Zeke smashed his forehead into the black crystal trunk of the tree, shattering it with a single blow. At the same time, he grabbed hold of one of the thousand branches jutting from his chest and yanked. It came free with the sound of glass scraping against metal, sending a spurt of silver blood to splatter on the ground. It never hit, for the entire courtyard was inches deep in black shards of crystal.
He didn’t have time to notice any of that, though. Instead, Zeke had everything he could handle with tearing one branch after another from his body. Each time he yanked one free, he weakened a little more, but he refused to let it affect him. Those attacks all sapped his strength, but fortunately, he had plenty to spare.
At some point, he lost sight of his goal. Every time he destroyed one tree or broke one branch, there was another to take its place. If Zeke had plenty of strength, then Oda had more than enough mana to keep going nearly indefinitely. Against that, all Zeke could hope to accomplish was to hold out until the tree demon’s energy began to dip. Until then, Zeke had only one goal – endure.
So, that was what he did.
He bit and clawed, his trusty hammer having long since been discarded. He headbutted and kicked, wrestled the snaking branches into submission, and used every trick he had at his disposal to extend the battle even for one more minutes. Minutes became hours, and hours turned it into more than a day. And yet, Oda showed no signs of slowing down.
Neither did Zeke, though.
He’d decided to keep going, and in that, his will was like iron. His entire world was crystalline branches. He was surrounded and inundated, with thousands of branches piercing his body. In a way, he felt like Sisyphus and his eternal labor. Though, instead of pushing a boulder uphill, he was tasked with fighting against an endless inundation of crystal trees.
But like that mythological figure, Zeke had no intention of giving up. If the gods had chosen to punish him, then he would endure that punishment until they tired of their little game. So it was with Oda.
Clearly, he couldn’t overpower the demon tree. He simply didn’t have the strength to finish him off. However, what he could do was outlast him. And as it turned out, that was precisely what Zeke was good at. Of all his traits, it wasn’t his strength or endurance that had seen him through countless battles. That wasn’t how he’d gotten through years in a cave system filled with trolls. Instead, he’d made it through those harrowing events because he was far too stubborn to know when he should simply give up.
He channeled that same attitude as Oda tried to bury him beneath an endless cascade of black crystal. Tree after tree impaled him, tearing through his body and elicitin a degree of agony he’d never before felt. And yet, Zeke endured – not because of any mystical trait, but through a simple refusal to surrender.
Zeke lost count of the days. Not that they mattered. He would keep going until Oda tired of the fight. Or, unlikely though it seemed, until the demonic tree ran out of energy. Everything and everyone had limits. Zeke just needed to find Oda’s.
So, on he fought. As he sank further into himself, he became increasingly more aware of his body and the expression of his attributes. It didn’t happen all at once, but over time, the tree branches that had once so easily pierced his body were stopped by his skin. What’s more, every punch, every kick, every flick of his fingers shattered the crystal trunks.
He was gaining ground, though he didn’t really notice it. He was too focused on survival to care about things growing easier.
But eventually, the trees ceased reappearing, and Zeke burst through the wall of crystal, bloody and with his body having been ripped to pieces, only to find nothing left to fight. Then, he glanced upward to see Oda floating around fifty feet up.
“You vex me,” the tree said. And he was a tree in truth. After being shattered multiple times, Oda had discarded his host entirely. Now, he was represented by a gloriously perfect tree, much as he had been back in the Mortal Realm when Zeke had encountered him in the center of that corrupted lake. Back then, he’d barely understood what he was looking at, and now, he was only a little more knowledgeable.
“And you piss me off,” Zeke growled, glancing across the courtyard and seeing his hammer. Over the years, he’d developed something of a sixth sense regarding the weapon. It had been with him almost since the very beginning, so he could feel it almost as well as he could sense his own limbs. “You want to come down here so I can finish breaking you into increasingly tiny pieces?”
“You fight even when you know you are beaten. Tell me – why?”
“Because that’s who I am.”
“Interesting,” Oda said, his branches waving. “You have the spark of divinity. I can feel it locked away behind that ridiculously crude cage. If you live, you will become a god. When that happens, what will you embody? I sense destruction in you. Is that what defines you? Or is it merely a tool you have adopted?”
Zeke didn’t answer. Instead, he stood there, staring defiantly up at the tree. He could easily reach Oda with a leap, but then what? He’d already proven that he couldn’t kill the tree. He’d spent countless hours trying to do just that, and he’d yet to be successful.
No – he needed a different tactic.
But he just didn’t know what that might be. So, he stood there, stalling. Finally, he said, “I don’t know. I don’t care, either.”
“You should. If you kill this avatar and ascend to the next realm, you will need to make a choice as to what defines your very being. Is it destruction? Or endurance? Something else of which I am not aware? Your sponsor, Oberon, chose nature. I chose something similar, though from a different perspective. My sister, Eta, chose creation. Did you know that she made the elves? They were not reborn from other worlds, as they would have you believe. Their race began in the Mortal Realm. Her little project that she thought would usher her to prominence. And yet, they failed her.”
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Why are you telling me this?” Zeke asked. “Aren’t you here to kill me?”
“Of course,” Oda stated. “But I will admit that there is a chance that you will destroy this avatar. A small one, to be sure, but a chance nonetheless. I merely wanted to know if you had considered your future.”
“Not especially.”
“Then you should. For your sake as well as the sake of your subjects,” Oda said. “I care not for either, but one god to another, do not let Oberon manipulate you to his purpose. He fights a meaningless battle, and joining him will only result in ruin. Not that it matters. You will die here.”
“Lot of talking and not a lot killing going on,” Zeke remarked. “You going to get to it, then?”
Oda’s branches shook, and Zeke wasn’t sure if the tree was laughing or furious. Whatever the case, the brief respite ended then and there. Hundreds of crystal trees burst free of the courtyard earth, sending the shards of shattered trees spraying in every direction. Zeke braced himself, but he was still taken aback by the fury with which the trees descended upon him.
If his resolve had been tested before, now it was pushed to the absolute brink. However, in the back of his mind, he continuously replayed the conversation he’d shared with the demonic tree. Oda had claimed to have dedicated himself to something nature-adjacent. What did that mean?
Zeke pondered that while defending himself against the ever-growing branches. While he did so, he cast his senses downward, and when he did, he finally understood. Oda wasn’t a nature-based creature. Rather, he was dedicated to earth. The tree motif was just misdirection.
Even as Zeke waged a war against an army of crystal trees, he used his earth attunement to search the ground. And soon enough, he found it – buried deep beneath the citadel was a ball of dense crystal from which all the trees sprouted. The message was clear – if he wanted to kill Oda’s avatar, he needed to destroy that ball of crystal.
So, without further delay, Zeke started to dig. Not all at once, but in between shattering trees and yanking sharp, crystal branches from his body. And gradually, he made progress until, just as he came within a dozen feet of the ball, Oda once again spoke.
“What are you doing?” he demanded. “Stop! You can’t –”
Zeke surged through the last few feet, latching onto the hunk of sharp crystal. He could feel the powerful mana deep inside, and it wasn’t just earth-attuned energy, either. There was significant corruption as well.
What was even more important was that it was an object, not a living thing. And that meant that Zeke had no issues sending it straight into his storage. Oda let out a scream that cut off only a second later when the crystal disappeared. The moment it did, Zeke turned his attention inward and shouted for Eveline to come out.
“What?” she asked, peeking out from her mental bunker.
“I just sent Oda into the storage space. I need you to lock him down before he can do any damage. When I get back, I intend to put him in the prison,” Zeke explained quickly. They were able to speak at the speed of thought, but time still passed. And who knew what someone like Oda could do with even a few seconds of freedom inside a place like the Crimson Tower?
“On it,” she said. Only a second later, she continued, “It’s done. He’s screaming pretty loud, though. And just so you know, that isn’t actually Oda. It’s an avatar.”
“He mentioned that, but I have no idea what it means.”
“It’s like a tiny sliver of his soul,” she explained. “He had to be invited here, which was why he latched onto the Imperium’s leader. But once he was here, he didn’t really need the host anymore.”
“Is he dead?” asked Zeke.
“Oh, yeah. Definitely. He was dead the second he invited Oda in. But you totally killed him.”
Zeke nodded. That was as expected, but he still wasn’t entirely sure what to think about it. Indeed, he was in no place to ponder the man’s fate, considering everything that had happened. Fighting a god’s avatar was no mean feat, and it had left him with a hundred questions about his place in the world, how his attributes were expressed, and, most importantly, about his future.
But he didn’t have any answers.
One thing he did know was that the battle was over. Not only had Oda been defeated, but during that fight, his army had completed the takeover of the city of Eldoria. Soon enough, Eveline confirmed that, though Zeke would need to speak with the others to learn just how the battle had gone.
For now, though, he had a simple question.
“It occurs to me that Oda was an object,” Zeke said.
“You wouldn’t have been able to send him into the storage space otherwise.”
“Right. Well, he’s also an extremely powerful source of mana, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And that makes him sort of like a natural treasure, doesn’t it?” he ventured.
Eveline didn’t answer for a few seconds, but then she said, “Oh, that’s perfect. Absolutely perfect. Much better than what I had planned.”
“Will that hunk of crystal work for the quest?” Zeke asked.
“It definitely will. Probably a good thing, because I don’t think we had the means to kill him otherwise. Now, the Framework will take care of it,” she said with a sigh of relief.
“What was the other plan?” he asked.
“Oh. That. I was going to sacrifice myself.”
“What?”
“It can’t be that surprising, Ezekiel. Do you think I’m happy like this?” she asked. “I was a powerful demon, with all the freedom that implies. Now, I’m an ephemeral spirit who can’t leave your head. Getting out into the tower helps, but this is not the life I envisioned for myself. So, I decided to sacrifice myself for your little quest. It seemed like the right move.”
“You were going to kill yourself…”
“Well, as far as I’m concerned, I died a long time ago. I’m just a ghost now, Ezekiel. And like all ghosts, I’m just waiting for the right opportunity to be put to rest.”
“I…I don’t accept that, Eveline. I just don’t.”
“It’s not up to you. I won’t actively seek my own demise, but if it comes down to –”
“What if I could get you a body? What if you had your life back?”
“You know that’s not possible…”
“Anything is possible,” Zeke stated. “And I’ll make it happen. Just hold on until then.”
She let out a sigh. “Fine. If it makes you feel better,” she said. “It’s not as if I was going to jump off the proverbial cliff tomorrow or anything. Don’t get so worked up over nothing.”
“Your death isn’t nothing.”
“Debatable.”
Zeke knew he wasn’t going to win that argument, so he decided to be happy with her vow not to actively seek the end of her own existence.
“Besides, there’s another extremely important thing we need to do,” she added.
“What’s that?”
“Well, that citadel probably has a lot of loot, and given their dedication to the Sun Goddess, I’d be willing to bet you’d find something appropriately holy in there.”
That brought a slight smile to Zeke’s face, though he knew that it was a hollow expression. With what he’d just learned about his friend, it was difficult to focus on something so inconsequential as a bit of loot.
Still, he owed it to her to put on a brave face, so that was what he did.