Malachus Crowthorn's Arc

Chapter 2 of 1

The staff pulsed in Malachus's grip, heavy with the flood's whole current. Above him, the treehouse dripped dead leaves into the black water. Then a horn sounded from the platform. Marea's people spilled down the ladders, thorned spears in hand, faces hard as the trees they had lost. They had watched their branches rot all night. Now they came for the man who killed them. Malachus stood in the muck between two needs. To hold the current, he had to keep both hands on the staff. To fight, he needed a hand free. The first spear split the water beside his knee. He could not do both. He reached inside his robe for the cracked bottle he always carried. Its flame never died. Fumes leaked from its seams in a green haze. He tore the stopper loose and swung the bottle in a wide arc. Poison smoke poured across the water in a thick wall. The attackers stopped, coughing, blind. It bought him a breath. It did not stop them for long. "You cannot poison what you already killed," Marea called. She stood on the lowest rung, weaving a red-flowered vine between her fingers as she spoke. Dark dahlias bloomed along its length, fed by water he no longer let flow. Her calm frightened him more than the spears. "Give back the current. My people will let you leave the swamp alive." Malachus knew the trade. Release the flood, save his skin, lose everything he came for. He tightened his grip instead. The staff drank deeper. All at once the water bulged near the bank. A bloated shape rose from the mud, thick as a log and slick with scale. The canal serpent had lain drowned in the pit for years. His command over the flood woke it now. He pointed the crocodile head at the attackers. The serpent surged forward on his will. Its swollen body knocked the first spearmen flat and coiled between Malachus and the rest. The green smoke and the thrashing beast broke their line. They scrambled back up the ladders, dragging the fallen with them. Marea did not run. She met his eyes across the churning water. "You've made a servant of a dead thing," she said. "That is all you'll ever grow here." Then she climbed after her people and was gone into the dark leaves. Malachus stood alone in the smoke, the serpent circling his legs. He had held the current and driven them off. But he had spent the last of his flame bottle, and the swamp folk now knew his weakness. They would return in greater number. To keep the flood, he needed walls no spear could reach. He looked past the dying trees, toward the far ridge where an old stone castle waited, its spires black against the swamp fog. He would take the current there.