Chapter 35: Wildland Teeth!!
The dry chute ended without mercy.
One moment the survivors were inside stone, breathing each other’s fear, stepping over old rails and leech slime. The next, the passage opened into a hollow so wide the darkness needed layers.
A cavern forest spread beneath them.
Not a clean forest. Not green. Nothing in Furnace Sink Nine wasted life on green. The growth below rose from corpse soil and broken furnace bone.
Black trunks twisted around rusted pillars. Root webs climbed walls and vanished into ceiling cracks. Pale hanging pods pulsed with slow light. Vines as thick as arms dragged themselves through ash.
SHLOOP! SHLOOP!
Pools of red brown water steamed between root islands.
The air smelled of iron, wet bark, old meat, and something sweet enough to be dangerous. Sap moved under bark like blood under skin. Root veins tightened when the survivors breathed, and pale buds turned toward old wounds as if the hollow had learned hunger from every body that crossed it. Renn stopped at the edge and whispered, "That is not on any worker route."
Vaela stood beside him, blade low.
"Worker routes do not survive places like this. They become warnings."
Orrek looked over the drop.
"Finally. A room with enough space to be murdered properly."
Sella leaned on her metal strap and stared down with dull horror.
"Furnace Bone Wild."
Kael looked at her.
"You know it?"
"Know of it. Chain pit bodies used to be thrown near the upper rim when disposal carts broke. Sometimes the bodies were gone before morning. Sometimes the carts were gone too. Sometimes only the wheels came back."
"Wheels?" Miro said.
Sair nodded grimly. "The wild has taste."
The two supply carriers tried to step backward. Orrek’s chain clicked.
CLINK!
They stopped.
Tollen Gray, still walking beside Vaela, swallowed hard. "There is another way." Vaela angled her blade toward him. "You discovered honesty late. Say it fast."
"A tax bridge two levels above. Black Ledger uses it. Malrec will have it sealed by now, but it is not this."
"So one road with men paid to sell us," Renn said, "or one road where trees eat carts."
Orrek rubbed his jaw. "I dislike that the tree road sounds cleaner."
Kael stepped to the edge.
The wild below did not move like plants.
Not all at once. In sections. One patch of root web tightened. A pod pulsed. A vine slid under ash and stopped. The whole cavern carried the quiet patience of something that did not chase because food always came down eventually. Threat Perception Instinct pressed behind Kael’s eyes.
The system opened in fragments.
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[ HOSTILE THREAT PROFILE ]
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≫ PROFILE QUALITY: PARTIAL
≫ TERRITORY CLASSIFICATION: WILDLAND FACTION
≫ DOMINANT PRESSURE: CORPSE ROOT FEEDING ECOLOGY
≫ DETECTED ANCHORS: ROOT PULSE NODES, BONE HEAT POOLS, MOVING VINE MASSES
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[!] WARNING: Territory reacts to blood, heat, vibration, and falling bodies.
====================================================================
Wildland faction.
The words settled in Kael’s chest with ugly sense.
No banners. No officers. No debt table.
Still an enemy.
The first wildland did not care about Malrec. It did not care about the Court. It did not care about Kael’s mark except as heat, blood, and pressure.
That made it honest in a way.
Honest things still killed.
A pressure horn sounded far behind them.
HOOOOOOON!
The dry chute answered with a tremor.
Vaela looked back. "Malrec’s people found the route." Renn’s face tightened. "How long?"
"Not long enough to argue with trees," she said.
The horn sounded again, closer.
HOOOOOOON!
Tollen started shaking. "If we go down there, we die."
Kael did not look at him.
"If we stay here, we are caught."
"Caught can live."
Sella laughed once, bitter as old blood. "You have never been caught properly."
The fever girl leaned against Miro. Her eyes were unfocused. The water from Malrec’s trap had kept her standing, but not well. Brak’s breath rasped. Renn’s palm was wrapped in dirty cloth from the leech bite. Orrek’s shoulder had swollen under the wrap. Vaela’s face had gone gray around the mouth.
Fourteen lives.
Too many to run.
Too valuable to abandon.
Kael scanned the descent.
Broken rail ladders ran down the cavern wall in three places. The nearest had collapsed halfway. The second hung over a steaming pool. The third vanished behind a curtain of black vines. The vines shifted when he looked at them.
"There," Kael said. "Third descent."
Vaela’s eyebrows rose. "The one with moving vines?"
"Yes."
"You have a gift for choosing the ugliest answer."
"The other two are worse."
"I hate that I believe you."
Orrek stood. "I take first down."
"No," Kael said. "Your shoulder fails on ladders."
"My shoulder is not in command."
"It will be if you fall on the fever girl."
Orrek glared.
Kael looked back.
The big man held the glare, then spat to the side.
"Fine. But if a tree bites you, I get to insult it."
"Earned."
They moved toward the third descent.
The path narrowed along a rim of cracked furnace bone. On the left, the wall sweated black moisture. On the right, the drop fell into root fog. Every step sent ash sliding into the cavern below.
The wild reacted to each falling grain.
Tiny root hairs rose from the fog like sensing fingers. Miro saw them and made a small choking sound.
"Do not look down," Renn whispered.
"That never helps."
"Then look at Orrek’s back."
"That is worse."
Orrek heard him. "Correct. Fear my back."
The joke almost worked.
Then a root spear shot from the wall.
It aimed for the fever girl.
Not Kael.
Not Vaela.
The heat weakling.
Kael moved before the others saw it.
Velocity Movement Authority carried him across the rim in a low burst. His shoulder slammed Miro aside, his palm caught the root spear, and its barbed tip punched through his hand.
CHUNK!
The root did not stop.
It drank.
Heat and blood pulled down its length toward the wall.
Kael felt the wildland taste him.
The Sovereign Root surged.
Kael drove the command inward, forcing the shards into Core Mass Density, Gravity Vector Impact, and Mind Soul Anchor.
ALLOCATE!
====================================================================
[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
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≫ KINETIC FRICTION DETECTED: Furnace Bone Wild Root Spear And Territory Feeding Pressure
≫ EXISTENTIAL SHARDS EXTRACTED: +3
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≫ MANUAL ALLOCATION COMMAND RECEIVED
▶ SHARD ALLOCATION REGISTERED: +3 TOTAL
▶ ALLOCATION DISTRIBUTION:
- Core Mass Density -> 14
- Gravity Vector Impact -> 12
- Mind Soul Anchor -> 8
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▲ UNALLOCATED EXISTENTIAL SHARDS: 5
[!] SYSTEM NOTICE: Five Shard Reserve Maintained.
====================================================================
The new density locked his hand around the root. The new gravity impact sank his feet into the rim. Mind Soul Anchor held against the strange pull that came with the feeding. The root was not only taking blood. It tried to make him lean, surrender weight, become food by agreement.
Kael refused.
He pulled.
The root pulled back.
For one breath, man and wildland contested the same wound. Then Kael drove his forehead into the thick side of the root spear.
CRACK!
The outer bark split.
He twisted the impaled hand, tore the barbs sideways through his palm, and ripped the root from the wall.
RIP!
A wet scream moved through the cavern.
Not loud.
Huge.
Every pod below pulsed once.
The vines along the third descent lifted their heads.
Vaela whispered, "It felt that."
"Then it knows we can hurt it," Kael said.
"No," she said. "just educational. For it."
The horn behind them sounded again.
This time men shouted with it.
"Marked fugitive ahead! Protected bodies authorized for pressure capture!"
Malrec’s people had entered the chute.
The workers heard the order.
Protected bodies.
Not people.
Bodies.
Sair bared red teeth. "I would like to be protected from being called protected." Orrek lifted his chain. "Later. We have a forest argument first."
The vines lunged.
Not one. Six.
They came from the descent rail, the wall cracks, and the fog below, striking at ankles, wrists, throats, food bundles. One wrapped around a supply carrier’s waist and yanked him toward the drop.
He screamed.
Orrek caught his collar with the chain and roared as his ruined shoulder jolted.
THUD!
The man hit the rim instead of falling.
Vaela cut the vine near the wall, not near the man.
CHIK!
Black sap sprayed across her face.
The vine recoiled, dragging its severed end like a wounded snake. Renn shoved the fever girl behind Sella and grabbed a fungal paste bundle before another vine could steal it.
"Food! Protect the food!"
"I thought we were protecting people!" Miro shouted.
"People become worse without food!"
Kael released the torn root spear and charged down the first five rungs of the third descent.
The vines followed him.
That was the point.
He hit the rail with both feet, bent it under his weight, and used the bend to launch sideways into the curtain of black vines.
They wrapped him instantly.
Arms. Thighs. Ribs. Throat.
The wildland tried to pull him into the fog.
Kael let it take six inches.
Then he anchored.
Gravity Vector Impact drove through his legs into the rail and wall. Core Mass Density made him too expensive to drag. The vines tightened until skin split along his arms.
CRRRK!
A lesser body would have folded.
Kael used the tightening as handles.
He grabbed two vines, crossed them, and yanked them against each other until their bark screamed.
CRACK!
One snapped.
The other tore open, leaking black sap and red heat.
He drove his knee through the torn mass.
BANG!
A pulse node burst behind the vine curtain.
BOOM!
The whole descent shuddered.
Below, root fog recoiled from the rail path.
A way opened.
Not safe.
Open.
"Down!" Kael shouted. "Now!"
Vaela moved first, dragging Tollen by the collar. Renn pushed Miro and the fever girl after her. Sair cursed every rung personally. Sella descended with her torn knee shaking so badly Orrek had to brace the rail above her. The supply carrier who had almost fallen wept as he climbed.
Orrek leaned close. "Drop the food and I drop you after it."
The man clutched the bundle harder.
"He listened," Orrek said.
Behind them, the first of Malrec’s pressure men reached the rim. Armor plates. Capture rods. Black Ledger masks. Not a full squad, but enough to kill exhausted people on a ledge.
Their leader raised a rod toward Miro.
"Separate the protected bodies!"
Kael was still wrapped in three vines.
He looked up.
The leader fired.
A pressure hook shot toward the boy’s back.
Vaela saw it but could not reach.
Orrek turned too late.
Kael ripped one vine free from his own ribs and threw it upward.
The vine intercepted the hook.
SNAP!
Pressure wire tangled with living root.
The wildland did not understand Malrec’s tools.
It only understood a new thing pulling.
It pulled back.
The pressure man screamed as the vine yanked the rod, the rod yanked his arm, and his shoulder tore out of socket with a wet crack.
CRACK!
He fell forward.
The root fog below accepted him before he hit bottom.
His scream vanished halfway down.
The other pressure men stopped.
For the first time, they looked at the wildland as an enemy, not terrain.
Kael tore the last vine from his throat.
Blood ran down his neck. His marked hand opened and closed despite the hole through the palm. His body shook with new wounds layered over old ones.
But the path was open.
The survivors descended into the Furnace Bone Wild. Above, Malrec’s men hesitated at the rim. Below, the roots shifted away from Kael’s first broken pulse node and opened deeper paths that looked too much like mouths. Vaela landed beside him on a root island and wiped black sap from her cheek.
"The land hates you now."
Kael looked into the pulsing dark.
Far ahead, something large moved between the black trunks.
One step.
Then another.
Each footfall made the root pools tremble.
THUD!
Kael flexed his ruined hand.
"It can wait in line."
The hanging pods dimmed.
The Furnace Bone Wild breathed around them. And somewhere inside its dark, an old predator opened its eyes.