— Keira —

Almost at the same time as Keir realized she was standing before an incarnation of the goddess of death, the weight of her presence, even as dilute as it was, crushed down on Keir.

From what Keir had learned the fact that the form of Mortis standing before her was the same dimensions as the statue meant the incarnation before her was almost the simplest and weakest form, second only to a voice only communication.

Even with only a fraction of a fraction of the goddess’ true form present, Keir was almost forced to her knees from the pressure. Almost worse than the pressure that made her body tremble and her joints ache was the feeling of suffocation. Keir hadn’t actually needed to breathe since becoming undead but for some reason her lungs burned like she’d held her breath for minutes.

The closest comparison to how it felt was a time when she’d been pulled under the waves by the tentacle of a dying abyssal spawn. Between her armor and the corpse of a large spawn she’d sank rapidly. By the time she cut her way free and pulled out her emergency device she could no longer see even a glimmer of sunlight and the icy cold water was literally crushing her. Only potions and the aid of a combat medic allowed her to survive.

Before she could even formulate what to say, let alone force it out of her strained body, the goddess spoke in the same voice that seemed to combine hundreds or thousands of languages that combined into something between words and the chime of a vast bell carved from ice Keir had heard once before. “If you cannot even handle this form then it is not yet time for us to speak. Pierce the veil within the twisting hall of wisdom. Progress along the path. Only then should you seek me out again.”

Keir tried to force out a confirmation but instead she crashed to her knees hard enough that she would have broken them before returning from the veil. Darkness began to seep into her vision as she fought to keep from being crushed flat on her face.

With fully half of her vision occluded by darkness she found herself barely holding her body up off the ground with her arms. Just as she wondered if her trembling limbs would give out before she passed out, the crushing force vanished as if it was never there.

Suddenly free from the force threatening to smash her into the stone with potentially bone breaking, Keir partially launched herself from the force that had been holding her up and let herself collapse to the ground.

Her lungs spasmed as she hacked and coughed, trying to get a full breath in even as a small part of her remembered that a lack of air had never actually been the problem.

Somewhere out of her line of sight she heard sounds that might have been a voice but she couldn’t tell if it came from hundreds of feet away or right by her ear. As her vision began to clear the sound coalesced into the voice of Marsaili saying “Oy lass, can ya hear me yet? Ya alright down there?”

After taking a deep shuddering breath Keir said “I can hear you. Just give me a few seconds.”

It took a few more moments but eventually her vision cleared enough to notice she was laying on a dusty flagstone floor. Not far away was the base of a shelf. Every one of her muscles and joints ached, though her knees overshadowed the rest by a wide margin as she forced herself into a sitting position.

With her body mostly back under her control Keir took stock of her surroundings. Marsaili was standing a few feet away looking slightly concerned. Both of them were perhaps a dozen feet further into the warehouse than they’d been when it had transitioned into a temple courtyard.

Just as Keir was about to stand she saw a slim book bound in black leather with tarnished silver settings laying a few feet away.

Marsaili stepped over and extended a hand as she said “ya feelin’ any better lass?”

After grabbing the book, Keir took the dwarven woman’s hand and nodded.

Marsaili seemed willing to take Keir at her word instead saying “Did ya have a chance ta do what ya planned? I dinnae think I was in there even for a full ten minutes. That albino gorgon led me right ta the shrine an’ after I finished offering my thanks I was right back here an three minutes later ye were on the floor.”

Keir frowned before explaining the basics of her own visit to the temple. She couldn’t be sure of the exact amount of time she’d spent but it had to have been hours.

Once Keir was steady enough on her feet to feel confident walking across the many rope bridges the pair set off back towards the pillar while discussing what had happened.

“Aye, It startled the void out a me. Couldn’t even see ta the end a my nose in that darkness and jus’ when I got through, I almost walked’ right inta tha’ albino snake woman.”

Keir kept most of her focus on the narrow bridge they were crossing as she said “Oh, so you couldn’t see the shapes in the dark? I would have thought dwarven darkvision was not much worse than undead so close… Wait, did you say a snake woman? Not a arachne?”

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Marsaili looked pensive for a moment before responding “Aye the only living person I saw was tha’ gorgon. Are ya sayin’ ye talked with an arachne?”

“Yeah, an albino arachne dressed like a mage and with her spider half covered in constantly shifting runes. She spoke rather cryptically.”

Marsaili took a sharp turn at a junction of rope bridges as she said “Ya think the whole lot a them speak like that, or did we both meet the same person wearin’ different forms?”

For a while longer the pair compared their experiences idly trying to determine what was illusion and what was real before concluding there really was no way to be sure.

Instead of continuing that train of thought they walked mostly in silence for a while before Marsaili said “So, what’re yer plans from here?”

Keir gave the matter some thought as they cut across a corner of a market covered platform before answering “I’ve done most of what I needed to in the city. If the pair you recommended agree to the job then I will leave as soon as they are packed or right after nightfall depending on which villagers join me for the trip back. If they refuse the offer or require a prohibitive amount of time to prepare then I will try to find replacement options. Either way I hope to be ready to leave within three or four days at the absolute longest.”

Marsaili nodded thoughtfully before saying “I’m sure the pair a them’ll agree. I dinnae have any idea how long it’l take em ta be ready to travel though.”

“Well, I’ll chart those waters when I sail their waves. For now, let's talk about that drink we’re getting later. After all that, I feel like I could use a couple.” Keir said as she stretched her still aching joints.

— Blessed Death Root Alraune —

For well over a century the alraune seedling had imagined the moment when she sprouted forth from the ground. She expected the surface to be very different from even her time spent above ground as a seed. She even knew that the ability to move freely would lead to changes within herself.

Perhaps most of all she was excited to meet others and speak to more than plants that were at most semi intelligent. How might she change others and be changed in turn. After nearly two centuries of being contained, barely changing, within her seed she dreamt of such changes.

What she never expected was that those changes would begin so soon. Over the hours as she’d sent more and more of herself up to the surface in the form of a vine-like tendril an equivalent portion of her awareness traveled with it.

Mostly that awareness was focused on herself as she wove that initial vine into something approximating the skeletons of a fleshy humanoid, and wrapped it in sprouting vines and leaves to form the bulk of her new form. That made it all the harder to ignore the fact that as she exited her seed her emotions also bloomed.

With only plants to compare herself to her she’d thought she had normal or perhaps even unusually strong emotions.

The young alraune remembered feeling the plants happy when they found prey or nutrient rich soil. Some even felt fear when being damaged. None of them had felt concern for others or boredom or curiosity.

What had seemed to be such intense feelings were revealed to be almost comically muted. No not almost, If she’d already formed the necessary organs she was certain she’d be laughing, or maybe crying. Actually probably both.

The closest comparison she could make was that her emotions felt as if she’d stripped the protective layers from her sensory tendrils and groped blindly around a room filled with all manner of stimuli.

Even the pleasant feelings were so intense they burned in her mind, demanding a release she could not yet give them. Her excitement to fully emerge was like lightning flowing through her, urging her to rush through the process more the further along it she got.

Only the fact she had yet to finish any of her sensory organs other touch on the surface let her keep her entire focus internal in the face of her curiosity.

More than anything else however she found she needed to do her best to keep her guardian out of her mind. The heady mix of gratitude, worry, curiosity, and a dozen other less well defined feelings were almost crippling in their intensity. She felt like for the entire time she lived in a seed feeling only a fraction of her total emotions; the rest were preserved and were hitting her all at once.

Even her ability to effortlessly track the passage of time was severely limited in that state. Her impatience, a feeling she was fairly sure she identified correctly despite never really feeling before, made her unsure if she’d spent hours or days forming her true body.

Were the shifts in the intensity of the light hitting her leaves the cycle of the sun or simple things getting between her and the sunlight. The temperature hadn’t really changed much but she remembered portions of the journey the dryads had taken her on while she was a seed where the temperature never changed for many weeks.

She could tell a decent portion of her body was finished and the excitement was so intense she almost tried to jump up and down or maybe try that happy way her guardian used to step before she was injured.

That excited high was almost instantly swamped by a depressing low when she realized one of feet was firmly rooted to the ground by her main vine and the other was less firmly held in place by roots to help keep her forming body stable.

The very emotional alraune felt like her mostly formed head should be spinning, and was ever so briefly disappointed it didn’t, from the rapid back and forth sway of her emotions. The sadness of being unable to jump or do the happy steps was replaced by the anticipation that she could do either or both as soon as she finished sprouting.

In the meantime as many of the processes she’d been managing finished, like creating muscle like vines for example, more of her mind was freed up for other things.

She could begin one of the primary roles that an alraune fulfilled in their environment. Alraune not only took on a type based on the mana they absorbed, they reinforced it with their surroundings. By infusing mana into the vegetation around her she would cause the increased production of her aspect of mana that she could use to infuse even more plantlife.

Some instinct, either her own or one given alongside the death-aspected divine mana, told her that she would need to approach infusing a bit differently and much more cautiously.

She remembered the way it had burned through her when reacting to the more typical life and nature mana she’d held. Some plants around her were already heavily infused but the rest would need a gentle touch to allow them to not only accept but produce death-aspected mana.

In no small part to take her mind off the chaotic swirl of emotions flowing in her, the resolute alraune began tapping into the surrounding root and fungal networks and ever so carefully infusing mana into them.