Chapter 207: The Ground Beneath Her

Luke reported the shield impact as soon as the capsule opened. He still expected his left shoulder to ache when he lifted it, but the movement no longer hurt. Shaw examined the unmarked skin beneath his shirt, then checked the damaged right arm separately. The fingers remained sluggish, exactly as they had been before the dive.

Lauren removed her monitoring blindfold after the technician disconnected its leads. She sat beside Luke while they gave their account of the ambush, including her brief glimpses and his use of the borrowed shield. Shaw recorded where they had stopped and how they had escaped. The local guards had closed the road, and neither of them had pursued the attackers.

"Leave that route alone until the patrol clears it," he said.

Lauren waited until he finished the note. "I want to arrange a test for Heartwood. Somewhere quiet, with clear ground and nothing attacking us."

"Would it have helped on the wagon?"

"No. I couldn’t grow it on the load bed, and getting down would have left me beneath the shooter. Once I was Rootbound, Harl couldn’t have taken me with him."

Luke had wanted the tree between Lauren and the crossbow. He had not thought far enough beyond the bark stopping a bolt. She would still have been beside the storehouse when the wagon pulled away.

"What would you test?" Shaw asked.

"Summoning it, entering, and leaving before my mana runs low. No shared visions. The graft stays where it is."

Shaw asked how her last full use had ended. Lauren described the release in Lethariel, when the damaged trunk had opened with her reserves nearly empty. Luke remembered the branch lowering her onto the terrace and added that detail when the doctor asked what he had seen.

"I knew I could dismiss it," Lauren said. "I didn’t get the chance to try a calm exit."

"I’ll review a controlled trial. Your current authorization stands until you receive a replacement."

Lauren collected her shoes and waited while Luke finished dressing. On their way out, she took his left hand. He could feel her fingers moving against his, although she remained quiet until they reached the doors.

"Do you remember how wide the opening was?"

"Wide enough for you. I wasn’t measuring."

"We should write down what we do remember."

At home, she found a notebook and cleared a space at the dining table. Luke expected her to start writing, but she placed a pencil beside his left hand and pulled out the neighboring chair.

"Draw it for me. I know how it felt inside, but you saw the outside."

Luke began with the trunk. Drawing with his left hand made the lines wobble, and his first branch resembled a bent elbow. Lauren leaned over the page, asking where the opening had been while he tried to make the shape less embarrassing. He added the roots he remembered above the terrace. When his pencil moved toward the surrounding platforms, she placed a finger against the page.

"Leave those out. We need room around it this time."

Luke erased the nearest railing and drew a clear approach instead. Lauren asked about the lowest branches and how far the roots had spread. He could give her rough comparisons, not measurements, so she put question marks beside the uncertain parts. Neither of them could remember the exact height.

"I can still feel where it held my back," she said. "But I don’t know what the leaves looked like."

"Pale, I think. I remember the branches better."

She touched the rough canopy he had drawn. Luke tried to picture it without the smoke and fighting, then realized how little attention he had paid to anything above the opening.

"I’ll look properly when you summon it."

Lauren slid the notebook between them and marked the space in front of the trunk. "I want to walk out here. No broken boards under my feet, and room for you to stand beside me."

Luke drew the path wider. As he worked, his right hand shifted toward the pencil before he remembered and left it resting on the table. Lauren steadied the page without taking over. She waited until he had finished, then wrote her questions beneath the drawing.

"Should we just summon it without you going inside?" he asked.

"I need to try leaving it too. In Lethariel, I kept going until there was almost nothing left."

He set the pencil down and moved his chair closer. Lauren leaned against him with the notebook open in front of them. When the kitchen timer rang, she stayed another moment before getting up to check dinner.

The authorization came after the review and another stable examination. Their next supervised dive could last up to ninety minutes, but it was reserved for this test. Lauren would summon Heartwood once, observe it empty for fifteen seconds, then enter only if its formation and her readings gave her no reason to stop. Twenty seconds was the upper limit from the trunk sealing to her feet reaching the ground again.

"Start releasing it before you reach the limit," Shaw said at the briefing. "Don’t assume asking it to open means you’re already free."

Lauren could use one brief personal glimpse while Rootbound. Vision-sharing remained prohibited, along with any other deliberate transmission to Luke. His restrictions were unchanged, and the graft was to remain at the nursery, separate from the test. Afterward, they would return for examination rather than continue questing.

Luke asked where Shaw wanted him to stand. The doctor looked at the drawing, then had him mark a position beside the planned exit instead of directly in front of it.

"Close enough to help once she’s released. Don’t pull her against the roots, and don’t damage the tree trying to open it."

Luke remembered the warning about the core being destroyed. He crossed out his first position and studied the revised drawing while Lauren repeated the timing sequence. They left the notebook beside the monitoring station, where Shaw could refer to it during their report.

The technician fitted Lauren’s monitoring blindfold and helped her settle into the capsule. Luke lay back beside her as the integrated headset lowered. Before the room disappeared, he ran through the sequence once more, especially the time they had allowed for her to leave.

They reached Sella’s nursery with most of the session remaining. Luke’s leather guards were still fitted over his forearms, and he checked their straps while Lauren explained the test. She did not retrieve the graft from its sheltered bench.

Sella set her watering can down. "You’ll need more room than the beds. How much ground did the roots cover?"

Luke gave her his rough estimate. The grower looked toward the adjoining carters’ yard, where a wagon was rattling past the nursery wall, then led them through the quieter side gate.

Beyond the last storage shed lay a broad patch of fallow ground. An old wall enclosed one side, with a wooden fence along the other. Short grass covered most of it, broken by bare circles where pots had stood the previous season. There were no planting trays or carts to move before they could use it.

"This was our holding ground," Sella said. "The water line follows the wall. Stay well away from that."

Luke studied the nearest open patch while Lauren found the gatepost. The ground sloped toward a pile of broken pots, and the easiest route out narrowed beside them. He picked up one loose piece, then noticed a wider stretch farther from the wall. He put the pottery back instead of trying to clear a place when a better one was already available.

"Farther over," he said. "The ground’s level there, and she can walk straight back to the gate."

Sella inspected it with him before he brought Lauren across. They walked the approach together, with Luke describing the fence and the nearest shed. Lauren checked the surface with her boots and followed the route out once before returning to the proposed position of the trunk.

She crouched and worked her fingertips beneath the grass. Ancient Root Recognition gave her none of the distinct response she had felt at the nursery trough. Sella confirmed that the cultivated channels did not run beneath this patch.

"Would the old roots help it grow?" the woman asked.

"They helped support it in Lethariel. It can grow from natural ground, though, and I’d rather keep it away from your nursery network for this."

The warning about enemies tracing an active Heartwood still applied. Lauren couldn’t make the tree invisible by choosing an empty patch, but she did not need to connect it to the roots running beneath Sella’s beds.

She ended Ancient Root Recognition and waited while Luke marked the available space. He placed small stones along the sides nearest the wall and fence, leaving the approach open. They would give him something to judge the growth against. Sella brought a chair to the gate, then checked that none of her workers needed to cross the enclosure.

Lauren stood on the path and held Luke’s arm while he described where he would wait. She reached toward the position he indicated, checking that he would be within reach after she stepped clear.

"Let me find my feet before you take my weight," she said. "I want to know whether I can walk out without leaning on you."

"I’ll wait beside the opening."

"And put the spear by the gate. I don’t want the point anywhere near me when the bark opens."

Luke secured the weapon well away from the chair. He returned with his hands free and checked the route once more.

Sella remained at the gate, leaving both of them room to move. Lauren faced the clear path with the chosen growing space behind her. Her mana had recovered during the preparations. She read out the session time, waited for Luke to confirm it, and called Oracle’s Heartwood.

[Oracle’s Heartwood activated.]

Pale shoots broke through the grass beside her heels. They thickened and joined behind her, rising into a trunk while roots pushed the soil outward. Luke stepped away from one spreading root and watched its tip settle short of the marked boundary. The trunk widened into silver-gray plates, leaving a hollow open behind Lauren.

Branches spread above her head and unfolded into a canopy. The leaves brushed together with a dry, delicate sound while a loose strand of her hair lifted in the breeze beneath them.

Luke counted through the formation and checked the timer when the highest branch stopped extending. The nearest roots had settled into the grass, and the path in front of the hollow remained clear.

"About six seconds here," he said. "Nothing’s reached the boundary."

Sella stayed beside the chair, her head tilted back as she followed the canopy. Lauren remained outside the opening while the skill continued drawing mana. Her reserve was still comfortably above the stopping point they had agreed on.

"What does it look like?" she asked.

"Taller than the shed. The leaves are green on top and silver underneath. They flash when the wind lifts them."

Lauren raised her face toward the rustling above her. Shadows moved across her clothes and the glowing blindfold. Luke watched her smile, then returned his attention to the roots as the empty interval ended.

She turned and found the edge of the hollow with one hand. After testing the low rise at its base with her boot, she faced the path again. Luke moved to the position beside the opening and kept his hands clear.

"I’m going in."

Lauren eased backward into the hollow, resting her hands against the living wood. The bark curved around her shoulders and closed across the front. Luke noted the time as the last narrow seam disappeared.