“We need to leave!” I yelled to myself.

The building was shaking, the roots swaying across the floor like tripwires. I couldn’t be sure if the [Rootmother Hivemind] could ‘feel’ but I was the last person who wanted to figure out.

Was it unhealthy to refer to myselves as ‘we’? Anything to keep myself calm. There were people walking towards the doors again. This time everyone.

“We need to light the fire!” I told myself, hating it.

“And risk everyone?” I wasn’t sure why, but giving my clones each one side of my conscious helped me work through the problem. “They’ll burn as they come in!”

Both of our eyes widened. The goblins. “Where are the goblins?” We ran through the halls, scrambling, and found our quarry. Taking one down nowadays was soberingly easy. No one should’ve had this much practice.

Still, we took it down, and maybe the Field Boss wasn’t paying attention, but it didn’t react. I’d never risk this on a human. A goblin, though?

I stared at my counterpart, holding a lighter in one hand. Put it against any surface and this entire floor, along with the next three would be up in flames. My hand stared at the goblin in my arms, struggling. We’d both pinned it against the floor, face down.

Then we ripped the sapling out of its neck.

It jerked, screaming. The noise was uncomfortable. I held firm, staring at it. I saw the roots spreading up and down its neck, piercing the skin, die. The entire process didn’t look pretty, nor peaceful, the thing was thrashing. Genuine cries of pain.

But it lived.

I checked the floorplan, tracked the survivors outside, nodded to myself, and flicked the lighter. Dropped it.

It fell almost in slow motion, every sense of mine watching it, the catalyst of fire. A small flame, no bigger than a candle, against a Field Boss.

I watched it as I ran. Not for my life. But for everyone else’s. The goblin sprinted away—

I didn’t expect the air to catch fire first. The first floor? It exploded in a fireball of roaring flames, tearing into my back with searing heat, and sending me forward. Flames raced across the floor as if they were alive and hungry. I screamed like I was being boiled alive, my clothes melting into my skin. My world was fire and lava.

Outside, my original self was writhing on the floor, suppressing the scream if only because it was a distant pain. Teeth clenched, knuckles white, something allowed me to power through and I wondered if it were those extra points in WIL.

It still didn’t lessen the pain—the torture.

Through inexplicable agony and fire, I stared at the people, eyes flickering between focus and glazed pain. They were still walking. From above, the first floor was blown out, glass and debris rained across the base of the skyscraper.

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The next explosion sent me to the ground inside. Outside? The shockwave and heat was a strong breeze and warmth. Below, it was hellfire. I was thrown to the ground, pressed to the floor, flames around me, melting. Black smoke and… and water, raining down. Sprinklers, I laughed, useless thankfully.

I didn’t realize it but one of me had died. Instantly. I turned around, staring through the blurry haze of heat, and found the goblin first. On fire and dead. Every movement was agony, torturous hell, and somehow I found my feet.

I raced to the exit, coughing and hacking, cutting my way through curtains of flame and drapes of smoke. Instead, I found the door blocked, a mountain of debris—another explosion. I staggered, barely conscious.

“I’m not gonna make it.” I groaned. Not Third, who was down below, his throat was dry, instantly parched. It was Second, beside me, who spoke. Calmer than I had any right to be.

“Go,” I spoke. And he did. Leaving me alone, unprotected. It was the most vulnerable I’d ever felt since that first day. I couldn’t focus enough to produce another clone, to replenish myself. All I could do was watch, eyes glued to the chaos below, melted to it.

Second rushed across the roots, moving with the grace of months of practice. Two weeks of moving through this terrain, multiplied by my clones. I was no expert but I was certainly experienced by now.

He collided with the first survivor and ripped the sapling out. It was this or allow them to walk into a burning building. Immediately, perhaps noticing due to proximity, the other thralls swarmed. I dodged around them, [Solo’s Instinct] somehow allowing me to see the holes between them, the spaces where I could move. How I could move.

Because I wasn’t. I was staring at the Field Boss. All of its roots were writhing, curling upward, away from the flames, drying up like worms in the sun. And I hadn’t heard, not at first, but there was a noise in the air.

More than just fire and flame. It was screaming. A terribly high-pitched keening, worse than anything I’d ever heard once I noticed it. It wouldn’t leave my ears.

Inside, my hand was against the wall, I was limping, coughing, barely conscious. My entire back was charred, my skin was boiling. The heat was scorching. And—

Another explosion and I watched the fourth floor collapse. In fact, the entire skyscraper folded into itself, collapsing a single story downward. The weight of the entire structure erasing the first floor.

Just as I watched it, a guttural scream, unbidden, escaped from my throat.

I was being crushed alive, burned alive, and like a curse, was still conscious of it all. My entire body seized up, as if every bone and muscle shouldn’t have been. My brain worked against itself, trying to feel what it knew should be lost. Phantoms spasms conveyed through a clone brought to the brink of death. A pain and existence that was paralyzing.

The feeling of every organ crushed, my own ribs piercing my flesh. Of knowing exactly how your insides felt on account of them being impaled, crushed, burned, or otherwise fucked with. I vomited, spewing, as I doubled over in pain, the torture finally enough.

Second staggered below and he was swarmed.

Focus. The word was yelled from an internal fog, from the bottom of a well. Echoing upwards in fading intensity. Focus! Part of my brain woke up and Second found his feet, tearing another sapling, punching, kicking, never drawing his knife.

I needed to make another clone. I was in no shape to watch myself. But maybe I could? That didn’t make sense. Why didn’t it? My thoughts drifted past me like wisps of smoke. Smoke? Why was that…?

I had the faint certainty I was screaming when I passed out.