Chapter 57: World Soul
The green energy of the tree reached out to him, yet it was not like the purple ooze of his eldritch flesh that demanded he submitted, instead the green energy sent him a feeling of warmth and familiarity. This familiarity…it was like the soft green grass that brushed upon his back when he laid down on the bed of nature, or like the comforting, protective shade of a large tree.
The color of green intertwined with his red like strands of DNA. It danced around the red that he emitted with a joyful, innocent jubilance.
Zan saw no wrong, and so his will, the red infusing energy, listened to him.
The very essence of will was sentient, but that statement wasn’t totally correct. It was like an extension of him, like an arm or a leg. Consequently when the youth let his guard down, the protective barrier of his red intention let the green energy fully permeate his being.
Zan felt soothed yet at the same time intensely revitalized. It was relaxing, almost making him want to lay down. Yet at the same time the energy filled his being with liveliness and passion, making him want to run and jump. The youth was a little confused about what to do, but suddenly he felt something alarming that immediately focused his attention.
For a moment his eldritch limbs started to metaphorically drool, their bloodlust and instinct to devour flared like a flame finding a feast of wood. Out of nowhere purple ooze started to come out of the same limbs and devour the green energy being supplied to Zan.
His eyes opened wide in surprise. The youth did not have to think twice that letting the purple ooze absorb more power was going to be a problem, so he thought fast on his feet for any solutions. Naturally yet talentedly, he thought of the most direct way to resolve the problem. Why not just make more of his red energy?
Zan willed it, and amazingly more of the red flame was manifested from seemingly out of nowhere. The concentration of red started to deepen and the light of his auric flames started to turn from bright red to blood crimson. What was once a beautiful red aurora of lights became a hellish burning scene of red.
Immediately the purple ooze stopped, and even started to shake as if it was trembling in fear. It did not even struggle against him like last time, instead it was simply too afraid to even move. Zan’s will had the properties of its wielder, and its imposing strength demanded submission with dominating authority.
Quickly the purple ooze started to seep back into his limbs, but Zan had another idea. The hellish red will seeped into his eldritch limbs like an apocalyptic flood. It did not drown the purple ooze however, instead it burned it, and Zan observed as the purple ooze started to evaporate and disappear into the surrounding air.
Yet…not everything always goes as planned. A deep pain in his soul shook the youth’s very being, and the burning crimson will started to wither and weaken. The red that enveloped Zan’s body turned back to its auric flame state, before declining even further and receding back into his soul.
The purple ooze of course took advantage of this and expanded rapidly to envelop Zan’s body. In the physical world, the boy’s body froze, before his eyes turned all black. From sclera, to iris, to pupil, Zan’s eyes turned into an abyssal black void. Speaking of eyes, they started to grow on each of his limbs, followed by a disgusting myriad of mouths. Lastly, on his face a terrible grin from ear to ear started to muster…
Within the mind’s eye of the youth, within his very imagination in his head, the eldritch sentience triumphantly rejoiced. Well, it did so as simply as the thing could feel what happiness was. Now that it gained full control though, it would start again its instinctual and existential goal of devouring the universe. First…it had to start with this organic bundle of matter that was a tree.
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The sentient but unintelligent body of purple ooze touched the tree, intent on plundering and devouring it, it knew no other action than to consume.
Unfortunately however, it was not as gigantic as the cosmic horror down in Mila’s basement. Once it touched the tree and the purple energies of the eldritch being were recognized, a deep, vibrating ohm resounded in the deeper etheric layers of the living world.
The mind’s eye of the youth, was really one perception of the underlying connected reality, and so the changes that manifested in his mind were true for both in the physical and metaphysical world. In his mind’s eye, there was the purple infused body of Zan, and the green infused tree. Yet as soon as the repugnant purple touched the green, a rainbow of colors exploded.
Beneath Zan’s body and the tree, limitless red and orange manifested below their feet. It was the rocky, stone floor of the canyons. Above them, a limitless glow of blue, followed by puffs of smoky luminescent white manifested from the darkness above. Of course, it was the sky. Lastly, a similar shade of blue but much lighter, gently flowed past the two beings. It was of course, the whistling winds.
Together, the symphony of colors started to powerfully shift, the light of the elements intertwining to bear down on the out-of-place color of purple. Zan’s body that was momentarily overtaken by the eldritch sentience, felt not the dominating force of the youth’s will, but the grand majesty of the entire world.
It was like reality was crashing down upon the purple sentience, and partly, it was. For the very world was pressuring the invader to bend, or break. Interestingly enough, it allowed the sentience to choose instead of simply destroying it, ridding the world of a potential plague for good. Was it mercy? Or was it…a higher plan?
The sentience of course did not want to die. This time it was not trembling in fear, but simply frozen solid. Its will could hide within its soul, but its intuition was telling it that if it did not bend, the world would simply disperse its soul, including the very life it still held in Zan’s eldritch flesh.
The rainbow of colors that the world manifested, gave the sentience a gentle and slight nudge. That touch frightened it to such a degree that the repugnant purple quickly scurried back into its soul, which was within Zan’s eldritch limbs.
Once again, Zan’s consciousness resurfaced. Yet, as soon as it did, the youth’s body collapsed to the floor in a miserable, tormenting pain that he had unfortunately suffered before. The subsequent manifestations of his power of will took a great toll on his soul. Tapping into the infinity within him was quite literally the same as stretching the fabric of his soul to forcefully expand.
It was not the natural evolution of the spirit, but a radically accelerated path.
Thankfully for Zan, the will of the world was here to help him through his pain. The world mirrored more of itself into the limitless space inside his head, helping him to visualize and enforce the reality of what was happening.
Through that action, even more colors started to appear, and those colors shifted from their elements to form an endless spiral of radiant rainbow lights. The lights seeped into his body, or more accurately bodies. For in all layers of reality the rainbow light entered his being and the pain was drastically alleviated until it was totally gone.
Zan’s eyes fluttered open and for a moment he felt what it was like to truly feel oneness within his body, mind and spirit. The feeling was wondrous, out-of-this-world, and most of all fleeting.
When the young man opened his eyes, he found himself opening them to the physical world and not the world inside his mind. Yet a miraculous sight was beholden to him. The colors within his mind carried over to his sight over the physical world and he was shown a dream-like visage of the world. Colors danced in his view and he found that they did not all flow the same. Just as there was the soul of the world, there were spirits of the elements, and he saw them, as vague as they were, dancing joyfully around him.
They were like tiny specks of colorful light that each held different figures. Many of the spirits of the wind were balls of light with wings, while some of them were small human light bodies that flew around him. Each element had different figures and even in those elements, the spirits different greatly in forms.
What Zan didn’t know was that this particular region of Eok was quite scarce in world energies.
The little gatherings of the spirits of the elements were nothing compared to the millions of armies of them in higher concentrated regions.
Zan swung his head towards a certain direction and both his eyes stared in the distance intensely. One of his eyes was glowing red, but another one of his eyes had changed because of the will of the world's presence. If Gayle was here, she would see that his right eye’s iris had changed from brown, to a shining radiance of rainbow aurora. The girl however, would also stare at Zan stunned, for that same eye was identical to her mother’s, when the guardian of the forest would launch herself into battle.
Now, Zan looked towards a certain direction, and he too now had to prepare for battle. The colors of the world shifted once again into a spiral of rainbow that trailed off into a single direction. The green of the trees, the white of the clouds, and the light blue of the wind was pulled into the same direction. The colors of the world, the colors of reality were being pulled in that direction. The spirits of the elements rode upon the will of the world’s intertwining spiral joyously as they too urged him forward.
The will of the world, was directing him south…back towards the red towering peaks of the slave city.