Chương 42: The Murder Maple

Count Hollowfern, lord of the misted groves and ironwood keeps, Was the first to stand before the new duke. At Alyssara's whispered counsel, he and his blood were summoned. Bjorn sat beneath blackened banners, And demanded oaths - Swear anew, or be unmade. The Saga of Bjorn, Verse 33"How are you awake?" Sora groaned.

"Oh, I've been awake for ages!" Felix's grin was mirrored on Chris and Beatrix's face.

"It's just so wonderful what you can do when you get up early!"

"Muh. Coffeeeeee." Sora groaned.

"You're not a zombie, you know." Erik's teasing was sabotaged by his jaw-cracking yawn.

"Yush. Those want brains, not coffeeeeee." Sora shambled into the dining hall and started to fix herself the drink in question.

"That's a lot of caffeine." Chris commented as Sora added her third shot of espresso to the cup.

"A lot of caffeine." Beatrix agreed on Sora's sixth.

"Straight back to the hospital wing we go." Erik said on Sora's eighth.

"Not a drop of cream or sugar in sight." Felix said with a mix of awe and disgust. Sora walked, drank, and flipped them all off with her remaining hand at the same time.

"Where to first?" Erik asked. Chris rolled his shoulders.

"Felix said he wants the 'rest of the place' tour, which is going all over the castle. Ready? Let's go!" He took three steps down the hallway before Beatrix called him back.

"The shortcut outside is over there." She said.

"Right, I knew that." Chris pivoted without missing a beat.

"Today's Wednesday, so good weather." Beatrix said.

"Let's hit the outdoors before coming back in. I doubt we'll get to everything, but we can try."

"Wait, what does the day of the week have to do with the weather?" Felix asked as he followed along.

"Headmaster's got a dial up in his office." Chris explained.

"It controls the weather."

"Same pattern every season, every year." Beatrix grumbled.

"Summer. Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Bright and sunny. Monday, cloudy. Tuesday, rain, Thursday, thunderstorms. The rest of the seasons have their own schedule, regular as clockwork." Beatrix said.

"When you've been here a while, you can tell exactly what day it is by the wind as well." Chris perked up at that. Sora started to vibrate as she walked. Given how nobody else seemed concerned about her, Felix didn't say anything either. Just quietly resolved to get enough sleep and limit his caffeine intake in the future.

"We need to show them the mourning bough!" He exclaimed.

"Really? The murder maple first thing in the morning?" Beatrix said.

"Didn't you just get out of the hospital wing?" She asked Erik.

"Yeah." He confirmed.

"Two trips already." Beatrix turned on Chris.

"And you want to send him back again?" She demanded. Chris jerked his thumb at Felix.

"I wanted to show him what a lucky core looks like." He said.

"The rest are just tagging along."

"That's… fair enough." Beatrix said.

"Given Felix's wand, yeah, I can see it."

"Oooh, what wand did you get?" Sora asked, bouncing up and down next to Felix as they walked.

"Weren't you a zombie?" He asked. She waved the question off.

"That was a whole cup of coffee ago." She said. The cup in question was nowhere to be found.

"Now dish! What wand did you get?" Felix pulled it out.

"Four leaf clover with a horned rabbit core." He said. Erik grinned, and offered him a high-five, which Felix took.

"Yeah! Go Ireland!" He said.

"How's the resonance?" Oh right. Erik was some sort of big Ireland hotshot, and four leaf clovers were associated with them.

"It's…alright?" Felix said.

"There was a stronger wand, but it was too expensive." Erik looked at him thoughtfully as they went up a staircase. Why they were going up a tower to reach the grounds, Felix was chalking up to magic.

"You know, I think you were looking in the wrong store." He said. Beatrix made a half-noise of protest, but shut her mouth. This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

"Why's that?" Felix asked.

"You're from America, but most of the wands sold here are based off of Logres creatures and cores. Horned rabbit… isn't that pretty close to a jackalope? Maybe that's why you're getting something. They're related, but you're not quite there." Erik said.

"And nobody sells beginner American wands in Corwin." Chris said with a groan, slapping his hands over his face.

"Fuck. Felix, I'm sorry, we didn't think of that at all." Felix was used to life shoveling shit on him. Why stress over the unfairness of it all? He got over that years ago. Didn't mean it didn't hurt.

"I mean, it's still a wand, right?" He asked, examining it closely. The clovers still looked freshly picked, and were somehow a single mass. Nothing peeling off it or anything.

"It'll still cast?"

"Better resonance, easier magic." Sora half-sung.

"I mean, wands are just the most basic of tools. Save up a bit, figure out what your core is, and when you work out your specialty, get a custom conduit to last you a lifetime. Why shell out the big coins on a training tool that'll only last you a few years?" Chris said reasonably. It didn't do much to ease the sting. They left the castle together, the highest tower somehow exiting right into the main grounds. Felix was sure there had to be an easier route, but maybe they were getting lightly hazed.

Either way, he wasn't going to complain. There was significant space between the castle keep and the castle walls that was filled with greenery. Felix wasn't sure how that worked - entering the gates had dumped them straight into the castle, but he could see the gap now - but once again decided the answer was 'magic' and resolved not to think too hard about it. He quickly changed his mind, and took out his general notebook. Discover how to cast dimensional magic so I can build a house with it myself.

He wrote down in the 'long term projects' section. It was already getting quite full. Gardens filled with beautiful flowers filled the space, and cozy stone pathways wound their way around. A few students were out and about, carefully tending the plants. Signs indicated that students could claim a patch for themselves. Most of the plants Felix didn't recognize - it wasn't exactly an area of interest for him, no matter how bright and green Sacramento tended to be - but he did recognize roses.

"There's a few gardens that are hidden." Beatrix said.

"Need to find them. Usually, it's done by growing the right combination of plants together, then stepping through. Some of the hardest challenges Camelot has on a technical level, but it can be quite rewarding."

"Kinda sucks if you spend a year growing the wrong plants though, yeah?" Sora asked.

"Exactly." Beatrix confirmed.

"The mourning bough!" Chris happily skipped over to an isolated willow tree.

"Murder maple." Beatrix corrected under her breath.

"What's special about it?" Erik asked with a tilt of his head.

"The leaves are razor sharp." Chris's explanation was far too cheerful.

"Can absolutely slice you right up." Now that Felix was looking for it, he saw hundreds of cut leaves, branches, and stems on the plants all around him, and a silvery leaf that seemed warded away from the path.

"Do not come here during a storm." Beatrix sternly told them.

"There's a long standing challenge to touch the trunk!" Chris said.

"Do you get anything for it?" Erik asked.

"Nope!" Chris said.

"It's just for fun. And reputation. But mostly fun. Hey Felix, watch this!" With a wild whoop of glee, Chris tossed his staff to Beatrix and ran straight for the tree. He barely deviated as he jogged in, never breaking from his course. The wind seemed to just move the branches around him, letting Chris tag the trunk and sprint back out. He ran back to them and paused in front of the other four.

"Tada!" He announced, taking a sip out of a wooden cup.

"One lucky core, and one delicious drink!" Beatrix was facepalming.

"One day, Mau, your luck is going to run out and you'll get cut into a thousand ribbons. Your gate will remain at the Port of Dreams forever, and I'll write something offensive on it.

'The dumbass deserved it' or something." Chris pretended to fan himself.

"Why Brynwyll! You do care!" She made a frustrated noise.

"Felix, you should walk up and try! You're lucky, it'll prove it once and for all!" Chris egged him on.

"I dunno." Felix said, eyeing the tree and getting a bad feeling off of it.

"That just seems dumb, and part of being lucky isn't doing stupid stuff, right?" Chris sighed dramatically.

"If you insist." He said.

"I want to try!" Sora said, shucking her clothes down. The bluette stripped down to a tshirt and shorts.

"Sora!" Erik protested, getting a handful of clothes shoved into his hand for his trouble.

"Here I go!" Sora shouted out, before running up to the tree. Where Chris had simply walked in, Sora had no such luck. At the same time, Felix's eyes nearly popped out of his head at her remarkable athletic abilities, and thought she should be a gymnast. She twisted out of the way of a swaying set of razor-sharp branches, then lifted her leg to dodge a swirl of leaves that got kicked up by the wind. She danced, twirled, and cartwheeled her way over to the tree, and touched the trunk, then skipped out.

"Odin's beard, Sora, are you alright!?" Erik yelled as he sprinted over to where the girl exited out of the trees. Her face was flush.

"Never better!" She said, then Felix spotted what Erik had seen. Sora hadn't quite dodged everything, and was starting to ooze blood from several dozen cuts all over her body.

"You! Absolute! Broombrain!" Erik berated as he dug through his satchel, pulling out potions and starting to pour them over her.

"You were right! That was fun!" Sora called to Chris. Erik kept digging through his satchel with one hand, while he pulled her away from the deadly tree with the other. Chris turned to Beatrix.

"I vote she joins us in Dragon house, she's crazy enough for it."

"As much as I hate admitting you have a good idea, I have to agree." Beatrix said. Erik continued to fuss over Sora, and Felix spotted a few leaves stuck in her hair. She was going to have a heck of a time fixing her hair, with chunks of it being unevenly sliced off. He tried to carefully grab a few of them off, but Sora twisted right as he moved, and the razor sharp edges of the leaf cut his palm open. He hissed in pain, but otherwise powered through it.

"Maybe I'm living in the mundane world too much, but why is there a deadly tree in the gardens?" Felix asked.

"Because it's fun!" Chris said flippantly.

"I take it as a metaphor." Beatrix said slowly.

"Oh?" Erik asked.

"Oi, just because you're my lord, doesn't mean you can get handsy." Sora slapped Erik's hands away from her chest.

"You are bleeding out, excuse me if I think some decorum can be skipped!" Erik said. Felix refocused on Sora's chest, and yeah. That was a lot of red.

"I'll be fine, now give me that paste." Sora snatched it from Erik, having previously shown no indication of wanting to do any of it herself. Erik threw his hands up in frustration.

"Fine! Bleed out! See if I care! Blasted broombrains with no sense of self preservation." He grumbled out the last line.

"I'm sorry Lady Brynwyll, you were saying?"

"Only a lady for a little longer." Felix could tell Beatrix was trying to joke, but it came out more pained. He decided not to touch whatever can of worms that was until he had a better handle on everything.

"It's a metaphor." She started over from the beginning.

"There is always a monster in the corner. There is always a wild, powerful beast lurking around. We can continue to grow our lives, but we need to be conscientious of the coming storm. We need to prepare for problems, but not let it consume our lives. At the same time, we should pay special attention to those who directly face the problem, and pay them tribute and attention as needed. Without them to hold back the beast, their sharp blades would rain down upon us all." Beatrix gestured to some plants in the middle.

Felix noticed they were the little gardens closest to the tree, and they weren't pretty flowers. They were thick hedges. Hedges cut into nice shapes, to be sure, but heavy plants that could survive the razor-sharp leaves. Hundreds of the shimmering silver leaves were caught up in them, shielding the rest of the garden from the murder maple.

"It's a reminder not to grow soft, even protected behind walls. It's a lesson about preparedness in the face of obvious danger. It's-""It's a FUCKTON of FUN!" Chris interrupted with a grin.

"Seriously, that's all it is. Fun, and a sap that's not only delicious, but an excellent potion and ritual regent."

"Prat." Beatrix glared death at Chris, and Felix could feel his morning run getting more interesting. Alas, the fate of those at the bottom of the pecking order was to be collateral damage.

"What's over there?" Erik smoothly redirected the conversation, while also shoving yet another potion in Sora's hands. The girl didn't bother reading what it was before uncorking the vial and drinking the entire thing down. She smoothly managed to shoot the empty vial into Erik's satchel, where it vanished into the depths.

"That would be the greenhouse!" Chris quickly walked down the path in that direction, skipping Beatrix's wrath.

"There's six of them, and…" Felix, Erik, and Sora got a tour of the 'outside' portions of Camelot. From the six greenhouses housing increasingly deadly plants, to the griffin stables. They pointed out the Purifier's Tower - for the brave wixen working on the Fields of Camlann - to sharing rumors about minotaurs and harpies in the woods. They ended at the sports field.

"... And this is where we'll be playing stravolux." Chris said. Sora whirled on them.

"What." She demanded.