Chapter 390: Truly Unique
Slowly, like a child on midsummer’s day, Heila pulled the bundle into her lap and began untying the laces that held the fabric in place. Once the fabric fell away, her breath caught in her chest as she looked at a piece of heartwood taken from a young willow tree. The piece wasn’t large when compared to a twenty or thirty-foot tall willow tree, it was only four feet long and barely thicker than Heila’s arm, but it was warm in her hands and felt much lighter than it should.
Her fingers trembled slightly as she cradled the wood, her eyes growing distant as she remembered the magic of that night. The willow trees had fought alongside her, no different than when she and Ashlynn faced off together against the dangerous beasts in the Briar. They danced at her command, their branches striking like whips to protect her from obsidian shards, their roots intertwining to fill the arena with her magic without giving the cultists a chance to discover where she hid.
These trees had fought beside her, had protected her, had helped her save countless lives in the arena when it became clear that the Cauldron of Flame would stop at nothing to take her captive, even if it meant unleashing suicidal, sacrificial sorcery to do so. And now, a piece of them lay here, in her hands, still holding echoes of that battle.
"Is this..." she whispered, her voice thick with emotion as she traced her fingers along the wood grain. Each loop and whorl seemed to pulse with familiar energies, whether it was Ashlynn’s emerald power that had given the trees life, the soft, snowy chill from Snow Fang’s frost magic, or her own silvery-green shimmer that pulsed silently in time with her heartbeat, echoing her connection to the willows. And all of that was trapped within the willow tree’s heartwood, like memories preserved in amber.
The wood felt alive under her touch, not in the way a growing tree was alive, but like an echo of that vitality, preserved at the moment when their magic had been strongest and carrying the very faintest desire to resist the cataclysmic flames and devastation wrought by her enemies. It was something special, uniquely created in that moment that could never be made again.
"The trees I grew for your battle would never have survived for more than a week, even if we’d done everything possible to sustain them," Ashlynn said. "They were grown to participate in the battle, they protected you and fought alongside you and I couldn’t have asked for more from them."
"Is this, is this all that’s left?" Heila asked as she traced her fingers gently along the loops and whorls of the wood grain. There had been a dozen trees that night and while two of them had burned to ash under the relentless assault of the Cauldron of Flame and the others had suffered their own share of damage from uncontrolled flames and wild sprays of obsidian shards, she would have expected more to have survived than this small piece.
"Just this?" Heila asked, her eyes turning misty at the thought that so little remained of the mighty willow trees Ashlynn had raised to help her in the most difficult battle she’d ever faced.