The village felt different with strangers inside it.
Chris noticed it in the way the bamboo held itself straighter, the way the strangle vines tracked movement from every shadow and how even the fig tree's drips seemed to slow, as if the whole place was holding its breath and watching these newcomers closely.
He led Lyra and most of the party around, showing them the tree's, the vines and warning them about what was safe and what shouldn't be touched. The ranger and mage trailed at a distance, their eyes moving constantly as they noticed the many familiar plants. The knight though had been left at the gate with Sera and her sword for company, a fact that seemed to itch at him like a bad rash but after how he had been Chris didn't want him inside his home.
Lyra followed a half-step behind him, close enough to speak quietly but far enough to seem like she wasn't following, but walking in the same direction. Her eyes kept drifting to the bark-like ridges on his forearms, to the black lines that disappeared into his sleeves. She didn't ask about them and he didn't offer but she was intrigued about it, about their cause, if it was the reason he could grow things out here, more questions on her ever-growing list.
The flowers began to sing as they circled back towards the entrance, approaching the Ancient Ent.
It wasn't the loud, hopeful chorus that greeted dawn or the soft lullaby that closed the day. This was something in between, lower and seemingly reverent, as if the moon drop daisies and blood red lilies knew exactly who they were singing for but also wanted to show off for their new guests. Their petals seemed to reach out and brush against Lyra's boots as she walked by. Chris saw her glance down at them before understanding seemed to dawn on her, they were letting her pass.
She walked a bit further before stopping at the edge of what she easily realized was a grave.
The soil was dark, darker than the Barrens' dust had any right to be and darker than any soil she had actually seen before. The flowers had also grown far thicker here, almost woven together, their roots tangled deep. And at the center, where the earth rose just slightly in a shape that might have been a mound or might have been nothing at all, a single white lily stood taller than the rest, faint hints of red along its edges and clearly some kind of mix of the two.
Lyra stood very still as she took it all in.
"The old man," she said gently as her gaze turned to Chris.
He simply nodded in response, "Theron. The man who took me in, tried to help me and lost his life due to my idiocy and faults."
Her jaw tightened. "My father knew of him. Not personally but the name came up in old reports he would share, often referring to him as a honest man, beyond powerful in his prime before becoming a gentle ghost and caretaker who refused to die." She paused. "He was here for decades."
"Far longer than anyone should have been." Chris said gently, smiling faintly as he heard the old man never lost who he was.
She knelt down slowly not dramatically but rather just a simple, quiet folding of her body onto the soil. Her hand pressed flat against the ground, fingers spread, as if she were testing for a heartbeat.
"My father said he was a relic. A force of nature but always questioning and refusing to fold to the demands of any empire, but he was far too valuable to lose so they shipped him away, dumped him out here and slowly began to try and erase him." Her voice was low, almost conversational.
Chris said nothing.
She looked up at him then, and for the first time, he saw something behind her eyes that wasn't calculation. It wasn't warmth but it was something real. A crack in the armor she seemed to wear like a second skin since he met her.
"What happened to him?" She finally asked.
Chris had been asked this before. By Sera, by Korr, at times even asking himself that in the dark hours when sleep wouldn't come, the voice in his mind had often been rather vocal in blaming him for what happened and would tend to give various details on what it felt had happened. He still didn't have a proper answer besides the beasts got him, so he just spoke what felt natural, from the heart.
"There was a dungeon wave, a really bad one," he said. "Bigger than anything he'd seen in years. Maybe ever." He paused, his thumb finding the knot mark on his wrist. "He had me knocked out and taken to a safe place by the plants, facing it on his own..."
Lyra's hand curled slightly, fingers pressing into the soil.
"He could have run," she said.
"He should have but, and I hate myself for even thinking this, he went out how he would have wanted, he wouldn't have allowed himself to leave."
"No." She almost smiled. It didn't reach her eyes. "From what I read about him he really wouldn't have left; he wouldn't be able to live with himself if he had."
The silence stretched between them after that, filled by the flowers' song. He'd learned that some things didn't need words.
When Lyra spoke again, her voice was different, a bit rawer and more laced with confusion.
"I came here expecting to find a monster."
"The real monsters are out there, and not just from the dungeon."
"My father told me to be careful. The report even said you'd killed Walter, and anyone who could do that was dangerous, since as arrogant as he was, he did have some skill" She turned her gaze back to the grave, noting how he didn't refute or correct her. "He didn't say you'd be a person though, so human."
Chris didn't have an answer for that. He wasn't sure there was one.
Lyra stood slowly, brushing dirt from her knees, looking around again.
"You buried the old man, Theron here," she said. "With flowers. With a tree to act as a ever vigilant watcher, something that would last for a long time and act as proof that he existed." She looked at the Ancient Ent, at the bark face that watched them both with ancient, patient eyes she was sure actually moved and was looking at them. "You gave him more than most people get."
"He deserved more than he got in life, at least after passing I could give him something good."
"Walter didn't?"
It wasn't an accusation, just an honest desire to hear his response as she looked at him.
Chris simply shook his head, "No. He didn't."
She held his gaze for a long moment. Then she nodded in acceptance.
"Can you show me the rest of the place now?"
He led her back to the others waiting outside the flower field and led them deeper in and back towards the center of the village. Lyra's breath caught when she saw the Rootmind, having never seen anything like it before in her life.
It sat in the open now, its bulb-like top gleaming faintly in the afternoon light, its dark roots pulsing with that slow, steady rhythm that Chris had grown so used to he barely noticed it anymore. The seat in front of it was empty, but the marks on his arms throbbed once in recognition.
"What is that?" Lyra asked. Her voice was steady, but there were faint hints of fear in it. She was staring at the Rootmind the way someone might stare at a sleeping predator, respect mixed with caution.
"My security for the village," Chris said. "It connects to my many plants and helps keep me informed of anything and everything that's going on in and around here."
"You see through them?" She asked, the scout fidgeting nervously, the hero's glancing around and muttering something about killer plants or alien eggs? Even the healer seemed to regard it with caution.
Rolling his eyes he spoke simply. "It's how I knew you were coming when you started getting close, it's also how I know what to expect from the dungeon every night."
That was when she noticed the exhaustion he failed to properly hide.
"What's it costing you though?" The ranger asked in a whisper, causing him and Lyra to look at her, making her feel more self-conscious.
The question had honestly caught him off guard. He'd expected questions ask about strategy, about defenses, about whether he was a threat or for them to ask about the Rootmind's strange form or even his own markings. Not that though.
"I don't know yet," he admitted. "Maybe nothing. Maybe everything." He paused. "The marks though are a side effect; there's also a voice in my head that I'm still trying to deal with. But it's worth it considering the added safety and strategic benefits it gives me."
Lyra studied him. "What is it? The voice I mean."
Chris's jaw tightened. "You heard it."
"No, it's just, I don't know, when you talked about my brother it felt like something changed about your." She tilted her head. "Like something was overlapping your words, I thought maybe it was your true feelings but, now it sounds like a faint possession."
He didn't deny it. There was no point. She was too sharp, too observant, she already noticed there was something there, and sharing it would keep them from trying to look into it, it would also give him a fresh perspective about it.
"I don't know what it is, just that it's linked to whatever's in the dungeon, when I touched the dungeon core it reacted and seemed to empower the voice, even let it take control temporarily…" He told them, not noticing their reaction to his words.
"I don't truly know what it is yet either, just that it's something old and corrupted, that the voice has a link to what was sealed deep in there a long time ago. I had thought it was just guilt or greed or just echoes of something from within me, but recently a… friend helped me realize it didn't come from me, rather it's a parasite that jumped onto me somewhere at some point." He looked at the Rootmind, at the pulsing roots, at the way the light seemed to bend around it, the plant was the friend who had cleared it up for him, the only plant to be able to hear it. "It's remained quiet lately but I can always feel it existing there."
"Does it ever stop?" The mage asked him.
"No." The word came out harder than he intended. "But I'm learning to carry it and deal with it, if I indulge it ever so slightly it tends to lessen its attempts at control."
Lyra was quiet for a long moment. Then she reached into her coat and pulled out a small leather pouch, the kind of thing that had been handled a thousand times.
"Walter carried this," she said. "Our mother gave it to him before he left but he refused to take it, dropping it at the gates before he left. It's a protection charm, or at least that's what she called it. Even I know it's mostly superstition but still." She held it out. "I sometimes wonder if it could have saved him if he had taken it."
Chris looked at the pouch. Then at her.
"I don't want it."
"I'm not giving it to you." She tucked it back into her coat. "I'm telling you that he wasn't always the way you saw him, our mother just dotted on him a bit to much but he used to be far kinder. The world got to him though, our mother's indulgence and our father making our family out to be more than it was. She paused. "That doesn't excuse what he did. But I just wanted you to understand why he was how he was."
Chris thought about Walter. About the sneer, the greed, the way he'd ripped up flowers on his way out. About how his body was dug up and dragged away by beasts, taken from the unmarked grave he dumped him in.
"He made his choices," Chris finally said. "Same as everyone else and those choices caught up to him."
"Yes." Lyra's voice was soft. "I suppose they did."
They soon walked back towards the gates, the flowers' song followed them, soft and sad as Chris fell into step beside her without thinking.
"You didn't answer my question though," she eventually said.
"Which one?"
"About what you want, and about what you're building here." She glanced at him. "You said you wanted a safe haven. But safe havens don't need walls that kill or plants that so readily kill and devour."
Chris considered the question. Really considered it, he saw none of them would be accepting of a simple answer, not like the one he gave Sera or Korr or the same as the one he would give himself in the dark hours when the voice was loudest.
"When I first came here," he said slowly, "I thought I was something special, but then it became a desire to survive. To make it through one more day, to have one more chance, to see one more sunrise." He paused. "Then Theron died due to my recklessness and even if the plants argue I know he died protecting me with the hopes of creating a place to match his dream. Eventually it went from survival to wanting to make it something more, to make this place match his dream."
"And now?"
They'd reached the gate at this point. The bamboo parting for them as they all walked out of the village, Chris saw Sera watching the knight with her hand on her sword, it seemed like she was all but ready to come to blows, he did wonder where Korr had disappeared to but had long since gotten used to him disappearing on a whim.
"Now?" Chris said, "I guess I just want a place where people don't get thrown away, one that accepts exiles and supposed criminals, those who want peace from the wars and can be themselves and seen as equal to one another. A place of peace I guess."
Lyra stared at him. "That's not how the world works, that's just idealistic to the point of being delusional."
"I know." He met her eyes. "But even if it's just an unobtainable dream it's something I will try to building myself. I will make this place as close to that as I possibly can."
She didn't respond. The knight was walking toward them, his face tight with barely restrained anger well Sera seemed smug upon spotting them. The other party members where quiet, either considering his words, thinking of what they saw or silently judging him,
"We're done for now," she said, cutting off whatever the knight had been about to say. "We will discuss and work with what we had all seen thus far, I want you all to help me write out the reports."
The knight's jaw tightened as he narrowed his eyes at Chris. "My lady —"
"Don't even try it, you're still on thin ice with me."
He swallowed whatever argument he'd been preparing and stepped back, his hand still too close to his sword.
Lyra turned to Chris. "Thank you. For showing us all of that and telling us what you have."
"I just wanted to make it clear I'm not a threat, just a person wanting to make a welcoming home and place of peace that's left alone."
She walked through the gate, her party falling in behind her, and Chris stood watching as the bamboo wove itself shut again.
As Sera rejoined him and they parted from Lyra and her group Sera spoke softly, just loud enough for him to hear. "She's rather dangerous," It wasn't a warning, just an observation she noted.
"So am I though, or at least I've learnt to be dangerous."
Sera glanced at the vines around them. "That's what I'm afraid of."