“Here you are.” The small two horse cart rolled to a stop at the edge of the road. The old coachman released one hand from his reins and waved out to the sight before him as if revealing a prize to his guest. The road simply ended abruptly facing a deep forest of knotted and twisting wood. These trees had no leaves, instead their massive trunks like uncontrollable tentacles stretched and curved in every direction. Thinning branches protruded out of these massive trunks in the millions out towards the road like a wall of organic spears so thick that one could never just walk through its abode.

The guest wore a thick set of plate armor that completely covered his body. No skin revealed itself under the overwhelming armor that he wore. The guest’s heavy cube like helmet hid any expression that he was possibly showing at the sight before him. A large and beautifully detailed blue spear hung off his back along with a thick backpack filled to the point of nearly bursting. Another equally beautiful blue sword rested sheathed on his hip. The guest spoke, his voice containing a metallic echo as it struggled to escape his helmet. “Is this it?”

“Well for obvious reasons I can’t bring you any further but yes, the flower is said to be somewhere in this forest.”

The guest stood up and stretched out his tired limbs; his voice was slightly contorted by his stretching groans as he spoke. “And this flower should be the one I am looking for?”

“Well if your quest was to find a miraculous flower unbound by the laws of our world then I don’t know which flower that could describe if not the one of our village’s tales. Which before you ask yes, should be somewhere in this forest.”

The guest twisted his body to the side releasing a satisfying pop in his back before turning to the coach. “Thank you for your patronage then. I’ll make sure to drop by the village when I’m done and let you know what I find.” The guest placed a few silver coins in the coach’s open palm and jumped off the cart.

As the guest’s metallic boots landed on the packed dirt of the road a small explosion of flora sprouted out from where he landed. A small collection of grass, flowers, and mushrooms all appeared creating a strange circle of nature centered around the guest’s feet surrounded by the lifeless road.

The coach smiled as he watched the miraculously rapid growth of plants around this stranger’s feet. “I’ll hold you up on that friend. I wish you luck on your search.” The coach pocketed his money taking hold of his reins and set his horses to carrying him back home. The guest waved goodbye watching him leave listening to the faint clop of hooves fading out into the distance.

The guest was left alone to face this gnarling wall of wooden appendages. The man walked closer to the seemingly impenetrable wall of trees; with every step that he took another vegetative circle bloomed around him, a patch just large enough to softly welcome his foot.

The man actually found himself getting excited at the fact that he could not find any way for him to pass through this thick overgrowth. To him, it felt like the challenge of his journey just added credence to the fact that this would be the flower he was looking for.

The man paced along the forest line looking for an opening that he could enter. Eventually he found it, a small split in the wall of spears where all of those sharp protruding branches inexplicably curved away from one another in a spiraling funnel inviting the man to crawl in. An invitation that he felt he had to accept. His mind took almost no part in the decision, an inexplicable call forced his heart forward calling him inwards, calling him deeper.

The opening funnel was raised slightly higher than he was which required him a little bit of acrobatics to mount himself up. As his hand took hold of the entrance a small swarm of plants sprouted out of his grip wrapping around his arms and pulling him up on in. The opening was a tight fit, he kept his body low to the ground on all fours as he crawled forward passed that thick layer of branching spears and finally, he arrived inside the forest.

The forest was unlike anything he had ever seen before. There was no floor, no bushes or grass, other than the plants created by the man himself, these strange trees were the only life he could see. And what a sight he was seeing; a deep ebb and flow of intermingling life knotting and unwinding, launching up into the sky and crashing into the dirt below. A snaking string of thick trees formed a vertically shifting floor full of pitfalls and hills. It was as if a tangled ball of string in ones pocket had been sculpted to a grand scale of an entire forest.

The man could not simply walk through this forest, his travel required a calculated hike; he had to climb up over the thick twist and interlocks of various trees, he had to crouch under and into organic tunnels of the crowded underbrush. The man’s heavy armor did not help in this case; his ears were constantly filled with the incessant clanging and screeching of the sharp tips of tree ends or those branching spears grating against his armor. Similarly, his body was always being tugged and pulled in every which direction as small protrusions and nibs would get caught in his plate-mail let alone his spear. That frustratingly long weapon was an unending source of struggle, its sharp point constantly lodging itself into the surrounding trees or threading itself through small gaps or trapped in large patches of the branching spears.

None of this deterred the man though. In fact, it instead caused the opposite effect. He got more and more excited with every jump and twist he made, each obstacle was a motivator, he pushed forward with more vigor. Behind him he left a long trail of colorful flora. This once drab brown practically cave system was now alit with a thick green blanket littered in the multicolored bliss of thousands of budding flowers.

He came across a particularly stark vertical wall in forest jaunt. No gap in the wall would have been large enough for him to squeeze through. As far as his eyes could discern his only option was to climb up the wall. The wall was made of hundreds of intertwining trees creating a complex tapestry of foot holds and ledges, so the climb was not particularly difficult. The climb had brought him to the highest point in the forest he had reached yet. He wondered for a bit if he could somehow make his way to the canopy and catch a sweeping view of the whole forest but gave up the idea seeing how concentrated the trees were.

He was able to see the edge of the forest if he found just the right gap in the trees and squinted really hard. There was movement at the top of the canopy. He could see a gentle flow of a light blue fabric being sucked into the highest ends of the trees. The forest was absorbing magic from the air! He just kept getting more excited by this excursion, there were a constant increase of positive signs building his confidence that this was in fact the place that hid the flower he searched for. But he wouldn’t find it up here. He had to scale down the opposite side of the wooden wall and continue his trek in the depths of the forest.

The dark weaving nether slowly began to lighten up. A few eagerly persistent rays of light blew their way through the cracks and holes marking the path out of this nebulous entrapment. It was the other end of the forest; the man had finally made it through. He followed the light thankfully arriving at a gap just large enough for him to squeeze through.

The other side of the forest relented to make way for a small mound of lifeless stone which rose to a point revealing beyond it an incredible valley. The man walked over to the edge of the overhang of what unveiled itself to be a gargantuan cliff. From up here he was given an omniscient view of the valley below, it was a marvelous sight of lush and diverse life. This valley was not comprised of the same bland twisting trees but a mixture of blossoming trees, full vibrant bushes, all filled with active energetic life. Animals fluttered in and around the greenery playing and hunting and living.

It was a grandiose sight that displayed the full beauty of nature that rested at the bottom of this titanic pit, and a pit it was. Perhaps to merely call it a valley was an understatement, the top of the cliff he currently stood on to grant him this view was astronomically high. This was no simple divot into the environ, it was a straight vertical drop probably taller than a city was wide.

The cliff was just another sign that his expedition was not yet over. He definitely hadn’t found any flowers let alone plants in that suffocating mess of tentacle trees so perhaps the flower was somewhere in this much more normal seeming valley. He just had to make his way down.

The man was prepared for this, he took off his backpack and rummaged through pulling out a sturdy set of broad nails and an excessively long rope. The man thrust the first nail into the solid stone near the edge of the overhanging cliff peak and tied the rope around it. He then tied the rope around his waist and the backpack.

The man gave one final lean over the cliff edge and began to ponder how he would tackle this wall, while questioning the specific logistics of the climb he began removing his gauntlets and boots. He walked back away from the cliff edge placing his gauntlets in his backpack. He grabbed a roll of thin cloth from the pack and wrapped the cloth around either of his bare feet multiple times as a small protective layer. Placing the remaining roll back in the pack he then pulled out a small white chalky block from the pack and rubbed it around his hands, he crushed the soft substance until it had all turned to a fine powder coating his hands. He turned his head away and clapped his hands a few times creating a large dusty cloud formed from that white powder. He rubbed his hands a few more times to reduce the amount of powder on it and then: he was ready.

He began his descent feet first backing himself down to the cliff face where after not even a minute of descending he discovered a terrifying revelation. The descent was made significantly more challenging as he found himself at the end of an overhang and not just a flat cliff. The cliff wall he hung onto had curved back on itself pushing back horizontally, because he was scaling backwards, he couldn’t even see how far back the overhang went. This wasn’t going to be as simplistic as scaling down a vertical shaft of jagged ridges and depthless chasms, no he had to scale down this cliff horizontally, his back facing the void below. The only thing keeping him from falling through that empty sky was his sheer willpower and unbelievable death grip. In all honesty he was beginning to feel a mild sense of absolute dread as the danger and difficulty of this journey dramatically increased. Every muscle in his body was constricting, clutching, dearly holding him close to the underside of this cliff. He wasn’t afraid of heights or anything, he just preferred not to stand upside down over a vast nothingness so large that not even a devadoot would survive the fall.

His feet blindly poked around the rugged wall, ceiling?, searching for some kind of grip to lock themselves into. His hands moved with more liberty thanks to the extra grip granted by the hands’ flexibility and that chalky powder. Each connection to the stone surface sprouted a quaint collective of helpful plants that wrapped around his limbs hugging him tightly to the cliff greatly increasing his stability.

He ensured to keep three of his limbs firmly planted at all times only moving in miniscule increments. He was definitely feeling the incredible pull of his armor, the armor seemed desperate to launch straight down to the forest below unconcerned of which state it would leave the man within. He had pondered removing his armor, but he had too many bad encounters with flying monsters to make that mistake again; instead, he would just have to persevere through the extra weight and challenge it brought with it. On that front he was making quite good progress.

He thrusted a nail into the cliff face and tied his rope to it before continuing down the sloping slab of stone. His feet felt a sharp vertical wall, he leaned his body to the side so he could catch a glimpse of what exactly he was feeling. A small jutting mound of rock protruded down from the overhang. The man was initially disappointed, when his feet initially felt the vertical wall, he had though he made it to the end of the overhang, and he could start making his way downwards. This small protrusion could still find itself helpful to the man, if he could mount himself vertically on to the protrusion then he would at least be able to look around the overhang and see what trek lied in wait of him. Thankfully, the protrusion was just large enough for him to fit.

Having maneuvered himself onto the mound he craned his neck to the side as far as it could to peer across the mound and see what lied in wait for him. It was then that he saw it. A colossal green stock grander than any mountain he had ever seen. The green stock jutted out from the cliff’s overhang downwards for seemingly ever eventually concluding in a brilliantly blue bud. The titanic head of a flower whose scale could never be given justice without seeing for oneself. The flower was unlike anything he had ever witnessed, it was unlike anything he had even thought of witnessing. Its proportions were so large and beauty so all-encompassing that he could do naught but gaze in awe.

It was then that he finally understood that forest on the top of the cliff was no forest at all. Those were not trees, they were roots. The mystical flower of that village was not hidden in the forest, it was the forest. It was at times like this he was glad he always wore a helmet since it kept his tears hidden. He couldn’t stop the water works he found himself so moved by the natural artistry on display. This trip was not a complete waste even if it was the wrong flower. He climbed back up above the cliff.

It was a shame that it was the wrong flower, but it was still a much-enjoyed trip. This was truly an experience he would never forget. Interrupting his blissful reverie was the chime of a bell. The man turned to face the source of the sound and it was there that he what seemed to be a small pink rhombus grow out of thin air, or it was a rhombus, but its body would reject any stable state. It would shift and transform, shrink and grow, continuously morphing into other forms. The pink shape finally locked into a form resembling that of a featureless human with only one limb. The arm was outstretched towards the man holding a glowing parchment: it read.

You have been invited to The Tournament You are The Flower