The haunted forest bent toward Rusk with every step he took. It was so quiet every footstep crunched dead leaves or twigs, and more than once he became twisted around lost trying to navigate with only his memory. Eventually he drew himself a map and started carving nicks into tree trunks to keep oriented. Not one sign of any animal besides himself in the entire woodland. That alone was eerie, but even more so was the sense that the forest itself was imposing its death unto him. He felt if he spent too long here he’d surely die. It was illogical, but after all he’d seen he didn’t want to risk it.

“It’s true,” said that voice that sounded like Elena but that Rusk knew was the dead forest itself. That’s where the haunted feeling had come from. All this time he’d been waiting for something to reveal itself and now it was. “If you stay here for too long it’ll suck the life right out of you. Tell me little human traveler, does that dragon know you’re leading it to its doom?”

“What little dragon?” Rusk tried to find the source of the voice. He concentrated on the Elva, but even that was far out of reach here, as if some great evil were preventing his communication with his home forest’s power.

“How’d I get stuck with such an incompetent archer?”

“Say what?” Rusk could’ve sworn the voice sounded different now. Because it was. And it was coming straight out of the Dragons Knock, which he’d knocked on his bow without realizing. He seemed to be doing that a lot lately, and wondered if maybe he might be going a little mad. There were rumors that Heroes were crazy. “Dragons Knock? Is that you? You can talk?”

“I am forged from dragon spirit. Of course I can talk.”

“Okay then who’s the other guy?”

“This forest has a presence about it that I’m sure will be announcing itself further if we take action against this evil territory.”

Rusk pondered over this. He didn’t know where to shoot. There was no target. The forest had become eerily quiet all over again, as soon as the Dragons Knock had spoken. Either Rusk was going nuts or that wasn’t any coincidental happening. Maybe the evil presence was afraid of the Dragons Knock. That would make sense, especially if he wasn’t going crazy.

“You are cowardly to bring such a weapon here,” said the evil presence.

“Oh yeah,” said Rusk, pointing his arrow every which way. “Come on out and we’ll see who’s the cowardly among us.”

“Fool.”

“I’m waiting.”

“You would taunt him out of hiding?” asked the Dragons Knock.

“Obviously not if it isn’t working.”

“Have you never been in battle, boy?” taunted the evil presence right back, and its voice morphed into that of the necromancer and less of the Elena impersonation. Because that’s what Rusk realized it had been. An impression. Perhaps to throw him off balance. And it had worked.

“Even if the boy has not, I certainly have,” said the Dragons Knock. “Aim at any tree and I will show you my power.”

“Any tree?” asked Rusk, picking a nearby dead oak.

“That will do.”

Rusk loosed the arrow. In the time it took flying toward the trunk, the entire forest seemed to shudder in anticipation. The nature even dead around him knew something major was about to throw down. Rusk wondered if maybe it was a terrible idea to fire the arrow in the first place. Maybe the Dragons Knock didn’t know what it was doing, or maybe it wasn’t on his side for real.

He knew when it hit its mark.

From the point where Dragons Knock had struck its trunk the tree blossomed to life. It came alive in pulses of green that erupted from deep within and grew over the gray sad bark that had overcome it just like the rest of the forest. Vines slithered up and down. Flowers burst out of cracks in the bark and the limbs it stretched long toward the sky became less skeletal and more thick with vibrancy and color. It was green and gold and brown and gorgeous.

All this was mesmerizing until Rusk realized that the Dragons Knock was about to be swallowed under the new saplings that sprung forth from the dead tree. With a yelp of surprise as the rest of the forest cackled in its jealousy, Rusk came forward and started yanking hard on the end of the Dragons Knock, hoping to break it free of its lively tomb. When the vines swirled over Rusk’s wrist, he almost took a knife to the new growths but thought better of it. If he had a way to put new vitality into what was dead, then all he had to do was get his arrow out before that vitality overran it.

Rusk’s mind swelled with the endless possibilities of such a remarkable weapon. A weapon of healing. Oxymoronic, but with the way the tree was growing and growing and bearing fruit like nothing Rusk had ever seen in his life, he marveled at the uses of such a creature. Creature, because technically it wasn’t fair any longer to call the Dragons Knock a weapon, was it? It was alive. This proved that much, if not wherever its loyalty would lie.

Rusk told himself he’d figure that out later after he’d gotten rid of the current problem. He yanked, and hard.

Dragons Knock was sturdy, and came free of the overgrowing vines with the slightest hiss from its inner voice, which echoed around in Rusk’s head now instead of the open air.

“Be careful where you aim me,” said the Dragons Knock inside Rusk’s mind. “It is a fantastic skill that I have, I do agree, but it is also very dangerous if directed toward the wrong entity.”

“And what would be the ideal target then?” Rusk was on his bum with the arrow in one hand because he’d fallen pulling it out, and was staring in awe up at the tree which still bloomed unnaturally. Or, more naturally. Supernaturally. “This is amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it before in my life! Can you do this to any dead tree? Any corpse? What’s your limitations? There’s gotta be limitations for something as extraordinary as this.”

“I can only revive what is dead by unnatural forces,” said the Dragons Knock. “Such is this forest, dead, but not naturally so.”

Which pegged the question to Rusk, what made this forest’s death so unnatural in the first place.

As if in answer, the Dragons Knock shuddered under his palm.

Rusk took it off the ground and looked at it, really looked, inspecting it from every angle.

“This is a bit uncomfortable,” said the Dragons Knock in a blunt voice that somehow also sounded bashful when Rusk looked at its goose feather.

“Uh. Sorry. So okay, if this forest died unnaturally, then what killed it to make it this way in the first place?”

“I did,” said the necromancer, and the dead portal had swirled into existence before Rusk.

Corpses flooded out toward the blooming tree.