Demetri's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

The seal held, but Demetri felt it strain. His dark half pulled at him like a hooked fish on a line. He followed the pull through the grove, past the great hanging trees, until the moss gave way to bare stone. There the ground had died. A wide pit gaped in the earth. Green tendrils curled from its rim, thick as arms, dripping rot. The pit breathed. Each breath fouled the air. "There is your wound," Tiroc said. His hammer flared as he stepped beside Demetri. "Ground's poisoned deep. That's what's tearing at you." Demetri nodded. The pit was the sick root of it all. While it festered, the imbalance would keep dragging his dark half loose, and the seal would fail. He had to heal the ground itself. He knelt and reached toward the earth. A green light rose from the pit before he could touch it. A skull, jaws open, wings of bone. It poured pale fog from its mouth. The fog crept over the stone and killed the last living moss. More skulls rose behind it. Their fog thickened. Demetri drew a hard breath and pulled the rot toward himself, as he had done with the buried root. But the pit was too large. The corruption flooded in faster than he could hold it. His dark palm blackened. His light half dimmed. He felt himself tipping. "You're slipping," Tiroc warned. "Balance, elf, or the seal breaks." Small shapes darted through the fog. Green frogs, upright, with clear wings and little belts and satchels. They leapt from tendril to tendril. One landed on Demetri's shoulder and pointed at the pit's far edge. "You cannot drink it all," the frog said. His voice was thin and quick. "Give it to the roots. We show you where." Demetri understood. He did not need to swallow the rot. He needed to feed it back into living ground and let the forest break it down. The frogs swarmed the pit's rim. They dug their small hands into cracks and opened old channels between the stones. Demetri poured the corruption he held into those channels, thin and slow. The frogs guided it into the deep roots of the grove. He held his two halves even and breathed. Dark drew corruption. Light steadied his hand. The frogs sang, and the roots drank. One by one the winged skulls flickered and fell. Their fog thinned. The tendrils curled back and stilled. The pit closed to a scar of clean stone. Demetri opened his eyes. The pull on his dark half was gone. The ground held its own balance now, and the seal no longer strained. Tiroc lowered his hammer. "It's done." The lead frog folded his wings. "The rot was buried by a hand that came from the north road," he said. "A rider. Silver armor. We watched him pass three nights before your sickness began." Demetri looked north. The pit was healed. But now he had a face to hunt.