“I still can’t believe that the Council agreed to this so quickly,” The Unrepentant One said, his head shaking back and forth like he couldn’t decide where he wanted to look. I tried following the motion, but there was nothing there. Not even when I checked with [Ambusher’s Vision]. “Normally they’ll go on and on about something before anything gets done.”

“They’re desperate, even if they try to hide it. Hearing that one of the inner cities was willing to go so far as to purposefully sabotage a settlement so nearby…well, that sort of thing can’t go unanswered - but neither do they want to be the ones asking the questions that’ll need to be asked. Not without preparing for an answer they don’t want to hear. This,” The Staring One said, making noises at the other Coreless and waving one arm about in an all-encompassing gesture, “is part of those preparations. Honestly, if it weren’t for everything else going on, I doubt that they’d go for it at all. There’s…a lot of risk involved. People could die if something goes wrong and this forest turns against us. More would likely die if the Little Guardian himself does.”

“He won’t do that,” Will asserted. “Even if we can’t understand each other well, we can at least judge his actions so far - and they’ve been nothing but helpful. Lifesaving, many times over.”

“I know, and that’s why I decided to go along with this plan, despite the risks involved,” The Staring One replied. “But that doesn’t mean we should toss all caution into the null-water and let it fade into nothing. Which is why I also agreed with the Council’s decision to grow the forest around the city rather than inside it. If worse comes to worst, the null-water will provide a barrier between us and the forest, while still allowing the forest to be an effective defense and food source. It’s the best option we have available to us. Besides,” he finished, “if everything goes well, it’ll give the plants more room to grow.”

As the Coreless stopped making noises at one another, we finally stepped off of the darkwood not-sink that had carried us across the black-water’s dangerous surface. I carefully clung to not-Needle’s ore-flesh as we did so, peering worriedly downwards when a few droplets splashed upwards when the not-sink rocked.

Waiting on the other side was a great crowd of Coreless, having already arrived ahead of us, with oddly shaped bits of ore-flesh in hand and slung over their shoulders.

And then the work began, and the sound of shattering stones started to fill the cavern.

My senses spread across the banks of the black-water; even without actually looking, the world was highlighted by [Verdure Parasite] and [Spore Puppeteer], both abilities marking plant-flesh after plant-flesh in their own way. The Coreless had dug into the ground, the assistance of the disciples' glowing fangs of ore-flesh more than enough to cut through any bits of stubborn stone, and placed seed after seed down. And with that done, I had begun my work.

[Verdure Parasite] wasn’t just a way to shift growth from one place to another. It was an entirely new sense, one that both allowed me to sense the shape of the plant-flesh’s surroundings - by finding the places where that potential for growth abruptly ended - and faintly gave me an idea of what plant-flesh it was that I was sensing in the first place.

It wasn’t a good idea. I could only tell that some would grow faster than others, shooting upwards in the same time when another might remain stunted. Without anything else to go on, I wouldn’t be able to tell what the plant-flesh I was sensing was.

Fortunately, I did have something else to go on - I had helped to gather these seeds of plant-flesh myself, carefully selecting the ones that I wanted from the forest of the once-ruined many-nest. Because not all of the Lesser Core’s former bad-things were made equal.

Some were far stronger than the others. It was those that I made sure to keep, guiding my Coreless towards their harvest.

With that in mind, I knew exactly where to start. With one seed in particular - the soon-to-be forest’s heart, kept carefully away from the many-nest itself, where it would have more than enough room to grow.

A seed from the Darkwood Guardian itself.

…I’d have to make sure it didn’t grow quite as large as its ancestor, though. There was such a thing as too much, and the Coreless were already struggling with feelings of unworthiness. On the banks of the black-water, kept carefully away from the many-nest itself, the Darkwood’s descendant began to rise, its growth accelerated as I stole more streams of time from the plant-flesh surrounding it - only a little sprout for now, but soon to be so much more.

The forest didn’t grow at the speed that it had first done within the once-ruined many-nest. There, I had been able to draw from the boundless source that was the spore-mist itself, growing in instants what now - with far less sources of plant-flesh to draw upon - took far, far longer. If it hadn’t been for the extra seeds that we had brought with us, more than we really needed, it would have been even longer. Even then, thousands of seeds were nothing compared to what I had once brought to bear.

Still, it moved at a good pace regardless, the soon-to-be wall of plant-flesh visibly twining ever upwards over the following days. The offspring of the Darkwood Guardian was the first - and the longest - to grow; it was a work of days, even when those days were worth decades of growth; as long as I focused on a single plant, stunting the growth of everything else at the same time, something like that was manageable.

Even then, even taking days instead of a few instants, it was enough to draw the Coreless’ attention. Enough to draw their [awe]. The Darkwood Guardian’s offspring was obviously less than the Guardian itself, reaching a limit to its growth that was completely dwarfed by its ancestor, but even that diminished size was still impressively large. It was enough that, as it grew decades in the span of days, the roots of the Darkwood’s offspring started to stretch across the null-water’s banks. Not all the way around; it wasn’t nearly large enough for that. But it did span across a noticeable section of it, forming the beginnings of a plant-flesh wall at the black-water’s edge on one side of the many-nest.

The sight had attracted a crowd of Coreless over the days it had spent growing, inciting oohs and aahs from the tiniest of the Coreless in particular. More than one little Coreless had been carefully pulled away from the black-water’s edge by older Coreless as they began to draw too close, nearly throwing themselves into the horribly dangerous liquid in their excitement. As suicidal as it was, I could understand their excitement. Even if the Darkwood Guardian’s offspring wasn’t its equal, it was still a tree with a trunk that had grown to many, many not-Needles across in the span of a few days; the dark surface of that same trunk rose up higher than all but the largest of the nests within the many-nest, flecked with line after line of blue and gold, a burst of color that couldn’t help but draw the eye. The roots were much the same, forming a wall that was nearly a not-Needle high.

With the heart of what would become the puppet-forest completed, I started my work on the rest, using [Verdure Parasite] to strip away the streams of time that I had previously attached to the Darkwood Guardian’s offspring and direct them instead towards other bits of plant-flesh.

The ground burst in great waves of plant-flesh gold and blue and brown and greens starting to reach for the cavern’s ceiling, section by section.

Over the course of the following weeks, the forest would flourish, growing to its full height. I started with the most important bits of plant-flesh, those that could supply the Coreless of many-nest with fruits and flesh. The Darkwood Guardian - along with my disciples and I - were enough of a defense for now.

And by the time we left, the plant-flesh that grew upon banks of the black-water would be more than the Great Core’s Coreless could ever need - in every way imaginable.