Both of them rose abruptly, instinct and survival driving the movement.
Asheras grabbed Ezra by the collar of his torn coat, yanking him behind a raised root as the one-eyed man and the others advanced with steady steps. The tension in the air felt almost tangible—like the forest itself was holding its breath.
They were close. Too close to risk turning their backs.
The group, three figures in all, was now clearly visible. They seemed distracted by the ents, but not enough to be called careless. They moved with the confidence of people who had already faced living forests before, their eyes sweeping the surroundings with cruel precision. The one-eyed man, wearing a constant smile and an easy posture, twirled his chainsaw around his fingers as if it were a toy.
But Ezra knew: one wrong move, a branch snapping at the wrong moment, and they'd be targets.
And the ents… Something about them was off.
They were denser, their shapes more twisted than the first pursuers. There was no ethereal glow in their eyes, only a fierce, coal-like incandescence. The leaves were darker, tinged with blue, and veins of the same hue pulsed along their trunks. Roots dragged quickly across the damp soil, carving furrows as they moved. Branches struck neighboring trees like nerves twitching in rage.
"Kid, you can still run…" Mazzareth whispered, his voice materializing over the young man's shoulder.
"…." No answer. Or maybe he was pretending not to hear.
Mazzareth sighed like someone already expecting the worst.
"Ezra… do you trust me?" Asheras asked suddenly, her eyes fixed on the movements of the three men. One of them, the shortest, was crouched down, gathering sticky sap from a fallen ent, his cheeks flushed pink.
The third man paced in slow circles, pulling small blades from his belt and driving them into nearby trees, as if preparing an invisible trap.
Ezra turned his head slowly, a bead of sweat sliding down his temple. His shoulder throbbed.
"Can I say no?"
"No."
Ezra rolled his eyes.'Then why the hell did you ask?'
"So why'd you ask?" Mazzareth said aloud, almost at the exact same time as Ezra's thought, dripping with acidic theatricality.
"I need you to buy me two… no, three… no—five minutes," Asheras said, removing her glasses and pressing them to her chest. The gesture was ritualistic, as if it were a key or a mental command.
'Don't betray me this time.' Her hands were visibly trembling, the worry in her face all too real.
Ezra swallowed hard. The sounds of the forest were changing. The rustle of leaves had vanished, replaced by a dissonant chorus of cracks, wooden growls, and roots tearing through soil.
An ent in the distance burst into splinters, the one-eyed man's chainsaw had gone through it like a knife through raw meat. The other trees reacted instantly, their branches bristling like thorns, sap running like sweat. A silent battle was seconds away from exploding into fury.
"I don't think that'll be necessary," Ezra replied, eyes locked on the man with the blades, now blocked by an ent. "Not that I could… but I'll do what I can."
He knew he wouldn't stand a chance in a straight fight. Even with Vis, at best he could match one of them, and that was without the man using his codex. Against three Codex users… it was suicide. And if the ents decided he was an intruder too?
"If I were you," Mazzareth murmured, his voice as close as the pulse in Ezra's neck, "I wouldn't take anything for granted."
In that moment, the nearest ent roared, a dry, hollow sound like wood being crushed from within, and lashed its branches at the three intruders.
The one-eyed man laughed. Loud.
The chainsaw screamed back at full throttle, and he spun his body, slicing through the branch as if it were soaked paper. Splinters and sap flew in all directions, spattering Ezra and Asheras like hot blood.
The second man moved the very next instant. His skin was scarred, mottled with an unnatural, almost feverish flush, and his eyes quivered like those of a sick animal. A forked tongue flickered between his teeth, as if tasting the fear in the air.
Ezra stepped aside on pure instinct, but froze when he realized Asheras wasn't moving. She stood firm behind him, her body still, eyes fixed on something beyond the immediate scene. If he moved out of the way, she'd take the hit.
'Shit…' He drew a deep breath. Vis coiled through his joints with a pulsing heat, fortifying tendons, muscles, bone—but fatigue throbbed in his limbs like rust in old gears. Every deep breath made his fractured shoulder protest.
"Five minutes?" he muttered, squaring his shoulders despite the pain. "Feels like it's going to be an eternity."
With tense resolve, he lunged toward the man called Karmen, each step thudding like a muffled drumbeat in the living earth beneath his feet.
"Just don't lose… you know what…" Mazzareth's dragging voice whispered in his ear, laced with corrosive humor, almost too amused by the moment.
'If you're not going to help, then shut the fuck up,' Ezra shot back in his mind, weary of Mazzareth's constant presence—teetering between guide and deranged jester. Sometimes when silent, he felt like an angel.
Karmen's smile was a blend of madness and pleasure. His eyes lit up when he saw Ezra rushing at him.
"Well, well, darling. I knew you'd miss me." Karmen held the metal staff in a mockingly affectionate grip. Tied to its handle was a thick lock of hair, white streaked with green, the spoils of a previous encounter. A shiver ran down Ezra's spine. Disgust almost rooted him to the spot.
She stopped abruptly, as if savoring the moment. He swung the staff upward, aiming straight for Ezra's groin. "You won't be needing this…"
"Agreed," Mazzareth replied without hesitation.
"Just shut up!" Ezra roared, releasing a last burst of energy. Breaking his own dodge rhythm to throw Karmen off, he halted mid-movement, shifted his weight backward, braced on one leg, and spun, the other leg whipping around like a lever. The kick carved an arc through the air, hard enough to take teeth out.
Caught off guard, Karmen let out a strange sound, a grunt that blended rage with sick delight, and stepped back with sharp, practiced reflexes, ducking at the last moment. Ezra's kick sliced through empty air, but Karmen had no time to fully recover.
A sharp crack split the air.CRACK.
A vine as thick as a man's arm lashed down from above, striking the metal staff Karmen had instinctively raised in defense. The impact rang dry and violent, sparks leaping where metal met the dense, living force of the forest.
The ent that attacked roared, and as if answering its call, two more ents closed in from the sides, their roots tearing up soil with sharp pops and showers of moss.
Ezra seized the opening and pressed forward. His body ached, muscles protesting each step, but he forced his feet onward. His eyes locked onto Karmen's left flank. Yet somewhere inside, maybe from instinct, maybe from someone, an alarm rang.
"Fall back…" Mazzareth whispered, this time with real gravity.
Ezra felt the warning before he even heard it.
A metallic hiss cut the air—ZZZNNN!
He twisted his body on reflex, chest nearly scraping the air in front of him. A silver thread shot past his cheek, leaving a hot sting. It wasn't a normal blade, it was a thin, elongated needle, finger-length, nearly invisible to the naked eye.
The man with the filthy bandages stood at the edge of the clearing, his presence as silent as it was morbid. Eyes hidden beneath the wrappings studied Ezra's every move with a starved, sickly hunger.
"Don't you feel ashamed? Two against one?" Ezra hissed, his gaze constantly shifting as he retreated, senses strung tight as bowstrings ready to snap.
"Coming from the guy who survived a fifteen-to-one…" the one-eyed man taunted, stepping into view from the other side, resting his smoking chainsaw on his shoulder. The blade still spun lazily, spitting hot sap and splinters of wood like foaming blood.
Ezra was now boxed in from three sides, front, left, and right. The only opening was behind him, where Asheras knelt. Curled among pulsing roots, she was gasping for breath, clutching her glasses to her chest as if they were the last anchor keeping her conscious. Vis clung to her in a thick haze, like steam leaking from a boiler about to burst.
There was nowhere to run.
The trees shuddered, not from wind, but from the arrival of the ents. Twisted bodies of living bark, eyes glowing in shades of amber and green. Vines snaked across the ground, snapping the air with dry cracks. The closest ones were already tightening the noose, slow but unpredictable.
"At least I'm not alone," Ezra muttered with dry irony.
Though seasoned Codex users might scoff at them, the ents surrounding them were nothing if not erratic, some with hollow trunks hiding piercing spines, others with whip-like limbs that branched out mid-strike. One, its leaves glowing like embers, radiated blistering heat.
"Time for the hunt!" the one-eyed man roared, charging. His chainsaw snarled in answer, humming with Vis. He tore through the ents like straw dolls, carving a zigzag path, leaving behind a trail of smoke and bubbling sap.
"I agree…" the man in bandages whispered, hurling his needles with mechanical precision, each aimed for Ezra's joints.
Karmen came at him too, eyes locked, hungry.
Ezra didn't wait. Vis flared through him like stirred coals, and he burst to the side, kicking off an exposed root and vaulting over a spindly ent. He grabbed branches mid-air to fling himself again, dropping behind Karmen with a string of low kicks.
Karmen blocked with his staff, but one kick slipped through, grazing his ribs. Still, the staff swept in a vicious arc that would've caught Ezra, if not for an ent lashing both of them aside with a whip-like root, sending them in opposite directions.
The needles sang through the air. One skimmed Ezra's neck; another buried itself in an ent's shoulder, making the creature snarl in a deep, vegetal rumble before bursting into a frenzy of instinctive vines.
Karmen's staff whistled past, missing by a hair. Ezra twisted out of its path, the air hissing against his jawline, using the spin to hammer a heel kick, aimed not at Karmen, but at an ent behind him, shoving the creature into the one-eyed man's path.
Wood slammed into metal, the two colliding in a spray of splinters and chainsaw teeth. It was enough to buy space.
But the noose kept tightening.
Ezra spun, slashing behind him with a makeshift blade, severing the vines reaching for his waist. A sharp crack rang out, one of the roots burst, collapsing an ent that had been tunneling just beneath the soil.
He leapt backward, landing on a thick root. A needle grazed his shoulder. Another forced him into a roll, forest gravel spraying up around him. He moved through the living trunks like a shadow, using them for cover, for springboards, running along ent backs, slipping past whipping branches, vaulting over severed, twisting limbs.
And he never let anyone cross that invisible line behind him. Asheras was there.
Every time an enemy drew close, he threw himself in their path, shifting the fight's angle with surgical precision. Karmen tried to flank from the left, Ezra shoved a shattered ent into his way. The one-eyed man lunged from the right, Ezra snatched a thick vine and looped it around the man's leg, tripping him mid-swing.
The needles kept flying, but Ezra's movements were stripped to the bare minimum, just enough to evade, never enough to lose balance or focus.
He held the stalemate just long enough, until at last, he glanced back, heart hammering.
"Asheras!" he shouted, dodging a staff strike that cracked the ground where he'd stood. "It's been five minutes!"
She raised her head, hair plastered to her sweat-slick face, lips trembling. The energy around her was thick and focused, the earth sinking slightly beneath her knees, as if being pulled by an unseen whirlpool.
"And five minutes," she said, steadying herself, "is exactly what I needed."
Her eyes gleamed softly with a metallic lilac glow.
She took the glasses from her chest and, with all the strength she had left, smashed them against the living roots beneath her.
"