Path of Dragons 18 - Chapter 10 - Make Like a Tree (Patreon)

Just a quick announcement before today's chapter. There's a hurricane bearing down on where I live, so there's a chance that I'll lose power for a few days. If that happens, next week's chapters might be delayed a bit (until power is restored). This isn't guaranteed or anything, but judging by previous experiences, it's likely. Just bear with me if it comes to that.

“You must learn to think like a tree.”

Elijah didn’t look up from his meditation atop Shelly’s head.  He didn’t need to.  Over the past few weeks, he had been treated to very frequent visits from Kor.  Despite the apsara’s insistence that he would leave Elijah to his own devices, Kor seemed incapable of following through with that plan. 

His loneliness was obvious.

And it was completely understandable.  After all, Kor had spent countless centuries alone in Silvara.  Elijah had no idea if apsara were typically social creatures, but judging by his new acquaintance’s demeanor, he suspected that they were. 

And Kor’s entire race had been all but exterminated.  Even if maintained they weren’t actually extinct, most of the rest of the multi-verse considered them to be.  As such, there was a very distinct possibility that Kor was the very last of his race.

Elijah couldn’t imagine a lonelier existence.

Sure, he valued his solitude, often traipsing off into the wilderness for long stretches of time.  Yet, even Elijah recognized how unhealthy that could be.  Like most other human beings – or dragons, come to that – he needed social interaction.  In small doses, perhaps, but the company of other people was a necessity all the same.

Elijah could barely fathom how such loneliness had affected Kor.

Even so, if his eyes had been open, he might have rolled them.  As much as he wanted to heed the tree-man’s unsolicited advice, Elijah couldn’t do that.  Partially because it was vague and unactionable, but mostly because what worked for Kor wouldn’t work for anyone but Kor. 

Elijah needed to find his own path.  Even the apsara had said as much, and more often than Elijah could rightly count.  That didn’t keep Kor from constantly offering commentary, though.

Finally, Elijah opened his eyes and asked, “What exactly does that mean?”

The apsara was only a few feet away, standing almost entirely still.  The only exception was the odd blink.  Otherwise, he might’ve been easy to mistake for a strangely shaped tree, albeit an ancient and gnarled one.

“If you have to ask that, you are not ready to adopt the demeanor of a tree,” Kor answered. 

Elijah had also quickly discovered that the apsara liked to talk in circles.  He was undoubtedly wise.  Incredibly powerful, too.  But Elijah couldn’t help but wonder if the years had robbed him of some indefinable something that left him a little off-kilter.

Of course, in Elijah’s experience, that was the case with most transcendents.  Or all of them that he’d met, at least.

Frustratingly, Kor wasn’t exactly wrong, either.  At some point in the past few weeks, between trips back to the cave to ensure his friends remained safe, Elijah had come to realize that his next step in mind cultivation was less about expanding the breadth of his mind and more about learning what to do with stillness. 

Elijah struggled with that.

Rarely did his mind go blank.  Even before he’d begun to cultivate multiple facets, his thoughts had always swirled in a hundred different directions.  And now?  With so many facets available, he could scarcely contain the number of thoughts running through his mind.  At any give moment, he was pondering philosophy, examining his memories, reacting to whatever was happening at the moment, and governing his increasingly large skillset so he could combat whichever threat he happened to face. 

It should have been exhausting, but Elijah had to admit that he had begun to lean on his mind as a crutch.  An odd way to think of it, certainly.  His mind, dedicated to multi-tasking as it was, had kept him alive more times than he could count.  Yet, he’d never really learned how to be alone with himself and live in the serenity of a moment.

Was there value in that?

Elijah wasn’t sure.

But according to Kor, it was a necessary part of understanding what it meant to be a tree.  Until Elijah mastered that demeanor, he didn’t dare use the full breadth of the powers granted to him by Shape of Trees.  God of the Forest was difficult enough to keep under control, and Elijah could only imagine what it might mean to use Hibernate.

Would his mind go blank, only for him to return to awareness after ten thousand years?  On the surface, that seemed ridiculous, but Elijah knew that it was more than possible.

But achieving that state wasn’t the only issue.  Returning was what truly worried Elijah, and so far, it was one of the big reasons he hadn’t been able to achieve true serenity.  No matter how deep he went, he was always worried about never coming up.

And he’d tried everything to counter it, too.  Even using a quarantined leaf as something of an alarm.  Of course, it didn’t work, only ensuring that he couldn’t focus on anything else. 

That left Elijah extremely frustrated, which in turn, made it all that much more difficult. 

“Thank you for your sage advice, wise transcendent,” Elijah muttered, finally uncrossing his legs and stretching them out.  He’d been at it for hours, and while he could keep going for some time yet, that didn’t mean his muscles wouldn’t grow stiff.  He leaned back, wiggling his toes as he rested on his palms.  “What tier of mind cultivation have you reached, anyway?”

“That is not for you to know, sapling,” Kor answered haughtily.  However, there was a slight twinkle in his eyes that told Elijah that he was quite proud of whatever tier he’d managed to attain. Probably the top, if Elijah wasn’t mistaken. 

Chances were, the whole process had been easy for him.  At least insomuch as cultivation could qualify for that term.  His nature seemed tailor-made for the sort of serenity he preached.

Kind of like how Elijah had always excelled at soul cultivation, establishing a distinct knack for the processes involved.  It was always difficult, but Elijah knew that others had a much harder time advancing in that aspect of cultivation. 

“So, what do you do all day?” Elijah asked.  “What’s the life of a transcendent look like?”

Kor narrowed his eyes.  “I cultivate.”

“So you haven’t reached tier nine in every aspect?”

“Of course not. No one does.”

Elijah didn’t give voice to his assertion that he would do just that, largely because he recognized just how impossible it seemed.  Still, he had plenty of time, a lot of talent, and a will to succeed.  Hopefully, that would be enough to see him to the end of that particular line. 

In any case, he didn’t intend to talk about himself.  Instead, he wanted to know more about Kor.  He knew the apsara wouldn’t reveal much about his history, but he might just give Elijah some hints as to his normal days.

So, he continued to ask questions.

Unsurprisingly, Kor was more than happy to talk about his life.  Probably because he hadn’t had a chance to do that for so long that even talking with Elijah felt like a real treat. 

During that time, Elijah learned that Kor’s normal activities expanded much further than simple cultivation.  When he said the word, he wasn’t just talking about climbing the ranks of each aspect of personal cultivation.  Instead, he referred to his efforts concerning his stewardship of that particular corner of the Plane of Nature.

“It rejects colonization, as any good forest should.  However, I can nudge it in healthier directions,” Kor revealed. “A little snip here.  A bit of extra nutrients there.  The world responds, and everything becomes a little healthier.”

Then, he went into more specifics, most of which had nothing to do with magic.  When Elijah asked about that, the apsara told him that there is more to cultivating a forest than ethera. 

“You sound like a friend of mine.”

“Your friend is following the correct path,” Kor said, nodding his great head.  “What is their name?”

“Ikiahj,” Elijah said, referring to the Farmer who’d joined his grove.  Vaguely, Elijah could sense the dragon tending to the fields outside of Ironshore, but he couldn’t tell much more than that.  Entering the Plane of Nature came with a degree of distance that made everything back in Mortalum fuzzy.

“A good name for a proper cultivator,” Kor acknowledged.

He wondered what Ikiahj would say when he learned that a real apsara had said as much about him.  Elijah couldn’t help but smile.  “Agreed.”

“Well, do not let me delay your progress, sapling,” Kor said, in an obvious dismissal.  When Elijah didn’t move, he looked around, then, after a surge of ethera, slipped into the ground and disappeared. 

“I guess that’s where Nerthus got that,” Elijah said to himself. He’d known all along that spryggents were descended from apsara, at least in some way, but he still wasn’t entirely sure what the nature of that relationship was.  Were spryggents to apsara as goblins were to hobgoblins?  Or were they something altogether different?

Once Kor was gone, Elijah refocused on his task, delving deep into his mind cultivation.  After a while, he began to focus on the leaves dedicated to housing his trauma, be it mental, physical, emotional, or something that didn’t quite belong in any of those categories.

For years, he’d been quarantining those experiences, then shedding the leaves to cleanse himself of their effect.  However, even Elijah wasn’t deluded enough to believe that was where it ended.  All of that trauma left scars, and ones no amount of leaf-shedding could erase.

The process helped, but mostly, it just kept him from dwelling on things.

He knew that to truly rid himself of the trauma would require him to do more than mechanically processing the leaves.  He would need to confront it, feel it, and cleanse himself of it.

For obvious reasons, Elijah hesitated to do so.

The last time he’d done something like that, he’d been confronted by a vision of his sister.  Alyssa was just a memory, having died decades before, but it had felt more real than just about anything else he’d experienced since then. 

It had almost let him believe that she was going to come back.

A silly notion.  Dead was dead, as far as he knew.  Some transcendents could bring people back so long as they had died recently, but by the time Elijah had even learned that she was gone, it was too late to change anything.  Even if he knew one of those fabled Healers that could accomplish such feats. 

As grateful as he was to speak to her again, seeing Alyssa had been a painful experience.  Cathartic, in some ways.  Joyful in others.  But painful, nonetheless, because it reminded him of all the time he would never get to spend with his sister.

“Just do the thing, Elijah,” he told himself, knowing he couldn’t escape the process.  If he wanted to take the next step on the road of mind cultivation, then he had no choice but to do what needed to be done. 

So, without further ado, he delved deep into his mind, plunging headfirst into the quarantined leaves.  It was like leaping into a freezing pool of water, though the pain went deeper than prickles across his skin.  It was in his mind and soul.  The torture didn’t end there, either. 

Because dealing with that trauma required him to feel everything anew.

Every time someone stabbed him.  Each time he was ripped apart.  Every single instance of him being torn down to only a few cells.  He felt it all.

The physical pain alone was enough to knock him briefly unconscious.  When he came back to himself a few moments later, it hadn’t ended.  In fact, the gravity of the torture had only increased.

And that was only the beginning.

Because on the heels of that pain came something far more powerful.  Emotional trauma.

It hit him like with the weight of every tragedy he’d ever experienced, all at once.  Only this time, he couldn’t just shunt it off into a corner of his mind to be ignored.  This time, he needed to feel it all.

The only reason he wasn’t immediately overwhelmed was because of the established mechanism of his mind cultivation which allowed him to process bits and pieces of his trauma by letting leaves fall away, only to be regrown.  It wasn’t a fresh start.  Far from it.  But it did give him just enough of an edge to endure what should never have to be endured.

Like that, Elijah processed.

Like that, Elijah persisted.

Tears were only the start.  After a while, he lost himself in the sea of agony.  Then, suddenly, he realized that he’d internalized a few of Kor’s vague lessons.  Instead of standing against it like a mountain and slowly being eroded, he endured as a tree might.  Flowing with the wind.  Anchoring where necessary, and regrowing when he must.

It was not a cure-all.  It didn’t stop him from having to feel.  But it allowed him to maintain his wits and focus himself on processing the pain he’d accumulated.