Chapter 158: The Root’s Measure (Patreon)

Erthrix shouted calls.

“Hollis, left limb. Stay off the trough. Dace, small casts until I call it. Wren, on me.”

He struck his shield rim against the stone. The built-in taunt spread in a dull green ripple, and the Warden’s glass-crowned head swung toward him.

The first arm came down. Erthrix caught it across his chest, gave up half a step, and planted again. The second swept low. He turned his shield into it, leaving Hollis room beside the wall.

Then the roots at the Warden’s base tightened. Its trunk rose, lifting the blue fire behind its bark, and both arms struck down together. Erthrix dropped to one knee and held.

“After the slam,” he said. “Burn.”

Hollis drove his hammer into the left joint. Dace’s bolts passed above Erthrix’s shoulder and split the chest. A slab of bark broke loose, exposing blue flame suspended in a web of fine roots.

[Choirbark Warden: 91%]

Kage moved along the right wall. He cut the roots fastening one wrist to the floor, then drew back before the returning arm could pin him there. A dark afterimage followed Mumyo's edge.

Overhead, the glass leaves rang high. Two seconds later, the channels lit.

Silver sap rushed into the trough and climbed through the Warden’s exposed fibers. Bark grew across the chest wound in pale rings. Fresh glass leaves sprouted along its crown and chimed as they hardened.

[Choirbark Warden: 100%]

“Again,” Erthrix said. “See if it runs out.”

It didn’t. Hollis broke the joint a second time. Dace hollowed out the chest. Kage stripped a bundle of roots from the right side, his shoulder burning when his arm carried the cut farther than he intended.

The high chime rang. Sap arrived. The Warden stood whole again.

Dace drank a potion. Wren’s healing thread broke while she reached for one of her own, and Erthrix slid a boot back under the next blow.

“That’s early,” he said.

“What?” Kage asked.

“The pulse. We haven’t had forty-five seconds.”

Kage watched silver fill the hammer wound. The higher notes ran from the rear wall to the crown, then down through the trunk. The low chord beneath the stone continued at its old pace.

The Warden was calling for more.

Wonderful. An emergency supply line.

“I need the trough,” Kage said.

“Right side. After the sweep.”

He waited for the arm to pass, then crouched beside the groove. Sap ran beneath the Warden’s right base and disappeared into a knot of roots. Beyond it, another stream climbed the wall toward the shaft.

The Warden turned.

“Back,” Erthrix said.

“Two seconds.”

Erthrix stepped across to catch the arm. His shield blocked Kage’s view of the knot.

Dace raised her cracked staff. Red light gathered along its fractures.

“Rootfire Column,” she said. “I can cook the whole base.”

“Hold it. Kage, clear right.”

“Don’t use the column,” Kage said. “Those channels—”

“Move first,” Dace snapped.

He tried to stand. Mumyo’s tip caught beneath a hanging root, and freeing it cost him the opening.

Hollis grabbed the back of his coat and hauled him away.

The wooden hand struck where Kage’s head had been. Stone cracked around the trough. Glass sprayed across Hollis’s elbow, and his grip opened. He shoved Kage the last step with his shoulder and brought the hammer haft up against the returning arm.

“Your two seconds are expensive,” he said.

Kage got his boots under him. “Break the base and we could lose the floor.”

A small stone dropped through the fresh crack. They heard it hit something well below them.

Erthrix caught another sweep.

“Dace, no column. Kage, give me what you know before you go in. When I call clear, you clear.”

“I was trying to—”

“I know. Tell me from back here.”

Fair enough. Irritating, but fair.

A message flickered beside Erthrix’s face. He read it between blows, his jaw tightening.

“Surface team wants to blast the glass out of the shaft,” he said. “Drop the rope through.”

He sent the reply aloud.

“No. Hold the rim. No casting around the well. Pull the mobs away from the clearing. Nobody touches the beds.”

He dismissed the message and braced again.

Kage’s eyes stayed on the scorch mark along the shield rim for a moment. Then he backed to the right wall and lowered Mumyo.

“Keep it there,” he said. “I need to watch.”

Erthrix nodded.

Hollis kept his attacks short, letting the Warden turn into the shield. Dace kept her weight on her good leg and knocked glass growth from its shoulders with narrow bolts. Wren maintained Erthrix, her free hand already searching through her healer’s kit.

The Warden swept low whenever Hollis approached the joint. When his hammer landed there, the roots at the base cinched against the stone. The trunk reared for the double strike, exposing its underside.

“Right heel,” Erthrix said.

A thick root peeled off the floor as the Warden lifted. Beneath it lay a circle cut into pale stone, crossed by three curved lines.

“North well mark,” Erthrix said.

Three channels met inside the ring. Their sap gathered there before climbing into the trunk. An outer groove curved around the circle and continued toward the wall, its nearer section clogged with old bark.

The slam fell. The root covered the mark again.

Kage watched Hollis open a shallow wound along the joint. The crown rang high. Two seconds later, silver filled the cut.

“The high chime brings the heal,” Kage said. “Two seconds’ warning. Everything feeding it passes through that circle.”

“Can you shut it?”

“The channels keep going upstairs. I’d rather send the sap around.”

Erthrix glanced at the stream climbing the wall. “That groove?”

“Same width as the trough. It rejoins above the knot. Clear it, and I can keep the flow in it.”

“Roots over the circle,” Dace said. “I can take those off with a lance. I need the trunk up, though.”

Kage scraped bark from the nearest reach of the outer groove. Mumyo cut cleanly. He finished the pull with his shoulder and laid the strip aside. The groove continued beneath the Warden. That part would need an opening.

“Hollis hits the joint after the second sweep,” Erthrix said. “I step in and hold the slam. Dace opens the cover. Kage takes the channel.”

“I need to reach the far edge of the circle.”

“You’ll have it. Wren, keep me standing.”

She shifted left for a clearer line.

Kage checked his reserve. Enough Awen had returned for a short couplet and something quick if the opening went wrong. He could spend far more trying to break the Warden outright, with the well’s plumbing under it and a shaft beneath their feet.

He put Mumyo low and waited.

Hollis moved on the second sweep.

His hammer struck the joint. The roots cinched, the Warden began to rise, and Erthrix stepped beneath it with his shield high.

One root tightened around Hollis’s ankle. He chopped down with the hammer’s lower spike. The root held long enough to drag his foot out from under him. He fell toward the wall as the Warden’s left arm hooked sideways.

Erthrix left the center and caught the arm from below with his shield. He drove his shoulder into Hollis and shoved him clear, then dropped nearly to one knee under the weight. Wren’s heal washed up his shield arm.

The raised trunk tilted. Dace’s lance cut through the root cover, but the exposed circle slipped behind the Warden’s right base as it settled.

Kage stopped before committing his verse. The route he wanted had closed, but silver spilled from Dace’s cut across an old diagonal seam in the stone. It reached the cleared outer groove.

He slid Mumyo beneath the loose bark covering the seam and pulled. A strip peeled away, exposing the connection. Sap began to gather along it, then curled back toward the roots at the circle.

“Dace, hold. Wren, I’m beside the right foot.”

Warmth touched his back. He crouched beside the seam, keeping his shoulder clear of the trunk.

The high chime began overhead. Kage spoke into it.

Title: A Course Around the Wound.

Poem: “[Shape] silver sap along this seam;

[Bind] to the groove its climbing stream.”

[-90 AWN]

The arriving sap turned into the seam. A bright line curved around the root knot and climbed the wall beyond it.

The wounded joint began to close, then stopped. Wet fibers remained between its broken edges.

“Core,” Kage said.

Dace’s bolt tore through the thin new bark across the chest. Blue flame scattered against the inside of the trunk, illuminating the fine roots that held it there.

Hollis pulled his ankle free and drove the hammer into the damaged joint. The Warden sagged toward Erthrix’s shield.

“Same window,” Erthrix said. “Keep your feet clear.”

He backed out far enough to draw the next sweeps. Hollis followed, limping for two steps before he found his footing. Dace waited through the falling glass and fired after the slam.

The chest stayed open. Wren broke her healing thread long enough to close the cut across Hollis’s elbow, then returned to Erthrix. His shield was already dipping under the next sweep.

Kage kept to the channel. His verse carried the stream around the knot, but thin roots were reaching across the groove. He cut the first. Another pressed into the seam, pushing bark over the silver line.

The Warden’s right arm drew back.

“Right,” Kage called.

Erthrix turned his shield, still holding the other arm away from Hollis. The right hand scraped down the wall toward Kage.

He ducked beneath it and cut the root crossing the groove.

The Warden tore its hand from the wall and swept back. Kage could cross the channel and retreat. The roots gathering at its edge would close the route before he got back.

Erthrix’s shield entered the gap. The blow cracked against living wood. He slid into Kage, caught himself with one boot against the wall, and shoved the arm away.

“Finish the feed,” he said through his teeth.

The high chime rang again.

Kage lowered Mumyo into the groove. A root reached across it, thicker than the ones he had cut. He pressed the flat against it, pinning it to the stone beside the stream.

Title: The Open Groove.

Poem: [Bind].

[-45 AWN]

[Bind applied. Root fixed to anchor point.]

The root locked against the edge.

“Pulse is clear,” Kage said. “Hit it.”

Sap rushed past his blade and climbed the wall. Hollis stepped inside the raised arm and broke through the joint’s remaining fibers. Dace’s bolt struck the roots inside the chest.

The blue fire contracted.

Kage kept Mumyo in place. The bound root strained against the stone, dragging smaller fibers tight around it. Silver passed beneath them. Nothing climbed into the trunk.

The Bind expired. Kage pulled the blade through the pinned root before it could cross the groove. His elbow flared with pain. Bark fell into the stream and washed uphill.

Erthrix held through another slam. His shield arm shook as he forced the Warden back enough for Hollis to reach the exposed lower trunk.

The hammer struck. Dace steadied her staff with both hands and fired through the opening, severing the last bright roots around the flame. The fire collapsed to a blue point.

“Clear,” Erthrix said.

Kage stepped away from the groove and joined them.

The Warden settled backward into the shape of an arch. For a moment its crown spanned the passage again, glass leaves hanging motionless above the blue ember.

Then the ember went out. The arch split along the wounds they had made. Long slabs piled across the trough, and glass rained onto the broken bark.

[Choirbark Warden defeated.]

[You have gained 3872 experience.]

Kage waited for something to grow. Silver continued up the wall. The wood stayed dead. Behind them, the roots sealing the passage began to unbraid.

Dace sat down where she stood, stretching her healed leg out carefully. Hollis worked the last fibers off his ankle and swore at them under his breath. Erthrix leaned on his shield rim with both hands.

A loot panel appeared over the slabs.

Starlight Resin. Phantasmal Wood. A Rare pair of rootwoven bracers, with a level-thirty requirement.

Ordinary loot from an extraordinarily inconvenient door.

Erthrix moved the drops into a shared allocation window.

“Five ways. We price the bracers topside. Anyone who takes them, it comes out of their share.”

Kage nodded and checked the quest log. No update, no new entry.

Wren approached while he was testing his elbow.

He lowered Mumyo before she reached him. Green light gathered around her fingers, easing the ache enough that Mumyo brought each time he overstrained it. Then she went to Hollis.

Hollis eyes stayed on Kage, and his hammer remained within reach. Kage would have kept it there too.

Erthrix nudged a bark slab away from the circle with his boot.

“Does that need to stay diverted?”

“The spell will run out, eventually. So let's assume the sap will go back through the knot.”

“And this comes back?”

Kage looked into the split chest. The fine roots that had held the fire were black.

“One pulse,” Erthrix said. “Then we move.”

They waited.

Without the crown’s higher chime, the low chord filled the passage. Sap brightened along the walls at its old pace. By the time the surge arrived, Kage’s verse had faded and the silver was running through the circle again.

It passed beneath the fallen trunk and continued toward the shaft. No bark grew over the wounds.

“Forty-five,” Erthrix said, and Kage saw him typing something in a window he couldn't see.

Beyond the fallen arch, the roots loosened. They peeled away from one another and withdrew into the earth, dragging the broken arms aside. The passage continued behind them, sloping deeper into the ground.

The chord came through more clearly. Kage had been following its lowest note since the fall. Now he could hear the lines above it, each entering at a different point.

He stepped over the trough. Erthrix followed with his shield up, and Dace lifted her staff for light.

Thirty meters down, the passage opened around a curve of living root.

Flowerbeds had been grown directly into the walls. Most of their blooms were closed. Near the floor, a few petals opened with the song, violet on the low notes, warming to gold as the voices rose.

Kage stopped.

Beyond the curve lay a hollow of bare earth. Across its edge stretched a lattice woven root to root, with pale, folded petals caught throughout.

In the Echo, the court had carried the ancient blooms into this chamber in armfuls. Archivists bent over them beside soldiers and children, weaving the last decree together while the song failed.

Erthrix came up beside him.

“Know it?”

Kage kept his eyes on the lattice.

“What if I do?”