Path of Dragons 18 - Chapter 16 - Answers (Patreon)

“I do not possess a class.  Not as you know it,” revealed Kor.  Elijah sat nearby, his forearms on his elbows.  He’d changed out of his armor, having decided that he didn’t really need it so long as Kor stuck around.  With the apsara there, nothing would dare attack them. 

Not just because of his power, either.  He had a calming aura that clearly affected the local environment.  Without it, Elijah suspected that he’d never have been capable of surviving the Plane of Nature. 

Silvara was a wild place, populated by incredibly powerful creatures.  Yet, none of them had decided to have Elijah as a snack.  Perhaps he’d just gotten lucky, but he didn’t believe that for a second.  Instead, he believed that nothing happened within Kor’s sphere of influence that he did not expressly approve. 

“You were born before the system, weren’t you?”

“Birth…is not the word I would use,” Kor answered.  “The seed from which I originated was planted long before the system gained prominence within the multi-verse.  I grew to sapience only a little before that construct was created.”

That explained the no-class thing.  The apsara’s age was humbling.  Kor was a sapling well before Earth even existed, at least along the time frames most astrophysicists posited.  Elijah wasn’t entirely sure how much he trusted that, though.  Clearly, existence was far more complex than their convoluted math had led everyone to believe.

“Do you control the Call?” Elijah asked.

It was the one question Elijah had wanted to ask ever since he had first come to believe that Kor had intended for him to end up in Silvara.  He was afraid of the answer, though.

“No.  The Call is simply the resonance between your attunement and the wider concept of nature,” Kor answered.  “It originates within you as much as from without.  You feel that pull because you long to be part of the uncivilized wilderness.  You resist because you are a thinking creature who aspires to more than simple instinct.  We all feel it, to some degree.”

“But Druids more than most,” Elijah reasoned.

“Attunements come with benefits as well as costs.”

Elijah knew that to be true.  He could be incredibly at home in nature, but that meant that he was a little more uncomfortable in more civilized contexts.  That worked hand-in-hand with his natural tendency to explore the wild places of the multi-verse, creating a self-perpetuating cycle of isolation.  That, in turn, often made it all the more difficult to return to society.

Which just made isolation that much more attractive.

For the most part, Elijah combatted that tendency by thinking of his relationships, but he knew there was always the possibility that when he stepped out into nature, he might never return.  A part of him longed for that day, just as the rest of him feared it.

“Why did you want me here?” he asked.

“Because you needed it,” was Kor’s simple answer.  He shifted slightly, creaking like a real tree.  “You are a child of nature, young Druid.  A unique creature unlike any I have ever witnessed.  Despite being shackled by the system, you routinely break through the intended constraints, accomplishing feats no one of your relatively low power should be able to achieve.  I believe that is worth nurturing, so I invited you here.”

“How, though?”

“I opened the gate.  Your attunement did the rest,” Kor explained. 

It was such a simple answer, and all the more impactful for it.  When he’d realized that he had come to Silvara because Kor wanted him there, he’d imagined that the apsara had manipulated the Call itself.  As it turned out, he didn’t need to go that far.  He’d just opened the door.  Elijah had walked in of his own accord.

Like a bear that smelled food in a cabin.

Or a raccoon with an untended trash can.

Whichever analogy Elijah preferred, it was the lightest touch of manipulation, and one about which he couldn’t be resentful. 

“What do you want from me?” Elijah asked, dreading the answer.  In his experience, no one would have gone to such trouble unless the needed him to do something.  He’d heard plenty of stories about people who’d crossed the line with their cultivation methods, as well. 

“Nothing, save for you to flourish,” Kor replied.  “That is the core of my calling.  I am a cultivator, though not in the sense of the word as you might use it.  I grow things. I nourish them.  I nurture them.  I find my purpose in watching them grow to their full potential.  This is especially true for those closest to nature, such as yourself.  I only want your success, such as you may define it.”

Elijah ran his hand through his hair, then looked away.  That only lasted long enough for him to catch a glimpse of the bed of flowers that had grown around him.  They truly were beautiful, and it went much deeper than aesthetics.  In that rainbow of colors lay a bed of power, familiar yet slightly out of sync with his own.

Those plants had all grown around him.  They had used his aura for their own ends, and they’d been altered by it accordingly.  Was that similar to what Kor might feel with the creatures he’d brought to Silvara?  Shelly was her own being, as was Elijah.  But did they still bear the apsara’s light touch?

Elijah didn’t know.

“What would have happened if I’d just stayed a tree?”

“I cannot say for certain, but you would have been quite a formidable arbor,” Kor answered with a chuckle.  “A unique species, just like the World Tree.”

“You’ve seen it?”

“I tended to it in my youth,” Kor answered.  “In those days, it was barely more than a its name suggested.  A deified tree that had grown into a planet.  Nothing like its current incarnation.”

“What does it look like?” Elijah asked.  “The World Tree, I mean.”

“I have not seen it in…longer than I care to think.  I have lived in Silvara since just after the system took hold of the multi-verse.”

“Before, then,” Elijah prompted.  He didn’t mean to grill the Apsara, but the World Tree was one of the most interesting things about the reality into which Earth had been integrated.  It would have been silly not to ask Kor about it.

“Majestic,” the Apsara responded.  “Though that word is a poor descriptor, I admit.  Imagine a tree larger than a planet, with branches reaching out for thousands of miles.  Its roots formed a verdant ecosystem populated by thousands of unique and powerful creatures, above and below.  Entire civilizations nested in its canopy, never seeing any other environment.  So it was for my people, so long ago.  We tended to it. Nurtured it.  Protected it.”

He sighed, a rumbling sound that Elijah felt in his chest. 

“In truth, it has been so long since I last saw the World Tree that I sometimes question my own memory,” Kor revealed.  “The details have become blurry, but the emotions?  Those remain as sharp as ever.”

Elijah thought back to his memory of his parents.  Their features had become blurry as well.  Sometimes, he questioned whether he remembered them properly at all, or if he could only conjure idealized versions in his own mind.  Kor’s age meant that his memories were at least as unclear.

It was a miracle he remembered anything at all. 

Elijah wasn’t so sure he would be able to say the same, had their positions been switched.  That was a hidden danger that came with increased age.  Most people dwelled on the fact that near-eternal life meant outliving everyone he knew.  Some might last longer than others, but expecting anyone to reach transcendence was asking too much.  Expecting all of his friends and family to do so was looking for an impossibility.

And Kor had the added weight of knowing that he might be the last of his kind.  There could have been a few of them left out there, but the rest of the multi-verse considered apsara to be extinct.  Even if a handful had survived, the loss must have been overwhelming. 

It was no wonder Kor was lonely enough to keep coming back to Elijah.

“Do not pity me, young Druid,” the apsara said, clearly reading Elijah’s expressions and predicting his thoughts.  “I have lived a long and wondrous life, and I know that all of those I lost have returned to nature.  In the plants and beasts they nourished, they live on. Entire species have survived for no other reason than because of my people’s efforts.”

Extinction was another part of nature, but Elijah suspected that Kor wasn’t talking about those who’d been killed off due to being unsuitable for their current environment.

“I don’t pity you.”

“You do.  It is the folly of the young to think they understand their elders,” he said.  Then, his eyes twinkled as he smiled, adding, “I forgive you.”

“Thank you.  Do you mind answering some other questions?” Elijah asked.

Kor nodded.  “Go ahead. I will answer what I may.  Be wary, you may not be happy with what I hold back.  It is not a whim that governs my reticence, but your own good.”

Elijah didn’t hold back.

He asked him one question after another, rapid fire.  He covered everything from the nature of the multi-verse to the system’s creation and everything in between.  He asked about attunements and how they affected people, as well as the Ravener, the abyss, and its denizens.

When Kor answered, his responses were frustratingly vague.  It wasn’t so different than when he’d said to act like a tree.  At the time, Elijah didn’t understand the advice, but it had guided him through his mind cultivation anyway. 

“When you say it’s for my own good, what do you mean?  Is it some vague idea that what matters is the journey?  No sense in giving me the answers to the test because then I don’t learn anything kind of thinking?” Elijah asked.

“Far from it,” Kor answered.  “There are restrictions, even for someone like me.  Transcendents are allowed to exist, but we must abide by certain rules.  Many of those rules concern information and how it is disseminated.”

“Who restricts you?”

“Ah, that is the question, is it not?  Some would say the World Tree,” Kor answered.  “It is the mechanism by which those restrictions function.  Others might blame the system, but we have transcended its power.  What do you think?”

Elijah frowned. “I have no idea.”

“You must.”

Elijah opened his mouth to repeat his frustrations, but he caught himself before he did so.  Instead, he furrowed his brow and gave it some thought.  He knew that the system was, at the most basic of levels, a construct meant to harness power and funnel it back to the World Tree.  It had other functions, like codifying progression so people had an easier time with it at low levels, but it was mostly just a mechanism to empower the only shield they had against the Ravener’s advances.

Yet, it had long since grown past its original parameters, and according to some, it was a sapient entity in and of itself. 

“Does the system work through the World Tree to restrict you?” Elijah asked.

Kor smiled. “So it does.  See?  Is that not more satisfying than if I had simply answered your question?”

“Not really,” Elijah lied.  Then, he sighed.  “Why, though? Why doesn’t it want people to know what’s going on?”

“The system is a jealous creation,” Kor answered.  “By design, perhaps.  It takes pride – if such a thing is capable of that emotion – in being the conduit by which the multi-verse continues to exist.  It guards that position well.  If I were to answer all of your questions, I would surely meet its wrath.  Perhaps I would survive, but all of this…”

He gestured to his surroundings.

“Gone,” Elijah provided for him.

“Indeed.”

“So, we have the Ravener on one side, devouring everything.  Then, a megalomaniacal artificial intelligence on the other,” Elijah mused.

“There is nothing artificial about the system, young Druid.  It is as alive as you or I.”

“I don’t understand how that works,” Elijah admitted. “And I suppose you’re not going to tell me, are you?”

Kor’s eyes twinkled again, but he didn’t answer.

Because of course he didn’t.

Still, that didn’t stop Elijah from asking more questions, and while Kor’s answers weren’t as frequent as Elijah might have hoped, he did learn a few useful things.  Especially concerning the future of Orveth Kaal.