The Fusionist

The satisfying *thunk* of his axe sliding into the pale wood of the tree ahead of him caused Larek to smile as he hit it precisely where he had aimed. A large chunk fell out of the wedge he was creating in the lower trunk, adding yet another to the scattered piles he had already cut away. Each of his subsequent strikes against his upright target was perfectly calculated to remove exactly what was needed to ensure it was weakened enough to crack when he was ready for it. He had already carved out a portion of the other side of the 3-foot-wide trunk, so it was only a matter of time before the other side was ready. With a final swing with his steel-bladed axe and another piece of the tree removed, he judged that the time had come.

Aiming at his next victim, he pulled back his arm and swung it forward, releasing his best friend so that it flew through the air. Rotating only once, the force of his throw caused the head of the axe to bury itself 6 inches deep into the trunk of his new target, while he walked around the one he had already spent the last 10 minutes on. Taking another quick look at his handiwork, the clean lines of his strikes making two perfect sideways Vs, he realized that he probably should’ve carved another inch out of one side to ensure there was less splintering when it fell, but in the end he figured it probably wouldn’t matter all that much. His sister was going to shape it for transport anyway, and a few splinters wouldn’t make a difference in the end.

Besides, they were behind schedule, so Larek needed to hurry and fell as many trees as possible before dusk. They weren’t going to fall on their own, after all.

Standing to the left of the large, 60-foot-tall tree, he reached out and began to push the trunk with his right arm. His muscles strained slightly as he had to push a little harder than usual – probably because of that extra inch – but he quickly felt it move under the pressure of his push. As he saw it start to topple exactly where he had been expecting it, he took a quick hop backwards and away from the tree as he heard the tell-tale *crack* of a falling tree, as the wounds he had made in the wood split it in half.

Almost immediately after the *crack*, the reverberation caused by the breakage caused a kickback that jerked the entire trunk to the rear by nearly a foot. Thankfully, Larek was out of the way, as his experience had taught him to stay out of the way of such a danger. Most novices to Logging, unless told otherwise, all thought that a falling tree simply fell over once its trunk had been carved up, and simply stood behind it; their thought was that if it didn’t fall on them, then there was nothing to be worried about. Unfortunately, the kickback was something that he'd seen jump up to 6 feet before, and a few Loggers had been killed or maimed over the years because of that.

His father was one such in the latter category. An extraordinary kickback – caused by a tree he was felling getting tangled up in the branches of an adjacent monolith of nature – managed to slam into his leg nearly a dozen feet away, permanently crippling it to the point where he could barely put weight on it. Even three years later, it hadn’t healed past a certain point, so he was relegated to directing the mule teams rather than participating in the action of felling the actual trees.

Fortunately for his father, he had a son who could easily do it all by himself.

Larek turned away even as the tree continued to fall, not even bothering to warn anyone else nearby. His family all knew him well enough that the tree wouldn’t fall, except for where he wanted it to, and they were cognizant of his route for the day. Besides, they were still dragging away his former victims using the mule teams, where Marco and Kendee, his younger brother and sister, would trim the branches off; from there, Larek’s father would use the teams to bring each log down to the river, where they would join the dozens of others floating downstream. The Rushwood sawmill, located on the outskirts of the nearby Rushwood village, would direct the incoming logs into a holding area, where they were cut and sliced into thick planks for easier transport. The barges were then loaded with the finished product, which would disappear further down the river… to somewhere.

Larek didn’t really care all that much where it ended up, because it ultimately didn’t matter to him. He was doing what he loved, cutting down trees, and such things were of no concern to his mind. It wasn’t like he was planning on visiting far off places anytime soon, nor did he wish to; all he needed was his best friend, who he walked over to grab from where it had impaled the tree, and he got to work carving out more wedges into the trunk before him.

Soon enough, Larek got lost in the rhythm of his swings and the monotony of the work he was doing. It gave him plenty of time to think about things, though in all honesty he didn’t really have a lot to think about; his life was simple, plain, and easy – which was just the way he wanted it. His job as a Logger would last him until he was too old to swing an axe, if he was careful about it, especially considering that they were located on the edge of the Rushwood Forest – as evidenced by the quite simple name of the village nearby. The Rushwood trees of the Forest were fast-growing and invasive, spreading wherever their roots could reach underground, which necessitated the need to cut them down before they overran the nearby villages and towns. They weren’t necessarily dangerous, but they could start to punch up through the foundation of a house if they weren’t culled periodically.

A sudden chime inside of his head broke his concentration, causing him to slip slightly in his swing, and it hit a few inches higher than he was aiming.

Axe Handling has reached Level 76!

Another increase? That’s twice in the last month, I believe.

Then again, he realized, he had spent more time out in the forest than normal, unfortunately due to the death of a neighbor. The majority of those living around Rushwood Forest were Loggers, just like his own family, and they all worked together to keep the edge of the trees to a manageable line; when someone was temporarily sick or hurt, the others had to pick up the slack and work a little harder to get it done. When someone died, through accident or disease (rarely old age, as the profession was dangerous), it meant that the others had to get ahead of their normal Logging zones, so that they could all contribute a day or two every few weeks to push back the zone normally covered by the one who had died. Of course, it wasn’t usually this bad, as the Cordens’ entire family had perished when their house collapsed on them, due to an unseen Rushwood root burrowing underneath the corner of their foundation. Every member of the Cordens’ family had participated in the Logging work in one way or another, and it was difficult to recover from something like that.

Again, it wasn’t as if he cared. Oh, sure, he vaguely knew of the Cordens, but he had only seen old Jim Corden, the patriarch of the family, once from a distance; he didn’t even know the names of the others… nor how many of them there were, in fact. Kendee had cried for hours when they heard the news, and Larek vaguely remembered that she had been friends with one of the family. Exactly who she was friends with, though, he didn’t know.

All he knew was that it allowed him to stay out later each day so that he could fell more trees with his best friend.

He felt the slight tingle throughout his body that indicated his Axe Handling Level-up, though at this point it didn’t really do much for him. Each Level in a Skill gave him a 5% increase in the effectiveness in his handling of an axe; at Level 76, he was currently 380% better at wielding the sharp-edged tool than someone who had never picked up an axe. In all honesty, he hadn’t seen any real difference since Level 20, when he hit 100% effectiveness, as all the further increases really did was help him hold the axe with perfect form, reduce the strain and energy on his body that was required to swing it, and allow him to strike exactly where he was aiming.

He knew that some Skills, such as Cooking, could actually provide benefits to the result even at Levels higher than 20, but he didn’t really know of anyone who had those kinds of Skills. Larek’s own Cooking was at Level 1, mainly because he barely did any cooking for himself; his mother had a Cooking Skill at Level 9, and she had been cooking for the family for as long as he could remember. Normally, repetition was all that was needed to improve the Level of a Skill, such as his Axe Handling, but others needed something different to advance – which was probably why his mother had been stuck on Level 9 for years. At least, that was according to what she had told them, because it wasn’t as if Larek could actually see that about her for himself. No one could see anything like that about another person, as far as he knew.

After his Skill Level-up, he got right back into what he was doing before being interrupted. One tree blurred into another as he chipped away wedges of wood non-stop, his body continuing to work automatically despite his mind being somewhere else. Larek wasn’t thinking of anything in particular, just letting his thoughts meander wherever they wanted. They tended to do that quite frequently, until time passed so quickly it was as if none had passed at all.

“LAREK! QUITTIN’ TIME!”

His sister’s shouts echoed through the now-empty part of the forest he was in, startling him. Thankfully, he hadn’t been in the middle of swinging his best friend, but had been in the middle of rotating around to the other side of the arboreal monolith he was working on. A second after he heard Kendee shouting, he realized that dusk had fallen a bit before, and the light was rapidly bleeding away from his environment; he must have kept working despite the encroaching darkness, which just meant that he was enjoying himself.

Sadly, he had also worked hard enough that his stomach was practically growling in anger at him. While his Axe Handling Skill thankfully reduced the energy needed to swing the axe, he still expended great amounts of energy over the course of the day.

Holding the axe against one of his shoulders, he left the tree he had been in the middle of carving up where it was as he headed back home.