Chains of Gaia

by James Fahy

  “I think the pyramid is stone, on the outside at least,” Robin told them all, his green eyes sparkling. “I can feel it creaking, but it will take time for even these huge things to break through.”

  “We don’t have time!” Henry cried. Several of the swarm had spotted their group and were descending on them rapidly, darting between the knots and loops of vegetation, their spears held high. Robin threw a Galestrike upwards, knocking them off course and sending them spinning away, crashing into the darkness, lost in the sea of leaves.

  “More are coming,” Woad said, as they all turned to the outer wall, now deep in a thick carpet of living plant life. “We need an out!”

  “There is no out!” a voice behind them called, sounding furious.

  They turned away from the wall. Staggering toward them, looking battered and dazed, making her way carefully along the thick woody bridge, was Miss Peryl. The Grimm looked dazed and dishevelled, but her eyes blazed like a fury. She was flanked on either side by an insectile guard, swarms hovering in midair, their ghastly gas-mask faces flashing. Both of them had their spears raised, hoisted over their shoulders and ready to throw.

  “Don’t you numbskulls get it?” Peryl shouted. “Eris is here! You’re not getting away from her. And …” She raised a shaking finger, pointing at Robin as she stalked towards them out of the chaos “… I want my Shard back!”

  Robin could feel the wall at his back, heaving but holding. The ancient skin of the pyramid, heavy and well built, was moving, cracking under the pressure of the insistent life blooming within it. But painfully slowly. There was no way they would escape in time. They had destroyed the inner Hive. The dryads were free. The swarm were falling everywhere, dropping out of the air like flies as they were overwhelmed by the combined efforts of their enemies and the colossal living landscape. But Robin and the others had nowhere to go.

  “The Shard is mine!” Robin shouted back.

  Peryl grimaced, baring her teeth. “Oh for the love of everything, learn how to lose, will you?” she shouted at the top of her lungs. “You are all going to surrender, or you are going … to … die!”

  As she yelled this final word, one of her guards, skittish and hovering uncertainly as it dodged the ever-growing plants, seemed to startle. In its confusion and nerves, it threw its spear, full force overarm, clearly mistaking Peryl’s sharply bellowed warning for a command.

  The spear was swift. The long barb shot through the air, a lance of metal as sure as a lightning bolt. Robin stood in dumb shock. He didn’t have time to react. The deadly missile hurtled towards him, unstoppable, aiming directly for his chest.

  Time slowed.

  He saw the barb, whistling through the air toward him, a flying metal needle of death.

  He saw the rage drop from Peryl’s face as the spear hurtled towards him, replaced with shock, and something close to fear. He heard her shout wordlessly. It sounded like a warning, and saw her thrust her out desperately, loosing a coil of dark mana, a swift snake of shadow, which chased the shaft through the air as it flew towards its mark. She was trying to knock it off course. Trying, for reasons he couldn’t understand, to save his life.

  Her shadow bolt crashed into the hurtling spear, knocking its trajectory aside, the Grimm’s mana dissipating with the impact.

  It flew past Robin harmlessly, mere inches from his stomach, and landed instead, with an embedded thud, deep in Karya’s chest, lifting the girl clean off her feet and throwing her backwards with the impact.

  Someone shouted. Robin wasn’t sure who. It might have been Woad. The faun rushed to Karya’s side where she lay, crushed against the wall. Her face a mask of shock. The spear buried deep in her, an obscene and horrible barb, pinning her to the vines like a butterfly.

  Robin felt the blood drain from his face as he stared. Peryl was frozen in place, out-thrust arms still raised towards him, her fingers shaking uncontrollably. The Grimm’s eyes were wide and horrified as Robin stared from his fallen friend to her. She shook her head frantically.

  “No … I …”

  “What have you done?” he whispered, lips feeling numb, his voice shaking.

  Shadows lashed out from behind Peryl, thrashing in the air like dark tentacles growing from her back. Her mana spilling out unconsciously. The ribbons of darkness shot up and twisted around the two swarm guards either side of her, grappling them, twining around their necks and pinning their arms. With great force, she flung the insect-like creatures away into the void, sending them spinning away helplessly with panicked buzzing squeals. Both ricocheted off vines and thick walls of woody vegetation, tumbling away into the deep void below.

  Woad and Henry had both dropped to Karya’s side. Woad was cradling the girl's head, looking horrified. Henry had one hand on the cruel shaft, his other pressed to Karya’s chest, lost in the folds of her coat.

  “Rob … she’s hurt,” he said shakily. “Really hurt.” His hand came away red and wet, his fingers shaking.

  Even over the sound of the raging battle and the ever moving vines and branches, Robin could hear Karya’s breath coming in ragged, irregular gasps. The noise was nightmarish.

  Before him, amidst the gloom and confusion of the writhing mass of greenery, Peryl stood, looking lost and appalled. Staring at Robin, she opened her mouth to speak, her eyes, dark and wide, ringed with violet. Before she could form words, a shape descended on her from behind. The Princess Ashe had swooped out of the battle above, her pale leafy dress fluttering, wings humming. She fell on Peryl, shoving her hard as she landed on the great root-bridge, and the Grimm was thrown from her feet with the impact.

  Tumbling off the wide creeper and away into the darkness below, Peryl fell without a scream, head over heels, until she was lost in the shadows.

  Robin turned, ashen, to his fallen comrade as the princess, her wings folding along her back, rushed towards them all.

  Karya’s face was deathly white, her golden eyes wide and shocked. She looked up at Robin. Her own hands were wrapped around the spear, closed over Henry's.

  “Ow,” she said with feeling and some difficulty. “I got … a little bit … stabbed.”

  “The blade must come out,” Hawthorn said firmly in a frank tone.

  “That could kill her!” Robin snapped. It felt as though the bottom had dropped out of the world. The snaking vines around them, the aerial battle between the dryads and the swarm. They all seemed distant, irrelevant, as though they were happening somewhere else, to someone else.

  “Do it,” Karya coughed, her voice shaky but still managing, in her own way, to sound bossy and irritable. “Just … be quick about it.”

  Robin and Henry grabbed the spear and pulled. It came free, the girl grimacing in agony. Henry looked at the cruelly barbed thing in disgust. It was dark and slick with blood. He threw it away with a clatter.

  Karya’s shirt below her coat was dark and wet, and the stain was blossoming quickly through the weave.

  Henry pressed his hands down hard on the wound, making her grit her teeth and groan.

  “Keep pressure on it!” Hawthorn instructed. He looked to Robin, grabbing him by the upper arm and dragging him to one side. “We have to get out,” he hissed in a low voice. “Right now. The girl will die here.”

  “I’m not … dying … in this … bloody … place,” Karya said stubbornly. She managed to force her face into a smile. She looked as white as a Grimm, her lips tinged with blue, making the brightness of her gold irises stand out more than ever. “I mean … I would have … seen it coming … right?” She coughed, the movement making her wince in pain. Henry grabbed her hand, looking stricken. “Don’t be dramatic,” she muttered. “Just a scratch …”

  Robin stared helplessly at the wall. It was bucking and groaning, but showing no sign of collapsing.

  A sudden chill fell over them all.

  The air in the Hive had grown arctic all at once, as though a great wind had ripped through it, rattling every vine. Robin felt an enormous shudder t
hrough every one of the countless huge branches. A shockwave like an earthquake as the whole plant seemed to shudder and tense.

  Somewhere in the Hive, Lady Eris had arrived. Her presence seeped through everything, a surge of solid power, the same as had blazed from the mirror but magnified a hundredfold. The swarm and the dryads seemed to hang everywhere in mid-air, their battle momentarily forgotten as the menace rolled through the great space like invisible fog, chilling all.

  From above Robin, over the pounding of his own heart, he heard someone shout his name.

  Looking up, dragging his eyes away from Karya, he saw, standing above them on another branch, the silhouette of Strigoi. His bestial face grinned demonically down at them, taking in the scene.

  “Fae!” he called, his voice its usually hissing whisper. “How? How have you done this? You bring destruction to order. You and your creatures.”

  Robin glared up with a rising surge of hatred, bile in his throat. His green eyes blazed at the murderous creature looming above them. His parents' killer.

  “You were wrong,” he shouted up to him. “You said my friends were my weakness.” He gritted his teeth. “But every bit of strength I have comes from them. Every bit of power. It’s a power someone like you will never know!”

  Strigoi raised his dark clawed hand, holding it out towards Robin, and the boy felt the man’s mana building in his palm like the electric charge before a thunderstorm.

  “The empress is here, stupid Fae. Death fills the Hive, and it comes for you," he answered. “Tell me, slippery prisoner. Are you as swift as you are strong?”

  The Wolf of Eris let loose a great blast of mana. His own personal Tower of the Arcania, sheer will alone. It blasted down toward Robin, deadly and unstoppable, crashing through leaves and boughs, tearing them to shreds.

  Robin was swift, as it turned out. At the last second, shaking off Hawthorn and shoving him out of the way, the boy dodged aside from the blast, throwing himself protectively over his friends, his arms covering Karya. Woad and Henry ducked as the wall of deadly mana blasted angrily right over their heads.

  The force smashed into the wall, making the pyramid shudder. The creeping vines and carpet of vegetation covering it were smashed apart like tooth-picks. It was like a bomb going off above their heads. With a cacophonous noise, a great hole tore in the skin of the pyramid, blocks of dark stone, coated in the sickly honeycomb surface of the inner Hive, exploded outward, flying off into the sky beyond.

  Daylight streamed in, bright and dazzling, thrusting light into the dark interior of the Hive for the first time since the hellish place had been constructed long ago. Dust rose everywhere in huge clouds, blocks of masonry larger than Robin himself crumbling outwards, rolling away like boulders as fresh, cold air rushed in to greet them all.

  Robin looked up, blocks falling all around him, smashing heavily into the thick tubers on which they all balanced. There was no time to think. The presence of Eris loomed all around them. This was their chance. He slammed the palm of his hand onto their vast green vine, throwing all of his remaining mana into it, injecting it with every ounce of the Earth Shard he still controlled. He felt the last of his power flood into it, quickening and vitalising it.

  The great creeper shuddered beneath them, and then, no longer encumbered by the barrier of the still crumbling wall, it quested forward, breaking out of the pyramid through the huge ragged hole like a green, unfurling tongue.

  Robin held on for dear life, Henry and Woad gripping onto his arms, the three of them forming a rough circle around the fallen form of Karya. The great shoot waved in the blinding daylight of the outside air, growing fast and roaring as it careened down the slope of the outer pyramid. Other huge shoots following it, pushing out alongside and behind, widening the hole, striving for the sky. The weakened structure of the pyramid cracked and buckled, struggling to contain the force of nature striving inside it.

  Robin saw the sky, high above them, cool and clear, filled with sunlight and wispy high clouds. It was the most welcome sight he had ever seen.

  The forest lay around them on all sides but it was dead and withered, a great, petrified expanse of sickly trees, tainted by the poison of the swarm. The draconian pyramid of the Hive, seen from the outside for the first time, was dark grey stone, stepped and huge. It dominated a great open clearing of bare and lifeless grey earth, commanding the forest around it from a bald and flat hilltop. The grey ground around the structure was blasted and bare, dead grey soil threaded with white and powdery vines like raised veins on skin.

  The Hive was crumbling behind them, cracks and holes appearing all over its surface. Immense blocks of stone burst free, rolling with thuds down the countless steps. Through every hole, green life thruster, writhing and growing, desperate to be free.

  The dead space atop the hill, Robin saw as their huge questing root barrelled down out of the air, was not empty. The entire hilltop was full of moving figures. Centaurs, hundreds of them. Robin had never seen so many in one place. They covered the grounds outside the Hive, rearing up as the ground shook beneath them. Roaring and whinnying, stamping back and forth in agitation. Strigoi’s forces, his entire mounted horde, clearly stationed outside the Hive while their master attended to business within. They milled around, glaring up as one with their long masked faces, at the pyramid erupting above them like a volcano.

  Robin’s vine carried them relentlessly down towards this great horde, crashing into the ground and scattering the huge beasts in every direction as the giant shoot of life burrowed into the dry, cracked earth. Robin and the others tumbled clear in a heap, rolling in the dead and dry dust, finally back on solid ground.

  Robin scrambled to his feet, looking around wildly, still blinking in the bright daylight. Woad had Karya in his arms and Henry was crouched defensively beside them. Hawthorn had thrown Ffoulkes clear before jumping nimbly to safety. Robin turned to the amassing centaurs. The last of his mana had gone into their escape, and he felt that his horns were gone, his blurry eyes blue. His own mana stone was heavy around his neck.

  The centaurs were everywhere, rampaging back and forth around him in panic. They reared up on their hind legs and came crashing back to the ground, giant vines and shoots landed everywhere amongst them, bombarding the horde as they erupted from the collapsing Hive behind them. The prison itself shook and buckled. Beyond the crowds of centaur, Robin could see huge portions of its walls collapsing, a thunderous noise rolling away across the forest, shaking the trees and making the ground under his feet tremble. From every new opening, the dryads were escaping, streaming out in a large cloud of bodies, making for the air … and freedom.

  “Pinky!” Woad yelled above the chaos, oblivious to the hordes of Strigoi around them. He was kneeling by Karya in the grey earth. She looked small and vulnerable. Centaurs hooves crashed down all around them. “It’s boss. She’s not moving. I don’t know what to do!”

  The Earth Shard was drained, leaving Robin dizzy and weak. Blearily, he blinked at them both, his legs like water.

  Karya looked dead. She can’t be dead, he told himself. That was a ridiculous idea. His mind reeled from even the thought of it. Henry and Hawthorn, he saw, were defending the girl, back to back, trying to move in a circle, protected her from the stamping hordes. The centaur had spotted them, and despite the destruction of the Hive and the bucking, trembling of the earth all around them, they were closing in on them from all sides.

  Above them in the sky, the daylight was darkened with the mingled bodies of escaping dryads and fleeing swarm, fighting and flying, turning it to an unnatural, flickering twilight.

  Robin tried to take a step towards his friends, but his legs felt like lead and there was a high pitched ringing in his ears. He didn’t know how they could get away. What chance did they have?

  “Scion!” Hawthorn bellowed from nearby, a cry of warning. “Behind you!”

  Something hit Robin in the back before he could turn, sending him flying onto his face in the
dirt. He rolled painfully onto his back, blinking up into the sky in agony. A centaur had come up behind and kicked him to the ground with its powerful hooves.

  Unable to move, Robin stared blearily up at it, as the ugly creature stamped its feet, rearing up again above him. He stared into its strange bone mask, its red, mad eyes glimmering mercilessly down at him, great jets of breath issuing in a snort from its long snout.

  There was nothing he could do, destroying the Hive had taken the last of his strength. He watched the hooves descending, heavy and deadly. I got them out, he thought. The dryads are free. The sky is filled with them. But Karya…would she live? Would any of them? How long would the rest of them last, out here on this battlefield?

  A second before impact, a figure darted from the side. A shape barrelled into the centaur, leaping onto its back. A boy. His arm held high, a silver knife shining and flashing as it caught the sun.

  The assailant's other arm wrapped around the beast's neck, twisting it violently, and he brought down his arm, driving the knife deeply into the centaur's pale flank.

  The beast roared, thrown off balance, crashing away, its deadly hooves missing Robin’s head by inches as it tumbled to its side, shaking the ground as it fell dead.

  Robin forced his head up, fighting grogginess and exhaustion, trying to focus on his rescuer.

  The ash-haired boy emerged from behind the fallen body of the centaur, silver eyes flashing, wiping the long shining dagger clean on his trousers.

  “Jackalope,” Robin said woozily. “How … how are you here?”

  The hornless Fae dropped to Robin’s side, gripping his outstretched arm and lifting him roughly up into a sitting position with very little grace.

  His face was stern and cold. “Blame your stupid knife,” he said to Robin, brandishing Phorbas. “It’s been trying to get back to you ever since I left you on the hill. Thing’s like a blasted dowsing rod. Led me here.” The pale boy took in the chaos around them. The centaur, the vines and creepers and the tumbling Hive. “What in all the Netherworde have you done?”