Obloe's Arc

Chapter 21 of 8

Obloe crossed the last stretch of broken land and dropped into his grove. The heartwood seed sat in its bed, half-swallowed by creeping gray. But a worse sound stopped him. To the north, the pinned decay god thrashed. Yaahahahahaawayyy lay buried under moss and vine, the lion head snapping at the grass that held him. Each heave of his body pulled at the roots. Gaia's green net strained. The grove's living barrier bent with every lunge, and a seam of it had already split. Obloe understood at once. The god was dying because his source had been destroyed, but a dying thing thrashes hardest. If he tore the barrier, the rot behind it would flood the seed bed and choke the anchor for good. Obloe had crossed a void and burned rot from his own chest to save this seed. He would not watch it drown now. Woga Dimples arrived behind him, antlers cutting the gray air, his dark suit streaked with ash from the run. The jackalope studied the split seam with one glance. "The vines will not hold him long," Woga said flatly. "Cover the tear, or the bed floods. You have moments." "Fire will burn Gaia's net," Obloe said. "If I burn the vines, I free him." "Then do not burn the vines." Woga pointed a white glove at the god's open jaw, where the moss had thinned. "Burn the thing inside him. The old serpents rot from the mouth. Aim there." Obloe looked. The god's throat still pulsed with a last knot of gray light, a scrap of the source he had carried inside himself. That was the engine of the thrashing. Kill it, and the body would fall still. He planted his claws and breathed. His fire came full now, white at the core, the fire Daath's machine had steadied. He did not spray wide. He sent a thin lance straight down the god's open throat. The gray knot inside flared, screamed, and went out. Yaahahahahaawayyy shuddered once. The great body slackened. His lunging stopped. The vines around him stilled, then tightened, pressing him flat into the earth. The split seam in the barrier sagged closed as the strain left it. The god did not die and did not rise. He lay pinned and quiet, an empty husk under the green. Obloe's chest heaved. He turned to the seed bed. The gray at its edges had crept a finger closer, but the barrier held. The immediate flood was stopped. "You held the wall," Woga said. He brushed ash from his sleeve. "Barely." Obloe looked at the seed. It was safe for now, but still half-gray, still unhealed. The god was silenced, yet the rot already inside the bed had not gone anywhere. He had bought the anchor its life. He had not yet cleaned it. The seed needed more than a stilled enemy. It needed the gray driven out of its bed entirely, or the whole grove would rot from the root.