"Nathan?" Chad said. "Nice of you to… drop in on us like that."

  Nathan groaned.

  Bree slammed into another ghostly apparition, then stood back up and hit another one with an uppercut to the chin.

  Nathan pushed himself back to his feet and cracked his neck to the right. A loud snap echoed out, even through the fighting. He looked up toward the top of the tree. There were stairs roughly wrapping around the tree, but it would take hours for them to reach the top.

  "How on earth are we gonna get up there?" Nathan said.

  "Hey, mate, need a hand?"

  Nathan turned to his right to see Finny hovering in midair. "I don't suppose you have some way of helping us fly around like you do."

  "Well, I don't. But you do."

  Nathan squinted. "What do you mean?"

  "I'm talking about that trick you picked up. I can practically smell it roiling around inside of you. That should be able to generate enough power to throw us up."

  Nathan furrowed his eyebrows. "Basic Maelstrom? I don't have a strong enough handle on it."

  “You’d better get a quick handle on it, because that's our only way up."

  A quick glance around revealed that no one else seemed to have any ideas.

  Nathan grimaced. It would be up to him.

  He reached into his core and activated his abilities. His insides felt like a raging typhoon. It didn't help that every couple of seconds, pain would shoot up and down his spine from whatever was happening on his inside.

  Despite that, he shut his eyes and continued to focus on quelling the storm inside of him.

  Water started to form at the outskirts of his senses. It increased in speed, rolling faster and faster around him.

  "What the heck is this?" Bree said.

  Chad gulped. “Nathan, are you sure?"

  Nathan ignored both of them and continued to focus on his abilities. It was taking everything he had not to let his control slip and cause a massive explosion. The water continued to increase. He heard one of the apparitions get sliced apart by the water.

  "We're here!" Kason said. "We finally made it—"

  The water rushed down underneath them, then slanted upward from below. Nathan felt his breath get knocked out of him by the intensity of the force. He flew upward into the air, passing by stair after stair.

  "OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD, CHAT, HELP!"

  "How is this happening!?"

  "We're about to crash into the top!”

  Nathan snapped his eyes open just in time to see the roof of the tree greet his face. He slammed into it at full force like a wrecking ball through a concrete wall. Wood splinters sailed upward and everywhere, several embedding right into Nathan’s skin like pinpricks.

  He snapped his eyes open. The blue sky poked through the green foliage of the tree. A second later, he felt gravity kick in and he fell down several feet. His body slammed into the roof of the tree.

  A green glow.

  At the center of the tree was a shrine, with a staircase leading up to it. At the very tip of the shrine was a glowing green apple.

  Nathan blinked. "I guess that's what we're looking for."

  Nathan pushed himself up and took a few steps toward the shrine when he suddenly froze.

  The sound of air being displaced filled his ears. He looked down at the ground, then leaped forward. The wood splintered behind him, and out came a giant, pink-and-black figure. It reached the apex of its flight, then stood in place, hovering over all of them.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Nathan gulped. It was a butterfly…?

  “YOU IMPETUOUS CHILD!”

  Hundreds of voices slammed against Nathan's ears. He winced from the volume.

  Familiar voices. The voices that had taunted him for so long.

  "The wanderers," Nathan said.

  "Indeed.” The voice’s tone lowered. “But as I am now, you may call me the Queen of the Forest."

  The Queen’s wings sped up.

  And then the floor exploded.

  "You see?" B32 said, walking forward through the devastation. "The System always prevails. Calculation and order triumph over chaos."

  The remaining roots withdrew, retreating beneath the sand. The beach grew quiet except for the sizzling sound of system energy cauterizing the torn sections of soulscape.

  B32 approached Nathan's still-unconscious form, satisfaction evident in his stride. "Target located. Commencing primary protocol."

  The sand beneath Nathan shifted, almost imperceptibly at first.

  No.

  The psychic impression was faint. From beneath Nathan, roots began to emerge—delicate at first, then thickening rapidly as they coiled around him.

  B32 sighed theatrically. "Still functioning? Your persistence is becoming tedious."

  The roots tightened around Nathan, forming a cradle that lifted him slightly off the sand. One smaller tendril brushed across his forehead.

  Mine.

  "Yours?" B32 laughed. "You are, at best, a side effect. A glitch that somehow achieved independence."

  The roots trembled. A thin tendril rose up, pointing directly at B32 before curling back around Nathan.

  Still mine.

  The sand around Nathan began to shift, forming concentric circles that spread outward like ripples in a pond. B32 took an involuntary step back as the patterns grew more complex, more alien.

  "What are you doing?" he demanded, uncertainty creeping into his voice for the first time.

  The beach itself seemed to pulse.

  Roots erupted from the sand, twisting and coiling as they reached for B32. He reacted with machine-like precision, his hand glowing with system energy as he sliced through the approaching tendrils.

  "Pathetic," he said, his moment of uncertainty gone. "Is this the best you can offer?"

  More roots burst through the surface, thicker this time, surging toward him from multiple directions. B32 spun, his exoskeleton humming with power as he released precise bursts of deletion code. Each blast severed roots and left them withering on the sand.

  A wave of pain rippled through the soulscape.

  "You cannot win," B32 stated, advancing toward Nathan. "Your resistance is merely delaying the inevitable."

  A particularly massive root erupted directly beneath B32, catching him by surprise and lifting him high into the air. The root swayed, holding him suspended above the beach.

  For a moment, the flower seemed to gain the advantage.

  But B32's perfect features merely arranged themselves into a smile.

  "Protocol Override: Terminal Sequence."

  His form began to glow with blinding intensity. The root holding him blackened instantly, crumbling to ash. He landed lightly on the sand, now surrounded by a pulsing aura of system energy so dense it distorted the air around him.

  "Enough games," B32 said.

  He raised both hands and brought them together with a thunderous crack. A shockwave of deletion code spread across the beach, a perfect expanding circle of destruction that scorched everything in its path. The sand vitrified into glass; the few remaining roots shriveled and disintegrated.

  Nathan reached into his inventory without even thinking and pulled out his fishing rod. The ceiling had collapsed, and he was falling toward his doom.

  At least, that’s what the Queen expected.

  Instead, Nathan swung his hook forward, and it gripped onto the butterfly. His fall came to a stop with a sudden bounce.

  "How dare you!" the Queen screeched.

  Finny and a few of his fish friends took the opportunity to dart forward, scoring glancing cuts along the butterfly’s wings. The Queen screamed and flapped harder, throwing Nathan from side to side. He tightened his grip, his heart slamming into his chest.

  Nearby, Kason loaded a bolt into his crossbow and aimed it directly at the Queen’s head.

  "Wait!" Nathan shouted. "We need her alive! She’s the one who gives out the key to the fourth circle."

  Kason grunted and tilted his crossbow to the right. The bolt shot out and cut into the wing of the Queen.

  "I’ll kill you!" she screamed. "I will take your powers for myself, and then we shall be free of this infernal circle!"

  Nathan’s feet touched the top of the tree trunk. He gripped it with his toes and pulled back on his fishing rod—still attached to the Queen.

  Her body whipped through the air toward Nathan. Unfortunately, he hadn’t really thought about the implications of this. Her body crashed into his, and they both flew off the side of the tree. Out of desperation, he wrapped himself around the leg of the butterfly.

  "Get off me, you insufferable ape!" the Queen shouted.

  "Hell no!" Nathan grabbed onto the Queen tighter. "If I let go, I’m going to fall!”

  The Queen let out a screech and rolled in midair. Nathan held on, reared back his fist, and slammed it into the body of the butterfly.

  His fist punctured the Queen. She let out another scream and tried to roll him off.

  "Build us the passageway into the fourth circle!" Nathan shouted.

  "Absolutely not!" The Queen’s body jolted. "With your level of power, we’d easily qualify to become the challenge for the next circle! And if we reach the bottom, then we will be free!"

  "Is that what they told you? And you believe them!?”

  "It is all we have! It is our only chance of escape!"

  Before Nathan could respond, the Queen’s other legs reached out, grabbed him, and threw him off. He sailed through the air until his fishing line snapped taut. He grabbed onto it, stopping his fall. Above, where the hook was still embedded in the butterfly, the Queen was destabilized yet again and began to descend rapidly toward the ground.

  As she got closer and closer, Nathan’s mind whirled with ideas. He considered using his wind cultivation again to try to break his fall—

  Another spike of pain, worse than any of the prior ones, shot through him. Nathan could hear the flower voice scream in agony.

  Nathan was unable to do anything. The concrete rushed closer, and he smashed into it with the full force of human terminal velocity.