Grok Strongarm's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

The smoke still hung over the ruined grove when Grok and the tree king began their search. They needed a way to stop the winged beast. It had burned trees and a golden house, and it would come back. Grok knelt by a fallen trunk and pushed the ash aside with his hands. His boar dug beside him, snout in the dirt. The tree king raised his roots and turned the black soil over. "Look for anything strange," the king said. "The beast fears something. Find it." Grok's boar squealed and clawed at the ground. Grok dug where it pointed. His fingers struck something smooth and round. He lifted it free. It was an orb of pale glass, warm in his palm. Light moved inside it like slow fire. The tree king leaned close. His white eyes glowed brighter. "That is old," he said. "Older than my forest. Put it in the beast's mouth. It will drink the beast's power." Grok closed his hand around the orb. "How do we get near its mouth?" "We do not chase it," the king said. "We wait. It hunts here. It will return." They did not wait long. A roar came from the sky. The beast dropped through the smoke, wings spread wide, its tiger head snarling. Fire dripped from its jaws. Its horse feet slammed the ground and split the earth. Grok ran at it with the orb held high. The beast turned and breathed flame. Grok dove behind a fallen trunk. Heat rolled over his back. The tree king thrust his roots up from the soil. They wrapped the beast's legs and pinned it in place. It thrashed and screeched, but the roots held. "Now," the king said. "The mouth." Grok climbed the trunk and leaped onto the beast's striped neck. It bucked under him. He gripped a horn with one hand. With the other he jammed the orb between its teeth. The beast bit down. The glass cracked. Light poured out. It flowed from the beast into the orb, bright and fast. The fire in its jaws died. Its wings sagged. Its roar shrank to a low whine. The beast dropped to the ground, small and quiet, no bigger than the boar. Its flames were gone. Grok slid off and stood over it, breathing hard. The powerless creature blinked up at him. It did not burn. It did not fight. The tree king pulled his roots back into the soil. "The beast is beaten," he said. "You kept your word. You fought it with no axe." Grok looked at his empty hands, then at the shrunken beast. The threat was gone. But so was the fire that had cleared his trees faster than any blade. He still had a forest to fell for his friend's pen, and no tool to fell it with. And now the tree king watched him, the shared enemy dead, the truce with nothing left to hold it together.