Obloe's Arc

Chapter 3 of 8

The hound rose on pale legs. Its jaws glowed. Obloe crouched at the mouth of the passage, the wrapped seed just past the beast, close enough to smell. He knew the moment he lunged, those teeth would find his throat. He needed the hound gone, and he had no way to move it. Then a small light dropped through a crack in the ruined ceiling. Ashles landed on a broken beam, wings still. He had not expected her here. She had sent him north with a warning that the rot would eat his grove too. Now she had followed the rot herself. Dirt streaked her arms. Her band was smaller than before, and it showed in her face. "The decay is spreading south past your tower," she said. "I came to see if you were dead." She looked at the hound, then the seed. "You are not. Good." "It guards the seed," Obloe said. "I cannot reach it." Ashles studied the beast. "It is made of despair. Not flesh." She glanced up, toward the stage. In the dark above, Saturn watched with black, unblinking eyes. He had promised Obloe would fail. He did not speak now. He only waited. "Despair feeds on the willing," Ashles said. "Give it nothing to grip, it fades." She pointed at Obloe. "Stop bracing for the bite. Walk to your seed like the hound is already gone." Obloe's chest tightened. Every part of him wanted to fight. That was the wrong move, and he saw it. The hound grew brighter each time he flinched. It was drinking his fear. He forced his shoulders down. He fixed his eyes on the cloth and not the teeth. He took one heavy step. The hound snarled, jaws inches from his skull. He did not stop. He took another step. The light in its jaws dimmed. He pushed his fear down into the stone and kept walking. The hound lunged. Its teeth passed through his neck like cold smoke and closed on nothing. Obloe reached the seed and pulled it under his foreleg. The hound thinned to gray haze and was gone. Above them, Saturn made a low sound. "You borrowed her strength," he said. "Alone you would have flinched." Then he stepped back into the dark. Obloe held the seed against his chest. It was warm. But when he loosened the cloth, his breath caught. The heartwood had split down the middle. A thin black thread of rot ran through the crack. The seed still lived, but the decay had already reached inside it. Ashles saw it too. "It is dying," she said. "Slowly. You have days. Maybe less." Obloe had the seed at last. It would not save his grove unless he could pull the rot back out before it took the core.