Book 3 Chapter 24: Jacque should meet his uncle
Dantes and Jacopo flew to the old tree that they always used to tree-walk themselves to the Viridian Expanse. He coughed a bit as they landed and shifted, but he managed to force it down. The moon was high and full in the sky, and Dantes could feel its light filling him with strength as they moved. The old tree and the area around it had started to sprout new life in the last few months. Tough weeds grew through the concrete, mushrooms spread in moist places where the rain collected, and even the previously bare limbs of the tree itself were sporting leaves.
Dantes started to do his usual mental check of where everything stood. His gardens were being protected, his interests watched over by Jayk and the other lieutenants, he’d already replied to Argenta's most recent message tracking Godfreys old connections, and Wane was working with Felix to examine the old Fishery that he had cleared Serpica out of, to see if they could figure anything out on a magical level. Unfortunately, they weren’t exactly druid experts, and didn’t even know of any within the Academy. Still, he hoped fresh eyes might provide more insights. He'd healed everyone he could for the day with the expectation of more incoming the next day. Vera had asked him to have a private dinner with her when he and Jacopo got back. He was looking forward to that. He hadn’t had a lot of time to talk with her one on one in the last several months.
Dantes and Jacopo braced themselves for that awful feeling of oneness that they had to endure when they tree-walked, and began to press into the tree’s trunk.
It didn’t give.
Dantes looked at his hand, and the tree, then tried again. He focused all the energy bleeding into him from the moonlight into the action.
Once again, it didn’t give.
He tried a third time, trying to force that feeling of wholeness with nature that he would experience when he was within that network of life within the ground. This time, when he put his hand against the tree and pushed, he actually felt it start to give way, so he pushed even harder.
Pain shot up his arm suddenly and he was thrown back, barely avoiding landing on Jacopo by twisting his body at the last moment. He felt the feeling of rot flow through his arm and shoot through him. He wretched violently as he fought to force down the feeling. It took several minutes, but he eventually regained control of himself. He stood and went back to the tree, putting his hand on it not in an attempt to tree-walk, but rather to steady himself.
Serpica had done something. Maybe it was just a side effect of the corruption she’d been spreading, or she had some way to block tree-walking more generally. It didn’t matter the method, what mattered was that he was cut off from the other druids.