Each step was agony.

Each breath was harder than the last.

My mouth filled with my precious blood. Wracking coughs, which shook my entire body and occasionally forced me to my knee, kept my mouth clear. But only for mere moments.

Never before had my body felt like this.

My body was getting weaker.

The once powerful legs of mine could barely keep me up and moving. Each time the coughs forced me onto my knees, it was harder than ever to get back to my feet.

Yet, I kept stumbling forward. Braving the irregular cobbled road, following the silhouette of a slender and distinguished back. That slender form had an almost magical grasp over me; pulling me along in its shadow as it strode through the streets of Three Bridge.

These streets should be busy, yet all I could see were pale shadows swallowing the ever present silhouette.

Trapped in a world of blood and shadows, I stumbled onwards, hoping I was following the silhouette. Beneath my feet, the uneven and rough cobbles ended.

The ground fell away.

My body rolled as it fell into the damp bottomed ditch.

There was nothing left in my body. No strength. No hope. It could move no further. The pale stars hiding behind dark clouds mocked my weakness.

A droning voice, as annoying as a buzzing insect which refused to go away no matter how many times you swiped at it, kept on. I had no strength to swipe the voice away.

Something hard, rough, and rounded was placed into the palm of my hand.

My hand instinctively grasped it.

A strange energy leaked out of the stone and into my palm.

Where the energy sank through my body, there was something.

A sensation.

At long last I felt something, even if it was just a tingly dumbness which was taking over. That tingly dumbness sank into the earth beneath my hand, rooting it into the soil.

After my hand rooted itself firmly into the soil, my hand sprouted upwards towards those mocking stars. In time, my hand sprouted leaves. They reached out towards the air which surrounded them. Taking in the stuffy, blooded night air.

As the leaves grew closer towards the stars, the narrow trunk grew larger, engulfing at first my entire hand, then my lower arm.

Yet still, the leaf covered branches reached towards the mocking stars as if they wanted to pluck them from the sky and cast them down.

The trunk refused to stop growing.

Now it covered my upper arm. It was getting dangerously close to my face.

Yet the dumbness which affected my body was affecting my mind. I cared little if the trunk fully engulfed me.

In time, the darkness of the trunk replaced the darkness of the night.

I stopped breathing.

The tree breathed for me.

The tingly numbness was gone.

I could feel the gentle breeze as it shook my branches and leaves.

Still I grew, reaching upwards into the sunlight sky. The sun warm on my trunk, branches, and leaves. A refreshing rain washed over me, sinking into the ground where I drank it eagerly.

As I drank eagerly, I noticed a power hidden deep beneath the earth. I stretched out my roots towards this power, hoping to claim it for my own.

Night came.

Though I slumbered, creatures lived amongst my branches.

The warmth of the sun woke me again.

Iron axes shattered themselves against my bark. M ægen enhanced flames and blows proved weak against the blessings of the earth and spirits and the almost endless power which lay hidden beneath the insignificant unnatural construction.

Yet I knew I was not to touch them.

But I needed to expand.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Needed to grow beyond this single tree.

Needed to share the blessings hidden beneath the earth before they erupted in their desire to share the blessings outwardly.

I allowed my roots to expand outwards from the unnatural construction, ignoring the thin layer of stone blocking a patch of the ground. As I expanded my roots outwards, I touched other roots.

I took them into me and shifted them into further bodies of mine.

Iron axes and M ægen enhanced abilities were as useless against the least of my bodies as they were against the grandest of my bodies.

Despite the annoyances, I felt as if I needed to grow more bodies. Where there were no other roots, I forcibly grew more and more copies of myself. In the far distance, I felt an old forest. It welcomed me within, and though I dared not touch too many of its trees, still I took a few of those who welcomed me within.

Where there was unnatural space within the forest, I reclaimed it in the name of the forest. This was the one unnatural construction which I forcibly destroyed. Not only did I grow more of my bodies, I also welcomed the other trees to spread within. Even with my help, they would need many seasons of growth.

Though I could continue onwards and outwards after integrating the forest within myself, the spirits themselves bade me stop.

So I did.

With my growth outwards done, I grew the least of my bodies to match that of my grandest body.

Yet that grandest body had its own desires. It grew ever larger, towering over the forest of my bodies that had sprung up.

As I watched the forest grow ever more interconnected, life filled it. Simple animals and insects, whom knew no other life, to the humans who fled from the unnatural into the natural. Though it was not their way, countless numbers of trees grew large hollows near their base, allowing these inhabitants somewhere to stay within the forest.

Yet though it was strange for these trees, it was also right.

Life came in all manner and sizes and these trees sheltered life as much as were life themselves.

But it had come to the point where it would need to lose one of its bodies.

It had been the original body. No longer was it needed. The blessings granted by the original body made its new bodies stronger than any of the echoed memories of bodies long ago. Bodies ripped apart by the eruption of blessings.

The memory of those echoes might ’ve come into life again, if not for the scattering of its seeds far and wide. Even now it could feel its once-fellow bodies doing their best to reclaim their spiritual bodies. But it alone was lucky: it had been blessed by a rich, original body.

Even if that original body was not of its own type.

That original body belonged as much within that unnatural construction as it did with its fellow siblings within the forest that it had helped shape. Carefully, it unearthed the original body.

Taking inspiration from the lesser bodies, the grandest body hollowed out some of its insides. As it was the grandest, it was not a mere cave it hollowed out. It took inspiration from the memories and will of the original body.

The hollow inside felt strange, yet it was proud to honour the original body in this way.

One body, which had grown too close to a narrow water source, honoured itself in another manner. It made an arch of its body, then grew an oddly shaped wide and flat branch that reached over the water onto the ground on the other side.

Deciding that the body had rightly honoured itself. The grandest body allowed this bridge tree to grow a subordinate from itself. And so the two trees formed what the original body called a bridge.

Never before in the echoes of memories had a tree or two forced itself to grow like that. Never before had hollows been grown in trees for human occupation. This was likely due to the influence of the original body. Yet the blessings granted by the original body were unlike any previous blessings it had accepted before.

While other once-fellow bodies struggled to grow in strange regions, it had already grown a forest almost worthy of one on the isle it had once called home.

This was because the original body had given of itself to allow its grandest body to grow strong and true. Because of that, it was willing to accept some of the strange ways and will of the original body. Second to the blessings of the original body was the positioning of the grandest body, close to a reservoir of power beyond the already impressive power which the original body had held within itself.

Though this forest was not as grand as the one I had once called home, it was impressive enough. I shared the joys of growing to my once-fellow bodies, encouraging them to struggle and to grow. To reclaim what had once been ours, but in new homes in unknown places.

Separated from one another as we were, we would always be connected. I knew this because though the original body was no longer a part of me, I could still feel them as they lay within the hollow in my grandest body.

The spirit of its own body was departing from my body. The leaves and sun and wind were fading away. Instead of being free and part of the forest, I was once again trapped within my own body.

I was trapped and could no longer feel the wind in the leaves. I missed the sun warming the leaves and branches of the many thousands of trunks.

I was both trapped and free.

Trapped within my body.

Free to move how I wished.

The one bit of gratitude I could easily accept was the loss of feeling the scrambling of animals on my many thousands of bodies.

Though I was apart from them, I could feel the memories of the trees. And those memories provided a link to the forest, which was much closer and more intimate than I had ever heard a human have before.

My back was sore from laying on the perfectly smooth and hard hollow floor the grandest tree had granted to me. Light shone through an oddly twisted circular hole. Though it was too small for anyone, but the smallest to climb though, it was large enough to let in light.

I struggled to my feet and looked out from the oddly twisted circular hole. From here, I could overlook M ægen Scōl. Sitting next to the conjoined tree bridge was a woman I had married…

How long had I been part of the tree?

I knew not, but somehow I knew she had been waiting for me all this time.

With a smile, I hastened into the arms of the one I love.