The Refuge was easy to see coming. So dense was the cover of its immense canopy that it stood almost alone in the centre of its own clearing, as black as night. Toridd withdrew a torch from the large bag that he carried and lit it with a small tinderbox.
“Proceed with care, Omen,” he said. “The Heretic’s influence has not fully faded.”
“Shouldn’t we have come armed, then?” said Luna, rankling at being told what to do.
“Make not war against your neighbours,” quoted Vil-Odek. “Protect your own before you attempt to seize that which belongs to others.” Luna rolled her eyes. Very insightful.
“Are we going to be attacked, or aren’t we? Because if the answer is yes, I’d rather go prepared.”
Toridd shrugged. “There’s no way to know.”

The ground as they approached the tree crunched dry underfoot, dead leaves and branches from trees that had tried to live on the meagre offerings of sunlight and nutrients not absorbed by the Refuge itself. More than once, Luna thought she saw a flash of white bones under the cover of the leaves. But Toridd always urged her forward before she could look again.
As she drew closer to the foot of the tree she became aware of a sickly-sweet sappy smell on the air, intoxicating and suffocating all at once. There was another scent mingled with it, a smell with an edge to it. Blood. She could smell it all the way down here.
A staircase was built into the outside of the tree, which was thick enough that all three of them could have stood side by side and not matched the diameter of the trunk. The staircase was narrow, and Luna took the lead by dint of being the first person to arrive.
“Can you hand me the torch?” she asked over her shoulder. There was no reply. She looked back. The others were nowhere to be seen. She cursed in Tond and her own language, and carried on. Her eyes were used to the dark now. She could see quite clearly.
The first level of branches came after some time climbing, and with it the staircase opened out onto a kind of landing with a stone firepit in the centre of it. Bedrolls were dotted around the fire, and an iron pot sat upended in the ashes. Luna looked up. Of course there was no need for shelter – the tree provided that for them!
But where were the people who had once called this place home? She decided to press on up the stairs. She still had to meet with the Arboreal Heretic, after all.

The smell of blood was getting stronger. It mingled in with the sweet smell of the tree, that Luna eventually found was being emitted from notches cut seemingly at random in the wall. It wasn’t until she came across a sword half-buried in one of the notches that she realised – the tree was bleeding, too. She pulled the sword out, with some difficulty since it was stuck in a half-dried vein of sap. When it finally did come out, she wiped it clean against the wall. It was a guard’s sword from the village.
“So much for ‘make not war,’” she muttered, and held the sword tightly as she kept going slowly up the circular stairs to the second level of platforms.
She slowed to a silent creep as she approached the platform. Something was moving around on the next level, dragging something heavy behind it. A rasping whisper carried to her sharpened ears:
“Take the sap… the lifeblood… the heart of the forest… the wrath of the heavens…”
Luna shifted her grip on the sword. The hilt was sticky with golden sap, and she winced at the sound her palm made as she pulled it away from the leather wrapped around the grip. A second passed. She seemed safe. She didn’t hear anything else from the person above.
Then she realised that they had stopped moving.
“Is somebody there?” said the person in a quavering voice. “One of you village murderers?”
Luna really wished she had Vil-Odek and Toridd with her, even unarmed as they were when she had left them. Still, there was only one way forward.
“I’m here on a mission of peace,” she said, trying to cover how afraid she was, keeping her tone as flat as she could. “My name is… Ren. What happened here?”
“We lived alongside the village for years after the Master left. Nobody forced us to come here. We believed in the heavens. Earth-in-heavens,” said the voice. “That’s why we live here. Lived,” it said, and gave a sad chuckle.
“Where is everyone?” said Luna.
“Where do you think? The soldiers came. They threw them off. Cast them into the abyss.”
Luna nearly retched. The white bones underfoot… She took a few steps up the staircase, the sword held at her side now. The figure was a shadow, backlit by a small fire that burned behind it.
“I’m Ren,” she repeated. “What’s your name?”
“It doesn’t matter now,” said the figure. It shifted, and Luna saw that the heavy thing that it had been dragging behind it was a blunt wooden club. Luna tried to throw down her sword, anxious to show that she wasn’t a threat to the figure, who was easily a foot taller than her. It stuck to her hand, the firelight glinting off the inscribed blade.
Instantly, Luna knew that she had made a mistake. The figure shifted.
“Liar! Tree-killer! Murderer!” said the rasping voice. The figure raised its club and brought it down hard, splintering the wood of the platform in front of it. Luna put both hands on the hilt of the sword and circled, keeping her eyes on the dark figure. She was suddenly calm.
The figure swung again and Luna ducked left and brought the sword round, cutting deep into its side. The fire was behind her now, the light revealing the blood-matted fur cloak of the figure – the person – she was fighting. A black bandage was wrapped around their lower face.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry it came to this.”
She dodged another strike and then she was behind the figure and she slashed up and then down, the thick fur parting under her flashing blade as though it were nothing. Blood tinged the firelight. Her foe collapsed, supporting their body with the club.
“I… cast them into the abyss. After my family…” the figure said, and then died.
Luna wiped the blood off on the edge of the fur cloak. There would be time for tears later. The sunlight barely scraped over the treetops when Luna reached the peak. There had been no other people on the rest of the long and arduous climb. She looked out over the landscape of leaves and branches that looked for all the world like rolling hills and countryside. Suddenly, there was movement in the bark of the tree. In an instant her sword was raised, poised for another battle. There was no need. She saw now that what she had taken for just more gnarled, twisted bark was actually the figure of a man. He was burned heavily, which accounted for his roughness and his stillness alike. Two eyes, shockingly white in the purple-black flesh of his face, opened a fraction. He peered down at her.
“My omen…” he said in a voice like wind through leaves. “You have come at last…”
Luna stared, unsure whether to speak or not. Finally, she said “I’m sorry for what happened here.” The Heretic made a noise that could have been a laugh.
“There is no responsibility to allot. My end has been a long time coming.”
Luna nodded. “I have to know where my ship crashed. Where it fell.”
“You will not see from there. Climb higher,” said the Heretic. Luna did so, clinging to the branches that creaked and threatened to snap in her grasp. She followed the gaze of the Heretic’s glittering eyes off into the distance.
“Do you see the storm?” whispered the Heretic. “The domain of the Adversary?”
It looked tiny at this distance, but still dwarfed the mountains. Luna recognised the swirling torrent of energy at once. It was the same plasma storm that had brought them down, constantly revolving around that mountain peak in the distance.
“That is your goal,” the old man said. “It will be a long journey, but I know that means little to you. You will find your way. I hope you will find what you seek at the end, as I have.”
“Is this the end?” said Luna quietly. The Heretic said nothing, and closed his eyes. He was almost invisible again, but now that she knew where to look, Luna could see the slow rise and fall of his chest as he breathed in and out. She watched as the rise and fall grew slower and slower, and then eventually it sank and didn’t rise again.
She climbed down from the branch and left. Vil-Odek and Toridd were still nowhere to be seen.