The lungs expand. Full. The ribs screaming as they flex back to shape. The throat raw. Swollen. The breath coming in ragged, wet gasps that taste like acid and dirt and the cold copper of your own blood.
The other ankle. Now. Before it compensates.
UP. Off the ground. Use the momentum. FINISH it.
The construct is down on one knee. The dead leg splayed behind it. The remaining vines contracting inward. Defensive. Protecting what's left. The sword arm still functional. The blade sweeping low in blind arcs. The vine at the hip whipping in desperate circles.
A vine catches your wrist. Wraps. Thorns. You grab it with the other hand and rip it apart. The sap sprays. You don't flinch. The hands are already so burned and healed and burned again that the acid barely registers. The skin of the palms is pink and raw and not entirely finished regrowing from the last round.
You wrench the left ankle. The primary root. Thicker than the right. The main line from the network into the body. The claws dig in. The fibers resist. One second. Two. The construct's remaining arm flails. The gauntlet finds your shoulder. Grips. The vine-driven fingers closing with a force that grinds bone against bone. Squeezing. The armor groaning.
The shoulder held a crossbow bolt. This is a HAND. This is NOTHING.
You don't stop pulling.
Your teeth clench. The jaw still aching from the gauntlet. The taste of blood still between the teeth. You pull with the arms, brace with the legs, dig the claws past the sheath and into the core of the root and wrench sideways.
The root tears.
The construct comes apart. Not a fall. A collapse. The vine-tension that held it upright releasing all at once. The knees buckle. The torso folds. The helmet hits the packed earth and the visor pops open. Inside, the vine mass writhes. Tendrils reaching for the severed roots. Stretching toward the soil. Searching. The tips brushing the gray earth, probing, trying to find the network that's no longer there.
The reaching slows. The tendrils thin. The movement becomes trembling. The trembling becomes stillness.
The armor lies on the gray soil. The vine inside darkening. Contracting. Pulling inward like a fist closing around nothing.
Something about that. The reaching. The searching for the root. The slowing. It wasn't a shutdown. The vine tried to reconnect. Tried to survive. And when it couldn't, it stopped. Whatever was in there let go when it realized the connection was gone.
That looked like... release.
You're on the ground. Face down. Again. Hands black with sap, pink with new skin, cracked nails leaking dark blood. The scratches on the back still sealing. The ribs aching where the breastplate crushed them. The throat swollen where the vine choked it. The jaw bruised where the gauntlet held it. Dirt on the face, in the mouth, in the hair. Sap drying on every inch of exposed skin. The cloak torn in three places, soaked with black fluid. The hem hanging in shreds.
Breathing hard. Tasting soil and acid and blood. Staring at the packed earth three inches from the eyes. A beetle crosses the gray soil. You watch it pass. The small, indifferent life of something that doesn't know what just happened next to it.
The clearing is frozen.
For two seconds. Maybe three.
Then the chain one takes a step.
Not the patrol stride. Something different. Purposeful. Directed. Toward the fallen construct. Toward where the network lost a limb. The clicking of its links faster now. The rhythm changed. Not the lazy metronome of the circuit. Something urgent. Something called.
Another one moves. The inner ring. Heavy plate. The sword rising from rest position. Both feet moving. Not shuffling. Walking. Straight line. Toward the same point.
Another. And another. The perimeter ones abandoning their grooves. The standing ones pulling free from positions they've held for however long this garden has existed. The vines at their feet tearing from the soil as the root network redirects. Pulls. Commands.
All of them. Moving inward. Toward the pile of dead vine and empty armor.
Toward where you're crouching over it.
MOVE. MOVE NOW. THEY'RE ALL COMING. EVERY ONE OF THEM. CONVERGING. ON THIS SPOT. GET UP. GET OUT.
The fallen construct's armor lies scattered around you. The breastplate cracked where the vine-tension released. The gauntlets splayed open. The greaves still attached to the dead legs. The sword half-buried in the packed earth.
You look at it. Really look. The steel isn't rusted. The air here is dry. Dead dry. Whatever the vine does to the soil, it drinks the moisture out of everything. The metal is preserved. Chipped at the edges from years of blind swinging. Scratched and dented from impacts that nobody was alive to feel. Three fresh gouges across the breastplate where your own claws raked it. But not corroded. Not brittle. Functional.
The ARMOR. Get the ARMOR. The breastplate. The gauntlets. Put it ON. This body in that steel. That's the whole POINT. That's why—
No TIME. The chain one is TEN paces. Count: four constructs moving. Five. Every second spent DRESSING is a second closer to being SURROUNDED. Take ONE thing. Take the weapon. MOVE.
The breastplate. The gauntlets. The greaves. All of it just LYING there. Walk away with a sword and leave PLATE on the ground? PLATE. Do the math. The body can take HITS. Can take MORE hits with STEEL on top. Take the armor. Take the TIME. Strap it on and let them COME.
Strap it on WITH WHAT? No squire. No straps. Half the buckles are fused with vine. The gauntlets alone take two hands and thirty seconds. There ARE no thirty seconds. TAKE THE SWORD AND RUN.
Your hand closes around the grip.
Heavy. The weight pulls at the wrist, the forearm, the shoulder. Real steel. Solid. The edge nicked and chipped from years of hitting dirt and bark and stone. But not dull. Not in the way rusted metal goes dull. The edge is still there beneath the chips. Still holds geometry. A weapon that was made well enough to survive its owner.
The chain one is eight paces. The heavy plate from the inner ring twelve paces. The vines at their feet dragging through the soil as they advance. Slow. But steady. Converging.
Sword. Standard infantry longsword. Two-handed grip preferred. Weight distribution favors cutting over thrusting. Basic guard: blade vertical, crossguard at sternum height, strong hand on grip, weak hand below. For movement: lead with the edge, not the flat. Footwork matters more than arm strength.
The knowledge is just there. Not learned. Not remembered. Just present. Basic. Drill-level. The bare minimum a conscript would retain from training he probably didn't pay attention to.
The grip adjusts. The right hand finds the top of the handle. The left wraps below. The blade comes up. Vertical. Crossguard at sternum. The weight settles differently in two hands. More balanced. More controlled. Not comfortable. Not natural. But the geometry makes sense to the arms in a way the brain can't explain.
The first moon has dipped below the western tree line. The clearing is darker now. The only light the node's amber pulse and what little the second canopy gap still lets through. The constructs are shadows within shadows. Moving shapes defined by the faint gleam of chipped steel.
You grab one gauntlet from the pile. Just one. The left. The vine inside it is dead, shriveled against the interior. You shake it out. The dried vine crumbles. Falls away. The gauntlet is empty. Clean enough. You jam your left hand into it. The metal is cold. The fit is wrong. Too wide at the fingers. Too tight at the wrist. But it closes around the hand like a second skin made of steel and suddenly the left fist is armored and the right holds a blade.
MOVE. NOW. Western gap. Before it CLOSES.
You turn. The cloak, torn in three places, snaps behind you. The sword in your right hand. The gauntlet on your left. Bare feet on gray soil. The fallen construct's remaining armor behind you, abandoned. The breastplate. The greaves. The other gauntlet. Left on the ground for the converging hive to find.
You run.
Not full sprint. Controlled. The sword's weight throwing the balance off with every stride. The gauntlet heavy on the left hand. The bare feet finding the gray soil, the packed earth, the edge of the dead zone where the stripped trunks begin.
Behind you, the constructs reach the fallen one. You don't turn to watch. You hear it. The sound of armored feet stopping. The vines probing the remains. The rustle of tendrils searching for a connection that isn't there anymore.
The node pulses. Bright. Fast.
The western gap swallows you. The stripped trunks give way to bark. The dead soil gives way to moss. The Blackwood closes behind like a door.
You keep running.
The sword in your right hand. The gauntlet on your left. The cloak in shreds around your shoulders, and you gently pull what's left of it tight against your chest with the armored fist.
Behind you, deep in the dead zone, something that used to be a garden begins to move.