Calling the creature a tree was a massive understatement. It was more of a giant, hulking mass of roots and vines. Green moss covered nearly a third of its frame, giving it an almost sickly appearance. I tried to see if the thing had a face. It didn't. Or perhaps I couldn't discern it. Either way, I turned to run from the rampaging progenitor.

"By the gods," Lucid muttered, apparently regaining consciousness after face-planting at some point. "It's Apocryth, the beast king of nature. I-I thought that was just a ghost story!" He didn't stand; instead, Lucid sat there, dumbly staring up at the moving forest.

I reached over and yanked him to his feet. "Get up. Run!" The moment he was up, he seemed to collect himself, and we were off. Whatever spell Morgana cast had hopefully worn off. If there were still lingering magics controlling Lucid's body, he'd be a dangerous enemy to have at my back.

At the moment, there wasn't any time to think about that. I pushed this new body to run faster than I ever had before—faster than during soldier training and faster than my morning sprinting exercises. I knew that I couldn't outrun a progenitor. No one could, especially not some unawakened child.

Apocryth roared from behind us and slammed one of his heavy, gnarled vined limbs into the encampment. Dirt exploded up and away like angry bugs, but beneath the tentacle limb, everything was flattened. From tents to soldiers, anything in its path was forcefully merged with the sunken ground.

Cracks burst out from the canyon Apocryth created, jutting out around us. All sorts of smaller critters scuttled from the cracks. I turned to Lucid, gritting my teeth. We both had stopped running after the cracks had formed. There was nowhere for us to run to. The critters chirped all around us, utterly eviscerating anything they came into contact with, like starving children.

"Do you know any fire energy techniques? Or magic?" I desperately asked, glancing up at the setting sun. If we could delay until the moon rose, I could probably make use of this.

"I know a bit of fire energy. Some fire magic too," Lucid responded, putting his back to mine. I risked a glance back and saw small whisps of flames begin to circle above his palm. Then they all melded together into a single ball of fire.

"A fireball?" I sputtered, unable to keep the annoyance out of my voice. "Put that out and create a flame wall, squire."

To his credit, Lucid didn't hesitate to follow my orders. The ball of flames in his hand expanded outward as he spun his body to draw a ring of fire around us. It wouldn't even slow Apocryth down, but it didn't need to. As long as it stopped the bugs and delayed our death, that was all I needed to escape this.

Lucid grunted, and I could see the spell was rapidly draining his energy.

"This is why you build a core," I muttered, then turned to slam my palm into Lucid's back. My power rushed out my heart rings and flooded Lucid's fledgling heart with energy. The flame wall flickered once and then crackled upward with energy.

"Thanks," Lucid said. "But I don't think this will hold for long."

"Just focus. It doesn't need to last forever. Just hold it as long as you can."

The forest insects swarmed around us like cascading waves crashing against a crumbling shore. At first, the insects were reckless, droves of them flying into the flaming circle only to be disintegrated within seconds. The smell of burnt bugs quickly filled the air and my lungs. I nearly gagged, stopping myself through sheer will.

After a while, they no longer suicidally rushed headlong into the flames but instead chittered around us, little legs clicking with each movement.

"What are those things?" Lucid shouted as the circle waned under a sudden onslaught of the creatures. I didn't answer. I couldn't. I had no idea what in Ashwash those things were either.

I looked up at the sky, tracing the descent of the sun. It was nearly below the horizon. The moon had become clearer. A full moon. I didn't have time to consider how incredibly lucky that was for me. It would still be another couple of minutes before the sun was low enough that I could begin to draw on the moon's lunar energy.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

The fire would hold out at this rate. Just a little longer—

My thoughts were cut off by the roar of Apocryth and the giant tendril of vines that crushed the creatures in a canyon nearly ten miles wide just a few feet outside the circle.

Quickly, I shot more energy through my pathway and into Lucid's, causing the ring to flare and lash outward, expending all its energy in a large area of effect. In the chaos that erupted and just as the ring's base flickered away, I bolted from the circle with Lucid on my heels. The two of us shot through a gap I spotted in the swarm before the insects could close around us.

Unfortunately, the direction of the gap led us to where Apocryth rampaged. One problem at a time.

The swarm, scattered by Apocryth's attack, fortunately, did not follow us as we bolted. A quick look behind me told me why—the bodies of the dead soldiers were covered by the swarm. Disgusting, wet chewing noises came from that direction.

Lucid screamed. He was staring up, his eyes wider than I'd ever seen someone's eyes go. Then he looked at me, filled with fear.

Thump. Squish.

Apocryth's tendrils crushed the boy before I could blink. One second Lucid was running next to me, and the next he was just gone, replaced by a bundle of squirming vines and moss. Death was nothing new to me. Death was a familiar friend, accompanying me in all parts of my life.

I still gagged when the tendril lifted and revealed the scrunched, disfigured, and smushed version of Lucid. It was hardly recognizable as a human beyond the distinct iron smell of blood and one of his blue eyes somehow having survived the attack. It stared at me now, devoid of life and yet somehow still filled with despair. I wanted to scream or at least shout his name, but the warm liquid rising from my stomach kept me silent.

Finally, the sun dropped fully below the horizon. I pushed all my remaining energy from my heart rings and flooded it through every inch of my body, exposing the energy to the moonlight. In reality, I knew the energy I'd gathered around myself was not much, minuscule even, but it still roared through me, making me feel stronger than I had since setting foot in Graedon. Then my energy synchronized with the lunar energy radiating from the moon, empowering my energy well beyond my cultivation level, and I felt invincible.

Power not my own seeped into me and replaced my own lesser energies until my heart thumped and blood gushed from my nose and leaked from my eyes. My eardrums exploded as the pressure inside me built.

I continued to draw in even more of the moon's energy, screaming as the pain wreaked havoc throughout my body with chaotic glee. The energy veil I had created around myself tightened, squeezing muscle and bone until they tore and broke. It dawned on me that the energy I absorbed was temporarily forcing my body into an early reformation. If I could have felt anything beyond the shrieking pain, I would have panicked.

I could feel myself growing taller, muscles expanding in response to the increased energy coursing through me. Some part of my mind tried to warn me that the recoil from forced absorption would be much, much worse. I ignored it. I needed this. Right now. Or I would die a miserable death, just like Lucid.

The instant my vision cleared and the thudding in my ears lessened, I dashed—not away from the forest, but toward it. Between the forest and Silverwater was mostly grasslands. My chances of surviving by retreating backward were none. Moving forward into the forest... that was only maybe a fraction better, but I figured at least my death wouldn't be immediate.

I hoped the beast king might be more cautious in the forest. Most progenitors tended to be guardians of a region more so than wild predators, though some viewed offense as the best defense. That hope was shattered the moment I entered the forest's domain and four bundles of vines whipped out from Apocryth's chest to decimate the top half of at least a hundred trees.

I dodged the sundering by diving behind a heavy stone halfway buried under a massive oak tree. The attack snapped the oak tree in half like it was a twig and not ten feet wide. The Apocryth barked and grunted, savagely continuing to rip tree after tree either in half or straight out of the ground. The creature was like a tornado of vines and wrath.

Then, without warning, everything froze. A blanket of silence fell across the entire forest. A sense of utter and complete fear spread across the silenced space, threatening to strangle me as I gasped for breath. I couldn't move, couldn't make a sound.

A calm, eerily emotionless voice echoed around me. It spoke softly, yet I could hear it as if it was speaking an inch from my ear.

"Halt." The word was spoken, and I knew everything would stop, even the wind. The word was spoken in a language I only recognized as Ancient, the language of the progenitors.

Oh fuck. Oh fuck, I thought, still unable to move. The Apocryth wasn't the progenitor.

I forced my head to swivel, straining my muscles to turn even an inch. I saw only a slight silver gleam start at Apocryth's head and then it was at its feet. A second later the silver light was gone and the creature fell, split in two. The massive tree was felled in a single attack, one faster than my current abilities could track.

"To all those that remain," the deep voice continued as if it hadn't just felled an Apocryth. "Leave now."

The pressure holding me still disappeared, and I spun around to glimpse a horned human with completely black eyes looking directly at me.

Wait a second. I... I knew that being. Was that the demon progenitor? But that wouldn't be possible. I had delivered the final strike ending its reign of terror in Ordite.

Our eyes locked for a split second, and it smiled at me. Cold and cruel.

"Run, Queen of Rot. Run."