Cultivating Plants

Overarching, expansive senses. In a self-imposed prison of chaotic branches, Mother Nature found herself resting in a state of trance. Her body had long adapted to the acuity internal infusion; her mission only to overwatch this frenetic world.

A quest.

It was the presence of a quest, as irrelevant as it was, that kept her going; kept her focused. If her meditative state could be called focus.

Her senses extended far beyond the understanding of cultivators. Nurture could no longer entertain her might alone, Enlightenment was also needed as her senses took root in the world of ideas. Shallow caresses, but present, nonetheless.

Two hells under her watch.

Interference was great, senses weren't meant to be as minute or expansive as hers were, which ended up massively hurting her real capabilities. She could only manifest a fraction of her might in this crippled reality. The air had become too thick for her, too restrictive of an environment.

Yet she spent her time like that without protesting once. Attentively overwatching a world that hated her.

Until her senses failed.

Mother Nature needed not to ponder what had happened for only once she had felt an instance of her senses losing a single fraction of information.

The World Tree shook as she woke up from her slumber.

Her cocoon exploded in supersonic splinters of evolved plants as her body pranced into action, no longer donning acuity but glamour.

Air filled her faux lungs. It had been ages since the last time. She felt no satisfaction upon her exhalation, she doubted if she had ever had.

The next instant the canopy of the World Tree exploded in a maelstrom of blue violence with petals the size of houses flying around as her body jolted into the air, the impact of her boost not fully mitigated by the massive tree and instead continued traveling down to the earth in the form of earthquakes.

The druid's body became stationary in the heavens as the atmosphere completely robbed her of her momentum, and she took that moment of null gravitational pull to descend toward her objective like a meteorite.

There wasn't enough distance or speed to burst into flames as her body quickly reached terminal velocity – the gravitational attraction of Khaffat was boringly pathetic – so her path to the source of her awakening was slow. Moving at subsonic speeds was so… slow.

It took her almost a minute before she landed at her destination.

The impact against the ground created quite a crater, but as her inertia was completely composed of Khaffat's gravity, it wasn't enough to cleave the earth.

For that, she tapped the ground with her feet.

Faster than thought, a crater a hundred times more massive than the first one manifested below her.

Unable to withstand the blow, the bedrock caved down and the vegetable woman calmly descended on the underground as hundreds of tones of dirt and rock fell all around her.

A thick dust cloud lingered around as she landed on her feet, but they both could see each other just fine at this distance.

"Why did you not listen to me?" Mother Nature spoke calmly. Perhaps calmly, but not softly. The suspended particles in the air vibrated with her voice.

The figure kneeling on the ground slightly trembled at the sight of her, but with some minor difficulties, he stood up tall in defiance.

"You are the one that always refused to listen to me, Aloe." It took Mother Nature a moment before realizing that the man was referring to her.

"Answer me!" She ignored his counterargument, accepting not a no for an answer.

The dust was violently pushed away at her shout, a clearing suddenly manifesting around her at her command.

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"I wanted to be your equal," the young druid responded as the dust was clearing away, and the sight terrified her.

Al- Mother Nature gagged and almost took a step backward as she saw a man composed of vegetable matter, a bark skin reminiscent of cacao. If that wasn't clue enough, the scarlet eyes and the cape certainly did the trick.

"W-why?" The vegetable woman nearly sobbed as she spoke.

"Because you otherwise wouldn't listen to me!" The vegetable man shouted with youthful and wrathful violence.

Silence was made for the shortest of instants.

"Xochipilli…" Mother Nature said softly.

"No!" The Prince of Flowers stomped the ground, creating earthquakes of his own. "You won't pull yourself out of this situation by calling my name, Aloe! I'm tired of all of this!"

As he shouted, he raised his hand. There, an obviously simple seed lay.

Mother Nature's eyes shot wide open at that inconspicuous sight.

"You do not know what you are doing!" Her voice raged with unfiltered agony. "Xochipilli, please listen to me!"

"Listen?" The man's jaw deformed in a way only his vegetable body allowed to as he chuckled with a sickly grin drawn on his visage. "Too late, Aloe…"

Then he planted the seed in his body.

Time seemed to slow down as she lurched toward him with haste on, but it was far too late. It took but one instant for the black seed to blossom as Xochipilli forced its growth with the flowing stance.

The older druid was brought to a sudden halt – the ground was slightly burned off by the instantaneous loss of momentum – as she saw her apprentice's body jerk and become stiff.

"W-what…" He had difficulties speaking as his whole body was tensed up. "What's happening, Aloe?" Kernels of fear appeared in his scarlet eyes.

"Everything's fine, Xochipilli," she said softly as she embraced his still body. "Take deep breaths and fight it, I know you can do it. Resist it."

"W-what?" The Prince of Flowers's eyelids spasmed, closing and opening rapidly. Confusion drowned his whole being.

"Shh, focus on fighting it," Mother Nature continued speaking softly as he patted the man's head. "You will not be beaten by a seed, will you not? I know you can push it away."

She tried not to pull out the seed herself in fear of what would happen. Its dark roots had already expanded all over her disciple's body so the only way to remove it was if he personally gained dominance over the blossoming entity.

"It hurts…" Xochipilli added weakly, childishly.

"I know, Xochipilli, I know," the master continued cradling her disciple, her eyes shining like emeralds as she did so.

But as comforting as her words were, his body only continued to tense up more and more, becoming as rigid as a stone and equally as cold.

"What…" His voice was but a whisper by now. "What have you done?"

The words were ephemeral, but that fiery gaze penetrated her very being.

Judging her.

Mother Nature almost backstepped and dropped his body by the sheer anguish that gaze induced into her. Never before had she felt this sick. Was that her fault? Infinite thoughts like those kept assaulting her mind as Xochipilli looked at her.

It was a condemnation, yes, but at that moment she understood an underlying truth as one of the roots of the black seed made contact with her.

I have done it.

"I am going to remove them!" Mother Nature shouted at him, trying to recover his consciousness as she realized her sin.

How she had sabotaged that plant by making it herself first.

"Are you listening to me, Xochipilli?" She slapped his cheeks softly as the brightness of his eyes kept dimming. "Xochipilli!"

Knowing that she had no more time to lose, the druid shoved her vitality into the black roots, but it was promptly repelled. It had been assimilated by his body.

"No! No!" The vegetable woman shouted in despair as she clawed on the vegetable man's skin trying to manually pull apart the roots from his body, but he found an impossible force fighting at her.

It wasn't a normal force.

It wasn't the surface tension of a skin boosted by the toughness internal infusion with tens of thousands of Haya.

It was something way worse.

It was the force of two conjoined bodies through the art of Evolution.

The strength left her arms, and a moan escaped Aloe's lips.

It was too late.

It didn't matter that she was faster than sound, that she could burn her surroundings away through abrasion alone, it still hadn't been fast enough. It all took but one single, minuscule instant to end.

Her fingertips graced the surface of Xochipilli's stiff body, now covered in a web of the blackest roots looking like blood vessels. The surface of her forearm showed her what she had feared most as the dots on her spotted, succulent skin shifted around to form words.

On her forearm appeared a colored spot that was no birthmark yet read the following:

Species: Aloe Versa

Sobriquet: Seed of Rebirth

Description: A member of its own species, a species known for its ability to infer Reality itself and remake anew a living being.

Alignment: Life, Chaos, Information, Arcane, Light, Time, Death, Space, Void

It was all because of that species' name. If she hadn't created this creature in the first place, none of this would have happened. It wasn't just that if Xochipilli hadn't caught wind of it he wouldn't have discovered it. That mattered not. Even if he somehow had discovered how to create the Seed of Rebirth, her disciple still could have succeeded, but because she had infected it with her name, now it mutated into something horrendous.

Aloe…

"No," Mother Nature muttered.

Her emerald gaze became stern as she looked at the spasming body.

The process had ended.

It looked at her with a scarlet yet void gaze. Not one of an animal, but a vegetable.

"Ah…" She groaned weakly as it stood up.

It wasn't Xochipilli.

It was a monster.