In the Heart of the Wood

I manage to absorb most of the abruptly wildly-shuddering ichor cords with my own. The few that catch me in their death throes only lend me more.

I know that shriek. I didn’t know it would attempt to peel the side of my face off as well as drive this monster mad. Might be driven mad myself. Haven’t heard the real thing for two hundred years, is it me or the mark?

“Lonn!”

Ah, grating music to my ears. I peel my nails from my skull and push up onto footing I can’t recall losing. If I can stab Atsukute into—

I just about fall flat on my face. Do my best not to be violently sick. Somehow succeed.

Luckily Atsukute doesn’t need an arm to shove her into a writhing monster I’d sympathise with if I wasn’t doing my best to kill it. Curled in a ball isn’t the most dramatic stance from which to send a flaming sword whistling into its heart, but I can’t complain.

It shrieks and I taste metallic tar despite my best efforts. Spirits, that sound is awful.

“—ino! Brother.”

The chains require more life from me than I can muster. I can’t listen if I’m unconscious. I almost wish I was.

The impression of being hoisted into the air would be far less unpleasant if I were unaware.

“Deepest apologies, my friend!”

I manage a groan. “Jeanu.”

“—here in the nick of time, I know. We heard the commotion a while ago, but Akir, in all his shining wisdom—” can’t hear over the wind “—the grove—” can’t hear in general “—not far! Hold on!”

I feel the draft of mighty wings as damp leaves and earth meet my cheek, talons slipping from around my shoulders and paws unhooking from under my shins. Dead man’s carry. Appropriate. Been there a couple of times with Arvintt. Practice was only fun for one of us.

“Lonn—!” There’s a babbling in my still-ringing ears. A hand lands on my shoulder as I push myself up, half-helping me, half-holding for dear life. Ah, Akir, always doing his best to herd a chaotic brood of chicks.

Speaking— speaking of chicks— “Sels—?”

A manly yelp greets the tide of black finally spilling from the overflowing shores of my violently-shaken ocean. At least this time I don’t lose all of it. What fortune.

Two hands prop me up now, the life of spiriscence flowing through my bones packing taut into the deep tiredness abruptly throbbing there. “—you’d fixed it all with that chain thing?”

Black spots threaten to blot out my vision. Would like to know where Sels is first.

“He always throw up on people’s feet?”

Ah, there she is.

“—some issues, it seems.” Sister’s stiff voice. “I see you’re not dead.”

“Not for lack of trying. We’ve been held down here for three days.”

“Almost four, now. We were starting to wonder if anyone would—”

I just need to catch my breath. The aftereffects are already fading, even if I still feel weak as water. “The magistrate...?”

“Abandoned us, the bastard,” Jeanu gripes, to Akir’s disapproving hum. “Well, not just abandoned us—he left a lovely gift of his bowmen to keep us hemmed in, if you’ll believe it. It’s not like I ever liked Jaakko much, but the old bird’s gone completely insane, wanting to get rid of us when there’s a fissure right here!”

“It’s because... of the fissure. Its influence on the grove,” I rasp, wiping off my lips. Some of it’s probably caught in the scruff I haven’t shaved lately. I change that with the flick of a cord. “Its spirit is tied to Treeline and its people, and Ilempo is withering it with evil. We can’t let that happen. If it hasn’t been killed already."

“The old tree-deer’s fine. For now.” Akir’s calloused hand gestures past me, and I manage to turn my head, spotting the massive, majestic form, dimmer than it should be, kneeling on a patch of silver-lit grass. That’s good news, at least.

“I’m sorry... did you say Ilempo?” Jeanu’s golden-brown eagle’s head cocks, ears tilted back, feathery wolf’s tail flicking uneasily.

“That’s the name of this general of Noruaas, yes.” I push myself to my shaky footing with an effort and Akir’s supporting hand, still imbuing me. “He’s absorbing power from Kukunoshi, like you are. That’s enough spiriscence.”

“You’re covered in cuts.”

“I need them. Strange as that sounds,” I add at his frown, leaning on a thin trunk. With Jeanu as his companion, in this grove, he could likely heal every bruise and scrape without needing to even touch his own reserves of spiriscence. “Noruaas may be injured, but its generals are quite insistent on taking up the mantle. And this one... this fissure needs taking care of, quickly.”

I can’t let it fester here. No matter how ideal it would be, Ilempo won’t be planning to manifest here. And I can’t let him enslave the people of Treeline.

My eyes briefly meet sister’s. I won’t let that happen.

Exhaling quietly, I push away from the trunk. “Kukunoshi’s protecting this place, I assume. A last haven. Where’s the fissure?”

“Hold on.” Akir’s hulking figure reaches out, half-hovering as if uncertain of touching me, dark eyes under dark hair concerned. “You’re not well enough to fight—”

A stirring like trees rustling and creaking from the middle of the clearing cuts him off.

“You, cursed guardian.” The deer’s wooden, eyeless head rises, staring at me with the glowing ripples of its face, the puff of a pine-scented breeze blowing from its nostrils. “You will save my forest? It creeps deeper into my soil. This evil... it burns me. It withers my branches. I grow weaker. I cannot stand.”

Its mighty neck creaks, leaves on its antlers rustling as it turns to the wall of bushes and trees surrounding us. A path shifts open, glowing ferns unfurling to light the woven roots creating a paved road.

Its whispering rustle sighs through the trees. “If you will help, go.”

“I empathise, Mighty Kukunoshi.” Bowing to it as best I can, I go ahead of my uncertain and awed little team. “He’s right. We don’t have much time. They’ll come to us, or we go to them.”

“I... I didn’t know it could speak.” Jeanu’s hushed voice breaks the still-stunned shuffle of feet catching up.

“Why’re they all so spooky?”

“It can speak.” I slice with cords through the dead growth starting to block the path, hearing a low rustling hiss swell to our quick steps. Quick as a half-invalid group can be, at least.

“What... is that? Around your arm?” Jeanu whispers as the path clears ahead, faintly queasily.

A whip of ichor tentacles greeting me makes that somewhat hard to answer. Falling more than rolling out of the way, I call Atsukute down like a star, plummeting through the centre of a bristling monstrosity before its ring of jointed fangs can consume me.

Blue fire consumes it, its shriek attempting to skewer me in revenge.

Huffing, I glance over at the others, rolling my fatigued body back its trembling legs. Akir’s axe is out and ready, Sels behind his legs, Jeanu at his side, and sister with her daggers at the other.

In the middle of this space, a bubbling, dark pool drowns a teetering old giant of a tree, pulsing buds marring its blackened branches. They split open before I can drag in a proper breath, an unwelcome buzz cutting the air.

More abominations crawl from the pool, too, rustlings coming from the forest. What a lovely welcome. I spear as many of the flying nuisances as I can before they bring their stingers in, slipping between their thicker armour, but we’ll be hard-pressed. Especially once they start cutting cords with those buzzing wings, forcing me to pull them in or lose vibrant streaks of blood. A fast learner, Ilempo.

“Akir!” I stumble towards him, both he and Jeanu frozen at the sight of writhing red cords. I could do without them thinking I’m a devil, but there’s no time. “Spiriscence!”

This is more than we five can handle. I need an opening to plunge Atsukute in; I need enough spiriscence to create that opening.

He grabs my hand despite the wariness lurking in his eyes. Still trusting, despite it all.

I return that trust with a surge of red-white burned into my skin, pulling more than a sword this time, glowing white visages materialising like figures stepping from mist. They pull away from me, turning eerily-bright eyes briefly to the others—a gryphon with a grey-eagle’s head, a lion’s hind end, and a dragon’s tail; a wiry man with an imbued bow and a sharp face; another man and gryphon mirroring Akir and Jeanu.

This is another battle I’m going to leave unconscious. I release the sizzling focals, perspiration stinging my eyes, dripping off my chin. Can’t summon them only to fall on my face, though. Took more out of me than I thought.

Akir’s hand pulls me from my knees as his copy carves through a stabbing-legged monster, ghostly Arvintt flinging wads of white fire back at ichor webs. “What... what in the spirits...?”

I eloquently gasp for breath, tugging Atsukute back to my trembling grip. Curse this weakness. Akir’s spiriscence flowing into me helps, but not as much as I’d like. I nearly miss a hornet flying for my face, thwacking it messily from the sky, Akir neatly intercepting more, ghostly arrows doing the same.

Voices still question me. One step and I threaten to fall. Spiriscence and ichor roil under my clammy skin, as if it’s a wineskin stretched thin. My body’s almost had enough. Not yet. “I need... to get to the fissure.”

Akir punches through the fog and a vicious hissing something. “No. You’re wounded and weak, I can close it.”

“We can all contribute, then.” So long as I can reach it. I force myself forwards, vicious reams of red spreading out to capture flung webs of ichor trying to pin our feet. “Ilempo... won’t easily accede.”

“Ya don’t look so good.” A goose is suddenly at my shoulder, throwing a slicing honk up at a hornet about to skewer me. Arvintt’s spirit gives me an apologetic look for letting it slip through.

“I’ll collapse after.” Thousands of tinier, zipping spiders attempt to slip past our defences. They cook under a spray of violent orange-blue flames as I release the ichor sloshing in my veins, Atsukute humming eagerly through the air at airborne swarms. As long as we keep advancing—

The boiling pool of the fissure explodes with ichor cords.