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Since my writing is pretty new I decided to take in opinions, thoughts about the story line, potential characters,etc as the story proceeds so if you find something you believe will add to the story or help me make it better please share your thoughts with me :)

Chapter One

“What...what is going on? What is this place?” Santiago attempted to ask but his vocal cords refused to move as he desired and his senses were limited. He found he could not expand his telepathic sonar beyond a few mere dozen feet giving him a fraction of the picture he was used to receiving.

His first surprise was his own body, it was no longer what he remembered it to be, in fact he was not so sure he was even looking at his own body. For a moment he was stunned, but it dawned on him that he was in fact looking at his own body. There could be no mistaking it, it moved as he did and it felt as he did. He was a helpless infant in the belly of his war suit.

Master…

“What is going on?” He thought spoke to his suit.

Your nerves are weak...allow me to reestablish connection…

Moments passed. Santiago could feel tendrils crawl over his body as the inner nerves of the suit began to bond with him giving him a boost in his senses. The spire trees once bonded with the soul acted as both amplifiers and conduits for the abilities of the host making him not only stronger but more fluid with the use of his power.

As his senses and abilities became stronger and more focused he could now feel at least a hundred feet further from himself but his senses were so infantile that all he could sense were the large trees. He once could have distinguished even the insects that would crawl beneath the soil, now he could barely see enough not to bump into something the size of...well a tree.

The connection with his suit also introduced him to something rather interesting, inside the cavernous area where the host resides, in this instance himself, he could sense a brain. He connected to it and found that it was his, but it was so well fused to the suit that it was no longer truly his, the eeriness of it made him shiver involuntarily. After connecting to the brain he received a streaming vision from the perspective of the tree using eyes that just like the brain were once his. He figured there was a reason for why his old brain and eyes were now part of the tree and why he was now an infant, but he doubted that he could handle the truth at the moment and it would make no difference knowing.

Taking control Santiago began to make his way through the forest that surrounded him, the forest reaching as far as the eye could see covering the nearby hills and mountains. There were no signs of civilization and he could not feel the overwhelming presence of a Great Spire meaning that he was deep in the wilds of this world. He decided to head for the top of the tallest looking mountain and hope to spot some signs of civilization.

It took several days to make the journey, normally without a source of milk as an infant Santiago should have died but the suit had generated a pool of nutrients his master would require to survive and fed it to him via a strange mammary organ it formed inside itself. The organ was as soft as one would believe flesh to be and surrendered its meal as a normal breast would have. Santiago was thankful that he could not see it for surely he would have felt too much disgust to suckle from it.

Once at the mountain’s peak Santiago was disappointed to find himself in the middle of more wild lands. To the north there appeared to be a sea or ocean coastlines and in every other direction there was more forest.

“Can we take flight?” Santiago asked.

Unfortunately I have spent almost all of my strength restoring you my lord...your body is far too fragile to sustain us as well…

Reshaping the body of a tree took no great effort, Santiago could remold the tree and form wings or even rudimentary thrusters, but both come at a cost in energy consumption to sustain flight. With Santiago so weak he could not fuel either transformation and it would take weeks for the tree to condense the energy for a single hour of sustained flight using the least energy consuming form.

Santiago raised an arm and condensed energy into the palm of the suit’s hand programming the energy to release itself in a bright red hue and to leave a trail leading from his hand. He released the energy sending the little package of energy high into the sky where it burst in a brilliant ruby red. This was an SOS call.

Unfortunately for him he did not know just how much the world had changed and his actions had just then placed his own life in danger. The call was seen by many, sadly none of those who saw the signal were friendly.

Santiago had left the mountain and started to make his way due east, he figured that sooner or later he would run into something. Every few miles he would fire off another flare.

Barely three days after descending the mountain he began to feel a chill in the air, his battle senses told him he was in danger, but no matter how far he looked and how hard he attempted to expand his senses he could find nothing. The feeling, however, continued to persist as he continued in his straight line journey.

At the end of the week his stalkers finally made themselves known, spire trees, young saplings. There were dozens, maybe even as many as a couple hundred two meter tall saplings that appeared to have just emerged from the ocean floor less than a few years ago. Against the great bulwark that was Santiago’s suit, a hulking forty foot giant of a tree, the saplings were mere twigs.

These young saplings did not appear to have any military training of any sort, they swarmed and moved without the finesse of a trained soldier of war. Santiago did not want to think about what all of this meant, saplings growing and living peacetime lives? ...no best not to think about it.

They mean us harm...they don’t recognize us but understand that we are different...enemies of old…

Enemies of old? Were humans no longer around? Is this why he hasn’t seen anything resembling civilization for miles around? Had the world been lost?

“Stop it,” he told himself. “Just kill and take their spire seeds.”

Unleashing the chains that wrapped around his forearms and a third from his waist Santiago prepared to use the only weapon in his arsenal, a weapon that had made him famous as Black Tails. The chains, like the name, were black as night, but they were not made of metal. They were made of the very cores of the consciousness cores of his fallen enemies infused with his will. They moved like a part of him, fluidly and naturally. Each tail was composed of hundreds of one inch blades that were only half an inch wide and only one centimeter thick. Normally such a chain would be fragile and useless in a fight against walking trees but the material from which they were made was not only easily moldable but could be reinforced with psionic energy to make it very hard to break. Aside from being capable of changing shape the tails can even act independently.

The saplings crowded him approaching closer and closer until they were within five meters of him. Santiago attacked.

The tail on his back lashed out and wrapped around the lower leg of the closest sapling using it as a battering ram to toss around the saplings at his back. The two tails on his arms shot out and knocked back the crowd in the front before returning to mold themselves into a shield and dual headed axe, the shield on the right and axe on the left arm. The tail on his back continued to protect him from those who would attempt to attack him from behind as he charged into the crowd smashing saplings against his shield and cutting them to firewood with his weapon.

As he smited enemy after enemy the tail on his back would sift through the remains and take from the carcasses the spire seeds and add them to their own canopy supplying Santiago with much needed energy.

The battle spanned many acres as Santiago moved around crushing the saplings as quickly as he could not giving them time to regroup and by some miracle form a counter attack against him. At some point he managed to catch a reprieve from battle as the saplings found themselves outpaced by him and in that moment he realized that the saplings were just a distraction. Far off in the distance larger spire trees were making their way towards him, some appeared battle scarred meaning that he was going to be facing veterans of war soon. They were shrouded by trees but he could tell that there were at least four groups of three to five and from the glimpses he caught of them they were half his own height at minimum.

They feed us...so many seeds…

“Then let’s welcome them to battle,” Santiago said ripping a boulder from the ground and grinded it into a drill like bullet form the size of a man’s head. He stepped forward and placed his weight on his right leg, the one he used to step forward with, as he slowly turned his body gathering a mass of condensed potential kinetic energy on the bullet that floated mere inches from his left fist. As his left leg came around and stomped into the ground quaking the soil and tumbling the nearest saplings he brought his left fist around with incredible velocity. The stone round left his fist propelled by the force of his movements before blasting forward as the kinetic energy was released sending the stone bullet flying at incredible speeds. The impact struck close to a group of four slamming into the left ankle of the one behind the leader. The impact force not only obliterated the leg but also killed the owner of that leg and the dirt and spire tree’s corpse’s shrapnel killed the one behind it and severely injured the third taking three out of the fight. The skill depleted just one of the dozens of spire seeds he’d claimed during the fighting, it was a rudimentary skill, an easy telekinetic skill used against the lower level minions. Santiago was a Great Spire conqueror after all, the skills he employed to conquer them dwarfed the simple artillery shell skill.

Santiago did not have the time to fire another as the saplings once again swarmed against him trying to climb up his legs and arms. He had a much easier time fighting the larger trees when they joined the battle, Santiago was very experienced in melee combat and the fact that the saplings retreated once their larger kin joined the battle gave him an advantage. The bigger trees were slower and they presented a much bigger target, they quickly fell victim to his tails as they were bashed, hacked, and shredded to pieces. without the distracting element the saplings provided the larger trees were no match for Santiago.

It wasn’t until he killed the eighth of the large trees that he realized that the main participants in this battle were holding back which brought about another realization, one that brought a cold chill down his back, he was being tested. Almost in accordance with his thoughts a whole new kind of spire tree arrived to the battlefield dropping in from above. This one had wings, molded wings, it wasn’t a real surprise though but its aura told Santiago that this one was not someone he should be facing just yet.

Before this new arrival had a chance to step forward a series of explosions ignited around Santiago setting many saplings and veteran trees on fire. The vessel that had rained down fire from above was a heavy troop transporter. Many of the surviving saplings began to point their canopy towards the transporter, while the spire trees could not use telekinesis as well as humans could they had found workarounds. One of the workarounds included using the firing mechanism for releasing seeds and the canopy at the top of their large leaves to create a makeshift spire seed cannon. One round fired with three times the speed of a bullet and with the crashing force of an object weighing four tons.

They had not used this ability against Santiago because it took time to focus their inner nerves into the proper arrangement that would allow them to fire the seed cannon which would leave them immobile and vulnerable to attack until the cannon was ready to fire.

Santiago could feel the energy building up from the canopies of the sapling trees, as the firing moment drew close and as he fought off the remaining giant trees he prepared himself. At the last moment he launched the two tails on his arms at the transporter and dug the one on his back into the ground, then used the chains to quickly change the direction of the transporter in ways the engines onboard would not have been capable. All of the seed cannon shots failed to meet their target.

The transporter itself was large, at least a hundred meters long, its engines were powerful enough to hold as Santiago released his rearward tail and pulled himself aboard. The back hangar bay door had been dropped to allow him access. With all the crazy things that had been happening around him he wondered about what he might find inside.