Excerpt from Alexan’s Eighth Journal, Tour of the Crags and Builders.

The world divides itself into several different groups. Groups based on nations, Nations based on races, Some divided by followers of the eight Incarnations and then by the borders of the eight continents.

But before every other method came that of the elemental seeds and their corresponding gods. Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, Light and Dark. Then come the Unsown who have any o the six elements, possibly two, maybe more. But rarely so strong or skillful as the ‘Pure’, those who have only one element within their seed. And then after that come the Barren, those groups and races with barely any individuals who would be so lucky to have even a trickle of aetheric control.

As the rarest of the rare Unsown who might be able to use all the elements… I sometimes envy those supposedly ungifted. I sometimes envy those ‘Barren’ who can only imagine the touch of the elements in their veins.

Bulbcutter Easil

“Easil! Come see this!”

“A moment, Nisk!”

Easil yanked at the last of the fruits, pulling the orb from its stem with a yank. He sighed in disgust as the core remained attached to the stem, the rotten inner pulp of fruit leaving him holding only the leathery skin.

More and more the fruits of the tree were rotting from the inside out. He tossed the inedible skin aside with resignation. It was almost as if something was taking the life of the Tree.

“Easil! I reeaally need you!” Nisk’s voice quivered this time. Something was wrong.

Easil climbed slowly down off the twisted trunk and glanced in the direction of Nisk’s voice. His companion had gone into one of the many hollows in the search of mushrooms. Clearly, he had found something else. Easil hurried in, holding the glow torch ahead of himself to guide his way with pale light.

“I’m coming!” Easil called back, “Just hold on!”

“Hurry!”

Easil ran along the wide limb, ducking around branches, growths and smaller branches rooted into the great wood. The smells of life surrounded and reassured him that there was still food to be found. An errant gust of rot distracted Easil just long enough to smack his head into a low hanging fog petal plant, causing the bulb to explode into mist according to its namesake. Easil shook his head and waved at the spore cloud as he continued to head in Nisk’s direction. Even when one was familiar with the great Hollow Home, it was still difficult to move around without smacking into something. Fortunately, the worst of it was all far above Easil’s head.

“Where?” Easil called with annoyance.

“Here!” hissed Nisk’s voice.

Following the sound, Easil found the gap in the trunk to one of the many dark pockets and ducked through the hole. Again he thanked his small stature that allowed Easil to move about in the ever-dense foliage and life of his home. After several moments of pushing through long vines and thick leaves, Easil popped out next to Nisk, only to draw in a surprised breath.

The Hollow Home known as Linumbra’s Embrace was an aptly named sort of mana tree and a vast landscape within itself. It was a place that held layers within layers, and this pocket of calm was merely another example. Before Easil and Nisk lay a hidden chamber within the wood, a large natural hollow reaching up into the darkness with a single rare glow of light cutting through the dim, dusty air to shine on the mossy floor. Glowing Fungus and multi-coloured mushrooms lined the walls, providing for more illumination than the world outside the tree could provide. The floor itself was half submerged. On one side, a ground of roots and moss, and on the other, a catch basin of water that Easil idly considered a find worth remembering.

But all that was not their focus. From the side of the room grew a gem tree. Rooted right next to the water, the straight trunk rose up and its branches grew out to catch both light and dark. Only prior experience with the tree let Easil know what the tree was. Despite the name, it’s bark was white with horizontal black lines. It was the fruit that gave the tree its name. Even now several gem-like glittering fruits hung from its branches.

One of the elder Erlkin possessed a fire opal, a bright multi-hued stone. That was the closest comparison Easil had for the gem fruit. The pit of a gem fruit on the end of his stick was rough and covered with sharp crystalline protrusions like a geode also in the same Erlkin’s collection.

Easil had heard stories from Elder Roones about gem trees before. A more technical name was the aether tree. The common-born name for them was the ‘god’s toy.’

The gods may act through the gems of the aether tree, for they are infused with a great deal of aether, more than the unskilled like Nisk and Easil could hope to manage without hurting themselves. Or at least, that should have been the case. Few of the gem fruits were larger than Easil’s clenched fist. They should have been up to as big as his head. The reason lay before them in a hollow in the roots of the floor.

Before Nisk and Easil stood a prime example of that second name, and the reason Nisk had called so fervently for Easil to join him. Yet now that Easil was here, neither of them could speak.

A hooded figure stood upon the root and moss of the chamber, underneath the crystal tree and just outside the light. In the center of the light lay a large crystal pod, the top of it cracked and opened, newly fallen from the tree and glittering all the colours of the rainbow under the light of day. In the center of the pod, a child, utterly pale and unmoving. Stillborn?

The Hooded figure turned to face Easil and Nisk. They could see no face within the hood. It moved, carefully, but even that was enough for the pair of them to flinch. It reached into a large sleeve and pulled out a white, circular object. A pristine, white stone mask.

With grace, it placed the mask on the nothing that occupied that hood. A gentle face, that of a mother with closed, but peaceful eyes and a loving smile upon her lips. The face was wrinkled with age but carried a mature beauty and sense of calmness. With closed eyes, the mask regarded the two, then turned to the child and placed hands of soft darkness on the baby's forehead. The baby squirmed and cried out, but did not wake.

The figure stood to gaze upon the child… and dissipated to vapour before their eyes.

It was a very long moment before the two spoke.

“What was that?” Nisk squeaked.

“That was The Masked!” Easil hissed, his heart was *pounding*. “The child is blessed! Born from a gem fruit made God’s Toy!”

“Blessed?” Nisk squeaked again. “You sure he isn’t cursed?!”

“Come on!” Easil complained, rushing over to the child, the rather, large, child.

“What is it?” Nisk asked, “It looks like us but…”

“But the baby is almost as big as an adult! It’s a Human!” Easil exclaimed, the gnome turning to his friend and hopping with excitement on his little legs.

“Human?” Nisk asked in confusion. His confusion was reasonable, there hadn’t been a Human within the Hollow Home for generations.

“The seekers of the Gods! Don’t you listen to Nolsa’s stories?” Easil berated lightly, his excitement getting away from him. “If a Human has appeared, then that means the Gods are up to something… We might even see freedom!”

“Oh, that's… uhh.”

“Come on, the Elders tell us to be especially watchful for God's Toy all the time, maybe this is why! Lend me your help, I gotta carry it!”

Nisk fell silent, but still placed his hand on Easil’s shoulder to lend his friend strength. Easil barely paid him any mind. Easil’s eyes flared with light and crackling energy and he slowly began forming his spell. With conscious effort, he breathed in, absorbing the natural aether of the air. It suffused his lungs and Easil could feel the cool rush of the seed in his belly converting the raw aether to wind mana. In his mind he built the simple spell, root, trunk, branches and leaves, components laid upon components.

The shape of a cage. The strength to hold and to lift. A tether by which Easil could direct its movement. The power to sustain itself for the trip and the ability to provide more mana to maintain the structure over time.

Pulling strength from that seed deep within his core and the tendril that Nisk was lending him, Easil drew out winding roots of power, extending them forward and around the child and its pod. Then, encased in a nest of mana that looked all for the world like true vines in form but for the translucence of the tendrils, Easil extended branches of magic from that cage into the air about them. He knew the lines of power would be invisible to Nisk’s unskilled eyes, but to Easil’s bright blue eyes, the vines sparkled like lightning and the flow of air around the nest of mana was clear.

His spell woven, Easil lifted the child and the pod into the air.

“Okay, I’m going to head back, I’ll take it slow until you can catch up,” Easil told his friend.

“I’ll make it quick,” Nisk replied as he pulled out a piece of leaf-parchment. The Tree would change soon enough, growing in and shifting to change the routes they’d mapped out, but they would be coming back to this tree soon. God’s Toy aside, the regular gem fruits were valuable in their own right for crafting materials. He sketched in the new route frantically, slowly turning and toddling after Easil.

Easil paid it no mind as he headed back, the chubby baby in the pod sleeping quietly in the embrace of the wind.

Sixteen years later, Unnamed Tal

Linumbra’s Embrace was a massive place. No mere tree, it was a forest in a single endlessly expanding and twisting hollow trunk. Lesser aether trees aspected to darkness such as this were known as Hollow Homes. But Linumbra’s was the greatest of the like. A deep wood with innumerable lives and space aplenty in which to protect those lives. The hollows offered up food and shelter for small and large alike. To the adventurous spirit its depths supplied the population with wood and even some mineral wealth deep down in the core.

The innards of the tree were packed tight with fungus and crawling things, a tiny ecosystem bursting with incredible life and variety. A treasure trove of creatures and plant life that existed only here, unique in its own right.

Birds lived and played in the outer reachers, enjoying the bounty of fruit and insects that lived in the labyrinthine wood. Small animals scurried about the branches, carefully avoiding the sparse few predators that lived within the tree. No large monsters lived within the upper reaches of the wood, but there were many places for smaller hunters to hide and snatch any small unsuspecting residents.

But it was the depths of the tree that were truly dangerous to the residents above.

Linumbra’s Embrace extended down into a great earthen hollow, the ground eaten away over time by the delving roots of the tree, leaving only rare fingers of rock extending towards the Hollow Home. The gouged out ravine extended into the darkness below, obscured by the many roots become branches of the tree.

Yet no natural wind stirred the branches of Lin’s Hollow Home. No shafts of sunlight bathed its residents with the warm embrace of true sunlight. There were days of dimness, but no clouds could be seen, nor was there any cleansing rain to wash away the dust of living.

Not that Lin's Hollow Home no longer felt the wind or the rain. The residents of this twisting wood supplied their own. Communal spells of wind to scatter the seeds and rain to give life were regularly cast by individuals gathered from the various communities living in this tree the size of a great mountain.

Tal pressed his hand against the barrier.

As always, nothing. It didn’t matter how hard he pressed, the only thing he could feel was vague resistance, maybe the barest hint of warmth. It would shimmer and pulse as he pushed, almost as if he had dropped a stone in a pool of water. The reaction strengthened as he pushed harder, creating larger ripples that travelled further, but no more.

*"Tal…”*

As far as he could actually *feel*, there was nothing there. With the barrier blocking sight, blocking wind, heat, *anything* but the ever diffuse light of day, there might have well have been nothing there.

*"Tal.”*

But all the stories said otherwise.

“Yekchetal!” a voice snapped out in the distance.

Tal flinched. Easil had found him. Not that there was anywhere to hide out here. It was only ever a matter of time of course. Tal would have to seal himself away from the very air to avoid Easil.

Tal turned around just to see the tiny figure ambling down the cracked road from Lin’s, following one of the fingers of rock that connected the tree to the barrier surrounding it. A blocked road to a much larger world than Tal might ever know. “Tal!” Easil exclaimed with annoyance as the gnome approached, “You are shirking your duties!”

“The tree isn’t going anywhere,” Tal complained, careful to school his annoyance at hearing his full, awkward given name. “And the stores are full, it won’t hurt If I’m a little late for foraging today.”

Easil arrived before Tal and craned his head up to glare at Tal. It was always a little hard to take his adopted father seriously when the gnome didn’t even come up to his knee, but Easil could still make his displeasure felt.

Tal rubbed the back of his neck as Easil stared.

It was Easil who gave in first though. His little head turned, looking to Tal’s right. He raised his little hand and pointed. “There, my son, do you see that?”

Tal turned his head. A small rise of earth caught in the nook of a root that rested right against the barrier. Long grass with small bursts of multi-coloured flowers surrounded a small blasted off stump large enough for Tal to use as a seat. If he’d wanted to poke his rear full of wooden sticks. The stump had been flattened out right in the center.

“When I was your age, I did the exact same as you,” Easil admitted, bringing Tal’s head around with surprise. “I’d walk all the way out here, stand on that stump with a hand on the barrier and wonder.”

“Wonder?”

Easil looked up at Tal with clear blue eyes. “What does the sky look like?”

Tal stood awkwardly, unsure of what to say.

“I can see it’s been bothering you, I can relate well,” Easil said with a soft smile, approaching with purpose, “but don’t let it, the barrier isn’t going anywhere today. Come, it’s time for work.”

“Okay,” Tal replied, dropping to a knee and lowering his arm. Easil climbed onto Tal’s forearm. As Tal stood, Easil climbed a bit higher, turned and sat on the wood pauldron Tal wore for foraging.

“Onwards my noble steed!”

“Don’t make me run.”

“Ah, please accept my apologies.”

He might not be able to see the sun, but Tal supposed his life could be much worse.

End Chapter