Begin report: Sieging has begun on the first ring of the Core Holds. We expect heavy defences from the defenders. The Empire has emptied out the outer Holds, south of them and conglomerated the dwarves into their uncrackable nest. Anassa is present although she is split across several different fronts. I would advise sending the Princes up above, for the situation up there seems far more dire than the situation down here. Hold Levhen has been entire surrounded, the outer gates have been cracked. There is only one more that remains before we can enter. Kassandora is confirmed to be there, the Empire has shown no advancement in portal magic, although I suppose this is the time to put it to the test.

  In regards to the presence of a Goddess, I have already called for more troops and specialist magicians. Kassandora is a grand theoretician but it is known that she is not a terror unlike most of her siblings. A Prince would be appreciated to deal the finishing blow, although that is simply a matter of theatricality at this point. She will not escape when there more than half a million legionnaires blocking each entrance of the Hold. Nevertheless, I wish to hurry the deployment of the tracking hounds. Levhen is a grand hold and she will most likely retreat deeper into it in order to try and evade us.

  On the issue of Anassa at the core holds, she has been effectively overwhelmed with sheer mass. The Divine now operates only in thirty-minute intervals, with a thirty-minute rest in between them. Whereas progress is slow and costly, progress is still progress. Once one Hold is breached, I strongly suspect that the rest will only be a matter of dominoes.

  Fer and Baalka have successfully escaped through a different route and have entered the Core Holds. If the Underground front is to herald nobility, then I ask for the Princes to be sent to counter them. Both alone would be able to block a single front. Great War anti-disease have been instituted, flame-locks separate the army to stop contamination.

  Neneria and Legion are still engaged in their chase. It has descended into a stalemate between the two, although I somewhat think that both us and them are content with it. She is leading him down ancient Highways at this point, that were only used during the Great War and never since the initiation of the population control measures. I expect her to leave for the surface soon in western Arika. Legion has been advised to follow. Ultimately, I think that as it stands, Legion is a small price to pay to disable the Goddess of Death and I think that the Empire makes the same rationalisation but in reverse: the Goddess of Death is a small price to pay for Legion.

  Irinika has still not moved from her post. We have confirmed that she stands alone, only with messengers attending her on occasion. The main force upon the Core Holds has used the new ashfront Doctrine. We have confirmation that Irinika can indeed singlehandedly halt the ashfront in an enclosed space. The vanguard force sent during Plan Four Knives has failed. Irinika still holds.

  Thus, the encirclement of the Holds will change from our initial counter-clockwise manner into a clockwise manner. The danger posed by Hold Levhen is only relatively minor at this point. We do not suspect that they will be able to mount a counter-attack and a full encirclement is impossible. Even if they pushed out through one of the gates successfully, they would need an army of millions to successfully isolate the main force.

  And an armies of millions of spare, they do not have.

  - Report by Prince Malphus, commander of Tartarus’ underground forces.

  Olephia stared at the entrance for minutes of stunned silence, her humming loud enough to illuminate the entire region. Covered and obscured by bark, it was certainly something that simply should not be there. Those noxious waters that had flooded the depths of Klavdiv had been so acidic they had even broken down Imperial submarines, entire laboratories up above were still working on trying to find a way to neutralize the acid that did not simply involve inundating with so much water that a whole ocean would need to be transplanted into here. Pumping them out was a fool’s charade of a project for the amount of resources invested into the infrastructure for such a project would have be enough to be surpass the entire Imperial Army.

  So Olephia had been called in, as the last resort of the Empire that she was. There was no reason to pretend she did not enjoy the role. It was a grand title after all. A role reserved for when her father’s entire nation decided a wall was far too sturdy to batter through. She stood here as a gate-breaker for the ultimate fortresses. And now, she found herself stood before a gate she did not quite understand.

  Wood.

  Wood at the very bottom of the Klavdiv.

  Wood that had somehow survived and held back an ocean that should, by all means, simply devoured it. Olephia took a few tentative steps closer until her humming’s physical effects actually reached it. Lightning that crashed in long, crimson webs out of her body burst towards the stone around her. It charred rock, it crashed and devoured the lone pools and puddles that were dripping down from above, the remnants of Klavdiv’s taint. They crashed forwards into the wood.

  And they had almost no effect. The area was only slightly charred. That raised even more eyebrows. Olephia opened her mouth to speak and then…

  Silence.

  No, it would be better not to open something that should not be opened. Instead, she looked up at the darkness above her. Now that Iniri’s forest barrier had managed to put itself out, there was utterly no light down here. Olephia lowered the tone of her hum as she floated, she couldn’t force anyway. Just like her father, fate had not blessed her with speed.

  It took a long time, it felt like a day of travel through the darkness although Olephia knew it was just the fact that she was slowly floating in darkness. She started miming swinging a paint-brush as she moved up to pass the time. Light strokes, there and back and there again. It couldn’t have been that long though, Iniri must have spotted her. Branches and roots began to spiral downwards beside Olephia. They blazed away under the damage of her hum. Bark chipped and fell away, and then grew thick. Thick golden sap streamed down the material. A small branch extended from it, it grew wide enough to stand on. Olephia’s lightning cascaded out of her, it was shattered. The branch retreated, then pushed forwards again.

  Olephia hung in the air as the branches tried to push into the decomposition of creation emitted from her hum. She took a sigh. Ultimately, there was a way to handle this, wasn’t there? She should have talked with Iniri about this but the woman was a Goddess and an ancient one like this. She should be able to react quickly… Even if she was Iniri.

  Olephia returned to silence. Immediately, the energies around her subsided. The ambient light of reality breaking down shut off. Darkness once again swallowed the Goddess, Olephia could not even see her nose or her outstretched hands as she felt the air moving past her, without her voice it was deathly cold once again.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The fall lasted for not even a moment. A branch lunged forwards, it touched Olephia’s shoulder. From that, vines sprouted, they latched around Olephia’s chest like a climbing harness. The wind that had been surging up past Olephia suddenly began to surge up. The Goddess of Chaos rolled her eyes, her arms and legs falling loose as she allowed herself to be dragged upwards. To think that Fer, of all people, was gentler than Iniri.

  Iniri’s barricade opened up. The defence that had stopped Olephia from destroying Klavdiv with the blasts of energy she had been expelling. It was thick oak wrapped and twisted around thick oak, heavy vine held it together, sap acted as glue. Suddenly, Olephia’s harness retreated from her body as light spilled in from above. Artificial light of floodlamps, but light nonetheless.

  Olephia fell through the air, reached the zenith of her fall, she prepared to slam into the ground and then was caught by a gentle leaf. So Iniri could be gentle! It lowered her down to the ground where everyone was already ready. Iniri in the Imperial black of Divines, her coat had marks were it had been overgrown with living wood. A few human scientists stood about. Some engineers were doing repairs on a nearby generator that rumbled. Sound echoed in from above, the beating of hammers and the hissing of welding torches and the high-pitched beeping of a truck being reversed. There were dwarves down here too, only five of the half-men, stood in their arm with thick coats spilling out from underneath it.

  Anyone else would have introduced themselves. Olephia didn’t have the luxury of speaking. Instead, immediately pulled out the notebook from within a pocket. Her pen was clipped onto it. Immediately she started to write, smile on her face at a job well done: ‘I have reached the bottom. I assume I have found the entrance although I’m not very sure, it is covered with wood of some type. I would advise for a party to travel to the Holdmaster to inform him.’ She wrote the message out twice, then tore the paper in half. One was handed to the dwarves who had scampered over, another to Iniri.

  The Goddess of Nature read it, her eyes scanning the text. Olephia focused more on her reaction than the half-men and humans. The latter were confused, the former perturbed. And Iniri? Olephia seen the look on Kassandora when she was about to enter a battle. “Wood?” Iniri asked.

  Olephia nodded and Iniri had to speak again. “Actual wood? It survived the waters?”

  Olephia nodded again. “Did you break it?”

  Olephia shook her head and then pointed to Iniri. The Goddess of Nature raised an eyebrow and Olephia realised her mistake. She had spent too much time just talking to herself and had forgotten people couldn’t read her thoughts. A message was written: ‘No, I thought it was a job for you.’ Olephia passed the paper over and Iniri smiled.

  “I appreciate that.” Olephia thought of writing another message, telling the actual reasoning. That if she opened, then it would be destroyed to shut an extent that there was no chance of it ever being opened back up. That didn’t have to be said though. Iniri would act better if she didn’t come into it nervous. She just pointed to herself, to Iniri, then down to the ground. That message, Iniri did get. “Of course, we’re going now.” She turned back to the dwarves and humans who were inspecting the message still. “We will go down, you will go up and inform the rest. Send a team to catch up to us.”

  And that was that, before any reaction was given by the mortals, the wooden platform was already opening up. Olephia lifted her arms to her side, she felt like a damn princess right now as a huge leaf that felt like a soft jelly. Iniri watched her with a smile, and collapsed backwards onto a similar leaf. A small vine wrapped around their stomachs to keep them from sliding off, and then they plunged below. The journey down took a fifth of the time as it did for Olephia to lethargically float upwards, propelled by herself.

  The leaves deposited the two Goddesses as mushrooms and luminous flowers sprouted from the massive vine that had lowered them down. A faint mixture of lights, blue from the mycelium, orange from the flora, began to expand as Iniri’s plants filled the bottom of the chamber. They stayed away from the remaining pools of poison that Olephia had not cleaned up, trees sprouted, bent sideways, they barks smoothed out to make a flat floor for them. “So?” Iniri asked. “Where is it?”

  Olephia shrugged. Was she actually supposed to have a sense of direction. She just spun her finger around in a circle and then mimed confusion: Her hands spread out to either side as if she was a scale struggling to balance. Iniri looked around, the flora spread out further.

  An intake of breath meant she had seen it. Olephia stepped towards the wood, not too close for it to suddenly lunge at her, but just closer. She pointed to it, then to Iniri. Sometimes, this self-control did get under her nerves. “That’s it?” Iniri asked. Olephia just shot her a dry look. What sort of question was that even? That’s it? Did she actually need an explanation on why wood should not be here? Iniri must have seen it. “I mean, that’s the entrance?”

  Oh.

  Olephia nodded proudly. She gestured to herself, then up, then mimed an explosion. “I know.” Iniri said, walking closer. “Why is it here?” Olephia shrugged. If she had answers, she wouldn’t have returned back up to Iniri. “I mean…” Iniri took a step closer. “Shouldn’t it have been devoured? How did it even grow?”

  Olephia finally gave up on the miming and opened her notepad again. She realised the papers were getting short. The men better have one on them. ‘If I knew, I would open it. If I open it, it won’t be shut again. I brought you here to open it. Do you know what wood it is?’ She ripped off the sheet by habit and then immediately regretted it. That was another paper gone.

  “Well I can try.” Iniri said. “I…” She took a deep breath. She cast her hand forward. Olephia watched the Goddess of Nature face a flat palm toward the wood. “If I can’t do it Olephia…” She said and Olephia stopped the woman from speaking with a slap on her back and a point towards the ironwood barrier. Iniri took a deep breath and cast her power. Her eyes began to shine green, her breathing got deeper, Olephia began to write as the wood slowly curled.

  ‘Can’t do it?’ It was so sarcastic that she didn’t even have to speak to get the message across. ‘Who are you again? Goddess of Nature?’ This time, it was in a smaller text and she didn’t tear the sheet, instead just showing the notebook to Iniri.

  Iniri let out a deep breath of stress being finally dropped from her shoulders. “Apologies Olephia.” She said. “Apologies, I don’t know…” She trailed off. “Well I do actually, I couldn’t move the Jungle, I thought this would be similar.”

  Olephia had talked with her family about the Goddess of Nature being stolen by a Divine that was a forest incarnate. ‘Trees are trees, the Jungle is the Jungle.’ She wrote back the reply. ‘Two very different things. Can we go faster?’ She asked and pointed at the entrance. The finger stabbed the air a few times to prove the point.

  “Of course.” Iniri said. She cast both hands forward, one foot was placed back as if she was going to push a heavy bolder before herself. She grit her teeth, her eyes began to shine with verdant green energies. From within the sleeve of her black coat, a branch shot forwards and touched the wall. She dug in. Olephia turned to the wooden barrier that was blocking the entrance to the World-Core.

  Well… It was moving. Certainly it was moving, it was expanding into a corridor, the wood seemed to regrow back into the position as Iniri. She began to write, then held it before Iniri, unsure of whether the woman would even answer: ‘Is there a problem?’

  Iniri stopped. The bark began to slowly close up the hole. She chuckled to herself as if in disbelief. It couldn’t be too bad though. Certainly not if Iniri was smiling. Olephia waved her hand before the woman. “Do you know what that is?” Iniri asked, stretching and cracking her fingers. Olephia turned back to the wood, the passageway that had been wide enough for Fer to confidently stride through had already closed to the size of a man. She shook her head. “No, of course not.” Iniri said. “You’re Worldbreaking breed.”

  Olephia crossed her arms and turned back to the Goddess of Nature. And that was supposed to mean what exactly? To think that this little upstart who had been so nervous now was commenting on Olephia’s age? “Gaia of ages past.” Iniri said. “Of ages so ancient that I think only Neneria and Irinika and myself remember it.”

  Iniri walked towards the wooden barricade, her voice loud. “What a feeling Olephia, I can’t even describe it.” She placed her hand upon the wood; it began to shift again. Slowly, carefully, as if still trying to push back against Iniri’s influence. “A kingdom that has forgotten its Queen.”