NOVEL NEXT Chapter Eighty Eight
My roots dug deep, entangling together with the roots of the Ankh tree. My long tendrils brushed against the desiccated sun-bleached grass, as if stroking a lover’s hair. As I felt the waves of energy flowing out of me, beautiful vibrant buds began to sprout around the base of the tree, the sprouts growing larger and larger until they began to reveal the buds of their flowers, preparing to unfurl themselves.
And when the lilies finally opened themselves with a light ‘pop’, it was as if the world around them took on a unique shine.
Somehow, everything seemed to light up with a gorgeous white hue, as if the world was somehow being turned into a better place, just through their existence.
The white lights that the lilies continuously emitted slowly condensed into several lively motes, looking very similar to spritely little fairies as they began to curiously fly around the place, eventually settling themselves against the ground and the bark of the tree, disappearing into them. Everywhere that the white motes touched, the slightly yellow hued dirt and grass began to be dyed in a vibrant, healthy green, as if healing away the crisp aridness of the Wind Territory. And the Ankh tree’s trunk, which once looked to be covered in shadows and dipped in death, slowly began to chip away its bark, revealing shining patches of grayish-white underneath. With each mote that flew into it, more and more patches of bark were peeled off, falling to the ground and shattering into dust on impact. And when the only thing that was left were the misty, soul-sucking black leaves at the top of the tree, the tree visibly shuddered, and they all fell away to the ground, leaving behind shining silver after-images from where they used to be.
The gigantic tree stood tall for a few moments more, shining with an absolute and pure light, just like the motes, for a few minutes more, before a loud groaning sound filled the area. The tree shook violently, causing a small earthquake to shake the ground, and then suddenly, like a large building being demolished from the bottom, it collapsed down on itself, breaking into sparkling shards of light as it hit the ground. The light shards spread out in a shockwave, coating over the land. Anywhere that my many lily flower’s motes had failed to reach yet were quickly covered and left shining with purity, and soon the lights of my lilies faded away, having successfully completed their job.
And man, let me tell you, it felt like I just sucked away five years of life with that stunt!!!
Look, I’ll admit, if mom hadn’t spent so much energy turning into her previous pretty human form, summoning three of my minions in adult form for several hours, and then growing a freaking nuke tree, then I’m sure all that stuff I just did would have been a breeze! But for a while there, it really felt like I might just starve myself out before everything was finished with how much energy I was chugging out!
Now let me be fair because I’m being a bit of a baby right now; When that shining shockwave of light hit me, it also gave me back a good amount of the magic that mom had channeled into the tree, like it was rewarding me for a job well done. I’m actually sitting really pretty again right now, enough that I don’t have to be worried about getting more magic back for a loooong time. But still, for a while there until that happened, I was reeeally feeling the burn, I tell you! It was super worrying, for real!
Anyways, crisis averted! I successfully killed off the evil tree with the power of purification, healing, and love! The world has been saved! Yayyyy me~!
…I guess now that that’s out of the way, I can probably put my minions away now, right? I don’t really need to use them to protect me anymore, since now I can focus on protecting myself. Besides, it’d be a bit hard to beat it out of here while dragging all of them along, right? Shui might be able to keep up, but I doubt Trig or the new thorny one would be able to. Yeah, hiiighly doubtful. Having just Shui out wouldn’t be such a bad thing though; Two plants are better than one after all, right? Even if I’m already super insanely powerful on my own right now, anyways.
Alrighty then, c’mon my trusty Shui, let’s get out of here before trouble comes!
~~~
I was completely ready to just leave, you know? Completely
ready. But I guess… Ya know, mom was totally right about me.
I’m really not cut out for this whole ‘indiscriminate murder’ bullshit.
Just because I’m fast doesn’t mean I can’t see what I’m running by, right? All the decimation, the people lying dead in the streets, and all the screaming and crying that’s filling the place… I can even see the heavily wounded remnants of the town guards and the two half-dead looking Pack members that are desperately trying and failing to keep up with me! And honestly? I just feel freaking bad about everything!
I know the plan was to leave before I managed to get myself into even greater hot water, but…
Idunno, even my shittily small conscience is hurting over this!
=...I can’t just leave like this, can I, Shui?=
As I suddenly stopped and spoke to it, Shui also skidded to a halt, peering up confusedly at me while I looked around the place. The fact that the sound of it rustling the leaves of its bush at me, which I normally found to be so loud and distinct, was almost completely unrecognizable due to all the sounds of horror ringing out around me, basically confirmed my question for me. It’s true, if I left now, I would never forgive myself for letting things end like this. It would haunt me for the rest of my pretty little plant life.
Maybe the villain who caused everything to go to hell like this was my mom, but she did it in my body. No one’s going to go ‘Oh, that wasn’t you who did everything, miss plant? Okay, then we forgive you!’ now will they? No, it’s still gonna fall onto me to clean up after all of mom’s evil-doing in the end. Sucks a ton, but it’s a fact that I’m just gonna have to accept, isn’t it?
If I want to be better than mom, then I guess I’ll have to start here first.
Alright then… Let’s… Let's get to work.
~~~
Helping people is a heck of a lot harder than just eating them, huh…?
Well maybe it wouldn’t be so hard if the people I was trying to help weren’t so freaking terrified of me. I mean, don’t get me wrong, they have eeevery right to be frightened; They saw ‘me’ burst out of the ground, kill a bunch of people, set my minions loose, and make a horrifying, evil, soul-sucking tree. And ya know, there’s also the fact that I currently look, um… really fucking scary right now. So yeah, can I blame them? No. No, I cannot. But damn would it make things easier for me if they weren’t screaming their heads off and flailing all the time!
Why can’t more of you just faint from fear or something?!
Or maybe just pee your pants and quiver quietly!
I used to relish in the idea of being big and scary like how I am right now, but when I’m trying to save people it’s super freaking inconvenient!!!
At least I had my minions to help me out with everything, so it wasn’t a complete shit-show. Shui is fast and has tentacles on its side, so it was practically made for rescuing people. Trig is good at growing things, so he was able to stop a lot of buildings before they collapsed down and pancaked a bunch of helpless folks that were still stuck inside of them for whatever reason. And the thorny one (name still pending!) is great at keeping those pesky Pack members and guards at bay so I don’t have to deal with them while I focus on saving people!
What an unlikely rescue group we make~!
And what am I doing during all of this, you ask? Well, I’m the only one out of this pack of plants that can heal people, you see, so I’ve been getting Shui to bring the especially hurt ones back to me for a lil TLC! At first I was gonna summon Lily to help me out with everything and make things a bit more efficient… But Lily doesn’t exist anymore. I guess when I got rid of mom, that also made Lily, her placeholder body until she got a hold of this one, go away too. It makes me kinda… sad. But oh well, maybe one day I’ll find a new corpse plant to fill in the gap that she left. And besides, I kinda prefer for my minions to not creepily talk back to me, you know? At this point, if one of them decided to suddenly start talking back to me again, I’d probably have a heart attack! Or a… seed attack? Idunno, some part of me would pop out and kill me, for sure!
Anyways, it’s only been almost an hour, but I’ve already made some pretty decent progress here. The guards and the two Pack members are struggling a little bit too hard over there in their thorn-cage for their own good, though, and it’s starting to really worry me. They both look absolutely ragged, but that fuzzy snake-looking one looks especially like it might die at any moment…
It’s my fault that they’re like that, but at the same time, I’m a little worried about healing them up. I mean, I’m big and scary and there’s no way that some regular old Pack members who couldn’t beat my gang of corpse minions are gonna be able to beat me, the raid boss. But still, one on one with my minions, they’d probably totally figure out a way to win, especially if there were two of them fighting my poor thorny minion. Putting more of my minions on guard detail is also not ideal right now, since I’ve got to really hurry on this whole ‘saving the remainder of the townspeople’ thing before I end up attracting more trouble.
I don’t know, maybe I’ll just heal that snake a little bit? I’m sure with how big and powerful I’ve gotten now, I should be able to moderate how much I heal for, right? Maybe just ooone little drop from my lily of the valley would be good enough. Yeah, that certainly sounds doable.
Okay little snake~.
Stay still for me for a moment~!
With my size I easily climbed over the thorn-fence to reach for the dead-looking snake.
And just as my tentacles were about to take hold of it, my head was immediately taken off of my body by rows of huge sharp teeth, and spat onto the ground.
Ahhh, I knew there’d be trouble if I stayed. Honestly I’m surprised that he took this long to get here, what with mom's warpath through the towns and all the Pack member killing. Guess losing the territory must have been what finally made him show up.
As the ‘head’ on the floor quickly withered away and regrew back onto me, I studied the large wolf-dragon that was glaring at me with its glowing yellow eyes.