At the same time as Tromo and Ethall had been having this philosophical discussion, somewhere below, Zantheus had started to hallucinate.

He was back on Awmeer, not in the heights, but on the lower slopes, running through the early training exercises as a boy again, learning to climb with rocks tied to his arms and legs. There was Rhemeus’s face looking down on him, goading him on:

“Come on Zantheus, if you can’t handle this little ridge how will you ever hope to conquer the whole mountain?”

He gritted his teeth, scrunched his eyes up, and tried harder, expending every ounce of his willpower on forcing his body up the training run. If he just tried that bit more, if he just put in that bit more effort, he would make it to the top.

Discipline and hard work, that was all it required.

Only...only that wasn’t working any more. All the will power he had amassed, all the strength he had built up was useless to him now. Each time he tried to wrestle free of the plant’s grip with his own strength it would only draw him straight back into it.

He was having to violently unlearn everything he had been taught in the Order. Getting free from the plant took something other than willpower –it took a strange power of...stopping that wasn’t really a power at all. Just when Zantheus thought he had learned its trick, certain that this time he would get to the top and be free of the plant, a vine would constrict particularly tightly around him and he would jolt back into his old way of behaving and into the leafy depths once more.

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This happened.

He gave up. It was impossible to escape. Instead of moving again, he lay where he was, in the clutches of the plant. He heard Rhemeus say in his mind “You’ve got to try harder, Zantheus, you’ve got to push yourself.”

“No, no...” he murmured. “I cannot. I cannot do it. My strength is useless to me here...”

Now he saw Anthē’s face. He saw how it had looked when he was nearly out. “You can do it, Zantheus, you’re nearly there!” But not even this picture could get him moving again. Down here in the plant, it twisted and contorted and mocked him.

“You can do it, Zantheus, you’re nearly there!” rang out the words again, now tainted with sarcastic malice.

“No, I cannot!”

“Try harder!”

“I cannot do it!”

“Try harder!”

“No! That does not work. That does not work!” He realised he was crying. He could not remember the last time he had cried.

“You’re right, that doesn’t work.” This was a new voice. Though it spoke in a whisper, it was musical and gentle. “You can’t get free for yourself, or for anyone else.”

“How can I go further?” he asked the voice.

“Here, take my hand,” said the voice.