Just as I said this, though, a huge chunk of marble, which looked like it weighed at least a ton, dropped from the ceiling above me. It was only through my catlike reflexes and a rapid dive and roll that I avoided being flattened like a pancake. We couldn’t run; this place would be reduced to rubble in minutes. I racked my brain for a solution, and when I glanced down at my wrist, on which my faithful little Tree magic crossbow was mounted, it came to me.
What did one always see growing out of the rubble of ruined castles and temples? Trees. Their persistent roots could crack even the strongest stone over time. And what did trees need to grow big and strong? Sunlight, water, and fertile soil—with the soil usually being made that way by the rotting of dead things. There was plenty of water flowing through the sewers around us, and the Lord of Light could provide sunlight. As for me, I could draw on the energy of Death to nourish the tree’s roots. Using the power from the Gray Sentinel, I could amplify the tree’s rate of growth by ten thousandfold. It was a crazy plan, but just crazy enough that it might work.
“Check the bodies of the Blood Demons!” I ordered. “See if any are still barely alive; they just need a few breaths left in them!”
“We’re about to get crushed to death and you want to check the enemy dead?” Yumo-Rezu gasped. “Have you gone mad?”
Unlike Yumo-Rezu, the Lord of Light obeyed me immediately, ordering his men to check the corpses.
“This one’s still breathing!” one of the soldiers yelled after a few seconds, pointing to a Blood Demon who, despite having been chopped in half, still had a few ragged breaths left in him.
There was no time to waste. I took aim with the tiny crossbow and fired an enchanted bolt into what remained of the Blood Demon’s body. Normally, the foul creature would have been able to resist the Tree magic, but in his weakened state, he could not do this. Leaves, roots, and branches exploded out of the writhing demon’s corpse, and the creature’s skin turned into bark. As the Blood Demon was forcibly transformed into a living tree, I hastily explained to the Lord of Light what I intended to do. He smiled and gave me a confident nod.
“Close your eyes, everyone, lest ye be blinded by the purest and most concentrated sunlight ever seen in Prand!” he yelled.
We closed our eyes, and while he started shooting intense sunlight at the little tree, I drew on the power of Death. I was already full to brimming from when I’d pulled the power into me for the fight against the Blood Demons, from all the graveyards all over Luminescent Spires. This was the first time I would be using this power for growing something rather than destroying something, but I figured it couldn’t be that different.
While the Lord of Light blasted his pure sunlight at the sapling, I crawled over to it on the madly shaking ground, keeping my eyes closed against the blinding light. I felt around on the ground and grabbed the nearest root. As soon as my skin touched the tree, my subconscious took over. In my mind was the intention of growing the tree and of converting the Death energy to compost-like fertility. With this transfer of magical energy from myself into the growing tree, I poured my pure will, ordering the tree to grow at an impossibly rapid rate and demanding that its roots seek out water.
As I poured my energy into the tree, the root in my hands pulsed and writhed like a live viper. The tree’s instincts knew where the shortest path to water was, and the root shot out of my hands and smashed through the ground below me, going for a direct path to the mass of water running through the sewers.
It was happening. I could feel it. The tree was growing.
A force like a heftily swung club smacked me upside the head, knocking me to the ground. It was a branch, shooting out of the tree in mere seconds, growing to a size that would usually take years, decades even.
“Everyone, grab a branch and hang on tight!” I yelled. “This tree’s going to get us out of here!”
Everyone scrambled to grab branches and boughs as the combined force of my magic and the Lord of Light’s sunlight gave the tree a supernatural boost in growing power. The entire vault building crumbled around us. Walls toppled over and ceilings collapsed while wagon-sized chunks of marble and rock came crashing down. But the mighty tree was not inactive. Instead, it exploded in size, smashing up through the collapsing ceiling and plowing through the multiple floors of the vaults. As the tree grew, it continued shooting out new boughs above us, which thickened and strengthened from finger sized shoots to branches girthier than the thickest wine barrels in mere seconds.
It was all we could do to hold on to the tree as it surged upward, smashing effortlessly through layers of stone and marble as if they were nothing. Then, finally, it broke through the roof of the vault, and we saw open sky above us.
“We made it!” Friya cried, dangling precariously from a lower branch. “You saved us, Vance!”
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” I said, “not by a long shot. Look at the palace and the cathedral!”
The Grand Palace and the Great Cathedral were the only two places in Luminescent Spires that were higher in elevation than the vaults, being situated at the very top of the massive hill on which the city was constructed. The citywide earthquake was shaking these two buildings—each of which was hundreds of feet tall, and over a mile wide—like saplings in a hurricane. They were crumbling and collapsing, their towers and spires cracking in half and toppling over while their walls collapsed into
