Pando’s POV

No... no, no, no.

An even stronger Arch Druid.

I struggle, but it will be futile. Thousands of magical and mundane attacks destroy my limbs way past the healthy renewal point and into pointless destruction. The main retinue of enemy magic wielders are all heavily protected. The Arch Druid doesn’t even try to control a single blade of grass or try to turn my generation of plants into fertilizer instead saving his strength.

They sacrifice a greater number of orcs and other physical fighters, including a few of their blade wielding elves on the outside, while keeping almost all the magic users protected and well rested in the middle. They rush the most vulnerable corridor, chipping away at my domain with skills that I still don’t understand.

Not only does the main mass drive deeply into my territory, but the thirty or so groups that fleed in past attacks start pushing and dividing my attention and resources. Individually, they are barely a concern, but instead of fighting my will directly, they destroy anything in the territory I lose, no matter how briefly. While the soil grows richer from the decay of the current generation, I don’t have the time to make use of that.

Enemies encircle me, extending inside their territory in my perimeter. If I’m not careful they will join together and eventually would cut me off from the outside.

Even cut off, the area was enormous, more than I ever thought I could cover before my survival depended on it, but being cut off would just lead to a quicker demise. I will need to eliminate them if they keep this up. But my attention focuses elsewhere.

I dread the approach of the main mass of enemies. If… they brought that THING, I’m not sure how I could survive.

The last attacks were painful sure, but they lasted seconds as the Arch Druid was on its last dregs of mana.

If they brought that thing again… the damage from the last bout that had been hard to heal from, swathes of forest empty from the decay.

Dozens of powerful warriors fall every second in their march over my large territory and the closer they get to the center, the greater the force I can exert, but with each step, a few more candles of hope die.

They get to two hundred meters of my oldest still living limb. Well in range of my innermost defense ring around the largest and most majestic of my limbs. What my friend calls the heart tree.

It stands some four times as tall as my adult limbs used to be and some ten times thicker standing above it all. It takes the energy and nutrition from such a wide area and only continues to grow but it seems small in comparison to the enemy marching over.

My magical senses feel the wrongness in the air.

A summoning.

They are bringing that thing and they have plenty of protection and mana left.

I’m done.

A seed that is not wholly physical, a warping in my domain as a rush of mana pushes to touch elsewhere. Something that is not of this realm, a black being of roots that is anathema to nature comes into existence. Dread hit me, worse than ever.

This thing…is larger, stronger and more… real.

I will not see another sunrise, nor fell the sun hitting my leaves again. The thing opens its maw and charges.

If I try to marshal my will, I won’t last for more than an instant.

I’m large, but this being can devour all the land with enough time and I’m only a small piece of it.

I try to make sense of the numbers, the bastardized version that I used. The number of remaining soldiers, the total mana pool that they can gift to the Druids, and the perfect condition to handle all that mana they are in. Even in my most optimistic assumptions, I’m finished.

I’m thankful that I called the protectors of the forest away. Little beings like them wouldn’t survive more than a brush against this THING. But even as it springs at my main limb, the very place I usually keep most of my nebulous consciences, I move miles away. The smallest of my tendrils of will stands in place and the vivisection starts.

The pain is as bad as ever, if not worse, but I marshal all I’m and the call goes out.

“Escape.”

All the animals that for so long protected me and were hidden miles away from the path of the army would simply be fodder for this new enemy.

I struggled and hold out for as long as I could my friend, but it was not enough. I know that you would not have abandoned me if you had any choice, but today… today is the day I die.

But if I’m to die, I can lay a seed for another day or I can fight with my whole being.

Hope or despair.

Those are my choices. For I have already lost, time just hasn’t caught up and with a choice between those, there is only one answer, a small chance for the future.

I gather all my mana and I drive it deep in a lake near the edge of my domain. I grow a seed in the deepest crevice, the furthest any of my roots ever reached underground. Through cracks that none of my enemies could pass, but my roots extend everywhere and I pull on the ground.

No light, a lack of life in the soil and a slow cycling of the water from the lake but I grow a single large seed with enough nutrient stores to survive in hibernation. A chamber in which will lay another of my progeny. It grows unnaturally fast even as I feel the wave of death coming. It’s not content to slowly suck me dry from a distance but wants to destroy my will in an instant.

I make a place too small for me to survive, but a young being won’t take as much as me to make it. A deeper wave of pain strikes me.

No, no it is too soon.

I didn’t prepare.

I never thought I wouldn’t have the time.

The end came too suddenly. I can’t lay another seed.

A severing. A splitting of the world, pain that makes all the previous tortures come into perspective as scratches rather than wounds and then it is over.

The walls close in. My reach extends only inside the egg and a few meters out with a few severed root tendrils. I reach for my Aether hoping that can tell me something… anything.

I tendril heads back to where the beast is and then suddenly I can nearly see the fight above. Another piece of myself, except, it is incomplete. It has most of my Aether and a decent chunk of consciousness but that part of myself moves listlessly like a beheaded corpse.

Weakness gets to me as the unnatural thing reaches out looking straight in my direction.

“How?”

Nobody else could sense Aether. Even though it can see my consciousness and attack it is already a surprise but this seed that the enemy brings over and over… this unnatural thing they feed so that it enters our realm...

It has come to devour me, but first, it gobbles the tendril of Aether reaching out between us while dragging a bit from the pool of this other half of mine. As soon as it does that I feel the attention of another being in the sky. A frightening being that was not on my side. Its gaze locks on the ghost ready to devour everything. Judgment from the heavens has arrived.

Meaning not encapsulated in words comes through clearly to me, not their contents, just loose concepts.

Aether devourer.

Punishment.

Death/Banishment.

The partially translucent black roots making its ghostly body splash over as an attack faster than I can conceive mashes it into pulp.

I tuck my Aether in myself not ready for it as weakness hits me. The situation is over, but its effects are far reaching. The gaze from that being hits me and then I’m dismissed. I’m inconsequential, a shell of my former self.

I can’t leave this place. I can’t even extend my Aether to see or reach for my roots, what if there is another of those beings out there? What if the being in the sky changes its mind?

The small egg gets smaller and smaller as I look around. I won’t survive here long without the sun to refuel. I could grow again, but that is also death. This is just a seed that will never grow with limited nutrients and energy.

By chance I’m still alive, but not for long if I waste the little I have.

So I tuck in. I draw my whole being in a tidy little ball and do something I had only ever witnessed, only witnessed… I sleep.

Hopefully, that will be enough time for my friend to find me.

Come, friend, I don’t have long.

Please. Come quickly.

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Elves’ Arch Shaman POV

“No, no, no, no….” I mumble as my gaze is locked on the ruthless eye in the sky.

“The stupid creature.” My seconds in command express my thoughts much more eloquently.

“What is wrong?” a younger and oblivious Elf asks.

It is over, the system’s quest being complete makes that clear.

“The void wraith must have tried to eat some Aether from that creature. That is a big no-no, even for one without protections as a system user. It is the only thing I know that would cause a reaction like that. We carefully instruct it, but they are….”

“How stupid is it to steal the Aether from a living creature under the system’s nose? Aether we were tasked with retrieving?” He asks.

“Not really stupid, he just doesn’t care about the consequences as much as we do.”

“Well, summon it again and flail it alive.” Calls the young Elf in a blood thirst tone.

“We can’t.” I sigh.

“Why not? Just get the seed and throw a bunch of mana at it as always. Even if it is injured, it will just take more mana and cause a small delay.”

“What seed? The ruthless eye tried to kill it. Even if it survived by riding the attack back into its realm, there is nothing behind linking it to ours. Such a valuable prize lost in the blink of an eye. Ten thousand years we kept it and it was the perfect tool for dozens of small invasions but this is the risk of using a tool, it can break at any time.”

“Ohh shit, the matriarch will skin you for losing it. That single seed cost more than the expected output of this planet for a decade after it is developed. And it is not like we will take the lion’s share over here.”

“I’m not so sure that this planet is so simple. That is the very reason the matriarchs even allowed us to bring the seed over. Otherwise, they would have let the months and years pass as we slowly got stronger troops to overwhelm this Aether Icon. Even losing it to another faction would not be such a bad outcome with the low level of investment that just sending a few troops over requires.”

Pulling up my quest I stare at the results.

Quest complete.

Banish or kill Pando allowing for Aether retrieval.

Reward: territorial acquisition equivalent to Pando’s expected territory. (1000 sq km * 170 % completion rate * 70% penalty).

I didn’t fucking steal any Aether and I’m being punished for it. Baaahh.

At least we return to our planet with a prime invasion slot and even a large initial territory. Even if the cost was great, this should develop into a decent investment after our return in a century or two.

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Nash’s POV

I hold myself tucked in as the waves buffet me. Faint cries reach me but are muffled by all the other noise and pain. All thoughts leave my mind, though Aspen’s concern still gets to me through the longer trial than any other before.

For minutes no new cracks arrive, though the damage this time is not shallow. Dozens of cracks that are not healing took me to a tipping point. I feel as sap enters my blood melding as it slowly cycles. I let go of everything and leave Aspen to take care of it, just focusing on surviving, on making it through it with my sanity intact but that fails me.

Meditation is not simply emptying a mind. That is not a very useful concept and in most cases a nigh useless mental image. I need to fill my mind with something else and my attention fills with my soul.

This trial, I don’t know how it will help me, but as painful as it may be, I will GROW from the experience.

I will SURVIVE

I will THRIVE.

I will …

Cracks above and below, shift and grow. Deep wounds that make no sense, as even the system is clueless to their origin or so it claims.

If each of the pieces can’t survive on its own, I will draw it all in. I will make it all one stronger whole.

Each shift only widens the cracks and I fear what will happen if I just let it continue. The system tries to send healing waves, but they barely affect the outside walls of my soul. They become a little more malleable and I feel a little of the pain fade.

Trying to hold everything in place is not the answer, nor is trusting the system going to protect me.

I take a deep breath and finish ripping a few of the cracks in the internal walls so they won’t worsen the outer edges of my soul. I take the roof and bottom keeping pieces of my soul separate and start overlaying them on the outside.

It is like making surgery on myself, without anesthesia, but my focus is absolute and dozens of little beings, young and ephemeral in this realm come to give me strength of their own accord. I let them in, to support me, to let me overcome the madness, to do something thing useful.

I enjoy my island as I redecorate my soul.

I don’t understand how everything is so malleable beyond ‘nebulous faint help from the system’. But I roll with it. I reach for my pool of Aether and spin the ever emptier well, rushing out and trying to become myself. To expresses what is in my heart with such depth and feeling that it cannot be denied.

Before, anywhere in my soul, the only thing I could affect was the resource pools including Aether. Now, I draw all tree spaces to occupy the same volume, stretching the walls from a short cigar three stories tall into a sphere. The strongest and most efficient shape I could think of.

Space recombines into one, but then it begins to draw in layers overlapping each other.

I stretch the pieces of wall fold and cut them up melding everything back into an organic hollow structure like spongy bone or interlinking roots. And through it all, I write. I treat the runes like a language, even more than before, telling a story of an impregnable fortress, a piece that is the mirror of the small space in my middle. The Aether field feels the change and it shifts. All the runes I know, even the one that a friend asked me not to look too closely to start to repeat over and over layered inside my soul.

I’m no longer just myself:

I’m Pandon’s guardian, I’m his friend and keeper of his progeny.

I’m one with the world, understanding and connecting with EVERYTHING.

I’m … a lot more than I was a moment ago, but also, the same.

Untainted by the misapplication of Aether, of the polluted artificial Aether that the system provided.

I keep layering, thinner and thinner strands and making it a lot more structurally sound than a sphere thin wall, even as I keep telling a story. I’m careful in how I apply the system attuned Aether, keeping it only feeding my natural field outside and using the supposedly inferior pure version trying to make my vision become reality.

But even as action nearly takes over my thoughts, I know there is something wrong. My injuries must be the system’s doing, it is being too helpful.

Sometime later, probably at least half an hour, I take a deep breath as soon as I trust my soul to not fall apart as soon as I look away.

I open my eyes and laying before me is someone I had never expected to see in my flying craft.

The Automaton.