Chapter 392: Focus

The walls were lined with books. The woman led her down through the network of vaults carved inside the tree, until they reached the heartwood.

“These records contain our history and all the knowledge that we cannot forget,” she said softly. “No one but Moongrove can come here, but it leads to a secret passage to the Ritual Hall.”

She wound through the stacks until she reached the entrance, a hidden doorway concealed within the hollow of a massive, moss-covered pillar. The delicate crystalline runes sparkled.

She opened the passageway and stepped in the half-destroyed Hall.

They’d desecrated this place, too. Bastards.

“Don’t be too upset, this is just the reception hall.” She pointed to another door. “That is the hall you want.”

Isorai slipped through the narrow door, descending a steep, spiral staircase made of living wood into the cool, dark depths of the earth. The air here was dry, smelling of ancient parchment, dried herbs, and old dust.

As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she saw a faint light flickering from another room. Someone was inside, tossing heavy leather-bound ledgers onto the floor in a frantic, unorganized search. In reality, the books were still on the ground to this day. She bent to pick them up as she rounded the frame.

The figure in the room turned, holding up a glowing lantern. The light illuminated a young, dirt-streaked face framed by messy, short-cropped hair, and eyes wide with frantic terror.

The child looked past her at the sound of battle above. The young boy dropped the heavy book he was holding, the pages fluttering wildly as it hit the floor with a loud thud. He stared at her, his lips trembling, his face turning entirely pale as if he were looking at a ghost. The fight continued on. He collapsed into a nearby wooden chair, burying his face in his hands as a ragged sob escaped his throat.

Was this her child? Was she actually here to rescue him? Or… was this the Banegrove woman’s child?

Isorai kept looking and came to a stop at the skeleton sitting in the observation chair, dressed as a young witch-in-training with a short spear anchored in the ground, barely held in his skeletal grip. It was customary for there to be a herald for ascension ceremonies.

She supposed he had been given that duty, but it had never come in his lifetime. She walked over to the young man’s remain and cast a wave of light over him and his spear.

“Rest in peace.”

The bones fizzles away. The wind sighed and flew away, guiding her to another doorway, cloaked in silver light.

The silver veil of the portal parted like silk, and Isorai stepped through, leaving the subterranean area behind as she entered a seemingly deeper level that sat at the core of the tree.

The air here was electric, thick with the concentrated essence of the the Tree and its consciousness. She swallowed realizing that this was the heart that she’d reached out to when the Consortium was under attack.

The space defied reason. The vast, high-ceilinged chamber was carved directly into the petrified heartwood of the ancient tree. At the center of the room was a glowing  orb that looked like the cross between jade and emerald. There was a row of empty seats, but no one to occupy them.

She tsked and turned back, going back the way she came and feeling ridiculous. The chained spears had been locked to stand in observation, to ensure that the seats needed to be filled for ascension would be filled.

They had let the Banegrove woman bind their souls… so that Isorai would have a proper ascension.

They must have known about the vroth.

She reached the room and collected each spear, each of them thrummed to life, illuminating their thirteen rings. She headed back the way she’d been shown and stopped, to grab the young woman’s spear which had been loddge in the wall.

She set each of the spears beside the seats and watched the impressions appear as faint outlines projected from the spears.

When the last was set, the young woman appeared again.

“It is time.”

Isorai walked purposefully toward the central altar in front of the giant orb. Her boots clicked softly against the stone floor. As she approached, the ancient mechanisms of the temple responded to her presence. A heavy, stone chest embedded in the face of the altar rumbled, its seamless lid sliding back with a slow, grinding sigh.

From within the recess, a small, crystalline vial rose, suspended on a faint updraft o magic. The liquid inside was a swirling, irised silver, thick and humming with a raw, volatile potency.

It was the the potion that she had plannnned to make for this purpose.

As her fingers closed around the cold glass, a resounding click echoed through the chamber. Behind the altar, the massive, solid wall of heartwood began to shift. Great wooden gears groaned as the roots uncoiled, parting to reveal a hidden, ascending pathway that wound upward into the dizzying heights of the Great Tree itself.

Isorai unstopped the vial. The scent of ozone, crushed pine, and ancient starlight washed over her. Without hesitating, she threw her head back and drank.

The potion hit her throat like liquid lightning.

A gasp tore from her lips as a searing, ecstatic agony rippled through her veins. Her vision flashed blinding white, her heart hammering a frantic, echoing rhythm against her ribs. She could feel the magic expanding inside her, tearing down the old boundaries of her mortal reserves and anchoring her soul directly to the roots of the Great Tree and its thirteen massive roots reaching out.

Gripping her dagger to ground herself, Isorai stepped onto the ascending path.

The earth groaned around them. With a violent crash of displaced rock and boiling mud, Ruhkaal tore his way through the upper crust of the living world. His massive, ruby-scaled form fizzled away in a cascade of sparks and molten ash. Close behind him came Draevir, in his dragon form.

Ruhkaal was so stunned he shifted into his human form.

“What?”

Draevir turned his head, shaking his wings out. He was no longer just emerald green, his colossal body was composed of jagged obsidian and deep-veined granite, lined with flickering green light, like he’d gotten armor.

“That is not fair!”

Draevir laughed as Xaruh surfaced from a tiny shadow and shook himself. He chuckled.

“Behave, boys.”

Draevir shifted back, shaking himself and glancing back.

“It was kind of dicey there for a second.”

Ruhkaal glowered at him. “Only for me.”

Xaruh snickered.

"Look at the sky," Draevir’s voice rumbled, a low, tectonic vibration that shook the surrounding pines. His eyebrows jumped up. “Is that what I’m going to sound like now?” He hummed. “I’m going to have so much—“

“Focus.”

Above them, the sun had been violently swallowed by an unnatural, creeping dark. The clouds churned in violent, bruised shades of purple and black, but it wasn't a storm of rain. A strange, resonant frequency vibrated through the air, and then, a voice began to echo across the heavens.

"Isorai?"