Head pounding, Jack went from unconscious to fully alert in a moment. He immediately attempted to leap to his feet, but found that his entire body and head were tightly bound. He couldn't move an inch. Now that Jack was awake, he could feel that he was being carried through the forest by whatever had captured him.

Taking in his surroundings, Jack felt a jolt of shock at what he saw. All around him were humanoid creatures that looked somewhat familiar. They walked and gestured and even seemed to converse like humans, but they were clearly descended from trees. Jack had fought a tree woman back on Earth, but they did not exactly resemble her.

For one thing, their skin was not the smooth, light-colored wood covered in swirling patterns of grain like hers had been. They were covered head to toe in bark, and they wore nothing but the occasional belt of scripted bark or flower necklace. They all walked in the same direction in front of Jack, so he could not see much of their faces.

In the place where a human head would have hair, the tree people were much more diverse. Some had more bark that raised up from their heads in spikes. Others had thin vines hanging like the wooden woman that had attacked Jack back on Earth. One feminine looking figure had a bouquet of flowers that grew from her head in every direction like a brightly colored afro.

Another way that they differed from humans was their size. The shortest members of their party were around seven-feet tall while the largest stood close to ten.

Jack counted a dozen of the creatures walking in front of him, but he was unable to turn around and look behind. He was held so tightly by whatever was carrying him, he couldn't even tilt his head down to see what grasped his limbs, although he assumed that it was roots or vines.

Well isn’t this just great? he thought to himself, searching for Zachias in his mind. Caught by a tribe of no doubt carnivorous humanoid trees. I just have to hope they don’t want to fuck.

He could barely feel Zachias' presence in his mind. It was even more subtle than when he had been hiding from Janus. All Jack could get from him was a sense of concern, as if Jack needed any help knowing what to think about this situation.

He could feel the warmth of the rising sun hitting the right side of his face. So they were heading North. That is if the cardinal directions worked the same as they did on Earth. For all he knew, the sun might rise in the North and set in the South on this world.

By this point, finding a race of tree people in an alien forest wasn't enough to blow Jack's mind. There was, however, one thing that he found strange about them. Although their gestures would suggest that they were conversing, he had yet to hear a single word from them. Jack wondered if their voices were too high pitched for him to hear, like dog whistles.

He didn't know exactly how long they had been carrying him, but it had to have been for several hours. Whoever had choked him out had been extremely thorough. He spent the next few hours trying to find a way to wriggle free from his bonds and make a break for it, but he never figured out how to pull a Houdini. He was wrapped up like a damn burrito.

Right about now, Jack was wishing that he had taken up video games instead of jogging. If he had, he would probably be eating snack foods and using the word heck a lot rather than having a daily near-death experience on a hostile world.

Lesson learned Jack thought. Never try to improve yourself. That shit is for suckers.

The lumbering creatures continued to lug him along for most of the day until they finally arrived at their destination. Jack's eyes widened when he finally saw what they were walking towards.

Every tree in this forest was bigger than any that he had ever seen back on Earth. Even the redwoods of California would be dwarfed by these monstrosities. Most of them reached close to 500 feet into the sky with thick trunks to match. They were bare until about halfway up their trunks where they started to branch out in a cone shape that tapered to a point at the very top.

The forest floor was mostly bare, and the huge trees were well spaced out, so Jack caught a look at where they were headed from miles away. There in the distance, stood a single tree that put the rest of the giant evergreens to shame.

It was enormous.

Jack would have thought it impossible for a tree to grow that large without cracking under its own weight. It towered over the rest, easily doubling them in height and width. From the moment Jack spotted the absurdly large tree, it was another hour and a half of being lugged along before they even reached the clearing that it was planted in.

It stood by itself in the middle of an expansive grassy field. It made sense to Jack that there were no other trees close to it. The root system must be incredibly expansive to hold the gigantic tree up and the amount of nutrients that it would take from the soil would keep anything but grass from being able to survive in close proximity.

Jack had expected the massive evergreen to be surrounded by a bustling village of the wooden people with homes made out of living trees that naturally grew in the shape of houses. Instead of the whimsical civilization that he had pictured, there was nothing but a grassy field. The only people that he could see, were the ones walking in front of him.

They crossed the field slowly, all of their conversational gestures stopping as they looked up at the wooden giant with reverence. As they arrived at the trunk of the great tree, they formed two lines, one on either side of Jack.

They all faced the same direction as if waiting patiently for something to happen. He still hadn't seen their faces yet. For all Jack knew, they might have thought that he was dead. Maybe they had choked him to death and his healing physique brought him back. He hadn't said a word all day afraid that they would choke him again if he spoke up.

Jack was startled when the ground started shaking. He would have thought that it was an earthquake, or rather an olympusquake, but the tree people around him did not seem surprised. They calmly endured the shaking like it was expected and continued to watch the thousand-foot tree in front of them.

When the shaking intensified, Jack finally noticed something strange about the tree: It appeared to be shrinking. When he had first laid eyes on it, the tree had been more than twice as tall as the rest of the forest. Now, it was several hundred feet shorter than it had just been.

More than that, Jack could see space between the dirt and the trunk that had not been there before. It looked like the tree was deflating. Watching the leaves and branches retract into the trunk tickled Jack's memory. He had seen something like that when he had fought the Guardian golem in the forest on Earth. She had been able to grow and retract branches as well.

The ground stopped shaking after the tree was shorter than the rest of the forest. It took a few more minutes before the entire root system was visible in the hole left behind by the full-size tree. It was hovering in the air at this point. Not a single root was touching the ground.

Finally, the roots twisted and then melted together forming two limbs. The branches also condensed into two arms and the top of the tree began to take the shape of a head.

Jack couldn't take his eyes off the display. He wondered if all of the people around him had started off as actual trees. Had he been walking around a forest made up entirely of sentient trees? Had they been watching him all this time?

When the tree was done transforming, there was what appeared to be a remarkably beautiful human woman floating in the air above a large hole in the ground. Unlike the beings that had choked him unconscious and carried him here, her skin did not appear to be made out of the rough bark of a tree. In fact, her unblemished skin appeared to be the smoothest that Jack had ever seen.

Her hair was thick, straight, and black. It looked like human hair as well, not like vines or plants of any kind. In fact, if he hadn't just seen her change forms with his own eyes, he would have thought that he was looking at a real human woman.

She floated over towards them and Jack noticed that she was also shorter than the more treelike beings around him. While they were between seven and ten feet tall, she stood only around six feet. She had a leafy green material wrapped around her shoulders and chest that left her navel uncovered as well as a short skirt of the same material.

Her face was diamond shaped and she had shining grey eyes that Jack felt could see right through anything. As her feet touched the ground directly in front of him, the lines of the tree folk that had brought Jack here turned towards each other and he finally saw their faces for the first time.

Like the rest of their body, their faces were also covered in bark, but they were smoother and more defined than he had expected. They had similar features to a human, with two eyes and a nose. Their mouths were less distinct than humans as they did not have lips.

The most obvious difference, was that their ears were just two holes in either side of their heads. They did not have the protruding lobes of humans. With the exception of the gorgeous brown-skinned woman who looked up at the tree people fondly. She had the exact same features as a human.

She seemed to greet the wooden people without saying a word. They all turned back towards the outer edge of the clearing and began to make their way out, leaving only Jack and the winsome woman. As they left, most of them completely ignored Jack.

Out of the dozen beings, only one looked at Jack before walking away. It was a masculine looking tree that was eight and a half feet tall. Instead of hair, he had a glorious set of wooden antlers branching from the top of his head. Jack looked into his brown eyes expecting to see hostility, but if anything, he saw curiosity. The tree man seemed to be interested in the human that had disturbed their forest.

The beautiful woman walked closer to Jack. She leaned over him and studied Jack from head to toe for a moment. Jack was still stunned by the fact that a gigantic tree had turned into a woman who would make a supermodel weep with envy.

He had thought that Diana had been the most gorgeous woman that he had ever seen, but this being put her to shame.

He couldn't move his head at all, but out of the right corner of his eye, Jack saw a shape dashing across the field. He struggled to look in that direction, but all he could make out was a huge, four-legged creature with grey fur streaking across the field.

It was much taller than Jack on four legs, and it was running straight towards the beautiful woman like it was about to attack. For a moment, he held hope that it would allow him to escape.

It was moving extremely quickly for such a large animal, and it seemed like it was barely jogging. It casually bounded across great distances with what seemed like little effort. Jack got the feeling that it would be able to move much faster than that if it wanted to.

Unfortunately, the brown skinned woman looked over and smiled gregariously as the creature approached. It didn't slow down in the least until it was a few feet away from the woman at which point it landed on all four paws and instantly stopped effortlessly.

There was no sliding across the grass or indentations where it halted. The creature didn't even bend its knees to pad the landing. It simply went from running fast enough to pass a car on the highway to a complete stop without a single sign of strain.

Now that it was in front of him and standing still, Jack studied it closely. The creature looked like a cross between a wolf and a lion. It had a long snout similar to a wolf and a great bushy mane of dark grey fur around its neck. The rest of its sleek body was covered in a short light grey fur.

Its ears were short and triangular and stood up from its head. It was around ten feet tall even while standing on all four legs.

Unlike the wolf-like beast that he had slain the day before, this proud creature had an obvious intelligence in its shining blue eyes. The woman and the beast stared at each other for a moment before it began to shrink just like the tree had.

It didn't make a sound as the bushy tail disappeared into the body, and the arms and legs reformed themselves. Before it took the shape of a human, it stood up on two legs and straightened its back to look as regal as possible.

When it was finished, there was a handsome man with white skin and a thick beard of dark grey. He had the same shining blue eyes that burned with frightening intensity, and he was wearing a light grey jerkin with dark grey pants.

The man's uncovered arms rippled with barely contained muscles even though he was not especially bulky. Standing at six and a half feet tall, he was built like a professional athlete. He crossed his arms over his chest and turned to look at the still restrained Jack.

Since the moment that the woman had came close to Jack, he had noticed that there was something weighing on him. It felt like the air was heavier, as if it was pushing down on him. Jack focused on sensing his own energy as well as the qi around him and immediately regretted it.

He had located the source of his discomfort. The qi in the space around these two mysterious figures was staggering. The difference between Jack's qi and theirs was like a drop of water compared to two oceans. They were each surrounded by the massive spheres of their own auras which expanded well beyond Jack’s field of perception.

Whoever these beings were, they were exponentially stronger than Jack. Their power was outside of his comprehension.

The woman gazed at him again with her grey eyes, and suddenly, he heard a smooth breathy voice in his head.

"Hello little one. We would like for you to answer some questions if you would be so kind."