Asheras moved as if she had been born there, a living shadow among the branches. But unlike the children of the forest, she wasn't confined to natural vines. She made use of everything within reach: broad leaves strong enough to hold her weight, arched branches like springs, thick trunks that served as trampolines.
She never touched the ground. Not out of fear, but instinct. Footprints were invitations, and she wasn't one to leave invitations behind.
Her grappling hook whirred from tree to tree, catching with almost arrogant precision. There was something to it, a rhythm. A tempo. As if she were dancing among the treetops. And despite the urgency thick in the air, she smiled. A strange smile, caught between the thrill of speed and the quiet furrow of worry on her brow.
Ezra, a few meters behind, moved through the branches with the weight of pragmatism etched into his shoulders. No hooks, no acrobatics. Just calloused hands, steady feet, and a quiet confidence in the strength of trunks and the pliability of vines.
He lacked Asheras's lightness, far from it, but his movements were clean. Direct. Choreographed by necessity and the habit of survival.
Up above, Asheras seemed part of the forest itself. As she swung effortlessly through the canopy, she glanced over her shoulder, signaling with two fingers and flashing a grin that seemed to mock danger, or perhaps, simply play with it.
Ezra looked up, brow furrowed. He heaved himself up to a higher branch with a dry thrust and let out a sigh that vanished into the wind.
"I'll never understand her…"
"You don't have to…" came Mazzareth's reply, not appearing or slithering into view this time. This time, the voice spoke only through the mental link. Cold, direct. "Only egocentric and arrogant fools try to fit others into their tiny patterns."
Asheras's smile widened, oblivious to the conversation. The leaves around her danced in her wake.
Ezra scowled deeper. Mazzareth's words echoed in his mind.
'Trying to understand others… isn't that something natural? Especially when you care about them?'
"And look where that got you," Mazzareth replied, as dry as shattered stone. "Can you honestly say you understood your former companions?"
Ezra bit his lower lip, the weight of silence settling over him. He had tried. With all his strength. And four years ago, he would have sworn he knew each of them. Their pain, their dreams, their limits. But the man he was now… wouldn't be so sure.
Even if he still told himself he understood their reasons. That, maybe, in their place, he would've done the same.
"That's why they should teach about human relationships to children. At least the upper-class ones," Mazzareth went on, unmoved. "What's the point of psychology, sociology, philosophy, all those social sciences, if you can't integrate them into your own life?"
Ezra clenched his fists, teeth grinding. "That's enough! I get it!" he snapped, low but sharp, just enough to snap the thread of patience. Yes, he had those classes. They were part of the mandatory curriculum in Yllíria's high class. Although… he'd skipped at least a third of them.
"You okay up there?" Asheras called, twisting her body mid-air as she launched from a moss-covered rock. The hook snapped taut in the air, pulling her in a perfect arc toward the next trunk. Her eyes locked briefly onto his, as if sensing the break in rhythm.
Ezra shook his head, returning the gaze, trying to hide his frustration. "All under control."
"K," she replied.
Despite the words, the forest said otherwise. The sky, once filtered gold through the canopy, now turned a purplish gray. Clouds piled high like magical dust, and a thin mist crawled along the roots like fingers groping the earth.
The forest felt more alive than before—wilder.
The ents' screams no longer came from afar. They were closing in—fast.
RRR-AAAAAHHHHRG!
A guttural, tearing sound, like wood being ripped apart by a dull saw mingled with the roar of something ancient.
Ezra felt chills climb his spine with each new crack, each shriek interspersed with vegetative thunder. He looked back. Branches exploded into splinters. Leaves shot like green blades. A whole tree toppled with a dry roar.
Asheras then pulled a pair of improvised goggles from around her neck, a mechanical contraption made of thin metal frames and asymmetric circular lenses. One was covered with an orange filter, like a retro welder's glass, while the other resembled a triple-stacked lens, overlaid with tiny gears and a bluish glow pulsing at its center.
She adjusted them with a soft click behind her ear and looked back, activating one of the modes. The lenses spun with a tik-tik-tik, rearranging in layers as the analysis began.
At first, she saw only smoke. Dark gray spirals dancing above the ground. Then shadows moving between the trees, fast, almost like phantoms flitting through trunks.
But then…
"Shit... we've got company," she murmured, her voice nearly muffled by the air thick with electricity and soot. "And not the good kind."
Three figures emerged from the mist like shadows unveiled by flashes of silent lightning.
The first moved in jagged zigzags, as if dancing among the furious roots and branches. His presence was heralded by the metallic roar of a chainsaw swinging in the air, chewing through trunks and ent limbs like they were paper.
One of his eyes was hidden under a dark leather patch, and the other, red and sparking, flickered erratically, casting bursts of light like a corrupted lantern. When his gaze met Asheras's, even from a distance, he smiled, all teeth.
Asheras froze. Her stomach clenched instantly. "Seriously? Of all people... it had to be the one-eyed cyclops?" she muttered, teeth gritted.
The second was smaller in stature but no less terrifying. His body twitched with nervous spasms, and his forked tongue dangled from his mouth, tasting the tension in the air like a serpent.
Scars crisscrossed his face in chaotic patterns, and in his hands, he swung a blunt-tipped metal baton, stained and dull silver. Dangling from the handle, bound by dried leather, was a braided lock of hair, a silent trophy. He laughed as he advanced, smashing lesser ents with the baton like someone sweeping dry leaves off the ground.
CLAAANG!THRRUUMM!
The forest responded with howls.
GHRRNNNAAAGGGHH!
Branches throbbed like muscles in agony, and one of the larger ents had its trunk split down the middle. The creature toppled, its leaves burning pale blue, releasing a groan that echoed like a thousand voices through the canopy.
The third figure didn't walk. She appeared.
A glitch in the senses, a slip in reality's texture. Wrapped in stained and haphazardly bound bandages, she appeared where she shouldn't, vanishing the instant an ent struck.
As if Asheras's eyes refused to register her. And when she reappeared, it was only to finish the job: a single, dry, precise strike that silenced even the mightiest.
No aura, no scream. Just the dry sound of wood pierced with surgical accuracy.
THUK.THUK.
Asheras gripped the hook's handle tighter, the leather biting into her palm until it burned. Her chest tightened. "They caught up to us…"
Around them, the forest went mad.
Flashing red and blue lights burst between the trunks, like trapped lightning trying to break free. The trees screamed in protest, changing shape, faces bulging from bark, canopies twisting away or toward them, and the ents now appeared increasingly distorted. Some bore more than one face; others had eyes made of moss and fire.
Ezra landed near Asheras, chest heaving, sweat dripping along his jawline. Behind him, a beheaded ent still trembled as it collapsed to its knees.
BWHOOM.
"How many?" he asked, trying to steady his breathing.
"Three," she replied, brow furrowing.
She narrowed her eyes. "Tell me, Ezra… what the hell did you do to piss off Graam's gang?"
Ezra let out a short, dry, almost desperate laugh. "I'd love to know myself."
But the answers were about to arrive, just not in the way they hoped.
The third figure, the one wrapped in filthy bandages, made a barely perceptible motion with her fingers. Tiny metal shards, thin as needles, flashed for a moment in the dusky light before shooting out like silent arrows.
Clank!
Asheras's grappling hook cable snapped mid-air.
"Shit!" she shouted, trying to hurl herself back by grabbing anything, trunk, vine, branch, but everything around her had already been severed. The figure had anticipated every escape route, as if reading her movement before she even made it.
"Don't do anything stupid!" Mazzareth shouted at Ezra, the voice scraping the back of his throat.
But Ezra wasn't listening anymore.
The Vis surged through his muscles, a burst of energy propelling his body forward. He launched himself like an arrow, aiming for her fall. There was no calculation, just instinct and the fear of letting her hit the ground.
He caught her in mid-air.
The impact wasn't gentle. Their combined weight dragged them down the hillside, rolling through dry leaves, exposed roots, and broken branches. The muffled sound of flesh and bone crashing against the world. A dull crack. A choked grunt.
And then, THUD!
They stopped abruptly, colliding with the curved trunk of a tree. The hollow sound echoed briefly.
Asheras coughed, the metallic taste in her mouth, and looked at him through half-lidded eyes. Ezra still held her tightly, arms wrapped around her body as if, for that moment, he could stop the collapse of the entire world around them.
She gasped, chest rising and falling in a rapid rhythm, her heart pounding like an off-beat drum. Then, between a breath and a crooked smile, she murmured:
"What are you doing? Run!"
She yanked him aside at the last second—ZZZT!—another metal needle zipped between them, slicing the air just millimeters from their ribs.
"When—?" She didn't even have time to process.
They had been reached.
The bandaged figure, now visible among the forest's twisted trunks, walked with a ritualistic calm. Behind him, the other two emerged, silent figures, boots sinking into leaves soaked with sap and a strange blue-tinged liquid that smelled faintly metallic.
They didn't hesitate.
Moving as though the ents weren't hunting them. As if the living forest didn't see them as intruders.
"Kid…" cyclops voice slid through the air like thick oil, every syllable dripping with sarcasm. "You really are an ugly duckling… no, better… a stubborn little hen."
He raised his hand.
In his palm, the chainsaw purred, a mechanical, raw, almost animal sound.
"But even stubborn hens can lay golden eggs. And you just led us straight to another debtor."
At that moment, an ent burst from the side, branches like spears, mossy eyes burning with fury. The man didn't even flinch. He simply twisted his body with rehearsed precision, and the chainsaw roared in metallic fury. The ent's trunk was torn from top to bottom, a black sawdust storm exploding into the air.
"As a reward, I won't let Karmen break you... at least, not entirely," he added, visible irritation flashing in his eyes.
Asheras stepped back, jaw clenched, gaze flickering between the killer and the shadows slumbering deep within the forest.
Ezra blinked. His shoulder burned. His mind, foggy. The voices felt distant, like echoes underwater.
All but one.
"Even after all my warnings…" Mazzareth appeared beside him like a ghost. Cold, disappointed eyes fixed on him.
"You still chose stupidity in the end."