I let out a nervous laugh, falling into step beside her. Aleks followed closely behind—as did Zayn, eventually.
The path narrowed to a ribbon of sandy white dirt, hemmed in by an increasingly tangled mass of overgrown roots and branches. Everything glistened as if coated in a thin frost, despite how suffocatingly warm the air was quickly becoming.
Deeper and deeper we went, until a massive tree came into view, stunning us to a stop. It stood out—a dark giant among ghostly white trunks, its bark smooth as marble and streaked with veins of deep gold. It was as tall and wide as any tower at Rose Point. Wider, really, if one counted the roots that rose all around it, curling and knotting into shapes that, at first glance, almost resembled creatures caught in a web.
Grimnor shook once more, the energy along its blade brightening.
On a whim, I tapped the flat of the sword against the closest tangle of dark roots. We all drew back a step, tensing, as a crack of sound split the silence. Light bled from one of the veins of gold in the tree trunk, shimmering just brightly enough to give us a better look at all the things around it.
“There’s something at the center of its base,” Aleks said, pointing, then aiming a sphere of his own light toward it a moment later. With the added light, we all saw it clearly: A half-buried, partially broken structure made of stone slabs. Like an altar, almost. The tree’s roots had grown around it, forming a cage.
Something inside of that altar pulsed with the same golden light that crisscrossed the trunk.
Aleks made his orb of light grow brighter. Parts of the tree seemed to recoil in response, limbs creaking and clattering in protest.
Or in warning.
I swore I saw the roots moving, too, tightening around the altar and its golden treasure, protecting it.
“Could that really be it?” Zayn asked.
“…I can feel power coming from it,” I said, breathlessly. “And it’s building.”
“But is that power coming from the shard, or from the spelled tree that’s protecting it?” Aleks wondered.
“Either way, it doesn’t look like they’ll be easy to separate,” Thalia said. “Not without cutting through the wood, or whatever this strange material is.” She knocked her fist against the smooth black tree; it sounded hard but hollow. “And who knows what will happen if we do that? Something tells me the forest won’t like it.”
A cold sweat washed over me.
Cutting it free will have consequences.
“Orin warned me about this,” I said quietly.
Aleks glanced my way, concerned for a moment, before stepping forward to more closely inspect our target. Panic shot through me, but he moved with perfect calm, leaping over wayward branches and scrambling gracefully across the massive roots before finally placing a hand at the base of the trunk.
I shivered as I felt his power rising, taking on a similar energy as when I used my own power to obtain visions of the past. Except, Light magic didn’t divine the past. It saw the future—a much trickier spell, and not one he attempted very often.
Because the future is always fluid,he often said.
But he seemed determined to pin it down, this time. Several tense moments passed before his eyes opened and flashed in Thalia’s direction.
“She’s right,” he said as he made his way back to us. “The forest won’t like it at all if we try to cut these things apart.”
As if it had heard us discussing the mere possibility of slicing into it, that forest shuddered even more convincingly to life; this time, I was certain I saw deliberate movement—and not just from the restless root system.
Vines slithered like snakes. Branches twisted sharply toward us, curling downward like claws groping for prey. A limb struck for Aleks, but he leapt away at the last possible instant, rolling aside as it hit the ground with enough force to shatter into dozens of tiny splinters.
More limbs rattled and shifted threateningly around us. Roots rose up from the ground like living beasts, arching their backs in threat. The air grew heavy and electric, humming with waking power.
I scrambled out of reach of the deadliest-looking branches, Thalia and Zayn following my lead.
Aleks rejoined us without taking his eyes off the golden glow at the base of the tree. Power rolled off him in waves, enveloping me in warmth. I expected his thoughts to follow, like they so often had here lately. Instead, it was an image that dropped into my head as his fingertips brushed my palm: A vision of Grimnor cutting through the gnarled limbs, loosing the glowing fragment from its altar.
I realized what he was doing—trying to show me the future he’d seen, whether it would ultimately prove true or not.
While he kept his eyes narrowed and his sword raised toward the center tree, I took his hand more completely. I bowed my head, focusing. I saw images of the forest bending and breaking, collapsing altogether in some places, as a wave of unstable-looking energy raced outward from this center point. That wave stretched beyond the edge of the forest, draping like a shimmering, black veil of mourning, toward…
“…Rose Point?”
