Don't think I have been quiting... ;3

Sadly the world demands that I labor to meet rent's demand! Woe is me!

On the brighter side of things...there are no brighter sides...its all grey...deal with it ;_;

Chapter Ten

The brown tree’s journey had been rather adventurous since he set off from Elder Noah’s estate and entered Sezaria. The city itself had held nothing of great interest, there was the usual city things like big buildings and attractions for the populace and tourists to enjoy. There had also been something rather unexpected, a Redlight District, a zone of the city in its most dark parts dedicated to the selling of pleasure.

It had disgusted Santiago as he saw through the brown tree’s eye.

The family was never intended to be capable of this, the laws, the codices would have made this impossible and the culture itself should have too. As he dug deeper into the industry he discovered the reasons why the district was possible. For the women, drugs made it possible, enough of them and you have a dependent addict that could be controlled through supply. For men it was about the sex and the credits.

In the big cities where tourism thrives credits are necessary, which makes certain markets necessary, which draws in foreign goods as well as services. Those who run the Redlight District tend to be those who love material things and require the credits to buy import goods.

There is a greater complexity than that simplified explanation, but Santiago couldn’t stomach any more of it. While it was family preying on family he preferred that over some other foreigners from other worlds preying on them. Of course there had been one foreigner who had been doing exactly that, until brown tree changed the fact to fiction.

Unfortunately there was no way to easily correct this tragedy, not yet anyways.

After this detour brown tree found himself enlisting in the mercenary group known as the Boar Kings. He’d already grown to nearly sixteen feet in height, four feet over the minimum requirement for registry.

Through the BK Santiago learned of the massive invasion the spire trees were setting up, while he did not know the intended target he did know that once the battle took place it would present many opportunities.

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“Hold the line!” Santiago roared.

He frontlined at the lead of his legion and behind him stood four hundred tree bonded Alocartans. They had landed on the quarantine zone and brought war to the remaining Great Spires on Alocarta.

So far the battle had begun as predicted, the trees had been taken by surprise and did not react quickly enough to stop Santiago’s legion from taking a foothold on the continent. The battle, however, devolved into chaos as all battles usually do. The trees reacted with strength slamming into the hastily constructed fort that was their foothold. The battering was overwhelming but as the battle dragged on the tide of war was slowly changing in favor of the legion.

The main reason Santiago wanted the legion on the continent was the fact that there were incredibly old trees on those lands. Those that were not killed in combat could be captured and used to strengthen the legion itself by having non-bonded members take for themselves partners. While many took to the idea eagerly many more waited for the battles to drag on, waiting for better potential partners.

Today was the sixth day that they were holding down the fort, but today would be a little different. Today they were going to expand their claim.

“Great tree Ho!” one man beside santiago pointed to a flying great tree. He was the largest to enter the battle as of yet.

“Dont let the line crumble!” Santiago hollered to the man via telepathy. While it wasn’t necessary to holler the telepathic link had become extremely clogged with combat noise. Hollering would deliver the message home better. “I’ll go bring him down!”

Of the nearly two thousand bonded warriors only four hundred defended the fortress, because at the moment the remaining sixteen hundred were split into a quad of four centuries and each of these quads were doing a blitzkrieg race far and wide through the nearby few thousand acres of land. The fortress force was simply there to keep the enemy focused on a single point.

He shifted the black tree’s body so that wings formed on its back with a ring at the curve of each wing. The rings would gather psionic energy and produce the lift necessary to fly.

With a quick jump and a massive burst of psions he lifted high up like a rocket allowing his tails to uncoil. The great tree, a tree of a minimum of thirty feet tall or long, swerved to avoid Santiago as it prepared its canopy to fire its seed cannon. Though Santiago flew past the great tree his tails detached and coiled around the great tree crippling its wings.

He took hold of the tree as it fell and using great force slowly guided the tree in a sort of free fall floating fashion towards friendly controlled ground where surely a soldier would be waiting for his chance to bond with the tree.

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Scar and the rest in the communion wept in sorrow as they felt old friends being ripped apart from the great mind network, their selves beings discarded as the humans performed their abominable bonding.

“We must stop them!” thousands shouted their voices melting into one strong force as they pleaded of the Great Spires to make their move.

“We must…” again the shout that had become like a chant after being sounded thousands of times was halted as in a single moment one of the great minds vanished. A Great Spire had fallen, it had been a vanishing, the tree had ended itself rather than be subjugated to the horrors of bonding.

“GYAHHH!!!!!” The screams thundered through the network as thousands, through the voices of their minds, vented their horror.

The death of a Great Spire was not like the death of a sappling or even a great tree, a Great Spire has been around for millenia. Thousands of years, THOUSANDS! The loss of one is just...monumental. Great Spires father entire generations, hundreds of thousands, millions, and the oldest father billions before their eternal sleep.

Just as the sorrow reached a crescendo the loss of a second Great Spire impacted the network and what followed chilled even the oldest of the trees, pure and uninterrupted silence.

For moments the trees simply could not do anything and even the continuous loss of their fellow brethren did not affect them. It was as if they had all gone numb, even on the field of battle many trees simple stopped which confused their aggressors making them cautious before renewing their attacks.

The loss of the third Great Spire barely registered in their minds but the fourth...the fourth took a while...it transmitted its pain...its fear...into the heart minds of all the trees before it too chose death over bonding. They all... as a collective saw it happen in their mind’s eye as if...in a dream...it was all happening to them. The slow but sure conquest of one’s personal space, the area which no one but those they allow may enter, was slowly invaded, the trees...this space...it meant so much more. There is a proximity limit for the bonding...it was a truth the trees knew well, if they got too close it was over, you would cease to be but as if they could lift the dead from their grave your body would continue to function and with life...a life that was not yours...would take root and sprout.

Some of the elder trees, the truly old, Elder Trees, born on the old world, the first world...the home world...speculated that the life that renewed itself in the corpses of the fallen, victims of the bonding was life beyond theirs. Some Elder Trees knew well that they were what they were and knew well the things the bonding did. Ethereal could easily represent themselves when considered next to the spirit of a bonded tree...a spirit that ceased to be a function of a whole and become a function of a self fulfilled something deeper if not greater.

The shock of the latest loss sent ripples through all the trees of Alocarta and as one they became lost to their grief losing themselves in a berserker state that had they known their strength in their fury they should have surely conquered the world once more and made it anew, but as again, their lack of unity in their turmoil they failed. Just as long ago when a number too costly to count fell to human hands the last remaining survivors of Alocarta found themselves dwindling in number dramatically.

Humans...the vilest of their enemies...found ways to profoundly wound them beyond points of recovery. They had faced enemies on worlds too numerous to count but the first they ever feared and failed to drive away from their spreading territory or into extinction were humans. For reasons unknown they awoke to abilities other creatures never did, they faced aliens that experienced growths in unique fashions but humans were the first to exhibit growth in military might primarily above all other possible points of growth.

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In just a month Alexis’ seedling had sprouted into a very virile sapling measuring just a few centimeters under two meters tall. The growth had surprised her, normally a tree should have taken years to grow that tall but for a month to result in this? It baffled her to say the least no matter how much the tomes she received from the headmaster made sense.

The sapling had started to follow her about as well no longer keeping itself rooted to the riverside where the soil was best. It expressed an emotion of wanting but Alexis was far too inexperienced to know what to do with her sapling’s emotions. She was still reading the large tomes she had been left with, she felt even more alone in her efforts to grow her tree after she learned that her headmaster, the man of the black tree, would be leaving with the Legion to fight on the quarantine continent. After his depardture she felt puzzled as to what to do with her sapling, though, unconsciously, she started to follow a routine of constantly watching that the sapling root in the best of places to feed itself and photosynthesis properly. She also watched that it grew properly from the cellular level, since that is what forced growth was all about.

What she had not expected was the relationship that sprouted from its growth and in essence from the growth in herself. She had always lived independent to others as best as she could relying on her own strength to progress forward, not that her situation changed except that with her sapling it was no longer about being alone. While, she, herself was independent the sapling was not...while she had struggled to free herself from her bonds of her disability she felt herself conflicted by the struggle of the sapling. It did not try to become independent for itself, instead it was always fully clear that Alexis was the center of the sapling’s world.

To say the least, the sapling’s way of thinking was beyond the norm Alexis was most comfortable with.

The bond only grew stronger and soon she found herself understanding the true meaning of the words in the books the headmaster had shared with her. They revealed things to her she had not always been aware of.

Alexis had nearly been hollowed by the loss of her sight in her youth, her struggle had always borne crippling moments that always threatened her growth to either be something more or something less of what she was. The sapling that grew with her had none of these worries, instead it worried most of whether it served for her a purpose, while she had never heard it speak though the books clearly spoke of a deeper vocal bond, she knew well that it grew so long as she willed it.

The happier she was the stronger the tree became, it was not a normal bond either. She had read the books and it told her that her bonding had been somewhat more special with her bondmate though it did not explain the why’s nor how’s. The tomes were far too vague and complex for her, but many of the messages were clear, the sapling was a piece of her in a deeper sense beyond what she could understand. She understood the rules too.

If it dies you die.

If it is strong you are strong.

unfortunately the true rules did not stop there and the words and the magical complexity escaped her far beyond her degree of aptitude...for the moment at least.