Forever

Everything hurt. His head spun, palms ached, and he was definitely bruised across his torso. Warmth drifted through him, like sitting next to a campfire during one of the few hiking trips he had as a kid. Detached, he simply felt the blood flowing through his veins as his heart beat slowly in his chest.

The aching persisted, as began to wake up, the pain sharpening, focusing on the blackness of his eyelids. Yet as he tried to open them, he realized that something was wrong, the darkness stuck to his eyes. Panicking, he tried to move, only to realize that he couldn’t feel anything, his arms and legs completely uncoperative.

He was trapped, the only thing grounding him was the beating of his heat. The rhythmic thumping calmed him, and with the desperation of a drowning man, Salim centered himself. Panicking would do him no good and if he wanted to figure out what had happened. But even trying to pull up the menus was met with failure, darkness continuing to encapsulate his vision.

Rooted to the spot, he strained to try and reach his core, hoping that magic might be a way out. Liking wiggling ears or flexing the stomach, he touched upon the weird impulse he had been using for months. The pull was stronger, potentially due to the lack of distractions or his desperation, moving inwards as the soft glow of his core slipped into his vision like a mirage.

What-

Thoughts squirmed their way through his mind as he looked around the core, which was glowing from his small reserve of mana, the light illuminating the branching pathways that led to the rest of his body. Instead of passages directed towards his head and limbs, he was met with shoots directly above and below. Twenty-four passages spread out above with five below, wide and thin, like gaping maws that only served to amplify his confusion.

Resting for a moment, Salim collected his thoughts, attempting to explore the pathways with the small amount of mana he still had. As the mana bunched up and churned into his push spell, he gently moved the mana to the edge of his core. Taking aim, he focused on the hole straight below him, the most robust of all the passages.

Whoosh

The spell flew as Salim had directed, straight down with perfect accuracy. As the light broke off and was eventually lost, he slowly began to feel something in his body, the feeling pulling his attention back from his core. It was nothing like he had ever experienced before, even more so than the core the pathway that the spell took was so incredibly foreign.

Down it went, along his body, pulling off to the side and out of his fingers. His fingers? That couldn’t be right, he didn’t have fingers on his feet, that would be ridiculous.

He knew he was kidding himself, cold existential fear wrapping around him as he tried to make sense of what had happened to him. His fingers were now clear to him, with the spell guiding the way for him to discover the new appendages he didn’t just find one finger, but all five. Despite his efforts, he couldn’t move them much, just slight adjustments at a glacially slow pace as the movements sent a sensation shooting through his mind.

Exhaustion, he felt tired and wrung out, and although he was feeling the horror from his realization of what had happened to him, he was simply too exhausted to care. He wanted to cry, yell, scream. But he had no way to make his pain known, mind slipping from consciousness, belligerently protesting in agony.

How long had it been? Salim woke with a start, jolted awake as yet another new sensation awoke in his body, strange and alien in its ways. Something was knocking, with swift rapt motion, against his mouths.

Mouths. Plural.

The shock was enough to completely disrupt his train of thought, his mana churning in discontent in his core.

Knock, Knock.

Who’s there? He giggled manically to himself.

The one knocking didn’t find it so humorous. Three seconds were all he had before it forced its way in, a familiar caustic sensation burning his throat as silver liquid poured down his many throats. Nothing worked to stop it from smothering his core, slowly pushing its way inside as he failed to stop it, the pain overwhelming his ability to concentrate.

Swirling around, the moon's mana clogged his passageways, the viscous liquid forming chains around his core as it pressed against its surface. Pressure was building up in his head, like flying in a plane, it pressed down on his thoughts as the moon’s presence continued to oppress him. As the silver mana slipped its way inside his core, a reaction occurred, his own mana evaporating with a loud hiss under the suffocating force of the moon.

A hollow feeling filled him as he helplessly watched the last of his mana get scoured away. After a while, all that remained was a glowing silver core, floating in a wash of more silver mana. No matter what he did, nothing worked.

Salim. The name shot through his mind, utterly alien in its sound and totally against the flow of his inner monologue. His thoughts froze, as caution wormed its way into his mind. Did he think that?

You were hurt, I healed you. Definitely not him.

“Fallon?” The quicksilver mana undulated in affirmation.

“WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?” His thoughts screamed, he was restrained against his will, unable to see or move without great effort. Fallon had done something, said that they ‘healed’ him, which… To an entity like Fallon, what was considered healthy.

Thoughts stirred in his head, waiting for any sort of reply to make itself be known, to vindicate him and allow him to espouse his righteous fury upon them. So he waited, stuck in his own head as the moonlit mana began to suffuse into his core, turning its surface a glimmering silver. His waiting continued, as the light began to compress, folding itself inside his core until it was bulging to its limit, completely contained within him.

He knew that Fallon had left, realized it as soon as his gained control over the moonlit mana and pushed in towards his core to recoup the losses that it had caused. Had they truly abandoned him like this? Was he going to be stuck as a faceless thing, an abomination of a tree, forever?

His anger gave way to the clutching hands of dread, pulling him down as he felt the reality of his situation.

Alone.

Completely and utterly alone.

Not the loneliness that came from living out in the woods, but true isolation that physically locked him in his mind, only giving him the respite of his core to look at. He wallowed in his self-pity, the distress causing him to feel like his life was over, for what felt like several days. But at the end of it all, boredom won out over his distress.

It was slow at first, the subtle movements as he slowly worked his way through the surrounding ground, the glacial speed allowing him time to think. He had lost, something. Spells didn’t come out the way that they were supposed to, maybe his roots and leaves were too long, or something else was stopping him. Ultimately, it didn’t matter, he was stuck as a tree and while he may have eyed his core and thought about the consequences of damaging it, he could never bring himself to act on it.

The mana Fallon had forced into him had fully crystallized, solidifying inside his core as it formed what looked like a sieve. Salim hadn’t figured out the purpose until the night after it had completed, where he felt the same moonlight pressure come down through his leaves. Instead of drowning the area around his core again, this time it slowly dripped, the moonlight being filtered by his unwitting creation as something different came out the other end.

Instead of the green that he was used to eating from the trees, this mana was a harsh violet, pulling itself away from the bottom of his core. Watching with curiosity, the light fell to his roots, a calm sedate feeling filled him as the mana seemed to release itself from his roots. It felt right, like he was doing exactly what he was meant to do.

Night after night, day by day, the mana dripped through him as he calmly watched his body process the mana. Each pulse of power as the mana released itself from his roots sent a wave of calm ecstasy through him, his leaves shaking on their own. He had a lot of time to think, to ponder his situation in great detail.

Fallon didn’t know any better, they didn’t understand what the concept of freedom meant, if anything they are helping me! Lines of thoughts filled his head as the quicksilver mana dripped from above, the memory of an echo creating a calm environment. Who cares if he couldn’t access his menu, he wouldn’t be in this situation if it had actually helped him!

Winter is here.

The thought came unbidden from his mind as a shiver ran down his body, the memory of a biting cold playing out in his head. But he wasn’t concerned, his roots had dug deep enough that he could still feel the warmth of the ground, sustaining him. Fallon did not disappoint him either, still gifting him copious amounts of mana to sustain him, to feed him further.

So winter passed without an issue. Spring brought the joyous feeling of growth. Summer came and went with the annoyance of its sun's heated mana, trying to break into his body to no avail. Fall went by in a blur, the season simply preparing him for winter.

Around and around the cycle went, two, five, ten. It became hard to keep track after a while, as Salim’s perspective ballooned outward, roots covering more and more land. He stole the space of his neighbors, slowly at first, but with a deliberate purpose that was impossible for the simple trees to replicate.

His stealing became routine, as he undermined several at once, his constantly expanding trunk causing him to grow more roots. That in turn allowed him to expand faster, his branches shooting upwards, heavenward towards Fallon. He wasn’t sure when the idea had come to him, perhaps in his exhausted dreamless sleeps, but he was going to reach them.

For they who helped him so much, who protected him and made him so much more, he had to reach them so he could kneel before their majesty. So upward he went, growing wider and taller, year after year, inch after inch. It was a race against his own body, the natural instincts of a tree telling him something was wrong, only to be pushed aside by his core, its whispers guiding his growth.

After an unknowable amount of time, Salim’s expansion hit a snag, the plateaus, their stony walls were finally within his grasp and were stopping him. He was trapped, boxed in from all sides, his roots could burrow into the stone, but it was slow-going and would slow down his rate of expansion. But he had no choice, and besides, the plateaus would provide a great platform to support his bodies upward trajectory.

So up he went, slowly drilling and pushing himself upwards with the help of the sheer walls, once a harrowing descent turned into a victorious return. Up and up he went, even as animals made homes within his flesh, he became the land, but did not care for any of it. His mind, after so many years, could only focus on one thing.

But unfortunately, his desire was not to be. As his roots burst out the side of a plateau, he shook in agony as his dreams were ripped from his hand. The ocean sat below, he could taste it through his roots, the putrid sea stopping his growth towards his God.

While he could still grow, he knew that the stable pillar he was trying to create would never come to fruition. Blocked on one side, he would be unbalanced, ultimately fated to never reach the heavens where his God resided. But he couldn’t give up, not after so long, if he could get to space…

Yes, if I simply get to space I’ll be safe, everything will be okay. I simply need to get to space.

So the tree attempted to reach his God.

Creak.

But blind fervor can only get you so far.

Creeeeak.

Eventually, you have to face reality.

Crack.

And reality is a cruel thing.

Snap.

You have died.

Cause of death: “Starvation”

Total Score

Level = 17 Points

Class = 10 Points

Stats = 33 Points

Titles = 25 Points

Total is 85 Points.

Spend Points in Shop before Respawn.