Chapter 770: The Organ

Alex looked at the red glow beneath her fingers.

He had no intention of taking that power. The organ had absorbed attacks meant to destroy it, then drawn strength from his rune the moment the rune touched a feeding line. Trying to empty it under Lolth’s gaze would only give her another reason to tear through his boundary.

"You take it as it is," he said.

"Then you have offered me what I already came to take."

The pale strand above his head struck downward.

Alex turned his right hand away from his left wrist and raised a second row of runes.

The impact drove him to one knee, breaking the stone beneath him. His first barrier stayed under the slab, but the boundary facing the light woman cracked from top to bottom.

He could not move the organ away without dragging the last attachment through it.

Alex pushed more power into the broken runes.

Blood ran down his right side. The wound Thepes had opened was tearing again under the strain, and the flesh around his left shoulder burned as he kept the slab level.

Lolth watched him through the crack.

She hadn’t struck the organ. She was forcing Alex to hold the slab steady while defending himself.

"Mingyue," he said through their bond.

"I see."

Ice broke at the junction behind him.

Alex felt her alarm before he heard Dorian calling for the last carriers to get behind the wall. He wanted to turn, but the slab tilted as soon as his attention shifted.

He steadied it instead.

A pale line slid through the opening in his boundary. Frost caught it just short of his throat.

Mingyue landed beside the broken warehouse wall. She held one sword toward the strand and the other toward the road behind her.

"The strand at the junction moved this way," she told him. "Selene has the patients behind cover. Hold this side."

With the strand from the junction now attacking Alex, Mingyue had been able to leave the road. But if Lolth sent more threads toward the wounded, the wall wouldn’t protect them.

Alex spread his runes over the short space between Mingyue’s ice and the slab.

The pale line bent against the joined defenses.

Mingyue’s left sleeve darkened. She changed the angle of the sword in that hand, using the other blade to hold the nearest stretch of space steady.

The crack stopped widening.

They had protected a few paces of broken paving. Above the buildings, the rest of the web continued pulling ships out of formation.

Alex rose from his knee.

"If you want the remains damaged in a fight, keep going," he said. "If you want them whole, let me finish."

The light woman looked down at the organ.

One of its veins had stretched when the slab tilted. Alex lowered the far edge of his support until the flesh settled above the marks again.

He had not threatened to crush it. Lolth could break his boundary and take the whole apparatus if she chose. He needed her to prefer the remains cleanly separated, with no struggle beside the exposed flesh.

Her gaze followed the last red attachment.

"That join first," she said. "I have been waiting for you to reach it."

Alex kept his eyes on his work. She understood what he was doing. Nothing except her choice kept the rest of her web out of this yard.

The pressure on Mingyue’s swords eased without disappearing.

Alex took a shallow breath and looked at the narrow line linking the slab to the paving.

"Vesa. Is he still there?"

"Yes, King. He’s listening."

A faint voice followed hers.

"Tell me what changed."

Alex described the last attachment, then the pale thread resting on the upper side of the flesh. The first belonged to the apparatus beneath the organ. The second led upward toward Lolth.

"Separate the apparatus," Alucard said. "Leave her connection alone."

Alex looked at the white light pressing against Mingyue’s frost.

"What about the people she’s caught?"

"That thread isn’t a handle on everything she holds. You saw her before coming here. She had a web then."

Alex remembered the cocoons they had passed inside it.

Those cocoons had spread through another star system, feeding her battle against Olivia. Vesa had also told them about the souls imprisoned inside Lolth’s heart. Alex knew enough to fear what she held, but he had no way to inspect it from this yard.

He looked past the service yard toward the sky. The new strands were pale against the smoke, but following them upward did not show him where Lolth’s older network began or who remained inside it.

Cutting the line that touched the organ wouldn’t free those people.

"King," Vesa said, "I can help you watch the local strands. I can’t tell you who is still alive elsewhere in her web."

Alex’s fingers tightened beneath the slab.

He hated that limit. The creature feeding on those people was right in front of him, close enough to bargain with. But demanding everything wouldn’t give him the strength to force her to surrender it.

Mingyue looked toward him.

"Finish the separation," she said through their bond. "The people here are still being pulled while we wait."

Alex brought his attention back to the narrow red attachment.

It passed over the edge of the slab before joining the wider ring. He could now see where its glow entered the small support pattern and where a separate part continued inward toward the flesh.

He placed his new runes on the exposed stone outside that crossing.

The organ pulsed.

Alex waited for the glow to dim again, then broke the outer mark without lowering the slab. Red light ran across the paving.

The narrow attachment split beyond the edge of the stone. Its outer end fell against the yard, and the glow there began to fade.

The organ shifted toward Lolth’s thread.

Alex lifted his support to follow it. Mingyue moved her right sword under the stretched line of space beside his barrier, preventing that short area from twisting as the weight changed.

The marks left on the slab still held the flesh above it, but no red line connected them to the surrounding paving now.

Alex kept the boundary around it intact. The green haze still moved inside, and the power within the organ had not become safe simply because he had separated the external apparatus.