“Well fuck. That’s not good.”

I groaned to myself at the thought of having to face the Sanctum’s invaders now. I wasn’t even close to ready for that. As I rubbed my eyes, flashes of the invasion came to my mind. So much of it was blocked away by the passage of time and my own efforts, but the pain was still there.

“Why didn’t I connect the dots when Spore had mentioned where her mother came from. It’s clear that’s where she would’ve originated from, and her size only adds to the obvious answer. Something else is going on with me.”

I looked up at the sky and knew that a big part of it was that I was letting myself forget what happened, burying the memories that held so much emotion within. That wasn’t it, though. I thought to myself about what the difference was between before and now, specifically, why the connection between Spore and the Behemoth mountains was harder to make a few days ago, rather than now with the beetles.

I let myself contemplate for a while, leaning against my spear while I looked at the pile of dead beetles. Remembering my grandfather's advice to let the thoughts flow naturally to you instead of grabbing for them, which would only cause them to drift further away, I felt a moment of clarity. Right now, I was standing in a natural forest after a fight, physically alone, and I had made the connection to the mountains. Before, I was in an artificially grown grove built to keep us safe and gather energy, with two others who were showing me around.

I looked back at where the grove was, and I knew that the biggest reason it was easier to make the connection out here was that I wasn’t in a “cage”. Out here, I was free and had more responsibilities over myself. That was scary, but it led to much deeper self-discovery and realizations. I understood that subconsciously, which is probably the reason I was so adamant about expanding the grove when speaking to Sifter, Spore, and Root. I felt it was important, but I couldn’t quite tell why. Now I know.

Looking back at the last few days, I knew there was more I could’ve done. To better prepare and set myself up for more success. I had been lax since I woke up, when there was more I could be doing within my capabilities. I was glad I went outside the grove, as that sense of protection faded, allowing more urgent feelings to surface. There was a lot more below the surface, too, and if I could access it, I could do a much better job now. I hadn’t even added another scroll to Researcher’s Analysis yet, as I didn’t want to start something when another topic might come up.

With that in mind and a clearer conviction than before, I knew what I had to do. I needed to go through all of my memories after the village was attacked. To make sure I didn’t forget anything.

I first cleaned my wounds with moss infused with innate nature mana, then repaired the hive completely, making sure it was stable. Then I completely rejuvenated the vine, wrapping it around my arm for easy access, and started working on the beetle corpses. I had the 3 vines I imbued with my innate mana consume 2 of the corpses by leeching the mana from their bodies. The vines I had chosen were Strangler Figs, which usually slowly grew over trees and parasitized them, consuming their mana over long periods of time. In this case, the vines wrapped around the beetles and did the same thing, albeit much faster due to my influence.

After seeing how well the vines did with absorbing the mana, I decided to just make 18 more vines to do the same. Once all of the vines had absorbed the mana of the beetles, I scattered the remains around each hive I had previously gone to, leaving 3 vines at each with the command to protect the bees if they were in danger.

With that done, I went back into the grove, reaching the slumber shell I had slept in for so long, and took off all of my gear and supplies, putting them to the side. Changing into the shorts I had worn before, repaired and clean, I sat cross-legged on the moss bed. I got as comfortable as possible, taking a few breaths and some time to think through some things before I started.

“How long would reliving my memories take?”

I doubted it would take longer than a few days to go through, and, just in case, I wrote a soul note for Root to inform him of what I was doing.

“What did I hope to achieve by doing this?”

I wanted to remind myself of what I had been forgetting about my past, what I had allowed myself to push down to keep going. This would also let me see things again, with a better understanding of what I was facing and what I had to do.

“Was this safe?”

Physically, I would be fine, but mentally, it would hurt to go through everything again. Overall, I would be ok, and it was important to do this now.

“Was I rushing to do this?”

Yes, I was. I knew that if I tried to push this off, it would take me a long time to get back to it.

“Was I ready?”

Not as much as I’d like to be.

With that, my questions to myself were done, and I felt myself relax completely into the moss, going from a cross-legged position to lying down completely. I took a few of the vein vines to put against my limbs to supply me with mana, and began to activate the ability I had made before. I realized now that it was ideal for reliving and remembering my past. Maybe I had made it with the subconscious desire to do this all along. With a smile on my face, I activated Perfect Recall.

The sapling in the core of my soul pulsed with my innate mana, and like a book flipping its pages to a previous one, I felt my mind slipping to another place. This wouldn’t be like looking in from the outside at my past, but reliving it with no control over my actions. It wouldn’t be until the memories were done that I would realize I was simply reliving them, but the comprehension I gained would remain.

I would view all of my experiences up to when I went into the coma, starting from the morning after Root’s memories ended. When my childhood stopped, I had to face the world as it truly was. With that thought out of my mind, everything else slipped away, falling into darkness.

Waking up feeling the soft moss bed against my back was a mix of comforting and annoying. I knew that sleep was over now, and I would have to leave my bed to begin the day. Since it was autumn now, we had to finish our preparations for winter, which meant chores galore and less free time.

Flipping the moss blanket over my head as I groaned with the idea of having to get up, I felt a pain in my stomach that bubbled to the surface, causing me to burp. I stopped in my tracks and felt confused for a moment before realizing that something was wrong.

If it were just a burp, I wouldn’t be that concerned, but it seemed like acid had climbed up from my stomach, to my throat, and exited from my mouth too. My tongue and teeth were experiencing a prickling feeling I hadn’t felt before, and just as quickly as the burp, my stomach began to erupt in pain. Lurching forward, feeling the rising of something originating from my stomach, I quickly scrambled out of bed, vomiting all over the floor. Sweat began to erupt all across my body in response to what I was feeling, and as I looked down, all I could see was a giant pile of red bile. It wasn’t supposed to be that color.

I began to panic as I had no idea what was going on, immediately thinking I was dying from something I had ingested. There was nothing that came to mind as something new I had eaten, making me now think it was some sort of parasite.

This was so much worse than when I had stolen Grandpa’s fire wine to drink and then tried to quell the burning sensations by hopping into a pool of water that I had no idea was full of leeches. I knew then that even through the suffering, I would survive. With what I was experiencing now with the addition of the pile of presumably blood-soaked vomit on the floor, I wasn’t so sure.

The first thing I thought of doing was getting my parents’ attention. I tried to call out for them, but it felt like my throat was burning with a fiery acid, barely managing to get out a wheeze before I realized it was useless. My head began to pound as I felt like the world was caving in around me, the rush of adrenaline and whatever was affecting me coming together in a horrible storm of hurt.

I tried to push myself up off my bed to reach the door to get help, but my arms began to shake and gave out from underneath me within moments of trying. Not giving up, I used my legs to turn around so I was facing the earthen wall of my room and began to beat them against it, hoping someone would hear. My legs felt like they were encased in stone, and I could barely hear the sounds coming from the wall, cursing my dad's great earth manipulation skills to make the sturdiest home possible.

I quickly realized it would be best to try to use the mana I had gathered in my mind to manipulate the plants in my room to do something. With that thought, I attempted to do so, but was immediately met with an intense sluggishness sensation as it felt like I was trying to move my mana through thick mud. Pushing onward, the mana slowly crawled forward to begin to allow me to connect with the plants in my room, and as it did, I felt like it was getting easier to do so. With that hope in my mind, I continued on, unable to sense how long it took to do so.

Finally, I felt like I was able to grasp solid ground to pull my mana out of the mud, and as I pushed forward, it was finally free. Gasping for air, realizing I was holding my breath the entire time, I gave out a faint smile as I began to try to use the freed mana to access the plants around me. The smile on my face froze as I sensed my mana beginning to be locked up again, but this time, as if it was being gazed at by a predator. Before I could even make a plan or defend myself, I felt a mana much more potent than my own latch onto my mind, beginning to rip it apart.

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

Even with my throat wrecked, I managed to let out a raspy scream as my mind was on the verge of shattering. The mana in my head was out of my control, causing damage I couldn’t even comprehend, and I vomited again, but this time I was stuck facing upward. As I choked, looking up at the ceiling with my vision beginning to fade to black, I thought this was the end. The scent of blood and bile was the only thing I could even sense anymore; the rest of my body didn’t even feel real at this point. I didn’t even notice as footsteps came pounding from the outside and my door slammed open.

Images flashed through my mind as I felt time stretch. Sitting at dinner last night with my parents and Tusgove. Hanging out with my friends in the nook. Giving the necklace to Civa. It went as quickly as it came.

My mind faded into darkness, and the pain followed suit, leaving me to float in an expanse of death that was so close. Wherever I was, I didn’t have a body; the only thing left of me was a faint green mote of mana that was fading away with time.

There was nothing else for me to experience now; I couldn’t even fight it, so I didn’t. Time stretched on as I sank deeper into the abyss below, not realizing the faint red tendrils of mana reaching for me as I came closer and closer to touching them.

The longest of these tendrils was just a moment away from grasping onto me before two hands of light came crashing into the abyss from above. One was brown, like fresh soil, with veins of bright amber running through it, and the other was bright green, with seemingly hundreds of colors blooming from it. They reached down, grabbing onto me, their fingers interlacing as they held the green orb of light that I represented. The rest of the sickly red tendrils surged upward in response, one of them grazing me, leaving a faint red mark behind that dissipated within, but couldn’t bring me down as the two hands pulled me out of the abyss.

All of a sudden, I gasped for breath as my awareness came back, and I could feel my body again. The vomit was gone, and I felt two hands on me, keeping me steady. With one on my back and another on my chest, I was comforted by the two familiar mana signatures that were cycling through me. One was helping fortify my body and mind, while the other began to heal the damage that was already there. I had no idea how long it took to do so, but I felt my head clear, and I could feel my stomach, throat, mouth, and limbs all go back to normal. I was still slick with sweat, and I was gasping for air, but it didn’t feel like I was dying anymore. Looking up, I could see my father’s worried face looking down at me, his gray and white speckled braided beard and hair moving up and down as he was breathing heavily, his hand still on my chest. I could feel my mother’s hand on my back still, which went away as she replaced it with a gentle hug, causing me to hear her pounding heartbeat and see strands of her dark hair drape across my shoulders.

We sat still in that moment as I caught my breath, and they calmed down too, clearly shaken by what happened to me. It was my father who spoke first, staring down at me with concern in his amber eyes, which softened into relief as he gently took hold of my two hands.

“We got you in time, little root. We thought you were…dead.”

The words put an ache in my heart. I knew I was close to death, but hearing it from my parents, who had gone through so much, made the feeling of fading dread significantly more intense. My mother didn’t speak, but I felt her shudder as my father spoke, clearly scared of what had happened, as she believed the same.

“I-I-I don’t…I don’t know what happened.” I said as I stuttered, still scared I was going to find my throat burning with acid. As I realized I was ok, tears began to emerge, and the feelings in my head began to pour out in an unorganized mess. “I-I woke up feeling fine and then…my stomach was in so much pain causing me to throw up…and then I tried to crawl out of bed, but I couldn’t move so I-I tried to bang on the walls and then tried to channel mana to alert you guys, but it felt like it was moving through sludge, and then it went berserk causing my head to feel like it was splitting open then I think I threw up and I couldn’t move so I thought I was going to…die.”

My father leaned forward, pulling me into a hug along with my mother. Their body warmth helped rid me of the sickly cold feeling that went beyond my physical ailments, and I could finally relax.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMM

Suddenly, we were all rocked out of our hug as, from far out of our house, to where the Curling Wall was, a giant explosion echoed out. I could feel the house shudder with the air's vibrations, followed by the sounds of screaming and splintering wood. In response, my parents sprang up, my father rushing to the door and my mother carrying me in her arms to follow him. I was just a bit shorter than her, but she managed to easily carry me as I still felt faint.

As we got outside, the early morning sun was barely stretching through the thick jungle trees hundreds of feet high, causing little illumination. Beyond that, however, the burning of a gigantic section of the Curling Wall as it crashed downward to the ground gave more than enough light to showcase the panic and destruction it was causing. The dense mana in the air seemed to tremble, as the same sensation I felt before when I was dying seemed to be concentrated from that direction.

We were being attacked.

Writing this backstory has really helped me understand what I really enjoy writing about. I've found a lot out about myself through this and it makes my excitement about writing along with what the future holds seem even better.

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