Luck be Damned

5

^^ Dragon Knight ^^

— Alice —

Armed with a map of the forest and another of the entire kingdom, I led Ganda down the elevator, towards her house.

"Why are we going to my house? I've got everything I need with me." Ganda hummed curiously.

"I have a theory to try out... and the area around your house is the safest place to try it." I explained casually, and she nodded, sated for now.

It wasn't the first theory I'd tried out in her yard, and most of them ended in failure, but a few of them... Once we were in her yard, and the sun was directly above us, signifying noon, I began my experiment.

The roots of the trees around her house extended a good eighty feet down, and were dense enough that there was little to no room for any creatures to pass through them without destroying the roots; a time-consuming and dangerous task, considering the number of Ents and Dryads in this particular forest. Therefore, passage through the roots would be well protected and supported by their very sturdy structure.

Therein laid my plan: Tunnels through the roots, which would be safe from 99% of Monsters just by virtue of location and inaccessibility, and then the remaining 1% would be driven off by Ganda's alchemy tricks, until such a time as I created a plant or crystal that gave off that same scent, and also a light, because it'd be dark in there.

But instead of tunneling through the roots, and enticing the Wrath of the same Ents I hoped to use for protection, I would simply ask the roots to move out of the way, and then pay them with the energy of whatever died within or around the tunnel, which I imagined would be a very good deal.

The first test worked with little to no trouble; the roots formed a donut of sorts around Ganda's clearing, and then formed walls and a flat floor as I walked along the perimeter of the clearing. Traveling inside the loop, I felt irritated by the lack of light, and managed to make some nice nocturnal bioluminescent grass grow. It was therefore white, not green, which gave the entire tunnel a beautiful, ethereal theme, and I was very, very happy with it, overall. With that handled, the second phase began.

First, I oriented myself south, and then carefully measured the direction of the nearest city, the Elven/Draconic city of Blue River, located in the exact center of the forest. Several dozen Sentient Ancient Dragon's lived there in harmony with the elves, apparently, and there was even rumors and myths about the elves riding them.

Next, I slowly walked down into the dirt, the plants moving themselves out of my way and eating the dirt to fuel their movements, effectively forming a slow, steady decline.

"Oh... wow, that's what you meant... Alright, I'll get a lantern and some food for the journey." Ganda nodded and rushed inside swiftly.

Once I was about sixty feet down, I leveled out, and used the plants' senses to keep myself that distance, so that I didn't exit onto the surface on accident. The walls soon became a thickly woven net of roots, leaving no gaps at all. The floor was flat, to accommodate a cart or horse, and there was a full thirty-foot by thirty-foot clearance, so that it didn't feel too claustrophobic. I also included little off-shoot tunnels for necessaries, and planned on more every few hundred feet. Progress was very slow, however, moving only about 36 feet a minute, and I couldn't manage any faster, so I informed Ganda of my limits.

She hummed, watching the slow moving curtain of roots as they slithered out of the way. "Yes, I can see that... it'll actually give me enough time to place my wards properly, so don't worry about it." She limped back to the beginning of the tunnel, and began drawing symbols in the dirt with lightning, creating a deep green shield over the entrance that soon faded and turned invisible. Then she'd grow a ring of crystals around the barrier, and it would begin glowing brightly. Every sixty feet, she placed another barrier and ring of crystal, and then move on, by which time I'd probably already dug the next sixty feet, and soon we had a proper rhythm going.