As I leveled up...
I dreamt. I knew that I was dreaming because the vision before me was blurry, inconsistent, unclear.
The dream suddenly became more focused, slightly clearer...
An enormous jellyfish with a hollow, diatom like body, even bigger than the whale jellyfish had arrived. The two ghostly creatures screeched at each other in ultrasonic, producing a disturbing cacophony. I wondered if they would fight over me, getting ready for a fun observational experience.
The diatom-shaped jellyfish suddenly stopped screeching and released hundreds of copies of itself from its innards. The little monsters attacked the whale-jellyfish from all directions, nipping at it with small blade-like threads. The Phantom-Whale creature screeched and rushed away, chased by the swarm of little monsters.
The hollow jellyfish turned towards me. It slowly circled the barrier, without slamming into it.
In panic, I realized that it had intelligence. It looked like it was prodding the shield for a weak spot, for a fracture. It had eventually found one and I could do nothing, for I was but a tree bound to the warmth of the battery. The abomination opened its grotesque maw and released a blinding beam of light into my direction.
As it struck me, my Astral roots ignited, burning up from below.
[-6 in Soul]
The Soul-Song resonated.
Pain, immense, blinding pain filled my entire tree.
The hollow phantom paused. Its vile ray failed to kill me.
It stopped right in front of me, peering at me with a hundred silver-blue eyes, examining me like a specimen. There was curiosity and something akin to... amazement in its eyes, not mere hunger.
It's silver eyes, were completely unlike the whale squid. They conveyed an intent to do... something.
It was almost as if it was extremely intelligent, as if it understood something I did not.
I aimed the [Identify] Song-Spell at it, hummed it as quickly as I could.
[Phantasm-Squid Matrchiarch LV 324.]
What?! WHAT?!
This thing was an absurdly high-level monster!
As I panicked more and more, the hollow high-level abomination made a series of tones in ultrasound and a little copy of her emerged from her innards.
The copy floated to the shield, shimmered and unfolded into the shape of a... human. An approximately seven-year-old girl with silver hair and silver eyes stood in front of my shield.
The small, scrawny girl took a step forward, her silver dress trailing behind her in the air, shimmering silver-blue hair floating behind and above her, held up by the Astral current coming from the obelisk.
"What?!" I yelped mentally as the ghostly girl stepped right through the shield, walking towards me.
Oh no. The shield didn't stop a partially human ghost!
There was immense sadness and pain painted on the ghost's face, as if she didn't want to do this. As if the monstrous hollow Astral Phantom was somehow forcing her to walk towards me.
"You're human?! Do you understand me?" I attempted to speak at the sad-looking ghost in Alanian language, vibrating my branches to resemble human speech. "Hello?! Stop!" I wasn't sure if she heard or understood me.
Silver trails of tears shimmered down the ghost's face. She stepped towards my tree and her face skewed into an expression of pain.
Her fingers suddenly unfolded into a thousand silver-blue blades.
"No, no, no! Get away!" I screamed as the ghostly blades struck me from above.
-1 in Soul
"I'm sorry," the girl whispered, swinging her blades at my branches. She wasn't speaking Alanian but my [Soul-Song] had translated her words for me nevertheless, just like it translated the sky-god language.
-2 in Soul
"Forgive me, little tree," the ghost added, hitting me again.
-4 in Soul
Through the pain, I sang the melody of calmness, tried to still the ghost with [Tamus-Anima]. The low-level Song-Spell worked poorly, slowing the ghost only momentarily.
She struck me again.
-10 in Soul
I hummed [Sectus-Anima] with all of my branches. I wasn't fast enough.
"Mother... please! I beg of you... Don't hurt me anymore..." were the girl's final words before most of my branches shattered under the ghost's onslaught and I knew nothing but pain.
-30 in Soul
Pain. Incredible, blinding pain. A whole ocean of it, unlike anything I had felt in my entire life.
I stared at the crying, ghostly girl with a single, remaining eye-stalk as my torn-up, shimmering, shattered branches floated away from me.
I released [Sectus-Anima] at the girl.
The girl's neck came apart, as the spell cut right through it. Her head floated away, silver drops of blood floating through the Astral currents.
It didn't seem to stop the ghost. Silver-blue eyes bloomed on her chest, staring at me with an annoyed look.
She struck me one last time for good measure, breaking my last branch and tearing out my last eye-stalk. Darkness.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
-5 in Soul
I screamed in agony, feeling as if I was being slowly dipped in liquid nitrogen.
Something alien, foreign was coursing through me... an infection.
Mother.
I wept as frost engulfed my entire trunk, ice colder than absolute zero gripping my very soul.
A single thought pulsed, beat inside my mind like a drum, repeating on and on.
Mother.
The hollow-shelled phantom was my Mother.
I would do anything for her. I would serve her for all time.
I would gladly leech power from this Astral Engine for HER.
I would help her design spells beyond her level. She was smart enough to use them. She was the best, the most beautiful, the wisest, the most perfect of all Mothers out there.
Some part of me screamed, tried to resist the compulsion to obey and wept as it failed.
I would serve mother for a thousand years and then for all eternity.
I would make her into a God.
----------------------------------------
[Congratulations on reaching : Level 2]
Flashed into being, interrupting and ending my horrific nightmare.
I awoke with a shudder of all of my branches. If I still had a body, I would probably freak out and start to sweat profusely, but I was a little Astral Tree and lacked sweat glands.
I nervously stared at the gray field of bodies in front of me.
There was no enormous hollow-shelled phantom. Only the whale jellyfish was near me, angrily circling my obelisk.
I evaluated my situation. The dream seemed far too real. It had to be the future!
Foresight had given me a prophetic dream.
There was only one option left to me now, I had to run.
Foresight could show me the future. I need a lot more Foresight as phantom monsters gathered around me, seeking to devour me. Foresight seemed like the perfect skill necessary for my survival. According to the updated chart I had ten points to spend.
I dumped all of my points into Foresight and set [Chrysalis] to disconnect me from the fissure beneath the battery, to shed my bark and to create a spring-like muscle that wound tighter and tighter beneath me.
As warm and lovely as this place was, the hollow phantom... Mother was coming. Mother wanted to steal my knowledge, wanted to add me to her collection of servants.
There was only one place to go now - the blue thread. Wherever it would lead me, it was better than the cold darkness of the Astral Ocean and its hungry, hungry monsters.
I also considered burying myself in the ground made up of ossified corpses, but decided against it. I didn't know what was down there. All of Kopusha's knowledge or perhaps the sense of Foresight screamed at me - do not dig into the Astral. The bodies beneath me were attracted by something, and just maybe the gargantuan diatom wasn't just a dead structure.
Everything had a purpose. Everything mattered.
Mother had a very high level, maybe she had a skill in tracking scents too... that is if soul-scents existed in the Astral.
I glanced down at the battery and looked at the black obelisk. Someday, I would come back here. Someday, when I was strong enough, I would claim this place for myself, grow, thrive and multiply, drive back the decay and the monsters... light up the dreary darkness, bloom and spread my spores.
Was I thinking like a tree? Hrm.
The unfortunate downside to [Chrysalis] was that it made my mind incredibly foggy, messed with my perception of time. I had no idea how many days passed as the skill rebuilt my body beneath me turning me from a tree into a tight, compressed spring ready to uncoil.
. . .
Something within me told me that the spring was ready.
The change had agitated the Phantom whale squid even more. It slammed into the shield harder than ever, screeching hungrily and trying to claw at me. Thankfully, the ancient shield held. Kopusha recalled that it wasn't just protection for the obelisk, it was also designed to be a little haven for lost souls that died. A place from which they could be rescued, if they were conscious enough. Too bad all of my potential rescuers were dead.
I aimed [Identify LV 3] at the blue thread in the distance.
[Pathway / Tether]
Identify defined the blue thread. Not very informative, but definitely something to work with.
I extrapolated, broke down the words [Tether] using sky-god language. I decided to call the language Omnicode, because it seemed to define absolutely everything in extraordinary mathematical complexity.
I slowly combined the word [Sectus] with the word [Tether] creating an entirely new spell song. It took me ages to extrapolate both words and to combine them together into a single functional fractal superstructure. My soul-mind or whatever I was using to compute these was starting to hurt immensely as I brought the spell up to Level 3.
I needed more intelligence. Maybe I should have invested more points into Intelligence instead of Foresight?
Whatever.
I kept it up, until something began to glow in the distance. It was her. They were here.
Mother and her brood.
Something told me that she was here even earlier than before. She had gotten here faster than in my dream, maybe she knew that I was trying to escape!
Something had gone off-script. As some of her children attacked the whale, Mother didn't bother chasing the whale herself and focused right on me, heading straight for the fissure to strike at me with her ray, hundreds of her children surrounding the shield.
She also had Foresight on her side, she also somehow knew or subconsciously perceived the future!
Just as her ray ignited, I released the tightly wound spring-muscle. Her ray struck the battery, carving a path across it to where I was growing moments before.
I flew out of the shield, away from the obelisk like a fiery star. As one of her phantom children tried to grab at me, I fired [Sectus-Tether LV 3] at it. It didn't get cut, but it became momentarily confused, the silver tentacles unable to grab at me.
Mother fired her beam at me again. Thankfully it had a slow reload rate, it wasn't instant.
The second attack missed me by a hair, as I spun a little to the side right before it struck me. The beam ignited, but it was blocked by the confused phantom-child right behind me.
Success!
I caught onto the blue thread and was flung down its path to wherever it was leading.
The pathway no longer felt like it fit me. It felt wrong, awkward, like I no longer belonged to it. My movement across it was a lot slower, definitely not as rapid as before. Either the blue thread had decayed over time or my Astral body had grown stronger, bigger and no longer fit it properly.
I used my threads to push me down the blue-thread, accelerating myself.
I heard something screech behind me. I turned several of my eye-stalks to glance behind me.
Mother!
She was chasing me down the path, accelerating, catching up to me, clinging to blue thread with her tentacles.
Hell!
I aimed [Sectus-Tether] at the thread behind me and let the spell go. The entire thread behind me shattered, tore apart. Mother screeched as she was flung sideways, her horrid ray nearly clipping me once again.
"Take that you..." I gloated.
The tunnel-thread suddenly felt tighter. It crushed, folded, squeezed me into... something.
I screamed as darkness claimed me.