The Villain Professor's Second Chance

The air tasted like old copper and rotting bark. Each step into the glade sank slightly—spongy with decayed roots that pulsed with something that wasn't sap. Draven felt the earth give beneath his boot-heels, then rebound with a faint, unpleasant throb, as if the ground itself possessed a stubborn heartbeat. A faint, sick-sweet odor bled out of that living mulch, coating his tongue like spoiled honey.

Overhead, a ceiling of tangled branches choked out much of the dawn. The few shafts of light that did pierce the canopy looked bruised, their gold dulled to bruise-violet by drifting spores. Those spores spiraled in lazy eddies, catching lamplight and turning the air into a snow globe of corrupted pollen. Draven marked how they stuck to skin—first a sheen, then a film—before sloughing away in greasy flecks. Whatever spell animated this place wanted to cling, to cling and infect.

Behind him, the lantern-bearers—children too young for blades but already wise enough for courage—stood unmoving. Blue-glass globes dangled from iron poles in their small hands, flame-wisps fluttering within. The glow painted their faces an unearthly azure, like saints carved from moonstone. They looked as if a single breath might break them… but none wavered. Each one locked eyes on the warriors ahead, refusing to blink even when drifting ash stung.

Smart of them to stay back, Draven thought. Smart of them not to look away.

Vaelira raised two fingers and swept her hand outward. Silent order: disperse. Elven soldiers melted into the undergrowth, armor muted beneath scraps of moss-cloth. A line of spears, barely visible, slid away like the quills of an animal bristling in slow motion. These were veterans—scarred, surefooted—but even veterans spared furtive glances at the rot-slick trunks around them. Leaves that should have rustled instead quivered as if breathing.

"They're reacting," Sylvanna murmured. She kept pace at Draven's left shoulder, bow drawn, arrow nocked. Stormlight pulsed along the fletching—soft, steady, like the heartbeat of some lightning-forged creature. Raëdrithar circled above, wings half-folded in hush-flight, arcs of static crackling across its pinions before sinking back into feather and scale.

Draven gave no reply. Words were weight. He saved breath for action.

The glade whispered.

At first, it was the hush of bark rubbing bark. Then came voices—thin, threadbare. They wafted between tree trunks like smoke: fragments of battle hymns, names spoken in tones of longing or accusation, the muffled sob of a child lost mid-song. One voice repeated the name "Elyan" with such quiet desperation that even Draven's iron focus flickered. Tears welled in a young warrior's eyes at the sound—brother's voice, perhaps. The lad's sword hand began a visible tremor that traveled up his arm, rattling steel against scabbard brass.

A lantern child stepped up beside him. Bare feet soundless on leaf-rot, she lifted her globe higher, letting blue light bathe the boy's face and drown the vision. The boy's breath caught. The shaking eased. Draven watched the exchange from the corner of his eye—small things. But small things saved lines from breaking.

"They're trying to fracture us before the fight even begins," he said, voice level as a chalk line.

Vaelira acknowledged with a curt incline. She slid one foot back, dug her heel into the root-knotted soil, and slashed at a gnarled tendril creeping toward her boot. Her curved saber hissed through the fibrous mass, sap spraying in pungent arcs. The glade groaned, a prolonged creak like a bowstring held too long. Above, windless branches swayed.

First motion. Then the screamers broke cover.

They came in a ragged wave: half-corrupted elves twisted by rot-glyphs seared into flesh. Skin split by bark, eyes clouded with resin cataracts, limbs bent at obscene angles. One charged on all fours, ribs protruding through gaps in its own armor. Another scuttled sideways, legs jointed the wrong way, chanting a hymn's chorus backward. In the dim light their bodies reflected patches of metallic lichen, making them glimmer like broken mirrors.

Draven stepped forward, twin blades drawing an arc of white. His mind bit down on angles and joints the way a grinder catches a blade. First attacker—noted right hip overextended, momentum high—sidestep, cut inside knee. His left sword parried a crab-claw swipe; his right pierced the soft bark seam below a protruding rib. One thrust, twist, retract. Body collapsed.

A second ripped in from Draven's right, mouth impossibly wide, teeth replaced by root barbs. Draven pivoted, letting the creature's own charge slide along his left shoulder. He felt the brush of splinters tugging his cloak but ignored it, brought his right blade upward in a diagonal slash across its spine. Sap—too dark, too thick—splattered his vambrace. He batted the corpse aside to clear Sylvanna's line of sight.

Her arrow flashed past his ear like cold lightning. It nailed a leaper mid-air—shaft burying between warped eye sockets, stormlight detonating on impact. The corrupted thing disintegrated mid-scream, shards of bark and bone raining over moss.

Two more followed. Sylvanna fired slowly, methodically, exhaling each shot as though releasing judgement itself. Where the arrows struck, silence bloomed. She adjusted for wind that didn't exist, for gravity that felt heavier here, never missing.

Raëdrithar dived, wings tucked. Thunder cracked when its talons met its target—a brute bigger than the rest, sap-swollen arms wielding a femur-club. Lightning rippled down the chimera's spine into the creature, bursting sap blisters in incandescent spray. The brute staggered; Draven opened its hamstring with a neat flick, then buried both blades in its stomach and tore sideways.

Vaelira held the center. She whirled in ritual measure—every motion a glyph drawn in the air. Her saber severed a reaching limb; her off-hand dagger plunged into corrupted bark, anchoring her spin before she sliced through a second foe's abdomen. She danced on ghost memories of royal courts and moonlit sparrings, but her fury anchored her feet like roots. Where she fought, the air felt momentarily cleaner.

Yet the corrupted pressed. More spilled from the tree line—shambling, crawling, skittering; each shape worse than the last. The smell thickened—fermented sap mixed with the coppery tang of their own blood.

Draven's lungs burned with the cloying sweetness. He adopted shorter breaths, letting muscles regulate oxygen on minimal intake. Across the clearing he saw Sylvanna wipe resin-flecks from her brow, eyes narrowed against the sting.

A shriek tore the air—inhuman. A twisted elven priestess lurched forward, robes ragged, hands fused into a single branch-like spur ending in a wooden sickle. She intoned a dirge older than the grove, and the ground convulsed. Roots shot up, snaring the ankles of two warriors. They fell, weapons clattering.

Draven sprang—a blur of cloak and steel. His right blade chopped the root coil. Left blade intercepted the priestess's spur mid-swing, sliding off its bark to cleave her throat. Resin bubbled, and the chant died with a gurgle.

Quick glance: the snared warriors scrambled free, nodding thanks. He turned, parried a spear that was more vine than wood, and rammed an elbow into its wielder's jaw—a cracking noise, then a stab to finish.

"They're not just corrupted," Sylvanna shouted, voice hoarse but steady. She loosed another arrow. "Something's puppeting them!"

"I know," Draven called back. His eyes flicked to the massive tree at the glade's heart—ancient trunk cracked wide, an open wound weeping dark sap. Shadows writhed deep inside that split, like something dreaming and hungry. A heartbeat later he registered a low, seismic groan. The ground shifted. Leaves shivered though there was still no wind.

A younger warrior—barely older than the lantern children—let out a frightened whimper when a root brushed his boot. He swung wildly, blade clanging off stone. Vaelira whistled sharply; the lad steadied, stepped back into formation. Beside him, another lantern bearer lifted her light even higher, blue fire flaring brighter, as if it could cauterize fear.

Somewhere behind Draven, a corrupted soldier tried to drag itself on splintered arms. Sylvanna's arrow pinned it through the skull without ceremony. The air crackled as she drew again.

Raëdrithar banked overhead. Its screech cut through the moans of the wounded and the death-rattle hiss of the corrupted. Lightning bled from its feathers, spiderwebbing across low-hanging branches and shocking spores into ash. The beast dipped, strafing the front ranks of shamblers, scorching armor and splitting bark-skin.

Draven noticed the tree's wound glow from inside—an orange low-light, like molten metal glimpsed through furnace slats. The decayed roots underfoot pulse harder, throbbing under every bootfall. The corrupted seemed to fight with renewed frenzy, as though some distant puppeteer had yanked the strings taut.

More came.

Draven lunged forward, slashing through a trio. One lost half its face; another lost the hand clutching a spear. He spun, ducked, thrust upward through groin to spine. Movement blurred into reflex, reflex bled into motion, and the screams around him became mere percussion to his mind-engine—calculating angles, distributing lethal force.

He felt Sylvanna at his left, always at the edge of his peripheral, her arrows a surgical echo of his blades. Vaelira ahead, saber carving through roots like scythe through grain. Each of them a gear in a precise, remorseless machine.

But the gears strained. As the wave of puppets slowed, the wound in the tree yawned wider, spitting amber light and hot resin that hissed when it touched the ground. A shadow leaned out of that crevice—massive, crude—massing trunks and roots into a rough humanoid silhouette. Its eyes were twin hollows of molten sap. With a bone-deep groan, it stepped free.

The battle seemed to inhale and hold.