“Very well, O great guardian.” Iona took her hands and used them to wring her drenched locks of red hair. She stared at the dirt now turned to mud, the rain pouring harder than ever. “I materialized one hundred years ago. Far north from here, in what the humans call the Republic. I was born of the ashes of forest fires, and I embody their gentle wrath, their healing blaze that scorches one moment so that years of life may flourish. I apologize if I am rather young as a spirit.”

Li slicked back his wet hair and waved his hand dismissively. “No apologizing, no begging. Just talk.”

Iona nodded. “I was the root of Dagda, guardian spirit of the northern Incendic woodlands, right above where the mortals known as Elves dwell. I served as Dagda’s root for eighty faithful years, maintaining the fires that returned the old to ash to bring forth nourishing soil for the new.”

She paused, and her lips twisted into a frown.

“The demon wars?” said Li. “You’re one hundred. That minus eighty is twenty years ago, and that was right when the wars started.”

“Yes, the wars. But not the demons, I was spared of their cruel corruption, at the least. though I know not whether that fate would have been better.” She shook her head, her eyes closing. “The demons came from the southwestern hellscapes, far from the elves that dwell in the eastern oases. It was the twelve tribes of beastmen that took the full brunt of the demon invasion, and that I grieve for. The beastmen were always respectful of the forests.

But the elves-” Her eyes opened wide and her hands tightened around her hair, squelching out a particularly forceful burst of water. “They are all that is wrong with mortal greed. They cull the green to make way for their cities of cold stone and metal that tower in the sky. Their bellowing machines belch out smoke that poisons us all. And their magic, that otherworldly, unnatural, disgusting, heretical source magic-”

“Calm down. Low profile, remember?”

Iona looked down to find her hands emanating with a faint ember glow. The rain had started to steam around her skin.

“My apologies, O guardian. Life has held little meaning for me for so long, and so it is a struggle to deal with this tide of hope.”

“Why hopeless? Why am I your only hope? Surely, you have somewhere or someone else to turn to in this wide world,” asked Li, both out of curiosity and to see if the treant had some other way to get a happy ending for herself.

“Because all the guardians are gone. The age of nature untouched by mortal hand is over. To ask these questions, you must have underwent a great sleep long ago, and I am grateful for that as you have escaped much of the atrocities brought upon the forests.

When the demons invaded the southern kingdom of man, they slew the forest guardians or corrupted their glades, forcing them into a poisoned dormancy from which they will never wake. It is why these Winterwoods are ever so cold, ever so lacking a heart to pump its lifeblood.

For the guardians of the north, for us – we have wasted away under the elves. Their machines poison our roots or, as was with me, our lands and lives are stolen from us in heretical source rituals, the essence of every leaf, insect, animal, and spirit burned away to open those ungodly and disastrous gates.”

“I can understand that.” Li took in a deep breath, clearing his head of images of his past life, of a world of men that had taken nature as their slave. “But here, from what I can see, nature is still standing strong. It’s a daily part of people’s lives. Farmers respect the earth, till it with their own two hands and grow life without taxing the dirt to death.”

“True, the humans are a little better – that is why I fled here – but believe me, they have the same innate mortal greed within them that, given the chance, will flower into a vile blossom that will raze the forests.”

Iona sighed.

“When the humans seceded from the Republic and founded their own little duchy, I came here to seek solace among forests that possibly still held guardians and roots, but I saw quickly that the demons had devastated them all. It is no wonder that the humans train their adventurers with such rigor, for all their forests now crawl with beastly monsters mutated uncontrollably without the guiding hand of guardians to maintain life.

But I did not lose hope even when I knew that my life was destined to fade away, untethered to any guardian spirit. I felt I could still honor all those of the forests that had passed before me by attempting to teach the mortals how to respect the land. I knew that humans would always use the land, so I thought it prudent for the future, when I am no more to guide them, to let them know how to take from the land in a way that would ensure harmony among mortals and the green forever.”

Li gave a half shrug. “Something went wrong, I assume? You didn’t seem too happy during the test.”

“No. My life leaks from me every passing second and my spirithood fades. For two decades, I taught the humans, but to maintain my place among them, I had to consume some for their life force. Not many, for I did not wish to cause them unduly harm while I taught them, but to these tribal monkeys, even one of their deaths is a tremendous deal.

They cannot see that my teachings are far more precious to them than one or two worthless criminals roaming the gutters whose souls I consume.

Alas, when they found out, it was I that became the heretic, not them. They burned all of my teachings. They arrested all of my pupils. They set their adventurers upon me like hounds, and I found myself chased across the lands, only ever managing to settle here, in this quiet city so far out west, so far from the capitol where none could use divination magic to see through my shapeshifting.

And as if to turn the knife in my back, with the consumption of humans came the adulteration of my spirithood. With human impurity came human emotion and thought. With that came an ailment of the mind the mortals call depression, and such was my sorry state during the test, if you can forgive me.”

“There’s nothing to forgive. Look, I’ve heard enough. You’re right in that you can teach me about restoring my divinity: I have an idea of what it means to be an Elder, but not what it means to be a Leshen. That’s something I have to inevitably face.” Li watched as Iona’s face brightened. “But I also have to tell you that if I do hire you, I’ll be hiring you to mostly help this farm. You have to understand that this farm is not a joke. It is not a game. It is not a disguise. It is who I am.”

Iona gave a questioning nod. “I…understand.”

“No, you don’t quite understand, I can tell. But you’ll have to make yourself if you want to stay around here. A few conditions, too. You only come here to work for me as an herbalist. It would lessen my workload by half to have someone helping me brew and plant, I have to admit that, but you don’t live in the cottage and you do not tell the old man inside that I am anything more than human. You have a place in the city, right?”

“By the docks, yes.”

“Good. Then you stay there. I’ll want someone that’s in the city to keep me informed about what’s happening. Also, you can do the groceries for us as well. The walk to the marketplace is a chore, and an even bigger pain in the ass is all the noise and ruckus from the markets themselves.”

Iona clasped her hands together and gave a bow. “Anything you wish.”

“Good.” Li saw that the knight was heading towards them, the horse’s head bowed as it avoided the rain as much as possible.

“Anything else you want?” said Li to the knight.

The knight scratched his moustache. “Actually, to be honest, I’m-”

“What?” sighed Li. “Another surprise identity? What are you? A god in hiding?”

“I’m afraid not, though sometimes I do dearly wish to be,” said the knight. He put down his helmet visor and coughed into his hand. “Well, I merely wanted to apologize for wasting your time. I see no reason for slavery to occur here, especially on the respected grounds of a demon war veteran such as Old Thane. I daresay there was some bias within me that may have thought you men of the east were inclined towards the brutish practice. Goodness, and I even went through mandatory knightly sensitivity training. Well, I’ll be off now. Do keep dry, you two.”

And with that, the knight rode off, yawning audibly through the pattering rain.

“Time for you to leave as well,” said Li. “Start coming by at the start of next week. The stall will be done and I’ll be brewing for the first time. I’ll see how useful you are then. Consider it a trial run.”

“I swear, O guardian, I will not disappoint you.”

—

As Li watched Iona leave, he shook his head. He understood that she could be useful, it was true. Two hands to brew was always better than one, and she was surely an experienced herbalist. But he had pride in his own two hands. He wanted to do everything by himself.

Mostly, he had decided to hire her because he couldn’t shake off a slight sense of guilt. She had mentioned her lands had been destroyed in a source ritual, and he found himself making connections with what the vampire Alexei had said, about how the elves had sacrificed a great amount to bring Li here.

The timeline was off, for sure, as Iona’s homeland had been destroyed years before Li’s appearance, but who knew how space and time interacted with this strange and new magic?

If Li had truly come here at the cost of so much of the precious nature he cared about, then he owed it to Iona to at least keep her alive.