I could only stare in shock at what was happening. Fields of mana-rich cassava and taro, meticulously intertwined with the jungle flora, along with plantains, were destroyed right in front of me as sections of the Curling Wall fell upon them. Vines that had been draped over them with miniature sun stones were demolished, the once-gentle, nurturing light replaced by raging red flames.
The fire that burned through the area was crimson instead of orange, and somehow easily burned through even water mana-soaked foliage. Luckily, no homes were within range of the fallen wall, as farms were placed between it and any buildings as a natural barrier against intruders.
Looking to where the screaming came from, I could see that a few others were throwing up red bile like I was, and there were others that were having seizures as their mana was being ravaged. My parents both looked at each other and nodded as my father whispered to the earth, causing a rock to emerge beneath his feet, propelling him forward at a rapid pace towards the wall.
In an instant, my mother channeled her innate mana into the yellow lightning tattoos that wrapped around her ankles, causing them to glow and spark. The lightning and speed affinity they held allowed her to reach those in need in an instant, while carrying me. In the next moment, the light from the ankle tattoos faded, and the curled, purple fuzzy flower-like one between her shoulder blades took their place. Instead of simply glowing, the tattoo swelled as the “flower” unfolded into 6 squid-like limbs that were made of purple moss and branches. They immediately got to work, reaching out to the various ill and imbuing their bodies with their healing energy to slowly fight back against the invasive mana without harming them.
Then she went to a child I recognized as my friend Dima’s younger sister, who was going through the worst of the “mana ravaging” and was personally channeling her mana into her. It was helping to stabilize the young girl who before had begun to foam at the mouth and go through convulsions. Now she was doing better, as while she was still shallowly breathing, the dark red veins that had appeared across her were fading.
All around me were the sounds of crying and screams of pain, and all I could do was sit there in shock. I wanted to help, but my weakness kept me from even crawling forward. I could try to use my mana to help grow some plants for comfort around those suffering, but what good would that do now? It would just waste my mana, which was already low and that I might need later, and would be overpowered by the devastation around me.
I felt so useless.
“Do what you can or do nothing at all, little Root.”
A voice I recognized echoed out in my mind, and I turned around to see if Grandfather was there, but he wasn’t. For a second, I thought I was just hearing things, my mind simply making things up to comfort me, but then the jungle around me shook.
Similar to a wave, the mana in the area rippled in response to something calling out to it, deeper in the Sanctum, and began to glow vibrantly. Vines, bushes, trees, flowers, grass, and anything that was a plant or a fungus were lighting up in their respective colors, filled with dense natural mana. The entire Sanctum began to follow suit, a vast glowing scape of mana that had been imbued into this place from centuries of effort, all showing off at once.
The density was so high that the ambient mana began to float off into the air, but instead of dispersing, they were directed into the bodies of everyone in the area.
I began to feel my muscles relax as the energy entered my body, as if I had just taken a nap in a bed of flowers. The people suffering from the “mana ravaging” were now doing even better, their bodies regaining energy as the healing was being empowered.
Over at the wall, my father had assembled giant, slanted earthen walls over 100 feet tall to stop the crimson fire from spreading. While I couldn’t see it directly, a vast amount of nature mana was gathering there, causing moss, lichen, and roots to quickly grow on the walls, helping reinforce them.
Though I couldn’t see him, I knew my grandfather was protecting the village. It usually required multiple strong members of our people to activate the natural mana stores and control it, but my grandfather was a lot stronger than most.
As I began to calm down and get to my feet to help those who were struggling to get up, I felt a pulse in my awareness. I stopped myself, looking to where the red fire was and the giant scorched opening of the Curling Wall instinctually. There was something coming closer, something powerful.
It seemed like my grandfather, father, and mother noticed too.
A swell of nature mana so large it appeared like all the energy that a forest could contain rushed forward to that area. Alongside it, my father began to channel more of the earth from beneath the Sanctum into the walls, forming giant spikes dense with roots. I could hear him chant in Worldspeech as the ground became mud-like, morphing at his will.
The lightning tattoos on my mother lit back up as she grabbed all the patients with the squid-like limbs, which broke apart into multiple thinner ones, allowing her to carry them all at once. She picked me up, too, and moved to the center of the Sanctum while she continued to heal those who needed it. The boost in speed helped us all go at a fast pace, but not so fast as to hurt the ones she was carrying.
Looking down at the tentacles that held us, I was reminded of my mother’s primary Origin of Self, the body, and how she could use powerful affinities to make permanent and more powerful additions to her body via tattoos. While the lightning was just a lesser one, the purple moss was a greater one. It came from a powerful shrub squid with an affinity for adaptability and healing. It was one of her more powerful assets, gifted to her from healing the ancient shrub squid that ruled to the east of the Mossy Sanctum in thanks. It was invaluable now.
I shook my head as I realized I was trying to distract myself from what was happening and looked back at where my father was.
As I did so, I felt everything go in slow motion as she ran, her footsteps pounding the ground, and the grinding movement of the earth my father manipulated in my ears. The nature mana seemed to reach a peak as it swirled itself into a giant barrier shaped like a leaf to block the open hole, and a horrible, nauseating feeling seemed to encase my awareness. It made me hyper-aware as the giant leaf barrier was impacted against with a wet thud; one tiny fist-sized bulge grew to ten, then a hundred, then seemingly thousands of wet thuds. It strained against the nature mana as crimson-red beads of energy began shining through it, and in the next moment, it ripped.
“SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!”
The barrier broke open as a swarm of fist-sized crimson, mosquito-like insects flew through it, each seemingly a very weak creature, but together a group that rivaled what we had built over centuries. A screeching sound erupted across the area that didn’t even come from each individual insect, but instead the mana they encompassed. I couldn’t tell what it was before, but now that I saw how it ripped and ate through the nature mana itself, I identified the affinity the swarm held.
Destruction.
In response to the swarm breaking in, the earthen walls changed from solid to liquid as they shifted in unnatural ways, twisting to crush them. The remaining nature mana wasn’t left untouched; it instead began to separate into tens of thousands of individual green motes that swelled and exploded, killing tens of the bugs with each impact. Thousands died every second, some crushed into paste and others burst into dust.
It didn’t matter, though; the swarm continued on.
With numbers that didn’t even make sense, they continued to close in, burrowing new holes through the Curling Wall that were tiny, but expanded with every second like a leaf being chewed by a caterpillar. The earth shifted more as thousands of tons of soil smashed more and more of them, causing attacks over large areas to get as many as possible. The nature mana that hadn’t been used up in explosions zipped into the closest plants. The plants that made up the Curling Wall, thick branches with dense leaves, began to move as they whipped around the air, impacting the swarm drastically, speeding up the process.
Just as the attacks adapted to the swarm, they were interrupted by the introduction of new enemies that erupted out of the dense horde of red. Giant, crocodile-esque insects darted from the shadows, their black chitinous plates on their bodies hiding them well up until now. It wasn’t perfect, as the plates haphazardly morphed into crimson, bloody flesh that pulsed with destruction mana. They also had black insect-like limbs that grew all over the flesh with no order at all, some even combining with black reptilian scales of various sizes that looked like warts.
They had been waiting for a time to strike, and 5 of them targeted my father while 12 others rushed out to get to the rest of the village.
All of a sudden, dense earth mana swirled around my father and flowed deep into the earth in an instant, his voice echoing outward as it did.
“METALLIC BURST”
As my father’s voice echoed outward, the earth responded to his ability and command.
The 5 crocodile-insect chimeras were pierced with 2 long metal spears that shattered their chitinous plates and burst through their crimson flesh with ease.
They came from deep below the village, through the ground in an instant, to meet their targets. One of the spears pierced 2, while the other pierced 3 of them, the metallic rods expanding around the wounds to latch onto them. The creatures let out guttural roars that let out large amounts of blood from their mouth and wounds as they continued to be sent out of the Curling Wall, disappearing into the distance.
The other 12 crocodile chimeras continued forward, ignoring the deaths, but it didn’t change my grandfather's actions, who continued to destroy the swarm, or my father's, who manipulated the earth to do the same. I knew they weren’t fools, so I waited to see what they were doing, and in the next instant I saw.
A slash of orange mana erupted from deeper in the village, perfectly cutting through all 12 of the chimeras as a line over 1,000 feet long was left in the earth. The mana stayed in the ground, a thick line of autumn orange that would dissuade others from making the same mistakes the chimeras did.
As my mother ran farther away, the last thing I saw was my father smiling back at me, and an autumn-leaf-shaped halberd that floated in the air for a second before zipping back deeper into the village. Smiling to myself, I knew they would be fine and focused on making sure I was ready in case anything bad happened.
We soon got to the center of the village.
The large mahogany trees with large carved runes on them that guided the mana into dense formations marked that we had reached safety. Looking at the large clearing in front of us, I could see the gathering of over a thousand Forest Trolls underneath the Starmoss tree that represented the absolute center of the Sanctum. Its 800-foot-tall stone-like trunk was glowing with dense earth mana, and the thick moss canopy atop it was bright green with dense nature mana. The thousands of small holes in the moss were shining down individual runes cast into the huddled crowd below, resembling a starry sky. Looking all around, my gaze ended up at the top of the tree where my grandfather was currently.
Sitting cross-legged with his palms open and facing downward, I could tell he was in intense concentration as the most potent multi-affinity mana swirled all around him to different sections of the village. Worryingly, one went to where my father was, but there were 3 additional ones just as strong going to other sections evenly spread across. The smile on my face from seeing so many safe was extinguished as I realized we were being invaded from 4 different sides.
My mother finally stopped at the start of a medical field, other medics tending to the ailments of over 100 others who were suffering through the “mana ravaging” and placed all 20 of us down. She looked at me and motioned for me to join the rest of the gathered group, then turned back to the injured to begin treating them. I listened to her, walking over to the rest of the gathered village as I scanned the crowd to see what everyone was doing.
The main emotions I could identify were worry, anger, sadness, and fear. None of these emotions existed on one face by themself; every person held more than one that existed all at once, with a multitude of other feelings that were intertwined with those thoughts. Most people didn’t know how to deal with that all at once, especially when placed near others doing the same.
This chapter was the hardest to write up to now and I finished it the day after I published the first chapter. That helped me lock in to finish it.
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