When Lucas arrived, he saw a rectangular depression right above where the orb should be, where he would stay tomorrow. It really looked like and open grave, and he wondered if the tree did it on purpose, but he didn’t mind; it saved him hours of work. It could be a pit for all he cared.

He thought about going down there and trying to connect with the orb before the big day, but the truth was that he was scared. No one had any idea what that thing was; it had stood there for a million years. If he was going to do this, he wanted the tree to be with him; if nothing else, at least for the moral support.

He lay on the grass and studied Faruk’s journal a little more before he fell asleep. He awoke the next day with a bird pecking his head.

“Hey, get off!” Lucas yelled, sitting down and waving his hands to scare the animal away.

“The early bird gets the worm!” the bird bizarrely uttered.

Lucas took a moment to take things in. Did this bird just talk?… Dammit, the tree.

“What did you do that for?” Lucas asked, a little annoyed. He didn’t like people waking him up, especially in this fashion, he discovered.

“Why did I do what?” the bird replied nonchalantly. “So, are you ready to die?”

Lucas felt a weird sensation when he heard that. He couldn’t convince himself that what he would be doing wasn’t crazy, and hearing it like that only made things worse.

“Are you sure it’s the only way? I mean, I could try to connect with it without using the seed.”

“Sure, you can try. But if what Faruk said in his journal was right, then the only way for this to work is if you are dead. But I guess it’s possible that he may not have considered your death aura,” the tree-bird said, looking genuinely interested.

“All right, I’ll give it a shot.” Lucas climbed down the hole, being careful not to fall and break something on the way. The first thing he noticed when he arrived was that it was really weird being so deep underground and in such an enclosed space; the quietness was suffocating. Shaking these thoughts away, he lied down, trying to be as close as he could to the source of the power. He took a deep breath.

Here goes nothing, he thought, as he extended his death aura to its maximum capacity. The first thing he noticed was that the orb seemed to recognize his aura. It was beaming as ever, and when both auras collided, Lucas felt something. He didn’t know what it was, but he felt it in the depths of his being. Something had happened.

However, time passed and nothing else happened. The orb didn’t move, and there was no magic, no special sign of recognition. Nothing. Only that feeling in the beginning that left him wondering if it really happened or if it was only his imagination playing tricks on him.

“It didn’t work. I’ll need to use the seed,” he yelled to the bird looking at him from up there.

“All right. Try to be in contact with the orb with your aura when you take the seed; it may help,” the bird said, sounding a little unsure, what made Lucas even more nervous.

But before Lucas could freeze, he decided to just do it. Still lying down, he expanded his aura once again until it touched the orb, and then placed the seed in his mouth in a matter of seconds. At any moment now, he would…

Lucas lost consciousness. Technically dead, the bird observed. He lay peacefully at the bottom of that hole, and the bird tried very hard to feel the changes in the death aura around the place, but it couldn’t sense anything.

While death and life auras are opposites, it should also make it easier for one to feel the other in any normal circumstance. However, this case was atypical. For starters, the orb wasn’t purposefully emitting any aura, as far as the bird-tree could tell. And while it knew it had a death aura, it couldn’t feel the changes in it, only that it existed. So the tree's surprise wasn’t small when Lucas told him he could also feel it and, what’s more, that he had a death aura in him.

It really seemed like one of those things the tree chose long to ignore: destiny. The tree didn’t like the concept of destiny. As a matter of fact, it hated it. It didn’t like it, especially because if something like that were true, then its destiny was to be seated in a forest for all eternity, just waiting for adventurers to come their way. The bird-tree quacked involuntarily at the thought.

Ever since it was born, the ancient tree always felt restless. It yearned for the day that it would grow legs and start venturing into the wide world. But the years and centuries passed, and that never happened. And even if it could take some lesser being’s body from time to time, that was only in the confines of the forest and for a limited amount of time, not nearly enough to satisfy the needs of the tree.

The tree also discovered that it was the only one amongst its siblings who had this restless feeling, this desire to see more and venture outside of the forest. The other trees seemed perfectly fine with the idea of being stuck there for millions of years, and that made the oldest tree all the lonelier. It was hard to talk to them, because, even though they respected their oldest sibling, the ruler of their part of the forest, they couldn’t understand the majority of the thoughts it had.

In the end, the oldest tree ended up developing different personalities as it enacted scenes in its mind—scenes where different landscapes appeared on the horizon, where there were creatures and treasures to find. That was its only escape from the harsh reality.

But now, as it watched Lucas’ body at the bottom of the hole, its eyes burned with a feeling it had suffocated long ago to retain some sanity: hope. Not because of his chances of attaining the orb; it was more than that. Every time the tree thought it couldn’t be surprised anymore, Lucas came back with something else.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

That he had a death and life aura inside him was one thing, but that he managed to learn how to control it based on some scrambled notes from the necromancer’s journal about mana was a whole other thing. The two forces, despite sharing some similarities, weren’t the same. To learn how to properly control its life aura took the tree many years; of course, it had to learn without any outside help, but still, that just wasn’t something one does in a matter of a few days.

Despite its excitement, the tree chose not to share any of those thoughts with Lucas. It wasn’t good for him to know how impressive his achievements were. Based on what Lucas said, the Second Chance Program had only just started; geniuses would pop up from all over the world and he needed to have a sense of urgency if he wanted to be one of them. And the tree needed him to be one of them. Lucas was its ticket out of that cursed forest.

…

Ten minutes had passed. Life magic ran through the bird’s body and entered Lucas’s, bringing him back to life in a few seconds.

“What…” Lucas began to say, but stopped. Something had changed; he could feel a deep connection with the orb now. Did it work? The whole process had passed in merely a second for him; if he hadn’t known previously what was going to happen, he would’ve thought that he had only just closed his eyes.

“What happened?” Lucas asked the bird that was looking at him.

“You tell me,” the bird almost seemed to shrug.

Lucas definitely felt a connection with the orb, but he didn’t know what it was. He never felt anything like it, and the orb was still underground.

“I don’t know… There seems to be a connection, but I’m not sure what to do with it.”

The bird seemed to consider it.

“Try to call the orb to you,” the bird said in the end.

Before asking how he was supposed to do that, he decided to try first. Since his aura was the thing he had used just before he died to try to connect with the orb, he decided that was probably the best way to do it. He tried to send a pulse of aura towards the orb with the thought that it should come to him.

He wasn’t expecting anything to happen, but something did. The orb below seemed to be trying to move. Lucas could feel it through his connection, and the bird-tree could feel it too due to its domain over the forest. However, seconds passed, and nothing happened.

Lucas looked at the bird, and the bird nodded. A smaller hole, shaped like the orb, was created near Lucas and it went down 7 feet. Like a bullet, the orb rose to a very surprised face and rested in Lucas’ hands. Its surface was smooth and dark like obsidian, with a few ornaments in gold, making it look like a really expensive artifact.

“I did it!” Lucas exclaimed, and he started laughing with joy.

“Yes… you did,” the bird said contemplatively. That orb had always been in the forest. Who knows how many years it had been there before the first sapient tree was born? It might be only a few years, but it could also be millions, and now it was resting in the hands of someone who wasn’t even twenty yet.”

“I have no idea what it does, I can’t identify it,” Lucas stated after some time, taking the bird away from their thoughts. The bird was surprised and looked at the orb, confirming what Lucas had said.

?

That was the only thing they could see.

“Are we not high-level enough?” Lucas asked after receiving confirmation that the tree also couldn’t see anything.

“I’m not sure. That’s something you will have to find out.”

Lucas observed the orb for a little longer; it was really beautiful, and judging by the ornaments in gold, it was clearly made by someone, or at least added later on. But that only intrigued him more—what could it be? Even with his connection to the thing he couldn’t tell what it was made for. After a few minutes, he stored it in his ring and climbed out of the hole.

“I don’t know if you scammed me or not, but I guess I’ll find out eventually,” Lucas said to the tree.

“I haven’t made any promises regarding the orb, you were the one who wanted it,” the bird defended itself. “Regardless of that, since you’ve obtained the orb, I will now tell you my last request.”

Lucas was curious. What could it be for the bird-tree to make such a mystery out of it? He didn’t believe it was something he had on him, or the tree would already have said it. And how could the tree make sure he would follow the request after he left?

“You have to promise me that you will look for a way to get me out of here, on the outer world,” the bird simply said.

“What do you mean, get you out of here?”

“I’m tired of being a tree that can’t move. I’m tired of just waiting in this forest for something to happen. I want to explore the world and go on adventures, but I can’t do that in my current form—the tree form, that is. For centuries, I tried to find a way to leave this place but I failed. Perhaps in the wider world there is a solution; that’s what I need you to look for,” Lucas could hear a tinge of emotion as these sentences spurted out of the bird’s mouth in a few seconds.

Lucas was surprised by this request. Shouldn’t trees love being trees and just doing nothing? He didn’t understand how this world worked yet, but it seemed like this was the same as fighting against its own nature.

It was like Lucas deciding to just stay seated in the forest for a million years because he preferred it instead of just moving about. But he didn’t care; not only that, he loved it. Screw nature. Wasn’t he fighting against nature at this very moment, as he continued to live a breathe after all the fighting and running—all things that his body wasn’t meant to do?

“Alright. I think I understand,” Lucas said after some time, nodding. “And I’m assuming that you can’t remain in this form for a long time?”

“No. I also can’t leave the forest in it. It has to be something else.”

Lucas nodded and thought of something else. “And I’m guessing this was the reason you didn’t want to wake the other trees?”

The bird sighed. “They wouldn’t understand. And besides, that’s not a sure thing. I’ll tell them if you manage to find a way for me to leave this body.”

Lucas agreed. “Then I’ll do my best!” He understood that this was a request based on trust; nothing stopped him from leaving this forest and never coming back but his conscience. And the tree was trusting that his conscience was worth something; that trust moved Lucas, and he almost felt bad for finding the tree annoying.

At the last moment before they parted ways, he remembered a part of their deal: “Hey, you told me that if I managed to take the orb, you would tell me what you know about my constitution, so spill it out.”

“Huh… Haven’t I already told you?”

“What do you mean? That thing about the death aura? You didn’t even know that before I told you.” Now he was sure he really was scammed.

“Well, I told you after you acquired the orb I would tell you what I knew, and that’s all I know,” the tree replied solemnly, and when Lucas was about to curse it continued. “Well, I guess here is where we part ways,” the bird said, sounding a little hesitant. So much hope was placed on Lucas that it was hard to watch him leave. “Don’t forget what I said and don’t be lazy. There will be plenty of opportunities for you to gain power and knowledge; don’t miss them for any reason.”

Why it keep insisting that I’m lazy?, Lucas thought annoyed, remembering why he found the tree dislikable in the first place. However, he decided to ignore that part, as they would split up soon.

“Don’t worry, I won’t,” Lucas said. The bird nodded and flew away, leaving Lucas alone in the clearing.