The pine, whispers a sapling just outside the circle of shade, others rustling their leaves in an unseen wind in agreement, it spreads.

Too far. Too much. No sun for seeds, says a thornbush to its side. The pine in question is a regal old monarch of a tree, branches reaching higher than any other and trunk so wide around that you doubt you could circle it with two dozen people. The ground within its shadow is bare of anything except a thick pungent mat of decaying needles and the other plants cluster resentfully on the outskirts of its perimeter.

Druid. It falls. It rots. It returns to the soil. Seeds, fruits. For the druid. It falls, says the sapling.

"Done," you reply, accepting their terms with a quick fingerflick of magic. You blink and the cracked lines of its bark that earlier looked no different from any other formed by natural growth now resolve themselves into a contract written in a language no others would recognise. The leaves around you shiver in pleased anticipation.

As you stride forward across the boundary, the ancient pine comes into awareness with the low creak of shifting wood. Those younglings. They ask humans to do what they cannot. They want this space, this sun, this soil, but cannot have it. Nothing is here except this one.

You've heard it all before. They always think they're justified in their actions, or that they can convince you they have the right of it. What they don't realise is that you don't care. Anything that can't co-exist will be removed and when nature doesn't work fast enough, you take payment from any plant that asks.

Reaching into your pouch, you draw out a handful of seeds and toss them to the ground. Foolish, it says. The sun is mine. The soil is mine. Your seeds do not grow, human.

"I'm not a human," you say, drawing on your magic. It twists and burrows through your veins, shining green through your skin as flowers sprout in your hair and thorns erupt from your joints. "I'm a druid."

Before it can reply, you plant your feet through the needles and push, energy flooding into the ground and through to your seeds. The seedlings burst into life and with a speed that nature never intended, they engulf the pine in a thickening web of strangling vines that wrap around, over, around again, looping on themselves until not a trace of the pine's bark can be seen through their stifling embrace.

Then they constrict. The pine screams, the sound like a hurricane lashing branches and snapping roots. Needles fall from its boughs in a smothering rain until its bare limbs are left stark against the darkening sky and though you can't see it, you can feel it drying and the rot spreading through its trunk as the vines sap everything they can take.

At last the pine goes silent as its trunk crumbles away, the vines left wrapped around empty air with its hollowed-out imprint as the only sign of where it once stood. With the deed done, you return to the sapling, take your payment, and continue on. They know how to contact you next time something needs pruning.