Path of Dragons 11 - Chapter 75 - Setting Down Roots (Patreon)

Surrounded by familiar ethera and with Nature’s Design directed inward, Elijah focused on the nascent seed that he hoped would become his core.  In the back of his mind, he knew that if he failed – if he misplaced even the smallest detail – everything would fall apart.  That was the problem with using a living thing as his model.  Not only was it complex, but every part had been streamlined by millions of years of evolution, perfected by time, trial, and error.  Protecting that delicate balance was of paramount importance, lest one failure become a cascade that destroyed the entire construct.

Thankfully, Elijah was a biologist.  He’d internalized the process of a seed growing to maturation well before he’d ever become a Druid.  And his experience with Nature’s Design – both within the grove and outside – had only served to enhance that knowledge.  Layering ethereal structures onto biological knowledge complicated things, but it had also forced Elijah to understand the basis even more thoroughly.

If there were more than a handful of people on Earth who understood plants better than Elijah, he would have been surprised. 

Then there were his instincts.  Increasingly, Elijah had begun to think they stemmed as much from the World Tree itself as from his nature attunement.  And that, in turn, informed his task as well. 

In short, he knew precisely how to guide his nascent core into fruition.  He only needed to focus. 

With power soaring through him, scorching his channels with every passing second, he concentrated on what was important.  He couldn’t allow himself to care about the pain flowing through his body, mind, or soul.  It was only temporary.  Literal growing pains. 

Nor could he allow his attention to shift outward, where the frothing horde of dragons, wasps, and abyssals scratched and clawed their way through the outer shell of the planetary core.  They were just distractions.  Only his core and the absorbed Worldseed mattered.

They were one, but they were also separate.  It took Elijah a few moments to recognize the imagery involved.  If his core was the seed from which his entire cultivation system would grow, then the Worldseed had become the substrate from which it would gather nutrients.  It was the fuel that would power its growth, that would push his core to the next grade.

He only needed to tap into it.

To date, his imagery had stopped at the first hint of shoot emergence, with the plumule barely having broken free of the seed wall, where it dangled in nothingness.  Unconnected.  Imperfect. 

Now, Elijah realized why it had never grown any further.  His imagery was flawed.  He wasn’t growing a tree from scratch.  The plumule didn’t need to grow upward, break through the surface, and begin photosynthesis.  Rather, it needed to go in the other direction.  In his body, he already had a trunk.  In his soul, he already had branches.  And in his mind, he already had leaves.  Now, he needed roots. 

It was such a simple shift, and one he felt certain he’d considered before, but he’d been so wrapped up in the biology of it all that he’d forgotten something even more important.  Once ethera got involved, things didn’t follow the rules to which he’d grown so accustomed.  The rules he’d been taught were no longer inviolable.  The laws of nature and physics that seemed more like suggestions now.

In any case, once he discarded those preconceived notions, everything opened up to him.  Vaguely – in the back of his mind and beneath all the pain rampaging through him – Elijah considered that things would have worked better if he’d begun with the seed and worked up to the other facets of his cultivation. 

But his instincts told him that never would have worked.  The core would have been weaker that way. 

Gradually, the plumule shifted into what would become the primary root, extending deep into the substrate that was the remnants of the Worldseed.  It immediately drank from that nutrient rich substance, pulling it into the seed and prompting more growth.  Soon enough, lateral roots branched off, spreading wide. 

His body was only so big, but the space within him was limitless.  The core both existed in the real world and slightly out of phase with his reality.  He could feel it.  He could see it.  He could sense it with abilities like Soul of the Wild.  But if someone were to cut him open, they’d find nothing but normal organs. 

Regardless, the roots had plenty of room to spread, so spread they did.  Like a majestic banyan tree, whose roots were known to cover three to four acres.  But Elijah’s core also went as comparatively deep as a shepherd’s tree, whose roots were known to grow hundreds of yards below the surface. 

Elijah continued to push ethera through those roots, watching as the flow was absorbed – much like water or other nutrients might’ve been for a true tree – then redirected back into the roots.  The shoots expanded, branching off into a dizzyingly complex tangle, but they also matured.  Tiny root hairs extended from each shoot and off-shoot, coating the entire structure until, at last, the roots reached full viability.

But Elijah knew the job was less than half-finished. 

The core might’ve been developed, but at present, it was entirely disconnected from the rest of his system.  The branches of his soul dangled, and his body lacked the nutrients it needed to protect the rest. 

In its current state, the cultivation system was less than useless. 

If he stopped now, he would be crippled.  None of his spells would work, and his body would eventually wither and die.  Such was the danger of completely restructuring the arrangement of his cultivation.  One mistake, and his life would effectively end.

Fortunately, Elijah had spent months preparing for this step.  He might’ve been mistaken about how the seed would become what it needed to become, but now that that stage had finished, he was in much more familiar territory.

In the broadest terms, a tree’s vascular system wasn’t nearly as complex as a human’s.  But comparing the two barely went deeper than their basic purpose – carrying needed substances throughout the body.  With humans, the system of arteries, veins, and capillaries carried blood, which in turn served to transport oxygen, nutrients, hormones, immune cells, and waste through the body.  Meanwhile, a tree’s system was comprised of two major components – xylem and phloem. 

Xylem conducted water and minerals upward from the roots while phloem moved sugars and other organic molecules mostly downward and between tissues.  Unlike a human’s cardiovascular system, which relied on a pump and a high-pressure, closed-loop system to move blood, a tree’s vascular system’s flow relied on pressure gradients and osmotic differences. 

Elijah borrowed principals of both to create his unique system.  After all, if magic was involved, then he wasn’t entirely bound by the laws of nature.  He used his instincts – derived from his class as well as his attunement – education as a biologist, and his experience using Nature’s design to guide his metaphysical hand.  And in doing so, he created something that never could have developed in nature.

At its center was the seed, which had come to resemble the Worldseed in almost every aspect.  From it grew the system of roots.  Those looked almost mundane, though they glowed with dense flows of ethera.  The Worldseed had been entirely integrated into his body, and through it came additional energy that served to nourish him.  Most of that was funneled upward, through Elijah’s central core and into the vascular system he’d built. 

That was where the biggest deviation came.  Elijah wasn’t satisfied with a system of xylem and phloem.  Instead, the connections he built were more like that of a human being. 

It was only after he’d completed its construction that he realized there was another source of inspiration – Nerthus.  Spryggents weren’t trees.  Nor were they like human beings.  Their systems took aspects from both, blending them together seamlessly.  Elijah had subconsciously used his friend as an example. 

His creation wasn’t wholly unique.  Thinking that it could not exist in nature was just hubris.  Nerthus was proof of that.  Not that it mattered, save as a minor factoid. 

Regardless, Elijah brought those disparate components together, finally connecting everything.  However, he did hesitate before he fused the final vascular conduit to the branches of his soul.  If he’d made a mistake, everything could implode.  He thought he’d done everything properly, but he was not infallible.  No one was.

Yet, he didn’t have time to check things again.  He’d done so hundreds of times already, and in doing so, he’d given the horde outside the opportunity to break through the weakened shell.  Already, he could see an abyssal’s tentacles slithering through one of the cracks. 

It wouldn’t be long before the shell ruptured altogether. 

And if he was still focused on his cultivation when that happened, he would die. 

So, without further delay, he fused the last conduit to the branches of his soul.  An explosion of power erupted out of him, shattering the shell altogether.  Half the creatures outside were vaporized in an instant, and the others were burned beyond all recognition.  They would die in moments.

But Elijah saw none of it, save in the briefest of instants before he felt his body vaporize.  It regrew a second later, stronger and more durable than before.  All around him the image of a tree – his tree – manifested.  The roots spread far and wide, and for miles in every direction.  The trunk shot upward, the branches arcing out into a graceful crown that rivaled the size of his island. 

The leaves fluttered in a nonexistent wind, glittering gold and green and pushing back against the abyss.  And at the center of it all was Elijah’s tiny body, rapidly disintegrating and rebuilding over and over again.  Every passing second saw a new incarnation of Elijah’s form. 

His scales flashed emerald.  His scars stood out, white and hot.  And a guttural scream of pure agony dipped and rose with every reformation until it all blended together. 

Inside, Elijah was in shambles.  He’d never felt such pain.  He’d never experienced so much condensed vitality.  So much life.  He was the tree, looking out over the Broken Crown.  But he was his body as well. 

Or perhaps it was all part of the same system.

Regardless, he was in no position to fully understand what was going on.  By connecting the various components of his cultivation into a unified whole, he’d begun something he could no longer control.  He could only ride it out.

It went on for hours.

Days.

Then weeks.

Elijah completely lost track of time, and to him, it felt like a passing eternity.  It was only when he broke – mentally and physically – that he turned his attention inward and wrested control of the uncontrollable.  He forced the power to compress, and slowly but surely, the tree shrank.  It grew denser.  With more conduits.  More mass.  It was like those anecdotes he’d heard about a thimble-sized bit of neutron star weighing more than Earth in its entirety.  He knew that was inaccurate – it was more like the weight of a mountain – but as he compressed the tree of his cultivation system, Elijah felt it was an apt comparison.

The tree maintained its majestic shape, but as it grew smaller, so too did it adjust to fit inside the confines of his existence. 

And it was agonizing.

Not only did his body continue to disintegrate and reform, but he added the twisting pain of forcing his cultivation into a far too small box. 

But Elijah endured, and not just because he didn’t have a choice.  That was part of it, but mingled with that fatalistic lack of options was the stubbornness he’d developed over the years.  The obstinacy that had seen him through his other bouts of cultivation.  The determination that had driven him to endure the Shackle of Penance.  The resolve that had pushed him to survive everything he’d been forced to experience and keep coming back for more. 

Whether it was because he was born different or due to his experiences, Elijah knew that, in that moment, he had become something unique.  He could do things no one else could do.  His status as the strongest man on Earth was not a mistake.  It was not happenstance.  It was the result of a combination of factors, not least of which was his willpower to keep going. 

He leveraged that to his advantage, forcing his cultivation – the power of a planet combined with his already-strong dragon core – to fit into his body.  And perhaps not shockingly, it complied.

Then, suddenly, it clicked into place.  The pressure ceased, though Elijah couldn’t deny that his spirit felt incredibly bloated.  He only had a second to acknowledge that fact before the world suddenly changed, and he found himself blinking up into the light of a red sun. 

“Asharain?” came a voice.  Elijah turned to see a blue-scaled dragon looking down at him.  “Are you well?”

“Yes, mother,” Elijah heard himself say, only then remembering that his previous core advancements had come with visions of his heritage.  “I am just a little nervous.”

She smiled – an odd look on such a reptilian face – and said, “Such is always the case.  Just do your best.  You are ready for this.  The rites are dangerous, yes, but you are a true dragon.  You have everything you need to succeed.”

  Elijah had no idea what she was talking about, but the mention of danger definitely put his hackles up.  Both of the other visions had been deadly, and he didn’t expect this one to be any different.