Cultivating Plants

Naila didn't give Mother Nature a moment of respite as she charged at her with the violence and speed of a lightning strike. The Sultanzade's body became a blur and at the same time the druid noticed she had moved, she felt the pain in her right leg as it was hacked completely clean. The speed stance transformed the cultivator with comparatively low vitality into a monster, being able to stand her ground against a goddess as she moved faster than thought.

By the time Mother Nature had managed to follow the blurry shape with her gaze, the cultivator had grabbed her leg and threw it far away. Not quite into space as she didn't have the liberty to switch into the strength stance, but still far enough.

The druid peered into the cultivator's body with cold nonchalance as she stood in a single leg.

Then she wasn't.

Fire sprouted from the goddess' body and vegetable matter weaved and swirled into wave-like moments as a new leg popped out of nowhere. Worst of all, all the vitality that should have been lost from losing such a big part of Mother Nature's body seemed to matter not as her vitality reestablished to the same value the next blink.

That got a scare out of Naila as she backstepped again and prowled around Mother Nature unsure of what to do next.

"I have been thinking about it," Mother Nature mused as a coat of fire covered her body. "No matter how strong you are – or rather, the stronger you are – those blades should not have been able to survive an impact against my flesh, let alone cut through them."

"You have noticed," the Sultanzade whispered as she constantly circled the vegetable woman, too preoccupied with the consequences to stop.

"I have noticed." The tree-sized entity nodded. The fire around her continued growing without showing signs of stopping. "Your blades are alive."

"Quite. You are not the only one that has progressed on the vital ar-"

A maelstrom of blades assaulted Mother Nature as Naila was speaking. The attacks were as vicious as they were equally shallow. The fires of the Blossomflame were trivial for a cultivator of her level, but the Sultanzade still erred on the side of caution as she retracted herself after landing a strike, no matter how shallow it might be. This went on for nine more strikes before she retreated. The whole interaction lasted about a fraction of a second, fast even for Mother Nature, but the same couldn't be said for Naila as she seemed somewhat tired as she regained her footing several tens of meters away from her. Nothing that her enhanced regeneration couldn't solve.

"That was a cheap tactic," the druid commented with a shred of boredom.

"Cannot blame a woman for trying," the cultivator responded with a smile. "And were you not going to kill me, 'goddess'?"

"All in its due time, child."

"Oh, fuck off! You are only three years older tha-"

The Sultanzade instantly fell silent as flaming death descended upon her. Her senses were sharp even in the speed stance as she managed to dodge the tree-sized projectile, though the same couldn't be said for the ground as even the bedrock cracked upon the impact and shrapnel the size of automobiles was hurled around.

As the druid met the cultivator's eyes, Mother Nature became aware that Naila finally acknowledged the extent of her vitality. An unstanced attribute of the vegetable woman was the same as a stanced attribute of the Sultanzade. The only difference was training, but beyond that, they both wielded the same djinnish speed.

Naila panted as she avoided premature death, a bead of sweat trailing down her temples.

"So," the writhing behemoth of fire placidly commented as her body turned in out of itself to face the cultivator – a shifting mass of vegetation as her eyes were from the front to the back – for she did not need to turn her head. "How is it that you bless metal with life?"

"Statal secret, I am afraid," Naila shrugged with a wry, nervous smile.

"Could you not make an exception for me?"

"No."

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"Dunes," the druid clicked her tongue before lunging into the cultivator like the sun upon the world.

The similarity of their physical capabilities was infuriating, but more so was the difference between their skill. Whilst the Sultanzade only managed to dodge by a hair's width as her reaction time only allowed by so much, she managed to seize that advantage into a flurry of blades as she hacked and slashed the airborne body of Mother Nurture before it collided against the ground.

And when it did, the cultivator was nowhere to be found.

These bursts of speed weren't without expense as Naila panted for a couple of seconds with every exchange, yet Mother Nature stood up completely untouched every single time. Exhaustion slowly chipped away the cultivator, whilst the druid was foreign to the concept of pain.

"Were you not going to use more cultivators against me?" The vegetable woman commented casually once she stood up.

"I have come to realize that they will not be useful on the battlefield," the calipha responded gratefully as she was being granted the utmost minimal of respites. "Older sultanzade might have been able to contend with Aaliyah-al-Ydaz, but they were forty, and my mother was barely seventy. There was some leeway there. But here… well, two centuries are quite the insurmountable barrier."

"I am not so sure about that," Mother Nature started prancing forward slightly, much to Naila's dismay. They were steps so small and trivial that they only unsettled the cultivator more and more. "My disciple has been able to reach your level in just over a decade."

"How about you tell me how he did that and I tell you about the secret of making steel alive?"

"Hmm?" The druid hummed as she pondered for a moment, and then the temperature dropped even though the Blossomflame's fire raged on. "No."

Mother Nature lunged at the calipha again as if expecting something to change. Except it did. Instead of unleashing a storm of paper cuts, Naila sheathed her tulwars, switched to the strength stance, and put her arms before her body. The druid wasn't even able to acknowledge all of these events as her senses became a chaotic blur of conflicting information in such fast-paced scenarios and was only able to sense how the woman switched stances.

But that was enough.

The vegetable woman instantly noticed that the Sultanzade intended to perform her cosmic maneuver again, as futile as it had proved to be.

So before she could, Mother Nature exploded.

Enough vitality to nurture a world was emitted from her body in a fraction of a blink, and before the cultivator could put her hands on the druid, the freed vitality combusted into mighty flames through the flowing stance.

An unprecedented feat of strength took place as Mother Nature used most of her vitality to liberate the flames. Most cultivators that dared to use flowing stance techniques – a massive niche as it reduced one's current vitality swiftly – only used a fraction of a fraction of the fraction of their vitality for their techniques. And yet… the goddess who boasted the greatest accumulation of vitality in Khaffat used most of hers in a single go.

The previously trapped and pressurized vitality expanded faster than sound as it was set ablaze, provoking a massive conflagration. The very being of Mother Nature vibrated as she was caught in the middle of her own attack, her body calcinating completely like charcoal as a miniature sun formed with her as a nucleus, but Naila proved to be more fortunate as she was able to switch stances unlike her.

The flames disappeared as soon as they were summoned as the vegetable monster stopped flowing her vitality out. The world seemed to halt for a moment as sound as a concept became an impossibility as all the air around had been pushed away, and the atmosphere that rushed in was charged and smelled foul.

The sultanzade stood a couple of hundred meters away from the epicenter of the explosion. She hadn't moved away; her body had just been trashed around. Even though she had managed to switch to the defense stance in time, it hadn't been enough. Her whole being ached. Her bones vibrated. Her eardrums exploded. Her eyes boiled. She couldn't feel her skin. She stood up as much as it hurt her, but she stood up. Her body protested against the gesture, but she had still to fight. Yet as she looked forward, her legs gave out.

"Ah…" Naila-al-Ydaz, ruler of the greatest in the world, moaned weakly as she felt through her vitality sense how all the vitality that had been evaporated in that suicide attack was restored before her very eyes.

It wasn't instantaneous, but it didn't need to be. Either way, before she could moan again, Mother Nature had recovered her whole vitality again. Her eyes were too damaged to look, but she knew for a matter of fact that the vegetable woman's body was also completely healed to a pristine state.

Despair.

Simple and plain despair.

There was no other term in the Ydazi lexicon to describe that horrendous grasp on her heart.

There was no chance of victory. Now she understood why the druid had treated all of this like a game. This had been but entertainment for her, not a battle. She had thought this confrontation would have been a collision between two forces of nature, that even if it had been a suicide mission since the beginning she could still defend her nation, but… there had only been a single force.

"Monster…" Naila mused to herself as much as her throat protested the treatment.

"Yes," the woman said; the cultivator hadn't even noticed that she stood in front of her. A barky and dry hand was placed on her burnt neck – if it could even be called that as there were roots for digits – and it raised her whole body. The posture of the grip was already painful by default, but the burns made it worse. The bicentennial woman couldn't help but groan in pain. "But before that, a goddess."

Death came for her, she knew it. She failed to resist it, instead, she embraced it. There was nothing she could do, only to…

"FOR YDAZ!" A cacophony of a thousand voices broke through the silence of the night.

Reinforcements had arrived.