We didn’t get moving immediately. John filled Davi in via Mental Speech, asking her to drop Kurt off in a safe place and head back to us, since she also had a bracelet. It wasn’t feasible for me to carry all of us out of the danger zone. The only way for us all to get out alive was to kill this treezilla.

The wait was a little anxiety-inducing, since Davi’s only means of responding was her solitary weekly message as one of my followers, and we’d asked her to hold it until she got close so we could make an entrance for her. Getting Kurt to safety would take a little time. The tree’s range was huge. Apparently a five-mile radius around the tree had been evacuated… not wholly successfully. We weren’t the only ones the tree had thrown things at, and the sea of summoned monsters was a step up from the “usual” terrors of the apocalypse.

Here! Where do I go in?

I smashed through the membrane of exterior wood and Byron knelt to blast a Searchlight through the aperture. Davi tumbled through the tiny opening moments later and hit the ground hard. A flock of evil birds tried to follow her through, but Helen brought up a wall of stone the moment Davi was inside. Only one was close enough on Davi’s heels to make it through, and I flattened it with my hammer before it could do any damage.

It was clear my friend’s return hadn’t been easy. Her clothes were in tatters and there was blood seeping from, well, everywhere. The only parts of her not covered in injuries were the portions protected by her ski goggles and helmet. Tiny scratches from tiny feet, deep gouges from their beaks…

I got her back to health, but it was my third major healing in less than ten minutes. Even with my incredible synergy on Healing Touch, I felt a wave of fatigue.

Davi pushed herself to sitting, looking even more tired than I felt. “Tried to shield myself… couldn’t…”

“Don’t worry about it. You did great. You made it, and you’re fine now. So what if you’re a little tired? All we need to do is use our bracelets to summon some big monsters then their whole team will help us take them down. Right?” I glanced up at Andy for confirmation.

He sucked in a deep breath. “If… if that’s all you can do, we’ll do our best. We’ve got some strong fighters. Trouble is, that’s three more summons than we planned to face, and we couldn’t bring all our forces. It was hard getting people in through the tree’s perimeter.”

Helen, the stoneshaper, spoke up. “I’m glad she made it. It gives us a better chance of having enough Intensifiers to actually pull this off, but we need to get moving. Everyone inside has been fighting for seven minutes longer than we planned. If people get too tired, pulling this off will be impossible.”

“It’s still within mission parameters,” Andy said.

Helen nodded, but her hesitation spoke clearly: they might have made plans for things to go this slowly, but those plans were pretty far from Plan A.

“Let’s get moving. Colonel Zwerinski said everyone else is in the heartvein chambers and waiting on us. He’s moving them upward so we can have the bottom chamber, since that’s closest. He’ll make an Announcement as soon as we’re in position.”

I joined the soldiers making a path through the tree’s interior, trusting my companions to guard my back. My first hammer blow broke through one layer of the weblike interior, but stopped at the second. The weird veinlike growths bent where I hit them, flexing almost like metal. They’d shatter if bent far enough, but…

“Get a blade,” Michelle said. “Trade with a friend.”

Davi was already carrying my spear, using it as a walking stick, her Shop-purchased sword dangling forgotten in a sheath at her side. At the soldier’s words, she drew it and offered it to me wordlessly. I accepted it, returning my hammer to the loop on my backpack.

The sword worked much better, the sharpened edge slicing easily through the criss-crossing supports that surrounded us, making me a valuable addition to the path-clearing team.

I was feeling good until a glance over my shoulder gave me a nasty shock. We’d barely moved twenty feet in, and it was already difficult to see the stone entryway. There was plenty of light - two of the soldiers had small light sources strapped to their backpacks - but the webwork of the tree’s internal structure was reforming behind us, growing to cover our path.

It wasn’t a comfortable thing to realize. We’d been trapped before - first, we’d been hemmed in by the sea of monsters and thrashing branch-tentacles, then a skin of wood had grown over our entrance - but I’d always known, in the back of my mind, that I was fast and strong enough to get through those things if I had to. It would have meant abandoning my friends, which wasn’t an option, but I’d known I was staying because I chose to.

The creeping growth behind us ate away at that certainty. It would take me time to destroy that, time it would be hard to get with the camouflaged giant ferrets leaping out at us from above and behind. They were damn hard to spot, with the bobbing light sources making shadows shift through the wooden tangle. That didn’t even touch the distressing same-ness of our surroundings. Heading in a straight line would be challenging, and I wasn’t the best at navigation even in ideal circumstances.

Stolen novel; please report.

Fifteen minutes ago, I was looking forward to being home tonight. How the hell did I get here?

The universe didn’t give me any answers. No matter how frustrating it was, we’d thrown our lot in with this group of strangers, and there wasn’t any clear path forward besides victory. I’d just have to pray they knew what they were talking about and do my best to improve our odds of success.

I felt bad that Annie, John, and Lottie were with us, especially Lottie. None of the three had bracelets or particularly high-synergy skillsets. Annie and Lottie had been fairly isolated since the apocalypse hit, and both had a mix of ranged skills like Ice Bolt, utility skills like Healing Touch and Force Shield, and physical augments.

At least they had plenty of combat experience. Even if the pitchforks Annie and Lottie were using to fight weren’t the most effective weapons in this enclosed area, they were moving intelligently, keeping their backs toward each other and constantly scanning their surroundings, only using abilities when absolutely necessary.

I’m not sure how far we traveled before we broke into an open chamber. It was empty of people, but someone had left alien light sources behind, letting me clearly see the whole area.

It was large, maybe 100 feet across and thirty feet high, shaped like a squashed sphere. Most of the walls were porous, just like the wooden webbing we’d destroyed to enter, but the vines that made up the ceiling were far denser, forming a near-solid barrier with only a few gaps near the edges and center.

The middle of the room was dominated by a column that pulsed regularly, throbbing like a beating heart. Little sacs grew along its sides, expanding unnaturally quickly, more like watching a time-lapse video than seeing something real. I focused on one as it ballooned from softball-sized lump to something the size of a trashbag before bursting in a shower of fluid and tissue. A full-grown ferret monster scuttled out, charging us immediately. Just above it, a smaller sac burst, letting a tiny flyer escape.

Everyone is in position. Stay away from the walls! Activate intensifiers on my count! Ten… Nine…

“How do we activate these?” Davi said, waving her arm at Andy.

Andy looked alarmed. “Didn’t I tell you? Fuck me... Just say something about how you think things are too easy or would have preferred more difficulty. It’s pretty flexible!” He blanched, staring at his wrist, where his bracelet had just dimmed several shades. “Damnit. Too flexible…”

Three… Two… One! Go!

As the voice on my head finished its countdown, one of the sacs on the tree ballooned, stretching and bulging grotesquely as it expanded. When it reached the size of a small car, it exploded open, tentacular branches and roots shredding its skin as they unfurled into one of the woodwalkers Andy had described. It really was a miniature version of the treezilla, with a trunk about ten feet high and two feet across, topped by six or so writhing branches and churning forward on just as many roots.

It was hard to tell how long the roots and branches were. Maybe twenty feet long? They started out fat and thick, not quite a foot in diameter, narrowing to something barely an inch across near the tips.

“Hey!” Helen’s voice cut through my fascination. “You heard the colonel! Make your summons!”

“This is… too easy…?” Davi didn’t sound at all certain about what she was saying.

Well, that won’t do, I thought. Things are bad enough. We need to keep our spirits high.

“Give me more of a challenge!” I roared. “I CAN TAKE IT!”

Eligibility verified. Complaint registered. Intensifying.

The message had been clear enough, but my bracelet dimmed several shades. Maybe some kind of cooldown? It explained why they couldn’t just have one person use their bracelet over and over, if so. More importantly, Davi’s terrified expression lifted slightly as she shot me a look of disbelief.

Okay, that worked.

I didn’t hear what Byron or the others said, but they must have said something. The central pillar - the heartvein? - was rapidly hidden by a series of swelling sacs.

Andy was already near the central pillar, doing his best to deal damage to the miniature tree he’d prematurely spawned. He didn’t move like someone who had martial arts training, but he was fast enough for that not to matter. The monster swung tentacle after tentacle toward him, but he was never in the same place long enough for any of the hits to land.

I was a little tired, but I wouldn’t be using active abilities to fight. The tumescent growths were nearing their maximum size.

“I’ll focus on the trash!” Byron shouted. “John, give me a hand!”

A barrage of Fire Bolts began, knocking flyer after flyer out of the air and digging deep furrows into the ferrets.

The ferrets are much easier to fight in this flat area, I realized. They’re intended to ambush us from hiding. That’s why the Announcement wanted us away from the walls.

A sickening squelching sound drew my attention back to the center. Sac after sac tore open and the chamber turned from a bad dream into a complete nightmare.