Wizard's Tower - Arc 3 - Interlude 1 of 3 - Baron Froom

I sat at the edge of her bed, listening to her shuddering breaths, but I had a hard time looking at my love. Instead, I found myself staring at my hands. Once strong and full of life, now they were wrinkled and spotted. I hadn’t looked at my hands in a long, long time.  Really looked, with intent. Now that I was, I realized that they weren’t familiar anymore. 

It was a part of life to age, I knew that. Yet, it had always been something in the back of my mind as I pursued the next adventure, the next spell. The excitement of fame and power.

“Alred,” Natali’s voice called, and it sounded stronger than yesterday.

I turned to look at her and hid away my pain to give her a smile. She always seemed to have an intuitive notion when I was becoming too disheartened. Not that it mattered this time, as the weight of her approaching death smothered all my other thoughts and shaded all my actions.

“You,” she spoke slowly between gasping breaths, “have too much faith in your old teacher.”

I knew Natali’s opinion of the man. Whatever words had been shared between her and that nature elemental outside of his tower she kept to herself, but it had changed her view. Before she had met Nemon, I had done much to describe his eccentricities, a way to prepare her for meeting the wizard himself. Natali had always been quick to judge others, and find fault within them—a habit that had saved my life more than once, but still aggravated me to no end.

Her reaction to Nemon had been different. Before she met him, she had seemed optimistic, almost excited about the prospect. Yet, whatever words the elemental had shared with her had shadowed her opinion, and she held him in low esteem now. It confused me, as I didn’t know why her opinion changed, but I still defended him whenever the topic arose.

This time was no different, “Too much faith? When I discovered the pestilence, it took you a week to leave my room. Even then, I could only react with fear. Goblins? Wild monsters? Those don’t scare me. Not like they do, and my reaction was to hide away. Even this place,” I gestured at the crystal walls of the tower. “Is a way of hiding. But do you know what he did? His first reaction was to look for ways to defeat the creatures. I spied on his work, and he was already developing methods to defeat the beasts. No fight them, defeat them. Even now—”

“Lord Alred,” my wife’s voice interrupted me. I hadn’t realized it but I had risen and began pacing back and forth as I spoke. Her interruption brought that to a halt, and I had to once again take in the image of my dying wife.

She didn’t let me dwell too long, though, instead, she spoke the two words that I had most dreaded to hear, “It’s time.”

I watched her struggle to sit up for just a brief moment before the full meaning of the words hit me. Then, I rushed to her side. The ceremony had been prepared for weeks now, and our current room was only a small distance away. It took much effort to lift her and carry her on my side. More physical effort than I had given in a long time, and had it been anyone else, I would have used a golem to carry them.

Yet, for me, no matter how much I struggled with her small weight, it had to be personal. With staggering steps, we left the small room with the bed and approached the field that had been prepared. Wagonloads of dirt came through the portals every day, to cover the crystal land that we had taken. To create fields for planting, and places to bury waste, but this place was untouched by either.

Four great stone pillars, wrought by geomancers with runic designs prepared by druids rested atop the thickest layer of stone in the quartz plane.  Seeds of every type we could attain had been brought and planted in the soil outside those pillars, but only a few had sprouted so far. It smelled strongly of dirt and stone.

Other druids seeing our approach stopped their work and began following behind us as we walked. She had discussed the ceremony many times before, and my part was only to help her walk around the pillars thrice before leading her to the barren center. Yet I still feared. I feared for her loss, for what I would do when she was gone. I feared for how much I would hurt, as selfish as that sounds.  

Despite my fear though, I lent my strength as we slowly began walking around those four pillars. Her aged and broken voice began chanting a druidic spell I had never heard before. I felt the power building in her, and then build the others behind us as they took up the chant as well. Their tone effortlessly matching that of my wife, and the rise and fall of their cadence seemed as though they were born for this one task.

I stopped focusing on that, though, or the walk. The burdens of my body left my mind, and I found myself simply watching her face as she worked.

I didn’t want to remember her as the sick woman lying in the bed moments before. I wanted to remember her how she was now. Strong, vibrant, determined. That was the woman I fell in love with, and even if her face was aged, it was still beautiful to me.

Three times we walked around those pillars, though my thoughts were elsewhere and I didn’t count. So far away from the present, I was startled when she turned to step inside the pillars. She was weak now, barely able to move her foot a step, but I helped her in every way I could. She was too proud of a woman to allow me to carry her, I knew, but I was still tempted to try.

It took over an hour to reach the center, and my wife could no longer contain the strain of the walk from her face. It was a look that left my insides churning. Yet when we stopped there in the center, she turned and reached one hand out to touch the side of my face.

With a sad look in her eye, she whispered, “I love you, Alred.”

I watched her through teary eyes and opened my mouth to tell her how much I loved her as well, but no words came. That didn’t matter, though, because she had already closed her eyes and raised her hands over her head. The effects of the spell were taking hold. Her body shuddered and changed. Her robe split open as her feet became roots, then tore further as her body grew to a tree’s trunk. Her head and arms reached higher even than the pillars around us as the spell finalized her new form. From the woman I knew to a great oak tree.  

At some point, I had fallen backward and was caught by a pair of strong hands behind me, the other druids no doubt. Yet, I wasn’t concerned with anything but my wife, even as the seeds planted around the pillars sprouted into vibrant new plantlife. Eventually, those same hands lowered me down to sit on the barren dirt around the tree and I came back to myself.

“I love you too, Natali.”