All of It

HIS IS NOT OKAY!”

Karneth hollered as Beeps brought both forehooves down through the oakweaver beneath him. Its abdomen burst against the earth, black ichor spraying the dwarf’s boots as the creature folded beneath the bramblehorn’s weight. The beast came down snorting, lurched sideways when another spider struck at his flank, then lowered his head and drove straight into the next cluster before Karneth could steady himself.

“Hold still, you woolly bastard!”

Three spiders scattered through the roots. One did not move fast enough. Beeps crushed it beneath a forehoof while Karneth leaned from the saddle and buried an axe in the creature scrambling along his side.

The oakweavers were everywhere now, spilling fallen trunks and the corpses they had torn themselves from. The rogue slipped beneath an oakweaver as it sprang for Karneth, a hairy leg raking her shoulder before her daggers split its head and dropped it beneath Beeps’ hooves.

“Thanks, lass!”

Av'elyth caught herself against the bramblehorn.

“You’re welcome.”

An arrow passed over her shoulder and buried itself in the eye of another spider.

Lunara had already turned away.

“You’re welcome!”

She fired almost as quickly as she could draw. Jaeshu stood close enough to reach into her quiver without asking, his own already empty. Near Oesora, Navian caught a leaping oakweaver against the face of his shield and smashed it into the ground. His boot came down upon the white metal hard enough to crush the creature beneath it as Oesora cast a pearly barrier across his exposed side.

“Stay behind me!”

Navian no longer chased kills. His attention moved between the others, stepping wherever the circle threatened to break. Oesora knew that look. He had stopped fighting for ground and started fighting for people. Somehow, that frightened her more.

Ahead of them, an inferno erupted through the dead trees.

Eightrees came through it.

Flame rolled across the ancient oakweaver’s underside and along the hooked joints of its legs, but the enormous creature crossed the burning ground with terrifying speed. Black chitin reflected the fire in broken orange streaks as Gaz stumbled backward, hood fallen, sweat darkening his hair.

Violet light gathered around the crystal of his staff. He thrust it forward, and fire struck Eightrees across the head. The creature barely slowed.

“Gaz!” Oesora shouted. “Stop attacking!”

He thrust the staff forward again. The next blast tore wider than the first and scorched the side of a dead trunk, but Eightrees drove straight into it. One enormous foreleg punched into the earth where Gaz had been standing a beat before.

“Gaz! Walls!”

The wizard rolled to his knees and swept the crystal across his body. A rectangular flame surged upward between two trees, but one side collapsed almost immediately while the other twisted uselessly into the branches.

Eightrees found the opening. Gaz staggered back.

Oesora looked to Navian. He was already fighting two oakweavers at once, shield up, sword moving.

“Navian!”

He never looked over.

Oesora growled under her breath and broke from the group in a sprint.

A spider crossed her path. She threw a barrier without slowing. The creature struck the pearl wall hard enough to tumble sideways, and Oesora slipped past before it could regain its feet.

Gaz saw her coming. “Oesora? What are you doing?”

“Again.”

Eightrees drove through the remains of his failed wall.

His eyes widened. “Again what?”

“Fire!”

“Oesora—”

“Gaz!”

The crystal blazed violet. Fire exploded upward before them, enough power to fill the space between the trees, but the flames buckled and rolled over one another as Gaz fought to hold them.

Oesora lifted both hands. Her Light answered weakly.

Pale strands stretched from her fingers and entered the blaze, threading themselves through the flames. A pearly lattice took shape within them, defining edges where Gaz’s magic had none. Oesora drew her hands inward, and the fire followed until a burning wall stood between them and the ancient oakweaver.

Eightrees lurched forward and struck it hard.

The impact traveled through Oesora’s arms and drove her backward. Gaz caught her shoulder with one hand while keeping the staff fixed with the other. The wall bowed beneath the enormous creature’s weight, its foremost legs pressing deep into the flames.

Oesora forced her hands forward. The lattice tightened, Gaz poured more fire into it, and Eightrees recoiled. For half an instant, Gaz stared through the burning shield.

“...oh.”

Oesora almost smiled.

Eightrees struck again.

Behind them, the others were losing ground just as quickly. Beeps wheeled back toward the center beneath Karneth as spiders flooded through the clearing. Av'elyth ran beside them, three shallow tears dark across one shoulder.

Jaeshu’s arrows had run dry long ago. He moved in beside Lunara, close enough to reach into her quiver without breaking stride. He pulled another. His arrow pinned a spider to the side of a trunk.

"Three left."

Lunara took the next shaft without looking. A pair of oakweavers fell, skewered together.

“Two.”

The ranger grabbed an arrow and loosed. Karneth's saddle was clear again.

“One.”

They both closed their hands around the final arrow. He looked at it for half a moment, then held it toward her.

“Take it.”

Lunara drew, whirled, aimed, and fired past him. The shaft struck a far stone at the base of an oak, glanced sharply beneath the fallen tree, and disappeared from sight.

A high-pitched squeal split the air as a spider tumbled from behind the trunk.

Then another.

Then a third.

Jaeshu looked at her.

“Out here.” Lunara slung Aloy across her back. “This is mine.”

Jaeshu drew one of his blades and tossed the other toward Lunara. She caught it, nearly lost it, then slashed at the first spider that reached her. Steel skipped across shell. She drove the lower limb of her longbow into another creature’s face like a club while Jaeshu stepped around snapping fangs and buried his sword beneath an oakweaver’s head.

Empty bows hung across their backs.

Av'elyth split another oakweaver in two. For a breath, she looked up at the canopy above. She had spent centuries as little more than a common elf, forbidden from setting foot beneath these royal trees of Ilvarin’del. Yet now, somehow, she was here at last—bleeding, surrounded by corpses and monsters, fighting for her life in the very heart of it.

Of all the ways she had imagined entering this place, never this.

Eightrees pressed into the burning shield.

Gaz planted both feet and fed the flames while Oesora held their shape. Her fingers trembled. The pearly structure flickered wherever those enormous legs forced against it, but for several breaths neither side gave ground.

Then Eightrees drew back.

Gaz’s shoulders loosened. Oesora felt the change before she understood it.

“No, wait—!”

The ancient creature lunged, its full weight striking the center of the shield.

The pearl lattice shattered. The wizard's fire burst outward in a violent wave, ripped free of the shape Oesora had given it. Flame rolled up the trunks on either side as Eightrees drove through the middle.

Gaz hit the ground. Oesora was thrown backward hard enough to empty her lungs. Fragments of Light scattered through the clearing, most vanishing before they touched anything. A few reached the earth and fell across a waiting oakweaver. The priestess began to conjure another small barrier of Light—

Then stopped.

The spider had regained its feet, but it did not attack. A spark of Light from the barrier rested upon the oakweaver’s shell, then seeped between the narrow seams of its chitin and vanished into the body. Its clustered eyes fixed upon her, and for one strange moment neither of them moved.

Then the creature backed away. Oesora stared after it. Mere seconds ago, it had been trying to kill her. Now it retreated quietly into the forest, moving against the current of the other creatures still pouring toward them.

Somewhere behind her, a wizard yelled her name.

She pushed herself onto one elbow. Something moved beside her hand.

A blade of grass had pierced the blood-dark soil. Beside it, fresh moss crept across the exposed curve of a dead root where one fragment of her shattered Light had fallen, and tiny leaves unfolded from a vine so dry it had seemed ready to crumble.

For one heartbeat, the earth lived.

Then the fragment vanished. The grass bowed and browned, the new leaves curling upon themselves as grey returned to the moss.

Oesora stared. Every spell had faded too quickly since they entered the forest.

Not vanished...

Oesora tilted her head. The priestess pressed a single finger into the dark earth and summoned what little Light she could. Several bright green shoots pushed through the soil around it.

Her hand recoiled. The shoots withered almost at once. Oesora leaned closer.

...consumed?

A terrible little hope opened inside her.

“Oesora!!”

Gaz’s shout tore across the clearing. He had reached his staff. Fire surged between him and Eightrees, but without Oesora to hold it together the wall immediately began to warp. One side folded inward as the creature pressed toward the opening.

She looked once more at the dead blade of grass. Then she ran.

“Just hold it!”

Gaz stared after her. “With what?”

“Fire!”

“It isn’t holding!”

“Use... better fire!” she yelled.

"The hell does that even mean?!"

A blaze roared behind her almost immediately. Apparently he had understood well enough.

A smaller spider lunged across her path, and she cast a small barrier into its face without breaking stride. The creature smashed through it almost instantly, but the impact twisted it aside long enough for her to pass. Ahead, Navian disappeared behind a surge of hooked legs. Her heart jumped. Then the paladin came through them. His shield slammed one creature sideways. Another sprang from a root at his shoulder, and he caught it against the white metal before driving his sword beneath its body.

Oesora reached him and seized the edge of his cloak.

"Navian!"

He caught a leaping oakweaver in one gauntleted hand and brought it down across the rim of his shield, splitting the creature in two. Black ichor streaked the white metal. Oesora grabbed his cloak and pulled again. Harder.

"Navian!"

He spun toward her, battle focus vanishing the instant he saw who had grabbed him. “Oesora?” His eyes went past her toward the place she should have been. Toward Gaz. “The hell are you doing here?”

“The forest!”

“Yes, priestess, the forest! It hates us at the moment!” A spider sprang through the brush before Navian could answer. He caught it against his shield, turned with the impact, and kicked it backward into Gaz's fire. It squealed as the flames swallowed it, its body blistering and collapsing into the heat.

Oesora rose beside him, one hand still twisted in his cloak while the other pointed toward the patch of dead grass at her feet. “Look at the ground!”

Navian looked down.

Bright green shoots pushed through the blackened earth around his boots, rising where the last traces of Oesora's Light had touched the soil. They lived for barely a heartbeat before the color drained from them and they withered away.

“The forest doesn't hate us!”

Navian ducked as Av'elyth vaulted over his head, caught an oakweaver in midair, and ripped both daggers through its belly before either of them touched the ground.

“Under all of this,” Oesora pressed, splashing a barrier of Light to turn aside another strike, “it’s still alive!”

Navian looked at the priestess, then past her.

The dwarf and his bramblehorn were being forced inward beneath a flood of hooked limbs. His sister and the ranger fought shoulder to shoulder with blades, both too tired now to waste movement. The elf ripped one dagger from beneath a spider as two more crawled across the corpse toward her.

His brother's fire buckled.

Eightrees advanced another two giant steps.

“They are not evil!” she yelled. Her voice reached Navian as though from somewhere far away.

His gaze moved once more across the clearing: Gaz retreating step by step; Lunara and Jaeshu without arrows; Karneth barely controlling Beeps amid the swarm; Av'elyth bleeding; Oesora standing before him with almost no Light left to give. The circle was disappearing.

His attention returned to the dead grass beside his boot, then back to Oesora. That's when he finally saw it in her eyes.

Fear. The very thing he had promised her she would never have to face again.

She noticed the change in his expression, in the sudden stillness that settled over him, but she could not read it.

The paladin lowered his sword and drove the point into the earth. The sound frightened Oesora more than anything else in the clearing.

“...Navian?”

He did not answer. He tore his arm free of the shield straps as he dropped to one knee, white metal striking the roots beside him.

As he drew back his hand, Oesora saw the green blade of grass beneath him.

Her breath caught. “Navian, NO!”

She lunged.

His palm struck the earth.

Light ignited beneath Navian.

White brilliance gathered in his chest, swelled through his shoulders and arms, then streamed downward from him in luminous ribbons. It spilled over his armor like water made radiant, ran across his hands and knees, and disappeared into the blackened soil.

Oesora caught his shoulder.

“Stop!”

Bright emerald grass broke through the dead leaves around him. Moss spread across roots stripped bare by rot. Tiny shoots forced their way between stones that had not known green in decades, while brittle vines stirred against the trunks and opened leaves no larger than fingernails.

Av'elyth stopped with one dagger still buried beneath a spider. A thread of green crept along a root beside her boot. For one stunned heartbeat, she watched it. Then she tore the blade free and turned back toward the swarm.

At the center of the clearing, Navian’s shoulders sagged.

“Navian...”

More radiance poured from his chest. Oesora dropped beside him. “Navian, what are you doing!”

He opened his eyes. Another pulse passed through him hard enough to make him flinch. Oesora stared at the white streams disappearing into the earth. She grabbed his shoulders and screamed.

The spider nearest them stopped with one foreleg raised above the ground, its mandibles hanging open. Another slowed beside it.

Then more.

Stillness spread outward through the swarm until spiders dragging themselves over roots froze mid-stride and others halted among the bodies of the elves from which they had emerged. A creature charging Jaeshu stopped so close that his sword had already begun its arc before he realized there would be no strike to meet.

“Jaeshu,” Lunara breathed.

“I see it.”

Beside Karneth and Beeps, an oakweaver stood scarcely a hoof's length away. Both axes remained ready, but the creature did nothing. Its clustered eyes reflected the white Light crawling through the roots beneath them.

Across the clearing, Gaz’s firewall still burned. Eightrees stood behind it.

“Navian?” Gaz’s voice cracked across the clearing.

Navian looked toward him and lifted one hand. Palm down. He lowered it slowly.

Gaz’s eyes widened. His gaze snapped toward Eightrees, then back to Navian. His fingers tightened around the staff, and his head moved once, barely.

Navian kept his hand raised. Then lowered it again.

For a breath, the brothers simply looked at one another through the fire. Gaz swallowed.

His staff began to descend. The firewall sank with it. Flame collapsed from the branches, shrank along the roots, and guttered into nothing.

Eightrees stood unobstructed before him. The wizard stopped breathing.

The ancient oakweaver did not move. Gaz stepped backward.

Nothing.

Another step. Eightrees remained still. Gaz backed through the motionless spiders until he reached his brother. Only then did he breathe again.

Oesora looked back at Navian. The Light surrounding him had grown brighter. Navian himself had grown pale. The faint sheen along his armor was disappearing, but Oesora’s eyes caught on the sword planted beside him.

White fire still traced its edge. Then it flickered. And went out.

The blade remained buried in the earth, dull steel reflecting Navian’s Light from somewhere outside itself. Oesora stared at it. She had never seen his sword look ordinary before. Neither had she ever imagined how much that would frighten her.

“...stop.” The streams continued.

“Navian, stop.” Her eyes filled with tears.

“Enough!”

She caught both sides of Navian's cloak and forced his face toward her. If there was any moment where the priestess could repay him, it was here. Now.

“Give it mine!” She dropped to one knee and pressed her palm flat against the earth. A weak glow flickered beneath her fingers. Fresh shoots stirred around her hand.

Navian caught her wrist.

“No.”

The glow broke when he pulled her away.

“Why?” she pleaded.

His smile was weak.

“I promised... you would not fear the dark again.”

*Of all the promises for him to remember...*

Her head shook once. Navian looked at her with the sincerity of something far deeper than friendship.

"Keep yours. Always."

Whatever she meant to say never came.

Behind them, the spiders began to move. Oesora spun, one hand flying up... but they were retreating. All of them. Hundreds. Silently. Those nearest Navian withdrew first, picking carefully across roots and bodies as they left the living ground around him. Others followed until the swarm parted in slow waves and a narrow strip of earth opened through their midst.

Farther ahead, the opening widened. Hundreds of oakweavers parted and crowded toward the trees. Navian tried to straighten.

“...Walk.”

Everyone faced him.

“Now.” He swallowed for breath. “Steady. Do not run.”

No one argued.

Jaeshu reached them first. He pulled a leather rein from Beeps’ saddle and guided the bramblehorn alongside Navian. Then he laid his friend's right forearm across the front of the saddle and bound it there, loose enough to spare the arm but tight enough that the beast could bear some of his weight if his legs failed.

Gaz remained beneath Navian’s left arm. Suddenly, the years between them seemed impossibly large. He could not remember the last time he had been this close to his brother. Perhaps not since they were children.

Karneth kept to Beeps’ outer side with his axe lowered. Av'elyth moved opposite him with her daggers held close against her thighs. Lunara walked backward, watching the rear by instinct.

Then they entered the path.

The first spider stood so close that one folded leg nearly brushed Jaeshu's boot.

Navian sagged against Gaz. “Steady,” he whispered. They forced themselves onward.

The path carried the group between two living walls. Oakweavers crowded among roots and bodies and clung motionless between the trunks. Clustered ruby eyes glittered in the dark. Mandibles clicked softly, while hooked legs scraped bark and stone whenever one shifted its weight.

More than once Oesora passed close enough to see herself reflected in those black eyes. Every instinct screamed at her to summon Light. She kept her hands at her sides. Doing nothing had never required so much of her.

Karneth passed within reach of a spider crouched upon a root and did not raise his axe. Av'elyth slipped between two more without lifting either dagger.

Behind them, Gaz’s staff remained dark. Beeps stepped carefully beside Navian. Each time the paladin’s weight shifted, Gaz staggered beneath him and adjusted without complaint. Where Navian passed, small traces of green followed. A blade of grass rose beside the bramblehorn’s hooves. Moss returned in thin patches across stone. Tiny leaves unfurled from roots that had been dead when they entered Ilvarin’del, brightening as Navian approached.

Av'elyth slowed beside a blackened branch. A single young leaf trembled there. For the briefest moment, the elf lifted her hand toward it. She stopped herself before touching it and moved on. She had imagined touching Ilvarin’del a thousand times. Never like this.

Navian’s left knee buckled. Gaz caught him before he fell. Oesora moved closer on instinct, one hand pressing against Navian’s back as he forced his leg beneath himself again.

Ahead, the trees had begun to thin. Av'elyth looked to her right. Between two dead trunks, grass had broken through the old leaves. Moss spread in a thin green crescent across a fallen stone, and several new shoots stood among the roots.

She stopped. For an instant the elf was a child again, standing in a forest she was forbidden to enter. Now she stood beneath those trees. And something living stood with her.

Tears slipped down her face. “Grandmother...” she whispered. Her eyes moved across the small patches of green.

“Finally.”

Navian stumbled ahead of her. She kept walking. Pale moonlight appeared between the trees. They moved. Jaeshu and Lunara remained beneath the final branches until everyone else was clear. Only then did they back into the grass.

For the first time in what felt like days, there was nothing above them. No branches knitted together against the dark. No ropes disappearing into the canopy. No pale bodies turning slowly overhead.

Nothing.

Only sky.

Stars stretched from horizon to horizon, cold and impossibly bright.

Nobody moved. Or spoke.

A deep scrape sounded behind them.

Everyone stopped.

Eightrees had stepped a single leg into the clearing. The enormous creature approached through the trees at a slow, measured pace, smaller spiders shifting aside beneath its legs.

Karneth raised both axes. Av'elyth turned. Gaz’s hand tightened on his staff, though he knew full well that if Eightrees came for them again, he had nothing left to answer with.

“Don’t,” Navian murmured.

Eightrees stopped upon the earth they had crossed. Slowly, the massive oakweaver rose to its full height upon its legs.

A breeze moved through Ilvarin’del.

Av'elyth went still.

It passed among the branches just as before, through the hanging ropes above them. For the first time, the wind from the forest carried something else with it—faint beneath blood and earth, but unmistakable.

Sweetness.

There was no song.

Only Eightrees remained.

The towering beast took two slow, heavy steps forward...

...then, almost imperceptibly, lowered its tiny head.

Slowly, the ancient oakweaver backed away into the forest, folding its massive legs beneath itself as the darkness swallowed its body. Only its ruby eyes remained, glistening between the trees for a moment.

Then they, too, were gone.

Wind passed through the grass and across their faces. Lunara tipped her head back as though she had forgotten the world could be that large. Karneth lowered both axes until their heads rested in the grass and stared upward.

Gaz bent beneath Navian’s weight, gasping openly. Then he looked up too. His mouth parted slightly. Oesora followed his gaze.

For several breaths there was only wind, grass, and more sky than any of them had seen since entering the Golden Quiet. After so many days beneath branches and bodies, the emptiness above them almost felt impossible.

Jaeshu looked from the forest to the grass beneath his boots. Av'elyth looked at him. One by one, the others lowered their eyes from the treeline and found each other in the silence.

The ranger whispered to the group.

“Now.”

Lunara slashed through the leather binding Navian’s arm to Beeps’ saddle. Gaz caught his brother as the support fell away, and together he and Karneth lifted Navian across the bramblehorn’s back.

His body folded heavily over the saddle.

Karneth seized the reins. “Grakh varrak!” Beeps lunged forward.

There was no formation now, no attempt to conserve strength or move quietly. Just escape. Av'elyth tore across the field with both daggers still in her hands. Karneth ran beside Beeps. Gaz stumbled after them with his staff, and Oesora stayed close enough to keep one hand against Navian’s back. Jaeshu and Lunara took the rear.

The forest shrank with every stride. Trunks became a black wall, then a low silhouette, then, finally, a distant line beneath the stars.

The seven of them kept running until exhaustion tore the pace apart. Beeps carried Navian well, but Karneth’s heavy steps lost rhythm. Gaz nearly fell and saved himself with the end of his staff. Lunara’s breathing turned ragged, and Jaeshu shortened his stride until he ran beside her.

Only when the old forest seemed to disappear did Karneth finally let Beeps slow.

He stumbled to a stop. Gaz dropped to both knees.

Av'elyth made it three more steps before folding into the grass, one hand planted against the earth while she fought for breath. Jaeshu remained facing the distant treeline until his legs refused him, then sank down beside his sword. Oesora stayed beside Beeps.

For several moments, the only sound beneath the night sky was their breathing—harsh, broken, desperate.

Then a body shifted across the saddle.

“Navian?”

His weight slipped suddenly to one side. Oesora reached for him, but Gaz and Lunara were already moving. Navian slid from Beeps’ back, struck the grass hard upon his shoulder, and crumpled.

Av'elyth turned. Gaz dropped beside his brother almost before he stopped moving. “Hey hey hey!”

Lunara slid in and landed on her knees at her brother's other side while Oesora, already beside the bramblehorn, rolled him carefully onto his back.

“Is he alive?” Gaz asked.

Oesora pressed her palm against Navian’s chest.

Nothing.

No. Not after all of that. Not here, beneath an open sky we have only just reached.

She waited.

Then his chest rose beneath her hand. A shallow breath escaped him. Several seconds passed before another followed.

“He’s breathing.”

Lunara closed her eyes. Gaz lowered his head, though the tension left his shoulders only slightly. “Can you heal him?”

Oesora lifted her free hand above Navian’s chest and waited for the familiar warmth.

Nothing came. Her fingers trembled.

“My Light hasn’t returned.”

Gaz looked up. “None of it?”

Oesora shook her head.

A short distance away, Jaeshu had sunk into the grass with one leg stretched before him, too exhausted even to put away his sword. Av'elyth sat several paces from him, elbows resting on her knees, both daggers still loose in her hands. The tracks of her tears had dried upon her cheeks.

Karneth remained beside Beeps. Eventually he let go of the reins and walked over until he stood near Navian’s feet.

The night had become strangely ordinary.

Wind moved through the grass. Somewhere beyond the field, insects had begun calling again.

For several minutes, nobody spoke.

"Oesora." Jaeshu finally broke the silence. “What... happened?”

No one answered him. Oesora remained bent over Navian, her hand resting against his chest. Beside them, Gaz took his brother’s hand and turned it over slowly. The skin was pale beneath the moonlight. No warmth gathered in the palm. No white shimmer moved beneath it. Gaz ran his thumb once across Navian’s knuckles. His expression changed. For the first time in decades, he noticed scars on his brother he had never bothered looking closely enough to see before.

“He looks... empty.”

Oesora remained kneeling beside him. “He gave to the forest.”

Jaeshu sat up. Av'elyth slowly stood.

Lunara had not taken her eyes from Navian. “How... much?”

Oesora closed her eyes.

“I’m sorry...” She looked at the lifeless white armor. At the sword that no longer glowed.

Gaz stared at her. Then he lowered himself into her line of sight until she had to look at him.

“Ria. Oesora.”

Her green eyes lifted. Gaz’s voice fell almost to a whisper.

“How much.”

Tears gathered in her eyes. The priestess' small fingers closed around Navian’s.

Then the answer barely escaped her lips.