"Arhh, rotten Vis, badly brewed!" snarled cyclops, spitting a thick, rust-tasting slime onto the ground. The flavor of bile and metal burned his tongue. His mechanical eye flickered with a sharp click, shooting out a trembling red beam before hissing and going dark again.The shockwave of the dome still rattled through his bones.
"That's a bloody thunder-wall!" he roared, splitting an ent in half with a kick from his studded boot. Shards of wood and black sap sprayed across his face.
Stitch staggered, hopping through the living roots on one leg. His filthy bandages hung in strips, torn in half a dozen places, exposing more ragged wrappings beneath.
"These ents are like demon lice! Rip one off, ten more crawl out!" he yelled, only for his words to choke off when a branch shot at his shoulder. He spun, driving three needles into the living trunk. The creature shrieked and burst into splinters.
"Youth these days..." Karmen muttered, leaning against a crooked pillar with his staff resting on his shoulder. His crooked smile widened as his fingers drummed an impatient rhythm on the metal.
"They just love playing hard to get..." He raised the bat, sniffing the hair tied to it, eyes gleaming with a dangerous thrill. His breath came sharp, one hand tugging at his belt slower than necessary. The bulge in his leather pants was now impossible to miss.
A branch whistled through the air. He dodged by a hair's breadth, swinging the staff in a brutal arc that smashed the ent apart. Shards flew like black rain.
"You're sick," spat One-Eye, wiping sweat with his forearm, the crooked eyepatch flashing just long enough to reveal the hollow socket beneath.
"These bastards won't quit, for fuck's sake!" He revved the chainsaw with fury, charging in a zigzag and carving through two ents like a starving lumberjack.
"Not sick..." Karmen panted, "Just... sexually frustrated." His staff ricocheted off three more living trunks.
"One-Eye! We don't get paid for this shit!" Stitch screamed, popping out from behind an ent that nearly swallowed Karmen, jamming two needles into what passed for its neck. The beast shuddered and collapsed.
"We get paid to drag in debtors," One-Eye growled, sawing another trunk clean in half, toxic spray splattering his face. "Don't forget your bloody job."
"I haven't forgotten!" Stitch snarled, panting, a vein pulsing in his neck. "But I wasn't hired to take on an entire bloody forest with a sewing kit!"
"Just ten more minutes," One-Eye grunted, booting a branch aside. The chainsaw howled like a caged beast in his hands. "We grabbed everything from her old workshop. That forcefield must be her last working trinket. The rest is scrap. Once it weakens... then, Karmen—"
"—Then I jam this bat through the dome and smash it all to pieces, that's what you're getting at?" Karmen cut him off with a grin full of filthy teeth, licking his finger before pressing it to the energy field. It hissed like meat on a hot grill. "Mmm... that's hot... I like it."
An ent the size of a wagon barreled in from the right — GRRUUUUHHHH!
"Shit—!" Stitch dove aside, but a root caught his arm, flinging him into a smaller ent. He rolled, bleeding but alive.
"Not even Karmen's gonna crack it without the Codex," he spat, jamming a thicker needle into his own arm. His body convulsed briefly before snapping back into motion, faster, sharper, deadlier.
"You're fighting like a rookie!" One-Eye roared, his mechanical eye spitting another spark. "Do what the kid did, turn the bloody forest against them!"
Above them, vines whipped down like lashes. The whole field seemed alive. The forest itself was furious.
"Anyone got a plan that doesn't end with us dying painfully and broke?" Stitch howled, stabbing another ent, only for it to shrug off the hit.
One-Eye revved the chainsaw, laughing like a madman. "Yeah, just one: survive, then charge interest!"
✦ ✦ ✦
Nine of the ten minutes the barrier could hold had already slipped away. Ezra, Asheras, and even Mazzareth were racing through the final details of their escape.
"This..." Ezra's hands trembled as he clutched the handle of the makeshift weapon Asheras had built from scavenged junk. "This isn't gonna blow up in my face, is it?"
Fwwweeeeuuuu—
"That's a double-edged pistol." Mazzareth leaned in, the echo of the whistle still ringing in their ears as his sharp gaze examined the weapon like a blacksmith appraising a rare, twisted find.
The pistol was a grotesque hybrid: the barrel looked torn from a broken firearm, clamped together with crooked bits of metal; the trigger was nothing more than a torque key jammed into place; and the guiding runes, sketched in charcoal by hand, still pulsed weakly with Vis, as though breathing. Each line was like an exposed nerve, on the verge of collapse.
"Don't you mean a double-edged sword?" Ezra arched a brow, cautiously tugging the weapon free.
"Doesn't matter. You knew what I meant." Mazzareth's crooked smile carried a bite of mockery.
Asheras, watching from the side, frowned, like a weary teacher with bickering students, before exhaling long and deep, pushing hair back from her face.
"How about you two focus on the part called 'survive in under sixty seconds' instead of naming lethal junk?"
Her words landed on both Ezra and Mazzareth. Yet, for reasons Mazzareth never explained, she could see him. Speak to him. Maybe even touch him, though they had never dared to try. Within the boundary marked by her Codex, her Workshop, Mazzareth was no longer just a voice, or an echo, but a tangible presence.
"You've never heard of the Law of Patience? Or the Law of the Relaxed Mind?" Mazzareth raised his fingers, sketching quotation marks in the air. "First: the one who runs blind stumbles before seeing the cliff. Put simply, haste always charges a toll."
He lifted two more fingers with theatrical flair. "Second: a drained mind drags a body to ruin. But a mind that breathes easy sharpens the body, like a blade fresh from the whetstone."
Ezra snorted, teeth clenched, trying hard not to laugh, or curse. "You sound like a drunk monk peddling cheap wisdom in some tavern."
Asheras let out a brief, unwilling laugh through her nose before clamping it down and forcing her face back into seriousness. "Drunk, monk, or ghost... I just hope your philosophy holds for another minute." Her eyes narrowed on the glow of the barrier, which was thinning fast. "Because the barrier won't."
Even as the words passed, Mazzareth tilted his head, gaze drifting to something only he could see. A sigh slipped out, long and weary, and his voice lowered, almost dissolving into the air:
"Even with the Laws to guide them, they still choose to dwell in shadow… Is this the world you longed to build? A place where, despite all knowledge, most still cling to ignorance?"
Ezra flinched. He wasn't sure if he'd actually heard the words, or if they were just an echo inside his skull. His expression twisted, some old memory prodded awake, but he quickly looked away, jaw set, forcing his trembling hands to still.
Asheras noticed. A crease formed on her brow. She couldn't quite read the faces of the two before her, but something was moving between them. Something's going on…
The air grew heavy, as if the world itself was holding its breath.
A sharp crack — CRRRACK! — tore the silence, crawling across the barrier's surface. The runes flickered in panic, then fractured into glowing veins, spiderwebbing like glass about to shatter.
Ezra's eyes shot up, heart pounding. The first impact wave crashed down on them like a living tide, the sound of trunks slamming against the shield reverberating in their bones.
"How…?" he breathed, disbelief in his voice.
Through the fractures, colossal shadows shifted. Massive ents, twisted and heavy, advanced in unison, hammering the fragile defense. Each strike made the barrier quiver like a drum stretched too tight.
Amid the storm of blows, the light dimmed. The cracks widened, until the inevitable broke through.
Like glass, the barrier shattered.