Chapter 29 #2
Kaelren turns to me. His silver eyes are calm, but beneath the calm is the grinding frustration of a man whose mind is his greatest weapon, and his greatest weapon was just used against him.
"The plan doesn't work," he says.
"I know."
"Every tactical approach I can generate, the core has already countered. The tunnels. The angle of attack. The timing. It knew exactly when we entered and exactly where we were going, because it would have done the same thing."
"I know."
"I can't out-think something that thinks like me. That's the fundamental problem, and it doesn't change no matter how many people we bring or how many angles we try."
"Kaelren." I put my hand on his chest. "I know."
The chamber shakes again. Harder. A section of the root ceiling cracks, and soil sifts down through the gap. The Cathedral is pressing on the tunnels now, compressing them, trying to seal us in.
"We need to surface," Thalia says. "Now. The tunnels won't hold if the Cathedral keeps applying pressure."
Peeble lifts off my shoulder as we move, hovering just ahead of me.
“If something eats you,” they say conversationally, “I’m not fighting it. I’m narrating your poor choices.”
"Not now, Peeble," I scold as we run back the way we came, through the narrow passage, through the junctions. The ceiling groans and dips in places, the living wood buckling under the Cathedral's weight. Nimor phases ahead, finding the clearest route, and we follow his voice through the darkness.
We surface inside the second ring, bursting through a tunnel exit into the middle of the battle.
The scene is chaos. The second-ring wall is holding, but barely.
Root constructs pour over it in waves, climbing the living wood with thorn-claws that dig into the surface and haul their twisted bodies up and over.
The ward lines flicker along the base, their amber glow sputtering each time a construct crosses the channel, the magic struggling to hold against the volume.
For every construct the defenders cut down, the pieces hit the ground and start regrowing, vine and thorn knitting back together until Sarnyx's people find the root-node and crush it.
Sarnyx is at the eastern section, covered in plant matter and sap, her thorns dark with the residue of a dozen kills.
She's taught the defenders her technique, and I can see them applying it, targeting the root-node in each construct's chest instead of hacking at the limbs.
But the constructs are adapting too. The newer ones have the root-node buried deeper, or moved to the abdomen, or split into multiple smaller nodes that all need to be destroyed before the thing stops moving.
Bryx is on the western wall, and I can hear his sonic pulses shattering constructs in rapid bursts.
The sound is a series of sharp, percussive booms that crack through the air and rattle the walkway under my feet.
Kevin dives beside him, stinger flashing, picking off smaller constructs that get past the sonic blasts.
Every few seconds I hear Bryx shout something encouraging and profane at the surrounding defenders.
Vashael is behind the front line, working with two of the Verdance's healers, applying her toxin mist to the gaps in the wall where constructs are pushing through.
Her compounds slow their regeneration but don't stop it entirely.
The Cathedral is learning the toxin's composition and adjusting its constructs' biology in response. In real time. While I watch.
Eltrien is at the base of the Heartwood, his hands pressed against the trunk, his marks blazing as he channels information from the root system. He's tracking the Cathedral's movements through the Rootline, feeding positioning data to Rhyven's commanders through a network of Rootkeeper relays.
They're all doing exactly what they were asked to do.
Every person, every ability, deployed precisely where Kaelren and Thalia placed them.
And it's not enough. Because the Cathedral isn't trying to win right now.
It's studying. Testing. Probing the new variables, cataloging Sarnyx's thorns, Bryx's sonic abilities, Vashael's toxins.
It's learning everything we brought, the same way it learned everything that came before it.
A construct that Sarnyx killed two minutes ago reforms at the base of the wall. This time, its root-node is encased in a shell of hardened bark that her thorns bounce off on the first strike. The Cathedral learned that weakness and armored against it. In two minutes.
Kaelren stands beside me in the chaos, his corruption marks blazing, his hands clenched at his sides, and I can see the truth on his face. The same truth that's settling into my chest like a stone.
The plan failed.
We need something else.
“I hate it here,” Peeble announces softly.“But I am, unfortunately, invested.”
The Cathedral takes another step toward the Verdance, and the ground shakes, the ward lines scream, and somewhere on the wall, a defender goes down and doesn't get back up.
We need something else now.