They came back after four days without much warning.
And it wasn't with five riders this time. It was the entire force, moving through the darkness of the early hours of the morning in a tight formation with the mages at the center and the soldiers spread wide. They didn't stop at the edge of the mist the way they had before but instead pushed through with clear direction.
The cloud tree's mist pressed back against them like it was trying to slow them down, thickening and curling while making it impossible to see your hand in front of your face, but they kept coming.
Chris was woken up to it by the world tree's roots shaking and the worry in its voice, followed by the Rootmind telling him that Korr had already begun giving orders to prepare.
Reaching out, he noted roughly fifty people, some with horses, moving in a coordinated wave toward his walls. Sera's words about being careful and to not trust them came to mind as something cold and sharp settled in his chest.
This wasn't an 'assessment' or a polite request wrapped in formal language but rather them making good on their threat. An attempt to take what he'd built by force, done in the dark when they thought he'd be asleep, no doubt hoping for the least amount of resistance.
He both heard and felt the scream flowers hit first.
The first rank of soldiers had made it maybe thirty paces into the mist when every scream flower along the northern wall opened at once. The sound that came out of them hit them like a physical blow and made two of the soldiers at the front stumble and drop to their knees with their hands over their ears. He couldn't help but smile at the way the Ancient Ent mentally told him how their formation wavered for a few moments, clearly upset about their lack of discipline.
As he arrived on the wall, he managed to hear the sergeant screaming something but couldn't make out what it was over the noise and soldiers pulling themselves together, noting how they had begun to once more press forward through the sound with the kind of discipline that came from years of constant training.
The thorn vines struck out next.
The first rank hit the outer kill zone and the ground came alive. A variety of thorn vines exploded up from the soil in thick coiling sheets that wrapped around legs, arms, and slid under their armor to get at their torsos, their barbs tearing through their undershirts and cutting into skin beneath. The forward force of soldiers began to scream in pain. Some swung their swords at the vines, their blades cutting through the thorns that had already hooked in, but they refused to let go; those not cut yet bit deeper as they struggled, doing what they could to sink their barbs deeper. The Critic had been working on those thorns after having finished with the soil, only recently managing to integrate the shadow berry vines' toxins into their thorns, making it just strong enough to numb and slow their victims without killing them because Chris had specifically asked for non-lethal. He didn't want to murder people if he didn't have to, even if Sera and Korr warned him about it being stupid; he didn't want to spill more blood without it being needed.
It was effective for a few of them, but a lot of the soldiers weren't slowing down. They were cutting through the vines while pushing forward, leaving a mixed trail of blood and strips of cloth behind them, the gap they'd opened being wide enough for the rest of the formation to pour through.
"Korr," Chris said with a slight note of urgency, but the demon was already moving.
A few of the spike bushes, still sitting beneath the ground, began to detonate.
The second rank barely had time to register the shift in the ground beneath their feet before the buried clusters erupted, taking them and Chris by surprise, launching small spike balls in every direction with the kind of force that shattered armor and sent soldiers flying. Chris felt the bamboo launch them while a few buried under the ground began to poke through as more flew through the air to hit those still standing or impact those on the ground.
The drill sergeant's section of the wall released them in a steady, coordinated burst that sent the clusters arcing over the thorn vine field and into the densest parts of the formation. Their impact was brutal and immediate. Men went down with their armor crumpled. The neat, disciplined column soon broke apart into clusters of soldiers as they began trying to find cover but found none in the open area, a few going so far as to try and use their allies as shields.
The mages took that moment to retaliate.
Chris saw their grey cloaks moving into the center of the formation, three figures raising their hands toward the village. They were far calmer as they seemed to weave through the soldiers and dodge the vines with ease.
He felt the air shift a moment before the first fireball came screaming over the thorn field and hit the Ent wall with a sound like a thunderclap and enough force to shake it. The bark blackened and split where the fire landed, but the tree held firm, letting out an angry roaring noise as its roots shifted deep beneath the soil, the mist condensing and steaming as it layered over its burns. The follow-up fireball went wide when the scream flowers, having somewhat recovered, hit them with a focused pulse that made two of them stagger and the third lose his concentration entirely.
"They're targeting the Ents, hoping to spread the fire across them to burn our home to ashes." Korr's voice cut through the chaos, his own sword drawn, red eyes tracking the battlefield with the calm precision of someone who'd done this before but his teeth gnashing in clear anger. "They're hoping the fires, if concentrated, will bring down a section of wall so they can pour through the gap, similar to how the beasts had done a short while back. Redirect the thorn vines to cover the weak points and try to attack them."
"I'm trying, but they're worried about being burnt. One of them is apparently causing heat to cover them after the first fireball. I'll try to get everything else ready and in place; if we can wear down the other soldiers, it should hopefully cause a retreat," Chris told him heatedly.
Feeling through the Rootmind, he had them and the bamboo both reinforce where the Ent bark was weakest while having the cloud tree further thicken its mist in front of them before the already recovering mages could target them. The fig tree's roots had spread through the network alongside the world tree's, and they helped anchor the Ents where they'd started to shift from the impacts, reinforcing them as the yam tree pulled nutrients up from deep below to fuel the growth of everything that was fighting and boosting their regeneration nature as best it could.
For one brief moment, Chris could feel the entire village working as one organism, every plant connected and coordinated and pushing back against the force that was trying to tear it apart.
The strangle vines, having steadily sent their offshoots through the tangled mess across the ground since the start of the battle, hit their rear.
The supply wagons were the weakest point and everyone on both sides knew it. Chris had told the strangle vines to wait for exactly this moment, to let the soldiers push forward and commit to the assault, making them think they had the village's full focus on the attack before ordering them to strike. Four vines surged up from the ground behind the wagons. They grabbed the first one and simply pulled, dragging it sideways to slam into the second, their supplies spilling across the ground before they pulled some of their wheels off.
The soldiers at the rear who were supposed to be guarding it but had instead rushed to help their friends tried to rush back to deal with the threat. The strangle vines gladly welcomed them, coiling around legs and pulling them down into the dirt. The sound they made was worse than the scream flowers; it was screams of real people in pain and dying.
Chris had to push it out of his head to keep functioning. Korr had ordered it, and as much as he didn't want to, the strangle vines still went through it. Korr said a few deaths would prevent a slaughter, how it would be a psychological attack.
His words proved to be true as a few moments later, as the screams began to die down, the formation began to collapse into a fearful panic.
It didn't happen all at once. The front rank, bogged down in thorn vines, began to scream and call for surrender as others tried to turn and run. The middle rank, already shattered by spike balls, followed soon after, pushing and shoving to try and flee. The mages were suppressed by the remaining scream flowers; he noticed how a number of them had split, trails of sap running across their wrinkling petals, making him wince when he realized how hard they had pushed themselves. The remaining members of the rear, occupied with trying to survive the strangle vines, rushed forward, colliding into the retreating soldiers.
Sir Brennan was somewhere in the middle of it all, screaming orders that his soldiers couldn't hear over the chaos. Chris simply watched while sensing it all through the network as the man tried to rally his people into a coherent counterattack that never came. Then, still somehow on his horse, he ordered the retreat before galloping off, slicing at every vine that tried to grab him and even managing to sever one of the strangle vines as he fled.
The soldiers, realizing what was happening, tried to pull back the way they'd come, dragging what wounded they could while prioritizing the mages, leaving behind the scattered supplies and in some cases leaving behind men who weren't moving anymore or were too far to rescue.
The thorn vines let them go under Chris's order. The scream flowers quieted steadily as the mist settled back into its slow drifting rhythm like nothing had happened at all but now circled the kill zone.
Chris walked to the gate, his whole body shaking as the adrenaline began to drain away, his mind now slowly flooding with sensations from the aftermath causing him to throw up.
He could feel everything through the Rootmind, dulled and filtered but still there: from the thorn vines that were torn and bleeding sap where swords had cut them, to the surviving spike bushes slowly trying to regrow their clusters, and even the Ents scarred and blackened where the fireballs had hit. He could even feel how hoarse the scream flowers were from their constant screaming, the damaged and hurt ones whimpering.
The village was alive and it had held solid. But it had come at a cost; he could feel it in every frayed connection and every weakened root.
He counted the bodies the soldiers had left behind through the Rootmind's awareness. Seven dead with only three visible bodies and nine badly injured. Seven men who'd woken up that morning thinking they had an easy win and were now lying dead in the dirt outside his walls because their commander had decided that force was easier than patience, with nine others hurt and bleeding, no doubt a few of them would be joining them soon.
Sera was beside him; her face was pale but her hand was steady on her sword as Korr walked the perimeter to check damage. None of them said anything at first, broken only by the groaning of those still alive and Chris's order to capture and treat them.
The Voice pushed at the edge of his awareness, faint, weak and still desperate. Chris could feel as it tried to guide his thoughts but was quickly caught by the filter. It seemed to understand that now was not the time and it would gain nothing, as it seemed to sink back to whatever corner it skulked in.
He looked north, toward the ridge where the Imperial force had retreated to. He knew they would either try again or return to report, and that if they did, their Emperor would hear about this and send a far bigger, proper army at him.
They'd be back, and they wouldn't make the mistake of underestimating what grew here a second time. They would be far more prepared.
Chris let out a slow breath and looked at the green sprawl of his village. He'd need to be faster next time and far more prepared. They held, but their forward force had reached the walls. If the force was bigger, even just twenty more soldiers or two more mages, they may have gotten through the walls. If they had assassins or thieves, anyone with stealth, they would have managed to get in and done who knows how much damage while they focused on the battle in front.
Next time they would more than likely send someone competent, someone who would split their forces, who would strike from more than one angle.
He didn't know how long he had, but he needed to be ready. The look he noticed in Korr's eyes when he returned told him he had the exact same thought.