Chapter 35 #3
She couldn’t find anything to help them fight a familiar. Her hands sifted through rubble and dried leaves. Was that…a bone? It wasn’t even big enough to swing.
There was nothing.
She tried to get up, but her legs weren’t working right. Her stomach lurched and vomit crept up her throat. Her vision went black around the edges.
She would not faint. Not when they were so close to getting out.
She managed to get a foot under her, but fell forward when she tried to stand. Her injured hand smacked against the stone and she choked on her breath. Her heartbeat throbbed just beneath her skin…or whatever raw meat was where her skin was supposed to be.
It hurt.
Everything hurt.
But she wasn’t going to just lie down and wait for the witch to show up. She tried again, putting a hand down to steady herself. Her fingers closed around a root that had pushed up through a cracked flagstone.
Agony seared through her, sharper than the burn.
The root belonged to a tree that was still alive.
It had been corrupted. One of the first to be taken.
Its bark had sloughed off. Its branches were split and fallen.
Insects had wormed their way into its flesh.
The soil was dead around it. The water foul.
It wanted to die, but the same darkness that animated the witch’s haggard body kept the tree alive too.
Only it wasn’t really life, was it? That living death?
It was the same for the tree beside it and the next and the next, on and on for miles.
The demon was feeding on that life, had been feeding on it from the moment she and Toby had fled this place.
Daris was right. They should have run to the priest for a cleansing. Maybe they could have stopped this.
She started to pull back, needing to help Asher. The witch would be here soon. She had to find a rock or a branch, anything to use as a weapon.
But something held her at the edge of the connection.
A thread of light, golden but faint, from a living tree at the far edge of the forest. Not in the direction of Toam, but close to another village like it.
That tree was alive, very old. An oak that had stood for more than a century.
It would take three men to wrap their arms around its trunk.
Its boughs were wide and spreading, sheltering the garden of a small house.
Two young children played in the dirt outside with a kitten they’d found in a ditch.
The oak had watched generations of that family birthed and raised and buried there under its branches.
It wanted to see these little ones grow too.
And it gave freely, without being asked.
She didn’t call for help. She didn’t cast a spell, but energy flowed into her, along with the oak’s memories of the family whose bodies nourished the soil where its roots burrowed deep.
Around it stood other trees that were still healthy, children of the great oak, some little more than saplings.
More energy came, that golden light surging into her from every corner of the woods.
All of the healthy trees lent her their strength.
Daughter of the wood…We come…
Only the strength didn’t just come to her, it lit up all the darkened paths of the forest, pushing back the rot that had claimed the network of connection among the trees, spreading out, growing stronger as more trees added their strength to the river flowing toward her.
She felt the witch below lift her face and laugh, greedy for all of the raw power. She felt the well of darkness beneath the fort stir, ready to swallow it down.
There was only the most fragile membrane there, separating the living world from that void. Something bad had happened here so long ago that no one remembered it, leaving a wound that seeped darkness.
That wasn’t the witch’s doing. The witch had been drawn here. To the pain and misery that had caused the wound. To the darkness that had been waiting there ever since.
But there was also magic there, old and faded, that had been placed like a bandage to seal it closed. Before the fort was abandoned. Before the roads changed and this place fell silent and forgotten.
The knowledge flowed into her with the energy from the trees. The pains of her body faded as her life energy merged with theirs. In the back of her mind, she was aware that she might be dying, but she couldn’t stop now.
She wasn’t going to feed the void. It had already been feeding on the woods for months, years. It would never be filled.
Instead, she poured energy into the weakening seal. The magic that formed it felt foreign and familiar at the same time. Like the golden energy that connected the trees. Like that green shield that had protected her from the familiar in the woods.
It was magic—terrifying and wondrous. She had no control over it.
It was like a spell, only vastly more complicated.
She didn’t understand it, but the trees did.
They directed the power, using her as a conduit to reach this place.
The roots of the tree she touched sank down into the well beneath, reforming the shield that had nearly failed.
The witch howled as her connection to the void was cut off.
Her familiars joined her a moment later.
It weakened them, but they were still alive.
The witch was connected physically to this world through the body of the woman she inhabited, the familiars to their twisted animal forms. But the demon was furious that it wouldn’t be able to draw on that well of power.
The tree beneath her hand trembled.
Asher called her name. She looked up. He ran toward her, his face bone-white. Behind him, the familiar’s head thrashed as if it were in pain.
Asher reached her, grabbed her arm. “Come on. We have to get out of here.”
“What did you do to the familiar?”
“What did I do? You were glowing.”
He jerked her hand free of the root. Charred skin stuck to the bark. She screamed as he helped her up. She wrapped an arm around his neck to hold on.
“The witch…”
Asher nodded. “She’s coming.”
They ran for the door.