Chương 142: Gad, Part 2

My heart thundered in my chest. Fatigue and frustration and so many victims I could've saved formed a black ink in my mind that stabbed deep into the deepest parts of my brain. I fucked up so much in such a short time. This was entirely my fault. If we didn't take the bait, if I let Chris handle the bank I could've been there to stop Quercus from killing all the people in here. I wouldn't be so worn out from having to fight Assacu and I'd have been able to focus on a real plan. I wouldn't have gotten May hurt.

The dread of having done it all wrong boiled inside me. And from it, came a revelation. Buildings could be fixed. Lives couldn't be replaced. If they're already dead, then there's no collateral. I could just hurt them as much as I wanted to. And it would feel so, so fucking good. I took one step. KRAKKK The floor nearly gave out from under me, splintering and cracking spanning out from the pressure I put on. Another. KRAKKK Another. KRAKKK KRAKKK KRAKKK KRAKKK KRAKKK I didn't want to lunge. I wanted to sprint.

So they could dread my approach. Bringing back a fist, I was ready to strike the pale Father with enough force to splatter him across the walls, paint him in blood. Right as I was about to connect, however, Quercus had interceded, his Wyrdwood weapon widening out into a shield. And when my fist made contact- THOOOOM There was no Northern wing of the building anymore. The sheer concussive force of my blow tore through it. With the torn open wall, I could see the other side of the campus of the building.

There sat that tree that formed all those Knights and Hussars, produced weapons for the ADU troopers on the other side of the building. Yet there, on the ground, was Father Quercus, half the skin sheared off his body and being pulled together by vines and roots. His weapon was gone, shattered from the punch. The pale father was a good ten, fifteen feet behind him, legs bent in unnatural ways.

"Father Taxus-!" Quercus yelled.

"You need to touch him! Now!" The Father apparently named Taxus wheezed out an "I can't move!" The dread in his voice was apparent. Quercus didn't seem too pleased with that. He yanked one of his horns out from his head, and it extended into some almost serpentine form. Whipping it at Father Taxus, he lassoed the man and whipped him towards me. Desperation move. I was able to just step to the side as I began my approach. Taxus limply slammed into a cracked wall behind me, letting out a groan of agony.

"I can see it," I called out, my chest heaving with a need for air. My heart banging against my ribs like a wild beast in its enclosure.

"In your eyes." Raising a gloved hand, I pointed at the heart hanging from his chest.

"Go. Eat it. I want you to see how high you can climb, and how I'll still tear you to fucking ribbons." Quercus pushed himself to his feet as he ripped out another horn, forming it into a spear that he leveled at me. His body was already mended together, though with a distinct green hue as the skin hadn't really reformed yet.

"I forfeited my heart until it is time to build Nemea's throne. While the hour is nigh, it is not now. We have more than enough for you. Freki! Geri!" In a blur of motion, two of the wooden wolves slid across the ground as they tried to get between me and Quercus. And in another blur, Jairo was off to the side of them, bark in his mandibles as their heads were torn off. They were going to reform soon enough, but they were out of my way for now. Quercus handled this better than I expected, as he yelled out "Skoll!

Hati!" Two more wolves, these ones not bothering to go on intercept as they instead sought to flank me. Bending my leg at the knee, I whipped around and extended it as they grew close, my shin cleaving through their bodies and leaving their halves on the ground. Their splintered bodies began to pull together by roots, but with the damage done, I had a bit of time. Quercus' next response was to hurl that Wyrdwood spear at me as I got about halfway towards him. I just held a palm out.

Thought about putting all that strength into my palm. All that gravity. Thought about how just about anything breaks if it falls from a high enough place. As the spearhead made contact… KRRKKKK The spear splintered and shattered apart down to the very end, though the split portions tried to coil around me like a family of serpents. I simply spanned my arms out once they got as tight as they could. They fell to splinters. I felt I was getting close to something. I wasn't sure what.

But my nostrils ran cold and stunk of copper, and over my right eye was a searing pain digging its finger in all the way from the forehead to the back of my skull, and I couldn't stop my other eyelid from blinking over and over. The anger in me was doing all it could to blanket me from the warnings any common sense in me had from forcing my power to function like this. Quercus wanted to stop me, but there was no stopping me. He wanted a warrior. He wanted someone who could really contend with Gleditsia.

Well, he was getting that now. All of this had been whittling me down bit by bit. I'd been doing a great job of holding it in as much as I could, no matter how ridiculous or awful it became. I wasn't going to be that animal that killed someone that might have been innocent. You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. But Quercus wasn't innocent. And that made it so goddamn hard to keep my cool. Every step I took, Quercus matched by stepping back.

He wouldn't admit it, but there was fear instilled in him. Jairo looked at me, in that monstrous form of his. The one that initially made my body tense up in fear of some kind of predator's presence. But in this moment I felt nothing of the sort. His body kept low, crouched. Not poising to attack. Trying to make himself less visible. The balance had flipped. Jairo's parasite realized what it was in the presence of.

"The wolves," I muttered to him. He didn't even nod. Just flashed off in a blur, constantly tearing chunks out of each of the wooden wolves to avoid them from fully regenerating. Quercus, meanwhile, looked towards that tree.

"Hussars! Now!" Three more of those sword-wielding wooden men lept out from the tree's bark as it rippled like water, weapons all raised. They were faster than me. But I just kept my thoughts on the idea of things crashing against the ground at terminal velocity as I poured as much strength into my body. I could feel their wooden blades splitting against me, shattering and splintering and forming deep gouges where they just kept pushing through.

I raised an arm and swiped my backhand against the midsection of the nearest one, cleaving it in half. That same arm then thrust forward to the next, punching it hard enough to make it shatter. For the third, I snapped that hand towards its head, gripping tightly before yanking down. Faster than its body could keep up with, as it was effectively torn into thirds by the motion, loose ribbony wooden fibers waving in the breeze. At that point, Quercus was almost entirely backed up against the tree.

The fear in his face was fighting its hardest to make itself known while whatever pride in him was failing to obscure it. I almost reveled in making the giant scared of me.

"This isn't a war." I said aloud.

"This is a city of innocent people you're torturing. You're gonna see what that gets you." Suddenly, the fear on his face was gone. His hand was against the tree.

"I know what it gets me, boy," Quercus explained as a smile began to form.

"It gets you hyper-extended. Too invested in some dead men you never met." His hand began to almost fuse with the tree's bark. But it didn't look like when Viscum walked into it, or when any other creature came out. It must have been a different function. And I found out the hard way that it was.

"Agent Richmond, they're all in place. Master Sequoia, it is time." What the fuck did that me- The ground shook and rumbled like a great beast under it was rolling over. The great quaking of the earth was responded to by the sky clouding and dulling. Neither night nor day, instead this hazy in-between of a colorless dusk dimmed the world around us. Still blue, but hazy. Fake. Like the color was simply painted onto fog, almost. And then, across the city, trees. So many trees.

Trunks and branches spilled out from the concrete, splitting roads in half, some tearing apart entire buildings or parasitically filling out the floors. People fell from the windows as the roots shoved them out. Leaves and foliage as large as cars spilled from some as they further shaded out what muted light made it throughout the sky. Everyone's screaming could be heard across the city, in an uneven and mindless chorus with no conductor to orchestrate every high and low note of terror.

Off in the distance I could see one tree so tall and so wide that even in the distance I sat in its shade. Initially, I could almost withstand the shock to my senses of seeing it all. But then revelation struck my mind and heart. These were all made of Wyrdwood. Every single one. And at that point I realized what happened to those not shoved out of their homes, those ambushed by sudden overgrowth. I remembered the basement. The faces knotted in terror embedded into those roots, of adults and children alike.

I remembered that building where the men being overtaken by Wyrdwood were alive but begging to be killed as every part of their body was invaded. I remembered the vision Gleditsia put in my head. All the destruction of the mind by the Wyrdwood while it also engaged in destruction of the land. Further along in the distance, where there were hills and horizons and ocean, there was simply nothing. Just more of that colorless dusky haze. Everything in me was tense and burning and cold and numb at the same time.

Did we fail? Did I fail? Was this yet another distraction for some even greater scheme? Was there another attack we should've been keeping an eye out for? Where did I go wrong, again?

"What the Hell did you do!?" I shouted out, barely able to keep my balance as I reached for Quercus, hoping somehow physically holding him hostage would undo what was happening.

"Me? Nothing," he bellowed out with a laugh.

"But we have been working towards this goal the whole time. Every attack intercepted, every time you thought you were clearing out the footholds we were embedding, you were being deceived. War is an old man's game, boy. I warned you. While we fought on the surface, we prepared the Nemean Throne in secret. Deep in the woods, unseen by any eyes not part of the Union or the Senate. We manipulated those associated with you and brought them into ours." Associated with us-"Agent Richmond-" I started.

"Agent Richmond was more than pleased to aid us after my son blessed her with a vision from Nemea of what unity with the Arboreal Senate will offer. That's why she was so adamant on keeping an eye on you all. To get you into a vulnerable position. Where we could obtain two of the Sperma tes Parthenou." Two of- Tancred said it meant Seed of the Virgin. Then it clicked. I remembered. The surgery Lafeuillade performed on me. She needed the blood of a virgin. Sam was a virgin because she had her kids by cloning.

The two he was talking about were- I had to stop Agent Richmond. I didn't have time to deal with him. Any second spent with Quercus was a waste of time. Everything was-"I know what you are thinking," Quercus called out.

"You must go, stop Richmond, save the children. They were taken as soon as I sent the message. There is no collecting them. You have failed, in every capacity that matters, boy." THUM The shock, the anger, the dread in me sapped all the strength from my body. Left me vulnerable to a strike from Quercus that sent me stumbling back, with his fist the size of my torso.

"You are all going to either die or bond with the Wyrdwood. Make peace with that. I am to stay sentinel to the Platanos. If any of you wish to forfeit your lives to us and aid in its growth, you know where to go." He pointed a thigh-sized finger towards the massive tree in the distance.

"There will be an announcement on any surviving electronic devices." Still capitalizing on my stunned silence, Quercus simply fell into the tree by him as all of the torn apart wolves were pulled into the ground by the roots. Jairo had stopped, watching in horror in his human form at everything that had happened. I couldn't wait. I needed to hear what was going on. I brought a finger to my earpiece, speaking up.

"Tancred, I need you to check in on Sam's kids, now, what's going on-" I started Tancred interrupted, voice exhausted. Audibly weak, like he'd just fallen from a cliff and barely survived.

"You're… hrngh, a bit late on that. That bitch took them. Nearly killed us all." In the background, I could hear Sam screaming in despair. I'd never heard her voice raised like that. Anguished. Like she was vomiting out every lament and regret that led her to this point all at once. I screamed too. Loud enough the ground shook. We had lost the battle, and we might be losing the war.