Book 3: Chapter 19: Corruption

Book 3: Chapter 19: Corruption

Victor tried to saddle Thistle without bothering anyone, but Norl came out of his front door, sipping a steaming mug, and said, “Leaving before dawn, hmm? The beds that bad?”

“No, your place is great, Norl. I’m just eager to be on my way back to Tellen’s camp. I’m worried about my friends, and I miss them.” Victor grunted as he cinched the buckles tight on his saddle.

“Understandable, young man. What about your friend? She staying a while?” Norl glanced toward his home as though he could see Teil sleeping in the guest room through the walls.

“Yeah, she was soundly sleeping, but she knows I’m leaving, don’t worry.” Victor buckled the bridle around Thistle’s ears and down under his neck. “I mean, I’m not dipping out on her if you’re worried about that.”

“No, no. I was wondering, though—she lost her loved ones? Her village was destroyed? Do you think she’d want to stay with us for a while?” He took another sip from his mug and sighed loudly in pleasure, smacking his lips after he swallowed.

“Maybe. It won’t offend her if you ask; I’m sure of that.” Victor stepped into his stirrup, hoisting himself onto Thistle’s back. “Well, that’s it for me, Norl. I’m off. Thanks for everything, and I’m sorry if I woke you.”

“Oh, you didn’t. I don’t sleep much these days. Victor, by the way, you’ll find a path on the north edge of the village that leads directly to the plains.” Norl gestured toward Victor’s left with this mug. “Wasn’t sure you knew that.”

“Well, I didn’t! Thank you, Norl; I was going to backtrack the way I came.”

“Thank you, warrior. Thank you. That bear woulda done us just as it had your lady friend’s village. We owe you a debt; you’re welcome in my home anytime.”

Victor looked into the older man’s eyes and gave him a nod, then he clicked his tongue and started Thistle moving through the village. When he got to the path and saw that it was wide and clear of obstructions, he pushed the vidanii into a cantor and made quick progress through the woods toward the plains. He had a lot to think about and allowed his mind to wander while Thistle did most of the work.

He thought about his time on the Spirit Plane with Thunderbite and everything he’d learned about himself. He was feeling a lot better about his new affinity now that he’d already managed to build a fear construct and do some cultivating. He reasoned that if he’d improved himself by dealing with the memories that caused him to feel anger, he’d only continue to do so by facing his fears.

It was unpleasant and difficult stuff for Victor to admit to being scared, to look at a time in his life when he’d describe his feelings by saying, “I was pissed off,” only to really analyze it and say, “I lashed out because I was afraid of someone leaving me again.”

Several times while riding between the tall, beautifully colorful trees, he turned his vision inward and looked at his Core, admiring the three orbs of attuned Energy and how they balanced each other in appearance. He felt the dark, shadowy purple orb of his fear affinity was a good counterpoint to his inspiration Energy while his rage smoldered, ready to add raw power to either one. “I wonder if I can find a weave to mix that fear with my rage.” He figured he’d ask Gorz and Oynalla for ideas when he got back.

Victor looked up as the sky began to grow light and admired the height of the trees. True, he’d hardly seen any sort of forest, living in southern Arizona, but he felt these trees were truly immense. They soared many times higher than telephone poles, some of their trunks wider than his tio’s pickup truck.

“Heck, that one’s bigger than my abuela’s house!” He said to Thistle, patting the vidanii’s rough, red shoulder. The tree was a good fifty yards from the trail, but its enormous black-barked trunk was easy to see with the wide clearing around it. Victor figured its canopy made it hard for smaller trees to grow very close to it.

“Let’s check it out,” he said to Thistle and steered him off the trail toward the clearing and the forest giant. Thistle’s steps were loud and the only noise in the area, the birds and animals either holding still or having fled. His big hooves pressed into the mulch of fallen leaves, and when he stepped into the clearing around the tree, Thistle balked. Even when he’d been hunting the “demon” that terrorized Tellen’s hunting party, Thistle hadn’t acted spooked—this was new. “You all right, boy?”

The vidanii snorted, steam pluming from his nose, and stamped a front foot, but he wouldn’t move closer to the tree. “All right,” Victor said, sliding out of the saddle. He stood next to Thistle, one hand on his neck, the other on Lifedrinker’s head, and studied the great tree.

It was almost like looking at a tall building, standing this close. Victor couldn’t see around the trunk to either side, so vast it was. The bark was gnarled and dark, all blacks and grays, and the first branches didn’t start for nearly a hundred feet. Looking up at those branches, though, Victor marveled at the amount of wood suspended in the air over his head—hundreds, no, thousands, or tens of thousands of tree-sized boughs hung from the great trunk, their long, silver-blue needles blocking out the sky.

“Wait here,” he said to Thistle, and still resting a hand on Lifedrinker, he approached the colossal trunk. He wasn’t sure why he wanted to, but Victor’s palm almost itched with the desire to rest it on that rough bark. He didn’t have any sense in his gut about why Thistle was spooked—he felt like he’d know it if he had some fear tickling the back of his neck. There was nothing, though; all Victor felt was curiosity and a desire to feel the enormous life of that tree beneath his hand.

As he drew near, within a few feet, Victor began to experience the tree’s aura—thick, vibrant, a life so strong it could snuff out lesser plants before they took their first sips of the rich air or soil. He outstretched his arm and, slowly, like a man reaching out to pet a crocodile, placed his palm against the dark, mossy bark.

Close as he now was, Victor could see that the things really were worms, and they might act together, but they weren’t part of the same organism. Inspiration struck him, and, dodging their swinging, wriggling advances, he put Lifedrinker away in her loop and cast Berserk. His vision went red, but he kept, firmly in his mind, the need to rip and smash those worms, and he waded into them, his enormous hands seizing them near the root and yanking them, one by one, out of tree’s flesh.

Victor roared and screamed as the worms sank their teeth into his hands and legs, even his neck. Some of them bit into him with both of their tooth-ringed ends, pulling at his blood and Energy. The vast majority fruitlessly bit into his armor, hanging from it while he went around the massive taproot, pulling the worms free, flinging many of them with tremendous force against the hard-packed wall of the cavern. Soon, a pile of dazed, partially smashed worms throbbed and wriggled there, the least harmed ones inching over the ground, back toward Victor.

He roared again; this time, his coyotes caught Victor’s meaning, wrangling the loose worms, dragging them back toward the pile, and delivering bites that bled away the worms’ vitality in the process. In his rage, enhanced by the horrible itching and sucking bites, Victor began to lose sight of what he was doing. He stumbled away from the roots and the remaining worms and began to roar, breathing heavily and choking on the gouts of blood and spittle in his throat.

Why was he so tired? What was this horrible itch? He began to yank the worms out of himself, and as he saw them, his rage was stoked to new heights—he veritably steamed with it. Victor lifted his arms up and out, looked at the cavern ceiling, and screamed with such horrible ferocity that it would have deafened a bystander. He arched his back, and with all his being, he screamed again and flooded his pathways with the last of his rage. The worms clinging to his flesh burst apart, shredded by the violence of his fury.

Bereft of rage but cleared of the parasites, Victor looked around the cavern, gasping with effort. The ground near him was drenched with green and yellow ichor, littered with the shredded flesh of the worms. His coyotes were corralling a pile of worms near one of the cavern walls, biting and tearing at them as they tried to separate from the ball.

The plucky canines seemed only mildly bothered by the acidic ichor released with each of their bites, and Victor felt they could contain that squirming mass near the wall. Finally, at the center of the cavern, a dozen or so fat, long worms still clung to the enormous taproot of the tree.

Victor pulled Lifedrinker off his belt again and strode toward the root. As he got near, he cast Project Spirit, and a wave of black and purple Energy surged out of him, drenching the worms in fear made manifest.

In the past, when he’d cast Project Spirit and directed sickly, twisted inspiration at his foes, he’d struck doubt into their hearts. This was something far more visceral—Victor knew at a fundamental level that he’d just inundated those worms with terror incarnate, and some primal instinct in their parasitic brains caused them to panic.

Every single long, thick tube of toothy flesh released the enormous root and began to flap spastically along the cavern floor away from Victor. He laughed and charged after them, cleaving them into chunks of ruined, acidic flesh with Lifedrinker. She arced through the air and flesh alike, not slowing as she sheared through them. The acidic blood seemed to bother her not at all, and Victor saw her silvery veins pulse and throb with the Energy she pulled away from each severed worm. “Fuck yes! Run, fuckers!” Victor laughed, hacking them to bits as they retreated.

When the last of the fleeing worms was shredded, Victor turned back to the pile his Coyotes had been working on and saw that he was down to just two beleaguered companions. Most of the worms were dead, shredded and torn, but a few still struggled to work their way back to the root, and Victor charged forward, helping his coyotes to finish them off. When the last one lay twitching at his feet, Victor stood and, lungs heaving for breath, howled his victory, laughing as his two coyotes joined in.

The air was foul, and his eyes stung from the vapors of the acid in the soil, so Victor started walking back toward the tunnel that led away from the cavern. That’s when he saw the thousands of golden motes of Energy beginning to form along the cavern floor, and he braced himself for the impact.

A few heartbeats later, Victor saw the motes stream together and then surge toward him, and he was transfixed by the effect. His aches and itchy scabs faded away, and his Core instantly recharged. Victor howled again, and his two companions, stubbornly clinging to this plane of existence, joined in again, their high, yelping voices mingling with his deeper, madder sound.

***Congratulations! You have completed a Quest: Descend to the great tree's roots and cut out the corruption that has plagued it for nearly two centuries. Approach the Silverbark Monarch’s taproot to claim your reward.***

As Victor swiped away the message, he noticed that the air was already more clear—he didn’t smell the corruption so heavily anymore, and his eyes weren’t burning. Looking around, he saw hundreds of tiny roots probing out of the hard-packed soil, wrapping around the bits of torn worm flesh and dragging it under.

He turned to the massive knot of roots at the cavern's center, pleased to see it wasn’t as dark as before. The ragged holes where the worms had been burrowing were already healed over, and the flesh of the root was lighter; Victor thought he saw a shimmer of golden Energy pulse through it, but it might have been a trick of the light—his Dauntless Radiance still shone down upon the center of the cavern. Walking toward it, Victor saw the ground shift, and then a distinctly blue root wriggled out of the soil and coiled upon itself to form a kind of basin.

Again, a soundless voice filled his mind, this time not shouting, but clear, almost soothing, “The sap of my heart, hero. For you or your companion—only one may drink.” As he watched, the coiled, blue root bowl filled with a shimmering, silvery liquid. Even from a few feet away, Victor could feel the Energy within that sap, and his body yearned for it like a man seeing pizza after a ten-day fast.

“Me or my companion?” At first, Victor thought the tree had meant his coyotes, but as he looked around, he realized they were gone. Then it clicked—it meant Lifedrinker. “Oh, of course. You’re definitely up, chica. Don’t even doubt it,” he said, lifting the axe free of his belt. He knelt over the coiled root and very gently dipped her blade into the sap. She throbbed and vibrated in his hand, and then he saw the thick fluid slowly start to drain, and he knew she was drinking it.

Lifedrinker had already regained two of her long, silvery veins, but now they thickened, grew branches, and spread out through the dark metal. Victor felt his cheeks start to ache and realized he was smiling broadly, his eyes filling with tears as he watched Lifedrinker not only restored but pushed further. Her axehead pulsed with silvery light, and when it faded, he saw the sap was gone, but she was radiant, her Heart Silver edge and veins glowing from within, only slowly fading back to their usual luster.

Victor stood and hefted Lifedrinker, and she felt different, somehow. When he moved her, it almost felt like she was moving with him, like the difference between lifting an unconscious person and helping someone to stand. “Are you there, beautiful?” he asked, wondering if he should touch his head to her metal again.

He felt the axe vibrate so rapidly in his hand that it was practically humming. He lifted her, looking into the bright silvery veins, and then he heard her voice, undeniably feminine, rich, like crystal, chiming over placid waters, “I’m here, Victor.” With those simple words, a flood of emotion surged into him through Lifedrinker’s living handle—love, pride, satisfaction. She’d known she could count on him to restore her, and she was exceedingly proud of him and herself for being right.

“That’s it. That’s it,” he said, lifting her to rest on his shoulder. Victor, still beaming ear to ear, turned and began his journey out of the tree, wondering at his luck. Had he stumbled upon something rare and impossibly fortuitous, or was this world just filled with opportunity, ripe for the taking for an enterprising adventurer?