Mike once again walked through the forest behind Crosse. Crosse had handed him the dead hunter, Connor’s, longbow. He had said that it was dead, but that Lady Ina could revive it and make it work the way that his did. For a new hunter to use. For now, it was a decent walking stick for the person with an injured leg.

Crosse was carrying the sack that contained the remains, cradled in his arms. Mike had been wanting to speak up to ask about the hunter in more detail, but he felt like his natural curiosity would be inappropriate in this situation.

He didn’t know what to ask or how to broach the topic of a dead friend or comrade with someone, especially right after finding their remains. He wanted to console the older man, but he honestly didn’t know him that well and was trying not to think about what might have happened if things had gone even a little bit different.

When he at first dodged forward he had been expecting the spikes, but he hadn’t expected them to come out at an angle and overlap like that, he didn’t know if that had been the original objective of the ooze, or if it had done that to try and hit him after he moved closer, and just missed.

Either way, if he had been just a little slower or done something differently like dodging backwards, he would have been a dead man. That was true for almost the entire fight tiny little differences and he would have ended up skewered by the spikes, cut in half or turned into a pincushion.

He was honestly lucky that Chill touch had worked as well as it had. The thing had been a monster made of Metal mana and tree sap and he wasn’t sure if it conventionally felt pain at all. Perhaps Magically induced pain worked differently.

His spells were something he needed to work on, with both Metal and Fire Magic resistance now, he might be able to actually learn to use some offensive Magic. He looks down at the bow in his hand.

It was almost a solid branch to him right now, he wondered how they worked. He didn’t know if he could help Crosse mourn his friend, or console him in any way, but perhaps he could distract him, it helped him.

“What did you mean when you said the bow was ‘dead’,” Mike asked, looking to Crosse’s back.

Crosse glanced back at him then spoke up, “the hunter’s bows were all made by Lady Ina when she decided that she didn’t want to deal with every single beast that was threatening the village. They are Magic weapons that aid in harming the Beasts, most of which have some resistance to mundane weapons. I said it is dead because it is currently without an owner, they require a human wielder to function.

“Something in them dies and they lose their flexibility and abilities, such as the bowstring and the arrows. However if Lady Ina approves a new hunter she can connect them to the bow, it will regain its uses and lost capabilities, I intend to ask her to let you have that one, you seem capable. whatever you did to that ooze stopped it dead and I assume that is the same thing that you did to the peryton?” Crosse asked, looking back.

Mike nodded, feeling awkward, he wasn’t sure he wanted to explain what he had done to Crosse, the old hunter seemed to like him, but Mike wasn’t so certain of his assessment.

Mike had lucked his way through every encounter he had had so far, or had someone vastly more capable carry him through it. He had beaten the peryton on his own but had sustained so much damage that in his current state he had just passed out.

Mike didn’t know how to respond to that, He wasn’t sure he deserved that honour just yet, he had no idea how to use a bow with any amount of reliability, having only shot one a few times back on Earth. The bow was an obviously useful tool though, and staying in Inasholme and learning to deserve the title of hunter didn’t sound like too bad a place for him in this world.

From there they continued walking both too deep in thought to continue talking.

***

The sun was close to setting as they began to hear the sound of a river in the distance, Crosse had smiled sadly and told Mike that that meant they were almost there. After less than half an hour of walking, they reached the town of Inasholme.

As the settlement came into view Mike’s eyes widened and his lips parted in awe as he took it in. The idea of the treetop village was something that the fantasy genre was infatuated with. The idea of Wood Elves and Demi-Humans living as one with nature being a core aspect of their identity.

Seeing such a thing in real life was every bit as awe-inspiring as he had imagined. The village of Inasholme was constructed around the trunks of the huge gild-leaf trees, as Crosse had called them. As they drew closer Mike saw that the settlement wasn’t constructed around the trunks, it seemed grown out of and into them.

The whole village was grown into several of the gild-Leaf trees, that looked like even larger examples of the species than he was used to by now. With stairs seemingly grown out of the trunk that spiralled upwards starting from a large root at the bottom that reached the ground like a ramp. At about a third of the way up the trunk, there were flat walkways in rings that had doorways carved into them.

The design made Mike think of an inside out spire, with the hallways of each level wrapped around the outside and the staircase never stopping, rising past the last level and into the leaved branches of the trees.

At a few of the levels, there were what looked like thick branches bridging the gaps between the trees. Mike could see people too, Humans. They were spread all over the trees, some standing on the walkways ringing the tree, leaning on the wooden railings that seemed to be there and talking, others crossing the bridges with armloads of food and other objects. Some were even high up, walking down the staircase at the top levels of the tree, too distant for Mike to see what they were carrying.

Mike drew in a shaky breath. It hadn’t been that long from his perspective since he had been separated from people like himself, but the AI had told him enough times that it had been two months for it to sink in. That was compounded by the harrowing events of the last few days of his life, to make him feel isolated in a way that he had never felt before.

It was nice just to see people. He wasn’t sure if he was up to actually interacting with any of them, but it was nice to see them. Especially since he wasn’t sure he would even be able to understand them. By the time he had collected himself from the shock of seeing such a fantastical sight, they had reached within twenty metres of the ramp that lead up a root of the nearest tree.

When Mike finally focused on it he saw that someone was waiting for them at the top of the of that ramp. Someone who had a longbow and was wearing a jacket and pants padded with leather. Mike blinked and looked to Crosse, “A guard or a welcome?” he asked.

Crosse’s expression fell into a stoic mask as he stopped walking. “A welcome, though not for us, and not one that will go well. I wanted to wait,” he said. He closed his eyes and took in a deep breath, then sighed it out.

He started walking towards the ramp again and Mike followed a step behind him. They reached the bottom of the ramp and went up the first few steps before the man higher up called down to them.

As Mike had expected, he didn’t understand. Then the man's voice cleared around a single word “... Connor?” It was inflected as a question. Mike immediately started to understand the context for the situation and was hyper-conscious of his hand on the arm of the longbow he had been using as a walking stick.

Crosse replied looking pained, and this time Mike understood two words, “...Connor… dead.”

The man at the top of the steps staggered at the declaration. Mike took the moment to properly look him over. He was taller than Crosse but shorter than Mike, he seemed younger than Crosse as well, maybe in his early or mid-thirties, while Crosse seemed like he could be in his early forties if he had aged well. His hair was black and his eyes dark brown, in contrast to Crosse’s much lighter hair and eye colour. Though he shared the pale skin tone with the older man.

As Mike examined him he saw the man’s eyes began to fill with tears. He rapidly tried to blink them away, his jaw and fists clenched. He shouted one word and this one Mike understood, “How!?”

Crosse started to explain, taking the next few steps upwards toward the man. Mike stayed back not wanting to bring any attention to himself, he was an outsider here and he didn’t know how this man would react to that.

So he stayed back, moving his hand to grip the bow at its centre, just watching and listening, not sure how to feel. Crosse's words were back to indecipherable noises, and the other man was getting progressively more upset, He looked as if he couldn’t decide to be devastated and sad or devastated and angry.

He eventually looked down at the cloth sack in Crosse’s arms and froze, obviously not having noticed it before, or not having realised its contents. Maybe Crosse had just explained the exact manner of the young hunter’s death and it had just occurred to him that the sack was big enough to contain all that was left of him.

Mike closed his eyes and took another deep breath to calm himself down. He could barely understand his feelings, let alone this man’s. Who he assumed was the father of the dead hunter or at least a very close relative like a brother or uncle.

Mike’s eyes opened when he heard another phrase he understood. “Who are you?” the man had asked him.

Mike looked to him and then looked to Crosse, he couldn’t respond as if he understood, Crosse knew he didn’t speak Manish, and while he had said that he learned fast, he hadn’t said that he could learn simply from understanding the context and listening in for a little while.

As Mike expected Crosse spoke to him in GIldaic to translate, “He is asking you who you are, introduce yourself, politely, though he cannot speak Gildaic he will know if you are rude.”

Mike nodded and bowed upwards to the grieving man, saying, “I am Mike Sven, I am sorry about what happened to your son, I hope to do everything I can to help this village, though I know that is not enough to bring him back.” when he was done Mike stood erect again and looked to Crosse.

Crosse nodded and then translated his sentence back to the man in Manish. Mike blinked, he thought it was Manish, even though he understood every word of what Crosse said, which was just a verbatim translation of his own words.

The man seemed to be collecting himself somewhat, the initial shock of his son's death sinking in, the grief settling deeper, no longer as outwardly visible, for the moment. He replied to Crosse and Mike mostly understood, “He doesn’t speak Manish? Only...?” Mike didn’t catch the words at the end, but he assumed it was a colloquial term for Gildaic.

Crosse nodded, and the man turned to face Mike again. He nodded his head in recognition and spoke to Mike directly, “I am Gonal, father of Connor,” his eyes flicked down to the bow in Mike’s hand and his hands clenched tightly again, but his face didn’t change, “The village will thank you for your assistance if it is capable, but if not then I advise you stay away, you are not much older than my son i...” He stopped and his voice caught, “was,” he finished.

When he finished, Crosse turned to him and repeated the speech on Gildaic, filling in the few words that Mike had not quite gotten. Crosse took the last few steps up towards Gonal. Lifting the sack towards him as he did.

Gonal reached down, scooping the sack full of his son’s bones into his arms. His composure didn’t crack as Mike had expected it to, but he gave Crosse a very hard stare and said something that Mike didn’t understand in Manish, proving that he had indeed not entirely acclimated to it yet.

Gonal left, Making his way up the steps that ran up along the trunk ahead of them. Crosse not following him.

“What was that at the end?” Mike asked out of curiosity because he knew that Crosse translating it would help acclimate to the language faster, and because he didn’t want to dwell on the scene of a father carrying the remains of his dead son clutched to his chest any longer than was necessary.

Crosse watched Gonal until he was carried around the curve of the huge tree by the steps, then sighed. “Connor was my apprentice. He graduated from it less than two seasons ago. Gonal wanted to be his partner from that point on but Connor said no, he said that I needed him more because I was reckless and I’d get myself dead without him.”

Crosse stopped talking, swallowing. “I wasn’t sent out after the peryton, Connor and I were sent after the tree-sap ooze, but we came across the trail of the peryton on the way. I left him behind to deal with the ooze because I thought it was beneath me and that he could handle it. I wanted to kill the fucking bird before it got any of the villagers.”

As Crosse spoke he closed his eyes and clenched his fists, a very similar showing of emotion to Gonal’s earlier. “I’m the reason that boy is dead.”