Chapter 75: Verdict Ledge!!
The four-armed extractor drew air through its pipe-lungs.
HUUUM!
The ledge answered. Roots lifted from the stone. Iron bolts shivered. Orrek’s wounded shoulder folded toward his chest as the ground beneath him hardened around his boots.
The crack around Kael’s feet widened first. Thin stone teeth broke against his boots and dropped into the shaft. Vaela’s blood struck the floor behind him, and two red strips changed direction at once. They left Tavin’s scar and crawled toward her open palm.
Renn saw the movement before Vaela did. He still had the empty strap from her fallen crescent blade around her wrist. He yanked it tight and pulled her hand away from the floor.
"Do not bleed down," he rasped.
Vaela glanced at the strips, then at her palm. "Useful timing. Annoying voice."
"Still here," he said.
The creature’s pipe-lungs swelled again. The red strips flattened against stone, seeking blood by heat and wetness. Kael stepped sideways and ground one strip under his heel. The other snapped toward Renn’s burned fingers. Vaela caught it with the strap and tore it loose from the ledge.
RIP!
Black fluid smoked across the leather.
"It is using the wall," Jaro said.
"Then stop it using the wall," Vaela answered.
"I have a knife."
"That has never stopped you talking."
Kael caught the next hook hand. Its grip closed around his wrist with enough force to grind bone. He felt the creature’s strength, but the worse part was the ledge joining it. Roots pressed against his ankles. A chain link rose under his heel. The wall did not think. The pipe-lungs filled it with vibration, and every loose piece of the crawl moved on that vibration.
The vibration gave the creature extra hands. A bolt under Sella’s grip rotated until her fingers nearly slipped. A pipe lip opened beneath Dorran’s splinted foot. A cold chain loop rose behind Tavin’s knees, trying to fold him backward toward the gap. None of it looked clever. That made it worse. It was appetite translated into metal and root.
Jaro pressed his ear to the wall and winced. "The pylon is beating behind it. It pushes through the strips. Through the roots. Through the pegs."
"Where?" Vaela asked.
"Everywhere."
"Choose a better answer."
Jaro swallowed and forced himself to listen again.
The Root opened a brief reading across his sight. Ascendant Stage. Fourth band. Higher than him, and high enough to turn cramped ground into another pair of hands.
Kael looked at the chest plates. The left red strip lagged each time the lungs swelled.
A torn line.
"Jaro," he said. "When the left strip opens."
Jaro stared at it, then nodded too hard. "Half a breath after the others."
The creature struck with both upper hands. Kael slipped inside the first reach. The second hook raked his shoulder. Blood warmed his shirt. A root sprang toward it.
He stamped the root before it could drink.
THUD!
Orrek tried to rise. The stone grabbed his boots. Dorran reached for him and nearly slid into a red seam.
"Stay down," Orrek growled.
"I am already down," Dorran said.
"Then do it with purpose."
The extractor’s pipe-lungs opened again. A heavy vibration drove through Kael’s knees and made his muscles seize. The leading edge of the force slammed into him hard enough for the Root to answer.
For one breath, Kael’s legs stopped being his. The pylon strip pinned him to the ledge while the hook hand came for his throat. The pylon’s force did not speak, think, or judge. It shoved through things built to shove: pipe, strip, root, peg, cable, chain. He hated it less than the old lies and more than a clean enemy. A clean enemy could be read by the eyes. This one had to be read by pressure through bone.
The hook came closer.
ALLOCATE!
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[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ HOSTILE HIGHER-STAGE PRESSURE DETECTED: PIPE-LUNG AND ROOT-CORD CONFINEMENT
≫ EXISTENTIAL SHARDS EXTRACTED: +3
--------------------------------------------------------------------
≫ MANUAL ALLOCATION COMMAND RECEIVED
▶ SHARD ALLOCATION REGISTERED: +3 TOTAL
▶ ALLOCATION DISTRIBUTION:
- Velocity Movement Authority -> 19
- Primordial Marrow Layer -> 17
- Threat Perception Instinct -> 15
[!] SYSTEM NOTICE: HIGHER-STAGE PRESSURE ADAPTATION INITIATED.
====================================================================
The vibration reached Kael’s marrow and found something denser waiting. His feet stopped sliding. His eyes caught the shape of the next root before it broke the stone. His body moved before the hook hand finished its turn.
The new response did not make him faster in a pretty way. It made the instant before danger heavier. He felt the root swell beneath stone before it split. He felt the hook’s turn before the wrist finished bending. He felt the ledge trying to borrow his own weight and chose where the weight landed instead.
He dropped his heel on the root before it surfaced.
CRACK!
The hook passed where his neck had been.
Kael did not chase the missed strike. He watched what the miss did to the ledge. The hook had dragged three roots after it, and those roots had pulled strength from the same wall pulse. When the creature missed, the roots kept moving for half a breath too long.
A half breath was enough.
Kael trapped one root under his heel and yanked the hook arm across it. The creature’s own pull sawed the root against stone.
RIP!
The ledge dropped a finger-width under everyone.
Sella gasped. The child made no sound at all, which frightened her more. Renn dragged both of them back from the edge by the cloth at their wrists.
"Breathe," he told the boy.
The boy obeyed, small and ragged.
The creature’s upper hands dug deeper into the wall.
He drove his shoulder into the extractor’s ribs and used the rebound to cross under its arm. The hook tore air behind his neck.
"Now," Jaro shouted.
The left red strip opened late.
Vaela’s blade flashed through it.
She had only one blade now, and her wounded hand did not close properly. That made the strike uglier. She braced the blade against her forearm, stepped in close enough for the creature’s lower hook to scrape her sleeve, and cut with her whole shoulder instead of her wrist.
RIP!
Black fluid ran over the creature’s ribs. Its pipe-lungs coughed instead of filling cleanly. The roots around Orrek’s boots loosened. He ripped one foot free and kicked the nearest cord away from Dorran.
The release did not last. The wall tried to seal the strip with smaller red threads. Jaro saw them first and shoved his body against the stone, smearing soot across the opening to hide blood heat.
"It repairs by taste," he said.
"Then make it taste dirt," Vaela snapped.
Dorran, still half trapped, dragged both hands through ash and flung it against the creature’s chest. The ash stuck to black fluid. The tiny threads writhed in the wrong direction.
Orrek stared at Dorran. "You threw dirt with purpose. I am proud and upset."
Dorran looked at his ash-black hands as if they belonged to someone braver.
"It was close," he said.
"Close is where most useful things happen," Orrek said, then bit down on a groan when the stone tightened around his other boot.
The extractor heard the groan. A lower hook angled toward him, choosing the loud pain over the cut strip. Kael intercepted with his forearm. The hook carved across skin and caught on bone for an ugly instant before he tore free.
Blood hit the ledge. Three red threads turned toward it.
Vaela stamped one. Renn dragged his sleeve across another. The third reached Kael’s boot and died under his weight.
The extractor bent over the torn strip. Its lower hands scraped against the ledge, seeking another line in the wall.
Kael saw a black cable disappear behind its left ribs.
It was no vein. Too straight. Too hard.
It ran into the stone behind the creature.
The cable pulsed in time with the hidden pylon. Half a breath late. The same late rhythm as the torn strip. Jaro had not imagined the delay. The creature’s body and the wall were arguing over timing, and the gap between them was the only weakness the ledge had given.
Kael reached for the cable.
He had to reach through the creature’s lower arms to get there. The first arm struck down. He let it hit his shoulder instead of his head. Pain burst white. The second hand came for his knee. He turned the knee inward and let the hook scrape cloth instead of tendon.
The cable pulsed again.
Late.
Kael drove two fingers under the edge of the rib plate hiding it.
The extractor reacted like a wounded machine finding panic. Both lower hands slammed into stone.
CRACK!
The ledge answered under Orrek.
"There is something in the wall," he said.
The extractor’s smooth face turned toward him. Its flat teeth clicked.
Orrek felt it first through the trapped boot. Stone softened around his heel, then vanished. He looked down, saw red dark where floor should have been, and grinned because fear had arrived too late to be useful.
"That is rude," he said.
Dorran grabbed his belt. Dorran had one bad ankle, ash on both hands, and no angle worth trusting. He grabbed anyway. The old woman caught Dorran’s harness. The pull ran backward through the line until Sella braced the child against the wall and Renn seized the nearest bolt.
The ledge groaned under all of them.
The chain below answered with a hard swing. The sound came up like a promise made of iron. Orrek’s grin vanished as the pull reached his knee.
The extractor felt the line form and struck at the weakest piece. A red strip snapped toward the old woman’s wrist. She saw it coming and shoved her wrist into ash first. The strip hit grit instead of blood and skidded away.
"Dirt," she wheezed.
Dorran laughed once, pained and wild. "Useful."
"Do not sound surprised."
The laugh helped nothing except the hands. Hands that laughed clenched again. The line held for one more breath, and one breath was all Orrek had before the ledge chose him.
Kael saw the split forming too late to stop it. He could reach Orrek or he could keep the extractor’s lower hand away from the child. The ledge forced the choice with brutal timing.
Orrek saw the same thing in Kael’s face.
"Do your job," he said.
Then the stone under him opened.
The ledge split under Orrek’s feet, swallowed his boot, and pulled hard enough to bend his knee backward.