“What do I call you?” asked Elijah, still looking up at the tree creature.

“I have no name, for I am only a sapling,” it said. “Regardless, this is the last time we will speak for some time. I am nearly at the end of my available energy.”

“Oh.”

Elijah had no idea how to respond to that, so he’d decided to keep his mouth shut. As his father always said, it was better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt. It had originally been an Abraham Lincoln quote, but Elijah’s father had adopted it as a mantra.

Elijah missed the days he’d spent with his father. Most of the time, they didn’t even talk; instead, they’d just sit in nature and enjoy one another’s silent company. By contrast, his mother had been the talkative type whose base demeanor bordered on mania. She could be exhausting, but her good-natured attitude and kind heart had made it endearing, rather than annoying.

Everything would have been so much easier to bear if they were still around. But fate had other ideas, and almost a decade past, they’d died in a brutal car crash. Back then, Elijah had just graduated high school, but he remembered it like it was yesterday.

He shook his head. It was neither the time nor the place to think about such things. If the tree creature was running low on energy, then its time was limited. Elijah needed to get as much information out of it as he could manage. So, he looked up and asked “So, what do I do?”

“Sit,” said the tree.

Elijah did, crossing his legs under him. The tree was surrounded by a carpet of green-and-yellow moss that had felt particularly luxurious on his sore feet. Sitting atop it was even better, and he found himself relaxing. Or perhaps that was just the tree’s presence, which had put him at ease the moment he’d laid eyes on it.

“Put your hands on your knees,” it said. “Then close your eyes.”

Elijah followed the tree’s instructions, feeling a bit silly. He’d tried meditation a few times, but he’d never achieved anything close to a quieted mind. Still, he’d tried it enough that he could recognize the trappings.

With his eyes closed, Elijah could feel everything even more clearly. That pull he’d felt back in the cabin was even more potent now, telling him that it had originated with the tree. However, he also felt a sense of connection that he couldn’t quite wrap his head around. Like he was part of something far bigger and more complex than he could understand. But rather than feel overwhelmed by that reality, he instead felt immense comfort. It was as if all he had to do was just let go, and he could throw away his individuality in favor of –

“Listen to me, young one! Hear my voice!” thundered the tree with far more volume and authority than it had before. “Do not surrender.”

It took a few more moments for Elijah to latch onto the tree’s continuous instructions, but when he did, he felt overwhelmed with what he’d been about to do. In seconds, he’d nearly given up on everything that made him an individual.

“The Call is strong here,” said the tree, its voice far gentler. “That you can resist it at all is a testament to your individualistic nature.”

“The Call?” asked Elijah.

“Of nature,” the tree stated. “Of the collective. We call her the Mother of All. But that is your first lesson, young druid. To become one with the Mother is tempting. It will feel natural. But that is not our path. You must resist, or you will lose yourself. Do you understand? Do not surrender.”

“I…I understand,” was Elijah’s response. And he did. He was horrified that it had only taken him a few seconds before he almost willingly sacrificed his individuality in favor of joining with the Mother.

“You must feel her presence,” it said. “But you must not let it overwhelm you. Try.”

Elijah focused on that feeling, keeping a firm grip on his own identity. It was difficult, and it took quite a while, but with every breath, he let himself more fully perceive the energy surrounding him. In his mind’s eye, it was green, but that was just a construct of his imagination. Still, it helped. For a while, it continued to try to convince him to surrender, but now that he was aware, he could resist The Call. Barely. However, with every passing moment, it was a little easier.

“Now, look closer,” the tree intoned. “Separate The Call from the Ethera.”

Elijah followed the tree’s instructions. For a long time, he didn’t even know what he was looking for, but as the minutes passed into hours, he began to recognize a subtle difference between the energy and the presence of The Mother. It still felt like her, but it was separate. Completely different from the Ethera in his core.

“I see it,” Elijah said, completely unaware of the sweat pouring down his hairless face. In fact, he was so deeply enmeshed in his trance that he could barely perceive the passage of time.

“Good. Reach out with your awareness and drag the Ethera toward you,” said the tree. “But do not absorb it through your Mind. Surround yourself with it.”

That was much more difficult. Elijah could barely even follow what the energy was doing when his Mind harvested it from the air and funneled it down into his Core. When he’d done it before, most of the process was automated; he’d just had to give it a nudge. But interrupting that process and forcing the energy to do something else? That was extraordinarily difficult.

Still, Elijah bent his will to doing just that, concentrating the entirety of his being on keeping the ambient Ethera from entering through the vortex in his mind. In the end, his will acted as a one-way door, letting the suction of the funnel act on the Ethera but not letting anything through. Hour after hour passed, but he didn’t let up.

Eventually, the gathered Ethera began to pool around him, growing ever denser as it clung to his body. One layer after another, it condensed further and further until Elijah could hardly breathe.

He pushed harder, packing the energy around him until it had become a cocoon of Ethera.

“Hold it there,” said the tree, a note of strain in its voice.

Elijah complied, focusing every ounce of his will on keeping the energy as densely packed as he could. And then an avalanche of Ethera crashed into him. He almost lost control as the pressure built far past what he could handle. But the new onslaught of energy was more controlled.

“Now, condense it!” roared the tree, its voice so powerful that it sent reverberations throughout Elijah’s body. “Focus your will on harnessing the Ethera and compacting it into your body!”

Elijah pulled with his will, focusing on the tree’s instructions. He didn’t stop to wonder how he was doing any of it. Indeed, if he had, he would have felt like he’d gone insane. Or perhaps that he was concussed. But he didn’t have any room for such thoughts in his mind. He could only do as the tree ordered.

Even so, he almost lost his grip when his entire body erupted into agony.

It was as if he’d descended thousands of feet underwater without any protective gear. The human body just wasn’t meant to withstand that kind of pressure, and it felt like he was on the verge of implosion. His bones creaked, and his organs felt like they were about to rupture.

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If he could have stopped it, he would have. But the Ethera had taken on a mind of its own, increasing the pressure exponentially with every passing second. Elijah tried to scream, but he couldn’t open his mouth. And even if he could, there was no air in his lungs.

He was dying.

He knew it. The tree had tricked him into willingly walking to his own doom. But Elijah didn’t have the willpower left to curse his own naivete.

Eventually, the pressure leveled out, but that was little relief for Elijah. He couldn’t move. He could scarcely think, much less try to break free as the Ethera began to solidify around him. In the beginning, it felt like a dense fog, but then it was like being submerged in water that, in turn, became gelatinous. At some point, it turned completely solid, then crystalline, where it settled.

Elijah wanted to scream. To rail against his captor. But he couldn’t marshal the willpower, and even if he could, he was frozen in place. He could only await his fate.

Like that, time passed. It could have been hours, days, months, or even years. Perhaps he would sit there, trapped in that crystalline prison for all eternity.

And then, suddenly, there was a cracking sound, followed by the sensation of immense power washing through him. Another crack. And then another.

Over and over, tiny fissures appeared in the crystal. Elijah still couldn’t open his eyes, but he could feel tiny surges of relief with each crack. Then, finally, the crystal shattered, and he fell over, gasping for breath.

That’s when the smell hit him.

It was like rotten garbage and sewage rolled into one horrible odor. Lying on his side, he retched, but only a little water came out. Coughing, he pushed himself to his hands and knees. Hanging his head, he muttered, “W-what did you do to me?”

“Nothing,” said the tree. “I merely provided a little push. You did this to yourself. That is how cultivating the body works.”

Elijah slowly sat up, shifting away from the tiny puddle of vomit. However, when he looked down at the blanket of moss that had surrounded the huge tree, he was distressed to see that the once-green-and-yellow carpet had become black and shriveled, almost as if the life had been sucked out of them.

Then, he looked at his hands, which were covered in a black, tar-like substance. As distressing as that was, he was more concerned with the state of his fingers. Over the course of his chemotherapy, his body had been ravaged by the toxic chemicals, but the most troubling side effect was when he’d started to lose his fingernails. His toenails had soon followed, but by that point, he had been distracted by other, more pressing issues.

Now, though, his nails had returned, and what’s more, the skin he saw beneath the tar-like substance had lost the pallid, sickly complexion that had been with him for months. In its place was healthy skin.

“What happened?” he asked, confused. He’d thought the tree had been trying to kill him. Or perhaps, to feed off of him in some way. But now? He wasn’t so sure.

“You have broken through to the first stage of Body cultivation,” the tree said. “You will be stronger, faster, more durable, and healthier than you’ve ever been before. That substance covering you is impurity made manifest and purged from your body. Whatever disease from which you suffered has now been cured.”

Impurities. Elijah guessed that much of what had been purged from his body had been related to the chemotherapy he’d been forced to undergo. To confirm what the tree had said, Elijah opened his status:

Name

Elijah Hart

Level

1

Archetype

Druid

Class

N/A

Specialization

N/A

Alignment

N/A

Strength

3

Dexterity

4

Constitution

11

Ethera

4

Regeneration

7

Attunement

Nature

Cultivation

Body

Core

Mind

Soul

Wood

Unformed

Unformed

Unformed

Elijah shook his head. Not only had he picked up an Attunement – whatever that meant – he’d also progressed his Body cultivation from Unformed to Wood. The next question seemed obvious, so he asked, “What comes after Wood?”

“Stone,” said the tree. “But you will have to find an area with much denser Ethera if you want to progress. As it stands, even if you were fortunate enough to find such a place, attempting to take the next step would kill you.”

“What? How am I supposed to progress, then?” asked Elijah.

“So impatient,” was the tree’s response. “Barely taken one unsteady step on the path, and already, you want to run. The first – and easiest way – to ensure that you are ready to progress is to gain levels. You can do this in a variety of ways. Killing other creatures is the most common, but any use of your skills or spells will count toward your progression.”

“Like a video game…”

The tree either didn’t hear Elijah’s muttered interruption, or it simply chose not to acknowledge it. It continued, “The other method is to acclimate yourself to increasingly denser Ethera. To do so, you must repeat what you did here today. Over and over, improving bit by bit until you can take the next step.”

Elijah’s eyes flicked to the other categories of Core, Mind, and Soul. So, he asked, “What about the others? How do I progress my Core?”

“I cannot answer that,” said the tree. Its voice had already grown dimmer, and Elijah thought it looked even smaller than before. “What I did here was the limit of the assistance I could give, and even that was toeing the line between what is and is not allowed. Any further, and…it would not be good.”

“What else can you tell me?” Elijah asked. He was incredibly grateful for the help the tree had given him – the value of ridding his body of cancer, both from an emotional and a physical perspective, was vast – but he wasn’t averse to pushing for more. After all, the more information he could get, the better prepared he would be to survive. Perhaps he could even get to Seattle and find his sister and her family. Though he sensed that with how much the world had changed, that might be a far off goal.

“Nothing,” said the tree. “I can only wish you luck on your journey. When next we speak, I hope to see that you have progressed.”

“But –”

The tree creature shrank before Elijah’s very eyes, growing smaller until it was only a small protrusion atop the branch. At the beginning of their conversation, the tree creature had claimed to be an extension of the tree, and now, it had retracted.

He leaned back, trying to wrap his head around what had happened. He’d been healed, and if what the tree had said was true, his cultivation had given him a stronger body. What that meant – beyond the basic understanding that it was better – was still a mystery, though. He’d have to do some testing.

But first, he needed to head back to the stream and clean himself as well as he could.

Then, another question hit him: how long had he been in that crystalline chrysalis of condensed Ethera? It had felt like an eternity, but other than looking up at the sky, which was just as overcast as always, he had no context by which to tell time. He wasn’t that hungry or thirsty, so maybe it had all been in his head.

The bushberries and the mushroom he’d gathered, as well as the dandelion fluff, had gone the same way as the carpet of moss. None of it was rotten, but rather, it was more like they had become blackened shells of what they’d once been.

Perhaps the tree had sustained him somehow. Either way, it didn’t affect what he needed to do. So, he pushed himself to his feet and started back the way he’d come.