The gunfire from the east was a violent, alien punctuation in the ancient glen. Each crack of Elena's heavy pistol was a deep, decisive thud, answered by the spiteful, chattering brrrrp of automatic fire. Underneath it all, the mechanical shriek of the Order's machinery ground on, a sound of pure industrial violation.
Sebastian didn't flinch. He strode to the center of the stone circle and planted his black staff on the altar stone with a crack that resonated through the ground. "Lily, the moss. At the foot of each monolith, clockwise from the east. Alex, with me."
Lily moved with a serene urgency, pulling small clay pots from her pack. She began at the eastern stone, the direction of the conflict, smearing the luminous paste in a spiral pattern at its base. As she did, the stone itself seemed to drink in the light, its dark surface shimmering with a faint, internal glow.
Alex joined Sebastian at the altar. Up close, he could see the stone was not perfectly smooth. It was inscribed with a vast, complex pattern—a map of the Blackwood Forest, with the stone circle at its heart, and lines of power radiating out like veins.
"Place your hands here," Sebastian instructed, indicating two hand-shaped depressions at the center of the map. "You are the listener. You must become the conduit. The forest's song will come through you, and I will… direct it."
"Direct it how?" Alex asked, his mouth dry. The symphony in his head was a roaring cataract now, beautiful and terrifying.
"To remind our captive kin who they are," Sebastian said, his amber eyes holding Alex's. "And to remind the machines that stone and root remember how to break."
Alex placed his hands in the depressions. The stone was not cold. It was alive with a deep, vibrational warmth. The moment his skin made contact, the world shifted.
The glen, the stones, Sebastian—all of it remained, but it was now overlaid with another reality. He saw the forest as a luminous web of life-force, a breathtaking tapestry of silver light connecting every tree, every creature, every blade of moss. The web was brightest here at the Stones, converging in a brilliant, swirling nexus above the altar. But to the east, he saw the sickness. Patches of the web were going dark, severed by harsh, angular pulses of orange-red energy—the Order's machines. And within that orange-red field, he saw captured knots of the forest's own silver light, thrashing and confused. The Moon-touched. Their natural wild song was being overridden by a crude, dominating signal.
He also saw his grove. Two bright, familiar sparks of consciousness danced and weaved at the edge of the sickened area. Kaela's was a darting flame of ferocity; Elena's a steady, focused beam of will. He felt a jolt of pain—not his own—and knew Elena had been hit, a graze or an impact, but she pushed the sensation down, channeling it into sharper focus.
"Now, Alex," Sebastian's voice was a distant anchor in the torrent of sensation. "Listen for the root-song. The deepest note. Pull it to the surface."
Alex tried. He let the cacophony wash over him, seeking the foundational tone. It was there, beneath the fear of animals, the anger of the trees, the shriek of metal—a profound, slow, earth-deep vibration. The heartbeat of the continent. He focused on it, imagined his own breath syncing with its impossible rhythm.
As he did, the altar under his hands grew hotter. The silvery web in his vision brightened, and the light began to flow towards him, into him, filling him with a power that was vast and ancient and utterly indifferent to his human form. It was agony and ecstasy. He felt his bones vibrate, his blood sing with a mineral taste. A sound was ripped from his throat, not a scream, but a low, resonant note that matched the root-song.
To the east, Kaela flowed between the trees like smoke given purpose. The Order's advance team were not soldiers; they were techs in body armor, shepherding a hulking, six-legged walker that carried a spinning, multi-barreled sonic emitter. Its operator, safe in a cockpit of polycarbonate and screens, was systematically blasting the forest ahead with pulses of disabling sound.
Elena, from behind the cover of a massive cedar, took aim. Her first shot was not at the operator, but at the complex joint where the walker's front left leg met its body. The heavy slug struck with a spark and a scream of tearing metal. The leg buckled, causing the machine to lurch and its sonic blast to go wide, shredding canopy fifty feet to the left.
"Suppress the infantry!" Kaela's voice was a whip-crack in Elena's mind through their grove-link.
Elena switched targets, firing twice at a pair of techs trying to bring a smaller, handheld emitter to bear. The shots tore into the soil at their feet, spraying them with dirt and splinters. They scrambled back.
In that moment of distraction, Kaela struck. She exploded from a thicket of ferns, not heading for the walker, but for the thick power cables trailing from its rear to a generator sled. Her dark sword flashed once, twice. Severed cables whipped and sparked like dying serpents. The walker's lights died; its emitter spun down with a pathetic whine.
But the Order had brought more than one tool. From behind the disabled walker, a high-pitched whine escalated. Two spherical drones, each the size of a basketball, zipped into the air. Their surfaces were studded with lenses and slender, needle-like probes. They locked onto Kaela with inhuman speed.
"Genetic signature confirmed. Subject: Blackwood, Kaela. Authorization: Live acquisition," a synthesized voice droned from them.
Tendrils of blue electricity arced from their probes. Kaela dove, the charge searing the air where she'd been. She rolled and came up firing her crossbow. The bolt passed harmlessly between the drones; they were too agile.
Elena fired. Her slug punched through one drone, sending it spinning into a tree where it detonated in a shower of plastic and circuitry. The second drone adjusted, now targeting Elena.
Before it could fire, the forest itself reacted. The ground at the drone's feet erupted. Not with an explosion, but with thick, barbed thorn vines that had lain dormant. They shot upwards with terrifying speed, wrapping around the drone, constricting. The metal shell crumpled with a shriek of protest before being dragged down into the moss and buried.
For a second, there was stunned silence from the Order techs. They had been prepared for beasts and bullets. Not for the land itself to fight back.
In the circle, Alex, half-blind with the influx of power, felt that action. It was Lily's work, her connection to the growing things, amplified a hundredfold through the Stones and through him. He had been the cable; Sebastian had been the switch.
"Good," Sebastian grunted, his face sheened with sweat, both hands gripping his staff as if holding a lightning rod in a hurricane. "Now, for the captives. Find their song. Find the one you heard in the lab."
Alex wrenched his perception towards the pulsing orange-red zone. Within it, the captive silver lights flailed. He pushed past the static, seeking a specific, familiar signature—the proud, wounded intelligence he'd locked eyes with in the sterile cell. He found it, a knot of brilliant silver tangled in painful strands of red-orange code.
He poured his focus, and the forest's power, towards that knot. He didn't send a command. He sent a memory. The scent of pine needles after rain. The cool darkness of a deep burrow. The fierce joy of the hunt, the tender care of the pack. The pure, un-medicated wildness of being.
The response was a seismic shock of recognition, then a roar of defiant rage. In his vision, the brilliant silver knot flexed. The constricting red-orange strands around it snapped.
In the Order's makeshift containment field at the edge of their advance base, a reinforced steel cage shuddered. Inside, the large, scarred wolf they had captured threw itself against the door. But this time, the neural inhibitor node on its collar didn't flare. It sparked, fizzled, and went dark. The wolf's eyes, previously clouded with pain and confusion, cleared into sharp, furious amber.
With a howl that carried the full force of the liberated root-song, it smashed the cage door off its hinges.
Chaos, true and absolute, erupted in the Order's ranks as their primary subject turned on its captors, its howl joined by others as the cleansing wave from the Stones broke inhibitor after inhibitor.
Back at the altar, Alex gasped, the connection snapping back like a over-tuned guitar string. He slumped, his hands burning. The symphony in his head was a ringing, painful echo. He saw Sebastian sway, the amber light in his eyes flickering.
But the old lord smiled, a fierce, grim baring of teeth. "The first movement is complete," he rasped. "Now comes the crescendo."
He looked up at the sky, visible through the canopy in the glen. The bruised clouds were parting, and the first sliver of the monstrous, full moon was beginning to rise. Its pale light touched the tops of the Whispering Stones.
And from deep within the earth, a new note sounded, one that made the previous power feel like a lullaby. The true alignment was beginning. And somewhere, Alex knew, Victor Thorne was watching his plans unravel, and would now unleash everything he had left to seize the nexus at its moment of peak vulnerability.
The battle of technology and tracking was over. The war of gods and monsters had just begun.