Chapter 2: Root Guardian

“Root Guardian” coloured pencil on paper by Chaiga T. Cheska

Deep beneath the woodland's ancient lattice, where the thickest roots of oak and pine intertwined in darkness older than memory, the Root Guardians dwelled. They moved as slowly as the world's own heartbeat, their mossy shells shimmering with the dew of ages, their eyes deep and gentle as peat. Legends said they had watched over MirMarnia since the first beings pressed their palms to this soil, even before the first stories were spoken into the wind.

———-

Lisera's storm had passed. Silence settled over the clearing.

The air carried the scent of snow and shadow, and beneath it, the trembling hope that follows in the wake of fear. The four boys stood motionless, as if the forest itself dared not disturb what had just transpired.

Nix's breath came slow and deliberate now. The wild light beneath his skin dimmed, curling back into the deep places of his being. His ears eased from their flattened bow, his fangs retreating. The sharpness of his stance softened until he was once more a boy, slight, pale, and fourteen years old.

But the effort cost him. The magic had drunk deep from his life's well. He could feel the hollowness it left behind, a strange ache in his chest that had nothing to do with the wound his premature magic had torn there. He would not show weakness if he could help it, yet his limbs felt heavy, and the cold seemed to press harder against him.

Bran broke the held breath of the woods first, dropping gently to his knees in the damp moss. Not from exhaustion, but from that peculiar sensitivity that had always defined him, an awareness of things that moved unseen, a pulse beneath the surface.

Tavik's eyes met Oren's over Bran's bowed head. Both recognised this: the way Bran's body would sometimes respond to currents in the earth that the rest of them could not feel.

"He's listening to something." Tavik kept his voice low, though there was no one to hear them but the trees.

Oren nodded, moving closer to his youngest brother but not touching him. "Give him time."

Bran's palms pressed to the moss, fingers splayed wide. His eyes closed. Whatever he was feeling, it ran deeper than roots, deeper than stone.

Nix watched him, then found his own knees bending until he knelt beside Bran. Dizziness swam in his vision, but the closeness to the earth steadied him. Somewhere far below, something stirred. Not a sound, not a movement, but an awareness that brushed against his own. The Root Guardians. He could feel them now, their presence not in words but in the deep, grounding weight of ancient roots threading through darkness.

For the first time since Lisera's strike, Nix let himself lean into that stillness, drawing on it the way a creature draws on the shelter of a great tree in winter.

"Bran?" Oren's voice was quiet beneath the tangled branches. He edged closer, one hand extended.

Bran did not answer. His head tilted, shadows shifting on his cheekbones as he listened to some current hidden from the rest of them.

Oren hesitated, then sank to his knees beside his brother. After a moment, Tavik followed, settling into the stillness, though his hand remained near the hilt of his sword. Old habits.

Even the breeze seemed to pause. The clearing hovered on the edge of a dream.

———-

From deep below, a low thrumming rose. It was the slow, resonant speech of the earth, a sound felt more than heard.

The moss shivered. A faint tremor passed through the ground, as though the earth itself exhaled.

Bran's brow smoothed. His eyes remained closed, but a sudden smile broke across his face. Without warning, he plunged his hand through the moss, down, down, his arm disappearing to the elbow.

Tavik started forward. "What are you…?"

Bran's hand emerged, and with it, a round, moss-covered creature no larger than a hunting hound. It rose into the frost-bright morning, water and soil streaming from its carapace.

The Root Guardian.

Its mossy body was beaded with dew, tiny flowers blooming from its carapace in many colours. Its eyes, deep and unblinking as peat pools, surveyed them with an intelligence that predated language. Though barely half Nix's size, it carried the weight of ages in every slow movement.

A warmth radiated from it, not comfort alone but an unspoken command. Trust.

Oren's hand, which had been moving toward his belt, stilled and fell to his side. The tightness in his chest, which had been there since they had seen Nix in transform, suddenly loosened.

Tavik's shoulders dropped. His breathing, which had been quick and shallow, deepened and slowed.

Even Nix felt it. The fear that had coiled in him since his magic had burst through him, began to ease, replaced by something gentler. Peace, perhaps, though the word felt too simple for what moved through him.

The sky responded. Light spilt through the canopy in shifting colours, dreamlike and strange, painting their breath with wonder.

———

The Root Guardian's moss-shadowed gaze fixed on Nix.

Nix met those ancient eyes and knew he was being read. The hollows beneath his eyes. The blue pallor of his skin. The way his shoulders held too much weight for a boy of fourteen. He had drawn his magic back inside himself, ears no longer flat, fangs hidden, but the effort had cost him. The fire of his magic that had prematurely erupted from him still burned low in his bones, drinking from his life's well drop by drop.

He could not afford to waste it. He knew that now, though he did not know how he knew.

With the slow surrender of one already half-claimed by exhaustion, Nix lowered himself to the frost-dusted moss. He lay on his side, curling slightly, his eyes drifting closed.

The Root Guardian moved toward him. It's great, root-woven hand came forward, not rough bark but a gentleness older than the forest itself. With two careful fingers, it touched Nix's closed eyelids.

Darkness settled over him. Not the smothering darkness of fear, but the green-scented darkness of deep healing. Warmth flooded through him, different from his own violet light. This was cooler, steadier, like water from a deep well. It moved through his chest, along his limbs, into the hollow places the magic had drunk from.

He felt his body relax, muscle by muscle, breath by breath, until he was floating in that green darkness, held and tended.

———

Oren and Tavik stood watching, neither quite daring to breathe.

The Root Guardian left Nix lying peacefully in the moss and turned to Bran. It bent its crown, a gnarled dome festooned with lichen and small ferns, and rested it gently against Bran's forehead.

Above them, the high branches creaked and leaned, as though the whole wood stooped to listen.

Bran's eyes remained closed. His lips moved, but no sound emerged. Whatever passed between him and the Guardian existed in a language older than speech.

Then the Root Guardian was sinking back into the weave of moss and root, its form dissolving with a rustle and a faint shimmer. Within moments, it was as though it had never been.

The air thinned. The magic's warmth ebbed. Winter's breath came sliding back through the trees, sharp and metallic on the tongue, as if the snow itself were made of cold copper.

The slope before them fell away into dimness, toward where the Emaris river roared unseen beyond the forest's edge. Around them, the woods stood close and watchful, their trunks frosted by fresh snow.

———-

Bran opened his eyes. When he spoke, his voice was low, almost lost to the wind, yet it carried the weight of something that had been decided.

"The Root Guardian says we're in danger." His gaze dropped to where Nix lay. "Nix is a new magical being, unique in this world. Others will want to claim his magic for their own."

The words settled like frost on steel.

Tavik's jaw set. "Then we get him to Drakkensund. Now."

"Your teacher, the healer." Oren's hands closed on Bran's shoulders, his gaze intent. "Yilda. Will she help him?"

Bran's brow furrowed, the shadow of thought passing over his face. "Drakkensund first. Yilda. After that..." He shook his head slowly. "I don't know what comes next."

Oren rose in one smooth motion, the decision already made. "Then we don't wait to find out."

———

Nix stirred.

At first, only the faintest shift of his hand in the moss. Then his eyes opened, heavy-lidded but clear, and he pushed himself upright. His breath smoked in the cold air. The light in him was banked now, but it still glimmered faintly beneath the surface, dulled by the after-weight of his magic.

He blinked as though waking into another season.

The three brothers turned as one. Oren crouched beside him, steadying his shoulder with the sure grip of someone who had caught others before they could fall. Tavik moved close on his other side, a wall against the cold. Bran remained where he knelt, his gaze searching Nix's face as though reading something written there in a language only he could decipher.

"What were you talking about?" Nix's voice was hoarse but intent. He looked up at Tavik.

Tavik held his gaze for a long moment. "We need to get you to Drakkensund. To the healer. Can you walk?"

"Yes." The word left Nix's mouth before the breath behind it was spent. Too quickly. Too certain.

In that swiftness, the others caught it. Not fear exactly, but the shadow of something newly awakened, the mark of bloodline and power intertwined.

The word hung in the cold air.

Nix's hand rested on his knee, fingers curling once, then stilling. His gaze drifted past them, beyond the frost-rimmed clearing, to some place only he could see.

———-

In the space between heartbeats, he was elsewhere.

The memory came back to him in shards. The cold first, biting and sharp. The taste of frost in the air. The way the dawn light had bled pale through the oak branches where he had crouched, legs aching against rough bark, watching the clearing below.

Simi had been hunting him. He had known it with the certainty of prey.

Then the crunch of snow under boots. Simi bursting into the open, sword in hand, breath steaming, eyes lit with fury. The shout for Ulfgar. And Ulfgar stepping from the far edge of the clearing as though he had been waiting all along, the string of strange gems at his throat catching the first light like captured stars.

The words had been flung like stones. Accusations. Captivity. The naming of the gems. Stolen constellations, Simi had called them. The key to freeing Lisera.

Nix had felt his own breath catch. He had never heard their mother spoken of like that before.

Ulfgar's refusal had been flat. Final. Then steel on steel, the ring of it cutting through the morning. Simi's blade crashing against Ulfgar's sword. The older man's weight driving Simi back. Snow churning under their boots. The grunt and clash of combat.

And in the shadows, she. Lisera. Mother.

Silent all his life, yet her lips had been moving, shaping words he could not hear. Her gaze had fixed on the ground at Ulfgar's feet.

The roots had stirred. Rose. Coiled about his legs like living chains.

The sword stroke had been quick and sickening. Nix could still hear it. The wet slide of metal into flesh. The choking gurgle as Ulfgar's eyes went wide with astonishment. Blood steaming on the frozen earth, red stark against the frost.

The gems had lifted then, weightless, spinning into a tiny cosmos above the body before spiralling into Lisera's waiting hands. She had flung them high, and the air had changed.

She had grown taller, darker. Her skin had deepened to cerulean, runes writhing like living light beneath it. Wings had unfurled from her shoulders, vast and iridescent, each feather shimmering with the constellations of uncounted worlds. Her hair, moss-red and green. Her cheekbones, sharp as blades. The shadows had bent toward her as if she were a collapsing star.

Magnificent. Terrifying.

Her voice had been like crystal breaking under stone when she thanked Simi. He had begged her to make him like her, to share her power, but she had only looked at him. Then her gaze had turned upward, finding Nix in the branches above.

The tilt of her head had been slight, but it had opened a pit of fear in him.

Simi had followed her gaze, shouting up accusations. Nix had shouted back that he had seen Simi kill his own father. The reply had been a blade of its own: why should a bastard care for a man who was never his father?

Lisera's growl had silenced them both. Then the roar, vast and inhuman, calling to something far beyond the forest. Simi had fled at once, disappearing into the trees.

The sound had struck Nix like a physical blow, shaking the branch beneath him. He had fallen, hit the ground hard, and run. The sky had been boiling, the storm building above and around him, Lisera's power gathering like thunder.

And then, the tear in the air. Light, wind, the terrible pull of it. His magic had erupted without his will, raw and searing, tearing at his skin as it dragged him through the gap between moments.

When he had stumbled out the other side, he had been changed. The magic was in him now, dangerous, unasked for. And with it came knowledge that no one should hold, understanding that burned in his mind like fever.

It frightened him. It thrilled him. And it pulled at him with urgent, unrelenting force.

————-

A hand closed on his shoulder. Oren's, firm and grounding. "Nix."

He blinked. The icy clearing rushed back into place, solid and real. With a sharp breath, he shook himself and scrambled to his feet. "We need to keep moving." He was already glancing toward the shadowed slope ahead, where the path led down through the forest.

The three brothers exchanged quick looks. Curiosity. Caution. The unspoken agreement to ask later.

For now, they fell in beside him. Boots crunched over frost. The wind scattered pale flakes through the trees as they pressed on, leaving the clearing and its silence behind them, descending toward the distant roar of the Emaris and whatever awaited them in Drakkensund.