Chapter 128: Boiling the sea

The next forty hours became a pattern etched in muscle and sap. Verdant Wells multiplied; three, then five, then eight, each a lung breathing water into neighborhoods the blight had tried to teach to thirst. Symbiotic Gardens layered the Rootsite until the city looked like a cathedral that had learned to eat and heal. Lure Thickets sang and lied and fed the walls with wolves that had once been problems. Clayton and Torren ran the hard edges. Veyra and her Wardens turned alleys into killing lanes where no Construct reached the second corner. Kaelin made the air untrustworthy for anything that walked on manufactured legs. Soren’s quiet rage never cooled. Everywhere, Lorn kept the pulse from tripping over itself, mending before breaks became fractures, speaking soft to people who needed a voice that didn’t come wrapped in orders or iron. Each time Korrath escalated, the Rootsite learned a new way to breathe. And yet... Clayton felt it in the marrow of the Heartroot: Korrath was still ahead of the curve he was drawing. The machine hadn’t required its Lord to move yet. The jaws hadn’t yet closed. They were just... opening wider. Night fell like a held breath across the rooftops. Clayton stood alone on a high spine of bark, the wind tasting of iron miles west, rain miles east. New Chicago pulsed in his mind like a wound on a bandage. The Aphid Network whispered a hundred small victories and a dozen small griefs. The city slept because it had to, not because it could. He spoke aloud to nothing and to everything that heard him when he said, "Not yet. You don’t get us yet". A flicker touched the edge of his sight; not an insect, a root, or ally. Just a ghost in the grid. For a heartbeat it traced letters in the air as if written by a fingertip through fog. [v a n] Then it was gone, not like it had fled but like it had never discovered how to exist in the first place. Clayton stared at the empty space and smiled without humor. "Armistice," he said under his breath. "You watching too?" The wind did what wind does. He turned from the ledge and went back to work. At dawn, three things happened at once. A Verdant Well on the eastern quarter doubled its yield without being asked, as if it had found a deeper throat to drink from. A child born in the northern ward took a first breath without crying; eyes bright, watching the leaves move like she already understood their grammar. And on the far wall, where the Rootsite’s new teeth had been laid thickest, a horn blew one long note without tremor. Clayton reached the ramparts as Veyra lowered the horn and pointed with the hand that wasn’t her bow. The horizon wasn’t a line anymore. It was a shape; a low, rolling darkness that didn’t smoke or stumble. A carpet. He put Hive-Sight down the lanes between rubble and thorn and saw it; not a wave of beasts this time, not a tidy file of Constructs. Rather, a tide of hunger. Feral feeders... micro-Behemorphs by the thousand, chittering and blind, poured toward the Rootsite like a living flood, a solution Korrath had picked from the ugly end of an old toolbox. If the prey won’t starve fast enough, feed the hunger to the walls. Veyra’s voice was very calm. "So he’s done waiting". Clayton’s Heartseed burned hard and bright, not with fear. Fear was a useful tool. Instead of fear, his Heartseed burned with the clean, simple angle or a promise being tested. "Then we stop waiting too," he said. He glanced at Torren. "Ready to boil a sea?" Torren’s grin showed teeth. "Say when". "Kaelin," Clayton said, eyes never leaving the rolling black. "Cut channels. Make rivers where the ground forgot how". Kaelin lifted two fingers in a lazy salute and disappeared. "Soren. Lorn". They were already moving; Soren to the breach points, while Lorn charged in the direction of the wells to protect them. They didn’t respond like individual units at all, but rather different parts and units of a singular body... Clayton’s Verdant Rootsite. "Wardens," Clayton called, and a hundred bows lifted like a forest remembering the word storm. Veyra’s lessons was now muscle memory to them, and they would be deciders in the storm that was coming. Clayton laid his palm to the wall. The Rootsite shivered as if every leaf had just inhaled at once. "Pressure," he said, and his steady voice carried through wood and water and will. "We answer". He watched as the Micro-Behemorphs charged in, coming closer, and closer, and closer, then... The first wave hit the outer thorns with the sound of hail on bone. The city leaned forward and, for the first time since Korrath began to squeeze, pushed back. KABOOM! The first impact rattled the Rootsite’s outer thorns. Micro-Behemorphs slammed into the barricades in a blind frenzy, claws churning, mandibles grinding in a mad symphony. The tide didn’t hesitate, didn’t falter. There was no strategy in them, only a relentless mandate to consume. "Wardens!" Clayton’s voice cut through the storm. "Burn the front ranks!" Veyra’s bow thrummed, her arrows carrying packets of Verdant fire that burst into sheets of green flame along the killing lanes. WHOOSH! The first wave of feeders ignited, thrashing in the thorn funnels, but the press behind them crushed their burning bodies flat and kept coming. "Torren!" Clayton barked. The Pyreaxe sang. Torren vaulted the barricade and brought it down in an arc that split a lane of feeders clean to the ground. Flame surged through the gap, rolling forward like a hungry tongue, boiling carapace and flesh alike. From the shadows to their left, Kaelin’s work became clear. He carved channels through rubble and root, redirecting the swarm’s momentum into narrow lanes where the Wardens’ fire could reach deepest. Clayton planted both hands on the wall. Roots beneath the surface convulsed, shoving up jagged growths to slow the feeders’ crawl. The city’s own teeth ripped gaps in the tide. Still, the swarm adapted. Feeders began climbing over their dead, forming chittering ramps of twitching bodies. One wave surged high enough to crest the barricade. Soren met them. Emberblade flashed once, twice, severing the lead creatures mid-leap. The rest fell back into the funnel, shredded before they touched the ground. "Wells holding?" Clayton called. Lorn’s voice came over the link, steady but strained. "Three tapped, one overdrawn. Pulling back flow now". "Hold them," Clayton said. His eyes fixed on the horizon, where more dark shapes were spilling into view. This wasn’t all of it; not yet. Korrath was feeding the swarm in measured pulses, testing for a break. A ripple moved through the Rootsite’s link; the carrion patrols. They were ready. "South wall, release the hounds!" Clayton ordered. From the southern lanes, the subordinated carrion-beasts surged forward in coordinated packs. They hit the flank of the feeders like a hammer, tearing into them with surgical brutality. The swarm recoiled, momentum stalling for precious moments. Kaelin appeared at Clayton’s side without a sound. "North quadrant’s thinner than it looks. There’s a breach behind the second funnel; I can close it". "Do it," Clayton said. "Leave nothing standing". The air filled with the sound of breaking carapace and snapping bone. The smell was worse; burnt chitin, steaming ichor, and wet soil. Torren slammed his axe into the ground, sending a wave of Verdant flame roaring outward. "That’s three lanes clear!" "Good," Clayton said, eyes narrowing as the swarm shifted again. New shapes were emerging; larger, heavier, plated like siege beasts. "They’re sending anchors," Veyra warned. "If they plant in the lanes, the tide won’t move". Clayton didn’t hesitate. "Torren, with me". They vaulted the wall together, hitting the ground hard. Clayton’s roots surged forward, gripping the lead anchor-beast’s legs. Torren’s Pyreaxe smashed into the plating, fire blooming in the cracks. The anchor roared once before it collapsed into the mud. The swarm hesitated, and Clayton took the moment. "Push them!" he shouted through the link. BAM! BAM! The Wardens loosed volley after volley, cannon-beasts drove hard from the flanks, and the thorns beneath the feeders shuddered upward in lethal spikes. Within minutes, the pressure broke. The feeders at the front turned, dragging the tide with them. The swarm receded in uneven waves, leaving the lanes littered with steaming corpses. Clayton landed back on the wall, breathing hard. "Status?" "All funnels holding," Veyra reported. "Losses minmal". Clayton grunted in reply. "Wells stable," Lorn said. "No breaches". Kaelin reappeared, faintly bloodstained but calm. "North sealed". The city settled into a tense quiet, the only sound the crackle of dying flames and the distant chitter of retreating feeders. Clayton looked west. The horizon was empty again, but it felt like the pause between hammer strikes. Korrath had tested the walls, and found them standing. Clayton’s voice was low, but it carried through every link in the domain. "He wanted pressure," he said. "Now it’s our turn".