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    We made good time returning to the mother tree. Aside from Archie knowing to be careful, Daysia was much stronger now, her link to her tree granting her new powers, and the life fire didn’t overwhelm her as much. By the time we landed she mostly just seemed extra energetic, but even that might have been excitement.


    As we arrived, we confirmed that Daysia was the third of the Dryads to bond with a tree. While normally this would have been a good result (though not amazing), her bond with a C-ranked plant like the Dawntreader Elm made her infinitely more valuable to the Divine Tree Temple.


    Much like with Jessie, if a Dryad wanted to break through, their tree had to proceed them to the next rank. Trees ranked up very slowly, given their long lives. While the bond was powerful and gave a lot of advantages, it had corresponding drawbacks, or else the Dryads would have taken over the universe by now.


    Even a peak D-rank tree might require a decade or two of nurturing by the special tree sap to reach C-rank, and they didn’t have nearly enough of that stuff as it was, shared between so many Dryads.


    Daysia, meanwhile, could rank up to C-rank immediately upon reaching the limit, though she would need to adjust her Illusory Path to fit the tree better before solidifying it. That was apparently what suitability was, finding a tree with a strong Path resonance. With that advantage, she was considered the most promising Dryad to come out of this ceremony, and she waved happily as the elders escorted her away to record information about her tree in their records, as well as any other tree info she had picked up on the trip.


    “We owe you a debt of gratitude,” said Tasha as she stepped up next to me. “That Dawntreader Elm, according to Daysia, is at the peak of C-rank. With a bit of nurturing we can promote it to B-rank and smooth her path up to the edge of A. Past that…we’ll have to see. But she’ll be a strong elder when she finishes growing. You’ve done us a great favor.”


    I shrugged. “She helped me first. I’m glad it was good for you guys, but it was mostly for her sake. Without her, I might not have gotten this.” I held up the staff, passing it over to Tasha, who would be refining it into a weapon suitable for me,


    She ran her fingers over the wood breathlessly. “What a terrifying tree,” she said in a reverent tone. “Soul attribute plants are rare and difficult to nurture. They require incredibly complex and often bizarre confluences of environments, as well as luck, to form. This one…we knew about it, but it was still young so we left it alone. The weasel king was enough of a deterrent to keep anyone from harming its growth.”


    That was an uncomfortable thought. “Didn’t I harm its growth?” I asked wryly.


    Laughing, she shook her head. “She sent you to find it. Her relationship with the Temple is complicated, but she is our mother in many ways. The trees are all hers, and part of her, and so if she says the tree should journey with you, it will. Preserving its life when I refine it will be complex, but ultimately make for a more powerful weapon. And one that can grow alongside its wielder. I’ll need to know more about your abilities before I do so, however.”


    Reluctantly, I passed her the staff. We’d left the platform, and rather than join up with everyone else she’d taken me further into the trunk of the mother tree. Descending a stairwell obviously made by Tree Singing, we walked for about fifteen minutes, and she asked me repeated questions about my Chronicle, my abilities, and my experience with the staff as she explored it.


    My grandfather trusted her, and whatever weirdness was going on with her and Celia, I didn’t think she’d hurt me, so I told her everything she asked. Once she finished though, I couldn’t help but bring it up.


    “So…why does my grandmother hate you?” I asked bluntly. “Because honestly, I kind of assumed she was threatened by you romantically, but it doesn’t seem like that.”


    Her face clouded. “I made a mistake,” she said softly. “When I was younger. Your grandfather got hurt because of it. It wasn’t on purpose, but it eventually led to the battle where she had to fake her death. During our travels, I ran my mouth when I shouldn’t have. Nicholas forgave me, he’s always been that kind of person, but Celia…she has her reasons for being upset. A lot of the things that have gone wrong with your life have been because of me.”


    Which meant, if I was reading the situation right, that she’d been the one to inform Black Sorrow that my grandparents were together, albeit probably not directly.


    “Wow, yeah I could see why she’d be pissed,” I admitted.


    She raised a brow at me. “Are you? I’d have thought that with your life, at least as your grandfather described it, you would harbor some resentment. Honestly, that’s the reason I offered to refine this staff for you. I feel like I owe you.”This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    “I won’t turn down free stuff,” I laughed. “But I’m not really upset about it. If you’d asked me a year ago I might have tried to punch you, but honestly…I’ve come to terms with my life. Well and truly. Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” I’d confronted my demons, sometimes literally, and I knew that my past didn’t have any more hold over me. One by one, the painful notches in my psyche had been sanded down.


    Not that they didn’t AFFECT me anymore. I still felt the impact of what had happened in my life. But it was old pain, familiar and comforting. Like a fond memory of a lost loved one.


    Her expression was complicated. “I think I know now why she sent you to this particular tree,” she said with a wan smile. “That kind of wisdom requires a lot of introspection. You must have worked on yourself a great deal.”


    “Yeah,” I said dryly. “That’s not why. But it probably didn’t hurt.” We both laughed at that, even if it wasn’t really funny.


    Finally, we came to a stop outside of a large, dark wood door. It was set flush into the wood, but it was banded with a bright amber material that kind of looked like a mix between metal and resin. “Sapsteel,” Tasha informed me when I asked about it. “Most metal can’t conduct life energy very well. Tree Singing and Dancing doesn’t work well with them. Sapsteel is a living metal refined from Mother Tree sap. Very strong and very useful.”


    The door didn’t have a knob or anything, but a quick knock and it opened of its own accord. Inside was a kind of lab, with various tools and vials of strange substances. Tasha strode inside, placing the staff into a vise on a table in the center of the room.


    I stepped inside, the door closing behind me, and gazed around the room with interest. “Are you going to use Tree Singing to do the enchantment?”


    She nodded. “Tree Singing is an entirely natural way to imbue power into plantlife. It’s closer to formations than enchanting, really, though it involves both, as well as some plant cultivation Skills. We learned it from the trees, actually. Or rather, from the Primordial Tree Spirit. She’s a natural Tree Singer.”


    Pulling out a bottle, she started rubbing the staff down, the oil staining the wood a shiny dark color. Once she finished, she started plucking vials, sprinkling various kinds of dust and liquid onto the surface. It all stuck, suspended in the oil, and when she finished, she turned to me. “Alright, this next part will be complicated, but you need to be involved. Based on what you told me, you plan to use the nine lives granted by the tree to refine your staff forms?”


    I nodded, and she grabbed my shoulders, moving me around the table and setting me up in front of the staff, hands raised over it, palms out and flat.


    “One of your lives is already imprinted, which creates an initial link. That’s good,” she lectured as she lit some candles and used the oil to trace a few patterns on the table. Nothing I recognized, but that wasn’t surprising. Enchanting styles were highly localized, and this wasn’t even enchanting. “What I need you to do next is to slowly imbue each form into the staff. But only as I say so. The initial bond is cemented, but for the staff to serve the purpose you want, and to grow along with you, we need to rebond it to you nine times.”


    I shook my head. “Ten,” I said firmly. “My chronicle is the Ten Demons Tome. One binding for each of the forms and one for me personally, bonding all of them together and then to me again.”


    She was the expert on staff making, but I was the expert on me. I knew what my powers needed, and I wasn’t shy about speaking out.


    She frowned, but nodded. “Ten, then. I can do that. A moment. We need one more thing before we start.”


    Walking over to a nearby shelf, she removed a dark box. Opening it, she took out a dark amber ingot. Sapsteel. Walking over to the bench, she set it down. “This will serve as the binder. You’ll need an anchor for the tenth binding, and this will give you something to find purchase on. I’ll need some of your blood.”


    She raised a hand over the ingot, humming softly, and the whole thing just kind of…melted. But not into liquid. More like it turned into jelly? Regardless, the consistency shifted. I raised my hand, cutting it, and bled onto the ingot. My blood seeped in, dying the metallic amber a deep crimson.


    With that done, she picked up the jellylike material and draped it over the staff. It sat atop the cylinder, jiggling lightly. Then she gestured for me to begin. So I did. Dantalion was already done. Next was Mephistopheles, then Belial, then Agares. Mornax, Zagan, Bael, Beelzebub, and finally, Sammael. After each connection, I had to actively resist falling into the staff, but with each one, a new symbol appeared on the shaft.


    A flame, a pair of dripping fangs, a cyclone of dust, a bull, a beating heart, a shadow, a fly, and a pair of black wings. As I worked, Tasha sang, and with each new symbol, one of the binding agents she’d sprinkled in was absorbed into the wood, the grain shifting and swirling as it formed strange patterns. The symbols, rather than just sit there, were swept into the swirling grain, being stretched and reformed into yet more symbols, albeit ones so deeply imbued in the wood it was hard to tell they were symbols at all rather than wood grain.


    Finally, the ingot melted, flowing along the staff, traceries of the substance flowing along the patterns until it reached either end and collected into a pair of dark metallic red caps. The caps were hideous demonic faces, screaming in torment, which I didn’t LOVE thematically, but I wasn’t going to interrupt over stylistic choices. Not when I could feel how powerful the staff was.


    When the caps set, the staff thrummed, power vibrating through both it and me and then…it vanished. Or rather, it retreated. Into me. Closing my eyes, I searched inward, finding the new staff (I was calling it the Ten Demons Tree) floating above the tome in my library, wisps of dark smoke trailing down from it and seeping into the book. I couldn’t tell exactly what it DID, but I knew it wasn’t bad.


    I opened my eyes, beaming at Tasha as I held out my hand and the staff appeared, slapping into my palm as I pulled it from my soul into the real world. Then it vanished again. I started laughing, a high, maniacal sound that I couldn’t resist. “This,” I told the elder Dryad. “Is PERFECT.” And I couldn’t wait to try it out.