Larek felt uncomfortable when the traumatized former captives all turned to look at him following the sudden death of the General.  Looking around at the SIC members, it suddenly occurred to him that he and his companions were greatly outnumbered; while he didn’t particularly fear them, it would kind of defeat the purpose of coming all this way to save them if they attacked him or his friends and subsequently forced him to hurt or kill them in response.


    That, and having just seen that his protective Fusion wasn’t completely infallible, he didn’t want to test it against more than 2,000 people filling a relatively small space.


    As the seconds passed by, and recognizing the fear and anger in the faces of the SIC members as a typical response to his height, he began to worry that a fight was inevitable.  Before anyone could act upon that fear and anger, an older Mage in a multi-colored robe pushed her way through the crowd, her short brown hair streaked with grey, but there was a definite air of authority about her; the way the others parted for her made that authority and respect very clear.


    I’m guessing that this is the other General.  General Auran, I believe?  Am I going to have to eliminate her, too?  Opposing her right here and now won’t win over the rest of the SIC members, of course – if I can even win them over at this point.


    When first planning the expedition to the SIC headquarters, Larek had originally hoped to eliminate, one way or another, the SIC leadership quietly away from the rank-and-file members.  Unfortunately, this whole situation, with the organization having been captured by the monster protecting the Calamity’s central Aperture and having to rescue them all, had ended up making that quite a bit more difficult.  Well, other than General Maxwell, of course.


    What he didn’t see, however, was any sign of the “advisors” that were mentioned to him, such as Dean Wilburt.  Were they killed down below, or are they somewhere else.


    He turned his attention back to the woman approaching, even as he glanced back down the long tunnel leading downward, which was still progressively becoming a problem, with the fire approaching at a rapid pace.  They had a small window of time during which to act to prevent the SIC members from burning up, so he hoped that the General didn’t make things more difficult.


    She stopped in front of Larek, looking him up and down with a guarded look on her face before holding a hand against her chest, right above her heart.


    And then she bent at the waist in a quick bow, before straightening back up, and she stared him right in the eyes.


    “I know who you are, Fusionist…”


    She paused for a moment as the tension in the tunnel rose.


    “…and I don’t care.  You saved us from a fate worse than death, and I am very grateful that you arrived when you did.”  She looked pointedly at a few of the nearby SIC members.  “No one here will accost you, as they should be similarly thankful for their lives.”  Staring at Larek again, she asked, “But what are you doing here in the first place?  I thought you were down south with the Volunteers.”


    “Is this really the time for this?” Nedira interjected impatiently, gesturing back down the tunnel toward the approaching fire.  Smoke accompanied the heat, and while it mostly stayed toward the roof of the tunnel, it was becoming thick enough to start obscuring Larek’s vision.


    Unfortunately, the obstinate General seemed insistent.  “This is important.  I must know your intentions before I can trust you.”


    They’re grateful and thankful for their lives being saved, but are balking at potentially escaping their “prison”?  I really don’t understand the logic of these SIC people.


    Rather than waste any more time, he answered her quickly and truthfully.  “I came to save as many members of the SIC as I could, while also eliminating most of its leadership.”


    “What?!”  The General seemed genuinely taken aback at that declaration.  “Why would you do that?”


    “I would think it would be obvious,” Bartholomew stepped up next to Larek, addressing the General directly.


    “Barkus?  You’re with them, now?  And what do you mean?”


    “General, you sent teams of SIC agents to kill innocent people so that you could try and take control, you’ve been riling up the Factions right when they needed our help the most to eliminate the mind-controlling bugs, and then you sent the Unspoken Response after The Fusionist.  It shouldn’t be any wonder why he wants the leadership of the SIC removed.”


    With every recounting of the SIC’s deeds, the General became more and more pale.  Larek wasn’t the best person to tell whether someone was acting or not, but everything he saw in her expression told him that this was possibly the first that she’d heard of any of what Bartholomew described.


    “The Unspoken Response?” she whispered in confusion, before she seemed to have an epiphany.  “Blackwind,” she angrily muttered.  “That filthy snake must have contacted them for Maxwell.”


    “Are you insinuating that you didn’t have anything to do with what happened down south?” Nedira demanded.


    The General hesitated for a moment.  “I… didn’t know anything about attacks on innocent people, nor about the Unspoken Response.  But I did participate in spreading information about The Fusionist in order to obtain support from the Factions, as we needed to consolidate power – and The Fusionist and these so-called Volunteers were undermining all that we’d been able to accomplish over the last few years.  We did it to save the SIC and the Kingdom!” she declared fervently, as if that could justify what was done.


    “And it was one of those ‘undermining’ Volunteers that heroically gave their life to save your sorry asses!” Penelope shouted, referencing the unfortunate demise of Johani.


    “We don’t have time to argue about this right now,” Larek declared before anyone else could start yelling.  “It’s my goal to interfuse the Corps and the Volunteers into a central organization so that we can work together after this.  We all want the same thing, and we all have things that we can offer the other.  With us combined and working toward the same goals, we can save many more people – but we have to save ourselves before we can contemplate doing anything further than that.”


    Larek gestured ahead and behind them, as the fire was becoming a problem as he saw more than a few recently freed Mages begin to wobble on their feet from heat exhaustion.  “We can discuss this later, but first we need to get out of here.  I have a plan to get you out of here, but you’re going to have to make a decision as to whether or not to trust me.”


    General Auran only hesitated for a few seconds before nodding.  “You brought us out this far, so I suppose that we can trust you.”


    “Good.”  Now it was Larek’s turn to hesitate.  “Before we make our move, tell me: Where are Dean Wilburt and Elain Blackwind?”  Having heard the General mention the Noble Liaison as the one that sicced the assassins on him, she was now as much of a priority for elimination as the Dean was at this point.


    “They took off before we even entered the Calamity’s territory, claiming to be looking for additional resources.  I have no idea where they went; it’s possible that Maxwell knew, but he didn’t share that information with me.  It seems as though there was a lot of information that he didn’t share.”Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    The Fusionist nodded in acceptance of the answer.  “Alright; here’s the plan.”  Placing a hand on Nedira’s shoulder, he said, “I’m going to distract the Treehemoth’s roots while you all make a break for it and get as far away as you can.”  He cut his betrothed’s protests short with a gentle squeeze of his hand.  “You know that I can move fast enough to avoid being hit; it’s the only way,” he said quickly to her, before addressing the others again.  “Get ready to move, and help carry any of those that cannot run.  Getting outside the range of the roots will be your primary priority.”


    “How are you going to distract—” The General began to ask, but Larek didn’t let her finish as he created a platform under his feet, rose up above their heads – right into the smoke, of course, but he wasn’t bothered by it – and shot outside of the tunnel and into the open air.  As he broke free from the confines of the Treehemoth’s bowels, he debated what to do about the remaining SIC leadership and whether it was better to just start anew with those who he might be able to trust.  The alternative was to leave the current power structure alone, which included General Auran and whichever Lieutenants were still alive, but also make it a stipulation that they interfuse themselves with the Volunteer commanders, such as Kimble.  Both choices had their risks and benefits, of course, but what he was leaning toward was leaving them alone for the moment – at least until a reason presented itself to remove more of them.  With General Maxwell, who seemed to be the one who was largely behind the atrocities, out of the way, there were only the two advisors he needed to find and get rid of before they caused any more problems.


    Then there were the leaders of the Unspoken Response who needed to be addressed before too long, but that could wait until he had the chance to track them down.  All of them had to pay for what they’d done, as each party had been responsible for one massacre or another – or were the source of many of Larek’s problems, in the case of Dean Wilburt.  The latter felt a little selfish on his part, as he wasn’t aware of Wilburt doing anything directly that resulted in innocent deaths, but his participation in the spread of lies and rumors regarding “The Fusionist” had nearly caused Kimble to be executed, and had led to the severe distrust of the Factions against the Volunteers.


    If that wasn’t enough to justify the Dean’s death, Larek was alright with that; he would still sleep well at night afterwards.  If anything, he’d probably sleep better knowing that the one who had essentially tormented him at Crystalview was gone.  So, it was selfishness all the way for him on that point.


    It only took a few seconds of flying to gain the attention of the Treehemoth’s roots, which almost immediately attempted to smash him out of the air.  Instead of hiding underneath the treetops of the jungle, however, this time Larek had to deliberately provoke the massive tree monster, giving the others the chance to escape.  Looking around the area as he managed to dodge a pair of giant roots, he couldn’t help but see how devastated the land around the Treehemoth was, as it seemed that the monster’s thrashing had caused widespread damage everywhere.  He glanced at where he thought the Hopper was located and was relieved to see that the area around it was largely free of damage, though if he didn’t manage to turn the tree’s attention toward him, it would only be a matter of time before they were hit.


    As for the Treehemoth itself, he saw large plumes of ashy smoke spilling out of a few openings down below, as it seemed as though the rest of the access tunnels were still closed.  He could also sense that the fire that he’d started inside the spherical space had spread from where it had started, as it traveled up the trunk of the monster from the inside, where it had massive trouble trying to put it out.  It was so bad that he saw multiple areas around the exterior of the enormous trunk that were starting to expand with the internal heat as fire attempted to find its way out.


    But that wasn’t the worst of it, as the rest of the Treehemoth appeared to be on its last legs.  Even excluding the internal fire, the bark along the outside of the monster was cracking and falling off in chunks, its leaves were withering away and dying, and its once-strong branches were drooping and appeared fragile.  Even its roots, the same which had obliterated General Maxwell, were slower than before, as if they were tired or out of energy.


    It looks like my Pure Aetheric Force was way too much for it.  It’s dying – but not quickly enough.


    To help it along, as well as keep its attention fully on him, Larek took out his VED staff and swung relatively close to the monster, creating explosions all along its height, dodging lethargic branch limbs that attempted to smack him.  He aimed for the branch connections and blew them apart, the weakness in the Treehemoth’s defense clear as he began knocking off its appendages, which was followed by an inhuman roar of creaking wood that nearly blasted him out of the sky.  He recovered quicker than the evolved monster and continued his assault, pulling out a second VED staff, and he began blasting away with abandon, chewing through its exterior with multiple explosions, reminding him of the days when he would take his axe and fell a tree with a few precise blows.  This tree would take many more blows to fell, of course, but he was making incredible progress already – and the more damage he inflicted, the less the Treehemoth seemed to be able to fight back.


    Eventually, he hit a spot on its lower trunk that blasted a hole into where the internal fire had been attempting to escape, and the rush of air invigorated the conflagration, ramping up its spread as it caught its exterior on fire.  He doubled down on that spot, widening the opening, before turning his attention to the roots that still attempted – and failed – to hit him.  Whereas the burrowed appendages once were so strong that he would’ve been hard-pressed to damage them, his explosions caused by his VED staves were enough to start blasting off chunks of them, especially once he turned the Magnitude up to 9.  Within a few minutes of flying around and dodging the roots, he’d managed to obliterate them down to weakly wiggling stubs, freeing him to deal even more damage to the larger trunk.


    The strain of flying around after all of the exertion of his focus down below began to weigh on him after a while, so he aimed to finish off the Treehemoth once and for all.  Once all of the branches and roots that could attack him were blown apart, he moved closer to the bottom of the trunk, where the fire was burning, and he used his VED with another purpose other than explosions in mind.  Instead, he used the high-powered jet of acid to start cutting a line into and through the bark, rotating around the exterior, using the acid like a saw, easily slicing deep within to begin separating it into two different halves.


    His efforts were complicated as the weakening roars of the Treehemoth shook him, as he was close to it and got a full blast of the effect that appeared to penetrate even through his Protection of the Void.  Fortunately, he was made of some stern stuff, and with his high physical stats, he was able to shrug it off with a little bit of a push.


    Once he’d cut all the way through, he moved back toward the top and prepared to rapidly fire off explosions that would chain together to start moving the bulk of the weak tree, with the intent to knock it down.  It was already dying from the fire and the purified AF poisoning it, but he’d rather not have to worry about it recovering and regrowing its appendages as the SIC escaped.  It was better to take down the Treehemoth now, while it was heavily drained and couldn’t fight back.


    Just as he was about to start his barrage of explosions, a build-up of incredible power inside of the massive tree caught his attention.  While he couldn’t see through its trunk, along with the fire and smoke wreathing the giant monster, he could determine that the buildup was happening right near the Calamity’s central Aperture.


    Larek’s eyes widened as he could see what was happening, before he turned his platform and flew away as fast as he could.  He aimed for where he could vaguely feel the SIC members and his friends were located, shouting at the top of his lungs for them to hear him.  “Defenses up!  Brace yourselves!  Get underground if you can—”


    A flash of light preceded an enormous explosion behind him, and while his defensive Fusion blocked the initial shockwave, the sheer amount of destructive power behind the explosion managed to penetrate through even the void surrounding him, knocking him out of the air.  As he tumbled head-over-heels, slightly injured but not severely, his vision caught the tail-end of the detonation centering around the central Aperture.  Thousands of flaming pieces of the Treehemoth flew out in all directions as it was obliterated from inside, and as he attempted to stabilize his out-of-control airborne tumble, he saw the greenish glow of the Aperture itself – and he witnessed it rapidly shrink from what he imagined was its normal enormous appearance down to the size of a simple Aperture that hadn’t expanded at all.


    Just like that, as the Treehemoth was defeated, so too was the Calamity; as he slammed into a tree, the impact of which was absorbed by his protective Fusion, it began to fade from existence when the Calamity’s territory collapsed.  Picking himself up from the ground with a groan, rapidly healing himself of the few injuries he’d sustained with a pulse of his Healing Surge Fusion, he looked through the fading jungle trees to see the hazy, moisture-rich air evaporating, even as large flaming chunks of the Treehemoth rained down all around him.