The Divinity Tree — Anne Hunter

Marion reaches the Divinity Tree to discover that Ragsdale has fallen in a ferocious battle with Gankyil. When the Ellingwood Brigade confiscates her ribbon, it re-threads into a continuum of numbers that transmute logarithmic codes which form a key. In a desperate fight for her life, Marion snatches the key to unlock the door of the Divinity Tree. Simultaneously, a stellar wind sweeps Marion and the opal inside. With no hope of escape, she is fragmented into a centrifuge of electrically charged hydrocarbons. For centuries, an aurora of lighted particles illuminate the outer layers of the Divinity Tree, until a Jethro Tillman, a rogue village scientist, investigates a myopic excretion from a vacuole in the upper crest of the tree. Under the vigilant watch of Tillman???s Clan, a quiet millennium passes as spore secretions slowly drip to form a fossilized porcelain nest.