The Veil of Darkness
Chapter 344: The Tree of Elements (Part Three)

She focused on her breathing. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale, and exhale until she felt connected to her own powers. She thrust out her arms—

The force of the spell lashed back at her as soon as her powers collided with the ward and knocked her down. Esmeray was immediately there to help her up and if not for her attention fixed on the tree, she should have really taken her time to feel embarrassed for falling so gracefully on the ground in front of him.

"Did it call me all the way here just to give me a hard time?" her question wasn’t directed at anyone in particular but since Esmeray was the only one there ho could speak other than her, he did respond - "Maybe you should calm down and think of a way to take down the protection field."

Maybe that was exactly what she was supposed to do, to use peace and not force. After all, she was there to ask for a weapon from the tea, she should be behaving like one. She slowed down her breathing again and tried to connect with the tree, but it was no easy task and she was struggling a little.

"This is a weird place..." she couldn’t help but say after another attempt of failure at making a connection with the tree. Her eyes scanned the area and returned to the tree, studying it closely.

"The energy isn’t bad," Esmeray spoke from beside her as he too was studying the tree, or maybe the protection field surrounding it. He was silent for a moment before he spoke again - "Or maybe it’s not quite good either... I feel like someone’s been here recently. This is a strange smell. A...fae smell."

"A fae?" Annalise was taken aback by surprise. They were in the Primordial Realm, no fae was supposed to be venturing these lands.

She whirled around, suddenly feeling like there were eyes on her. She caught a glimpse of a raven watching her from the trees. She immediately shot off a little wind spell toward the raven, shoving it out of its perch. "Maybe the tree isn’t the one testing me..."

The raven opened its mouth to caw, and instead, a purple light emerged from its mouth and floated toward her.

"Ooh..." The light was mesmerizing and beautiful. She held out her hands to reach for it.

"Don’t touch it, Annalise," Esmeray said.

"But I want to..."

"It’s a faery light. It will lure you into the forest and you’ll never come home," he said. "Look at me."

With some effort, she tore her eyes away from the light, snapped out of it, and shot a fireball at the raven.

At which point she guessed, the raven got upset and turned into a beautiful man with a grim but lofty expression etched into his ageless face. He lifted a hand, the long sleeve of his white robe whipping around as he generated some sort of crazy wind vortex that he shot at us, almost blowing her away if not for Esmeray’s protective hold on her.

"Wait! We are not here to fight. We just want a weapon from the tree." Annalise tried to use conversation to sort out the matter but she soon realized that she chose the wrong approach.

"You should learn to defend yourself at the first sign of an attack—!" He whipped his staff around and now vines and roots slid toward them from every direction, trapping her feet in place.

"Oh, that’s never good," Esmeray said, in a voice that nevertheless sounded like he was actually enjoying the show.

"Help me or be quiet!" She screamed at him.

"Do you want your journey to be in vain?" the faery man asked. "You must fight me alone. Prove yourself, or turn back. The King of Darkness knows this. And deep down, you know it too."

She did know this. Of course, if her weapon was special, there was a trial she had to pass to get it.

The vines, meanwhile, were circling her legs and trapping her, threatening to topple her over, as she struggled against them. She tried another fire spell and it dissipated like nothing. A wind spell wouldn’t work on vines.

"Ungh...!" They were starting to trap her arms and drag her down. She waved her arms around frantically and tried to kick but the vines seemed to fight her harder.

She took in a deep breath to calm down herself. She needed to be relaxed if she wanted to think of a way out from those vines. As her brain worked to think of ways, she recalled reading about a kind of vine in one of the castle’s library books. The more one struggled against them, the more these vines would entangle them. The way to get out of it was to stay still and cast slow spells until they backed off.

She immediately stopped fighting and went still, which wasn’t easy because it went against every instinct of her body. She took in another deep breath and the vines finally stopped encroaching so much.

She tried to connect with the vines and spoke mentally - ’I request you, vines, to slow down...,’ She tried to focus on her intent and not how nervous she was. ’Slower...slower.’ She was encouraged as the vines began to listen to her. ’Stop.’

The vines froze.

’Let me go.’

The vines dropped away, releasing Annalise from their hold but if she thought that she was off the hook—oh, no, that was not the case.

The faery wasn’t convinced yet and the test was still far from completed.