The lava felt like warm bathwater as I plunged deeper under the world’s crust. Vespar followed the standard planetary configuration, of tectonic plates floating on a sea of magma.

Since this was taking longer than expected, I started to increase my weight.

1 ton.

10 tons.

100 tons.

1million tons…

Ah! Ok that’s causing a bit of a gravity issue…

Back to 100 tons, this is a much smoother speed.

I could feel the electric charge running through the molten liquid as I moved deeper.

After several hours of falling I finally approached the power source, the trail I’d been following for a long time.

Buried in the overwhelming fiery heat was a pillar that ignored the heat around it.

No, to be more precise, this object was absorbing the heat energy around it. In exchange a strange flow of energy was being emitted.

I turned my mind fully on the problem before arriving at a possible conclusion.

Someone had tried to eat this world before.

Does this sound strange?

Perhaps, but the evidence was directly in front of me.

This massive pillar led deeper down towards the glowing golden sphere that spun at incredible speeds barely visible below.

I arrived at the world’s core by following the pillar to the end. Upon arrival my conclusion was reinforced even further.

The entire Worldheart was imprisoned in a titanic black cube of material centered within the golden core that formed the inner sphere of the world.

Someone before me had attempted to devour the entire world!

This conclusion raised even more questions than answers, though.

Who? Why? When?

After thinking for a short time, I decided it was a moot point.

The war that had been fought was long over, and none of this world’s currently accessible history recorded it. Most likely the winner’s had purged all records of the enormous war.

Although I couldn’t tell exactly what occurred back then, it was clear one side had technology far in advance of anything I’d seen, even on Earth.

This entire black cube was an immense power generating station that used the ‘pillars’ like a tree trunk, carrying power to the surface.

On the surface there likely would have been power stations to distribute the energy further to weapons or shielding of some type.

Incredible!

However…

Now this structure is mine, heh!

A small bow of my trunk extended my gratitude towards those who crafted this massive wellspring.

Mishra. I have reached my target. How are things up there? I sent through the heavy interference of the Worldheart and inner core.

Under…attack…please…hurry…Master… Mishra’s response finally reached me hours later. Unlike me, she couldn’t easily penetrate the interference generated by the massive power fluctuations.

For a moment I thought of abandoning the Worldheart, and simply going to assist, but reason reasserted itself.

No support I could give would reach there fast enough.

Focusing, I began to carve the Runes that would begin the end of this world.

Time dropped away from my mind as thousands of glowing Runes began appearing on all of the visible pillars. Tens of thousands more started to appear on the titanic black cube as well.

Space, Time, Power, Hunger, Void, Consume, Transmit, and more countless among my native language.

The silver glow of my runic carving started to compete with the golden glow of the inner core.

I will feed.

I will devour.

I will grow.

I will, bloom!

I activated the final control Rune with my mind set in stone.

Power started to curl around me, wings of invisible might made manifest by the enormous energy pulsing through the air.

From the start of my journey in this world, I was hungry.

I carefully managed my hunger, but, it was never enough.

Now, I had the feeling that a starving man would, looking at a buffet table.

Food!

Enormous amounts of food!

Endless.

Everburning.

Eternal.

FOOD!

The enormous black cube shattered under the pressure of my Chaos power releasing the Worldheart.

My roots grew rapidly under the endless surging power. At first only a few tiny hair-like strands managed to take root, within seconds the entire Worldheart was wrapped in millions of strands.

Unlike the pathetic technology of the previous attackers, I have the Dao of Nix!

The endless hungering void that slept deep within my trunk woke at the sight of a feast of famine.

I started to absorb the heat energy around me, and slowly as my Dao of Fire was burned in the flame of an entire world’s power, I groped towards enlightenment.

I could feel my consciousness expand, as my sight grew dark without warning.

“Tree.” a glowing humanoid male figure stood before me in the endless darkness.

“You..!” I said.

The figure in front of me was the glowing figure that had been teasing the edge of my vision for years now.

“You’ve finally reached this point. But you can feel it can’t you, Tree? You can go no further. Your soul is too immature to grow past this point.” The figure said, his eyes kind. There was a sadness there, but also a poingent longing.

“No, impossible! I can grow further! I can! With enough power even souls can bloom!” I screamed at the figure.

“You know this to be false, Tree.” A sharp sigh escaped the figure. “Equivalent Exchange, for something such as a soul to be truly born…”

“…An equal or greater price must be paid in exchange.” I said, my voice growing soft.

“Will you do it then Tree? Will you sacrifice the souls of those that trust in you, those that believe? Will you pay them as coin to further your growth?” The figure said, his eyes sharp awaiting my answer.

For a brief moment I thought of it. I truly did.

How easy it would be to exchange those that I had raised, to trade them for my own growth.

However, a glance at Dryad sleeping within my leaf was all it took to shatter the illusion.

I would never be able to live with myself if I started down such a road. In the end, even Dryad might fall victim to such insanity.

“…No. No, there must be another way. I have time, I can find it.” I told the glowing human, my voice growing stronger with each word.

“Hah! Exactly as I would expect from a creature born from my own soul.” The glowing human laughed uproariously before taking a dramatic pose.

“I have lived a full life, and one without regret. Fiat enim ut facta est commutatio. Goodbye, little me!”

The glowing human shattered into a million starlit points, each one drifting to me to be absorbed.

I felt the knowledge that had been plaguing me for so long strike me like a bolt from the blue.

I wasn’t a reincarnated human, I was the soul that had grown from said human. Like a plant, slowly and without knowledge. I had absorbed the experiences, eaten knowledge, devoured memories, but in the end….

I wasn’t a human at all.

As such, my own limitations as a plant became apparent immediately when I tried to ascend to a greater level of power.

My soul was too weak, being that it wasn’t really a human soul.

The endless ability of humans to rise and grow was something, I, as a plant, just didn’t have.

Until now.

The human soul that had followed me for thousands of years, watching carefully to see if I was worth granting true life too had finally made his choice.

I could feel the shackles of my soul within shattering.

I was no longer a human made tree.

I was a Tree, made in the image of the one who enabled my growth.

Power shattered the darkness around me as my Dao activated rising a step up on the endless path.

“Burn.” I said calmly, and the fiery liquid around me ignited.

Matter, is essentially incredibly compacted energy.

When someone does something terrible, like say, triggering an atomic bomb, at the most basic level they are shattering matter.

Matter, funny enough, releases enormous amounts of energy when it is no longer in a ‘solid’ state.

A single atom is enough to briefly bring the power of the sun to earth.

Now, imagine if you can, a glowing white tree sitting in the exact center of an endless sea of atoms…

Right before they all explode.