The Prime Trees is the fifth book in the The Metalwood Saga.
Serving as the explosive climax to the Earth-bound arc of the series (Season One), the novel resolves the looming threat of the Cothellon and fundamentally shifts the setting of the saga. The story follows the brutal destruction of Sylrantheas, the horrific revelations of the sky cities' power source, and a desperate, planet-altering magical gambit to save Earth from total annihilation.
Synopsis
The Fall of Sylrantheas
Following the revelation that the elves intentionally caused the Sundering, Trey is disgusted and attempts to leave Sylrantheas. He stays just long enough to witness the Waychoice Ceremony, where Arra shocks the village by defying tradition and Choosing to dedicate her life to all seven magical Ways.
The ceremony is violently interrupted when the Cothellon, led by Quynn, launch a surprise assault on the village using flying fallcars and mergeguns. The attack is a massacre; Arra's lover, Fenian, is shot and killed, and the village's Mentors, Eloen and Orist, also perish in the chaos. During the attack, Trey's trauma-induced mental blocks are exploited by Quynn, who captures Trey and forces him to return to the sky cities. Arra, devastated by Fenian's death, vows revenge against Trey, mistakenly believing he orchestrated the attack with his father.
The Truth of Civil Service
Simultaneously, deep in the Under, Rylan, Elanil, and Dill (Dillon) infiltrate a darkprime forest beneath Planner Central to rescue Rylan's friend, Con. They arrive too late and witness the horrific truth behind the Cothellon's "Civil Service": abducted human Citizens are ritually slaughtered, their blood used to mutate saplings into the Darkprime Trees that keep the sky cities afloat. Con is murdered before Rylan's eyes, cementing his resolve to destroy the Cothellon.
Attempting to flee, the group is confronted by Forcefinder Elion, who traps them in deadly forcefields. Rylan and Elanil discover that by physically holding hands, their opposing lightprime and darkprime magic perfectly syncs rather than canceling out. Together, they use a devastating combination of fallfoiling and leafrunning to blast the Cothellon guards out into the open sky. Dill ultimately kills Elion with a knife, saving the group.
The Ultimate Sacrifice
As the seven sky cities physically lock together to form the massive Fennas Elenathon (Gateway to the Stars) device, the Cothellon deploy their army to the surface to wipe out the remaining Eldrim and the human Splinter faction. The Cothellon's supreme leader, Lorelei, personally corners Arra and Elanil in an alley. As Lorelei fires her weapon at Arra, Elanil heroically pulls the gun toward herself, sacrificing her own life to save her sister.
Elanil's blood spills onto the roots of a nearby elm tree. Because her death was a willing sacrifice of pure love, the tree instantly mutates into a towering, true Prime Tree. The emotional trauma of her sister's death shatters Arra's mental blocks, instantly awakening her as a remarkably powerful Prime Mage.
Realizing that willing sacrifice is the key to creating Prime Trees, fourteen Eldrim—including Silanar's wife, Melenora, and the Mentors Nuvian and Belstram—volunteer to give their lives. Their sacrifice instantly births fourteen massive Prime Trees, providing the surviving elves with a nearly limitless source of magic to fight the Cothellon. Using the Book of Amplification and dark maple, Rylan performs an impossible feat of magic: he lifts the entire Prime Forest and its earthen floor thousands of feet into the sky to physically combat the floating cities.
The Conjunction and the Gate
In the sky cities, Lorelei attempts to seduce Trey, revealing that she had previously masqueraded as his human wife, Lora. Trey's memories begin to unlock, and he realizes Quynn is not his father; rather, Quynn has spent centuries repeatedly wiping Trey's memory and torturing him in an ongoing experiment to artificially awaken Trey's Prime Mage abilities. Trey violently breaks Quynn's mindmaster control and escapes back to the surface, engaging in an epic, storm-fueled battle with a vengeful Arra.
When Arra realizes Trey is not the true enemy, the two unite. Standing in the floating Prime Forest, Trey and Arra hold hands to combine their powers, utilizing the Tree Ring Staff to generate "shockarrows" and a massive mistwoven dragon to decimate the Cothellon army. During the battle, Quynn fatally stabs Silanar. With his dying breath, Silanar reveals that Arra is not his biological daughter, but an ageless, enigmatic being he found in the woods. Trey and Arra fight back, and Arra uses leafrunning to wrench a massive branch from a Prime Tree, crushing Quynn beneath it.
Believing Quynn to be dead, Trey, Arra, Orym, and Luthar infiltrate Gate Control with only minutes remaining before the Cothellon device taps into Earth's core—which would destabilize and destroy the planet. Using their combined magic, the Tree Ring Staff, and the Book of Amplification, Trey attempts to hijack the device's targeting system to teleport the entire planet Earth across the galaxy. However, the magic fails because Trey is only a Half Prime Mage and lacks the full spectrum of Aspects. At the last possible second, a bloodied Quynn survives the falling branch, gates into the room, and lunges for the Staff. As Quynn touches it, his splintered soul seamlessly intertwines with Trey's and Arra's, filling the gaps in Trey's power and completing the magical circuit. Together, the three of them power the massive gate, successfully depositing Earth into the Persephone star system alongside the ancient elven homeworld of Valaralda.
Epilogue
In the aftermath of the planetary jump, the Cothellon surrender, and the surviving humans and elves begin forging a new, unified society (Pano Sylrantheas). Dill offers Rylan the undername "Fall" to honor his incredible feat of magic, but Rylan rejects the title. Instead, he officially adopts the undername "Ryl" to honor Elanil's memory, as she was the one who originally gave him that nickname.
The passage through the massive gate fully restores Arra and Trey's ancient memories: they realize they are over twenty thousand years old, their true names are Alleria and Tarathiel, and they were married to each other on Valaralda long before the Sundering. As the couple embraces their renewed love under Valaralda's twin moons, Arra rests against the Prime Tree born from Elanil's blood and shockingly hears her dead sister's voice whispering to her from within the wood.
Key Characters
- Trey (Tarathiel): A Prime Mage who discovers his entire life was a fabricated experiment by Quynn. He masters his magic, remembers his past life on Valaralda, and saves Earth by gating it across the galaxy.
- Arra (Alleria): An elven Hunter who awakens as a fiercely powerful Prime Mage after her sister's death. She learns she is not Silanar's biological daughter and remembers her ancient marriage to Trey.
- Elanil: Arra's younger sister and a gifted leafrunner. She sacrifices her own life to save Arra, her blood creating the first new Prime Tree.
- Rylan (Ryl / Fall): The underkid son of Phoenix. He discovers the truth behind Civil Service and performs a legendary feat of magic by lifting the entire Prime Forest into the sky.
- Lorelei (Lora): The supreme Cundu of the Cothellon. She masqueraded as Trey's wife, Lora, and relentlessly drives the Conjunction project to escape the solar system.
- Quynn (Simon): The ruthless Cothellon mindmaster who tortured Trey for centuries. He is crushed to death by Arra and Trey.
- Allain: A mistweaver who, driven mad by grief over his father's death, accidentally splits his own soul into two distinct physical beings (Allain and Allain2) using an illusion.
- Silanar: The leader of Sylrantheas. He refuses to sacrifice unwilling victims, leading to the Eldrim's voluntary sacrifice to create the Prime Forest. He is murdered by Quynn.
Magic and Lore Introduced
- Prime Tree Creation: The book reveals that Prime Trees are created when a sentient being is murdered and their blood waters a tree's roots. Unwilling victims (like the humans in Civil Service) create twisted Darkprime Trees. A willing sacrifice of pure love (like Elanil's) creates a true, lightprime Tree.
- Co-Magic: It is discovered that opposing mages (lightprime and darkprime) cannot simultaneously cast magic on the same object without it spinning wildly out of control. However, if the two mages physically touch, their souls blend, allowing them to perfectly synchronize and combine their magics into devastating new forms, such as "shockarrows".
- The Conjunction (Fennas Elenathon): The seven sky cities were specifically designed as puzzle pieces that physically lock together to form a massive superweapon/gate known as Fennas Elenathon (Gateway to the Stars).
- Tree Ring Staff: An ancient, infinitely powerful artifact containing segments of all deciduous primewoods, joined together by rings of prime willow. It allows the wielder to endlessly draw upon magic without needing a physical wood supply.
- The True History: The memories unlocked by the planetary gate reveal that the elves originally came from the Persephone system. Earth is actually a part of a massive, ancient "Defense Mechanism" designed to combat an impending galactic threat known as "The Fall".