Alpha dodged a dozen whip-like roots as they shed out from all directions.

  As soon as Jīshí had told him the pn, he’d lept from the opening in the wall and fell back into the Heart chamber. If what they wanted to do was going to work, they had to move fast. The Guardians had stayed behind and stared out into the chamber after Alpha.

  “I don’t like this pn!” Alpha yelled between the sounds of cracking wood and the manic ugh of the elemental on his back.

  The room shook as a thick bck root as wide as the TAWP’s leg smmed into the ground where Alpha had just been. A dozen thinner roots, the size of a man’s torso, shot out of the pulsing carpet covering the floor and tried to wrap themselves around the TAWP. The TAWP strained against the stronger-than-tempered steel roots before they snapped, and Alpha jumped to the side just in time as the ground beneath erupted into a field of five-meter-long thorns.

  It only took a few moments for Alpha to cross a third of the chamber’s distance, but the closer he approached, the violent the tree’s reactions became. The half-awake Deadwood redoubled its assault as the nauseating presence got closer. Unlike the tasty undead, Alpha, or rather the TAWP, filled the tree with disgust. Worse yet, the warm energy triggered old memories of burning fmes and slicing cws. The tree thrashed in its sleep like a child caught fleeing from nightmares on the edge of waking.

  Twisted visages caught between unending fury and hopeless sorrow formed on the surface of the root-covered floor as if the roots were just a thin barrier holding them back. Hands and arms reached up, grasping at the air, desperately reaching for something, anything to grab hold of. The TAWP’s legs were soon pinned to the ground by dozens of grasping arms and cwed hands. They didn’t cling as tightly as the ropes had, but the grasping figures came with him as Alpha lifted his leg.

  Dozens of clinging figures were pulled out of the roots, like drowning men pulled from the water. From a distance, one might have mistaken them for humans, or at least zombies, but the truth was more apparent this close. Each figure was jet bck, its body composed of thousands of squirming roots, writhing in a tangled mess like a ball of worms. Every so often, their bnk, featureless faces would shift to that of a distinct person, their expressions locked into ones of anguish and terror.

  Freed from the root carpet, the figures scrambled up the TAWP’s side, cwing with far more agility and speed than any of the zombies had shown. Alpha tried to shake them off, lifting one leg and spinning it furiously. Most were thrown off, flying into the air and melting back into the carpet where they nded. But some hung on, and more joined them with every step Alpha took. The point-defense turrets were barely effective against the creatures. A single shot was enough to bst apart the upper portion of their body, but what remained would simply wiggle for a moment before rapidly regrowing. Only the ser turrets were effective, while his new crystal-rail only seemed to energize the creatures.

  All along his body where the creatures touched, Alpha could feel dozens of tiny, hair-like roots try to worm their way into his internals through any gap they could find in his armor. Unfortunately for them, the TAWP’s outer skin was composed entirely of nanites, making it a simple matter to block any such attempts, no matter how small the roots that tried.

  A few of the creatures managed to cw their way on top of the TAWP, using the bodies of their fellows as shields. Only to be sliced in two by thin stone bdes wielded by the frowning elemental on top.

  Alpha paused, then pulled the TAWP’s legs inward. The war machine vibrated for a moment before a thin blue energy shield made of interlocking hexagonal segments pushed itself outward. With a high-pitched screech, all the clinging creatures and much of the surrounding root carpet were pushed away. The shield flicked off, and the room stood silent for a brief moment.

  Then the chamber rumbled.

  The root carpet went wild, with thousands of roots of varying sizes standing in the air and wiggling like an army of mad snakes. The spreading roots retracted until several meters of the floor along the edges of the chamber were revealed. Then, slowly, the roots in front of the seed bulged upward, higher and higher, until they towered over 10 meters high, nearly a quarter of the chamber’s height.

  “I don’t like where this is going!” Alpha said, pointing his turrets at the mound of roots and firings. Dozens of ser bsts fired from the TAWP and struck the tall mound of roots, but only did minor damage. Burned roots regrew, and holes sealed themselves, even under Alpha’s constant barrage. The roots stopped writhing a moment ter, and rge, draconic cws pushed out from within the mound. The cws wiggled in the air before grabbing onto the edges and pushing.

  The mound of roots ripped open like a giant cocoon, and a creature’s bck and white, almost reptilian head poked out. It stared down at Alpha and screamed with the sound of a deep roar and echoing click mixed together. It pushed harder, and with a crack, the cocoon fell away to reveal the rest of the creature.

  It was a massive thing, slightly bigger than the TAWP. It vaguely reminded Alpha of Snowball, with the same odd mixture of both orca and wolf, with a spttering of draconian features along the legs and muzzle. Two rge webbed wing-fin-like structures ran the length of its body, from the shoulders to the midpoint of a muscur fluked tail. While its body was mostly bck, dozens of white swirling patterns constantly shifted and moved along its form. It stretched out its ‘wings’ before folding them overtop its body like a robe.

  Alpha pulled back, his turrets trained on the creature as it stared at him, giving off a constant low, clicking rumble. “What the hell is that?!”

  Jīshí frowned and answered. “That… is the true form of a mature Akh’lut.”

  The creature roar-clicked again and charged faster than something that size had any right to move. Alpha dodged, leaping out of the way, but a swipe of the creature’s powerful tail caught the TAWP in midair. Alpha tumbled before using his RCS thrusters to right himself. As soon as he nded, the creature turned and opened its mouth. A bck fme flickered in the back of its throat. Alpha threw up his hex shield the moment before he was engulfed in a dark stream of fire.

  The stream sted several seconds, with no end in sight, until a thundercp sounded. The bck fmes died as the giant Akh’lut lept out of the way the same instant the wall behind it exploded in a shower of debris. Alpha turned the still smoking [B55-Vijaya] toward the creature, but its erratic movement made it hard to track. Instead, Alpha tried to corral the creature with controlled turret fire, which it blocked with its thick wing fins.

  “Akh’lut? Why the hell does it look more like a dragon?!” Alpha asked.

  Jīshí narrowed her eyes. “Adult Akh’lut incorporate a variety of species’ bloodlines, what you’d call genetic materials, into their bodies. It’s part of what makes them so powerful… and valuable,” the elemental answered.

  “Hera’s family always had a bit of dragon in them. It seems she took it to an extreme. The species are shapeshifters by nature, and every adult is different in their own way.” Jīshí paused and looked to her left before continuing. “Case in point…”

  Alpha barely had time to turn his attention in that direction before a massive shadow shot from the rge hole in the wall. It flew through the air without a sound and smmed into the unaware creature with all its focus on Alpha. The figures tumbled for a few meters before Alpha could get a good look at the new arrival.

  It looked simir to the first creature, though a size smaller. Instead of smooth, scaley skin, its body was covered in a mix of bck-and-white fur and feathers. On its back, two massive avian wings grew. They were bck as night and sported dozens of tiny white specks, with rger spots on each primary feather. The creature’s head was more mammalian than the other’s reptilian features, but sported a wicked curved beak at the end of its short muzzle.

  Said beak shrieked loudly as the smaller creature rolled on top of its draconian counterpart and bit down the thin joint that connected its shoulder to the fin-like wing. It pulled its head back, pulling the connecting bone and a sizeable chunk of the protective wing with it.

  Alpha watched from the side, waiting for his chance. “Wait, so that thing’s actually Hera? I thought she got eaten. What the hell is up with this pnet and everyone returning from the dead?! That’s rude!”

  Jīshí nodded. “Yes, and I assume our friend with the Starry Sky Owl bloodline would be Artemis. A fine choice on her part; the Starry Sky Owl may not have the raw power of many other creatures, but it makes up for it with sheer talent. I’m pretty sure there’s some Griffon mixed in there as well. As for why Hera is alive, you have the Deadwood tree to bme for that.”

  She turned and looked at the pulsing bck seed still some distance away. Even now, the roots were regaining the ground they’d lost when Hera had reappeared.

  “Like I mentioned before, the Deadwood tree is reted to the World Tree. Unlike the World Tree, however, the creatures it absorbs aren’t used to seed new worlds or restore life. When it ‘eats’ a creature, the tree can replicate it to create a puppet. You’ve already seen a few of them,” she said, gesturing to some of the unabsorbed bodies of the humanoid root creatures scattered about before continuing. “It uses these puppets to scour the pnet of life and reach pces its roots cannot. That… ‘thing’ isn’t really Hera; it’s closer to a clone created using her as a blueprint.”

  The two enormous creatures separated, jumping away from each other and emitting low, clicking growls. They circled each other, heads low to the ground. Alpha took the shot and fired the [B55-Vijaya]. Its focus on Artemis, the draconic creature tried to dodge but still took the shot on its shoulder instead of blowing away its head as Alpha had intended.

  Instead of a spray of blood and bone, however, the creature’s front right leg exploded in a shower of writhing, bck vines. The wound quickly sealed back into scaley bck “skin” as the creature whipped around and roared at Alpha. In doing so, it took its eyes off of Artemis.

  Bad move.

  Artemis pounced, using its rge wings and smaller size to nd on top of the slightly rger creature. ‘Hera’ began bucking like a wild horse, trying to throw off the clinging Artemis.

  The orca-owl-dragon things tched onto the rger creature’s neck, using its beaked muzzle to pull away chunks of ‘flesh’ while its scaly cws raked across its sides and back. In only a brief moment, the creature’s wrestling match had resumed.

  “So, if that thing’s just a copy, does that mean we have to worry about it spitting out more?” Alpha asked.

  Jīshí shook her head. “Unlikely. If it was at its full power? It could produce thousands of ‘Heras’ at a time. And more dangerous creatures. After centuries of being starved, and still half asleep? A creature of Hera’s strength is likely its limit for the time being. Forcing it to spawn and then destroying such creatures was one of the primary methods we used to weaken it the first time. For all its power, the Deadwood tree isn’t very intelligent without its Dark Dryad.”

  “So, in other words, now’s the time to finish this?” Alpha responded.

  Jīshí only grinned.

  Osamaru