The Infinite Forest: Chapter 1
Trigger Warning: Heterosexuals
This is part 1 of 2. Two years ago, a long running dnd campaign ended abruptly and two of my players asked me to write a glorious death scene. This is making good on that promise. Part 2 is coming soon.
Chapter I
Talisa opened her eyes, or at least, she was pretty sure she did. After a few moments of seemingly pitch blackness, her elven eyes adjusted to the dim light of the stars, high above. Strange, she thought absentmindedly, it was noon a moment ago. She thought this over for a while, as the stars overhead grew brighter.
She realized she wasn’t breathing, and tried to inhale. It felt forced, and she had to focus on her lungs to make it work, so she gave up after a few tries. Something else was bothering her, and she could leave the breathing thing alone for a bit, it didn’t seem all that important. Instead, she decided the best course of action was to back up to the last thing she remembered.
Sand. She remembered a lot of sand. Had they been at the shore? There had been an ocean…but it wasn’t water?
No, the ocean had been made of sand, and endless expanse of dunes stretched out in all directions. She had felt weak, but not physically? What was that about?
Right, they had been crossing the Null Desert, and the lethargy had been because of the absence of magic energy through the entire sandy wasteland. It was possible for life to thrive in the desert, but without magic, most people didn’t see the point. We are capable of casting fireball everywhere else on the planet, was the reasoning, so what’s the point of going to the one place on Earth you couldn’t even cast a cantrip?
But there were things living in the Null, a thought quietly spoke in the back of her mind. Talisa pushed this thought away. There were more important things to focus on.
Talisa, her husband Okalta, and the rest of their ragtag crew had been crossing the Null. Was it the whole crew? She thought, and she tried to remember the faces of the lovable misfits she had been adventuring with for the better part of two years. Okalta had definitely been there, as had the mechanical fighter Keepur, the broad-chested Azurath, the unkempt basement wizard Ros, Ros’ fiancee and tech genius Kate, and her fellow druid, the sweet Rimple…
No, said her thoughts, that’s not right, Rimple had already died by the time we got to the desert. Rimple had been killed in a huge attack months before…died. In an attack. The words sat in the front of her mind, heavy with ominous meaning, and her inner eye stared at the words, trying to will them into meaning.
Attack.
Died.
A bright light, a horrible sound, and blackness.
I died in an attack.
Talisa sat bolt upright, panic gripping her mind as the events of her final few minutes of life swam back into focus. They had all stopped their cart at the base of a massive dune, and while the team had been struggling to figure out how to prevent sand from blocking up Keepur’s joints, the dune stood up. The group realized too late that they had been taking a breather directly in front of a sleeping sand dragon, who had decidedly not appreciated the interruption to its nap.
The sheer staggering size of the dragon had been more than enough to indicate that they were woefully outmatched, so fleeing was the only way to survive…
But they were still too slow. The massive bronze bell that they had been tasked with retrieving had allowed them to cast basic spells, but it’s tremendous weight had kept their wagon moving slow, too slow…and as the entire band realized this might be it, Talisa had looked up and seen the moon.
Suspended over the horizon in a clear blue sky, Talisa remembered the world drawing to slow motion as she saw the Moon, half of the source of her powers. Before she knew what she was doing, she stretched out her left hand to face the Moon, and her right hand to the Sun, almost directly overhead; the source of the other half. Even as she began to focus on the two celestial bodies, she knew that it wouldn’t be enough to stop the titanic monster.
Not enough to stop it. But enough to slow it down.
She had said something to Keepur, his jammed mechanics having forced him to remain slumped next to her in the back of the wagon, and stood up. She had heard her husband scream her name, but she could do this. She knew she could. With the sun in one hand and the moon in the other, she could fly.
She stepped off the back of the fleeing wagon.
The instant her foot hit sand, sound came back to her, as if reality was snapping back into place. She had stepped off the cart, and now sand beneath her was real, the sound of the cart accelerating without her was real, the thunderous roar of the encroaching dragon was real.
But the sun felt like the best summer day in the palm of her hand. And the energy of the moon, her moon, settled in her palm like the cool side of the pillow. Talisa felt the opposing forces settle in her chest, and as adrenaline coursed through her and seemed to slow time again, she found the exact point she was looking for.
She cradled the energies of the sun and moon into her open hands, and her gaze finally fell to the dragon ahead of her. It might be happy with just me, a small part of her consciousness spoke up, It might let the cart go if it can eat us as an easy meal. But no, the rest of her overruled. Not when her friends, her husband could still be at risk. “Might” wasn’t good enough.
Talisa angled her open palms toward the dragon, easily fifty meters long, galloping towards her at an impossible speed, as it began to unfurl its enormous wings, the sand that had been clinging to the leathery folds finally being shaken loose, revealing a brilliant copper shine to the scaled skin of the monster. Even now, as the roaring dragon was seconds away from her, a small part of Talisa’s mind tried to file away every observation of the incredible creature, as if she were still in veterinary school all those years ago.
People, on the whole, used to think in binaries. Day and night. Truth and Fiction. But between day and night is dawn and twilight, miraculous technicolor sunsets and piercingly bright sunrises. Between truth and fiction lay faith and doubt, a gut feeling of uncertainty or a conviction of beliefs.
And between them all stood Talisa, making herself the center point of two massive celestial bodies, balancing their power on the fulcrum of her heart, and split the atoms of truth and fiction into possibility.
She angled her palms towards the dragon, and an invisible force erupted from them, sending shockwaves through the sand, and slamming into the beast, not only stopping it in its tracks, but freezing the hulking monstrosity in its place, caught in mid stride, suspended off the ground…as if by magic.
She was in the biggest thaumic null zone on the planet, where no magic could ever possibly be performed…and she was casting a spell strong enough to hold a dragon in place. Talisa may have been proud about this, but she was distracted by the taste of blood…she realized she was bleeding from her nose and gums from the effort, the metallic tang of her own blood coating her tongue, and after a few agonizing seconds, she also realized she had been screaming since the instant she pulled the energies of the sun and moon into herself at the same time.
Talisa knew she needed to last, she needed to live as long as possible, even if that was only another few seconds. It was her final act, and she needed to buy her friends…her husband, enough time to escape. But the pain was overwhelming, and as she caught the dragon’s eye, she felt something rupture inside her chest, and it suddenly got harder to breathe. She tried to remember Okalta’s face, his voice, as the light began to fade.
“Babe,” Her husband’s voice said, too real, too close. ”…You’re incredible.”
Talisa tried to turn her head, as she realized with horror that Okalta was standing next to her, nocking an arrow into his bow. “Sorry it took me so long, I had to punch Azurath in the mouth.” Talisa felt blood pouring from her own mouth freely now, but her spell was still holding strong.
“Just a few more seconds, love, they’ll all be safe and away, and then we’ll get out of here.” Okalta raised his bow, and an arrow with cautions and warnings written in forty languages on it came into view. He always did love his trick arrows, her remaining consciousness said, as parts of her brain began to shut down. “We’ll get out of here,” he said, and he let the arrow fly. “Together.”
The arrow made contact with the dragon just as Talisa and her spell finally failed, and the head of the arrow broke, and then…
A bright light, a horrible sound, and blackness.
