Blackwood Vs Bracken Novels & Stories

“I’ll set knives in the choke and a silent line past it. If they rush without thinking, they’ll hamstring themselves.” I nod. “And the pits?” “Covered. Blackthorn bracken looks like bracken. It’ll eat a leg if you don’t know where to place your feet.” Hazel’s grin shows her canines. “Do we get to keep souvenirs if they step wrong?” “You can keep a shoe,” I say. “Assuming you make the shot that lost them the foot.” Hazel salutes with two fingers and saunters out the way she came. She never ceases to impress me.

The Blackwood. The Blackwood was a dense forest where sunlight never reached the ground. The trees were twisted and bent like broken fingers. I walked for three days in the heavy darkness. My food and water were almost gone. Then, I saw a thin trail of smoke. It rose from a small clearing just ahead of me. I crept forward, keeping my footsteps very light.

That is not reassuring. It is not meant to be, I said. We walked. --- The forest was different from the one around Blackwood Manor. These trees were older, their trunks wider than houses, their roots so deep they had cracked the bedrock beneath. The air was thick with the smell of moss and decay and something else—something that made the back of my throat burn. The ground was soft, almost spongy beneath our feet, as if we were walking on centuries of fallen leaves that had never fully decomposed. No birds sang. No animals moved. The silence was absolute, broken only by the crunch of our boots and the occasional snap of a twig.

The castles of the three king clans were unanimously decided to be built at the border of the blackwood forest by the will of their ancestors. The blackwood trees were famous for their versatility and durability that could put most types of metal to shame. The Rogue kingdom strictly manages the logging and processing of the blackwood trees, and it serves as one of the main sources of the kingdom’s income. A crescent wall of blackwood trees tightly surrounded the castle grounds, and Raimere could see the orderly soldiers of the Valerius clan in their black and red leather amors with a distinct silver crescent embracing a white gold rose in full bloom on their chests.

The Blackwood greeted them with a foreboding stillness that settled deep into their bones. Towering trees with gnarled branches formed a dense canopy above, casting the forest floor in perpetual twilight. The air was damp and cool, carrying a faint, earthy smell that was overpowered by something sharper—the unmistakable tang of instability. Jamie was the first to break the silence. “I’ve seen creepy forests before, but this one takes the prize. It’s like it’s waiting for us to mess up.”

"Nice. It doesn't hurt as much. More of numbed feeling. What kind of tree is this?" Quickstep asked the system. "It is Allocasuarina luehmannii (buloke or bull-oak), host. This tree produces that hardest wood among the Zero Tiered existences." The system replied to Quickstep. "How long until I can be completely healed?" Quickstep asked the system. He saw his branches were broken and in his trunk were impact marks, abrasions and scrapes which were likely caused by the Cheetah.

"He's demanding audience, Alpha. Says he has a proposition that might prevent... unpleasantness." Unpleasantness. Such a delicate word for the kind of territorial war that could paint these mountains red with supernatural blood. I found Blackwood waiting in the courtyard like he owned it, flanked by three wolves who moved with the particular swagger of creatures who'd never learned proper respect for established territory. He looked older than I remembered—gray threading through dark hair, lines around his eyes that spoke of years spent in exile—but his amber gaze held the same calculating intelligence that had made him dangerous three decades ago.

Paige looked at them and smiled while lowering her gaze in embarrassment. “Did something happen?” I asked, feeling a bit of intrigue. “Haven't you heard?” Paige whispered, leaning toward me. “Apparently Mr. Blackwood's younger brother is coming to the mansion.” When I heard that, my blood ran cold. Another brother? I knew about Sarah, the doctor, but I had no idea the Blackwood family was more extensive. But before I could ask, Paige cut in. “God, he’s such a sexy guy. They say he’s almost identical to Killian, but he’s 18; he came to see if he could find his mate in the pack,” she hinted with a tone full of hope.

Brooke. “Here,” Alexander sidles next to me on the table I am sitting at, with a book open in front of me. He shows me the book he’d found just now. It’s a book with a dark, leather cover with the title ‘Creatures of the Lunar woods’ on it, “I read the synopsis, and it’s got a section dedicated to all the packs in the Lunar woods. Granted the book was written decades ago, but most of the packs in the woods are ancient, so almost all of them are still here.”

Only one way to be sure. Warren had found old articles dating back a hundred years or so. There were few that said that you could kill a vampire by driving a stake through their heart. A stake made from the wood of an old, rare tree. He had done some research and came up with three possibilities, a tree called St. Helena Gumwood, and a tree called Dragon Blood Tree, and the last called Agarwood. They had a plan to get pieces of wood from all three trees. Unfortunately, they were all rare trees, so getting pieces from them was going to be difficult. Warren said that he had a way to get them, so he had left to go get what they needed.