The collision was brutal. Her body was all limbs, a bundle of limp paws and newly formed arms and legs, crashed into the floor and rolled into a nearby wall, knocking over a nearby shelf and causing a landslide of wooden trinkets to promptly topple onto her head. There was no glass through where they had flown-- which was the only thing Margo could find herself grateful for, besides their unlikely survival of the miserably painful landing-- but that had only meant that where they were wasn’t actually the library. As the wrinkled hands came to caress her face, Margo recognized Granny Ophelia’s makeshift room around her. Treeg was already standing, hoisting Margo up by grabbing her arms and shaking her out like a piece of paper as the rest of her body finally came to fruition. Granny Ophelia kept her nose pressed close to Margo’s, her long nails digging into Margo’s cheeks. She tried to push both her and Treeg away as she recovered.
“I’m fine!! I’m fine,” she huffed. A searing, stomach-curdling agony suddenly caused her to lurch over in Granny Ophelia’s arms. Margo’s vision swayed as she looked down to find the source of her new discomfort. Her right leg appeared to be fully twisted backwards. She reached down and twisted it back in place with a visceral crack, much like a wooden doll’s. Though facing the correct way, her leg remained stiff and unbending, a bodily punishment for the incredible transformation she had forced it through before.
“We need to go,” Treeg said, tugging at her cloaked shoulder.
“The lady in white, who is she to you?” Granny Ophelia croaked, pressing her sweaty forehead against Margo’s. “I see her calling you.”
“Granny, we don’t have time--”
A lucidity Margo hadn’t seen before washed over Granny Ophelia’s marbled gaze as Treeg tried to interrupt. The eternally spinning sky in her eyes warbled, giving way to white sclera and warm brown pupils. She shut her drooling mouth, wiping at it with her sleeves. “We don’t have time at all Treeg, you’re right. We need to go, now.”
Startled, Treeg’s mouth dropped in shock. “You’re back!! You’re not-- you’re--!!”
The words escaped him as Granny Ophelia curled her arms around him in a tight, suffocating embrace. He tried to speak, but his mouth was muffled by the thick scarves keeping her frail body covered and warm. “We have much to catch up on. But not now.”
The tender moment was ruined as a gaseous hand appeared outside the windowsill, gripping the ledge and pulling a weightier ball of fog with it. Margo nodded vigorously to the other two. “Let’s go!!”
The three ran out of Granny Ophelia’s branched home. They barreled down the hall, and Margo realized with some horror that there were sounds of screaming and fighting down in the base of the Hollow. They shoved past a bloodied Kethell in the hall, who only trembled and looked on with wide eyes that brimmed with tears and sorrow. Curled behind her was the corpse of an elk-man, whose fingers were clenched tightly around Kethell’s cloak. Margo tried not to look at her for very long, but the image of Kethell trapped by a dead Blem filled her with an unknowable dread she couldn’t shake off, not even as they came to the entrance of the library. Treeg burst in, launching himself towards the table.
The normally pristine and elegant library was a mess of fallen shelves and several Blem bodies piled on the table. Three knights stood over them, heaving a fourth onto the pile. They turned in unison to see the three intruders, drawing their weapons immediately. Treeg threw his hand out to a nearby wall. Thick black vines shot up out of every window sill, growing up and over to block all light.
“Margo, now!!” he shouted.
On instinct, Margo threw her hands towards the now darkened room. The knights charging towards them with their swords out suddenly seemed to stumble to a stop, each hacking up a lung violently. They suffocated in their suits, spraying blood through their visors and doubling over in a matter of moments. Treeg pried his hand off the wall and strode through the fallen shelves to the back of the library. The vines he had summoned disintegrated, allowing light back into the room. Margo pulled her hands back and blinked at them in confusion.
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“But why did it work now?” she asked, somewhat dumbfounded.
Treeg returned with a dusty book, Granny Ophelia sinking herself down in an untouched armchair by the nearest window with a comfortable sigh. He flipped through the pages rapidly before bringing it to Margo and showing her an illustration of a figure covered head to toe in gold mesh. “It’s sun magic,” he said with a grin, pointing to the picture. “I forgot, I had read this forever ago. A large part of the country’s money goes towards the worship of this, the Emblem of Solara. I’m betting the real reason isn’t faith at all, but a form of highly specialized protection for the military’s favorites. It grants protection from all bodily evils”
Margo groaned, shaking Treeg by the shoulders and scowling at him angrily. “Why couldn’t you just tell me all that when we were out there?! You dragged us all the way here just to show me this stupid book when everyone out there is dying!!”
Slyly, Treeg shook his head with a proud smirk. “We’re not here for the book. We’re here because over the past few weeks, I’ve discovered that the library is the beacon for the fortress.”
“What?”
Treeg turned around, placing a gentle hand on the table and pressing lightly with his palm. Black tendrils rippled out from his fingers, but unlike before, the roots weren’t coming to greet him. Instead, Margo watched as they disappeared into the wood entirely, melding into the walls of the fortress and pulsing with Treeg’s magic.
“Come here, Margo,” Granny Ophelia called airily. “You’ll get the best view from here.”
Margo joined Granny Ophelia by the window, leaning out from under the rounded cover to see the field below. There were still people fighting outside, but something else was happening around the combatants, something that caused Margo to gasp with astonishment.
Amidst the sea of blood and decaying plant life, great trees of black branches were starting to rise from the dirt. They started out as small, meager saplings, but within a matter of seconds, they spiraled up into the air, arching over to meet the walls of the fortress. As soon as they made contact, more grew between them, mirroring the braided design Treeg had instructed the Blems to create before. Reinforced walls of leafage and wood connected to the fortress, shrouding the land below in low light. Margo squinted between the foliage gaps in the structure, and to her delight, saw the knights beginning to stumble and fall to her disease.
“Margo,” Treeg called weakly, and Margo glanced over her shoulder to see Treeg doubling over. His cheeks were covered in what looked like raised veins, but as Margo ran to him, she could see small roots under the skin, crawling up his arm and growing into his eyes. “I told the fortress to protect us, but it needs to know your disease to travel through it.”
He extended his hand to her, revealing a leaf growing from his palm. A small, pulsating red glowber was growing just under it. Margo hesitated, looking at Treeg with concern.
“My magic knows to infect the enemy,” she said softly. “Even now, I can feel it moving around Xireal and the others… But if I cast it directly through you, I don’t know that it’ll know the difference between you and them, Treeg.”
Treeg smiled. The expression felt lifeless to Margo, the light not reaching his eyes. In a monotone voice, he said, “It’s okay. I can tell the fortress that too.”
Slowly, she arched her hand over his, Margo’s fingertips barely brushing his wrist as she pushed her palm into the fruit. It felt warm between them. Treeg’s smile never faltered, not even as Margo curled her fingers inward, forming a fist around the beating heart of the fortress.
“Treeg,” she murmured awkwardly. “You have to be sure that this will work.”
“We haven’t been sure about any of this. So why would I be?”
“Because I’m not,” she whispered helplessly. He just stared back at her with the same emotionless grin. With a deep breath, Margo squeezed the glowber, her nails shredding the skin and causing the juices to run between hers and Treeg’s hands.
In an instant, the walls ran black with Margo’s virus. The black tar texture repainted the walls, black thorns tangling around the windows and edges. The decorative flowers rotted away to reveal thrumming infected glowbers, bursting over the walls and spraying out over the fields. More glowbers sprouted and dangled from the ceiling, and Margo could hear the results of more erupting outside as the sound of unfamiliar shouts for retreat sounded through the air. In a matter of minutes, the foreign screams fell eerily silent.
Treeg fell limp in Margo’s arms. Margo held him tight, pressing her ear near his nose; once she heard his breathing, she calmed, letting out a few tears of relief. “We did it, Treeg… It’s over.”
“Not quite, I’m afraid.”
Yulo’s voice sent chills down Margo’s spine. She snapped her head towards them, horrified to see Granny Ophelia’s body in their metal arms, with the fog blade running straight through her chest. Yulo threw her aside like trash, the fog blade wavering through her form before aligning itself as solid again. Slowly, with haggard breaths, Yulo aimed the end of their blade at Margo and Treeg, heaving through the visor. “Caught you.”
