Of the various candidate trees that Lev had planted on Vecesta, Lev wasn’t really taken with any of them. It wasn’t that he wanted it to be exactly like the Grandfather Willow, and indeed in some other locations he’d begun focusing his resources on certain candidates. But even with Paradise’s help, the trees on Vecesta simply weren’t enough.
Perhaps it would simply take longer. Even a few decades was a short period of time to change the atmosphere of a planet, unless it was done recklessly. Maybe a new batch of seedlings would find one of good stock. Or perhaps he simply needed to pick one and tough it out.
Lev still found value in tending to his burgeoning forest as a whole. The trees weren’t raised for consumption so he couldn’t directly get energy returns on his invested energy, but the grasping willows helped build up the atmosphere and the soil, along with other things.
Lev did consider trying another variety of tree entirely, but he decided against it. While he would have no objections if someone else took up the project- either within the sect or outside of it- he wasn’t interested in such variety himself. He had his focus and was happy to stick with it.
Feeling ripples of natural energy, he looked up in the sky. “Must be time for Paradise to make another delivery.” The turtle had been occasionally coming by with material of various sorts to help build up the planet. The process was nearly done, but Rutera found no reason to expend their own resources when there was a willing volunteer keeping things on a good schedule.
Paradise was easy to spot from a great distance, even with all of the atmosphere in between. The turtle had only grown bigger since his origin of swimming through space, though for him another fifty years was perhaps hardly enough to grow another few kilometers long, at most. Even so, he was far more massive than even the largest Ascension-class ships, and there were only a few orbital platforms that could rival him and they were stationary.
The turtle began to orbit around the planet, letting it pull away waves of water and other material as he passed. The torrential rains it caused might have been one of the factors that limited the growth of the grasping willows, as a sudden infusion of moisture could be a shock to the system- but Lev knew that the impact was overall positive. Vecesta and the trees needed the aid.
With the material came an exchange of energy, Paradise sweeping up some of the stagnant natural energy and replacing it with his own. Lev began to guide the energy into some of his forest.
However, a moment later claws began to tear through the energy, grabbing onto it from nowhere while gouging huge furrows out of the ground. The attack seemed to come from nowhere. No, it did come from nowhere, and it returned to it.
Alarms rang out in the Ruteran bases as the claws passed next to them. Vecesta was still relatively near the beginning of its settlement, but there were various scientists studying the development of the planet and sect cultivators who appreciated the opportunity as well. The camps weren’t mutually exclusive, either.
But relevantly, none of them were particularly strong. There were more than a few in Life Transformation, a respectable achievement… but against a distortion beast that could cause such damage with a single sweep of its claws they were in a shaky position- and any buildings or people directly in the path were already gone.
Paradise reacted just before Lev managed to. A loud groan shook Vecesta as Paradise concentrated some of the small ocean around him into an orb that he shot forth. Lev couldn’t deny its power as it curved around the planet, his only concern was the attack actually connecting.
But it seemed Paradise knew what he was doing, as the sphere of water struck something. It exploded outward in all directions, pushing in front of it great leathery masses that could have been something like wings along with tower sized claws that scattered in all directions.
Lev launched himself for the base of one of those claws, as he was fairly certain it was still attached to the creature behind everything. Without the enhancement of the Grandfather Willow he wasn’t as powerful, but he was still an Assimilation cultivator. Here he had the power of one more in the early or mid stage instead of the peak of Assimilation, but it was valuable nonetheless.
His energy reached out, entangling the base of the claw and squeezing. Then he grabbed another and another, lashing them to each other. When they tried to withdraw into subspace, they pulled against each other, leaving them vulnerable to attack for a few more moments.
Those attacks came from the Ruteran cultivators as well as the Island Tenders on the back of Paradise- and of course the turtle himself. Paradise bit into a leathery wing, ripping apart several kilometers of oily flesh. Blood sprayed over the countryside, melting whatever it came into contact with. Erin focused some of her and Paradise’s mixed energy into a cutting jet of water, severing a dozen of the myriad claws the creature possessed.
The wings lashed out, creating tornadoes and almost blowing away the atmosphere, causing it to bounce around the planet. Lev let himself be carried away, dodging and weaving between the claws. He hadn’t seen a mouth yet, but distortion beasts weren’t always so logical as to have a visible way to consume. They would regardless, of course, it just didn’t always make sense.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
The waters and earth were torn up as the distortion beast writhed and thrashed, attacking anything and everything on the planet below, and the turtle above. Its claws scraped against Paradise’s shell, making only small marks. Or at least marks that appeared small from Lev’s perspective down on the planet, as they could easily have been many meters deep. Certainly each claw was enough to erase any building without the benefit of defensive formations.
The Ruteran cultivators targeted the distortion beast wherever it popped up- or sometimes where it was going to come out. Between their own senses and scanning technology, they picked out the movements of the creature as its pieces approached the closest layers to normal space, and whether they stopped it from reaching out into real space or tore into its flesh didn’t matter.
The durability of distortion beasts varied wildly, from nearly impenetrable to highly vulnerable. This was more towards the latter, but that did not mean the beast was easy to kill. Indeed, many of that kind simply didn’t care whether or not their flesh was rent from their bodies, always seeming to have more.
Lev charged towards the closest Ruteran base as an incomprehensible leathery wing crushed downward. He stood tall with the strength of a thousand trees, forcing his energy upon the center of the massive appendage. Lev’s bones creaked and his body went limp, his natural energy floundering- but he tore open a rip that saved most of those nearby.
At the same time, the surrounding grasping willows were snapped in two, either from the direct impact of the leathery mass or from the connection to Lev. The massive limb was almost ponderously slow as it forced the air out of a many kilometer wide area, blasting the surrounding area apart. Topsoil was torn away and even bedrock cracked.
Yet the sound of contented crunches continued to ring out throughout the planet as Paradise tore off pieces of the distortion beast. Soon it began to pull away, and the turtle chased after it, biting through layers of space to the creature behind.
Lev thought that such a meal would give any reasonable creature indigestion, but Paradise was far beyond what anyone would deem reasonable.
The distortion beast withdrawing didn’t suddenly make everything on Vecesta better, however. Indeed, the atmosphere was barely holding together and the new seas were sloshing around the planet wildly.
Lev found himself tossed about in the wind and waves, his remaining energy used to protect his body rather than to control his limbs or to do anything but weather the storm. Some of the Ruteran formations were able to hold up against the great fluid force flowing around the planet, but others were swept away.
Lev clutched onto the power of the Grandfather Willow back on Ceretos, drawing on it as he could- but it was nothing close to being in its presence. He also reached out for any local grasping willows… but he felt nothing around him. Not until he was tossed about another hundred kilometers more did he feel the faintest hints of any of his planted forest.
When he did, it was a single solitary tree. More of a sapling, really. The various conditions involved meant that not everything grew evenly, even when planted at the same time and in relatively similar environments and soil. Perhaps it had been a bad seed. Except… when Lev reached out for it, it reached back, catching him with a strand of energy. It didn’t have the power to calm the tumultuous surroundings, but it did have enough to hold onto him.
Over the course of the next few hours, the seas retreated and the winds began to settle. Paradise had returned, sending ships from its back to help those on the ground. He had also been partially responsible for the reduction in the force of the water, crashing back and forth around the planet.
Lev found himself sitting down next to a small tree as the sun rose on that part of the planet, beginning to dry him off. He looked around him at the disturbed landscape, which also included several claws sticking up like hills and rivers of blood or ichor or whatever foul substance the creature had in its place. His little tree had been soaked in it, even, and its leaves and bark were stripped away.
Reaching out mentally, Lev offered some of his flow of energy to the little sapling. He didn’t recognize it at the time as the rest of the terrain was gone, but later he would come to recognize it as the one that had survived the initial accidental frosts that Paradise had brought with him. And while on the surface, it still wasn’t much… its roots ran deep.
-----
Vecesta had been unfortunate to be attacked by a distortion beast of that magnitude. It was unclear exactly what had drawn it in. The developing planet might have looked like a tasty treat, or perhaps it was Paradise’s infusion of energy- though it would have had to be close to react as it did.
Either way, failing to detect it was problematic for the entire system, as Vecesta was still within Rutera’s main system. Even if the turtle had accidentally enticed the creature to follow him, he had moved along approved flight paths with appropriate levels of spatial awareness. Ever since the first encounter of Weos and Ceretos, people had taken precautions to avoid attracting them as much as possible.
After the initial damage from its caustic fluids, the remaining portions of the beast were determined to be only minimally toxic, though having kilometer wide hunks of rotting flesh wasn’t exactly pleasant for the locals. Chopping it up and mixing it into the soil was deemed to be the best solution, and Lev aided with the project. The environment hadn’t totally collapsed, but Lev had to plant new saplings on a majority of the planet.
The one little survivor, however, drank deeply from the air and soil around it, as well as Lev’s donated energy. He admired the little guy, not just for helping him out at the end but for surviving so much. It wasn’t really a choice so much on his part as something that just happened. This was the one he was going to focus his efforts on. Maybe it would never grow large. Grasping willows did have some utility with greater size, so it wasn’t simply an aesthetic concern, but perhaps a durable one would be best. And beneath the surface, Lev saw its roots were many times larger than expected- a good basis for its growth into the future.