Sunborn Rising (29 page)

Claws raked and screams tore the air.

Threads were severed and strings were snapped.

Arboreals and puppets fell, and at the Root, they weren’t so different after all.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Roedtaw wound his whirlpool faster and faster. The bups felt the smooth reverberation in the marrow of their bones. What small view was afforded by the opening of the plate was distorted by the deepening of the meniscus. There was no way to understand the blurred ocean outside. It wouldn’t take them long to reach the Boil.

Barra’s dream vision was finally clear. Still, she couldn’t figure how to share the revelation with her friends. Red twisted around her. Barra knew intuitively that Red understood what had to be done.

Watching them, Plicks thought they looked like they were saying goodbye to each other. The thought upset him. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” Barra faced the Kolalabat, earnest and loving. “I’m just… I can’t believe this is happening is all.”

Plicks didn’t believe her. He’d seen that look before, whenever one of his brothers or sisters left for a long trip, whenever a cousin from a distant Tree said farewell without knowing when or if they’d ever see each other again. The faces they wore were in anticipation of missing someone deeply. Seeing Barra wear that same face trapped the breath in his throat.

Red wrapped Barra and held her tight, one long tentacle in cords around her bald and cracking arm.

For the first time since their descent began, the Roedtaw slowed.

“Did you feel that?” Tory asked. “We’ve leveled out.”

Plicks and Barra felt it, too. They’d arrived.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The expedition was surrounded. Between the efforts of the Kudmoths and the fungal-puppets, those Arboreals still alive were pressed in close, their backs against the only partially fortified wall of the camp. Brace was on the frontline, wounded like the rest, but standing fierce, Vallor at her side.

Argus’s forces didn’t push their advantage. They held their positions, a boundary of dark vines, flesh, and glowing eyes disguised by the fog of Kudmoths. The wall was intimidating and frightened everyone except Brace. She was busy trying to find a hole, a weak area that they could use to escape. Pounding the Root with her tail and hissing loudly, she tried to provoke them. They seemed not to notice her at all.

It wasn’t the Buckle—that had ended before Brace arrived at the camp—but a new and similar vibration began travelling through the wood. Something was coming toward them. The wall their binders had built and fortified began shaking violently. The Arboreals shifted, terrified. They didn’t know which way to turn. Their heads jerked left and right, pulled around by unseen strings.

Scars appeared in the quaking wall as thin cracks. Wounds yawned open and spilled dark green pus from their edges. The glowing poison flowed over the woven and bound branches, and pooled at the foot of the wall where it smoldered and blackened. The newly-carved scars bulged. The dizzy attentions of the trapped Arboreals gathered, and focused on the culminating rattling of the wall. Stunned, they watched helplessly. Too terrible to turn their backs on it and run. Too alien to fight.

The wall that was set to shelter the small crew congealed into a single curved mass of rot, stench, and fungal ooze. The quaking became a soft rumble, and then disappeared. It was replaced by a squelching, wet sucking sound. The blackness that began in the pool at the base of the wall rose up through the noxious liquid until it swallowed the scars. No more light-emitting fluid spilled out, only slow, dark sap.

The largest scar in the wall swelled like a lung inhaling. Finger-like protrusions appeared and emerged one by one. They sharpened and lengthened, and then cut through the thin membrane of ooze that coated them. The dark skin peeled away, and hands were revealed, like two five-legged spiders. They moved precisely on their clawed fingertips, apparently searching for something. When they found a good place, the spidery hands pushed flat. They levered an eyeless, toothless head out of the muck, and a thin, hairless body followed.

Fully birthed, Argus perched in defiance of gravity, held to the wall only by the clawed tips of his fingers and toes. He leaned out and scanned the Arboreals with his sunken, empty orbitals. His face fixed over the top of the tightly packed group and onto the one creature that stood out. Brace didn’t waver beneath his gaze; instead she put herself between the rotting monster and her friends. She pushed through the mesmerized Arboreals with peculiar ease.

Brace stood apart from the huddled and tattered remains of the expedition. She was prepared to face Argus alone, but glad to spot Jaeden stalking along the top of the wall. Brace was careful not to blink, not to look in Jaeden’s direction, cautious not to reveal her.

Brace turned away from Argus. She inspected her fur carefully, almost whimsically preoccupied with the cleanliness of each patch even though she was coated in grime. Finding an offensive spot of dirt, she licked her fur. She preened herself as though it were any other day, as though she were safe in the Loft.

The rest of the Arboreals tucked into that tiny pocket of space were so quiet, their silence so absolute, that the small sound of Brace’s rough tongue scratching against her fur was cavernous like she was licking the inside of their ears. Argus heard the insult.

Argus leaned until his drooling face was close enough that Brace could feel the dampness of his breath on her fur. He roared a low rumbling note that shook the Root itself.

Brace’s eyes moved first, and then her head followed in a silky pivot. Her whip of a tail raised up and flicked the air. Argus’ roar continued as though he didn’t need to breathe. Brace’s nostrils flared and she hissed. She found a pure violence in herself so disturbing that she was at least as afraid of herself as she was of Argus.

There was a flash in her peripheral vision—Jaeden striking from above.

The pocket collapsed, and a churning mass of Arboreals and creepers took its place.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Anxiety flew into the bups’ bellies like buzzing Kudmoths. Breath caught in their lungs and their nerves were taut like the strings of an instrument pulled too tight, out of tune and ready to snap. The Nebules were worried too, and they spent their nervous energy by bouncing around, erratic.

The Roedtaw bellowed, and the bups felt the rush of blood to their feet as they slowed down. Barra concentrated on her vision to keep her steady. She reached out for Red.

Plicks said, “You’re not planning on coming back with us, are you?”

Barra was afraid that if she shared her vision that she would fail to follow it through, so she lied, “We’re just scared.”

“I don’t believe you.” Plicks wasn’t accusing Barra. He just wanted her to know that he knew.

Tory did nothing to mask his shock, and shot glances back and forth between his companions. Char nuzzled into Tory’s hand. Suddenly, Tory was overwhelmed with the sense that he was the last to know some secret. He felt betrayed and hurt, and demanded, “What’s that supposed to mean?!”

The Roedtaw stopped.

Barra felt the pressure of her friends, their caring voices. “What if an army isn’t the answer? What if there is another way? A better way?” Barra said. She locked eyes with Tory. She held up her arm, the severity of the infection plain to see. In the time they’d taken to descend her entire arm had shed, bald from shoulder to finger tips. Scarlet splotches had appeared around vivid green cracks in her skin. The original wound was black and seeping. “I’m not going to make it back.”

Tory and Plicks shuffled uncomfortably, but before either could speak a word in protest, Barra and Red dove into the ocean.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Jaeden raked Argus viciously across the face and coiled her tail around his throat, squeezing. But Argus dropped to the ground and dragged her from his face with her claws still deeply embedded in his flesh. He threw her away. Brace didn’t see how Jaeden landed or where. She lunged at the monster without looking back. Hissing and growling at each other they slashed and dodged as the battle exploded around them. They tumbled into bodies of puppets and Arboreals. Brace tried to avoid the others. Argus clutched, cleaved, and crushed anyone who got in his way.

Brace tried every trick she knew against the eyeless creature, but nothing fazed him. He caught her by the scruff and held her up, his face out of range. She swung her tail around, and he grabbed it out of the air, unnaturally fast. Brace’s tail was strong, armored by the story of her life. She levered herself around and unleashed a flurry of kicks. Reaching up, she clawed wildly at his flesh where he gripped her neck fur. Argus was unimpressed. He strangled her tail, his oozing flesh burning like acid through her braided protection.

He squeezed until her leathery skin bulged between his fingers.

She screamed and he split her tail in two.

Her Thread unraveled. Burnt, frayed ends splayed out, groping for attachments they could no longer find. The memories fell to the ground in a cascade of delicate sounds like raindrops on water-softened wood. Pain-blind, Brace heard the baubles fall even from within the cacophony.

Argus dropped her like a toy that bored him, and lifted his foot, threatening to crush her.

A sickle-shaped fang speared his lifted thigh with a thud, and another impaled his calf. Vallor Starch came lunging in, yanking Argus off balance with her twin tails. He stumbled, but didn’t fall. Instead, he grabbed Vallor’s tails, the tips still in his legs, and pulled her off her feet. Spinning around, he whipped her into a bough, and then against the Root, the Haggidon howling in pain, and then whimpering. Argus ripped the tail-tips out of his legs, reeled in the quivering Vallor, and held her up for a casual inspection.

Vallor looked for Brace, but she was gone. She felt relief, and smiled into the hideous, oozing face of Argus. He smiled back, and then he pulled her apart.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Barra, wait!” Tory grabbed Char and threw him to the meniscus where he spread wide across the threshold. Tory jumped through, Char enveloped him, and they swam off after Barra.

Plicks and Blue followed quickly after.

Even with their Nebules shielding their eyes from the light, the bups were momentarily blinded. Out of the light emerged clouds of mingling colors. Huge families of Nebules congregated and swirled. There were thousands of them and when they saw the bups emerge from the Roedtaw, they slowed to stillness. They swayed as the current generated from the Boil swept huge volumes of bubbles around them. The Roedtaw blocked the rising bubbles for the bups, spreading open the curtain so that they barely had to swim to stay close.

Barra realized that the Roedtaw had gathered the Nebules from the entire ocean. She fought hard to understand how they could all know what to do, and then she saw them flashing subtly to one another. Red spoke to them, sharing a greeting. There was response from the entire cloud, a pulse of light that waved through them like a cheer through a crowded audience.

One dark shape moved from deep within the colonies, and Barra recognized the striding strokes of Lootrinea. The Aetherial swam out in front of the Nebules and greeted the bups though she only came as close as the mouth of the Roedtaw. Her slender sucker-cupped arms were spread widely around her, displayed like wings, and her body rippled all the way to the tip of her tail. She folded her wings, flipped over majestically, and swam back into the cloud of variegated Nebules.

The burden fell to Barra and her dream. Only she could show them all what to do. She wasn’t sure what would happen to her, to Red, or any of the Nebules willing to join her, but she was confident the Great Forest would thrive again and become the world of her father’s journal. She knew he would be proud of her. She only wished he was there to see it.

Looking up one last time at the apparently endless darkness above, she wondered how it would all change if her plan worked. Barra took a deep breath and swam into the open water.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Brace writhed in agony. She might have blacked out for an instant or an eternity; she couldn’t know. She saw eyes. Familiar orange and gray rims filled her vision. But the nerves of her tail ignited, confused and crying fire as she moved to see. Brace called out desperately, “Gammel!? Gammel!”

But it was Jaeden that hovered over her. She slapped Brace hard. “Get up!”

Violent efforts reported all around; breaking limbs, wood and bone, and flesh tearing. There were threats offered, and echoes of threats fulfilled. Brace reached up, and Jaeden hauled her to her feet.

Brace was dragged into the thicket. But soon her body remembered how to move, and they were running before she was truly conscious of it. As her senses returned, she stopped and whispered, “We can’t leave them!”

“There’s nothing you can do,” Jaeden said.

Brace mistook the young warrior’s calm for emotionless dismissal and yelled, “We’re going back!” But Jaeden grabbed her by her mangled, shortened tail and sent a shock through her system that shut her down. A cold spike shot up her spine.

“You’re done.” Jaeden looked around suspiciously. “I promise I’ll go back once we’ve got you someplace safe.”

Unsure it was the right decision, but unable to ignore her injury, Brace gave up. Her head hung low and her shoulders fell.

Brace’s taciturn agreement came too slow for Jaeden. She yanked the wounded Listlespur—by the arm this time—to start her running. Jaeden snarled, “They’re coming!”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Barra wished she could tell Plicks and Tory that their support, being there with her, gave her the courage to do what had to be done. She didn’t think she could thank them without breaking. She knew they were following, but she didn’t turn around. She stared down into the Boil alone.

There was no other way. She gave Red the go ahead, and they swam as fast as they could into the cloud of Nebules. The gelatinous creatures gathered behind them in a lengthening tail of light and color.