Beneath the Mother Tree's enormous trunk, overrun with diseased growths.
With a flicker of that faint halo.
Lynn's body appeared once more.
He paid no more attention to the frozen growths. He raised his head and, fighting his overwhelming weakness, began climbing with all his might.
Following his memories, he struggled to recall the way inside.
As though he knew no exhaustion.
After several surges of psionic turmoil, he finally found a fissure near the top of the trunk where he could gain a foothold, panting all the while.
He held up his torch.
And cautiously made his way deeper inside.
It was not just the outside of the trunk. Its interior had long since been overrun with those pitch-black growths as well.
Beneath the torchlight.
They lay packed together like congealed, rotting flesh, stretching from beneath his feet into the deepest recesses.
He pressed onward.
In that utter silence, only his footsteps echoed.
At that moment, even the faintest response would have been his greatest salvation. But there was none. It was like stepping into a tomb, where only a seemingly eternal stillness answered him.
Finally.
After who knew how long.
He climbed, inch by inch, along the disease-ridden vines to the tree hollow leading into the core.
He had insisted that this hollow remain open to him at all times. She was a stubborn, sharp-tongued, wicked woman, so whenever she dared talk back, he could run inside at any moment and subject her to excessive punishment-including, of course, some of his own twisted amusements, like forcing his proud head maid to go without panties in his presence.
He had done that with very wicked intentions back then.
He hauled himself up, gasping heavily.
He looked toward the core.
At that moment.
Even though he had prepared himself for