Several months ago, Khan Ni had left her child with Rachael. There was activity in the World Tree Seed, an action that could not go unanswered. The fate of the great tree was at risk.
She had been running back to her homeland, far to the north, across the great mountains, to the plateau of the windy city. Groves of great trees flourished, but the journey was grim. Khan Ni had been in a few narrow scrapes, a broken arm and even a fractured leg. She had her own stash of healing medicines and potions but she would have been a dead Elf if she had brought her newborn child along.
'Zhan' Khan Ni thought about her husband, the man she took into her bed. Their child carried her bloodline, the Elven bloodline. 'The Seed, I must save the seed.' she trekked across broken landscapes and arrived at the charred remains of her home village. Gravestones marked the place where her parents laid. "I'm home. Father. Mother."
There was a big fire decades past, her village was attacked by roaming vampires and slave armies carrying torchbearer staves. She tried to get her parents to leave, but they died early in the fight. slain by offshoots of her own kind. The Vampires didn't like the taste of Elves for a reason, Elves were their ancestors. Driven underground for centuries, eons, they gradually changed to instead feed off the living instead of the sunlight. It was their misfortune for being in the path of the Vampires, there was nothing of interest other than possible hosts. However, when it turned out to be a colony of Elves the Vampires simply burned it to a cinder and slaughtered anyone they found.
"I should be dead." Khan Ni wept for her parents. There was a mass grave, dug her her own hands and delicately covered. It was a sacred spot, filled with the memories of her lost family, her clan, her neighbors and teachers. Spreading the soil, she placed the seed among the dirt. Nourishing it in the fallen ashes and bodies of her kin. 'Its been my intention to return earlier, but I couldn't bring myself to crack the seed myself. Forgive me.' Khan Ni cried while she slit her hand open and poured her blood onto the seed. She started to let it go, slowly, then more as she squeezed.
Her heart slowed, it pounded hard. The Seed grew leaves and spread into the open sunlight. It rocketed upward and started to displace the dirt beneath it. Khan Ni grabbed the side of the tree and held on as it grew. Bands around the trees split off and formed branches, leaves grew the size of small lakes, lush leaves like pads flooded out of the bark nodes and reached further out as it expanded. Towering above the landscape, Khan Ni saw the valleys, mountains, rivers and birds.
The Air grew thin and then the tree settled its canopy, expanding outward instead of up. The Area underneath its branches bloomed, all the plant life reclaimed the area. Average plants that were no larger than the grass now stood like swords from the ground. The Mystic energies of the World Tree were working its magic. "World Tree, World Tree. Great Mother, Great Father of thee. I give my homeland, my past and my future. Guide me."
A thunderous crack could be heard, branches split and a small feeler reached out. It came toward Khan Ni's neck, caressing it. Moving its tip across her face, it acted like a concerned parent to its child, or perhaps the other way around. A golden drop appeared and flowed into her.
'..Deliver them to the soil, may the fertilize the field, the enemy of nature. The undeath, the rot. It does not agree with the green.' A Vision played out in front of her eyes.
The World Tree had its own collective consciousness, Each leaf, memories of its past life, an eternal repeating cycle of life; sometimes it slept, sometimes it grew. Only great calamity would put it to rest but its seeds bore the ability for the cycle of rebirth, and so it would grow again.. eternal.
World Tree Seeds also became ingredients, prized by all races because of the World Trees very existence, nature and power. To have a world tree seed, it is a great and honored thing. Most would not dare to part with it. Khan Ni successfully obtained one from the Vault left in the Minaur City Ruins but she had it hidden away for a long time, safely kept in her care. Before meeting the Zao Clan, the restoration of her clan or the resurrection of the World Tree had been her obsession. Now, she had them both.
Standing among the branches in a crook by the trunk, a passage opened up and a small room took shape within. It was hidden from view, unlikely to ever be discovered again.
Khan Ni thanked her ancestors, gave one last look to the world below and crept inside.
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Half a year had passed. Zhan's trail grew cold. It had taken two entire months to get a militia ready for combat, though they had been untested. The Zao Clan had officially started its military and even accelerated the development of magical tools to aide in combat. One of the greater things they had come up were Airships. A Dozen had been fitted with gravity magic wave generators, courtesy of 'The Dragon's Share' in Greensong. They operated much like airplanes and blimps, but they were considerably faster, and louder.
The Spellwork for Gravity Magic always came with a piercing howl. It was terribly loud, when the airships were not in storage, they were making that noise as they hovered. The Tech teams were pretty satisfied with the overall designs, they were very hard to even scratch after their formation. A test crash to prove their viability had literally lodged one of the ships at an alarming speed into a cliff side. Needless to say, it survived in tact and became a model for their successive production.
The Noise however was horrible, though unavoidable. When they were not in use, commanders were told to keep them put away in storage rings. The Esper Emperor's Direct Action Team was starting to look like a modern mechanized unit. Vehicles made of Endurium, Stealth Crystal Cycles and Spellrifles made up the bulk of their new military might.
The 3,000 people that had been selected for the initial army had been given crystals and were learning their abilities, after the first month, the top 500 were given the complete option of changing their race, body size and even learn dual magics. Many of them chose the race changes, it was odd at first and the Onmyoji kept watch during the transformations.
Communication Crystals had been under production for almost seven months straight, they had a surplus and started to spread among the population. The functionality was much like a magical item, having one allowed you to be contacted, someone would have to use another. Both would be consumed during the use. They only lasted a few seconds but during a battle or to save a life, these things were necessary. Every member of the security forces kept a small pile of them on reserve for emergencies.
Xuan Kim Li had been directly supervising the production of the Spellrifles and crystal manufacturing and processing plant. there were hundreds of thousands of expected parts that needed to made, each spellrifle had over 100 different mechanism that needed to be shaped, molded, enchanted, inscribed and then installed into each module. then multiple modules would fit together to form a completed unit. The process to create a spellrifle from start to finish took about 27 hours, with thousands to make, there were bound to be losses.
An Explosion from a faulty rune diagram on a spell formation disc in the hammer assembly had caused one of the crystals to fire during storage, a section of the warehouse was on fire.
None of the rifles were in danger, but the materials that laid nearby were all starting to catch. Mage teams worked hard to clear up the fire, there were a few dragonkin among them with breath attacks that helped put the flames out.
"I need a full damage report, the Emperor will want to know exactly what happened." Kim Li shouted among the workers, several hundred people were on the factory floor churning out parts.
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