Chapter 17 - Eldritch

Fresh was hanging out with his friends, and he was also chilling out when his phone suddenly buzzed. He checked his messages and there was one from Ink, saying "help".

He knew something was wrong, Ink was typically strong enough to take care of himself most of the time. He would also provide an explanation to what he needed help with, but he didn't. That's what made Fresh worried, so he teleported to the last place he knew Ink was, the most recent kidnapping.

All he found was a dropped purple scale and the traces of Dream's portal. He didn't know where the coordinates would be, but he used the trace amounts of magic to make a new portal and entered it.

Usually, the portals would be really quick to go through, like stepping through a door. This one however, was like going on a water slide but much more ethereal. He could see all the different AU's flowing past, as he neared what seemed to be a pitch-black wall. He closed his eyes, glasses saying "oh no", but he somehow passed through it to be met with a hyper-tech and natural metropolis that would only be described and made in one place.

A creator's mind.

Feeling the impending worry crash into him, he hurriedly ran around the vista since he didn't want to interact with any of its inhabitants.

Then, he happened upon a path of where many statue-like skeletons that looked like Sanses entangled in platinum roots. The base instincts that kept him alive were screaming at him to run away, but Fresh kept going as he wanted to see what made his instinct react that way.

He followed the path to find that Dream was reduced to a shivering little ball, Blue was nowhere to be found, and Ink was slumped over on the ground. Suddenly, one of the platinum roots jumped at him, while Fresh used one of 'his' blasters to shoot it.

The root ended up absorbing the energy while also charging at him, wrapping him up. Bringing him to the giant, glassy yet starry eye embedded in the upper half of the tree's trunk.

{and what do we have here? A minor eldritch being specializing in puppetry?}

Fresh was stunned for a few seconds as the tree knew that he was inhabiting a skeleton's body.

"Then what are you? To recognize me with just one look you have to be something like a god or another eldritch being." said Fresh as he knew that there weren't many besides Ink that realized that he was inhabiting a dead body, and that was only because he told him.

{oh little one, I am both a god AND an eldritch being but I got tired of wandering, so I made my own domain.}

{Oh Yggdrasil, it's the tiny starfish puppeteer you were talking about!}

Fresh panicked, not knowing that there were more of the godlike beings. He got himself into this mess by helping and caring about others a bit too much, so he could only blame himself.

A large, golden black-veined pine tree burst from underground while shaking off some dirt.

[So the ink ere' was finally smart enough to call fo' backup, eh? Too bad it was this squiggly little thing.]

A golden root reached up from underground.

Fresh tried to avoid it, but he was still held firmly in place so he tried abandoning his current body.

The root instead grabbed his true body by encasing it in a clear crystal ball that was cold as ice.

There was a clear difference in power, French only was able to change what he was wearing on his "body" while the eldritch beings he was facing earlier made their own worlds without external help.

[Do ya think we should give im' to stepmother?]

{Sure, we won't be able to get much lifespan from this little blob anyway. She'll be able to find out what to do with him since she made my and Yerbanora what we were today.}

The two trees nodded somehow, then proceeded to teleport the tiny eldritch starfish into Yggdrasil's storage space.

Yggdrasil left, while Ink was staring at the tree with empty eye sockets.

{Almost forgot about you! Here, take this little blob of sunshine and be on your way. Blueberry was replaceable enough.}

Ink nodded and took the quivering little orange-yellow ball, made an ink portal, and left.

Yggardael took to taking a walk by using their roots to move and planted the golden apple seeds in a nearby hill. After, they went back to their garden of suffering skeletons to torture their collection until they needed more. By that time, Urraina was already sleeping as the robots were charging up.

A/N facts

I will be taking the form as the parents of the trees.

Also, the forms of the trees before becoming trees were:

Ygga: A hunched-over Arachne with spider limbs growing out of their back and a gouged open abdomen-mouth that can extend all the way to the head.

Drasi: an oversized mole with eyes all over his head and an abdomen over 70KM long and hind legs of a mantis shrimp. Also, he had sharp back scales.

Yerba: a bird with toothed wings that could make supersonic booms day a tail that was made up of hanging corpses. The head was that of a faceless dementor with the aura of hunger.

Creator: a large, blind and legless wyvern with pure white scales that devoured worlds. Turned into a bipedal snow-white dragon but still blind.