Chapter 44
I stood on two solid legs yet I had roots planted neither in one place but many, had but two arms but many branches. I had red blood running through my veins and liquid fire rising like sap from my feet to the bridge of her crown.
The coin rested in her hand as Zyperia wielded green fire that struck the blue of my Druz enemies, and where that light touched them, nothing remained but a charred pile of ash that drifted slowly as a dust devil. Men cried out, swords met steel, stun rods burned flesh, men fought other men, Celenes killed Druz and Dursvan fought besides humans against humans.
Gunfire erupted yet no bullets harmed the Seillach carrier, nor the Celene alliance. Blood had no substance here, only the weapons of the other plane had reality.
Zyperia forced her way forward under the Heart warriors to search for me. What they found was Brightarm kneeling with my body at his feet, my blood on his blade, his hand holding my chest off the ground. "You can‘t be dead!" He ground out, shaking me. "Damn you! Where is the Tree?" He dropped my body and turned to defend himself against her and her warriors joined her. Forced back by her wrath, the walls crumbled as they burned away until she stood before him with the last of his command. He snarled, "Your String Bearer is dead! You have no power over the Tree!"
"I have the power to finish with the Lord Jadewyn started!" She cried and squeezing her hands together, she glowed incandescent, the atomic proportions that washed over every Druz seeking their eyes. Green fire met the blue flame of their eyes and they melted, leaving nothing behind but an emptiness in the fabric of time and space. The Druz form was gone, as well as the human. The air vibrated, a sensation like worms crawling just under the skin and little flickers of static electricity bled off every surface. As it ceased, Celene soldiers and human warriors approached. Zyperia knelt at my side and pressed the coin into my palm as she ran her hands over my flesh. She screamed. "Murphy!"
He was there, holding up my head, his hands on the great vein in my neck, pulling at my shirt to expose the purple lips of that huge gaping hole to the left of my lower ribs. "Zip," he swallowed slowly. "He‘s gone."
He carefully gathered up my body, and carried it towards the portal that she had opened.
Every Dursvan and Celene left alive followed their faces, grim and in shock. They brought me to the foot of the King‘s throne and placed me on the table. I saw, my Lord‘s face, and was astonished to see the anguish on his pale visage. "Dead?" He gasped. He ran his fingers across my bloody cheek. "Can you not save him?" He looked to Murphy and the priests. The tree rustled from her new berth in the Crystal Gateway, no longer bound on earth plane, but residing in the gate, she could be everywhere and nowhere at once. I stepped out of her living essence and stared at my mortal flesh. I called the coin back into the Tree‘s fire.
"Bring it to me," I said in my voice echoed like the wind in the forest‘s crown, like far-off thunder rumbling before storm of uncontrollable energy. They started, turned to look and rushed towards me. "Stop," I commanded. "Do not touch me; it is the same as touching the tree.
It would burn you to the bone and kill you. New human flesh can contain the energies that feed the tree."
"Jadewyn, you‘re alive!"
"No," I returned. "Neither do I live nor am I Jadewyn. I am the soul of the Tree, the Weaver of Strings, and the Heart of the Universe. Bring me the Lord of the String‘s body."
Eilwynn and Kiannyn picked up my flesh and Zyperia held my hand as they carried me to the foot of the tree. I bent, regarded the paper-white face with an enormous occluded green eyes, full lips covered with a thin trace of blood that had run from my mouth. My face was black and blue with swollen cheeks. What was left of my clothes were sorry rags and opened to show the gaping wound in the ribs. There was no blood for the dead cannot bleed. I touched him and his flesh felt cold and mortal, no longer part of me. They looked from my corpse to me, and back. Zyperia lifted her scarred hands towards me. Time stopped.