A Hand-Woven Universe 49 49. Not That Much Worse...

A bead of sweat suddenly welled up on his forehead. The stone which was currently taking the plunge had just been a part of the cliff face that he was holding to. If Noone had been any slower to react, he dreaded to think about what would have happened to him if he had put his weight onto that stone.

Noone stared carefully at the broken piece of cliff in front of him. There was a small hole left by the now-gone stone. Inside of the hole, there was a brown tendrilled piece of wood that looked to be snaked through the surface of the cliff.

He carefully s.h.i.+fted his weight and used his free hand to reach into the gap, gently touching the wood underneath.

It was vaguely soft but also incredibly st.u.r.dy… He wrapped his fingers around it as much as he could and gave it a small tug, but other than flexing a bit under his grip, it did not s.h.i.+ft more than a millimeter. Noone s.h.i.+fted his body again, bringing his face really close to the hole to get a better look.

"It's a… root?" His eyes scrunched up incredulously.

Noone had spent some time in the floating gardens of Tapestry. So, he had an extremely vague understanding of tree structures. That, and his general education from Liter. However, living a life in a stone world did not lead well into having an expansive knowledge of flora.

The root in the hole was maybe four inches in diameter with small veins knotted around it. It looked very solid.

Noone scanned the cliff.

In a short few weeks he had scaled the rest of the distance and was now only a day's climb away from the source of whatever it was that was calling to him. In this time, he had been very careful to maintain full awareness of himself, not getting too carried away.

Now as he looked towards a portion of the cliff that felt closest to the call, he saw small cracks forming a huge radius around it.

They were just large enough to be noticeable, but there were hundreds of thousands of them snaking across the cliff face.

Noone reached up towards a crack above him that was an inch across and dug his fingers in between it. With only a little prompting, there was a click and suddenly that piece of cliff was now a stone in in his hands.
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"Hmm…" He threw the stone above him and watched as it knocked another piece loose, both falling past him to the ocean beneath.

The sun was beginning its approach the horizon, leaving only an hour or so of daylight left. If this were normal cliff face, that wouldn't give Noone any pause for thought. But now… Noone decided he would figure out a way to safely scale the broken cliff face tomorrow.

He pulled the pick off of his pack and studied himself against the stone wall just beneath the root he had discovered. Making sure to move as little as possible, he swung the pick towards the wall, knocking out a good chunk.

Over the past few months Noone had needed to do this on several occasions when he wasn't able to find any ledges to rest on. Thus, he had gotten extremely good at carving fresh caves into the cliff even while clinging to the side of it.

After a dozen minutes, there was enough stone broke away for Noone to stand inside and even lay out. Noone secured his bag and tarp full of food in front of the cave.

Soon would be sunset and he could rest. However, with eyes facing towards the ceiling of the freshly cut cave, he swung his pick forward knocking away more and more stone.

Lining the ceiling of the cave, was the same root system that he had observed earlier. Not only was it interwoven into the stone along the face of the cliff as he had initially thought, but it looked to extend backwards into the cliff some distance.

Noone watched the roots carefully as he tunneled further and further back.

Light flooded the cave casting Noone's shadow in front of him. Noone turned around to see that the sun had dropped beneath the cloud layer and was already touching the horizon of the ocean below. He had to squint, blocking the direct sunlight that was being focused into the cave around him.

This lasted for a few minutes, eventually dimming down into a soft glow soon-to-be pitch darkness.

Noone pulled out a sunstone and began to focus his life force into it. Slowly the sun stone brightened up the cave. Noone was preparing to sling it around his neck in the mesh sack he had. However, before he could put the stone into it, his arm was suddenly bound at the wrist - unable to move.

Noone's breath caught in his throat. With all of his strength Noone jumped backwards, wrenching his hand away from the sudden unexpected feeling. He groaned in pain.

Whatever held ahold of him was impossibly strong and it did not budge even an inch. Noone's breath was hurried and he held back a gasp. When trying to jump back he had nearly dislocated his wrist in the process.

Noone looked towards his bound hand and slowly opened it, allowing light from the sun stone to fill the cave once again. Noone stared at his wrist in shock.

From the ceiling of the cave, a lone root about an inch in diameter had lowered and wrapped around his wrist at a shocking speed. A cold s.h.i.+ver travelled Noone's spine. He watched carefully, waiting.

After nearly an hour of standing on edge, nothing changed. The root did not move or loosen. Slowly Noone attempted to pull his arm back again, but the root did not even budge against the pressure exerted on it.

Noone's entire body was tense as he examined the tendril. Even if he believed such a small root would be strong enough to hold him in place while dangling freely from the ceiling… Noone could not understand why or how it had moved. And even if it could move, why now? And why wasn't it doing anything else?

His mind moved quickly, but there was only so much information he had available to him. And worst of all… he didn't have a knife on him. It was with his pack because he hadn't thought he would need it.

Stupid. He admonished, gritting his teeth and staring at his trapped arm.

In his trapped hand the sun-stone still shone light casting shadows in the cave.

"It didn't move till night fell." Noone mumbled staring towards the entrance. "Maybe once day breaks and the sun s.h.i.+nes in…" He stared at the sun-stone.

There was something nagging him. The roots didn't actually make a move until he lit the sun-stone, however, the roots didn't go for the sun-stone. It went for him.

If the sun-stone was what it was aiming for, it could have retrieved it before Noone even had a chance to react. But it didn't… it trapped him there.

Carefully Noone reached out his right hand… around the root… and gently took hold of the sun-stone. His eyes were glued to the s.p.a.ce between his arms and the ceiling of the cave, refusing to blink.

After lifting the sun-stone, Noone pulled his free right arm back towards his body without interruption. He let out a sigh he didn't realize he had been holding in.

"Okay… So it didn't want the stone, which means…?" He looked at the stone and held it out from him. The stone rested freely on his palm.

"Which means…" Noone stared at the stone in his palm. He stared at the root and his trapped hand. Looking up towards the ceiling, he could clearly make out the hundreds of roots of various sizes silently looming above him. They weighed down on his mind putting him on edge.

Noone took a deep breath.

Suddenly the light from the sun stone was flashed off, only to turn back on a quarter of a second later.

A chill ran up Noone's spine.

"It wanted me." Noone looked towards his other wrist.

His right arm too, was now bound at the wrist by another root from the ceiling.

He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself, what was done was done. He was already trapped without help. Being unable to use another arm wasn't that much worse…