant hammers strapped to our backs. You can imagine where our names come from. We try to keep it simple."
There was a long pause. Masyldran turned to Smash, mouth open, expecting some sort of follow up. Everyone else was already familiar with this story and so they were waiting for her reaction. Part of the responsibility of the Menagerie is to guard and contain the Beast. How would she accept this?
"You live with a demon inside you?" she asked. Yumanea hadn't introduced her to the finer points of supernatural beings. Was it rude to ask about, like a Gift?
"It doesn't need sleep," he replied flatly, "and it wants nothing more than chaos and violence. The Beast is a conscious entity like you and I, and it finds ways to channel its boredom in the forever-prison in me. Everything from whispers and intrusive thoughts to hallucinations and mindgames. It cannot act in the physical world, but it would literally kill for me to." She was starting to pick up on the differences in their voices. Smash spoke a bit slower, more thoughtful and considered. The way he emphasized it would kill for me to. It said much and still sounded incomplete, almost broken. The idea that other elves did this to him made her sick to her stomach. She had been taught a little of the cultures of other elves and some of the ways they treated each other, but it had mostly been focused on how the Mountain elves treated their children so poorly.
"You must have developed incredible self-restraint," Masilydran replied after another long pause.
"To the point that I can sometimes subdue it. I'm apparently, 'not fun anymore'," he chuckled. "It wasn't always that way though," he continued, more seriously, "I think the first thirty years or so I did almost nothing but cry and scream. It bombarded me with everything to try and break me, but it didn't count on the fact that I had my brother by my side. How could it, a fearmongering entity such as itself? Hammer took care of me and gave me strength. Our bond gave me the physical and emotional support, and the space, to stand against it. Were I alone, The Beast may have won."
