The System Chose the Weakest Man

Chapter 033: Inside the Gate

The first thing Ethan noticed was the light.

It came from nowhere. There was no sun, only a pale, shifting green that seemed to float between the trees and fall in long splinters across the ground. Each trunk was a column of clear glass, thin as a wrist and tall as a house, leaning gently in the same direction, as though the whole orchard had been bent by a patient wind. Leaves hung from them like blades of ice. When the air moved, they touched, and the sound rolled across the grove in a soft, endless chime.

At the roots, something black was spreading.

[Glass Tree. Resonant. Loud noise triggers nearby fauna. Root rot: advanced.]

"Pretty, isn't it," Selka said, her voice low. "Don't let it fool you. The rot's what matters. Everything in this gate is feeding off it."

She walked at the head of the file with her bow half-drawn and her eyes on the ground. Bram came behind her, shield up, sword loose in his hand. Dessa Marrow followed, watchful, her satchel clinking softly with vials. Doran kept close to her shoulder and glanced at every tree as if it might bite him. Ethan brought up the rear, leading Biscuit by a short rope.

The mule had gone quiet. His ears had flattened against his skull and he walked in a stiff, sullen way, placing each hoof with care.

"He doesn't like it," Ethan murmured.

"He's smarter than he looks," Selka said, without turning. "Good. Keep him close. If he stops, you stop."

They had been inside perhaps ten minutes when the first beetles came.

They arrived with a clatter, like a handful of dropped crockery. Six of them, big as dinner plates, scuttling out from between the trunks on thin, jointed legs. Their shells were clear glass, each one polished and bright, with a drop of black ooze pulsing at the center.

[Glassback Beetle. Level 12. Vitality: 60. Weakness: heat. Heated glass cracks.]

"Heat," Ethan said, before he could stop himself.

Selka glanced over her shoulder. "What?"

"Their shells. I think they crack with heat."

"Doran," Selka said.

"What? Me? I'm sorry, I'm--"

"Doran. Fire. Now."

The mage went pale. Then his hands snapped up and a spray of orange flame leaped from his palms in a rolling wave. It struck the lead beetle in the shell and the glass went milky. A web of cracks raced across it with a sound like ice breaking on a river. The creature burst in a spatter of black ooze.

"I did it," Doran whispered. "I did a thing."

"Do it again," said Bram.

He did. Four more times. Bram broke the sixth with the rim of his shield, a flat clang that rang through the grove like a struck bell. Selka's arrow finished the last one. When the dust settled Doran stood there blinking in the green light, his hands still glowing, and his face had gone from white to pink to a kind of dazed, shining wonder.

"I'm useful," he said.

"Don't make a habit of it," said Selka. But she was almost smiling.

Ethan tugged the rope. Biscuit hadn't moved. The mule stood with his legs braced and his ears pinned flat, staring straight ahead at a spot in the air above the trees.

"Stop," Ethan said quietly. "Everyone stop."

The note came first.

It was one chime, high and thin and clear, from somewhere far to the left. It rolled across the grove and was answered by another, closer. Then a third. A faint, sweet shiver in the air, like the first notes of a song.

Selka froze. "Gods. Wasps."

"Chime Wasps," said Dessa Marrow, in the first words she'd spoken since the gate. Her voice was crisp. "They live in the hollow trunks. They hunt by echo. Any loud noise brings them. Bram, your shield."

"I know."

Ethan's skin had gone cold.

Loud noise. He thought about the clatter of the beetles, the clang of the shield. He thought about Biscuit's ears, flat back, and the way the mule had stopped in his tracks one breath before the first chime.

He opened Stalker's Instinct.

It flooded in, a wall of little pulses, thin and fast, hundreds of them. A swarm, wheeling above the trees in a slow, wide circle. It moved with a rhythm, passing overhead, curving away, looping back. He counted the beats. Forty. Forty-one. At the forty-second beat, the circle closed over the grove again, and the pulses dipped low enough that he could feel their hunger like a hand on his neck.

[Chime Wasp Swarm. Level 13. Vitality: 40 each. Count: approx. 90. Weakness: silence.]

Ninety. They would drown the party in a heartbeat.

He lifted his hand.

"They come back every forty seconds," he said. "A ring, around the grove. They've just passed. The next one's coming. We've got about thirty seconds of quiet." He kept his voice flat, as if he were reading it off a card. "I've been watching the mule. His ears go down a second before each pass."

Selka stared at him. At Biscuit. At the ears, which were, in fact, pinned flat.

Dessa narrowed her eyes. "You've been counting."

"I'm good with animals."

"Evidently." Her gaze lingered a moment too long. Then she shrugged. "Selka, for what it's worth, I think the boy is right. Wasps hold a pattern. I've seen it."

"Fine." Selka jerked her head. "Forward. Quiet. Doran, no fire. Bram, sheath that thing. Move."

They moved.

It was the strangest passage of Ethan's life. A long, tense walk through a forest of ringing glass, the whole party stepping in time to a count he held silently in his head. Thirty. Twenty-eight. Twenty. At ten he raised a hand and they stopped. The swarm swept overhead like a grey cloud, humming, and every one of them flattened against a trunk and held their breath. At twelve he lowered his hand and they went on.

Four times. Five. At the fifth, a shard of glass fell from a branch, a long sliver the size of a sword, and struck the ground a handspan from his boot.

It rang like a gong.

Flinch.

Everything stopped. His legs locked. His breath caught. He stood rigid as a post, one foot in the air, while the whole grove seemed to inhale around him. In the sky above, the swarm's hum lifted.

Bram's shield came across his chest like a wall.

The old man hadn't looked at him. He'd simply stepped sideways, a single smooth motion, and put the tower shield between Ethan and the sky. The first wasps arrived a second later, a rain of tiny bodies hammering on the steel.

"One second," Bram grunted. "Then you move."

The second ended. Ethan moved.

They ran the last twenty paces in a crouch, with the swarm howling behind them, and tumbled through a gap between two trunks into a small hollow. Selka slapped a rune-charm against the glass at the entrance and the hum died as if a door had closed.

Ethan lay on his back in the dirt, gasping. Biscuit leaned against his side, trembling, and snorted wetly in his ear.

"Thank you," Ethan said.

Bram didn't answer. He wiped his sword on his sleeve and sheathed it, and for a moment his eyes rested on Ethan, steady and unreadable. Then he looked away.

"There," said Selka.

She had crept to the edge of the hollow and was staring through a gap in the trunks. Ethan crawled to her side and looked.

Beyond the last line of glass trees the orchard opened into a clearing. And in the middle of it lay a lake, flat and still and utterly black, with a surface so perfect that it held the green sky like a polished plate.

At its center, on the water, stood a figure.

It was tall. Human in shape, though too smooth, too straight. It faced away from them with its arms at its sides. Light slid across its back in long, shining lines.

[Appraise: failed. Target reflects the observer.]