Page 71 of Venomous Lust
A few seconds later, he lay unmoving, yellow eyes staring up without seeing. He was dead.
As Yalko got back to his feet, he turned his attention to the remaining four warriors.
“I am chieftain.” His voice was a high-pitched hiss. “There will be no killing of those under my protection.”
The four Muharee stared, their faces expressionless, as white roots lazily wrapped around their fallen comrade’s body. Smoke rose in the air as the roots pulled him under the surface, his flesh melting from his bones until he was gone. It all happened in under a minute.
Hazel was still watching the bare spot on the ground where the Muharee had disappeared when Yalko resumed walking.
“Come,” Khal whispered in her ear.
Hazel walked, Khal close by her side, dread in her heart.
As they advanced, the stench changed from rotting flesh to something more like vegetation, green spoilage and sulfur. The previously pristine, vibrant green trunks were being eaten by long veins of pale yellow, rising from the ground in a sickly pattern.
Hazel kept close to Khal as they walked, the Muharee in front of them as silent as corpses. Even from a distance, she could see the lingering gazes of the Muharee as they turned their heads to the yellowing tree trunks.
Another hour later, and Hazel wished she could go back to the yellowing trunks and the drooping roots.
The Medina Forest wasn’t dying here. It was dead.
All around them, the Medina Forest was as silent as a tomb. The chirping was a long gone memory, the still air above the grass only trapping the absence of sound. Trunks lay on the forest floor like sleeping giants, their green color faded to a sickly brown. Everywhere, the white roots were stretched out beside the trunks, flat and lifeless. The stench of death permeated the air, powerful and unshakable. As far as the eye could see, trees lay dead.
The Medina was dying at a speed that confused Hazel. How could such a healthy, enormous organism perish so suddenly?
Hazel stayed close to Khal but she couldn’t ignore the distressed, almost desperate look on the Muharee’s faces as they pulled back their hoods, no longer needing the protection of their green cloaks.
After another hour, they arrived at what seemed like the end of a tall canyon. The rocky outcrop was bare, but it was easy to see that the Medina had reached all the way to the end of the cliff, with trunks hanging loosely down the abyss where the rocks didn’t cover the ground.
The Muharee silently lay down flat on their bellies, Hazel and Khal joining them. As they lay there, the Muharee stared in mute horror at the view below.
They had just found Knut’s Ilarian guard factory. And the monstrosity of it was beyond words.
“He is killing the Mother Forest.” Yalko’s voice had the depth of a hollow skull. “This is no accident; he is poisoning her.”
Fifty feet below the edge of the cliff was a large flat building made of what appeared to be gray stone. It stood on the bank of a flowing river, and leading to that river was a tube at least six feet tall, spewing a thick yellow ooze into the water. The sludge flowed downstream toward the Medina, giving the water a sickly shade as it carried death further and further away.
As far as they could see, the Medina downstream was dying, poisoned by the water.
And wherever the Medina was dying, the Muharee died, too.
“What is this blasphemy?” Yalko’s voice was filled with revulsion, with a religious kind of horror.
“This is an Ilarian guard factory,” Khal answered. “The clones are hatched into a broth, then grown in synthetic wombs. The liquid you see is the waste from their births. To have poisoned so much of your Medina only tells us he is producing more and more of the Ilarian, a number great enough to wage war on the Ring.”
“This much poison is destroying the entire Mother Forest. She cannot heal herself fast enough.”
Yalko dug his claws into the rock as he spoke, the tips splintering under the force. His eyes were wild and wide as he stared at the devastation below.
“What happens to your people if the Medina is gone?” Khal spoke without mercy, forcing Yalko to look back at him.
Yellow eyes full of hate and pain turned to Khal and Hazel. “We die.” Yalko spoke with a hollow voice that echoed the emptiness in his eyes. “All of us. There are no Muharee without the Medina.”
“You have no choice.” Khal kept going as Yalko’s face twisted with grief and anger. “Knut will never leave and he will never stop. Once he considers something his, he won’t abandon it. He will destroy your Medina until none of you are left alive.”
Yalko’s eyes went to the gray building down the cliff. As he looked at Knut’s factory, a savagery Hazel had never seen before spread over his reptilian features, a depth of hatred and bloodlust that sent shards of ice through her bones.
“Are there more tribes downstream from this?” Khal asked with death in his voice.
