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By Root 208 0

above they could see the gleam of masonry and, just where the steps curved and disappeared for the first time, an elder tree. It looked like any ordinary tree but it became a symbol for them—there was their initial antagonist. How would it fight? Elric placed a booted foot on the first step. It was high, built for the feet of a giant. He began to climb, the other three following behind him. Now, as he reached the tenth step, he unsheathed Stormbringer, felt it quiver and send energy into him. The climbing instantly became easier. As he came closer to the elder, he heard it rustle, saw that there was an agitation in its branches. Yes, it was certainly sentient. He was only a few steps from the tree when he heard Dyvim Slorm shout: "Gods! The leaves—look at the leaves!"

The green leaves, their veins seeming to throb in the sunlight, were beginning to detach themselves from the branches and drift purposefully towards the group. One settled on Elric's bare hand. He attempted to brush it off, but it clung. Others began to settle on different parts of his body. They were coming in a green wave now and he felt a peculiar stinging sensation in his hand. With a curse he peeled it off and to his horror saw that tiny pinpricks of blood were left where it had been. His body twitched in nausea and he ripped the rest from his face, slashing at others with his runesword. As they were touched by the blade, so they shrivelled, but were swiftly replaced. He knew instinctively that they were sucking not only blood from his veins, but the soul-force from his being.

With yells of terror, his companions discovered the same thing. These leaves were being directed and he knew where the direction came from—the tree itself. He clambered up the remaining steps, fighting off the leaves which swarmed like locusts around him. With grim intention he began hacking at the truck which gave out an angry groaning and the branches sought to reach him. He slashed them away and then plunged Stormbringer deep into the tree. Sods of earth spattered upwards as the roots threshed. The tree screamed and began to heel over towards him as if, in death, it sought to kill him also. He wrenched at Stormbringer which sucked greedily at the sentient tree's life-stuff, failed to tug the sword out and leapt aside as the tree crashed down over the steps, barely missing him. One branch slashed his face and drew blood. He gasped and staggered, feeling the life draining from him.

He stumbled back to the fallen tree and saw that the wood was suddenly dead and the remaining leaves brown and shrivelled. "Quickly," he gasped as the three came up, "shift this thing. My sword's beneath and without it I'm dead!"

Swiftly they set to work and rolled the tree over so that Elric could weakly grasp the hilt of the sword still embedded therein. As he did so he almost screamed, experiencing a sensation of ecstatic power as the tree's energy filled him, pulsed through him so that he felt like a god himself. He laughed, as if possessed by a demon, and the others looked at him in astonishment. "Come, my friends, follow me. I can deal with a million such trees now!"

He leapt up the steps as another shoal of leaves came towards him. Ignoring their bites, he went straight for the second elder and drove his sword at its centre. Again, this tree screamed.

"Dyvim Slorm!" he shouted, drunk on its life-force. "Do as I do—let your sword drink a few such souls and we're invincible!"

"Such power is scarcely palatable," Rackhir said, brushing dead leaves from his body as Elric withdrew his sword again and ran towards the next. The elders grew thicker here and they bent their branches to reach at him, looming over him, their branches like fingers seeking to pluck him apart.

Dyvim Slorm, a trifle less spontaneously, imitated Elric's method of despatching the tree-creatures and soon he too became filled with the stolen souls of the demons imprisoned within the elders and his wild laugh joined Elric's as, like fiendish woodsmen, they attacked again and again, each victory lending them more strength so