Only now, deep within the dark and twisted Tree of the One Voice, did I understand the enormity of what had transpired over a century ago. And I had somehow felt each moment, each experience of those individuals as if it was mine. The fear, the arrogance, and the raw determination of Archeron Bryce and the counterpoint in Amelia, afraid but determined, and tempered with compassion rather than aloof callousness. And I could feel the malign presence of the tree brooding over them both, watching, waiting, and influencing - for this was a tree of corruption, not of life. Even though I wasn't currently in possession of a smartphone, I considered myself a bit of an influencer, too. Let’s see what the tree thought of that… with a little push of energy, I forced myself deeper into the tree, and my awareness bloomed.

I was aware of everything in that dim chamber, of the dozens of Gangling Men scurrying about or standing transfixed. Of the furious activity as several of them wound a body together for their two new heralds. Of Rowan and Katherine Bryce conversing with… Professor Optimate. The name fluttered into my mind, for I now had access to the tree's knowledge.

"I demand to know what she's done with my son," Katherine Bryce said. She clutched at Rowan's side, clearly uncomfortable in this place.

"You do not demand of us," Optimate stated. "We do not scrape to you, do not owe the Bryce name beyond our pact."

Rowan was less ill-at-ease. "But you can find out what happened to him, yes?"

Optimate nodded, something like anticipation gleaming in his black eyes. "We can. Even now, the One Voice adds her to the harmony. Soon, we shall know all that she knows, and if she knows a thing about Lucian Bryce, so too shall it be known to us."

"Please let us know," Katherine said.

"If you hadn't raised such a shit kid, he wouldn't be stuck in the tree with me," I said, though nobody heard me.

"Ahh… the One Voice has tapped her mind," Optimate said. "Her knowledge is becoming known to us… Natalie Bryce and Lucian Bryce… hmm… oh… oh my."

"What? What is it?" Rowan demanded.

"It… this bodes poorly. It seems that your son attacked your daughter, drove her to desperation, and she consumed his essence… how such a thing is possible, I cannot say. But he is inside the tree with her. Quickly - we must draw up another contract."

Uh-oh. Time to get moving.

Beyond my awareness outside of the tree, I was aware of everything inside the tree, aware of tiny threads bundled into pathways - a dozen pathways, each with a dozen or more nodules upon it, little silvery lines of energy. These were the witches and warlocks within the tree. I felt that I might call to them, and I tried. Some of  them stirred with vague awareness, and others remained quiescent. I thought I might call stronger, but I wasn’t sure quite what that would accomplish – for all I knew, that would only open me up to greater attack by the tree. Suddenly, one of the witches sang back to me, her harmony loud and clear. I was in sympathy with her, and she with me. My magical twin. I forced my awareness into the pathway, purifying the tree’s corruption, blocking the flow of eldritch energy that powered it, and for a moment I was inside Simone, in awe of the brilliant energy I found within her… and then I cauterized my access to her and, with that, blocked the tree's bond with her. I proceeded back down to the almost-empty pathway before hers… a husk empty of all but the winnowing soul of Lucian Bryce… and suddenly I was back in the pod, but I was no longer held helpless.

"Mmph!" I said, or something very like that. It was stuffy and uncomfortable, my small body forced into an even smaller space. My hands were completely bound, so I had to improvise… fortunately, I had some experience with that. I traced out some simple symbols with my tongue and the pod cracked open enough for me to see the ruddy light outside. "Simone!" I whispered.

"Mmph!" came her reply - she was awake and aware, inside the pod next to mine. My pod loosened, I reached my finger out of its leathery seam and cast a line of force right along Simone's pod, splitting it right open. "Natalie!" Simone hissed. She slid out of the slackening pod and only barely managed to hold on to its hard stalk. "Natalie! Help!"

Fuck… Simone was about three seconds away from plummeting down fifty feet into the clustering of confused Gangling Men below. They'd halted their construction of new bodies for Heirophant and Satrap, scratching at their creepy, bald heads and wondering why their enchantments weren't working. Newsflash, assholes: Error 404: souls not found. I clambered up the side of my own pod and then scooted along the bough to Simone's spot, locking my lithe legs around the branch, as I might Magnus's rippled midsection, and dangled my hand over.

Simone squeezed it and pulled. "You're…" she gasped. "You're really good at climbing."

"Cassie thought I might be," I whispered. There were confused voices below, and Rowan Bryce was shouting something. "I bet you regret passing on all my offers to come work out."

Simone grasped my arm with both of hers and eventually got a precarious balance on the top of her empty pod. I wanted to shout for joy, but instead I helped her up atop the bough, and we both sat in the dim light for a moment, looking into one another's eyes and beaming like maniacs.

"I did yoga with you," Simone said. She leaned forward and touched her forehead to mine. It was good to feel her, to see her smiling.

"Twice," I said. "It hardly counts… shit… they…"

"They noticed," Simone said. "Oh… wow, there's a lot of them… what do we do?"

What did we do? Did we fight off a hundred Gangling Men along with Rowan Bryce and their creepy-ass demon tree? As talented as we both were, that didn't seem like a winning proposition. Take on a dozen of the creepy fucks on a neutral playing field? Sure, why not. Taking on a hundred-plus-tree-plus-Rowan in their tomb in Tunguska? Not so sure. And now they were climbing up their tree to get to us and, as good as a climber as I was, the Gangling Men had creepy lizard climbing abilities, sidling right up the vertical incline of the trunk. I spotted a glint near Simone's hand.

"Our Black Lily rings," I said - there wasn't much point in whispering now. I pricked my thumb with a witch's needle from my hair, traced a circle  on the surface of the bough, and then blotted a drop on each of the meridian points. "Touch them in the center," I said.

Simone put her hand in the center of the circle. I put my hand right across from it. We touched rings.

"Wonder twin powers activate!" I said.

Simone didn't get the reference, but she got the symbology. We traced out our signs and, in a flash, we pulled a portal into being through sheer determination.

It was a hell of a portal, too. It flashed blue and purple, and the energy just kept flickering and crackling, arcing down the tree, illuminating the witch nodes like LEDs on a Christmas tree. I grabbed Simone's hand and leapt…

+++++

I hit a slate-shingled roof and rolled down the slope. All around me, I heard person and above-person sized things falling from various heights, most of them out beyond where I was. I caught my bearings just in time to see Simone about to tumble off the roof.

"Simone!" My hand shot out, and my wrist nearly dislocated as Simone clutched on. I tried to pull her up, but she was too heavy… and her grip was slipping…

"Um… you can let go, Natalie. It's like two feet down," Simone said.

"Oh." I released my grip, peeked over the edge, and then lowered myself off the roof of Lily's porch.

A huge, black branch from the Tree of the One Voice had crashed down, wrecking the side of Lily's house and scoring a line of damage through the garden. All around them, there were bodies… actually, only a few appeared to be dead. Most were alive and in various states of injury and/or recovery. A harrowed-looking woman in turn-of-the-century clothes knelt at the vegetation of Lily's garden, scrounging for reagents. A man with an obviously-broken arm blinked in astonishment, looking skyward. Somehow, Simone and I had transported dozens or more of the witches and warlocks trapped within the tree, many of them imprisoned for over a century, and transported them to Lily's sanctuary. If I had to guess, I'd say we'd transported the entire bough we'd been on, something approaching a tenth of the entire massive tree, and zapped it to Lily's. That included whatever Gangling Men had managed to scuttle their way up the tree and onto the bough by the time we'd opened the portal - perhaps a dozen of them.

Right now, I saw a trio of them running toward the ley at the edge of Lily's property - they would try to open a portal back to their sanctum and bring reinforcements to help deal with us. So I raced after them, lengthening my legs for a handful of awkward loping strides… not exactly graceful, but much faster than my usual pace… until I caught up with them most of the way down the wooded path.

"If you even touch that ley, I'm going to dispel your creepy ass and burn the cloth," I said.

One of the pale men turned to face me, his smile yellow and toothy. "It matters not. We have within this sanctum every element we need."

They had every element they needed? Every element to do what, exactly. Then I recalled the summoning ritual that Callista Jasper had once read:
The darkened tree spreads awful root,
its strange corruption drawn by blood,
and when six thrice have gone to fruit
six darkling seeds shall be its brood.

The tree had held 666 witches and warlocks in its twisted boughs for years now, sitting full and potent for most of over a century. Surely, it had six 'darkling seeds' by now and, though I had no idea what such a seed might look like, apparently we'd transported one into Lily's sanctum. Oopsie.

Bombycus-halepha-tempura-octova - I traced out four symbols in an instant, summoning glittering golden threads out of the air and wrapping the three gangling men before they could respond. I had the element of surprise - two of the men were busy at their portal ritual and the third was too busy gloating to mount an immediate response - and that extra second and a half was all I needed. As soon as the threads started enveloping the three, they slowed down further and further until I could walk right up to their startled, creepy faces and dispel them, taking their symbol cloths from the tangled remains of the stasis cocoons. I'd gained the insight on how to make those from my time 'hacking' their tree. Thanks, creepy-ass tree! I dashed back down the path, blowing past Simone, who had just then figured out where I'd gone.

"Natalie! Natalie, wait! What the fuck is happening?"

"They're going to build a new tree!" I shouted back.

Scratch that - they were building a new tree. It already stretched twenty feet high with thick branches… and they were adding startled, traumatized, and injured witches to the thing, dragging them from wherever they lay and forcing them into the waiting pods of the growing tree. There might have been sixty or seventy witches and warlocks here… far too many to simply hand over to the Gangling Men. We had to get them out.

"Follow us! We'll get you to safety!" Simone shouted, and she started corralling whoever she could find and directing them toward the ley. The Gangling Men didn't care for that and started after her.

"Hey, assholes!" I shouted, and I shot their tree with a hefty zap of magical lightning. It didn't do much beyond charring its already-dark surface, but it sure got their attention.

Three seconds later, I was doing everything in my power to repel the zaps, curses, and force blasts they were tossing my way. The Gangling Men were only as powerful as whatever witch or warlock they held within their sympathetically-linked pod, but some of those poor folks were pretty respectable. Good thing they'd never got around to constructing Master Ganglers around Simone and me, because then we'd have been f-u-c-k-e-d, fucked. The air in front of me was glowing from the magical force of a hundred dispelled attacks. I pulsed my defensive shield out, knocking many of the Gangling Men over, along with a few escaping witches (sorry!) before pushing another defensive screen out.

One of them darted inside my screen and started summoning magical bindings. I unwrapped them quickly enough, but another one joined him to help… shit. There were close to twenty of them now, and they were going to overwhelm me in seconds. There were still another dozen or so witches out there, limping and hobbling as best they could, but unable to escape quickly enough - but I couldn't help them now. I had to retreat.

"Sorry!" I shouted. "I'm sorry! We're coming back!"

I cast a huge and indiscriminate cloud of stasis threads in front of me - not controlled enough to wrap any of the Gangling Men up, but enough to slow all of them down for a bit. I unwrapped myself the rest of the way, grabbed a limping young woman not any taller than me, and dragged her off toward the ley. I shifted myself into something like Cassie's body - I wasn't very coordinated in it, but I didn't have to be. I hoisted the girl over my shoulder and raced down the pathway.

"I'm Natalie," I said.

"S-Simone."

"My best friend is named Simone! Okay, I'm going to put you down so I can make the portal…"

"Where are you taking me?" And, from her panicked and confused expression, it was clear that other-Simone thought I might be kidnapping or absconding with her. She had no idea what was going on.

"St. Circe's," I said. "You'll be safe there. Come on."

Without waiting, I pulled her through the portal.

+++++

I saw other-Simone off with real-Simone to the dining hall to get food - she, like many of the witches and warlocks entombed within the tree, had been sapped of energy. She was gaunt and dehydrated, in dire need of replenishment. Her head wheeled about, wide-eyed, at the campus, squinting in the late afternoon light. I wondered if she'd once gone to St. Circe's and, if so, how much it had changed since her time there. Back at the turn of the Century, the school had thralls, just as St. Lovelock's had until quite recently. Many of the school buildings were old in a stately way, but I didn’t think they were that old.

Then I made a bee-line for the administration building. Nobody was out on the green - the day's classes would be over, but normally there would be girls wandering back and forth to activities, traipsing along the dark pathways channeled through the snow. The student aides were still on duty in the administration building, though. I stopped by Nurse Argent's office and told her about our 'refugees' in the dining hall - some of them would need medical attention - before continuing to the administration. I burst into Lily's office, surprising Harmony Yeung. She took one glance at me, my expression fierce and my pastel yellow dress looking grungy, smudged, and torn, and intuited that I was there on serious business.

"They're downstairs in the chamber," she said.

"Who?"

"The Thirteen."

The Thirteen were the inner council of witches for the Sisterhood of the Starry Night. And if they were meeting and they were meeting in the administration's underground ritual chamber, that meant they were treating the situation with the gravity it deserved.

"…and we cannot just raise the wards, Bethany," Dr. Clay said. "Many among our coven know to come here in times of emergency, and raising our wards risks attacking them when they come for help. We don't even know if danger is imminent…"

"It's imminent," I said. "I can fill you in on deets later, but the gist is this: the Gangling Men have a new base in Lily's Sanctuary… when Simone and I zapped there, a bunch of imprisoned witches and warlocks and a few Gangling Men came along for the ride. They've recaptured at least half of the witches, and we've rescued the rest… and now I'm pretty sure the Gangling Men will be coming for us, and they're going to come hard. If you ask m-"

Lily wrapped me in a hug and kissed my forehead, pushing me far enough away to look me in the eyes. Tears of joy streamed down her cheeks. "Natalie? I thought I'd lost you," she said. "You and Simone… you're… safe?"

"None of us are safe," I said.

She nodded and wiped at her tears. "Of course. I'll expect you'll tell me all about it later. Now do any of you have doubts about activating the campus wards?"

"I don't," Dr. Clay said. "Miss Bryce's word is good enough for me - if we're under imminent attack, we need to defend ourselves, and we need to protect our girls. Natalie, find the girls who don't know enough magic to defend themselves and get them to safety. Get them to the bunker underneath the conservatory and stay there."

I was about to object to the 'staying there' bit, but I didn't have to. Dr. Sauvage, of all people, chimed in: "Natalie is the most powerful witch here not in the Thirteen, and probably more than that. We need her and Simone Clayton helping us - they've fought the Gangling Men and they now how to hurt them."

"Your allegiances are clear, I hope?" Lily asked Sauvage.

The doctor shot her an annoyed glance. "When it comes to choosing between my sisters and some unfortunate-but-necessary allies, there is no choice. I would not be upset if those unfortunate-but-necessary former allies disappeared off the face of the earth."

"Good," I said. "Because that's what's going to happen. Enough chitchat - you've got wards to activate."

As I raced out toward the Junior Girls' dormitory, storm clouds slowly roiled in from the west, blotting out the low sun and casting the campus in a sickly shadow. And I suspected this wasn't just an inconveniently-timed snowstorm, for St. Circe's weather was impeccably-timed. The little blue and purple flashes told me what I needed to know: the ley storm of the century was coming, and it wasn't just unfortunate timing… for there is no coincidence in magic.