The Cheldean’s use of magic to speed his group’s pursuit was ridiculously easy for Katchen to detect. His enhancements forced her to use her own to keep out of their reach. That had forced their Firstborn quarry to accelerate his journey, making him almost as easy for Katchen to track as the Cheldean behind her. If she had had the energy, the island mage would have laughed at the absurdity of the situation.

            Unfortunately, she did not. The proxy she used to stay ahead of the pursuit drained her quickly. She could only keep up the pace for a few hours before exhausting her resources, even with sharing a mount with Celeres so they could ride while she worked her magic. To her annoyance, the Cheldean routinely managed to keep his proxy up for a half-hour longer than she could, taking large chunks out of the distance separating them. The fact that he was only moving a quarter of the people and antelopes that she was never occurred to her.

            Celeres found Katchen’s hair to be a bit musty, unsurprising considering the conditions of the journey and especially the last few days. Riding behind the mage prompted him think how much he missed the jasmine and steel of Sanura’s hair. He knew his wife was close. Despite protests of Prince Emhyr to the contrary, he knew the surge in their own speed had more to do with keeping with Zonneshin’s order to avoid his friends than with catching the thief. His every instinct screamed for him to abandon the company and ride back, but the prodding heat from the gem on his chest kept him to his duty.

            So far, the terrain had accommodated the flight nicely. Northeast of Kagayaku had been a long series of uncluttered valleys that eventually gave way to rolling plains tall with wild grasses. Only a single set of monsters attempted to hassle so large a group that passed so quickly through their territory. That pride of fast felines had found Katchen’s proxy let the gold masks swing their weapons as fast as it let them run. The cats had come off much worse from the encounter.

            Eventually, the plains gave way to trees that seemed intent on brushing Zonneshin’s toes as he flew across the sky. The forest of giants rose so abruptly from the grass without younger growth surrounding it that Celeres knew there was no way it had sprouted naturally. “Do we have to go in there?” he asked, recognizing the forest as a remnant of the Shard War.

            :Yes. Our thief went in there. In fact-yes, he’s still in there,: Katchen said.

            “That isn’t good,” Colonel Rafe grumbled.

            “Oh?” the blood knight prompted.

            “He’s spent all this time running, only to stop now? He’s either decided to face us on ground of his choice, which is never good, or something in there is holding him up. Considering what he is, I’m actually hoping for the first.”

            “What a wonderful set of conclusions, Colonel. I think I hate you,” Celeres said.

            “Just doing my job,” the Colonel smiled and shrugged.

            The company dismounted before entering the forest. The enormous girth of the trees was matched by their root systems. Unfortunately, the plants were crowded too close together, forcing the roots to squeeze each other for space and making the ground lumpy and uneven. However, the aggressiveness of the trees’ base gave obstructing undergrowth little room to grow, and the heavy canopy of green choked off the life-giving light above.

            Looking at the terrain, Katchen declare her proxy for speed to likely be of little use and her magic to be reserved for other needs. Prince Emhyr did not argue. He ordered the company to peer as deep into the woods as they could and keep their weapons ready.

            It did not help them much. An hour and a quarter into the woods, the rodents attacked. They scurried around from the far side of tree trunks or dashed out of hiding spots in the ground. A few daring members even fell from the heights of the canopy to drop down on the intruders. Fearlessly, the company faced the scrambling hoard.

            Celeres met the rodents halfway, slamming into them with his staff. It took him a moment to notice that the cat-sized creatures strongly resembled squirrels with their button noses and chubby cheeks. His only real hesitation with the identification was due to the hairless nature of their bodies, revealing leathery gray skin and a rat-like tail. Their glowing blue eyes were extra unnatural, but the blood knight had become used to such things in the north-out arm.

            A second squirrel launched itself off a tree and flew through the air to latch onto Celeres’ body. With his hirudin enhanced reflexes, he had no trouble catching it in mid-air. The blow was hard enough to break the skin, dashing blood onto the red wood of the staff. The blood knight grunted as the weapon turned icy cold in his grip. He cynically measured the extra power unnecessary for the creatures and proved it pulverizing the body of the next rodent.

            Not everyone in the company had the blood knight’s reflexes and magic weapons. The Prince and his advisors fought well enough, but neither the gold masks nor the antelopes had those advantages. Man and beast struck and dodged, but the hoard of squirrels overwhelmed them, landing onto their bodies to bite and scratch.

            With sharp gestures from four hands, Katchen scorched clear the area round her, earning herself a few moments to ponder the position of the company. Taken individually, there was no question they could easily defeat the rodents, but the number of still gathering creatures suggested they would eventually nibble the intruders to death, no matter how many squirrels died. The island mage considered what magic she could use to clear away the rodents without killing her companions in the process.

            With a proxy firmly in mind, Katchen lurched toward the company with four arms waving. The real two flowed forward, like ocean waves crashing down. The magically summoned two below rotated their fists and swung out their elbows like awkward blows aimed at imaginary enemies. She let the magic building up within her, then released it like a crazed bull onto the battlefield.

            Celeres experienced her proxy and wondered if the universe was unraveling around him. A jolt went through his spine, freezing him in place, followed by a second stronger jolt that spread through his body. He felt his skin swell as his blood tried to jump free of his organs. His head screamed as his eyes bugged out from their sockets, almost popping out of his skull. He was vaguely aware of his clothes ballooning away from his body, pressing desperately to get passed his more sluggish armor. His cloak flapped around his neck as if a hurricane were carrying it away.

            The two squirrels that had snuck past his defenses to cling to his body felt themselves being repulsed as well. They scrambled to hang on, but the proxy took hold and threw them away. The blood knight felt his body settling back, and immediately swung his staff, knocking the rodents into oblivion.

            Mostly, the company reacted the same. When the monstrous squirrels came free, the men and antelopes struck out with sword and horn and hoof to slaughter their attackers. The only exceptions were those that found Katchen’s proxy unbearable and collapsed to the ground instead.

            They all got a second dose of the magic as the squirrels regrouped and resumed their attack. The rodents swarmed a third time, only to be repulsed again. With that, they reluctantly concluded the intruders were too tough to kill then and retreated, waving their bare rat tails behind them.

            The company settled themselves and their mounts before Prince Emhyr ordered them to resume their march. Almost immediately, one of the antelope bleated and collapsed.

            “What happened?” Colonel Rafe demanded, but the gold mask who had been leading the beast could only shake his head.

            “Katchen?” the Prince queried.

            The island mage knelt over the animal, twitching her fingers slowly over its heaving body. Three more mounts and two gold masks went down while she worked.

            :Venom. It came from the rodent’s fangs,: she said shortly.

            The gold masks looked nervously to the forest, but the Prince ignored them. “Heal them,” he ordered.

            Katchen had not needed to be told. She had summoned four extra arms and went to work before the words had left his mouth. She managed to save those bitten that had yet to collapse plus one of the fallen gold masks. Over the other, she cast a proxy to preserve his body from animals and time alike. The antelopes they left where they fell. If the rodents did not clean them up, the maggots would.

            The company soldiered forward, fending off two more squirrel attacks with no casualties. The forest had gotten darker as they marched. The canopy overhead had gotten thicker and lower, although the trees showed no signs of getting shorter. The foliage gradually grew lower and lower, until the company could clearly see that it was not branches and leaves. Instead, green ribbons ranging from the thickness of a thumb to that of an entire arm draped across the gaps between the trees and wrapped themselves around the trunks. Here and there, the blue-eyed squirrels could be seen dashing across the ribbons.

            “Don’t like the look of that,” Celeres muttered.

            “How much further, Katchen?” Prince Emhyr asked, eyeing the low canopy.

            :Another mile. Our prey has not moved for hours.:

            The Prince nodded and said unnecessarily, “Keep sharp everyone.”

            The canopy dropped rapidly after that, making everyone edgy. A few rodents fell down, only to be quickly skewered. That seemed to deter the others watching above.

            Soon, a strand grew low enough to hang a few feet above their heads. Curious, Prince Emhyr reached up with a gauntleted hand to touch it. The rubbery strand stretched as he pushed it but showed no signs of breaking. In fact, it stuck to his fingers and stubbornly resisted as he tried to pull away.

            “Shells and shit,” the Prince swore, trying to shake his gauntlet free.

            As if that was the signal, the squirrels renewed their attack. The vermin stubbornly maintained the same tactics, allowing the company to rack up a fresh pile of rodent corpses without any of their own.

            After Celeres blasted the Prince’s gauntlet free using his staff, the company pushed on. The ceiling of green ribbons sank lower. The humans had to duck to avoid them, and the antelopes had to keep their heads down to keep from snagging their horns. Knowing the rodents still lingered overhead, the hoofed animals complained to their partners about the conditions they were expected to put up with.

            “How much further?” Prince Emhyr asked the island mage.

            :A thousand paces that way,: she said, pointing forward.

            They could all see the sticky strands settled almost to the ground in that direction.

            “Suggestions?” the Prince asked.

            “We might cut our way through,” the Colonel, gesturing with his sword.

            “Might work, although it stuck pretty good to that gauntlet. It would be slow going and leave us pretty vulnerable,” Celeres said.

            “True enough,” Prince Emhyr said, flexing his metal encased hand.

            :I’d bet it burns,: Katchen speculated.

            The Prince eyed the green above him. “We’ll need torches,” he said.

            :I’ll take care of it, Your Highness. Everyone else should keep ready to fight. I doubt those hairless squirrels are going to appreciate this.:

            “Do it, then,” he ordered.

            Katchen summoned her extra arms and settled them into an elaborate dance punctuated with abrupt strikes with her hands. After several preliminary passes, streams of fire burst from her hands and washed over the green strands. She had been right about their flammability. A few moments in her fire turned them to black ash that flaked apart at the lightest stirring of wind.

            The island mage carved open a space for the company to move freely in. They rushed into it just in time to face a renewed horde of venomous rodents, each fanatically devoted to slaying the vandals.

* * *

            Arva belted out a song in three voices right to the outskirts of the forest. All signs suggested they were only a few hours behind the Prince and Celeres, and the Cheldean intended to squeeze every moment of proxy-enhanced speed out of his voice that he could. One look up close at the forest floor convinced him it was time to save his voice for other things.

            No one else in the group even thought to question his decision. The past few days had taught them the limits of that particular proxy. Bad luck had matched two of their extra antelope with gopher holes at high speed, resulting in injuries that proxies could not adequately fix. The travelers had to put the animals out of their misery and moved on. Khenet visibly mourned the loss. Sanura felt it less strongly, pleased that neither Longstride nor Grass Eater had been hurt and willing to accept the loss of the others as the price for reaching Celeres.

            Khenet pointed out just how unusual the forest they were entering looked, so the travelers slogged across the uneven ground, ready for trouble. They found the dead gold mask first.

            A few living rodents minced around the battlefield turning the dead antelopes into ghastly pulps, with bloody bones exposed in ways they never should have been. The dead rodents received the same treatment from their living brethren. However, the human lay quietly in repose, untouched.

            “Preservation proxy,” Arva grunted.

            “No major wounds, just a bite on his cheek,” Khenet noted, swatting away a rodent that came too close.

            “The rat things must be venomous,” Tyla said.

            “Look more like squirrels than rats, up close. Of course, normal squirrels aren’t carnivores,” the Cheldean said, carefully examining one of the little corpses.

            Sanura, an attentive student of nature for those past months, took a quick look at the battlefield. “This was a lot of hunters dead for just a few kills. Why would they throw themselves up against a large group like the gold masks?”

            Khenet shrugged. “The monsters changed by the Shard War have yet to reach a reasonable equilibrium. These are hardly to first things to defy logic that we’ve encountered up here.”

            “Enough lollygaging,” Tyla announced. She pointed at the gold mask, “Since that isn’t Celeres or, for that matter, Prince Emhyr, we aren’t done yet. Let’s get moving.”

            Recognizing a reasonable suggestion when they heard it, the travelers continued their march, scanning carefully for enemies in the woods. Between all their various skills, they detected the buildup in rodents several minutes before the squirrels tried to attack. When the first glowing blue eyes leapt out, the travelers were ready.

            Having already quietly split his voice by proxy, Arva struck out with an electrical field around the group’s sides and back that sent any rodent foolish enough to touch it into lethal convulsions. To protect from above, Tyla threw up a ceiling of light and directed it to create loops that strangled squirrels that tried to jump down on them. Sanura and Khenet met those rushing the front, dealing out deadly blows to vermin within reach. The few that made it past the two women had to dodge horns, hooves, and Chadder’s sting. The fight dribbled off as the rodents reluctantly retreated from the second set of intruders that day.

            “Ugly things,” Arva said, examining his first fresh corpse.

            “They’d be cuter with fur,” Sanura said.

            “Everything is cuter with fur,” Khenet said.

            “In my opinion, the relative furless nature of humans places them among the better looking creatures of Tiran. Why do you think I chose this form?” Tyla asked.

            “And here I thought it was my charming personality,” Arva grinned.

            “No. Your personality is the reason I let you live the first time we met,” the Ai said.

            “So what’s your excuse for letting me live the second time?”

            Tyla snorted and led them deeper into the woods.

            A second attack eventually followed, but the travelers repulsed it as brutally as they had the first. The travelers watched the droop of the canopy with some concern. With her second-sight, Sanura noticed the similarities between the strands and a spider’s webbing. Worse, she could see the squirrels rushing along the strands like hornets after their nest had been wrecked. She guessed it was only a matter of time before they turned that energy on the humans. The first fights had been light in comparison with what she expected would follow. Could a sustained attack break their defenses?
            They reached the area where the green strands hung right above their heads without starting a fight. In front of them, pale green webbing strung all the way to the ground. That earth and the trees around them shows signs of being recently scorched.

            Sanura paused, but Arva told her that Celeres was nearby, only a thousand paces ahead. The soldier took the Nameless Sword and touched it to a strand.

* * *

            Katchen’s fire caught the hairless squirrels as often as their webbing, but it simply was not enough to keep all the monsters away from the company. Three gold masks had gone down and as many antelope, but the company was still making a good accounting of itself. In getting just halfway to their goal, over a hundred of the venomous rodents had died.

            Shifting her aim, the island mage cleared another twenty feet and moved forward. The Prince and Colonel Rafe flanked her, keeping the rodents from attacking her from behind and disrupting her proxy. The gold masks ringed the antelopes to blunt the rodent’s charge at their lightly armored mounts, but the beasts were on their own dealing with squirrels that dropped from above. Attackers not impaled on horns fell victim to sharp hooves.

            Celeres held the rear, the ice cold staff moving like lighting and devastating anything that came within its reach. The gem on his chest throbbed vaguely for him to rush to the front and defend the Prince, but this was where his liege had ordered him and that held more weight that the stone’s general imperative.

            Guarding the rear meant he did not get a chance to see their goal until they were almost to it. A decade ago, one of the giant trees has lost its grip on the ground, tumbled over, and jammed itself between its neighbors. In other lands, it might have survived a bit longer with its leaves still green and a root or two still running through the dirt. Here, the canopy quickly recovered with green webs, starving the giant of the light it craved. The canopy starved other kinds of plants in the forest, but mold and mildews thrived. They ate away at the heart of the giant until only a shell remained, made of bark too tough for the forest to consume.

            Something else had cut the hole through the side of the hollow trunk. At a distance, it had an unmistakable shape of a triangle that broke through the bark, exposing the dark center within.

            :There!: Katchen announced, nodding toward the entrance cut in the tree above them.

            “Brilliant,” Prince Emhyr said and moved forward.

            “My liege! That is not your risk to take,” Colonel Rafe remonstrated. The Colonel turned and called back, “Celeres!”

            “You’re right, Colonel, but I will be going up there, and so will you and Katchen. Mage, do you have anything to keep the rodents off my gold masks while we catch our thief?”

            The island mage thought for a moment, then nodded. :Actually, yes.: She shifted the rhythm of her dance and cast her repulsion proxy again.

            Rushing forward to answer the Colonel’s call, Celeres cringed at the feeling of his body ballooning. This time the magic lasted longer. His blood pushed and pushed at his skin, and he wondered if he was going to explode. Then the pressure disappeared, leaving behind a tingling in his fingers and toes.

            A quick looked around showed that all the squirrels had been thrown well over a hundred yards back. The blood knight watched as the rodents reoriented themselves and desperately resumed their attack. They never neared the company. A red shield draped itself between the animals and the people, creating a bubble of calm that held away the madness of battle. The shield included the triangular hole and most of the fallen tree.

            The Prince pointed to the entrance and said, “Little thread, get your ass up there.”

            Katchen was casting another proxy, but Celeres did not wait for her to finish it. He gathered himself and leapt up, catching the lip with one hand. Swinging his staff before him, he pulled himself up and tumbled into the trunk. He felt the ebb on his strength that accompanied any dark and ignored it. Nothing jumped out of the blackness at him.

            The red light in the entrance dimmed for a moment as Katchen floated up and stepped in. She peered into the darkness with him and said meditatively, :Hmmm.:

            Clanging steel and grunting, Colonel Rafe and Prince Emhyr climbed in behind her. While they did that, the island mage illuminated the interior with a few quick gestures. Except for themselves, it was empty.

            “Where is he?” the Prince demanded.

            Katchen ignored him and deployed another of her liquid motions. Unsatisfied, she started another, stopped, smiled tightly, and performed a third. A hollow laugh escaped her lips. :I see what he did,: she said. :Very, very clever, and something, I think, we can use.:

* * *

            The freshly spun strands fell easily before the Nameless Sword. The venomous squirrels hated that and tried to prove it by burying her with their bodies. Tyla kept that from happening by throwing up a white shield that held off the flood from the top, back, and sides. The Ai did not even bother trying to kill the hundreds that swarmed over the shield but concentrated instead on keeping it moving steadily forward.

            Those in front had a separate problem. The rodents were just as heavy there, but the shield was open to allow Sanura to cut the travelers a path. Arva had decided walking across a field of rodent corpses would present it own hazards and contented himself with a proxy that shoveled the attackers out of their path. That left only those rodents ambitious enough to throw themselves off the strands at the sword wielder. Khenet and Chadder took care of them, sometimes killing the squirrels outright and sometimes knocking them down where Arva’s magic would throw them away.

            It was grueling work, and it took them twice as long to get to the fallen tree as it had the Prince’s company. Still singing, Arva reached out with his dim sense of Celeres and found him beyond the triangular entrance. The Cheldean tapped Sanura on the shoulder and pointed.

            “Get me up there!” the soldier ordered.

            Arva nodded and shifted his voices to a shallow hissing and babbling whispers. There were a bad few moments as the rodents took advantage of the change in the proxies and stormed into the shields. Ignoring the horde, the Cheldean wrapped his arms around Sanura’s waist and flew them both up into the air. Behind them, Tyla sealed the front of the shield and the travelers’ mounts stomped to death the vermin trapped with them.

            Above, Sanura lead the way, slicing through the sticky strands. With a final sweep to clear the entrance, the two popped inside the trunk. It was dark, but it was only a matter of moments for Arva to sing up a light.

            The message was already speaking in their minds before he finished. The light revealed no speaker. The hollow trunk was empty.

            :It was a trap, of course.: Katchen said. :One of many the thief led us into on this journey. He left his essence here to lure us in and let the rodents finish us if they could.

            :I have some idea of your strength and have my doubts that they did all of you any damage.:

            Proxies from the walls exploded with enough power to level a citadel.

            :However, that should,: the message concluded.

            Sanura met the explosions with the Nameless Sword, unraveling the energy before it ripped Arva and herself to bits. Redirecting her blow, she undid the proxies themselves, dissipating them before they could do more than singe the green strands outside.

            The Cheldean whistled in amazement, having caught a glimpse of what she had just accomplished.

            “They don’t really understand what’s chasing them, do they?” Sanura asked.

            “No. No, I don’t think they do,” he answered solemnly.