Book 13: Chapter 50: The Voice of Integration

Path of Dragons

Six months, long, tedious and arduous, had passed since Elijah had begun to incorporate the crystal shard into the growing ancestral tree. In that time, the seedling had grown nearly a foot. With his guidance – through Nature’s Design as well as more mundane ways to manipulate growth patterns – it had wrapped around the crystal.

Soon, he would no longer need to guide it. Instead, only power would be required.

His actions harkened back to his efforts growing the tree on Chimera Island. That had taken months of work as well, but when he had finished, it had reached maturity. The early sapling he’d planted on Druhmor would take far, far longer to grow into an adult tree.

Years, at least.

Perhaps even decades.

Most people would look upon such a task and see a stretch of endless boredom. And there was some of that, Elijah had to admit. However, for the most part, he had plenty of tasks to occupy his time.

When he wasn’t tending to the tree, he was defending Druhmor against monsters. The area formerly known as the Cyst had always been a source of dense ethera, but now, it featured thick vitality as well. And that acted as a beacon for any monster in the area – especially when it pulsed, which happened once or twice a month along intervals Elijah didn’t quite understand.

Nor did he understand why it happened. He only knew that, periodically, Druhmor erupted in a wave of dense ethera and vitality, which it sent tearing across the landscape. Elijah had no clue where – or if – it might stop.

Invariably, an attack would follow soon after.

In the past six months, Elijah had fought more varieties of monster than he ever thought existed. Great tentacle beasts that dragged themselves across the uneven ground, hulking behemoths similar to the ones he’d used as fuel for the garden’s growth, and multi-legged creatures that resembled nothing so much as mutated insects were just the beginning.

And at some point, Elijah just stopped caring about the form they took. They all felt the same, and they all attacked with the same ferocity. That was all that mattered.

In addition to guiding the tree’s growth and fighting monsters, Elijah tended to the gardens of Druhmor, which had grown more than he ever could have expected. With that came an increase in ambient vitality that almost felt like home.

He’d also spent a little time studying and nurturing the corruption-fueled plants in the Abyssal Moat. They hadn’t grown very much, and instead, had remained short, scrubby, and gnarled. But they had become stronger, even if their apparent forms didn’t really suggest as much.

He occupied himself with other tasks as well. Like working on his mind cultivation, which was mostly a non-starter. As much as he had the will – and probably the power – to take the next steps, he just didn’t know which way to go. In all his plans, he’d never expected to advance his cultivation so quickly, so he’d not bothered to research ways to bridge the gap between the fourth and fifth stages of mind or core cultivation. Instead, he’d focused all of his attention on his body and soul.

Now, he regretted that because he knew that if he managed to acquire just a few hints one way or the other, he could advance.

Or at least make some progress.

As it was, he maintained the same core exercises he’d been doing for years while forcefully shedding and regrowing leaves within his mind. Neither task was particularly onerous, so he could train without much active effort. Which told him that he was barking up the wrong proverbial tree.

But he just didn’t know what else to do, at least when it came to cultivation.

Other times, he found himself going over his notes and making new ones concerning runic circles and, specifically, how they related to living things. Most of his notes amounted to nothing more than idle musings, but there were a few gems in there that he wanted to test as soon as he found a less vulnerable environment. He didn’t dare experiment in the garden, lest he upset the tentative balance he’d created.

He also tried to practice carving, but wood was still something of a luxury. Instead, he’d found a clay deposit, which he’d used to shape a variety of terrible statues meant to depict his friends and family. They were barely recognizable, even to him. And he knew what they were supposed to be.

Still, their presence almost felt like he had company.

Finally, he filled his idle time by examining magic. Whether it was represented via his Mantle of Authority or any of his spells didn’t matter. He wanted to understand it. But before he could do that, he needed to thoroughly examine the ins and outs of how those spells came to be.

However, it was a lot like trying to learn trigonometry without a teacher, and he made only a little progress.

Mostly, Elijah focused on the tree, though. That, he understood. And it also possessed the distinction of being the single most important thing in the world. At least to him and his plans. So, more often than not, he found himself sitting cross-legged next to the nascent tree and guiding its growth.

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The routine wasn’t terribly exciting, but barely an hour went by that he wasn’t occupied in one way or another.

By the end of that first year, the tree had reached a height of a little more than three feet. The trunk had completely encompassed the piece of the Branch, though it had not quite incorporated the crystalline shard into the underlying structure.

Which was a problem, Elijah realized.

He had never seen how Nerthus had managed to integrate the Shard of Nature’s Might into the ancestral tree sapling back in the grove, but he knew it was more than just embedded in the trunk. It had been entirely absorbed.

So, Elijah set about figuring out what the problem was.

He cast his awareness into the tree, though he found all the familiar strands of ethera he’d come to expect. He also found the web of vitality laced throughout. And in the center of it all was the piece of the Branch, shining brighter than anything else around it.

But it was more than just ethereal luminescence that set it apart. It was like it glowed in an entirely different spectrum that Elijah could only barely sense and never really see.

His awareness sank deeper and deeper with each passing moment until he could scarcely sense his other surroundings. Doing so was dangerous. If something attacked, he would be all but defenseless. Yet, Elijah felt that he was onto something. So, he continued to follow that thread.

Then, he heard it.

It was like a whisper in his mind, more melodic than any song. It called to him, pulling him in. Yet, it was too hollow to hold sway over him. What’s more, he’d heard that whisper before. He’d listened to that song and nearly given himself over to it.

It was the call of nature, like a mother beckoning her child forward.

Elijah didn’t pull away. Instead, he dove into it, trusting that his cultivation would maintain his identity. Suddenly, he felt as if he stood in the center of a gentle storm. Lightning flashed and thunder rolled while fat drops of summer rain fell upon his upturned face.

It was not real. In fact, it was no more than a feeling, and yet, he could almost feel those sensations washing over him.

He basked in the ephemeral sensation. He gave in, trusting himself to stand firm, rather than be washed away. It worked, after a fashion.

It didn’t impart any great knowledge. It didn’t give him any extra power. But it soothed his mind in such a way that, when he broke free from that gentle embrace, he knew precisely what he needed to do.

Perhaps the idea had been in him all the while. Or maybe the World Tree itself had spoken through the sliver of its Branch. Either way, Elijah felt certain about his next moves.

He retracted his Mantle of Authority, then reextended it from a single hand. His soul reached out, wrapping around the nascent tree and slipping into the crystalline limb at its core.

Power exploded from the shard, washing over him and kicking up a ripple of mud that splattered against the inner ring of trilithons surrounding the ancient arch. But Elijah didn’t move.

He couldn’t have, had he even wanted to.

His hand remained glued to the tree as his ethera rushed through his hand and into the tiny conduit passing through the tree. The crystal reached out, using Elijah’s soul as a path to connect to the young tree. Power flowed in and out, surging through the tree and into Elijah’s body.

He heard the whisper as a full-throated song, so loud and so clear that it very nearly killed him. It tore through every single leaf within his mind, shattering the crystal constructs and leaving nothing in their wake. Elijah frantically tried to rebuild them, but he was too slow.

Initially.

But as time passed, he reasserted himself. He pushed back, shoving against what felt like a tidal wave of sound, power, and an unfathomably potent identity that was too vast for him to even comprehend, much less fight.

It didn’t want to kill him, though. Elijah realized that as soon as he managed to maintain a single leaf for more than a few seconds. It was holding back. It wanted him to endure.

Only then did he recognize that he’d experienced something similar in the past. Back then, he was far weaker, but in the context of that seemingly infinite presence, the difference seemed miniscule. The weight of that identity – that mind and soul – was too much for him to bear.

So, he didn’t try.

Instead, he focused on rebuilding his leaves, one after another. The presence destroyed them as quickly as he built them, but after a while, Elijah found his rhythm such that he managed to maintain an equilibrium. And then, he started to gain ground.

Leaves bloomed, shattered, and were shed so rapidly that Elijah could scarcely think. But he could keep his goal in mind – keep building leaves.

Which he did.

In all the years since the World Tree had touched Earth, Elijah had never felt so much power coursing through him. Not atop that obelisk. Not when he was fighting the Synod. And not even when he stood at the center of the Abyssal Moat, reforging his soul.

For he was in the presence of the World Tree. It was just an echo of a sliver of its spirit, but it was still more than he could ever be expected to handle.

From within came a surge of power. In some ways, it felt similar to the World Tree’s presence – especially in that it felt like a shadow of something far more potent. It only took Elijah a second to recognize that it was the remnant of the worldseed he’d absorbed in the Broken Crown.

It had powered his climb to the lyndwyrm stage of core cultivation, pushing it to an exceedingly rare degree of potency. But there was still plenty leftover. It clashed with the World Tree’s presence, melding with it until Elijah managed to regain his footing.

But he didn’t want to simply survive.

He wanted to use it.

And he believed he knew how to do just that.

Flexing his will, Elijah took hold of the briefly stunned pair of powers and ripped them into two flows. One, he pushed toward the tree. The other, he sent into his mind.

A dozen recently reforged leaves shattered instantly.

Elijah allowed it, reaching out into that river of energy and, using some of the principles he’d learned sculpting clay, formed a new leaf. It was wider. Thicker. It was more complex in every way, and somehow, it felt as if it existed in multiple dimensions.

More importantly, when the dense waterfall of energy flowed over it, it did not break.

It trembled. It bent. But it did not shatter.

Seeing that, Elijah shattered it himself. It was a good first attempt, but it was not perfect. And as was the case with the other aspects of cultivation, Elijah would not settle for less than ideal.

The World Tree’s presence – diffuse as it was – represented a massive opportunity. He never could have endured the real force of its identity. But he could handle an echo of an echo, if only barely. And he could use that as a cultivation tool.

At that thought, he could have sworn he heard a tinkling laugh.

He ignored it and got to work.