“Has to be her,” he groaned. “Your essence isn’t capped. You’ll take me away. Kill us all. Has to be her.” He was breathing as if he’d just run a race. Kest gave Nira an anguished look, and she grabbed his hand with her free one for just a moment, squeezing her thanks.
“I don’t know how much longer we can keep making him do this,” Gamarron muttered, glancing at Guyrin. “We should look for this bigger tree. I’ve seen a few council chambers and weapons depots as we’ve moved inland, but nothing that makes me think we’re near the Shard.” He glanced at Nira. “The sooner we’re done with this, the better.”
He thinks I can’t handle it. I’m fine. This is nothing. Nothing here, nothing here. No one was ever here, and we were never born, and I have nothing, and I am no one, and no one is. She felt as if her head were simultaneously about to burst and about to float away. Distantly she felt a prodding at her shoulder.
“Nira. Nira, are you all right?” She opened her eyes. She hadn’t realized they were closed. Kest hovered before her, anxious and so incredibly there. It was as if he were the only person that had ever existed. Am I a ghost? She looked at the hand she had on Guyrin, and for a moment she could see through her own flesh.
Then out of the haze she felt herself lifted up, and she opened her eyes again. They keep closing. Kest had one arm around her waist, and the other around Guyrin’s, their arms linked over the back of his neck. Guyrin didn’t complain. His nose was bleeding more heavily. She let her body sag against the Beast Rider’s wide shoulder. “You two just keep it up,” he said softly. “I’ll carry you.”
The next part of the journey passed in darkness for her, with only the gentle jarring of Kest’s footsteps letting her know that they were moving. The arm she had linked with Guy seemed to not even exist anymore, but the pain in her head threatened to obliterate her. Even her mantra dwindled to a mere thread: nothing here… nothing here.
“Gaia’s hairy balls,” she heard Guyrin mutter weakly.
Opening her eyes, Nira saw the object of Guyrin’s cursing and was forced to agree with his assessment. If anything deserved to be cursed by the non-existent genitalia of a ravenous soul-eater, it was the tree before them now. It was three times as wide as any of the other great trees they had seen, and five times as tall. Only the profusion of the massive sentinel trees had prevented them from seeing the colossus until now. It was a fortress of greenery. Its branches drooped like a willow’s, making an open, shaded courtyard fifty meters deep on all sides, the lowest-hanging branches falling to within just a few meters of the ground. The sheer scale of the tree defied imagination. It was a scepter for a god as tall as the heavens, a ram to bring down the gates of eternity.
It was also crawling with Naga. The patrols that ringed the tree moved within sight of one another. Others moved in and out of the tree on business, many of whom wore the funny feathered headdresses they had seen before. Any Naga who approached the tree was challenged by at least one trio of guards, and a full dozen of the armed monsters flanked the main entrance to the Great Tree. The entrance was no mere hole, as had been the case with the other dwellings they had seen; it was a gate five meters tall, with carved Naga guardians flanking each side. This was a place of importance.
“It’s there,” whispered Gamarron, his eyes aglow. “I can feel it.”
“What do you mean, you can feel it?” asked Renna. “As in, you think it ought to be there, you hope it’s there? Or as in, ‘I can literally feel the presence of the Chaos Shard even though I can’t see it?’”
“’Cause that’d be a little crazy,” muttered Nira, still half-delirious. Kest let her and Guyrin down to the ground with the barest sigh of relief. She wondered how long he had carried them. She patted his hand in thanks and rested her back against the now-small-seeming tree behind them, her other hand still on Guy’s elbow. The chaos wielder was mumbling, his awareness fading.
“I can physically feel it,” Gamarron said. “It pulls at me. I don’t know why. I realize it sounds absurd, but it is entirely real.”
“Is it like when you first saw Guyrin?” Kest asked with a frown. That had been the night that Gamarron put his eye out, and none of them had forgotten it.
“Yes,” Gamarron said. “Very much like that. Except this feels more urgent.”
“Well, I won’t get in your way, then,” muttered the Beast Rider.
Nira closed her eyes, wishing she could faint so her head would stop aching, but suddenly the wood behind her back shifted, and arms appeared out of nowhere, one wrapping around her waist and another holding a knife to her throat. “Hello, friends,” came a fluting, melodic voice. “Let’s have a chat before you all run off and die.”
The others spun to face her, and in her panic she let go of Guyrin to grip at the arms around her. Naga! Guyrin moaned and fell to the ground, senseless.
Her companions were poised to spring forward and pry her free, but the cold touch of obsidian against her neck made her wave frantically at them, keeping them at bay. Her head throbbed and her vision pulsed black in time with her racing heartbeat.
“Your chaos wielder has fainted and you’ll be seen in moments,” her captor informed them. “You may want to join me inside for a bit. Walk backward, dear,” the cheerful monster cooed in her
