The momentary peace that had settled since entering the grove was broken by a groan of pain, drawing everyone’s eyes to Daus.
He was a wreck. Several amber spikes of his armor were broken, with their sharp edges piercing into his skin.
The healing Jordan had performed in the chamber had closed the worst of the stomach wound, but the internal damage and the sheer toll of the nature magic he’d cast had sapped his vitality. Daus’s breathing was a shallow, wet rattle.
Orion didn’t feel much better, still having trouble breathing, but at least he wouldn’t die from his condition. Not before he managed to drink the next potion, which would hopefully restore him to full health.
He’d already calculated the hours since he had swallowed his mother’s potion and knew he would have to wait. If he drank the second vial now, the alchemical agents would trigger organ failure. He had to endure the pain until the next afternoon, at the earliest.
Jordan summoned a fresh sphere of Light mana, reaching toward Daus.
"Save your strength," the druid whispered, lifting a trembling hand to push the gauntlet aside.
"The bleeding has stopped," Jordan insisted, his voice tight. "I can stabilize the internal ruptures. You just need to rest and let me work.”
Daus shook his head. His green eyes were glassy as he stared up at the grove. "The Song is gone from these lands. My brother is ash. My time is here.”
He reached into his pack with bloody, trembling fingers, pulling out a handful of amber spheres holding the mother-seeds. The resin glowed with a warm light, echoing the druid’s touch.
"Lay me against the mother tree," Daus said, turning his gaze toward Garrick.
The adventurer had fewer reservations about his fate, having seen too many people die from similar wounds, and knelt beside the druid. He grunted, slipping his thick arms under Daus’s shoulders and knees, then carried him to the thickest tree at the rear of the grove, resting his back against the ancient bark.
Daus pressed the amber spheres against his bleeding chest. He closed his eyes, his lips moving in a silent chant that seemed to drain all his strength.
A few seconds later, the bark behind Daus cracked with a sharp snap. It began peeling back, revealing pale, fibrous strands that slithered outward like starving worms.
They found the druid’s flesh and pierced the shattered gaps in his amber armor, burrowing into his open wounds.
Jordan turned away, unable to watch the process after trying so hard to save him. Erethemor, surprisingly, watched with grim respect.
Orion, too, kept his eyes on the strange scene, mostly to distract himself from his own pain and to keep watch, as the Field seemed to react oddly.
The roots seemed to vanish into the flesh, just as the flesh seemed to take on bark-like aspects.
Daus’s skin turned an ashen gray as the wood drank his blood, drawing his life force directly into the column. The cracking of his ribs echoed loudly as the roots expanded inside his chest cavity, seeking his heart. His flesh dissolved into the grain of the wood, his form flattening, merging with the ancient tree until only the faint outline of his face remained in the bark.
Once the process was complete, the tendrils turned toward the mother-seeds and drew them into the trunk.
A surge of nature mana flooded the grove, strong enough that Orion felt a powerful shift in the Field. The power within the seeds traveled up the rows, breathing life into dead branches and causing fresh green needles to sprout from the stone-gray wood.
The illusory barrier at the cliff’s edge thickened, its structure visibly strengthening as it absorbed the druid’s soul. The ambient Silence pressing against them was pushed back, and the grove hardened into an impenetrable fortress.
Daus was gone, offering his last breath to secure their sanctuary.
“That was a good death," Garrick rasped, stepping away from the tree where he’d kept watch over the whole process.
“He needn’t have died," Jordan muttered, but he seemed more lost than angry. He knelt by the spring, washing Daus’s blood from his silver gauntlets, and Orion knew he’d have to talk to him once he’d recovered.
There was something going on there that had spurred such a desperate need to keep his allies alive.
More likely than not, it’s the trauma of losing so many companions in the battles he’s fought, but it’d be best to check on him before it festers.
A groaning tremor shook the bedrock beneath them, forcing them to look away from the tree that now wore their friend’s face.
Through the shimmering veil around the grove, the northern delta spread in a bleak expanse of slate-gray ash. High above their hidden vantage point, the cliffs finally succumbed to the structural damage Verner had inflicted.
Subterranean boilers detonated in a synchronized chain reaction. Plumes of black smoke and bright orange flames erupted from the base, and the massive walls of the Iron State facility fractured, great slabs of gray stone shearing away. The cliff face sagged under the sudden shift in weight and collapsed.
An avalanche of debris cascaded down the slope. Tens of thousands of tons of material buried the ravines where Team Obsidian had fought its early skirmishes. The dust cloud billowed outward, a rolling wave that swept over the dry riverbed, swallowing the ruined waypoints and vanishing the base from view.
As per their original mission, the laboratory was erased, reduced to smoking rubble, but it was not a clean burial.
The collapse of the lower vehicle bays ruptured the outer walls, and even through the settling dust, Orion spotted the unmistakable red glow of optical sensors.
Hundreds of dark shapes poured from the wreckage. Bipedal Walkers dragged crushed limbs across the scree. Multi-legged Crawlers scrambled over broken concrete, venting bursts of acid to clear the way. Massive Centurions marched out of the dust clouds, unable to command the army after the destruction of their central command matrix, yet still dangerous. Among them were sleeker, smaller forms of silvery metal.
Not the mighty hounds that were the fourth version of the Mage-Killer, but the older ones, the third generation they’d fought first.
They spilled into the dry river delta like ants from a kicked mound, spreading across the wastes in a chaotic, leaderless swarm.
“So many survived the cave-in,” Erethemor noted, his slit pupils narrowing as he looked down at the sprawling horde.
"And they are blocking the road home," Esmeralda added with a pained expression.
It was one thing to travel the wastes and avoid the occasional patrol, but with so many machines out there, it was unlikely they’d be able to make their way through unnoticed.
Garrick sat heavily on the moss, resting his arms on his knees and sighing. “We’ll have to wait. Let them scatter. Without Kethor to guide them and the base to resupply, their reservoirs of Silence will run dry sooner or later. Some will find their way to another base, I’m sure, but most will be destroyed in time.”
Orion leaned his head back against the stone, regulating his breathing to ease the sharp tug in his chest, and forced himself to speak. "Kethor is no longer the main threat, nor is this machine army.”
The others looked at him.
"Verner’s betrayal was too calculated," Orion continued, his voice a hoarse croak. He closed his eyes, forcing himself to go over the data he had logged during the scholar’s flight. "He did not attack us directly when the hounds froze. Even when he realized the experiment had failed, he aimed his spell at the base. His goal was to collapse the laboratory, rather than to kill us.”
"To bury any evidence of foul play," Jordan said in realization. "He wanted to ensure the High Council believed we died in the Iron State. Do you think he might be trying to get back to the base?”
That was a possibility, but Orion didn’t think Verner was that stupid. Even if he managed to convince everyone he had no role in their deaths—something he doubted, given that the High Priestess was there—his mother would never allow such a person to take on any important role, if she didn’t string him up by the intestines in revenge.
“He said it himself; he is the apprentice of the Roaring Sun, and that is what he thinks of himself first and foremost. I think he’d rather rejoin his master to share what he learned.”
Garrick frowned, trying to see where he was going. “Cultists?"
“He might as well be, but I don’t think his master serves a higher power,” Orion said, opening his eyes to look at the veteran. "During the march, Verner spoke of his mentor with devotion. If there is one Archmage who would dare conspire with the Iron State, it is the one who failed to secure the leadership of the Collegium, the man who challenged my father and lost.”
"Ulysses," Esmeralda supplied, eyes widening as the facts clicked into place.
"Yes," Orion confirmed. He couldn’t be sure, but too many things fit. "If Verner serves Ulysses, then there is a much bigger plot unfolding in the background. Ulysses must have wanted Kethor to perfect the Silence-alloy so he could take it for himself, possibly as a weapon to use against my father.”
"And Verner could spy on us and report on our strengths while attending to his job of stealing the blueprint," Garrick finished, his voice dropping into a low, dangerous growl.
"Exactly," Orion said. "Let the Iron State build the ultimate Mage-Killer. Steal the research data. Then collapse the base to cover the tracks and leave the surviving prototypes to spill into the wastes. I wouldn’t be surprised if he showed up again to make sure Kethor died with the base.”
Jordan bit his lip. “But why leave the machines around? If all they needed was the data, the swarm would be redundant and could even alert others that he’s made a move.”
"Because the weapons will march south," Orion explained. "They will hit the Alliance borders. After the first groups are massacred, they’ll be forced to commit more to this front. Cyril will bleed itself dry fighting an army of magic-immune machines. That will drain our military strength, fracture my father’s political support, and leave the Collegium vulnerable to a change in leadership.”
"A coup," Esmeralda whispered. She looked annoyed and strangely impressed at the same time. “You think they set up this whole thing to allow a coup to take place. That we were just pawns to be played at a convenient time and discarded when we became less useful.”
Silence fell over the hidden grove, broken only by the spring’s quiet bubbling. Orion felt the need to explain himself. “This could all be a fevered dream my mind conjured up,” he warned.
But the others didn’t seem reassured. Too much had happened for them to ignore his words.
The fact of the matter was that the scale of the conspiracy dwarfed them. If it was true that Archmage Ulysses had used the Iron State as a free research and development wing, manipulating the High Council into sending high-value assets to spring the trap, then they were mere parts of a massive plan that threatened the whole Magocracy.
And now, the architect of the betrayal had the data needed to forge his own Silence-alloy constructs, while Antares and the other leaders remained blind to the threat approaching their borders.
"He took something," Erethemor said suddenly. "The Apprentice, Kethor. Before the ceiling fell, he pulled a copper cylinder from the console and escaped.”
Orion hummed. He hadn’t had the wherewithal to notice such things, but he knew the dragonkin to be more observant than people thought.
“It’s possible that Kethor might not have shared everything with Verner. Or maybe he simply has a copy of the data. We can’t know.”
Garrick spat a glob of blood onto the moss. "And we are stuck here, with no one knowing our condition.”
"That also means we are the only variable they overlooked," Orion said. “It will be risky, and yes, more of us might die. But this is necessary. We must return to the forest and alert them.”