Chapter 13

  Maira hit the bottom of the fissure hard. The sound of her impact was swallowed by the dull thud of shifting earth sliding down after her. It wasn't deep, perhaps four or five meters, but the problem wasn't the depth—it was the pressure. The walls of the crevice were not smooth; they consisted of a mesh of ancient, thick tree roots that closed around her like the fingers of a giant. The mud was damp, heavy, and smelled of the metal of bedrock and the stifling humidity of millennia.

  She lay perfectly still for a moment while the dust robbed her lungs of air. The echo of the battle above resonated in her head, but down here, an eerie, almost holy silence reigned. A silence Maira knew only too well. It was the silence of the grave.

  “Isolated,” she whispered hoarsely. Her voice sounded flat in the narrow tube.

  She tried to push herself up, but the roots of the Black Woods reacted to her movement. It was the magic of the Earth-Veska still pulsing through the soil. The roots tightened, narrowing the space and pressing her against the damp, cold earthen wall. The Veska didn't just want to keep her prisoner; it wanted to crush her, to turn her into fertilizer for this cursed forest.

  Maira closed her eyes. Once, in her life as a Cleric of the Inquisition, she would have called upon the Light. She would have pleaded for purity, for a radiant shield to dispel the darkness. But that light had long since been extinguished, burned out by betrayal and the realization of the true nature of her former masters. Now, there was no God of Light to answer her. There was only the Plague Father. His gifts were not radiant; they were sticky, dark, and unstoppable.

  “You want to keep me, little forest spirit?” she murmured, a grim smile stealing onto her lips. “Then you must learn what happens when you choke on things that are already rotten.”

  She began to gather her mana. It was not a flow, like what Luken or Vin experienced. It was a deep, vibrating throb at her center. She tapped into the dark, sickly energy that had accompanied her since her transformation. It was the essence of decay, the power that didn't end life but transformed it into something else, something degenerate.

  Maira placed her palms flat against the damp earth. She felt the life in the soil—the tiny insects, the mycelia of the fungi, the pulsing strength of the tree roots. It was a healthy, vigorous ecosystem.

  For now.

  She began to channel her magic into the ground. At first, it was just a fine, black thread seeping from her fingertips. But as soon as this thread touched the living earth, it spread like ink in clear water. She wasn't casting a conventional spell; she was initiating an infection.

  “Feed,” she commanded softly.

  The effect was immediate. The earth around her hands began to discolor. The healthy brown gave way to a sickly, ashen gray. The roots that had been trying to crush her just a moment ago trembled. Through her magical connection, Maira felt the cells of the wood begin to necrotize within seconds. The Veska’s green mana, which strengthened this soil, collided with the pestilence of the Plague Father. It wasn't a battle of forces; it was a systematic dismantling.

  Maira intensified the flow. She imagined the rot crawling up through the capillaries of the roots, how it caused the microorganisms in the soil to mutate at a frantic speed. The smell in the fissure changed drastically. The aroma of the forest vanished, replaced by the sickly-sweet, heavy stench of putrefaction and chemical decay. Black, oily liquid seeped from the mud of the walls. The solid structure of stone and earth that the Veska had so carefully shaped into a trap lost its integrity. The bonds of the soil were dissolved by Maira's poison. What had been as hard as stone moments ago became a thick, black sludge.

  Maira felt a deep, subterranean rumble. It wasn't the Veska—it was the forest itself reacting to the desecration. The trees above her seemed to shake with pain, but Maira knew no mercy. She was the end of the cycle. She was the corruption that made room for new, darker growth.

  “The earth is your body, beast,” she called upward, though she knew the Veska might not hear her. “But I am the cancer in your flesh.”

  The rot now spread in a circle from her. Wherever her poison reached, the earth became unstable. The roots became limp and slimy, hanging from the walls like dead snakes. Maira utilized this decay. She began to work her way upward, but she didn't climb. She moved through the muddy discharge she herself had created. Her magic kept the sludge fluid enough for her to glide through, while she simultaneously used the structural instability to bring the ground above her crashing down.

  She pressed her hands upward, releasing bursts of pure, necrotic energy. Every time her magic hit untouched soil, it turned into black silt in seconds. It was an ascent through a grave that refused to stay closed.

  Maira felt the Veska’s mana above her desperately trying to heal the cracks, to re-solidify the earth. But it was no match for the viral nature of her magic. Every attempt by the forest to fight back only provided new nourishment for the plague. The healing became a growth, and the growth became death.

  Her breath came heavy. The air in the fissure was now almost toxic, saturated with the gases of rapid decay, but Maira was immune to her own creations. She felt strong, intoxicated by the absolute power of deconstruction.

  Suddenly, she felt resistance. An especially thick main root, deeply soaked in the green essence of the Veska, blocked her path to the surface. It was nearly as thick as a man and fought back with the sheer mass of its magical protection.

  Maira grabbed the wood with both hands. She concentrated all her remaining mana into her palms. “Perish,” she hissed.

  A dark, violet bolt of lightning flickered across the wood. The root bucked, one last twitch of nature against the unnatural enemy. Then it broke. Not with a bang, but with a wet, mushy sound. It dissolved into a black jelly that flowed over Maira's armor.

  The path was clear.

  Maira pushed off from the bottom of the now completely unstable fissure. The earth above her gave way, not because it broke, but because it no longer had the strength to hold itself. A surge of fresher, if ozone-heavy, air reached down to her.

  With one last, powerful thrust of her magic, she blasted aside the remaining layer of dead mud and rotten wood. Her hand broke through the surface of the clearing, her fingers clawing into the remaining grass, which immediately turned brown and withered under her touch.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Maira pulled herself up from the maw. She was covered from head to toe in black, stinking mud; her eyes glowed with an unhealthy, feverish violet. She inhaled the cool forest air, which tasted of Luken's lightning and the heat of battle.

  She stood on the surface once more. Behind her, the fissure was nothing but a gaping hole full of black rot—a blemish in the Black Woods that would never recover.

  Maira straightened up, brushed a muddy strand of hair from her face, and looked around. She saw Luken circling high in the air, a radiant yet somber projectile against the dark sky. She saw the Earth-Veska, still standing with its back to her, completely fixated on the flying Paladin.

  The beast did not yet suspect that the very earth beneath its feet was already poisoned.

  Maira raised her hand, a cold, sadistic smile on her lips. She was back. And she had brought death with her.

  -

  When the ground had given way beneath Vin, she hadn't simply fallen into a hole; she had slid into a carefully woven pocket of roots and compressed loam that had immediately closed around her like a living cocoon.

  Down here, separated from the blinding light of Luken’s combat magic and the corrosive stench of Maira’s decay spells, an oppressive intimacy reigned. Vin lay in a curled position, arms pressed against her chest, while thick, slimy taproots coiled around her waist and ankles. Every breath was a struggle against the heavy aroma of wet earth and the sickly-sweet sap of the forest.

  She tried to free her arms, but the pressure was massive. The Black Woods answered her resistance with an almost tender relentlessness. It wasn't a malicious crushing, but a ruthless holding, as if the forest wanted to draw a lost child back into its womb.

  “Be still, Daughter of the Green,” a voice suddenly rang out.

  Vin froze. The voice didn't come through her ears. It echoed directly within her consciousness, deep and rumbling like tectonic shifts, underscored by the rustling of millions of leaves. It was the voice of the Earth-Veska, yet it was more than just the roar of an animal. It was the collective consciousness of this ancient forest speaking through the beast.

  “Why do you fight against the flesh of your own identity?” the voice asked, and Vin felt green, pulsating threads of light begin to dance through the roots right before her eyes. They illuminated the cramped confines of her grave in an eerie emerald tone. “You are a fragment of us, an elf whose soul was woven with the singing of the trees. Yet you walk alongside dead metal and rotting magic.”

  Vin bit her lips until she tasted blood. The taste of iron in her own blood helped her resist the mental pull. I walk with whoever I damn well please, moss-clump, she thought back grimly, knowing full well the entity could read her thoughts.

  “You are mistaken, little thief,” the Veska replied, and a root brushed almost gently across her cheek, like the finger of a father. “You are running away. You run from the Prince in his golden cage, who sought to bind your nature with chains of expectation. And now you run with the fallen Paladin, whose rage screams so loudly it drowns out your own song. Why do you suffer in the world of mortals, where everything breaks and dies?”

  Vin felt the roots loosen their grip, but not to set her free. They began to penetrate her clothing, seeking contact with her skin. She felt a warm, enticing pulsation. It was the magic of the forest—pure, timeless, and devoid of the pain of human emotions.

  “Become one with us,” the Veska offered, and the image of an endless peace flooded her mind. “Let your limbs become branches and your blood become sap. We offer you protection from the wars of men and the flames of the gods. In us, there is no betrayal. Only growth. Only being. Become the queen of this clearing, not the servant of an angry man.”

  For a heartbeat, Vin hesitated. The offer was seductive. The memory of Caleon, of Thivan’s possessive love that had felt like a noose around her neck, and the constant fear of discovery—all of it weighed heavily on her. Down here, in the embrace of the earth, she could forget everything. No more flight. No more responsibility. Only the peace of the forest.

  She saw images of herself merging with the Veska, her green magic feeding the entire realm of the Black Woods, untouchable and eternal.

  But then she sensed something else. A faint, stinging scent drifted through the layers of earth to her. It was the smell of sulfur and burnt ozone—Luken. And a second scent, foul and chemical—Maira.

  Her companions.

  They weren't saints. They were damaged, angry, and presumably doomed. But they gave her something this forest would never understand: the freedom to choose. The forest offered her peace by erasing her identity. Thivan offered her luxury by owning her. Luken... Luken expected nothing from her except that she fight.

  The roots began to dig into her skin, preparing to fill her veins with the Veska’s green mana. The transformation had already begun.

  “Say yes, daughter. Give yourself to the whole,” the voice whispered.

  Vin opened her eyes. The emerald light reflected in her gaze, but there was no peace left in it. Only cold, elven rebellion. She gathered her own will, the dark, thieving energy she had perfected over years—a magic that did not seek harmony, but the gap in the system.

  You’re right about one thing, she thought, and her voice in her head was as sharp as a blade. I am a thief. And do you know what thieves hate most?

  The Veska paused, the roots twitching in irritation.

  They hate it when someone takes something that belongs to them, she continued. And my life belongs to me.

  She concentrated her entire magic at her core. It wasn't a green glow of nature; it was a violet-black bolt of pure, stubborn willpower combined with the shadow magic she had acquired in the alleys of Caleon.

  “Will you truly reject our offer? For these... mortals?” the Veska asked in disbelief. Its rumble grew louder, the earth around her began to press in again, this time full of wrath.

  Vin’s face contorted into a hard, defiant grin.

  “Bite me.”

  In the next moment, she unleashed the explosion.

  It wasn't a physical detonation, but a magical shock pulse. Vin didn't use her connection to the forest to ask it; she used it to bend it. She forced the roots holding her to fight each other. She injected her shadow magic into the capillary system of the being that had just wanted to nourish her.

  The roots lashed back as if they had touched glowing iron. The Veska’s green light in the chamber flickered and died, replaced by the violet shimmer of Vin’s rebellion.

  All at once, the forest’s embrace became a hostile barrier that Vin now systematically tore to pieces. She didn't just use her daggers with her hands; she let her magic shoot from her pores like hundreds of tiny blades. The wood of the Black Woods shrieked—a sound only elves could hear—as Vin carved a path upward.

  She didn't climb. She broke through.

  With a brutal hand gesture, she turned the vines that had just held her captive into spears that pierced the ground above her. The earth the Veska had pressed so tightly shattered under the force of her rage.

  Vin’s magic was like a poison to the order of the forest. Everywhere she touched the ground, she turned the Veska’s coordinated structure into chaos. The roots withdrew in pain, and the pressure gave way to a sudden void.

  A massive surge of shadow and earth catapulted her upward.

  Vin burst through the surface of the clearing like an arrow shot from the quiver of a god. She landed nimbly on the balls of her feet, only a few meters from where Maira had surfaced moments before.

  Her breath came in gasps, her hair was matted with earth and green slime, and her clothes were torn in several places. But her eyes burned with a light that the Veska would never be able to extinguish.

  She straightened up slowly and drew her roots. They shot out of the earth, a deadly dance of nature. She looked directly at the massive back of the Earth-Veska, which was still snapping irritably at Luken in the air, only just beginning to grasp the double breakout occurring behind it.

  Vin spat out a clump of dirt and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “I’m no Daughter of the Green, you bastard,” she murmured, crouching into an attack position. “I’m the nightmare you just created for yourself.”

  Two out of four were back up. The air in the clearing became electric. The Veska had tried to bury them, but it had only shown them that no earth was deep enough to stifle their will.