Ben Pov (75)
(He was a throwaway character that I created and then almost forgot about. He had a girlfriend that suffered from the same condition as Valis, but he was also a bit special himself. Back then, I said I didn't know if I would've continued their story and I wanted to give it a try once more.)
"Aisha no!" I shouted as the world around me started to run dark.
The last thing I remember seeing was her killing her father and using her magic to put me to sleep.
During that time, I never felt hunger or thirst. I never felt the urge to go to the bathroom. It was as if my body was frozen in time.
When I woke up, the world had drastically changed. What was once a radiant and beautiful city is now nothing more than ruins. The vegetation had started to flourish, from beneath the layers upon layers of cement, destroying everything that was in their way, reaching for the skies.
Even with my eyes closed, I could see the world around me. I was located on top of a weird tree. Many people were trying to scavenge whatever they could find valuable all around me. The golden soldiers were flying high in the skies. Sometimes they would descend to stop people from fighting or to help the survivors.
My eyes were completely shut. My body was all curled up in a fetal position, covered in a slimy fluid. That thing not only covered my body, but it also filled my stomach, my nose, and probably found its way into my lungs.
Then I felt some people wandering near me, so I decided to check what they were doing. One of them was an adult armed with a small rifle, and the other one was just a kid carrying a heavy bag full of fruit. He did a poor job of storing them as they were dripping with juice from the back.
The adult would often take a knife from his back and stab nearby fruits. He would then extract some of the contents and pass them to the child beside him.
I tried to move around to see if they would notice, but I only managed to make the muscles on my thigh flinch. I tried to move the tips of my feet and calves, but I quickly got a cramp in the calves, forcing me to stop moving.
'Shit! I need to move.'
Thankfully, the man and the kid were heading towards me.
Then the adult took out the knife.
"Wait, old man, we can talk this out." I wanted to say, but even if I could open my mouth, my voice couldn't come out. Instead, what I got was a suffocating feeling of helplessness.
The man then cut open some of the fruits that were nearby. I took an imaginary sigh of relief, but that moment didn't last long as he started to get closer and closer to me, pointing the rifle at me.
I tried once more to break free of whatever was holding me, but I didn't have the energy to do so.
The man ordered the kid to stay away while slowly and cautiously getting closer and closer.
"Don't shoot, I'm innocent!" I wanted to scream.
'Damn it, why am I this weak!'
I tried to extend my arm, but it was impossible to extend it fully because of a barrier that separates me from them.
I then tried to concentrate a bit more on my senses. Aisha's mana was still stored inside me.
'YES! I can use this-'
Then the old man tapped the barrier twice with the barrel gun. Afterward, after fidgeting a bit with his rifle, he used the butt to try and break the barrier.
In the meantime, I was trying to gather mana to empower my body, but somehow I still felt pain whenever that man struck the barrier. It was somewhat bearable, but it started to put some questions in my head.
Why am I here?
Then he struck the barrier again.
What is this made of?
He struck the barrier again, but with much greater force this time.
What happened to Aisha?
Then the barrier cracked.
A wave of pain shocked my whole body. It was overwhelming.
"I'm a fine old man. There's no need to break this." It was useless.
As time passed, I realized the barrier was very thin.
The tired man then let go of the rifle and took out the knife.
"Wait, don't you think you might kill me if you use the knife."
Then he proceeded to stab the barrier in the cracks he had made earlier. The knife couldn't fully penetrate the barrier, but it clearly managed to enter inside.
The liquid then started leaking out.
The old man raised his hand and prepared himself to stab the barrier again. This time he was going to use both his hands.
I used some of the mana stored inside of me to create a blast of wind to push the man away from me. I had put too much power into the blast of wind and I managed to somehow push both the kid and the adult off the tree.
The old man could also use mana, which he used to make a solid path to return to the tree.
The blast also peeled off the broken parts of the shell.
Light started to illuminate the insides of my small room, and it was blinding. Even with closed eyes, the light of the day seemed so bright it was blinding.
I started using Aisha's mana to move my body around like a puppeteer would guide his puppet.
First, I checked how big the hole created by the man was. It wasn't even and it was large enough to put my hand in it.
Strangely, I had a lot less mana than usual. Normally, the amount of mana I had access to felt like an endless ocean, seemingly never ending, and its power was so overwhelming that I felt like I always had to treat whoever I was using it on like it was made of jelly to avoid accidentally destroying their body. If I had to compare quantities, this felt like a giant lake. It was still as powerful as before, but now I could see the end of such powers. If used carelessly, that source of power might even become completely exhausted.
After making a clean cut in the barrier, I realized it was some sort of shell. Once I managed to cut away the top half of the shell, I blasted it away since my body was too weak to push it away and I was afraid that if I used mana to move it around I could break some bones.
Right now, my body is as weak as a newborn baby. That much was already obvious. All my muscles could barely work, but the biggest problem so far was just how frail my bones were.
As soon as the top half was gone, I immediately started puking all the fluid that was stored inside my lungs as well as in my stomach.
Then the man started recklessly shooting at me.
"You insane psychopath, do you really want me to kill you?"
I created a barrier using as much mana as possible to make it as durable as possible.
"Hurry up! One of those just awakened! " shouted the man.
'What do you mean by one of those?'
"Don't fuck with me, old man. You're the one who attacked me first. "
Then I felt two winged beings getting closer and closer from the skies.
"Shit! reinforce incoming. "
They were indeed humans wearing some sort of mechanical armor that was also equipped with some sort of mechanical wings. I felt some weird, strange energy coming off of them.
So I prepared some projectiles to hit them with and, once they were close enough, I fired them. The projectiles of pure mana bounced off their armor as if it were made out of plastic.
"WHAT!"
The soldiers extended their arms towards my direction, and a weird energy started to accumulate in their hands.
I tried to make new projectiles, but then the world turned dark once more.
POV Ben (97)
"Aisha no!" I shouted as the world around me started to run dark.
The last thing I remember seeing was her killing her father and using her magic to put me to sleep.
During that time, I never felt hunger or thirst. I never felt the urge to go to the bathroom. It was as if my body was frozen in time.
When I woke up, the world had drastically changed. What was once a radiant and beautiful city is now nothing more than ruins. The vegetation had started to flourish, from beneath the layers upon layers of cement, destroying everything that was in their way, reaching for the skies.
'Wait a second, this feels oddly familiar.'
Many thoughts passed through my mind; many questions also arose, but there were no clear answers.
Where am I?
I'm trapped in some kind of horrific tree.
What am I doing here?
I'm healing my body.
Why is my body injured?
I don't know.
What happened to Aisha?
I don't know.
Why did she kill her own father?
I don't know.
What are those things flying through the skies?
They appear to be soldiers.
Why are they killing me over and over again?
I don't know.
Where is Aisha.
I don't know
Whatever this tree is made of, it's trying to resurrect me, and those guys seem hellbent on stopping that from happening.
Currently, I'm located inside the tree, in a place with no connection to the outside, near the roots of the tree, the place with the highest concentration of mana. Locating me here is impossible.
But that creates a problem. Once I'm fully healed, how am I supposed to get out of here.
This is how I usually spend my waking hours.
boring, right?
To make it more interesting, I started to gather mana around the tips of my fingers, and then, with the empowered fingers, I tried to scratch the insides of the egg-shaped cell I was in.
It was useless as most of the time the plant absorbed most of my mana back in case I tried to escape, but it was worth a try.
'Just how much longer will I be stuck here?'
A couple of days passed and I finally acquired my sight and I could even open my eyes. Not that it mattered in a completely dark environment, but at least it was something new to observe.
Since I'm connected to the tree in some way, I can roughly check every area of the tree and see its surroundings. What I ended up learning is that this tree had completely destroyed half of the city. From the giant roots, many ramifications started to sprout directly from the ground.
The soldiers had to intervene and set some special crystals to stop the tree from growing any further. I saw some crazy people trying to destroy them during the night, and surprisingly, they weren't executed on the spot, rather they were detained and then stoned by the people who lost their houses or loved ones. Of course, there were also those that tried to convince us that killing those people was wrong, but a lot of the victims simply ignored them.
It was pure chaos down there. Whatever the soldiers tried to do was met with constant criticism and slander. Some even tried to harm them, but to no avail.
Apparently, a lot of time had passed since Aisha had killed her dad. Right now, the soldiers had established a school and had begun teaching the new generations more things about their culture. The parents weren't exactly happy, and most of the time, as soon as the kids got back home, they immediately interrogated them, asking for every subject they talked about that day.
The soldiers then began helping the citizens with building new homes. Instead of cutting down the trees, they started teaching them ways to either carve the home inside the tree or how to make a tree grow in a specific way in order to build a house.
A couple of weeks passed and then, and a lot more of my own corpses had died by then. The people down there already figured out when to harvest the fruits in order to get some sort of blue pearl, and whenever they encountered an egg, they would blow a special whistle that would call the special soldiers.
I realized after some time that their armor made them immune to mana attacks.
Then another week passed, and slowly but surely, the liquid that was inside started to dry up.
Then, after another week, the egg started to crack from the outside, so I tried breaking free, and the tree allowed me to use mana.
'Finally I'm free!' I wanted to shout, but my voice wouldn't come out.