Wraithwood Botanist-Chapter 203 - 149 - Changed

I felt like death. That's the only way to describe what it was like to wake up after taking the Cailain Hetra Elixir. It was so bad that I didn't even know if I was alive. I was just suspended somewhere between waking and dreaming, never feeling the relief that sleep brings you. It's only sickness, a seasonal flu that hits you and makes you not want to do anything.

Felio helped me out of the water.

Aiden asked if it backfired.

Asail said they didn't know.

So they just thumped me onto a bed, and I shifted in and out of consciousness.

I swore I would never get cocky about an elixir again.

I slept on.

I didn't dream during that period. But I wish I did. There was something foreign snaking around in my body, pressing up against muscles and organs and bones and everything else that you know is there but forget exists until it's sore or injured. It was alive. Moving. Taking root like a growing seed. At some point, I just wanted to open up my stomach and pull it out, whatever it was, but I couldn't. I couldn't move. I was too sick. Too frail.

I slept on.

I didn't know how much time passed, but I imagined it was a lot, and when I woke, it validated that. I was treated like I had just come out of a coma.

The first person to check on me was Trant, which made me think that it was all a dream, but somewhere I knew it was him.

"Welcome back," Trant said.

"To where?" I croaked.

"Wraithwood."

"Where's… Wraithwood?"

"It's the new name of your settlement."

"Since when?"

"I don't know. Ask Aiden."

I was so confused. "Where's Aid—"

I didn't finish before Kline plopped onto my face. It was quite clear that the first thing I should've done upon waking was to seek him out, and after magnanimously allowing me three questions without my searching, he would not allow a fourth.

"You little shit…" I said, weakly peeling him off my face and holding him against my bosom. He wasn't fighting back. That wasn't a good sign.

"How long has it been?" I asked.

"Three weeks," Trant said. "I knew it'd take a week, but… that was my fault."

"You knew it'd take a week… and you didn't warn me?"

"No… I just figured you'd ask your fancy… whatever that thing is in your head."

"Oh… yeah. I guess I didn't do that." I looked at the door. "Kira."

Kira wasn't fused with me, so I recalled her, and her soul force moved from outside, through the tree, and into my body with a jolt. It was very uncomfortable, but my body felt so much better.

"God you're like my better half."

Kline gave me the stank eye.

"My second better… half. Whatever." I hugged him against my chest, and Felio came charging in with Cassain and her other guards.

"Mira!"

I sighed and prepared for a long awakening. It was. It was three days of feeding me and checking my temperature, and telling me not to walk. It sucked. But after the third day, I forced myself up and decided to cook.

"You shouldn't be walking right now," Cassain said.

"When was the last time you were bedridden for this long?" I asked.

She shook her head. "I can't remember."

"Well, if you did, you'd rather collapse and break your bones than spend another full day there." I started cutting vegetables. "I guarantee it."

"You shouldn't use mana-sharpening," she warned.

I looked down. It wasn't necessary to use mana-sharpening, but it was habitual by that point. I hung a knife set above my countertop, and in the center of the knives was a stick, a homage to my training using a stick to cut everything. Back then, it was hard work, but now, I used it every time I cut things.

"I can't cut the meat without it?" I said as I looked at the knives.

"Then I'll cut the meat," Felio said nervously. "It'll be fun."

"Okay," I said as I continued slicing. "That would be…"

I got a sudden dizzy spell and fell forward. My knife flew forward and sliced through my thumb.

I yelped in pain, and Felio caught me and screamed, but before anyone could react, a thin line of energy connected my thumb tip to the base, and all the blood and tissue and bone snapped back together. It felt sticky. That's a better way to describe it. It was like the two ends were velcro, and my body kept pulling them apart and pressing them together to line the pieces up. It was hot, burning work, but after only two or three seconds, my thumb stilled. And when I bent it, I couldn't feel a difference.

"No way…" Cassain muttered.

"Mira!" Felio cried and held me as the guards watched in shock. Any doubts about the elixir's effects or whether they'd allow Felio to take it blew away in the breeze.

I chuckled weakly. "I guess I need more rest after all."

I was bedridden for another two days. Aiden came in often to talk to me.

"I almost have Poison Sense perfected," he said. "So I can finally leave this place on my own. God… I've felt like such a bum this year."

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"What are you going to do next year?" I asked.

"Oh, I'll probably be given some ridiculous task like wrangling in a third evolution beast. And that means I'll need to kill a lot of second evolution beasts to improve Dominion… At least I hope not. Whatever happens, it's not going to be like this year."

I smiled. "Welcome to the club."

"What are you doing?"

"I don't know." I really didn't. "By the way, what's with Wraithwood?"

"Oh, that. When you were on your deathbed, Kira would come in and out of your house on her own, sometimes at nightfall. We still don't know why she was leaving, so it's a bit of a ghost tale. But we all kind of agreed it was charming. The wraith of Areswood Forest. Wraithwood. Protect Mira with your life, or her spirit will be set loose and take vengeance upon the land."

I smiled wryly.

"What?" he asked. "Would that really happen?"

I shrugged. "I actually don't know."

"You don't…" He ran his fingers through his hair. "That's… scary."

I smiled distantly and then looked up. "You don't have your flask."

He stood. "You should get some rest."

"Haven't seen it for a while," I pressed. "And you're still fun."

He turned around but paused.

"I like who you've become," I said. Confidence suits you."

"Then I'll try to be confident, Ma Lady." He chuckled to himself as he left.

Daylight came and went through the bearhide door to my humble treehouse, and before long, I felt pretty good. It was like my body stopped squirming and returned to a better place than before.

I couldn't quite walk, so I had Kira lift me and put me on Kline, and he took me on a tour of "Wraithwood Village." He pushed his way into the alchemy lab, where Trant was doing alchemy with Felio.

"Seems you two are getting along."

"Mira!" Felio said with the brightest smile I think I ever saw. She tried to leave but couldn't, but Trant said, "I'll take over," and she left, rushing and hugging me.

I loved Felio.

"You're better," she said.

"I am." I looked at Trant. "Seems you have a new student."

"Oh, no. I think I'm the one with a new teacher."

"That's not true," Felio said. "That man is a bottomless well. I'm sad he didn't show himself earlier."

"Oh, I see how it is," I grumbled.

Her face paled, and I giggled and ruffled her hair.

"Anyone down for a hike?" I asked.

"Sure," Trant said. "I could use a good flutter."

I smiled and waited for them to get ready. Then I petted all the lurvine and went on a great hike with Aiden and everyone else. This was what it was all about. The fresh summer air and forest sounds, life and love and wisdom. It was the end of summer, and the harvest was in a couple weeks, but it still felt so alive.

"I'm kinda afraid to go back," Felio said.

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"Why?" I asked.

"Because I'm afraid they'll say no."

"You got two epic requests and you're bringing them probably two hundred million in sales, but they won't let you stay?"

"I know it sounds weird but… I just don't want anything to challenge it. I like it here."

"Well, if that's the case, I'll be your bodyguard. If they say no, I'll beat 'em up."

"Lady Hill!" Cassain snapped.

My lips curved into a smirk, and Felio giggled.

"Seriously, though. You don't have to worry. I'm sure that once you return safe and sound, there'll be a line of people looking to join our village. It won't be so risky anymore."

She nodded, and we rode on.

During a break, I snuggled with Kline under a shady tree and ordered another platinum ward. I would have a grand illusionary ward after collecting my gear from the Bramble, but one of my personal wards was going to my brother, and I needed two for my teleportation arrays. Protecting the exit was obvious, but I also needed to keep people out of the entrance. Because there was no place I would teleport that would be safe for anyone to visit.

"Hey Aiden," I said.

He looked over. "Yeah?"

"How much money do I have?"

He grinned. "I wondered if you'd ever ask."

"Well? How much?"

"You have about a hundred million.

"Excuse me what?"

"You should have more," he said, ignoring my shock, "but with start-up costs, I think it's pretty reasonable to take a profit split for a few years instead of revenue. Everan is a weasel, but he's getting you far better deals for your money. So remember that, kay?"

I still couldn't get over that number.

Aiden grinned. "You're rich, Mira. You're officially a reclusive billionaire. Enjoy it."

I shivered. "What can I buy with that?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Seriously?"

I shifted nervously.

"You can buy anything," Aiden said. "Like, literally anything. Even people."

"Aiden," I said.

"Not like slavery," he said. "It's just more like… with enough money, people will damn near do anything you ask for as long as you want."

"It's true," Cassain said. "Not always money, but resources will do that. I swore a quarter-millennium pact with the Hellara family in exchange for resources to gain power. You could do the same."

I thought about it. "And they'd sign pacts?"

"They'd swear fealty with what you can offer them," Cassain said. "My younger self would die for this opportunity."

I nodded and thought about it. "Aiden. Can you put in an order for me?"

"That's what I'm here for."

"Put in an order for everything you need for a large village. And then send out the word that if the families want to be on my good side, they'll bring me their best and brightest that's willing to swear absolute allegiance to me and this forest. Soldiers. Construction. Blacksmithing. Alchemy."

Trant turned to me with a smile. "Give an inch, take a mile. You surely know how this'll look, right?"

I nodded. "I understand. But when people see the riches coming out of this forest, they're going to want to invade. And when they do, I want a fighting force of bright, capable people that are one hundred percent loyal to this forest to lay down the law. Building an army is the only rational choice we have."

Trant smiled strangely. Aiden didn't. He just looked at me with bewildered eyes and said, "Army? You know, people say I've changed. But I think you've changed more than I have."

Those words haunted me later that day when I flew north to my soul well and killed three third evolution beasts coveting the aura within it. Just a year ago, I gave thanks to the forest for my nourishment, but now, I only worried about population sizes. Like plants, they needed pruning and resources to grow—I was tending them like a garden. But they did not have much more meaning than that. The old me would have questioned whether it was a good thing that I had lost so much feeling—the new me found such a question irrelevant.

I walked over their corpses, collecting their souls and putting them into a jar of Diktyo water.

I couldn't use them openly, but once the veil came off and the Glaves and grieves came to collect, I would need these soldiers to protect the forest.

So I dug a hole with my bare hands and hid them.

Then I closed my eyes and released a nearan pulse.

The sight below me would horrify a normal person. There was a sprawling mass of moving mycelium below me, clawing and pushing and crying as it tried to reach the fourth-evolution soul I left there as bait.

"Be careful what you ask for," I said as I put my fingers in the dirt.

The ground shifted as roots came alive, breaking apart the soil as they grabbed hold of the Treskirita.

The mushroom was conscious. The day I arrived in Areswood Forest, I dug up the earth and saw it moving under the ground like a worm. It was the same plant, and when it felt the roots shift, it tried to run—but it was too late.

The roots from nearby trees strangled it, and my aura made those roots stronger than steel as they latched on and grappled it into submission.

Slowly yet surely, the roots dragged the mycelium closer and closer to the surface, pulling and shaking the earth as it did.

I used a separate spell to blow away the dirt around the area and white tendrils poked out of the earth, screaming and crying as they touched the air.

I lifted my hand and pulled the fourth-evolution soul out of the well.

"Greed is a fascinating thing," I said. "You tried so hard to get this—but you couldn't comprehend what it would do to you."

I wrapped the soul around my skin and grabbed the Treskirita with my bare hand. My mind flooded with the sound of a hundred screaming souls that the mushroom had stolen from the Wandering Reaper and started digesting. That sound once made me scream and lose my mind, but now it felt inconsequential. I lifted the soul of the fourth evolution beast that had nearly killed me and injected it into the mycelium. The roaring beast charged through the mycelium at the speed of sound, thrashing around and consuming everything in its wake. The fragmented souls ripped into its body and mind as they warred, and soon, both had fallen silent. It had only been two seconds, but it was a gruesome battle, and the mycelium in my hand spasmed three times and went limp.

"Rest now," I said. I harmonized the Treskirita, releasing the souls, then used a powerful form of Dessicate that I learned from Brindle to turn the multi-mile mycelium mat into compost to nourish the soil.

I dropped the mycelium I was holding as it crumbled like dried leaves.

You've changed more than I have.

That's what Aiden said. And I'll never forget the response I gave him.

"I know."