Taboo Online

Roots began to rise beneath the trapped children. They curved around the injured families and carried them down through narrow spaces beneath the bridge.

The broad villain released his power.

The debris exploded, sending stone and wood through the place where the rescuers would have been standing. The children had already disappeared beneath the ground.

His laughter stopped.

The elves could not attack him without giving him more objects to mark, so they withdrew through the homes while he advanced. Every wall, statue, and abandoned cart he touched became another delayed weapon.

Lauren wanted to send another warning, but only two lights remained.

The Heartroot carried her toward the ancestral hall.

Black-orange fire raced across carved walls, family banners, statues, and painted records while passing harmlessly over ordinary grass. Anything carrying history or emotional value fed the flames.

Elves rushed toward the hall with water and blankets, but their desperation only made the fire spread faster. Inside the building, shelves held thousands of thin crystals containing memories gathered by the Heartroot.

Generations of elven lives were preserved within them. Lauren saw births, weddings, lessons passed between parents and children, and the names of every village already consumed by the Black Rain.

The first shelf caught fire, and grief moved through the roots.

The Heartroot wanted her to save the memories.

At the same time, it showed her the Queen fighting alone near the final evacuation route.

The leader in the dark coat had entered the battle. Glowing brands spread from his hand whenever he touched one of the Queen’s living roots, weakening her control and turning part of the wood against her.

The hammer-wielding giant advanced from the opposite side. Every scream and weapon impact fed vibrations into his armor until the air around him trembled.

The Queen could survive one of them, but every future showed her falling once both reached her.

Lauren had two warnings and three disasters.

Her fingers trembled near the remaining lights.

The trial had not given her enough warnings to solve every problem. It was forcing her to decide what mattered most.

Lauren refused to accept that those were her only choices.

She studied the ancestral hall.

The elves were trying to save the building because they believed losing it meant losing the memories stored inside. Yet the crystals had grown from living branches connected to the central tree.

The memories were not truly stored in the building.

They lived in the roots.

Lauren took the fourth light.

Let the hall burn. Carry its memories into the Heartroot.

The warning traveled.

The elves outside the hall stopped throwing water.

For one terrible moment, Lauren wondered whether they had understood her. Then an elderly elf stepped into the flames, followed by two others.

They did not try to remove the burning crystals. Instead, they knelt on the floor and pressed their hands against the roots growing beneath the shelves.

Green light moved through the building.

The crystals dimmed one by one as their memories traveled down into the living network. Each preserved life entered the Heartroot before the flames could destroy its container.

The villain outside realized what was happening.

"No!"

Fire burst from his mouth and covered the entire hall.

The roof collapsed.

Lauren’s breath caught as burning beams fell through the room, but the three elves disappeared into the floor moments before the structure came down. Roots carried them away while the hall vanished beneath black-orange flames.

The building was gone.

The memories remained safe inside the Heartroot.

Relief passed through Lauren so strongly that her knees weakened. For a moment, she felt thousands of lives moving through the root beneath her palm. Children laughed in villages that no longer existed. Parents held newborns beneath silver leaves. Warriors returned from battles forgotten by everyone except the tree.

The Heartroot had lost the places where those lives had been lived, but it had not lost the people themselves.

The fire-wielding villain stood among the ruins and stared at the empty shelves burning around him.

His flames grew weaker.

The elves had stopped caring about the building once its memories were safe. Their grief no longer fed his power.

He kicked through a fallen shelf, shouting after the defenders who had escaped beneath the roots, but the hall gave him nothing else to destroy.

Lauren wanted to enjoy the victory.

She could not.

The Heartroot pulled her attention back toward the final evacuation route.

The Queen was still fighting.

Her living bow shifted between forms as she retreated across a damaged bridge. One moment, she fired silver arrows toward the approaching villains. The next, roots folded around the weapon and shaped it into a curved blade before the leader reached her.

He caught the Queen’s wrist.

A glowing brand appeared beneath his fingers and spread along her arm. The roots surrounding the bridge shuddered as her control weakened.

The hammer-wielding giant closed in from the other side.

Sound gathered around his weapon.

Shouts from distant defenders, the clash of blades, collapsing homes, and every scream still rising from the village entered the metal head. The air around it shook harder with each new impact.

Lauren watched the possible futures.

If the Queen moved left, the leader pulled her into the hammer’s path.

If she moved right, the glowing brand spread far enough to paralyze her arm.

If she raised another root barrier, the hammer shattered it and absorbed the impact before striking again with even greater force.

Every attempt to fight the giant made him stronger.

The noise of the village was feeding him.

Lauren looked at the final green light.

One warning remained.

The Heartroot’s fear pressed against her mind again. It wanted the Queen saved, but it had given Lauren no simple answer. The leader already held her wrist, the hammer was descending, and defenders throughout Lethariel were still shouting warnings to one another.

Lauren searched through the futures faster.

Arrows struck the giant and added force to his armor. Swords rang against his chest plate and fed the hammer. Even the Queen’s roots made noise when they cracked beneath his attacks.

The problem was not the weapon.

It was everything around it.

Lauren reached for the final light.