NOVPUB"Did you see her face?" he whispered, though the whole column could hear. "The storm—she's like Virellionn."
Fear rippled outward, a pebble tossed in stagnant water. Boots shuffled, metal clinked as grips tightened. Raëdrithar's head swiveled, silver eye cool and ancient. His low rumble rolled through the ground—less growl, more verdict. The soldier dropped his gaze, cheeks bleaching.
Vaelira stamped her spear butt once, sharp as a gavel. "Focus. Fear won't save you." The words cracked like a whip, slicing the gathering dread. She held the gaze of each trembling recruit until shoulders eased and breaths steadied.
Draven said nothing, but Sylvanna caught a glimmer in his eyes—a mental note: record resilience metrics post-incident. She could almost hear him assigning fear-threshold values to every face.
Mist thickened with every step, swirling around ankles like chill ink. The forest's normal chorus lay strangled; even insects seemed to crawl slower beneath the weight of corruption. Pale, papery fungi bloomed on trunks—splashes of sick ivory pulsing faintly, as though drawing breath. Once a crooked sparrow flapped overhead, feathers singed black, ember eyes trailing smoke. It crashed into a limb, shuddered, and slid into rot before anyone could lend mercy.
The trail funneled into a gorge where the river voice amplified, water churning somewhere unseen. Damp rot perfumed the air with a winey sting, and every inhale coated tongues with mold. The roar built until conversation was impossible; orders devolved into hand signals. Draven lifted a fist—halt. The column obeyed, rows compacting inside the narrowing canyon.
Through the fog Sylvanna saw pearlescent spray. The cataract thundered from a shelf of slate above, disappearing into a cauldron of foam below. Mist rose in dense curtains that brightened and dimmed, ghost-lanterns dancing as wind shifted.
Draven strode to the edge, water droplets jeweling black lashes. He drew a disk from inside his cloak, larger than a man's palm, etched with spirals that seemed to drink the light. He pressed a thumb to its center. Lines ignited—first dull amber, then a bloom of argent radiance that pierced the veil. The mist recoiled in ripples, unveiling a smooth curve of stone where the waterfall's edge parted around an arch.
As the echo of hidden machinery subsided, the air throbbed with new power. Sylvanna felt her rune answer, flickering like a heartbeat startled awake.
She stepped forward. Water hammered the rock lip, yet the force parted around the runic veil, leaving a dry corridor behind the falls. Spray hissed against an invisible barrier, rebounding in silver sheets. She tasted minerals, sharp and cold, on her lips.
Raëdrithar padded through first, shoulder brushing the glowing rim. Sparks leapt where lightning met sigil, scattering harmlessly. Sylvanna followed, pulse drumming high in her throat. Inside, every footfall became magnified; the rush of water overhead was a sky-wide drum.
Behind them Vaelira signaled her company to form a perimeter. Shields locked, spears angled outward, they looked less like escorts and more like jailers guarding a cell whose door lay ahead.
The tunnel descended in a tight spiral. Roots dangled in mats, some pale as bone, others sheened with amber exudate. Slippery moss sheeted the walls, glimmering faintly under her lightning aura. She placed each step with care, bow lowered but ready. Dark water pooled between uneven stones, pooling like black mirrors that scattered their reflections into shards.
Draven's voice drifted from behind, cold as the seep that trickled down the wall. "Watch for corrupted dryads. Aim for the core—lightning disrupts reanimation. If engaged at close quarters, sever femoral vines first; it halves mobility."
Sylvanna filed the detail. Her rune answered with a stronger glow, casting ragged silhouettes. Raëdrithar's purr thrummed through the cramped passage, reinforcing her heartbeat.
They passed a hollow where roots had grown into the shape of rib bones. Something twitched inside—an embryonic dryad cocooned in amber resin. Sylvanna loosed a quick charge; blue fire arced, resin shattered, the creature inside withered before it knew birth.
Draven's evaluation hummed behind her: "Response time, acceptable."
She scowled, unseen. This was not a drill.
The air thickened, sour with fungal sweetness. Damp clung to eyelashes; shadows pressed close as though exhaled by the earth itself.
Suddenly the tunnel widened, walls pulling back to reveal a chamber vast as a cathedral crypt. Roots spiraled toward a ceiling lost in gloom, coiling around each other like live serpents frozen mid-fight. The air tasted metallic, humming with energy drawn from a central monstrosity.
A tree—or what had been a tree—rose from a mound of slick mulch. Its bark glistened as if sprayed with oil, scorch lines spider-webbing across every knot. Jagged leaves hung limp, each vein weeping slow beads of black sap that dripped into the loam with soft plops. The ground sucked greedily at the corruption, feeding it back through massive pylons—six in all—rammed into the earth like enormous thorns, each one streaked with pulsing orange veins.
Raëdrithar's fur exploded in a wild corona of sparks before flattening again, as if even his storm recoiled. Sylvanna felt lightning skitter across her arms, desperate to discharge. Her bow vibrated, wooden limbs groaning under the sudden influx of power.
"There are six pylons," Draven said, voice low, steady, the eye of this hellish storm. "Destroy three to sever the corruption."
Lightning crackled along Raëdrithar's coat in looping filaments, scattering quicksilver reflections across the chamber's wet roots. Every spark illuminated a new horror: dryads with jaws unhinged, vines squirming like gut-white serpents, pellets of tarry sap dribbling from split trunks. The stench—burnt pine and festering mulch—seared the back of Sylvanna's throat. She forced herself to breathe through her nose, tasting copper and ozone while her pulse ticked like a war-drum behind her ears.
An arrow—white-fletched, rune-notched—nocked itself to her bowstring as if summoned by will alone. Muscles remembered what panic tried to erase: breathe, draw, hold. The shaft hummed, hungry for current. She loosed. A streak of living plasma shoved the mist aside, punched through three advancing dryads, and buried itself in a corruption pylon. Bark erupted in a spray of ember shards. The pylon did not fall, but its sickly glow dimmed, strands of orange energy guttering like a candle choked of air.
A hiss rose behind her quiver. She pivoted—just in time to see a soldier from Vaelira's line slam his shield into a vine creature shaped like a wolf but dripping amber from every joint. His blade bounced off its hide with a dull clang. Fear flickered across his face when the wolf-thing surged again. Sylvanna jabbed two fingers toward the beast. A fork of lightning leapt from her gauntlet, zig-zagging past the shaken soldier and striking the wolf square on the snout. The creature convulsed, char scent rolling off charred thorns, then collapsed into a puddle of tarry sap.
"Eyes up, Arilien!" she shouted over the reverberating boom. The soldier stared, pupils huge, before nodding once—gratitude or terror, she couldn't parse.
On the far flank Vaelira bellowed an order, voice resonant even under the crash of the cataract above. Her Vanguard locked shields, advancing as a wall to shove back a knot of shrieking dryads. Sharp steel kissed corrupted bark. Greenbark sigils flared along spear hafts; each flare briefly pushed away the choking gloom, granting the vanguard precious inches of ground.
Draven slid through the melee like a shadow detached from its master. Where most fighters swung with brute commitment, he moved in economical flicks of the wrist, twin blades catching nothing but vital lines: a vine's core fiber, a spindle root feeding sap into a drone husk, the narrow seam between bark plates on a dryad's sternum. Each cut birthed a clean spurt of dark resin that steamed in cold air. He left foes behind him stumbling, hollowed of whatever animating rot had driven them.
"Left pylon's destabilized thirty percent," he said, voice level despite the clash. "Two more strikes will neutralize—no overdraw, Sylvanna."
She almost spat back that she knew her limits—yet the memory of the soldier's earlier fear stitched her mouth shut. Instead she swiveled, searching for fresh angles. Raëdrithar barreled past, claws ringing against stone. Lightning streamed from his antlers in ragged banners, scoring luminous grooves in the chamber's walls. Each time a bolt met a corrupted limb the limb exploded, sending smoking splinters high as the root-vaulted ceiling.
The guardian spirit crashed through a curtain of hanging roots, trailing strands like shredded sails. Up close it made the tunnel look small. Shingles of charred bark shifted over muscle cords glowing molten amber. Where sap should run clear, lava oozed in pulsing rivulets. It bellowed—a sound like a furnace sighing through broken bellows—and slammed one claw the size of a wagon wheel into the earth. A shockwave rippled outward. Stone buckled; a pair of Vanguard elves lost footing, shields flying from numb hands.
Sylvanna felt the blast hammer her sternum. Her rune flashed crimson, flaring in reflex against the impact. For half a second her vision doubled—one world tinged blue, the other red. Virellionn's voice whispered in that red lens, coaxing. A cloying hunger promised power if she let the red eclipse the blue.
She gritted teeth, forced her breath out in a shudder, and focused on the pylon directly behind the guardian. It pulsed bright, feeding fresh corruption into the monster's tangled ribs. "Clear me a line!" she barked.
Vaelira answered first, hurling a short spear. Its tip burst with emerald light mid-flight, splashing a screen of raw mana across the guardian's front. The beast reared, momentarily blinded. Draven exploited the opening, slashing an ankle tendon thick as a sapling. The guardian staggered, knee sinking into torn soil.
Sylvanna sprinted, bow blazing. Her boots skidded across wet root, momentum lurching, but she welcomed the chaotic surge—let it braid with lightning. She planted hard, drew to cheek, and whispered the binding phrase that turned a simple arrow into a promise of storm. White-hot current coiled around shaft and head, giving the projectile the weight of thunder.
Release.
The arrow screamed through steam, slicing the stench-laden air. It struck the pylon dead center. For an instant nothing happened; then lightning erupted outward in branching filigree, racing down the wooden thorn in searching lines. The pylon's veins burst, amber fluid flashing to vapor. A deep crack echoed up the shaft—split timber giving way—and the structure folded inward, exhaling a hollow, dying moan.
Energy snapped back into the guardian. Amber veins across its chest flickered, stalling like a heart seeking rhythm. It roared again, but weaker; lava dribbled instead of pulsed. Raëdrithar seized the moment, leaping high enough his antlers grazed hanging roots. He raked both foreclaws across the guardian's snout. Lightning followed the cuts, stitching twin gouges of molten glass into bark.
The monster reeled, swinging blindly. One claw tore a swath of ceiling roots which crashed down in a rain of rot. Draven slipped clear with inhuman precision, turning the dodge into a pivot that lopped the head from a flailing dryad before it even realized he was there.
"Two pylons remain intact," he called, voice slicing through chaos. "Maintain vector dispersion; don't cluster."
"North pillar's exposed!" Vaelira shouted, pointing with sword. Even as she spoke, a whip-thin vine lashed toward her throat. She parried with the back edge of her blade, sparks skittering in a bright arc. A Vanguard shield-bearer stepped into the gap, catching the vine on reinforced barkwood before hacking it apart.
Sylvanna's eyes traced the vine's origin: a second pylon half hidden behind a curtain of sap-slicked foliage. Corruption light pulsed there, steady heartbeat feeding the guardian. She adjusted her stance, but the angle was wrong—Raëdrithar's bulk filled most of the lane, wrestling with the beast.
She gauged distances, felt bowstring prickle against glove. A ricochet shot might carve around her ally, but risked grazing his flank. Unacceptable. She hissed to herself, scanning for another vantage. On her left a root column leaned, forming a slanted ramp toward a pocket ledge halfway up the wall—barely wide enough for one foot.
Decision sparked. Sylvanna sprinted. The first step on the slick root almost spilled her; she lunged, grabbed a fibrous protrusion, swung her weight up. Boots scrabbled. Lightning flared involuntarily, cauterizing moss into ash. She balanced, heart nearly leaping from throat, then clambered higher. Wind from the cataract funnelled through a break overhead, spraying her with icy droplets. Cold shock sharpened her focus.
She reached the ledge. From this perch the northern pylon lay in clear sight. Dryads writhed near its base, nursing sap-weeping wounds but still functional. She drew again, slower, leaning into the bow's steady resistance. At full draw the limb trembled not from strain but anticipation—an arrow is happiest the moment before flight.
Below, the guardian hurled Raëdrithar sideways. The beast skidded, claws tearing trenches, but rolled to four paws, sparks flying in defiant arcs. Sylvanna felt his anger flood the bond—bright, fierce, loyal. She fed on that fury, let it funnel along the arrow.
"Fly true," she breathed.
She loosed. The shot cut through mist and curtain leaves, leaving a glowing trail like comet fire. One dryad jerked up, too late. The arrow impacted the pylon a handspan above the ground. Lightning spider-webbed, splitting bark. With a booming crack the entire thorn-spike imploded, chunks of blackened wood hurling outward in a storm of splinters.
Amber liquid spurted, sizzling on stone. The chamber's light warped—corruption conduits faltering as a second artery was severed. The guardian stumbled, one gargantuan arm dropping limp. Its molten veins faded from incandescent to dull ember.
Cheers rose from the Vanguard ranks—a raw exhalation of hope. Yet Draven's voice sliced across the burgeoning elation. "One more! The pylons! Focus on the pylons!"
