Chapter 28: Harthos

Bran was deposited into a bramble bush with remarkable swiftness and scant regard for dignity, a tumble so abrupt that it left little opportunity for grace.

His arms flung out in a futile attempt to steady himself; this manoeuvre succeeded only in ensuring his forearms met the thorns first. The bramble bush, as if anticipating his arrival, seized him with unrestrained enthusiasm. Bran yelped, twisting against the sharp tangle, feeling one thorn graze his cheek whilst several more made themselves known, one clutching at his collar, another snagging his sleeve, and a third landing in a spot so uncomfortable it elicited a different sort of cry altogether. With the frantic urgency of one beset by an obstinate adversary, he scrambled upright, grappling with the brambles that grasped and refused to let go.

“OW,” he yelped, to the bramble bush. “ow, ow, OW!”

He lunged forward, only to find the vine at his ankle constricting with abrupt determination. The sudden resistance sent him stumbling; his hand reached instinctively for a branch to steady himself, but this too turned out to be adorned with thorns. “Ow! For goodness’ sake…” he exclaimed, frustration punctuating his words as he grappled with the bramble’s persistent hostility.

With deliberate care, he extricated his hand, only to realise that the manoeuvre had shifted his balance onto his right foot, where three bramble tendrils, each more determined than the last, had woven themselves intricately about his bootlace, fastening him securely in place. He gave a sharp tug. There was a sound of tearing fabric; mercifully, it was only his hem and not his boot, and he lurched clear of that particular snare, only to discover that his cloak had been thoroughly ensnared by a trailing bramble cane which now clung possessively, refusing to relinquish its grip without a proper contest.

“Why is it always me?” Bran muttered, his voice laced with exasperation as he wrestled with the stubborn cane. “Of all the places to end up…ow…why here, of all spots in this wretched forest…ow...”

A thorn wedged itself beneath his fingernail, prompting a sound from Bran that hovered somewhere between a gasp and a groan, not quite forming into a word.

With one last, determined tug, Bran wrenched his cloak free from the bramble bush and lurched forward, staggering a couple of steps onto open ground before halting. He drew himself up, lips pressed tightly together, and lingered for a moment to gather whatever composure remained, though the recent indignity had left little of it intact. Methodically, he began plucking thorns from his sleeve, his movements measured and deliberate. Three more appeared in his collar; another had lodged itself in the seat of his britches, requiring a rather awkward twist to reach, and one, displaying surprising persistence, was nestled in the curve of his left ear. Bran muttered irritably as he twisted to dislodge yet another thorn. “Why is it always me?” he grumbled. “Tavik wouldn’t be caught in a bramble bush, nor Oren. They’d land somewhere respectable and look heroic doing it, but me…why, honestly?! Ow!”

With a curt flick, he brushed the thorns to the forest floor, then drew a steady breath and pivoted to call for Tavik.

The woodland before him was not the Eldertree forest he knew; it belonged to another world entirely.

Bran paused, motionless, acutely aware of the change in his surroundings.

The strangeness here was not the sort that provokes unease, the kind that sets one’s neck tingling and compels feet to stand poised for flight. Rather, it was the oddness that arises when one expects familiarity and finds themselves somewhere wholly other, a place removed from anything previously known. In front of him, the trees soared to such improbable heights that the Eldertrees seemed diminutive by comparison; their trunks, impossibly old and vast, harboured entire miniature worlds within splits and fissures. Copper-bright fungi formed layered shelves, moss spilled down in every hue from vivid emerald to rusty brown, and pools of shadowed water gathered in hollows along the bark. That bark itself swirled with colours, deep indigo, violet, and the bruised blue-black of a sky on the verge of snow. Above, the bare branches held yellow leaves suspended in the still air, as if autumn had chosen, quite deliberately, to pause its progress at this particular spot.

The sky smouldered with a deep orange hue.

It was a tranquil, unwavering amber-orange, evocative of late August, just before sunset, yet it possessed an odd permanence, refusing to shift or fade. This colour filtered down through the canopy, casting a gentle radiance over everything beneath, so that the whole woodland seemed to glow from within, as though illuminated by an ancient, patient fire.

“Tavik,” Bran called, his tone tentative, and he despised the uncertainty that seemed to slip into his voice.

His voice vanished into the woodland, no echo, no whisper of movement in response. The sound was simply absorbed, as if the forest consumed every trace with imperturbable assurance.

Bran stilled himself and carefully surveyed his surroundings, employing the vigilance his training had instilled, seeking not what he expected, but what was genuinely present.

A solitary figure stood among the violet trunks at the farthest margin of what, by any generous measure, could be called a clearing. Bran regarded it, estimating its height, tall, perhaps as tall as Oren, he thought. Its back was broad and rounded, quilted with a peculiar thickness that swept upwards into a ridge lined with long, tightly clustered spines. These spines were pale and sharp, stark against the trees, reminiscent of creatures found in the hedgerow and autumn gardens, though cast on a scale that had no rightful place near any hedgerow. From this distance, Bran could discern a pointed snout where its face concluded, and its eyes, small, round, and intensely black, shone with a brightness that called to mind winter sunlight glancing off river pebbles. Flickering between the spines along its back, tiny lights glowed intermittently: amber and gold for the most part, with an occasional glimmer of cool green, all steady and unhurried in their rhythm.

The creature remained motionless, simply observing him with a quiet, measured attention.

Fear surged in Bran’s chest, cold and immediate, a primal, sensible reaction to finding oneself alone in an unfamiliar forest confronted by something wholly unknown. He remained absolutely still.

Gradually, the fear ebbed away. In its place, something subtler emerged, a sense of calm settling beneath Bran’s nerves. The creature’s gaze, unwavering from across the clearing, was marked not by predatory intent but by a measured patience. It watched him, attentive yet unthreatening, as if its nature was to observe rather than to hunt. There was a distinct quality to its presence: it existed with the assurance of something ancient, quietly interested in the world around it, never regarding it as hostile. It reminded him, distantly, of the Root Guardian.

He let his breath out slowly and was suddenly aware of something that hung in the air directly in front of his face, that he thought probably had been there all along, and he was just now seeing it properly.

Bran blinked and gathered his attention. Suspended before him, exactly at the level of his nose and no more than a foot distant, hovered two thorns. They revolved slowly, each in its own direction, as if guided by unseen threads. Their movement was unhurried, possessing the kind of quiet conviction found in things that have lingered patiently. The points of both thorns caught the amber light, shining with crisp clarity. For a moment, Bran speculated whether these might be the very thorns that had plagued him earlier, now improbably fixed in mid-air after he had cast them away. The notion was perplexing, yet irresistible, entirely absorbing in its oddness.

Bran regarded the thorns for a lingering moment, his mind clouded by a mild confusion. Then, with deliberate care, he extended both hands, taking one thorn between the thumb and forefinger of his left and the other in the same manner with his right. Quietly steadying himself, he drew the thorns apart, feeling the subtle resistance between them as they separated.

The first thing to strike him was the sound, harrowing and all-consuming. A rending, guttural groan erupted from every quarter, resonating through light and air as though the fabric of this place lodged a violent, unambiguous protest against the act unfolding within it. Bran flinched, his eyes stinging with involuntary tears, yet a powerful instinct compelled him to continue. Even as the strain intensified, he felt as though he were drawing something immense asunder, resisting with every fibre. As the thorns separated further, the air between them began to tear and unravel at the edges; through that widening fissure, the scent of the world shifted utterly, cold, damp, and rich with the deep, verdant green of the familiar Eldertree forest. Beyond that, there came voices: urgent, muted, and achingly familiar, calling his name.

Bran scrambled forward, compelled by the insistent voices of his brothers and cousin that beckoned him through the opening. Each call seemed to tug him nearer, the familiar timbre of their urgency anchoring him amidst the tumult.

His toe encountered a tree root with unerring accuracy, sending him toppling forward. Arms flailed, too slow to offer any real defence, and he sprawled full length upon the forest floor, the impact driving much of the breath from his lungs in a single, muffled exhalation. For a moment, he remained motionless, cheek pressed against the cold, damp earth, acutely conscious of three pairs of boots positioned mere inches from his eyeline.

A sudden sound echoed from behind him, a sharp closure, as if a seam had been drawn taut and snapped decisively into place.

Nix made a small, quick sound that was not quite a word. He was standing very still, looking at the place where the portal had been, his ears pricked fully forward and his eyes wide and very bright, the pupils blown back to their full dark roundness. He stood like that for one long moment. Then something shifted in his expression: not surprise, exactly, but the particular quality of understanding, slotting into place with the certainty of something that had already been half-known.

Two sets of hands found Bran’s arms. They lifted him to his feet with rather more speed than elegance, and then Oren had hold of him in a grip that made his ribs creak. Tavik’s hand was gripping his shoulder briefly, fierce and warm, before both stepped back and looked at him with the expressions of people who had been calling his name into an empty wood for what had felt considerably longer than it probably was.

“Are you hurt?” Oren said, peering at his younger brother, “What happened?”

“Bramble bush,” Bran said, which he felt covered the essential points.

He turned to Oren, intending to speak, but the words faltered and abandoned him entirely. When his gaze shifted to Nix, the distance between intention and articulation grew even wider. The metamorphosis wrought by the Temporal Mist, so meticulously catalogued in Rootbinder’s book, was a world apart from the dry precision of academic language, far removed from the reality before him in the waning afternoon. Oren now stood tall, six feet eight inches of elder brother, crowned with a steady nimbus of light at his temples, elvish magic running quiet and deep beneath his skin. Beside him, Nix appeared suffused with a shifting spectrum of blues across his shoulders, storm-red hair vivid in the encroaching dusk, the suggestion of wings folded unseen at his back, and green runes glimmering softly within the cerulean depths of his skin.

“Gods above, just look at the pair of you…” Bran breathed, his hand reaching unbidden for Oren’s arm, compelled by an instinctive need to assure himself all was well.

“Bran, it’s alright,” Oren and Tavik said in unison, their voices overlapping with an ease born of familiarity.

Bran let his hand drop, searching their faces. “Oren, Nix, are you both alright? Tavik, what happened with the lightning…?”

“It’s gone,” Tavik replied, dismissing the concern with a brief gesture. “Nix handled it. But are you alright, Bran?”

“Yes, I just…there were so many thorns.” Bran glanced back at the vacant space where the portal had closed, his gaze lingering for a moment before shifting to Nix, who remained poised with that same air of quiet, focused certainty. “Nix, did you see what I just…”

“Yes,” Nix replied, his tone gentle and measured. He let his gaze drift from the now-sealed portal, settling upon Bran with an intensity that spoke of unfiltered curiosity. For a lingering moment, he allowed silence to do the talking, then, with deliberate calm, turned his attention towards the clearing that stretched out before them.

Oren had already seen it.

At the distant boundary of the clearing, where the delicate spring light filtered through the trees in slender, slanting shafts, a solitary figure stood utterly motionless. Observing them in silence.

Tavik didn’t move, not so much as a whisper of sound betraying his presence. Nix, too, had fallen into a taut silence beside him, ears pressed back and eyes intent, the subtle bracing in his posture signalling he was already calculating distances, angles, and contingencies the others had yet to consider. Oren shifted his weight, and with the silent coordination that comes only from long familiarity, all three instinctively positioned themselves before Bran, a protective wall assembled without the need for a single word.

Bran regarded the figure at the edge of the treeline, his gaze steady as he reached out, placing one hand on Oren’s arm and the other on Tavik’s shoulder. The gesture, deliberate and gentle, was meant to reassure his brothers.

“It’s alright.”

No one stirred.

“I encountered this same figure in the other forest,” Bran continued with measured patience. “It watched me then as well, and somehow, I sense it harbours no ill intent.”

Oren and Tavik exchanged a glance over Bran’s head, quietly pondering his words, this other world, and the enigmatic stranger whose watchful presence had followed Bran.

In a hushed voice, Nix remarked, “That is a Burrowback.”

Emerging from the elongated shadows cast by the trees at the clearing’s edge, the figure advanced with measured, stately composure. One broad, flat hand was lifted, palm exposed, in a gesture so ancient and recognisable that it required no translation of intent.

When at last it spoke, its voice carried the resonance and substance of stone anchoring a riverbed, a sonorous timbre that settled through both earth and air, imbuing the occasion with a weight that could not be ignored.

“I am Harthos,” announced the Burrowback, his utterance slow and profound, reminiscent of stone grating upon stone. “I have been waiting for you.”