Obloe's Arc

Chapter 4 of 8

Obloe held the cracked seed under his foreleg and turned for the doors. He needed clean ground fast. Every minute on this poisoned earth fed the black thread inside the seed. The rot spread faster here. He could feel it, a cold itch against his scales. One clear path led out. Something stood in it. Saturn filled the aisle between the ruined seats. Black eyes. Black horns curled from a shape made of despair. The forgotten god did not move to strike. He only blocked the way and smiled. "Leaving so soon," Saturn said. "With a dead thing in your claws. Stay. Watch it rot in your arms." He gestured at the poisoned floor. "The ground will finish what the thief started." Obloe knew the trap now. Saturn wanted him to fight. To rage. Despair grew fat on that. He had beaten the hound the same way, by giving it nothing. He pushed his anger down and studied the wall behind the god. Then the far doors groaned open on their own. A huge shape poured through. A lion's head above a serpent's body, mane the color of dead grass. Rot trailed from every scale. Obloe had heard the fairies whisper his name in fear. The maker who cursed all who would not name him maker. Yaahahahahaawayyy had come to see his poison at work. Saturn's smile faltered. He shrank back a step. The forgotten god feared the thing that fed the whole decay. "This theatre is mine," Saturn said. "Nothing is yours," Yaahahahahaawayyy said. "I made the ground you stand on. I will unmake it." His yellow eyes found Obloe and the seed. "That is a living thing. Living things defy me." The two turned on each other. Saturn hurled shadow. The serpent answered with a wave of rot that ate the front row of seats to dust. The clear path split open as they clashed. Obloe did not wait. He ran for the gap their fight had torn in the wall. He burst into gray daylight. His claws struck soil, but the soil was still poisoned. Ahead, beyond a dead field, he saw color. A small house woven from blossoms and mushroom caps sat on a patch of green grass. Living ground. The fairies' cottage. He drove his tired body toward it. He reached the grass and collapsed. He set the seed on clean earth and pried the cloth back. The black thread had grown. It reached halfway through the core now. The living soil slowed it, but did not stop it. A small light drifted from the cottage window. Ashles landed beside him, wings low. In her hands she held a glass bottle. Soft light curled inside it. "I could not pull the rot alone," she said. "So I saved this. Bottled hope. It may hold the seed a little longer." She looked north, toward the theatre. "But he is loose now. We are out of time."