The slow widening of those leaves and the lengthening of the stalk became everything in his awareness. The last few grans of his mental perseverance drained out of the hourglass, but he held onto the image with all his might. Time turned liquid, flowing quickly around the exhausted and blurred edges of Randidly’s awareness. His perception followed the World Tree’s minute growth upward; in his mind, he saw that small little plant as a fist raised against the sky.

It was a challenge. A promise. A dream.

A whole new world emerged in the contours of its leaves.

Recalculating…

Incorporating influences…

Congratulations! Your Skill Absolute Grasp of Yggdrasil (T) has incorporated elements from Fruit of the Planting of Enmity (L), Cycle of the Gloomy Wood (R), and Stalemate Breaker! Evolution forming… detecting image… Recalculating...

Congratulations! Your Skill Absolute Grasp of Yggdrasil (T) has evolved into The First Tree Suffers Only Fealty (P)! Skill Levels incorporated… new Skill Level set at 830. Range of Skill influence greatly increased! User may transform non-plant material to resemble roots in the usage. All materials are subject to the will of Yggdrasil. Damage done by the Skill has slightly increased. The more often a material is targeted by the Skill, the more easily it assumes the shape of roots. When the target is plant matter, that recipient will experience several minutes of massive growth when the Skill ends, before the life force becomes too much for the mundane item and it burns itself to ash.

The ash mist began to roil and seeth, bowing to that tiny green fist.

Gasping, Randidly came back to his body. Yggdrasil continued to settle and shift inside of himself, but he could no longer maintain his focus. His mind had persevered to its breaking point and now he collapsed into a heap. At this point, even Sulfur steamed, just from absorbing the ambient heat that he had been throwing off for the past-

Randidly groaned. Seriously? I was in there for a month? No wonder the Penance aches with need…

Feeling helpless, he allowed himself to slip into that no man’s land of the Penance, his awareness swimming deeper into nothingness. Within that oblivion he rapidly stabilized his Nether Core and recovered his mental acuity, recovering several days later to the thin island of sunlight that fell down through the eye of his Nether storm upon the top of the volcano.

He immediately checked his Soulspace again. Yggdrasil had grown, revolving slightly upward into a graceful sapling with branches forking out at fixed intervals. Each branch was only as thick as two fingers, but already they began to cloak themselves in emerald leaves. The tree was not yet a size for its bark to darken, but there was a strange light to the being; the golden and emerald stories that it told were somehow woven into the fabric of its physical state. Looked at directly, it simply seemed a tree, but from the corner of your eye, a viewer would feel an irresistible pull to look directly at it.

Above it, the drifting ash parted and the sky smiled blue down on this chosen entity. Its leaves rustled cheerily, a warm greeting.

Randidly returned to himself and rubbed his neck. He still felt a little sore and shaky, but it wasn’t to a ridiculous degree. “That’s the first step. After Yggdrasil recovers, I can spend some of my time honing its Skill Levels. That will get me closer to the five thousand PP that I need to trigger the tithe. In addition…”

His eyes gleamed as he looked down toward the beach. “I’m sure the Vulpis Squad has experienced some physical improvements while I’ve been resting, right? Maybe now I can make some headway on the Hierarchy of Burden.”

*****

Naffur Suite felt exhausted, bored, and vaguely disgusted by the people around him in the antechamber within Kharon’s City Hall. But he kept all of those emotions tucked under a disapproving and officious scowl. He pointed to one of the dozen hands that waved themselves frantically in front of his face. He still felt like a monkey in front of the media, but he no longer had the luxury of just ignoring it. “Alright, you.”

Some of the old ways of Pre-System Expira had come creeping back.

The rest of the reporters huffed and fell silent as the indicated woman stood. “Hello, Diane Palo from the Council for Order Integrity. What do you have to say to recent allegations that the Order Ducis has accepted massive bribes from certain prospective Orders?”

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“I’d say that for it to be a bribe, we would need to have given them a reward,” Naffur decided honesty was the best policy. It was, he believed, what the Ghosthound would have done. “It is 100% true that several corporations or political organizations have tried to bribe us since our founding. We saw no need to return the money to them after we had made it clear we wouldn’t be entertaining their idea of ‘buying’ themselves an Order.”

Naffur was about to move on, but the woman leaned forward over the small metal divider to hold his attention. She spoke in a shrill voice, impatient to get her point across. “Yet how can you say corruption isn’t the main selection mechanism, when quality, salt-of-the-earth Orders like the Order Scutum-”

“As we officially announced after the review for the Order Scutum,” Naffur interrupted. “We will not grant official Order status when this new Order, as positive as its current actions have been, when it was founded and funded by an organization whose previous Order had its license revoked for proven intelligent rights violations.”

“Are you so godless that you cannot forgive?!” The woman’s voice went even higher. She swayed slightly, seemingly about to collapse from the affront of this situation. The other reporters watched with hawkish eyes, willing to allow the series of questions in case they led to some breaking story.

Vultures, Naffur thought in disgust. He bit his lip to suppress the impulse just to walk away. The lines around his eyes tightened. “The Order Ducis is so professional that we won’t forget, Miss Palo. This is about culpability. Most of your donors reminisce about their ability to skip away from liability with pre-System corporate shells. And they are very welcome to create a firm that specializes in defense. However, it will not have the benefit or honor of being an Order, not when their first response was to attempt to bribe us. Now, any other questions?”

The woman opened her mouth and said something else, but her words were covered up when the rest of the reporters hopped to their feet and started waving their hands. Trying to iron the annoyance out of his expression, Naffur pointed to a reporter he was familiar with. “You.”

“Telman Slate, The Progressive,” The massive man announced his origin with a rumbling voice before proceeding into his question. “The Zones and independent states are in a wrestling match for political power right now; how important do you think it is to agree to a worldwide treaty and how do you see the role of the Order Ducis in that process?”

Naffur groaned inwardly, but for an entirely different reason than from the first question; despite his affable exterior, Telman Slate came at him with metaphorical teeth. The Order Ducis’s silence, while most of Expira suffered from municipal extremists, unresponsive protectors, and wandering refugee groups still reeling from the Calamity or from the lingering Chimeras within Danger Zones, was a point of heavy criticism. It turned out that the Ghosthound had been prescient with his creating of the Wandering City, but for the worst sort of reasons.

Expira was unsettled. Current estimates put at least one-half of the population within wandering wagon trains, looking for places to found cities and most just encountering discrimination.

As the leader of the Order Ducis… this is my decision to make. Naffur nodded slowly to acknowledge the question, while his thoughts moved a thousand miles a minute. He ran over the familiar arguments in his mind, but he still came away with the same conclusion.

The Order Ducis could do more. It could take a more active leadership position and push Expira in a positive direction. It could create safe areas for cities to be founded by refugees; it could help repurpose collapsed Bubble Cities to house immigrants from other worlds. But to do that… we would need to grow. The loose framework we have now is not equipped to be the compass by which Expira will move forward. We would need support systems, communication specialists, political experts, local connections, and public relations teams. Then we would need a larger frame of management to govern all that-

And its hard to believe that the spirit that the Ghosthound wants to cultivate can survive with so many people. Or we would grow too slowly to match the needs of Expira while trying to instill that spirit in every hire.

Naffur cleared his throat. “Let’s address the elephant in the room first, the Order Ducis has no plans at this time to take on new responsibilities on Expira. We oversee and police the Orders, many of which are doing great things to improve the lot of the average individual living in Expira. We do support a Worldwide Treaty- the current gridlock is by and large the result of the lack of agreements between political entities. But it will not come from us.”

Tellman Slate sat down without asking a follow-up question, which unnerved Naffur more than the woman’s shrill inquisition earlier. After that, most of the questions were easy; they addressed the newly promoted Orders and when the next batch of probationary Orders would be scrutinized.

But at the end of the press conference, Naffur called on one of the unfamiliar men at the back of the group on a whim. “You sir, at the back. What’s your question?”

“How long will it take for the Image Virus to cripple Expira?”

The man looked grimly at Naffur, a strange defensiveness in his posture and ambient emotions. Without an introduction, the words he tossed out were stark against the stretching silence.

Naffur titled his head to the side, unsure about the question. “I’m not sure what you are talking about.”

“Right now, there is a virus out there infecting and weakening images.” The man shook himself and then pointed a finger at Naffur. “And if you mean to tell me that the Order Ducis doesn’t know a thing… heh. Do you think we are sheep? If you keep playing dumb, I’ll have no choice but to expose you as the culprits. Don’t think the Ghosthound can save you from the truth.”