Despite the urgency so many feel to capture a moment, sometimes the moment captures them and never lets them go. For the friends and foes gathered there, time was no longer theirs to spend.
~Excerpt: Fizzit’s Leaves
The trio floated to the bottom of the oceanic trench. Red, Char, and Blue steered the bups into the submerged wood, swimming through the narrow passages easily. They navigated as though they had intimate knowledge of the entire Root. Barra thought they were heading for a whirlpool entry, but she didn’t know for sure.
Emerging from the wood into open water, the bups half expected a viny ball of green serpents to come floating toward them. There was nothing. The water was still, lacking life. The only movement came from swaying vegetation. A faint vibration began, and developed into an unmistakable resonance. An enormous shadow passed below them as something enormous blocked out the sun.
It was the Roedtaw, and he bellowed as he ascended. He only just fit between the rough walls of the trench. As he came up beneath them, Barra swam up to one of his gigantic eyes, and smiled into the ancient, steel gray iris. The inner circle of its mouth parted from the outer ever so slightly, and Barra stretched down to it. She kissed its upper lip through Red’s body. It wasn’t the required golden kiss, but the Roedtaw wasn’t there to collect a fare. Barra believed his arrival was a sign they were on the right course, doing the right thing. The Roedtaw opened up, ready for them.
The three slid in behind an open plate and felt the slow churning of the great beast begin to speed up as bubbles filled the small space. The Roedtaw swung around until they were pointed down. The last known surviving Olwone cycled up his internal whirlpool and began the voyage back to the Boil.
At the surface, sitting by the opening in the Root, Brace felt the first vibrations of the Buckle. It still felt odd to her, so different from the sway high up in the Loft. It was surprising too how easily she’d lost track of time.
It wasn’t the Buckle she had to fear.
Eyes shone out of the darkness. “The fungal-puppets are coming, Brace.” The words came with echoes in different timbres. Lancing the shadows with her keen eyes, Brace tried to locate the source of the voices. Her nostrils flared and pulsed, but there was nothing. Behind the sound though, farther away in the converging branches, something else moved. It came fast in her direction. She stealthed reflexively and waited.
The pool was closing. Soon, she would be entombed in darkness. She steeled herself against attack, but whatever was out there didn’t move like a monstrosity. In fact, the closer it came, the more familiar it looked.
“Brace!” Jaeden called. Brace was cautious, but she stepped away from the closing fissure and released her fur to become visible again. She was convinced something or someone was still hidden in the wood.
Jaeden dashed into the diminishing pocket of light and space. Out of breath, she went on, “The monsters… they’re attacking again.” Brace was listening, but still scanning the wood. “We have to go!” Jaeden told her.
Motionless, Brace spoke, “There’s something else out there.”
Jaeden spun around in a flash and crouched. After several seconds she whispered, “I don’t see anything.”
“He spoke to me,” Brace said, but she began to doubt it. She couldn’t see, hear, or smell anything, and her senses were acute.
Standing square to Brace, Jaeden said, “These woods play tricks, especially during the Buckle.” As more and more of the rootscape curled into itself, she added, “Time is short.”
Brace frowned. She broke her vigilant stare into the wood to glimpse at the opening to the ocean. The exposed surface had dwindled to practically nothing, and then it was gone as though it had never been.
Her daughter was safe. All the bups were safe… safer than they would be here.
Brace nodded to Jaeden. They fled into the crooked tunnels formed by the mad growth of the Root and the unbound motion of the Buckle.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
In the pocket behind the plate, the bups were silent. They had direction and purpose, but they also had Barra’s worsening health. It was hard to know what they should say to each other.
Tory tried not to look, but it was hard not to wonder what the infection was doing to his friend. Her fever seemed to have broken, but the cut was open like an eye and as black as a pupil. The wriggling worms had disappeared, but the skin around the cut was bald and carved by jagged green lines. The entire arm looked like a withering flower. It was bad, but what was worse in Tory’s mind was that Barra showed no concern for it.
Plicks was worried too, but tried his best not to focus on the festering arm. Instead, he focused on Red. The longer he observed the Nebule the more obvious it was she was getting worse. She was mottled auburn, and her severed tentacle was shredded at the edge, weeping liquid light that sparked to ash as it fell. He reached out to pet her, and she seemed to want the touch, but he could tell she was hurting. Despite her lethargy the Nebule tried to snuggle up against the Kolalabat and be playful. His chest ached for her. His eyes stung and his head felt swollen with emotions he had no words to describe. He stroked Red, tears sliding over his cheeks.
Too preoccupied to notice her friends, Barra thought about how to convince the Nebules to attack the Root. She didn’t have any immediate solutions, and she wondered if the Roedtaw would stop at the Drift on the way down. She hoped Lootrinea would help.
Barra thought about her dreams, and began thinking of them as her guides. She believed in them, no matter how crazy that sounded. She only wished she could make more sense of them. It was like there were two separate threads spinning two different webs from the same central point. Each connection on a web was a vivid fragment of a dream, but when she tried to connect the webs to one another the image became too confusing to understand. The dream webs were similar but with important differences and Barra got lost between images.
The Nebules flashed brightly and gathered together. Barra’s stomach flipped, and she sucked in a harsh breath. Her mother was in trouble. She didn’t know how she knew it, but the entire expedition was under attack, she was certain of it. Char was spinning and extending and retracting spheres alarmingly. The boys watched intently, but didn’t understand. Red flashed back sharply, and Char calmed down. Blue flowed about, clouds sliding over his back and belly. Adding a couple more subtle, softer flashes, Red seemed to offer a conciliatory message to the others. After a few more exchanges, the three Nebules bobbed together conclusively.
As the jellies returned to the bups, Barra’s dreamy gossamers fell away, leaving only a single web behind. As she contemplated it, it became a single obvious thread. A thread with a severe and unavoidable end.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The camp was under attack. The expedition fought from behind their makeshift walls, walls that wouldn’t protect them long against the fungal-puppets.
Brace and Jaeden met up with some Arboreals who had been outside the camp when the attack began. They were three Kolalabat scouts, a Nectarbadger, and a Listlespur. Brace and Jaeden made a total of seven. The fungal-puppets seemed only aware of the camp proper and Brace believed that gave her small squad the advantage. They separated into two groups. The Kolalas and Jaeden were going to drop in from above on the other side of the camp, just outside the best fortified wall. They could crush the fungal-puppets against the defenders there. Brace would lead the rest of the Listlespurs into the fray from the near side. They could pick off the monstrosities one at a time, thin their numbers, and kill off their strong from within.
As much as the creatures resembled Arboreals, they weren’t Arboreals. They didn’t care when Jaeden’s force ambushed them. They weren’t surprised or confused. They just turned and fought without concern for their lives. It didn’t matter to them when Brace and her crew silently snatched one after another from within the main group. They were neither demoralized nor frightened. They simpl
y kept moving relentlessly forward into the camp.
Floating pairs of morbidly green eyes flickered in and out through the collapsed wood. A fog of flickering beasties rose from the Root and blackened the air. The Kudmoths had been there long before the attack began. They swarmed up and around the stealthed Listlespurs, making them visible as they flew into them.
Claws raked and screams tore the air.
Threads were severed and strings were snapped.
Arboreals and puppets fell, and at the Root, they weren’t so different after all.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The Roedtaw wound his whirlpool faster and faster. The bups felt the smooth reverberation in the marrow of their bones. What small view was afforded by the opening of the plate was distorted by the deepening of the meniscus. There was no way to understand the blurred ocean outside. It wouldn’t take them long to reach the Boil.
Barra’s dream vision was finally clear. Still, she couldn’t figure how to share the revelation with her friends. Red twisted around her. Barra knew intuitively that Red understood what had to be done.
Watching them, Plicks thought they looked like they were saying goodbye to each other. The thought upset him. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing.” Barra faced the Kolalabat, earnest and loving. “I’m just… I can’t believe this is happening is all.”
Plicks didn’t believe her. He’d seen that look before, whenever one of his brothers or sisters left for a long trip, whenever a cousin from a distant Tree said farewell without knowing when or if they’d ever see each other again. The faces they wore were in anticipation of missing someone deeply. Seeing Barra wear that same face trapped the breath in his throat.
Red wrapped Barra and held her tight, one long tentacle in cords around her bald and cracking arm.
For the first time since their descent began, the Roedtaw slowed.
“Did you feel that?” Tory asked. “We’ve leveled out.”
Plicks and Barra felt it, too. They’d arrived.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The expedition was surrounded. Between the efforts of the Kudmoths and the fungal-puppets, those Arboreals still alive were pressed in close, their backs against the only partially fortified wall of the camp. Brace was on the frontline, wounded like the rest, but standing fierce, Vallor at her side.
Argus’s forces didn’t push their advantage. They held their positions, a boundary of dark vines, flesh, and glowing eyes disguised by the fog of Kudmoths. The wall was intimidating and frightened everyone except Brace. She was busy trying to find a hole, a weak area that they could use to escape. Pounding the Root with her tail and hissing loudly, she tried to provoke them. They seemed not to notice her at all.
It wasn’t the Buckle—that had ended before Brace arrived at the camp—but a new and similar vibration began travelling through the wood. Something was coming toward them. The wall their binders had built and fortified began shaking violently. The Arboreals shifted, terrified. They didn’t know which way to turn. Their heads jerked left and right, pulled around by unseen strings.
Scars appeared in the quaking wall as thin cracks. Wounds yawned open and spilled dark green pus from their edges. The glowing poison flowed over the woven and bound branches, and pooled at the foot of the wall where it smoldered and blackened. The newly-carved scars bulged. The dizzy attentions of the trapped Arboreals gathered, and focused on the culminating rattling of the wall. Stunned, they watched helplessly. Too terrible to turn their backs on it and run. Too alien to fight.
The wall that was set to shelter the small crew congealed into a single curved mass of rot, stench, and fungal ooze. The quaking became a soft rumble, and then disappeared. It was replaced by a squelching, wet sucking sound. The blackness that began in the pool at the base of the wall rose up through the noxious liquid until it swallowed the scars. No more light-emitting fluid spilled out, only slow, dark sap.
The largest scar in the wall swelled like a lung inhaling. Finger-like protrusions appeared and emerged one by one. They sharpened and lengthened, and then cut through the thin membrane of ooze that coated them. The dark skin peeled away, and hands were revealed, like two five-legged spiders. They moved precisely on their clawed fingertips, apparently searching for something. When they found a good place, the spidery hands pushed flat. They levered an eyeless, toothless head out of the muck, and a thin, hairless body followed.
Fully birthed, Argus perched in defiance of gravity, held to the wall only by the clawed tips of his fingers and toes. He leaned out and scanned the Arboreals with his sunken, empty orbitals. His face fixed over the top of the tightly packed group and onto the one creature that stood out. Brace didn’t waver beneath his gaze; instead she put herself between the rotting monster and her friends. She pushed through the mesmerized Arboreals with peculiar ease.
Brace stood apart from the huddled and tattered remains of the expedition. She was prepared to face Argus alone, but glad to spot Jaeden stalking along the top of the wall. Brace was careful not to blink, not to look in Jaeden’s direction, cautious not to reveal her.
Brace turned away from Argus. She inspected her fur carefully, almost whimsically preoccupied with the cleanliness of each patch even though she was coated in grime. Finding an offensive spot of dirt, she licked her fur. She preened herself as though it were any other day, as though she were safe in the Loft.
The rest of the Arboreals tucked into that tiny pocket of space were so quiet, their silence so absolute, that the small sound of Brace’s rough tongue scratching against her fur was cavernous like she was licking the inside of their ears. Argus heard the insult.
Argus leaned until his drooling face was close enough that Brace could feel the dampness of his breath on her fur. He roared a low rumbling note that shook the Root itself.
Brace’s eyes moved first, and then her head followed in a silky pivot. Her whip of a tail raised up and flicked the air. Argus’ roar continued as though he didn’t need to breathe. Brace’s nostrils flared and she hissed. She found a pure violence in herself so disturbing that she was at least as afraid of herself as she was of Argus.
There was a flash in her peripheral vision—Jaeden striking from above.
The pocket collapsed, and a churning mass of Arboreals and creepers took its place.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Anxiety flew into the bups’ bellies like buzzing Kudmoths. Breath caught in their lungs and their nerves were taut like the strings of an instrument pulled too tight, out of tune and ready to snap. The Nebules were worried too, and they spent their nervous energy by bouncing around, erratic.
The Roedtaw bellowed, and the bups felt the rush of blood to their feet as they slowed down. Barra concentrated on her vision to keep her steady. She reached out for Red.
Plicks said, “You’re not planning on coming back with us, are you?”
Barra was afraid that if she shared her vision that she would fail to follow it through, so she lied, “We’re just scared.”
“I don’t believe you.” Plicks wasn’t accusing Barra. He just wanted her to know that he knew.
Tory did nothing to mask his shock, and shot glances back and forth between his companions. Char nuzzled into Tory’s hand. Suddenly, Tory was overwhelmed with the sense that he was the last to know some secret. He felt betrayed and hurt, and demanded, “What’s that supposed to mean?!”
The Roedtaw stopped.
Barra felt the pressure of her friends, their caring voices. “What if an army isn’t the answer? What if there is another way? A better way?” Barra said. She locked eyes with Tory. She held up her arm, the severity of the infection plain to see. In the time they’d taken to descend her entire arm had shed, bald from shoulder to finger tips. Scarlet splotches had appeared around vivid green cracks in her skin. The original wound was black and seeping. “I’m not going to make it back.”
Tory and Plic
ks shuffled uncomfortably, but before either could speak a word in protest, Barra and Red dove into the ocean.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Jaeden raked Argus viciously across the face and coiled her tail around his throat, squeezing. But Argus dropped to the ground and dragged her from his face with her claws still deeply embedded in his flesh. He threw her away. Brace didn’t see how Jaeden landed or where. She lunged at the monster without looking back. Hissing and growling at each other they slashed and dodged as the battle exploded around them. They tumbled into bodies of puppets and Arboreals. Brace tried to avoid the others. Argus clutched, cleaved, and crushed anyone who got in his way.
Brace tried every trick she knew against the eyeless creature, but nothing fazed him. He caught her by the scruff and held her up, his face out of range. She swung her tail around, and he grabbed it out of the air, unnaturally fast. Brace’s tail was strong, armored by the story of her life. She levered herself around and unleashed a flurry of kicks. Reaching up, she clawed wildly at his flesh where he gripped her neck fur. Argus was unimpressed. He strangled her tail, his oozing flesh burning like acid through her braided protection.
He squeezed until her leathery skin bulged between his fingers.
She screamed and he split her tail in two.
Her Thread unraveled. Burnt, frayed ends splayed out, groping for attachments they could no longer find. The memories fell to the ground in a cascade of delicate sounds like raindrops on water-softened wood. Pain-blind, Brace heard the baubles fall even from within the cacophony.
Argus dropped her like a toy that bored him, and lifted his foot, threatening to crush her.
A sickle-shaped fang speared his lifted thigh with a thud, and another impaled his calf. Vallor Starch came lunging in, yanking Argus off balance with her twin tails. He stumbled, but didn’t fall. Instead, he grabbed Vallor’s tails, the tips still in his legs, and pulled her off her feet. Spinning around, he whipped her into a bough, and then against the Root, the Haggidon howling in pain, and then whimpering. Argus ripped the tail-tips out of his legs, reeled in the quivering Vallor, and held her up for a casual inspection.
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