[ WP ] The life of a tree is a long one . The Sacred Oak had quite a story to tell .

The forest screamed, for those with the ability to hear it. Elves from half a planet away shivered. The high priestess of an elven temple from the other side of the empire collapsed, dead, blood trickling from her ears. The trees all along the forest, interconnected across the continent, either braced themselves in fear, or mourned, the wind rustling through the leaves and making sounds like sobs. Both the city of elves and forest of trees fell that day. 
 
 The man hefted his axe, and plunged it into the tree. The elves tore at their restraints, and rattled at the cage doors as they were hauled away. The Sacred Oak merely shivered, but was silent. He dropped the axe, it was mostly a decorative affair anyways. His engraved helmet and armour marked him out as a noble, but the blood splatters showed he was a soldier. 
 
 His underlings ran up with a huge saw, and worked it back and forth over the incision already made. The sacred oak was fifty metres in diameter, and hundred and fifty metres high. It shimmered with magics both ancient and new, strong and trivial, up and down its length.It would take days for the men to chop through a normal tree that size. With the magics released when the crude, savage way they chopped trees was applied to an elven oak, it would take three months and take a few lives. The oak did not wish this, but it was out of her hands. 
 
 Over the next few months, they would work its way slowly through the oak, magics sparking against the blade. When the work was done, what was perhaps the biggest, most revered symbol of elven society fell, shaking the earth as it slammed against the earth. The men took what they could of the wood, and left, content in the knowledge that they had decimated the elves, both in body and spirit. Throughout it all, despite the pleading of both the elves and the trees, the oak had said nothing. The elven oaks had long memories, and much knowledge. The Sacred Oak in particular, had been the foundation around which the elves built their capital. It had seen their entire history, and seemed unwilling to share. 
 
 It was decades after, after the elves had mourned their losses, both of their kinsmen and the trees, that they found out why. As they fought through the human kingdom, they found the place where the Sacred Oak had once stood. The forest had grown back, thicker and denser, and around the Oak's old placement, the trees were grown into a wall, thorns facing outwards. As the elves approached, the wood parted. 
 
 The high priestess ran her finger over the fifty-metre long disc, the stump that was all that was left of the oak. Most trees had a mark of their history, of burns and cuts and good years and bad, in the rings. In the rings of the Sacred Oak was the history of the elves, from the birth of their race. It kept going, until reaching the death of the Oak. 
 
 Inscribed there, was the last message of the Sacred Oak, asking the elven people to not forget their past. Not to forget the Oak, and to strive for greater heights. 
 
 Replicas of the Elven History stand in every city. Most elves make at least one pilgrimage there in their lives. Many are buried there as well, beside the Oak.
