The forest trees died all at once.

  Not gradually, or just in patches. One step forward and the pressure I’d been feeling for the last half hour simply… stopped. My Arcane Sense didn’t go quiet, but it changed. The background hum of life thinned to a whisper, then seemed to fade almost completely.

  I slowed, lifting a fist. Everyone stopped behind me without a word.

  The trees ahead stood like statues, their trunks split and pale, branches frozen in the still air. No leaves. No birds. No insects. The ground was grey and powdery; soil turned into something that barely remembered being earth.

  Jerome, voice trembling and looking pale as the trees pointed forward. “It’s just a bit further in…”

  We proceeded once more, and then I saw it.

  At the centre of it all, something rose.

  It wasn’t a tree. Not quite.

  Roots thicker than pillars coiled upward from a cratered base, twisting around each other into a towering column. They reached skyward and then bent back down, forming a crown of dead, grasping tendrils. No bark. No green. Just a dark, fibrous mass pulled tight around a pulsing core of deep maroon light.

  A light that pulsed slowly.

  With each pulse, my senses stirred; this was something bad, as bad as the gorg chieftain, if not more.

  From the higher roots hung clusters of growths, swollen knots that dripped sap and rot. Each one split open at the end into two small pink blossoms, delicate and obscene in the same breath. They swayed even though there was no wind.

  I felt them watching.

  Around the base stood monsters. Dozens of them. Eldir, gorgs, weird animals… shapes that barely fit into categories anymore with the amount of roots coursing through theur bodies. All standing in place like soldiers waiting for a signal. More shapes lingered beyond, half-hidden among the dead trees, the ones that had been following us since Jerome led the way.

  I was so taken by the scene in front of me that it took me a moment to see the people.

  Two figures stood closer to the thing than the rest. A man and a woman, both human, both upright, both very wrong. Roots pierced their skin at joints and along their spines, disappearing beneath clothing and flesh alike. Their heads lolled slightly, as if the weight of what grew from within them was too much to bear.

  Flowers bloomed from their eyes.

  From each eye socket, contrary to Jerome, they didn’t retain an ounce of themselves, it was just that clear. When they turned their heads, the flowers turned with them.

  Mary sucked in a sharp breath besides me. Melissa’s barrier flared instinctively, a faint shimmer before she forced it back down. Rhea froze entirely. Jerome made a broken sound in his throat and dropped to his knees.

  The man and the woman lifted their heads together.

  When they spoke, they spoke as one.

  “You do not need to die.”

  The voice came from both mouths, layered and wet, as if something else was pushing the words through teeth that no longer belonged to it.

  “I require compliance only.”

  The woman’s flower-like eyes turned towards Mary. The petals fluttered.

  “I require her.”

  Mary stiffened. I felt it through my arcane sense, a spike of magic coming from inside her, a reaction to the fear she clearly projected, not that I could blame her.

  “No,” Melissa said immediately, stepping half a pace forward.

  I raised a hand, not taking my eyes off the figures.

  “Why her?” I asked.

  The roots around the maroon core flexed. Sap dripped and hissed where it touched the dead ground.

  “She can open the door.”

  “The door to the Shrine of the Withered Bloom.”

  At the mention of the place, all the monsters shivered at once, the maroon light in the tree-root core pulsating like a heart.

  “What is it?” I asked, not expecting an answer.

  “An ancient place,” the voice continued. “A burial ground. Eldir. Old power. Old enemies. Old rules.”

  Mary swallowed. “How can I open it?” She asked quietly.

  “Purity is the key.” The two voices replied.

  The thing’s attention shifted to me then. I felt it like pressure against my skin, not hostile, for now, just measuring.

  “What lies within, is useless to you, Cursed One,” it said. “Bone. Memory. Authority over growth and decay. I will claim it regardless.”

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  The man’s shoulders twitched. The woman’s fingers curled and uncurled, nails digging into her palms and knuckles turning white.

  “Leave her,” the voice said calmly, “and you may go.”

  I exhaled slowly.

  “That’s your offer now? I understand. But, you know… If these weren’t your pets,” I said, nodding at the monsters, “I might be impressed by the sheer numbers alone.”

  The maroon core brightened, just a little.

  “Many more are coming,” it replied. “You can’t win. A fight will be a waste of resources, others will notice.”

  Others… That was interesting. How many monsters were sitting in this forest?

  My curse surged again, dread and pressure slamming into my chest, leaving Mary to end me too, not that I planned on doing it in the first place.

  “You wanted to drag us here before,” I said despite the strain. “And now, you’re bargaining.”

  I took a step forward. My barrier enveloping me like a second skin.

  “When I’m done here,” I added, voice steady, “you’ll be begging me not to kill you.”

  For a heartbeat, nothing moved.

  Then the man screamed.

  The woman followed a split second later, both of them arching as roots burst further from their bodies, flowers shuddering violently. All around us, the monsters shifted as one.

  The air seemed to come alive in this dead place.

  And then they charged.

  The moment the monsters surged forward, the others moved exactly how we’d planned.

  Mary and Melissa didn’t retreat; they turned around and protected the back of our formation. They planted themselves, side by side, and the space in front of them hardened. Barriers bloomed into existence in overlapping layers, some broad and curved, others sharp-edged and angled to deflect. Every impact fed Melissa’s skill, light rippling through her constructs as claws and horns crashed uselessly against them. She gritted her teeth and held, redirecting force, shaping it, storing it.

  Between us, Rhea dropped to her knees.

  She worked fast, hands shaking but precise, carving lines into the ashen soil with a knife already slick with blood. Eldir hearts hit the ground one after another, split open and pressed into sigils that pulsed faintly as she whispered under her breath. The air around her thickened, like the pressure building before a storm.

  Jerome stepped forward without being told.

  He didn’t have a real weapon. Just the thick branch he found before. He set his feet besides the girls, shoulders squared, and raised it anyway. His hands were shaking, but he didn’t move back.

  I didn’t look at them again.

  I was staring at the core.

  I reached out with a hex, not at the monsters, nor at the puppets screaming and charging, but at the thing pulling the strings. I aimed straight for the maroon light buried in the roots and pushed a debilitating effect into it, something meant to fray its connection, to introduce lag.

  The spell just… vanished.

  Like smoke dispersing in the air.

  It was the first time that one of my hexes didn’t work. So I cast again. The next one luckily stuck.

  And then it spread.

  I felt it, the sensation was strange, but the hex didn’t stay only on the core. It flowed outward, fractured and redistributed across every single monster bound to it. A fraction of the effect on each, so thin it was almost meaningless.

  I blinked once.

  “What the fuck?” I muttered.

  I tried again.

  Another hex. failed.

  Another. Dispersed too.

  The third attached, and once again it bled outward into the swarm. The root monster hadn’t defended itself. It had shared the burden.

  Was this particular hex behaving this way, or was it something the thing was actively doing?

  I didn’t have time to answer that.

  The first wave was already nearly on us.

  But the idea had already formed.

  If the core was a diffuser, then I didn’t need to target any monster directly. I just needed more power.

  I didn’t hesitate. Not even for a second.

  All remaining points. Every last one, I put them into Willpower.

  All one hundred and fifty, the change was immediate.

  I felt a wave of power rise within me; I felt like if I just wanted to, I could make true anything I desired. Like a fog lifting all at once, my doubts disappeared. I could feel my aura closer, responsive, like a limb I’d forgotten I had. And my spells felt malleable instead of being rigid.

  No time to admire it.

  I leaned into Multicasting and let go.

  Hex after hex slammed into the core. Dense. I could feel them sinking their metaphorically teeth in this time, bypassing whatever resistance had stopped them before. The monster redistributed them again; of course it did, but that was exactly what I wanted.

  I stacked nearly thirty in seconds.

  Not targeting its connection this time, no. I went for its ability to hold onto their own very life.

  Something massive loomed in my periphery.

  Too close.

  I stopped casting the hexes and raised both hands.

  A double Arcane Blast, wide and unfocused, exploded from my palms.

  The shockwave tore outward. Eight monsters were lifted clean off the ground and hurled back into the others just behind them, bodies breaking on impact. Before they even landed, I was already multicasting again, five instances of Drain the Accursed snapping onto the next wave of enemies.

  My mana dipped hard.

  Too hard.

  But I had to prime everything before letting loose, so I cast an infused Malign Intensification, pumping it chock full of mana into the core of the roots. I felt the spell compound and increase the effect of the many hexes spread throughout every monster. I saw the giant tree root shudder for a moment.

  Then, I pulled.

  I didn’t kill them outright, with how weak their ability to keep their lifeforce to themselves was, I could have drained them in a second. No, I let the roots keep feeding, let the parasites draw from their hosts, and then I stole from both. The flow hit me like a flood, thick ribbons of life force ripping free and pouring into my control. I split it instinctively. Some into my senses, some into my barrier, which took on a faint golden sheen. The rest I forced directly into shaping spells.

  The strain screamed through the structure of my magic. The matrix bent and protested. These spells were meant to work mainly with mana apparently.

  I pushed anyway.

  The first dart formed in my hands, a meter-long lance of condensed light, white-gold and vibrating with barely contained force.

  With my senses I picked up a monster getting a bit too close to Rhea, and my curse obviously had to remind me, so I turned and let it loose without thinking.

  The spider never even had time to react.

  It exploded, legs and chunks of flesh scattered across the clearing like debris from a blast zone. The monster behind it caught the edge of the impact and lost half its body, collapsing in a spray of ichor and roots.

  I laughed. Once. Short and sharp.

  That might have been a mistake.

  My head throbbed, pain blooming behind my eyes, but my willpower held my spells at bay with an iron fist.

  I turned back to the front.

  Five monsters I’d been draining collapsed at once, dry husks hitting the ground. The power they’d been holding surged into me, too much, demanding release. I poured it into two more Blasts and three more darts, firing them in quick succession while already reaching for the next bunch to drain.

  Barriers flared behind me as Mary and Melissa held the line. Jerome shouted something I didn’t hear. Rhea’s ritual circle ignited, symbols snapping into place with a low hum.

  I was standing in the middle of enemy territory, a creepy tree and a hundred monsters trying to kill me, and none of it was touching me.

  It was intoxicating... I could feel the root monster reacting now, the maroon core pulsing faster, tension rippling through its network as its minions died in droves.

  Yes... I want you to feel it. The fear…

  And I wasn’t done. I thought with a chuckle.

  Not even close.

  20 chapters ahead!