Toren Daen

I was faster than the tree demons, but they were adapting to my tactics. When I launched into the air, another tumbling pillar of tree demons tried to intercept me. As I approached, I used my telekinesis to move out of the way, swiping at the column with a fire-coated Oath.

It seared straight through the hands that tried to reach me, allowing me to land deftly. I launched my spells from the soles of my feet, aiming for the spire. In the split second of takeoff, however, a swiping claw hit my foot. It sent my graceful arc into an uncontrolled tumble as I struggled to reorient, flipping through the air like a bird who had forgotten how to fly.

I crashed into the next rising tower of tree demons, their scratching hands covering my vision in monochrome gray as they ripped and tore at my telekinetic shroud. I felt a claw finally pierce my barrier, scoring a stab into my abdomen. I screamed as the claw curled in my flesh, slicing deeper.

Operating on pure adrenaline and instinct, I pushed out with an unfocused nova of fire, sound, and force. Tree demons screamed as they were consumed by fire, shook by sound, and obliterated by intermittent blows of telekinesis. The tower I was held captive by was smashed apart, everything within three yards blown away as I fell to the ground in a heap.

Mud splashed over my armor and face as I hit the ground. I pulled myself to my feet hastily, clutching my weapons tightly. My abdomen was bleeding badly, but I couldn’t tell what the damage was with the rain washing away the blood. It hurt like hell, though, and every step felt like it would tear something.

My telekinetic barrier began to slowly, slowly repair. It was agonizingly tedious, the crystalline cracks smoothing over in slow motion. But I couldn’t wait for it to fix itself. I needed to get to that spire.

I focused on my telekinesis emblem, compressing and condensing a force near my back. I held back the spell, gathering more and more power.

Before my spellform was upgraded to an emblem, I couldn’t afford to use instant pushes that were too powerful. Anything I tried would hit me back with the same force. If I used a megaton punch on an enemy, I would be struck with the same pushback.

To a degree, my mana-enhanced body allowed me to ignore a lot of that pushback. But my telekinetic shroud dampened those concerns. The shroud distributed the force of my pushes across its surface, meaning I could use my telekinetic pushes and pulls without worrying about blowing my body apart.

I only hoped my shroud would hold out under this push.

I released the spell, a colossal telekinetic push aimed at the mud behind me. I felt myself lurch as the mud was blown backward in a ten-foot tall wave, splattering the monsters around me in brown muck. I was catapulted into the sky, the raindrops feeling like a dozen bug bites as they bit into my skin.

My telekinetic shroud shattered into a million pieces as the pushback obliterated the already weakened barrier. I felt the remnants of the force wash over my back, and I knew I would have a massive bruise as the air was driven from my lungs.

But I rocketed in a straight line toward the spire, going at speeds too fast for the tree demons to intercept.

I twisted midair as I approached. I impacted the slick stone feet first, creating a small crater around my boots. My knees creaked as they bent, and I felt my mana-enhanced bones shudder.

But I didn’t fall. The stone must have been as slick as a seashore, but the flaring white telekinetic pull under my feet kept me anchored to the spire. I straightened, standing at a nearly ninety-degree angle as I stared up into the roiling storm clouds above. Rain dripped off my body, falling many stories below.

I yelled aloud as the lightning cracked overhead, the emotions pent up in my chest from my desperate escape finally released in a voice that echoed like thunder, the sound mana in the air roiling like the waves of the sea.

I breathed heavily, my blood dripping down with the water. My side hurt like hell, but now I wasn’t running. My telekinetic shroud slowly reformed, the lull in the fight giving me much-needed time.

I turned around, looking straight down at the ground. My hair fell around my head in drenched locks, sticking to my face as I stared at the tree demons. The demons crowded around the base of the spire in a sea of white. Their beady blood-red eyes stared up at me from below, condensed fury churning inside them.

I yelled a primal battlecry down at them, adrenaline flowing through my veins.

That started the horde. They dug their fingers into the stone, climbing up after me in droves. I distantly thought they looked like ink flowing up a long pen, seeking to coat all in white.

I threw Promise with a telekinetic burst. The blade buried itself in the skull of a tree demon, cutting off its screech before the dagger wrenched itself free. Then, it swerved to the side, cutting at another beast and darting around under my control.

I conjured a sound grenade in my left hand, throwing it down at the approaching wave. When it detonated, all the scrambling creatures in the immediate vicinity lost their grips on the stone, tumbling off the spire and knocking more free as they fell.

But still, they came. Still, they hunted.

I ran my finger along the edge of Oath, making the blade sear. Whenever the rain hit my saber, steam rose as my fire mana rebuffed the water.

I threw a handful of fireshot at the beasts, the orange streak of solid flame punching through a dozen more. Promise darted around closer to me, ready to intercept any that got too close.

And they finally reached me, standing against gravity at the top of the stone spire. One of them lunged at me, its long, gangly limbs seeking to tear me apart. Oath severed its arm from the shoulder with a hiss, making the creature lose its hold and tumble back to the floor.

Another monster tried to circle around the edge of the stone, but a direction to Promise sent the dagger into its skull. I used a telekinetic push on another to dislodge its wooden fingers. It screeched as it fell, but whenever I knocked off one, three more took its place.

The creatures didn’t bleed. Their wounds leaked a viscous red sap that coated my weapons and dulled their cutting edge. I had to periodically run a fire spell over the edges to burn away the refuse.

I was trapped on this spire, facing an unending tide of aether beasts. Though this funneled them into a more manageable space for me to fight them, I also realized that I had no idea how to survive this. Eventually, I would be overwhelmed by their sheer numbers. My mana would dry up, and I would be dragged into the horde and ripped limb from limb.

I danced around a lunging beast, grabbing it by its thin neck and using a telekinetic push to send it barreling into its compatriots. Oath came up in a quick arc, severing the head of another. I used the sharpened head to batter another away, then grit my teeth as claws raked over my telekinetic shroud.

I couldn’t turn to my attacker as I was facing four more to my front. Instead, Promise rounded behind me, taking the beast in the head. In the meantime, I slammed my fist into the stone in front of me.

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The sound spell–a derivative of my sonic clap spell–caused the slick stone to tremble as shockwaves traveled through it. The tree demons in front of me, unable to stay latched onto the earth, fell with a screech.

My arms burned from constant fighting. The terrible pain in my abdomen had faded to a low ache as I lost myself in the battle. I became like a machine: cut, push, dislodge, burn. As the rain fell, so too did these monsters. But I was tired. My mana was not endless. It recovered at a rapid rate, but I was using it far faster than it could regenerate.

It carried on for hours as lightning cracked overhead like the whip of a taskmaster.

I stumbled as a beast pulled on my leg. I was only anchored to this pillar by the glowing white telekinetic pull on my shoes. I almost tumbled and fell from that, but I brought my boot down on the wooden head, blowing it apart.

When will it end? I thought, exhaustion clear even in my thoughts. I hadn’t seen a change in the unending tide of beasts despite the hundreds I must have killed. My clothes were stained with their saplike bodily fluids, and my weapons had severed enough hands for a lifetime.

I slipped as I weaved around a swipe, allowing one of the demonic tree creatures to get a hold of my foot. The grip snaked up my leg, anchoring itself around my telekinetic shroud and trying to drag me down.

Fuck! I thought as I felt the telekinetic spell under my other foot giving way, the pulling force too much. I was about to retaliate with another spell, but then something changed.

The rain stopped. The water, which had been coming down in a torrential flood ever since the start of this battle, ceased nearly immediately.

And as the water streamed off the wooden demons, they halted in their movements as if turned to stone. The demons fell off the spire in droves, their fingers no longer gripping the outcroppings of earth. I was suddenly alone on the edge of the tall rock as the eyes of all the beasts nearby dimmed, turning closer to some sort of amber.

I hesitantly looked at the land around me. It was then that I noticed something strange: the wicked white trees had shriveled and blackened over the course of the storm. I watched one as it fell away in smokey flakes, leaving an open space where once it stood.

The beasts that collapsed in the forest began to change. Their forms shifted, their fingers and toes becoming roots as they anchored themselves into the earth. In moments, the near-empty expanse of hills was once again repopulated by gnarled white trees, each growing from the corpse of a tree demon.

I looked up into the sky, breathing heavily as my adrenaline began to fade. I suddenly felt the wound in my side again in full force, each twist of my torso sending throbbing pain through my body.

The tree demons that died near the road broke into dark dust, then nothing at all. I watched it all with wide, rabid eyes.

It looked like nothing had happened at all. The trees repopulated. The monsters decayed. And it was all ready for another storm.

I walked slowly down the spire, applying my telekinesis rune to lash my feet to the rock. When I reached the ground, which wasn’t nearly as damp as it should have been, I collapsed against the stone.

I didn’t even sheathe Oath and Promise as I lethargically searched through my dimension ring for bandages. Once I got them out, I systematically covered my wound, inspecting it beforehand and painfully cleaning it of any mud or dirt. It was a bad cut, but it hadn’t damaged any internal organs. It would leave a small scar as it healed over, though.

“I fucking hate trees,” I muttered as I nursed a bit of protein paste. First the Clarwood Forest, and now these. I didn’t think I could ever hate skaunters again when compared to these demons.

“You are lucky to be alive,” Lady Dawn said from my side.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said aloud. I found it ironic to no end that if I had taken an ascending team with me into this zone, they likely wouldn’t have survived. I only made it through because of my mobility. “And I’m willing to bet I’m going to fight another wave when a storm next comes.”

The phoenix looked out at the trees with a hint of disgust.

“Have you ever fought anything like these things?” I asked. I rested my head against the stone spire at my back and used Lady Dawn’s voice as a beacon of warmth.

“No,” the phoenix said at once. “These beasts are unnatural. Engineered lifeforms with a desire only to kill and propagate. If such beasts were left to the surface…”

I shuddered as the thought ran through me. They would spread exponentially, like an infection. I absently wondered if the djinn could’ve simply dropped one of these demon trees into the middle of the planet and utterly ruined it from a plague of wood.

Arthur had noted how the Relictombs seemed dark. I thought at that moment that he was underselling it. These tree demons could be a world-ending plague. I withdrew a waterskin from my dimension ring, drinking from it deeply. For all the rain that had fallen, I was parched and dehydrated to all hell.

“Wake me up if anything tries to kill me, please,” I said groggily to my bond before I laid my head against the stone.

I fell asleep in a few moments.

—

I woke up feeling far better than I had when I went to sleep. My core wasn’t quite full, which meant I’d been out for only a few hours. I’d have to get a good night’s sleep when I finally left the Relictombs.

I gingerly stood, prodding at my gut wound. It hurt, but not as much as before. I looked along the dirt path, wondering when it would end. If it would end.

I started down the path after a quick tube of protein paste and another drink of water. As I walked, I noticed there were some differences in the trees.

As I moved onward, it seemed like the density of the horrid forest increased gradually. Where before I could see quite far into the forest off the side of the path, now I couldn’t see a single yard in.

Every now and then, a tall spire of stone rose along the side of the road. I noted them internally as I walked, knowing they were my only chance to survive in case of another storm.

“What exactly is lifeforce?” I asked my bond, the eerie silence unnerving me.

Lady Dawn appeared a moment later, gliding along as I walked. She seemed to contemplate my question for a moment. “Lifeforce is the Anchor,” she said slowly. “It is what ties your soul to your Vessel. It is the glue that keeps the spiritual lashed to the physical.”

The trees around me weren’t pointing their branches at me whenever I looked away this time, which did wonders to settle my nerves. “It’s different from mana, yeah?” I asked, trying to understand. “It’s got to be an expression of aether, then.”

The phoenix looked at me, her blazing eyes inscrutable. “Every living body has a reserve of lifeforce. It is indeed fashioned of aether, but it is not the aether of the sky or the aether of the ground. The aether of the heart is lifeforce. It is what keeps our bodies moving.”

“And in my first phase, I can see this lifeforce?” I asked questioningly.

The asura slowed slightly. “It is a reflection of the arts of the Phoenix Clans. When our Fire begins to dim and our souls start to drift, we instead burn our Vessels. And when the lifeforce that remains flares, we Sculpt our forms anew, using the embers to spark another blaze. The phoenixes have always had closer ties to the Soul’s Tether than any other race. But your ability to see and sense lifeforce is unnatural, even among the Asclepius clan.”

I frowned. “How so?”

The asura raised her purplish arms again. “My last Vessel was not just that of a phoenix. The change… altered what was possible, in ways I did not expect.”

I exhaled, thinking about the ability to rise from the fire. It was so out of my own experience that it seemed wondrous. “It sounds amazing, being able to reform your bodies in the way you do. What is it like?”

The asura tilted her head, a faraway look in the suns that were her eyes. “A phoenix’s First Sculpting marks their majority. Once you have been purged in the flame, you arise with new wisdom and status in our society. Not all make it through the trial, but those that do are welcomed as full members of the Clans.” She turned away from me slightly. “But to feel your Flame slowly assemble a new Vessel is something that cannot be described. One can never know themselves as intimately as a phoenix that builds itself back from the grip of Beyond will. For we must make no mistakes. If there is the slightest inconsistency; the briefest of slips, then our Anchor will fail, and we will die in truth.” I listened with rapt attention as the once-deity continued. “The surety of purpose, the all-encompassing oneness with the soul…” She shook her head. “I am afraid I cannot describe it to you with words, Contractor, and for that, I am truly sorry. It is something wondrous beyond ken.”

I felt the surety and regret in my bond’s words. And as I walked through the forest of hell, I wondered what that slice of heaven must feel like.