Chapter 37: Rootblind!
The root fog did not roll like mist.
Root fog did not descend. It seeped sideways from cracks, touched ankles first, and made the road feel less like stone than memory with teeth.
THUD!
Root fog proved itself by stealing edges: Vaela’s knife outline, Renn’s count cloth, the gap between Kael’s boot and the next safe patch of ground.
It crawled.
It came from feeding nodes under the root bed, each node beating once before the fog thickened around it. The fog was not mood. It was breath from organs buried under the path.
It slid over the ground in a low red gray sheet, thick around ankles, thin around knees, warm where it touched skin. Every step through it made small rings. Every ring drew hair thin roots from beneath the soil.
The roots did not grab immediately.
That was how the fog lied.
It brushed. It tested. It learned the rhythm of feet. It found the limp in Sella’s torn knee, the drag in Brak’s breath, the stumble in the fever girl’s legs. Then it waited until the group crossed a narrow span between two furnace bone ridges.
Then the fog took the slow.
Sella went down first.
No scream. Just a hard jerk, a choked breath, and her metal strap clanging against root stone.
CLANG!
Miro turned to help her and the fog wrapped his ankle.
The fever girl tried to hold him.
The roots caught her too.
Renn shouted, "Center! Hold center!"
The command was right.
His body moved wrong.
He lunged toward Miro with his wounded hand extended. A root snapped around his wrist and pulled him down to one knee.
Vaela cursed and cut low.
CHIK!
A root split, recoiled, then rejoined itself farther down like wet muscle.
"Cut near the ground!" she snapped. "It seals higher!"
Orrek moved before she finished.
His chain slammed into the fog line around Sella.
THUD!
The blow crushed roots into paste and drove a crater into the soft root bed. Sella dragged herself back with both hands, teeth bared, knee twisting wrong under her.
The fog answered Orrek.
Three thick roots burst from beneath him and wrapped his ruined shoulder, waist, and uninjured wrist.
CRRRK!
His shoulder pulled back.
Orrek’s face went white.
Then red.
Then murderous.
"Wrong shoulder," he snarled.
Kael was already moving.
Velocity Movement Authority carried him along the ridge edge where the fog was thinnest. Threat Perception Instinct showed the pull lines under the surface. He did not chase roots. He chased anchors. A pulse lump throbbed beneath the fog near a broken furnace rib.
Kael drove his heel down.
BOOM!
The root bed caved.
The pull on Miro snapped loose. The boy fell backward with the fever girl on top of him, both gasping.
Another pulse lump beat under Renn.
Kael crossed the span in two low strides and dropped his knee into it.
BANG!
The fog bucked.
Renn’s wrist came free with skin torn open in a ring and the Sovereign Root answered through the torn ring of Renn’s wrist.
The command stayed inside his skull. Kael pushed the new pressure into Velocity Movement Authority and Regenerative Dominion, letting the surge answer through bone instead of speech.
ALLOCATE!
====================================================================
[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ KINETIC FRICTION DETECTED: Root Fog Separation Pressure And Survivor Recovery Strain
≫ EXISTENTIAL SHARDS EXTRACTED: +2
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ MANUAL ALLOCATION COMMAND RECEIVED
▶ SHARD ALLOCATION REGISTERED: +2 TOTAL
▶ ALLOCATION DISTRIBUTION:
- Velocity Movement Authority -> 12
- Regenerative Dominion -> 9
--------------------------------------------------------------------
▲ UNALLOCATED EXISTENTIAL SHARDS: 5
[!] SYSTEM NOTICE: Five Shard Reserve Maintained.
====================================================================
Kael felt the new speed settle into his hips and ankles. Felt the recovery function thicken blood around the reopened hole in his palm. Not comfort. Usefulness.
The fog tried to take Brak.
A root slid up his leg and punched into the side of his calf, not wrapping, piercing. It drank from inside the muscle. Brak screamed and swung his pipe down at it.
THUD!
The pipe bounced.
The root pulled harder.
Vaela threw her crescent blade.
It cut the root near the ground, bit deep into root bed, and stuck.
CHUNK!
Brak fell free.
A second root shot for Vaela’s ribs while her blade was out of hand. Orrek caught it with his chain, wrapped once, and yanked so hard the root tore from the fog with a wet rip.
RIP!
His shoulder shuddered.
He almost fell.
Vaela caught his belt with one hand.
"You fall, I leave you as fertilizer."
"You caught me."
"For neatness."
"Liar."
"Bleeding idiot."
The exchange lasted two breaths. That was all they could afford.
The fog rose higher.
Ankle level became shin level. Shin became knee. The root hairs multiplied inside it, brushing every wound and dragging at every weak step.
Kael understood the trap.
The wildland did not need to overpower him. It needed to slow everyone else until he had to choose between killing roots and carrying bodies. He hated how many enemies understood choice.
"Orrek! Lift the injured onto the ridge! Vaela, cut anchors only! Renn, count moving bodies!"
Renn staggered upright, wrist bleeding. "Fourteen! Still fourteen!"
"Keep it that way."
Kael stepped into the deepest fog.
It accepted him greedily.
Roots wrapped both legs, waist, ribs, one arm. They found old wounds and new ones. They tightened, trying to measure whether he could be folded. He let them pull until the pulse lines under the fog gathered around him.
Bait, then break.
Vaela saw his shoulders lower.
"Kael, that is a terrible idea."
"Most useful ones are."
The fog thickened around him.
Roots punched into his thigh and side.
CHUNK!
Pain went white.
He anchored.
Gravity Vector Impact drove down through both feet. Core Mass Density made his body a stone the fog had chosen badly. He grabbed a fistful of roots across his chest and pulled upward.
Not one root.
A net.
The fog lifted with it.
Underneath lay three pulsing nodes connected by red black veins.
Kael stomped the first.
CRUSH!
The second.
CRUSH!
The third tried to retract.
He caught it with his bare hand, squeezed until the membrane split, and drove it into the ridge wall.
SPLAT!
The fog dropped.
All at once.
Survivors collapsed into the sudden clearing, coughing, bleeding, alive.
The broken nodes left a residue like red egg membrane across Kael’s boots. It twitched toward the nearest torn ankle, failed to reach, and dried into brittle black flakes.
Renn counted through wheezing breath.
"Fourteen. Still fourteen."
Kael nodded once.
Then a pressure rod fired from the rim above and struck the cleared fog bed.
BOOM!
The impact threw root mist in every direction. Malrec’s men shouted from above.
"Keep them moving! The wild takes slow bodies! Drive them forward!"
Orrek looked up with a smile that held no humor.
"I am starting to dislike the spectators."
Vaela retrieved her blade from the root bed.
"Starting?"
Ahead, the old predator stepped close enough for the first time that its outline disturbed the fog: tall, bent, antlered with roots, walking on arms that were too long and legs that were not quite legs.
It did not attack.
It watched the survivors crawl out of the fog. Then it turned away, slow and deliberate, as if inviting them deeper.
Kael flexed his bleeding hand.
"It is herding us."
Renn whispered, "To what?"
The pods ahead pulsed red.
Vaela answered softly.
"A den."
They did not enter the den immediately.
Kael made them stop at the edge of the red trunk line while the root fog withdrew in long strips, leaving wet grooves across the ground. The survivors wanted to run from the place where they had almost been dragged apart. That was exactly why he forced stillness.
Panic moved faster than predators.
Renn counted again, voice shaking but present.
"Fourteen. Miro’s wrist worse. Sella’s knee worse. Brak’s calf punctured. My wrist torn. Fever girl still standing because she is stubborn or possessed."
The fever girl whispered, "Stubborn." Miro managed a weak grin through pain. "She bites too."
"Teeth are policy," Orrek said.
Vaela crouched beside one of the exposed fog nodes Kael had crushed. She did not touch it. She studied the broken membrane, the red veins, the way the roots had pulled inward after the node died.
"There are lines," she said. "The fog does not cover everywhere. It travels between feeding nodes. Break a node and you make a breath of dead ground."
Kael looked at the crushed path behind them.
"How long?"
"Not long enough to sleep. Long enough to cross if we hurt it first."
"Can you see the next ones?"
Vaela’s expression tightened with pain and pride. "Some. Not all. Do not ask me to be a miracle because you are bad at dying."
"Some is enough."
Orrek rolled his shoulder and immediately regretted it. His face twisted.
Sella saw.
"That arm is going to rot if you keep using it."
"It is not an arm. It is a statement."
"It is a swelling statement."
Orrek leaned down. "You want to carry the chain?" Sella lifted her metal strap. "No. I want to hit you with this until wisdom leaks in."
Renn, despite everything, gave a broken laugh.
That small sound nearly cost them.
A root hook snapped from the fog toward his open mouth, drawn by breath and vibration. Kael caught it inches from Renn’s face and crushed it in his fist.
CRUNCH!
The laugh died.
Kael looked at all of them.
"Even joy is noise here. Keep it close."
Sair nodded solemnly, then whispered, "I will laugh inside my bones."
"Do that."
The Old Root Bearer shifted ahead, half seen between trunks, as if it had listened to the entire exchange and found the group confusing enough to keep alive for another test.
Then the red trunk mouth opened.
Warm air rolled out, carrying the stink of old marrow and swallowed debt tokens.
Kael stepped forward first.
The wildland had tried to take the slow.
Now it showed them a mouth instead of a fog bank.
The invitation came from the part that remembered.