Thirteen
It did not escape my notice that the moment Selene and I stepped into the small briefing room together, Io passed Tabitha a 9-dollar bill. Nor was it terribly difficult to piece together why Euna was smirking. The second we stepped in, Selene collapsed into a chair and sighed in relief.
Aside from the four girls, Lana was also hovering over the meeting table, stepping down on a keypad to bring up a holographic display of Eastport central park as she was too small to use her hands to make the device obey her.
“Someone’s hips hurting?” Tabitha teased in Selene’s direction.
The blush that crept up Selene’s cheeks did nothing to dampen the round of chuckles that escaped my other girls.
Lana was the only one not smiling. She cleared her tiny throat and began speaking before any more remarks could be made addressing what she had caught Selene, Hannah, and I doing in my office. “Thank you all for co-” her eyes narrowed slightly and she rephrased mid-speech, “for getting here. I have good news from my contact in central park. She says she is willing to help, but not for free. She needs a sample of these dark spores to know what she’s up against, a bit of help from a magic-wielder such as myself, and the assistance of Agent Stryker in handling a private matter. I told her about how well you handled the chimera and the zombies and she seemed interested, so she probably needs some help clearing out some monsters that are nearby.”
I raised an eyebrow at the formality in the little fairy’s tone. She had never referred to me as anything other than ‘Ryan’ or, occasionally, ‘Mister Ryan,’ yet now it was ‘Agent Stryker?’ Weird. I absently wondered what her problem was as the meeting continued.
“Who is this contact?” Io asked suspiciously.
Lana rose a few centimeters in the air, preparing herself for a fight. “She’s a dryad.”
Hackles raised all across the room.
Tabitha and Io both shouted out, "She's a what?” in perfect unison.
Euna shook her head and sat down opposite Selene.
Hannah’s phantom-form suddenly wavered like heat wafting off of cement in the summer. The lights in the room, including those powering the holographic display, flickered slightly as my phantom girlfriend crossed her arms.
Only Selene and I were left in the dark.
“You expect Ryan to go speak to a dryad? Are you nuts?” Tabby demanded.
“Hold up. What’s wrong with her being a dryad?” I asked, completely lost.
“Nothing,” Lana stated firmly. “It’s just that there are certain vicious stereotypes that dryads have acquired over the years in and around Eastport that make certain small-minded people think ill of them.”
Both Tabby and Io looked absolutely livid, now. Things seemed to be heading in the direction of imminent violence, and I was no closer to an answer. Before they could each grab hold of Lana from different ends and pulled the fairy girl apart, I stepped in.
“Everybody calm down. That answer was purposefully vague and more than a little passive aggressive, Lana. I need to know exactly what’s going on. I’ve been in this world less than a year, so there are some pieces of information you all take for granted that I have zero context for, and dryads have never come up until now. What are they, what are these so-called ‘vicious stereotypes,’ how can this one help us, and what is it going to cost?”
Lana winced. “Dryads are magical spirits associated with trees. They can be extremely powerful if they are bonded with an older tree. Unfortunately they can also be quite territorial. A couple decades back there was a clan of dryads in the World of Magic who were displaced by this forest-clearing operation set up by some dickhead dark sorcerer. Without a tree, dryads become not so different from feral monsters. Except they are literally made of magic so they are many times more dangerous than your typical ogre or basilisk, for example. That displaced clan all slipped through an anomaly and wound up in Eastport.”
“Yeah, and they nearly destroyed half the city,” Tabitha cut in. “If it weren’t for Aleksei and…” she hesitated awkwardly, “well, and Boris I guess, all of Eastport would have been infested with these massive vines that spread throughout the city and nearly brought every building down. They said it was a massive earthquake, but the Bureau knows better.”
That caught my attention. Everyone knew about the big earthquake that struck Eastport. I should’ve known stuff like that would have a more magical explanation behind it if it took place in this city.
“Right,” Lana allowed, “well that was an isolated incident. Most dryads are peaceful.”
Hannah zoomed into Selene’s body and scoffed. “That’s one word for it. You know a few other words we could use to describe dryads? Power-hungry, vengeful, cruel, and manipulative. There are some dryads so old and powerful that their roots stretch into the afterworld itself. Some of them sit on councils that judge the souls of the departed. They are nasty pieces of work.”
Lana looked about ready to yell, but she somehow maintained her composure. “Yes, some dryads can also go the opposite direction and become cruel. But these are two extremes on a very broad spectrum that represents dryad-kind. It is not fair to judge-”
“Dryads waged war against the kingdom I lived in,” Euna suddenly interrupted. “They left a trail of elf bodies impaled on wooden spikes as their massive army, a whole roaming forest, marched across our lands. I’ve seen their soldiers covered in enchanted wooden armor with poisonous thorns sprouting from every joint. They gutted a centaur right in front of me and threaded roots through his corpse, feeding the nearby plants while he yet drew breath. It was horrible.”
Lana screamed out, “Okay, enough! I get it! You all think dryads are horrible because the only ones you’ve ever met have all been genuinely awful beings. But it’s not like any other species are all that great either!” She worked her way around the room, verbally ripping into each of my girls in turn. “Werewolves packs roam all across the World of Monsters; eating, turning, or raping people with complete abandon. And that’s on any average day, you don’t want to know what they get up to on the full moons! Should I judge Tabitha here based on the actions of her species? Or here, Io, so quick to judge. The lamia civil war your people have been waging for generations untold has completely decimated their lands and rendered entire species native to that region entirely extinct. Your kind has been fighting for so long that neither side even remembers how it started. And I’m sorry, Euna, aren’t Slimes viewed as ravenous, mindless entities that consume anything that they come in contact with? Hells below, don’t even get me started on humans!” She flicked at Selene and me with complete dismissal as she pressed on without missing a beat. “Even my kind’s history is filled with horrors and tragedies of our own making. Did you know one in four fairy children is killed outright for being born without functional wings? Their own parents will suffocate a baby less than an hour after its birth if its wings are even slightly malformed. Let’s see, what else? Elves would sooner cut off their own ears than lift a finger to help anyone whose lifespan is less than a few thousand years, bare minimum. Entire empires have risen and fallen, unleashing millions of tragedies in their time, without an elf ever so much as providing a friendly piece of advice that might have spared countless lives. Evil comes in varying shades, and no species that has ever ripped their way out of the violent cesspool of survival did so without getting blood on their hands. Yes, some dryads are evil, but not all of them!”
As Lana hovered in the middle of the room, seething, I took a glance around to each of the other girls’ faces. As they were all far more familiar with the histories of the larger worlds at play here than I, I needed to gauge their reaction to see how closely Lana had been to striking a nerve. Tabitha looked shaken, Io ashamed, and Euna deeply saddened.
I could not speak for them, but I knew enough of human history to know that what the fairy was saying was at least true upon the surface. Plenty of evil things had been done by people who looked like me. Their wretched actions did not make me evil.
“Alright. Onto my next two questions,” I said after a tense moment of silence. “Who is this dryad, specifically, and what does she want?” Lana’s little eyes darted up to me and then down to my waist, perhaps in shame or perhaps she was just checking me out. I didn’t have time for either so I snapped my fingers. “Quickly. There are zombies and ghosts loose in my city and I need to be in about fifty different places at once right now. Let’s speed this up.”
Euna perked up at part of what I had just said, but remained silent.
Lana nodded apologetically. “Her name is Autumn. She’s been here since that wave of feral dryads slipped through the anomaly. Or at least, a version of her. It’s complicated with dryads, but her spirit bonded to the largest and oldest tree in central park and she has become its secret defender ever since.”
A wave of understanding passed through my psychic link with Tabitha as my werewolf girlfriend suddenly put several pieces together of a puzzle I had not even been aware of. “So that’s why there’s never been any monster sightings in the park! She’s been guarding it this whole time?”
“Correct,” Lana answered. “Her or one of her previous iterations at least. Like I said, it’s a little complicated. I don’t really understand what she means when she discusses it, but the point is there has been a dryad guardian watching over central park for the past two generations at least. And this one, Autumn, wants to help us cure these zombies.”
Io slithered up to the little fair intimidatingly. “If my man is going anywhere near a dryad, I need you to swear seven different ways that this bitch isn’t going to try to poison him or anything that dryads get up to.”
“Some dryads,” Lana corrected. “And Autumn isn’t like that. She swore on her deepest roots that no harm would come to any of us, that she genuinely wanted to help restore the city to how it was before the outbreak, and that she means none of us any ill will.”
I clapped my hands together. “Great! This sounds like the best lead we’ve had so far about this whole zombie situation. We should put together a team and hit central park, then head to the university and confront this Kevin bastard so we can put a stop to him before he just summons more zombies even if we manage to cure the ones that have already been infected.”
Hannah cleared her (well, technically it was Selene’s) throat impatiently. “Yeah, no. Lana’s heartfelt reassurances aside, dryads are still dangerous. Even if they weren’t, we don’t have time to go stopping at central park and then getting into a fight at the university! Ryan and I need to head into the old forest as soon as possible to stop Gertrude.”
As one, I, Euna, Tabitha, Io, and Lana all spun to look at Hannah.
“Who the hell is Gertrude?” Tabby asked.
Hannah cursed under her breath. “Well, you’d all already know that if you were at all focused on what I’ve been trying to tell you is the much bigger threat than a bunch of clumsy corpses shambling around. There’s a full-scale phantom invasion going down right now and it’s been in the planning stages for months. Gertrude is the phantom ringleader who’s been setting things in motion this whole time, and she’s holding a massive rally out at the lake this evening. If we don’t put a stop to her now, her plan will unfold and Eastport will belong to these rogue phantoms in no time. Trust me when I say that these zombies will seem like a pleasant pastime compared to what Gertrude can unleash.”
Io snorted. “Sorry, I’m just having some difficulty taking this seriously. You’re telling me that there’s some big bad villain lady and her name is Gertrude? C’mon.”
Hannah looked at the lamia with eyes of steel. “I’m dead serious. Never underestimate old women. They are crafty in ways us youngsters haven’t even had time to devise yet. I don’t even know why, but every phantom I’ve come across speaks of her with reverence. It’s like… it’s like she’s formed them into a cult or a gang of some kind. They seriously worship her. Ryan, I need your help to put an end to her schemes.”
Lana scoffed. “Okay, but I need you to come with me. Autumn said she can’t cure the zombies without your help specifically.”
“Did she say why?” Tabitha asked suspiciously.
“Did Hannah?” Lana fired back.
I took a deep breath and prepared to speak up when Euna met my eyes.
We need to talk. I think I know a way to make this work out for everyone.