Page 102 of Blightfall

“Was it just the wind?” I asked.

Dayan didn’t answer, but one of the branches descended from the canopy, digging into the dirt just a meter from my head, stabbing in so hard that a good twenty centimeters of it buried itself in the soil.

Dayan held their light-whip out to the side, switching it on. Tendrils of light shot from the end, whipping at the trees. I leaped to my feet, wishing I hadn’t left the laser sword in my ship. In front of us, one of the thick trunks began to move.

“Are you going to fight it?” I asked.

“I was thinking we would run,” Dayan said. “No points to be gained fighting here.”

Dayan wasn’t wrong. “All right,” I said, keeping my eye on the trunk as the surface of it rippled, and two large eyes, gaping maws of blackness, opened in the bark. “On three.”

Dayan didn’t even wait for me to begin counting. They spun around and lashed their light-whip to the branches of a stationary tree, kicking their legs into the air and swinging away.

I reached down for Naga and turned to follow, fumbling with the light-line hanging at my belt.

The creature stabbed another branch into the ground right next to me, then hauled its enormous trunk into me, slamming me over a log. My chest hit the curve of the log straight on, knocking the wind out of me. Naga went flying over the branch and landed in the shrubs beyond. I hung there, helpless, with my hands on one side of the log and my legs on the other, while the thing lumbered over me.

Dayan dangled from their light-whip in the branches of a tree. They looked back over their shoulder and saw me stretched over the log like a side of meat, but they were too far to come back for me. The thing would be on me in seconds. I’d freed my light-line, only to drop it in the dirt somewhere behind me. I struggled to draw breath as the scion stabbed its branches on either side of me, easing its body over me. Was it going to eat me? Crush me? Neither option seemed particularly appealing.

On the far side of the log, my hands found purchase on a large stick, almost as tall as I was. I still hadn’t managed to draw breath, but I latched onto it and dug my feet into the dirt, heaving the stick up over my head.

It collided with the scion, bouncing off its thick bark. Stars, what did I think I was doing? Attacking a tree with a stick? That was like attacking a person with…well, a part of another person. But I didn’t know what else to do. I rolled over, kicking off the log and stabbing toward the creature’s gaping eyes, using the pointy end of the stick like a spear.

I managed to jab it right beneath one of its cavernous eyes, knocking off a large chunk of bark. The wood—was it wood?—was dark under there, a greenish-black color.

The scion swiped with one of its branches, and I tried to dodge but only got partly out of the way, taking a hit across my left shoulder. A moment later, the tendrils of Dayan’s light-whip hit that branch, wrapping around it and pulling it away, preventing the scion from walloping me again.

I probably should have run, but staring down that creature, I found I didn’t want to. Maybe it was our loss in the space station, or the fact that my team had failed at our mission. Maybe it was the multikilometer freefall still filling me with adrenaline, or the pent-up stress of trying to be spies when we were clearly anything but. It could have been the pressure from my parents to be part of their empire to the stars, or even the awkward mess I’d made of things with Alanik.

Whatever the reason, I stood my ground, raising the branch in front of me like a spear. I couldn’t solve any of my other problems by threatening them with a stick, and maybe this one wouldn’t be solved that way either, but damn it, I was going to try.

I let out a guttural yell. The scion twisted and yanked its branches away from Dayan, who was launched into its branches, landing on a particularly thick one three meters up. The creature thrashed, trying to throw Dayan off, but they held on with a vengeance, just as they had during the battle in the arena.

This time, I saw something else in the tree’s thrashing branches. Maybe I was projecting, but its body language suggested desperation. Fear.

“Hold still,” I said to Dayan, and I lowered my spear and backed away, moving through the trees so as to no longer threaten it.

The scion thrashed a while longer, then eventually stopped. It rested its branches, the ones Dayan was clinging to still twitching, as if it had a burr stuck there that it had resigned itself to not being able to shake.

Dayan stayed very still, then reached out for the branch of a nearby tree, grabbing it in a firm hold and turning off their light-whip. They slowly transferred their weight to the branch and lifted their body off the scion.

The scion seemed to sense the release and shifted its trunk, its black eyes blinking up at Dayan. The scratch beneath its eye was oozing a green sap, and I was suddenly sorry I’d injured the thing.

The scion swung its branches around and lumbered away, as if it just wanted to be free of us.

“Your form is terrible,” Dayan said, dropping down out of the tree. “But I’d give you full points for spirit.”

“I shouldn’t have done that,” I said. “I should have run, like you said.”

“But you’re not dead,” Dayan said. “So who’s to say I was right?”

My shoulder was badly bruised where the scion had hit me, and my left side was a kind of numb that I knew was only going to get worse as the shock wore off.

But despite all of it, I smiled.

“Why didn’t you run?” Dayan asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I just wanted to face something I stood a chance against.”