The sword traced a rusty arc through the air. The blow Yavuz swung gathered into a single point all the fear, helplessness, and the searing Erk-ache in his arms that he'd felt up to that moment.
The instant the rusty metal touched the tree's bleeding trunk, the dull clash he expected didn't come. On the contrary, the sword sank into the trunk as if cleaving soft flesh.
"CRRRACK!"
As the tree's bark cracked, the sword went on splitting it. Until it came out the other side.
When the sword came free, Yavuz lost his balance for a moment. He'd put too much force into the sword, and it made him take an involuntary step toward the tree.
Yavuz tried with all his strength to steady himself, but in that brief moment the tree attacked again.
"Shit!"
In fear Yavuz tried to block with his sword, but the attack never landed.
The tree, most of whose trunk had already been cleaved, was hanging on by only a small bundle of wood fibers and a thin, dying strip of bark.
The tree's last attack was too much for that little bundle of fibers and thin bark to hold; the balance broke and they snapped.
"ARRRR! HORRR!"
As the tree's upper trunk fell to the ground, its cries of agony mingled with the cries of the other trees in the forest.
"Yavuz! Keep going!" Miren's voice was now nothing but a rasp; the old woman had dropped to her knees, trying with trembling hands to direct the goblet-arm hanging in the air.
This time Yavuz faced a tree a little over a meter tall. Small as it was, Yavuz didn't underestimate it and took his stance.
He felt the Erk in his belly; it had dwindled.
Despite the days of meditation, it seemed about to run out in a few attacks.
'Three more times at most…' he reckoned in his head.
He sent the Erk to his arms, took a breath, and swung again. This time Yavuz's sword cleaved the air with a more decisive momentum.
The ache in his arms grew worse.
When the one-meter tree, groaning like a wounded animal, swung its branches, Yavuz didn't retreat this time. As the sword cut clean through the little tree's trunk in a single motion, the creature was split in two and fell to the ground before it even understood what had happened.
But the feeling of victory was short-lived. From the depths of the forest, an enormous tree—far more imposing than the others, eight or nine meters tall—began to "swim" toward Yavuz, tearing through the soil.
From the countless dagger wounds on it, its bloody sap flowed, all but defiling the soil.
The daggers kept coming down on the imposing tree, but as if they had no effect, it went on advancing.
In a reflex mixed with fear, Yavuz swung his sword, but against the speed and bulk of the enormous trunk his strike was wasted; the sword slid off the hard trunk and only beat the air.
"Second strike…" Yavuz murmured, clenching his teeth as if he'd crack them.
He pumped that last crumb of Erk in his belly all the way to his palms. Instead of swinging the sword, this time he tried to drive it into the enormous tree's trunk.
The thrust wasn't enough to stop the tree completely, but it did block its movement for a moment. Still, the giant trunk began to move again, starting from its branches.
Seeing the attack coming at him, Yavuz furiously tried to pull the sword that had lodged in the imposing tree's trunk, but he couldn't. The bloody sap flowing from the tree had practically glued the sword to the trunk and wouldn't let it go.
With bewildered eyes, Yavuz didn't know what to do. He let go of the sword and tried to flee the countless branches coming at him.
But there were more branches than he'd thought, and there was nowhere left to run.
Just as one of the tree's branches was about to make its strike at Yavuz, something cut it off: a wall…
Suddenly a wall of metal rose between the group and the trees. The sound of the trees striking it echoed off the cold body of the metal.
In fear Yavuz looked around. It was Sedef.
The girl's tiny hands were turned toward the wall, straining as if holding something. The little girl could barely breathe.
'Reveries…' Yavuz hadn't been curious about reveries until now, but after seeing the dagger- and goblet-arms and this wall, he made a note in a corner of his mind to ask about reveries.
As the army of trees struck the metal, ringing sounds kept coming from it.
But after a while they stopped.
The trees had realized they couldn't get past this wall and had begun to go around it.
Just then Yavuz noticed a brightness behind him. As if someone were holding a lantern behind him.
Mira's call had been answered; out of the darkness, neighing as it came, a strange, giant three-legged horse—Legless—appeared beside the group.
"RUN AND GET ON!" Miren's voice was now less a cry than a command. Despite coughing blood, with her last energy she was trying to keep the approaching trees at bay.
With Erya's help, Yavuz was flung quickly onto the horse. As Esen and Sedef, clinging to each other, settled onto Legless, the horse moved toward the cave's exit at an impossible speed.
As the three-legged horse fled in fury, the metal wall vanished as if it had never been there.
The army of trees left behind the wall, with the barrier gone, began to swim again with a vengeful momentum.
The ill-omened rustle of the trunks gliding beneath the soil struck the cave's ceiling and came echoing back.
Yavuz saw it: despite its countless bleeding wounds and the sword lodged in its trunk, the enormous tree was looking at him.
It had no eyes, but it was looking at him…
Then, as if in defiance, it wrenched the sword from its trunk and threw it to the ground.
"DON'T RUN!!" Amid the countless moans, Yavuz heard something. He couldn't be sure.
That tree? Had it spoken? He didn't know, and he was afraid.
As Yavuz held on to Legless's jolting back, he looked back one last time. That enormous, eight-meter imposing thing had no intention of stopping.
"Hold on tighter!" cried Mira.
Legless maneuvered through the cave's winding paths at impossible angles. The vines reaching from the side walls grazed the clothes of those hanging off the horse like whips, and the sharp wooden tips struck sparks off the rocks.
Miren, at the very back, went on with her attacks with hands worn down to skin and bone; with each jolt fresh blood seeped from her mouth, but the stubborn gleam in her eyes wouldn't go out.
Sedef lay completely spent in Esen's lap. The metal wall she'd just created had drained all the little girl's energy; her breaths came in gasps, her face white as a sheet.
Esen pressed Sedef to her chest with one hand and held on to the horse's warm body with the other.
In the distance, the cave's entrance appeared. As they neared it, the heavy, rotten smell of the Ruined Lands began to overpower the cave's wine and blood.
Legless neighed with one last effort and threw itself out of the darkness, onto the barren steppe lit by moonlight.
As the mouth of the cave fell behind, the collective cries of the trees coming from inside still hadn't stopped.
"Stop!" Miren ordered Mira to halt with her bloodied body.
The girl didn't object and slowed the swiftly moving horse. They stopped not far from the cave's entrance.
Noticing that Mira and Erya were waiting without asking questions, Yavuz couldn't put what was on his mind into words.
"Get me down!" At the command Yavuz helped at once and took the old woman's cold, frail hands.
The old woman headed toward the mouth of the cave with slow steps. She could barely lift her old cane with each step.
When she'd drawn a certain distance, she stopped; holding her cane with one hand, she raised the other.
Yavuz saw countless trees advancing swiftly toward them from the cave.
When Miren's trembling palm opened toward the darkness of the cave, the Sezi energy seeping from her fingertips made the air tremble like glass.
Suddenly a small child formed before the mouth of the cave. A boy of seven or eight, his body covered in a black substance…
Despite the questions in his mind, Yavuz again kept silent, not daring to ask.
The little child looked first at Miren, then at the cave. Then, without even looking back, he began to run into the cave.
Just as the eight-meter imposing thing at the front of the army of trees "swimming" through the soil reached the boundary and was about to step outside, a single word fell from the old woman's lips.
"Farewell…"
That whisper falling from the old woman's lips echoed through the heavy air of the Ruined Lands like a death sentence.
The instant the black child, plunging into the darkness of the cave at the speed of a bullet, struck the chest of that eight-meter imposing thing, the world sank into silence for a moment.
Then an enormous explosion, coming from the depths of the cave and shaking the earth seven layers down, tore the darkness of the night with a blinding whiteness.
With the force of the blast, the enormous rocks at the cave's entrance were flung into the air like scraps of paper. The cave's ceiling collapsed onto the army of trees trying to get out, with a terrible roar.
That enormous eight-meter nightmare turning to ash within seconds in the white light at the center of the explosion, and the last cry rising from its shattered trunk, were drowned beneath the heaps of rubble.
When the tremor ended, the mouth of the cave had been completely sealed by a pile of stone now impossible to cross.
Miren slowly lowered the hand she'd held in the air. Smoke rose from her fingertips, and her body, leaning on her cane, trembled like a sapling torn out by the roots.
The old woman couldn't even find the strength to wipe away the blood seeping from her mouth, which had now dyed her chest completely crimson. Her gaze stayed locked on the emptiness left behind by the child who had been at her side a lifetime and whom she had just flung into the darkness.
Her knees slowly buckled. Before Yavuz and Erya could even reach her, Miren's spent body collapsed onto the cold soil of the barren steppe like a shadow.
The moonlight gently covered the grains of ash settling slowly to the ground among the clouds of dust, and the group that had left in that cave its sword, its energy, and at last a piece of itself.
The thick smell of wine and blood inside the cave had now given way to a dusty silence.
When Yavuz saw Miren's motionless body, he froze.
'Granny Miren?'
As the questions spun in his mind, Mira and Erya ran to the old woman.
"She's alive…" Mira said in a flat voice, "but barely…"
The countless beats of three hooves striking the soil and the neighing echoed that night across the ill-omened steppes of the Ruined Lands.