My mother was an Alanian mage named Kopusha Megara Tricameron and I was… her seedling.

She gave me the name Leemy.

She sang to me in the evenings and mornings, imbuing me with tiny bits of her soul and her best memories… my perfect, beautiful, talented, young Agromancer of a mother.

She planted me in a lovely meadow in the forest-park of Borria at the edge of town called Skyisle, hoping that I might someday bloom into a full dryad. I was her graduate project and an assistant for her Agromancy research, a friend and… much, much more.

Kopusha poured her love for the wild, for plants, for sunshine and for the ever-bright future straight into me.

A future that she believed was coming with her entire heart, for the world was changing. For great progress was being made across her nation. The great Alanian Empire had finally managed to strike terror into the hearts of the false gods, had managed to permanently halt the hand of death, had discovered spells that could pull, split and inject the soul into anything.

Acolyte Kopusha of Tricameron had chosen to gift her soul to me.

As I grew and blossomed in my meadow, my mother returned every morning on her sky-glider, giving up bits of herself for me again and again, pouring her dreams and memories of the elegant, white cathedraltown of Tricameron Citadel into my tree body, infusing me with her own life and magic.

One morning she didn’t come. I waited patiently for her, for I was a tree. I knew her, knew that she would not forsake me unless something unexpected had occurred.

She had arrived that evening, splitting from the sky on her glider, spinning out of control.

She had let go of the glider and it detonated with a catastrophic crash, carving apart the meadow. She rolled across the forest floor, her body twisting unnaturally. I wanted to reach out to her, to help heal her… but I knew that aiding her was beyond my skills for I wasn’t born as a dryad yet.

Mom slowly crawled towards me, leaving a trail of blood behind her. I reached out with one of my soft branches and she had taken it into her hand.

“L-leemy…” she choked. “T-the Seditionists have taken Tricamerion. It’s over… it’s all over. They believe that what we are doing, s-splitting our souls and granting intelligence to magical constructs is wrong. They… killed my Academy Instructors, Leemy. Trust no-one. I will surrender the rest of my magic to you… I know that I’m done for… but at least you can go on. Just… be careful… grow old and beautiful for me, p-please. D-do what I can-n… cannot.”

As the blood of my mother poured over my roots, I wept. It was over. My dreams of holding her in my arms, of hugging and singing back to her would never come true. My dreams of working together, healing the world, growing forests across deserts were not to be. All because some mages didn’t understand what we were trying to do. All because…

Kopusha’s life left her eyes. As the last of her mana and soul departed from her, passing into my roots, her body ossified, deflated, emptied out, leaving just a dead shell that held onto my roots with blackened fingernails.

The empty husk began to grow cold. I wept. Would the Seditionists come for me, would they find my mother’s ossified body, scan me for signs of consciousness? I couldn't get away, couldn't hide from them. I was a tree. I haven't learned how to walk yet, so I couldn't dig myself out! I couldn't get away in time!

As I freaked out more and more, the ground started to shake. I turned my eye-stalks towards Tricameron Citadel and saw a brilliant, blinding light piercing right through the forest. The world caught on fire. My mother’s husk turned into ashes. Trees around me ignited.

The forest around me groaned as trees snapped in half, shattered as if they were made from glass. I saw that the entire Citadel burned. Mountains around it burned. Someone had set the entire world on fire. We were betrayed...

I had lasted slightly longer than the rest of the trees, but eventually my mana had run out.

I screamed and thrashed as I died in agony.

I screamed and thrashed, flailing my emerald appendages. The memories of a tree named Leemy, the last moments of her life burned, imprinted themselves into my head, clawing at me from within. I had made a terrible mistake. I should have taken the blue thread forward! I should have eaten the man! I should have...

I had regretted everything, for the pain was unbearable.

The pain of being burned alive refused to let go of me, refused to leave my mind.

I flailed, uncertain of how much time was passing.

Pain. Burning. Fire. Death. Cold...

The action of consuming the last memories of the tree was unsatisfactory, terrifying beyond reason, incredibly painful.

I remembered in perfect clarity how Leemy burned.

I remembered how armacus magitek guns shot Kopusha from the sky as she tried to escape the Tricameron Citadel, rapid fire of slicing spells cutting through her flyer and through her body.

The memories of the young Agromancer and her unborn dryad refused to leave my mind, refused to let me think clearly, occupying it permanently like a chunk of burned meat stuck in my metaphorical throat that I could not swallow properly.

In reaching out towards the last magical imprint of the dead tree, I had absorbed it into my own soul.

According to the memories of Tricameron Academia Acolyte Kopusha, this place filled with dead things was called the Astral Ocean. Everything that ever lived and died had sunk into this dreary hell.

This place... is a graveyard of a magitek civilization!

More discordant memories wobbled in my mind refusing to settle down.

The Alanian researchers from the Tricameron Citadel sought to use the Astral to bring back their loved ones who had died. They had succeeded, but this action had split their society in twain between Progressors and Seditionists. Between the people who wanted to become immortal and to bring down the gods once and for all, and those that worshipped the gods and gained power and purpose through the Pacts with their Deities.

I realized that I would find no peace, nor solace, nor happiness in the Astral because I had no way of sifting it properly, no way of knowing who died peacefully here and who had burned to death during the final moment when the world caught fire.

Whatever crumbs of knowledge were buried here would have to stay buried for I doubted that I could handle another memory like that.

I desperately yearned to fly back towards the warm embrace of the blue thread, away from this world of bones, away from these cursed dead and their awful memories.

These dead were shreds of final memories, imprints of life akin to the human shadows etched in stone left by the atomic bomb detonated in Hiroshima.

I now knew - most of them had carried this pain, this misery, this final moment of being burned alive by a horrific catastrophe that befell them all, the final war that likely ended their civilization, turned them all into shadows and dust.

[GIVE UP]

[EAT EVERYTHING IN SIGHT]

[EXAMINE NEW MEMORIES]