After a filling breakfast, Inza led me back out to the courtyard we had trained in the day before. The sun was just above the eastern wall, so the day was still quite young. To occupy me this morning Inza tasked me with better controlling the urge to draw the mana in from the plants when I tried to manipulate them. To be safer for the plant life in the area, we started back in the center of the black ring I created yesterday and Inza brought me smaller samples to practice on. 

Several shriveled husks later, I finally found some success. The tall potted flower in front of me bent to the side as I was trying to will it to do. I was met with a small round of applause from the onlooking Inza. “Wonderful darling! Keep it up. I have more pots prepared if need be, so give it your best!” 

Behind Inza and outside the circle of dead grass was a line of potted plants. A couple of treants occasionally came with another and put it in the group. It was almost a battalion of potted plants at this point. I could see that Inza didn’t expect this to be a painless process.

—

Hours later, when the sun looked down on us from its highest point, all that could be seen around me was a veritable graveyard of potted plants. This did not come without its gains though, as with sweat on my brow I caused the plant in front of me to wiggle around and grow beyond its current proportions. It was around my own height now, which compared to its initial size of hardly bigger than my hand was a huge change.

I focused hard and strained my control to the most that I could muster, and the plant under my power weaved its stems around how I wanted it to. It was a bit clumsy, and my precision was lacking, but I could control it for the most part. 

I let slip my influence over the mana in the plant and it steadily shrank back down to its original form. I fell to my knees and took a deep breath. This had been extremely tiring. 

Inza walked up behind me and placed a hand on my shoulder. “You have done brilliantly today. Let us go get some lunch and rest a bit.” Inza pulled me up as I grabbed her outstretched hand and she lead me back to the dining hall for lunch.

After a brief lunch and some teasing from Inza, I felt surprisingly well rested despite this morning’s exertions. We walked back out to the courtyard and Inza stood next to me in front of the plant graveyard.

“Your task for this afternoon will be to revive each and every plant that you sucked the life out of. With this, you will get a crash course in healing magic,” Inza stated frankly, as if it were the easiest thing in the world. 

I was shocked again at the expectations of my teacher. “You…what?” I stared at her blankly, hardly able to process what she even thought I could do. 

“You have become somewhat familiar with the art of manipulating mana. You have also experienced many instances of siphoning mana. I expect you to now attempt to reverse that process and imbue new life into the plants around us.” Inza let out a sly grin.

“You want me to bring back the dead?” I was revolted at the implications of such a thing.

“Not exactly. I want you to repair the damage done to the plants. It isn’t bringing back the dead, because they were without souls in the first place. There is nothing to bring back, only damage to repair. This magic can mend wounds and revitalize the mana of a person, but if their wounds had already gone far enough to remove the soul from their body then they will not be able to return even if the wounds are mended.” 

“I… think I understand.” I gazed down at the ground, burdened with the weight that came along with the words Inza had spoken.

“Good, now I have matters to attend to. You will guide your training today from here while I am away. If there is even a single plant left in such a pitiable state when I return at sunset, then I will personally reprimand you.” Inza turned away and waved a hand at me. She walked through a different entrance than we had normally used and disappeared from sight.

What have I gotten myself into?

I looked at a few of the nearest pots to myself. They seemed just as lifeless as they had been before. Nothing new about that. All I had to do was inject some mana into them, right? 

I put my hand on one of the black and lifeless plants. I couldn’t feel any mana at all from it. It was dry as a bone. Well, technically it still had water in it. But without mana, it was nothing more than a husk. 

I had felt many times now the act of sucking mana out of these plants recently. It couldn’t be that hard to reverse the flow the other way could it? Imagining a channel connecting me to the plant in my hand, I tried to flow some mana through it. I didn’t know how much it was going to take to revitalize this plant, so I tried to pinch the flow tightly. I didn’t know what would happen exactly if I used too much mana, and I was not keen to find out. 

After a few moments, nothing much happened. I could feel the equivalent of a few drops of mana go into the plant. Nothing seemed to change, so I tried to increase the flow a little bit. 

Slowly and gently. Focus on keeping the flow limited. Don’t allow myself to lose control. It was surprisingly easy to not worry about draining energy when I was focused on doing the exact opposite. 

The black husk started to react. Green pigment appeared in the depths of the black. The stem started to stand itself upright. Color returned to the petals, now a deep, velvety purple ring that surrounded a lavender center. 

Once the flower seemed to be returned to its original state I cut off the flow of mana. I wasn’t very familiar with how much mana was used for certain things, but I was glad to find that this did not tire me out at all. Maybe I really could heal these plants. 

Removing myself from my thoughts, I looked around for a moment. There were at least a few dozen of these left. My confidence faltered a little. I really shouldn't get ahead of myself after only doing one of these. 

—

I had a few mishaps along the way, but I did eventually get all of the plants healed. I somehow didn’t even feel tired at all from the whole ordeal. The couple of times my concentration broke all that happened was the flow of mana expanded and instantly fixed the plants. I cut off the connection immediately when that happened. I still didn’t want to see any kind of overload if such a thing were even possible. 

The sun was dipping down in the sky, only the top half was visible over the walls of the courtyard that I was in. The last thing that needed to be fixed was the grass, or what used to be grass anyways. It would be phenomenally tedious to do each blade one by one, so I had to try something else. 

Inza had said that the way mana can travel from your body to its target was through the air. I still wasn’t too sure about the air being anything but empty, but I had done something similar before. It might be worth a shot to try doing something similar to that. 

Imagining every single blade of grass seemed impossible, so instead I tried to imagine the mana spreading out over the ground around me. I held my hands out to my sides with my palms facing the ground, channeling my mana out and down towards the earth. 

A gentle blue glow settled in the air, which helped me know that something was happening at least. I put all of my willpower into dispersing the mana into a thin layer over the blackened strands that used to be grass. The glow successfully aligned itself with the black circle I stood in. I gave the mana one final push downward, and hoped that the mana would find its way into the grass.

For a moment, the glow faded away. Then, the ground started to glitter. The grass that until now had been blackened and dead started to grow lively and green again.

And it kept growing. Oh no. The grass grew and weaved around alarmingly fast. I stumbled to quickly get away from whatever was happening. By the time I reached the edge of the circle, the grass was already waist high. With a final push, I made it out of the ring.

I didn’t stop running until I was quite the distance away from the wildly flailing grass that was now taller that I was. I didn’t know what I was seeing now, but I had definitely done something that I shouldn’t have. 

The grass thankfully stopped growing, but just as worryingly it started to condense all of the blades of grass back down. It seemed like it was trying to form some kind of shape. As the grass compacted upon itself more and more, I noticed a light that was forming in the center of the mass. It was rather familiar, though I couldn’t tell why that was. 

A worried look on my face almost turned to tears. Would Inza be angry? I had done something wrong again. Flashes of the pain I had felt before when Lorn would strike me when I had done something wrong blew through my head. I no longer held back the tears. I could not turn my gaze from the event unfolding in front of me, but I fell to my knees and wept. 

The light grew brighter to combat the setting sun, but it did not seem to illuminate the area around it. The grass finally condensed enough to form some kind of shape. It seemed to be something around seven feet tall and was vaguely shaped like a human. Though it was made of grass, it came across as burly, though its face was gaunt and sunken in where its eyes and mouth should be.

I waited there, tears streaming down my face, unsure what I should do. Should I go and find Inza? Could I even find her in this massive place? Should I just wait? The grass doesn’t seem to be doing anything else now.

My thoughts were halted in an instant when I saw the grass figure start to stir. My eyes shot wide open and my chest felt like it was locked in a vise. It moved like a lumbering giant. One leg of grass rose, then the other. Then the crude steps started making progress. Very soon, the creature was charging at me at an alarming speed. 

I didn’t have the time or the presence of mind to even try running away. I was at the mercy of the thing I had created. The grassy arms of the creature were spread wide, making the already large figure even more imposing. Just as I was about to be run over, the creature bent down and I braced myself for whatever was to come. I shut my eyes tightly. 

I could still see the flow of mana around me even with my eyes shut. The large arms wrapped around me and lifted me off the ground. I thought I would be crushed by such a being, but… nothing else happened. 

Many seconds passed, and I opened my eyes. My head was right next to the face of the creature. It stared into me with its empty, grassy eye sockets. It was a scary face, no matter how one looked at it. I was suspended in the air, being seemingly bear hugged by a giant grass monster. I couldn’t struggle for fear that it would break me on principle. All I could do was keep looking at it. 

Minutes felt like hours. Only a handful of minutes came and went, but it felt like an eternity.

Our strange staring contest was finally interrupted by the startling exclamation of Inza, who had approached unbeknownst to me. “You really do get yourself into trouble when left unattended, don’t you?” I jolted in place as much as I could while held off of the ground in the embrace of a giant. “Will you be getting down from there so we can go get some dinner?”

“Wh-What do you mean? I can’t exactly get down from here. Save me from this thing, please!” With backup nearby, I started to struggle in the arms that held me.

“Oh dear, don’t call her a thing. You are going to hurt her feelings. Have you tried asking her to put you down?” Inza practically sounded snide in her remark, as if it should have been obvious that I should have just asked this giant lumbering thing to let me down. 

I looked back at the face of the grass giant, and with a small voice pleaded to my captor. “Would you… let me down… please?” Immediately betraying my expectations, the lumbering creature went to set me down while making a strange groaning noise. “Uh, thank you…” The creature responded with another strange groaning sound that sounded almost happy.

Inza broke the silence again after a moment of me staring in awe. “It has been quite some time since I have seen a greater treant formed. You really must have put a lot into your work today, haven’t you?”

I turned to Inza questioningly. “I don’t really know what I did. How did I cause this thing to appear?”

Inza tutted and waged her finger at me. “I already told you she isn’t a thing. She may not have a name, but you can certainly refer to her as something much more affectionately than ‘thing’ can’t you?” 

I withdrew a bit at her scolding. “Sorry,” I said to nobody in particular. “So, what is she and why did she appear when I was trying to fix the plants?” I glanced back at it - or rather her - and saw her swaying back and forth and doing nothing in particular. 

Inza crossed her arms at me and pouted a little. “You are usually so receptive. I don’t like having to repeat myself so many times. She is a greater treant, and no doubt she was created when you infused plants with too much mana. A dense enough concentration of mana in a plant will act as a beacon and a soul will find its way to the new vessel offered to it. To have created a greater treant, it must have been quite a lot of mana that you used.” 

That was strange. Inza spoke as if it was some great feat to create something like this, but it didn’t seem like I had used that much mana. I didn’t feel any fatigue, and I didn’t feel like I had used much of any mana. Maybe it was just a coincidence. 

“I don’t think I really did all that much. I just used what felt like enough to bring the plants back to health.” 

“You may have to learn moderation in the future, but I do not have the time to teach you now. Ask your new treant friend to join us coming to the dining hall. We should get you a meal and a good night of sleep to prepare you for the start of your journey tomorrow.” Inza turned and started toward the entrance that would lead us back inside. 

We ate the usual assortment of nature’s bounty with a couple new additions. All the while, the smaller treants that I had seen up to this point were clinging to the body of the new greater treant. Two of them were even swinging from the outstretched arms of the greater treant like a swingset and making gleeful chirping sounds.

Without much more conversation or remark, Inza guided me back to the room I had been sleeping in for another night. “Good night Keris, be sure to rest well for tomorrow.” Inza gave a little wave and walked away. 

Despite the fact that I hadn’t felt fatigued from the mana usage today, I had gone through a lot and was quite mentally exhausted. Just about as soon as I had gone to lie down in the hammock that awaited me, I had started falling asleep. I knew that whatever came tomorrow, I could only hope to follow Inza’s guidance and do as much as I could.

—

The army had made camp a few hundred meters from the edge of the forest. It wasn’t quite a full day to get from the village of Hefka to the forest’s edge, but Lorn assured that every soldier should be well rested before they tackled the foe before them. An army doesn’t make quick ground over roots anyway.

Lorn himself sat against a tree stump. His eyes were bloodshot and his grimace kept the soldiers away from his chosen rest spot. That said, he hadn’t slept since they got to Hefka. And he didn’t seem like he was going to be sleeping now either. The only communication that he had made with the soldiers was a quick order to make camp. Any further questioning would only earn a soldier a vicious look, or maybe worse.

As he leaned his back against the stump, he stared daggers at the tree line in front of him. The next day, they would fight a being far beyond what could be beaten by normal means. He would have to take drastic measures. He knew that it was unlikely that anyone in his company would be alive this time tomorrow. 

He didn’t care. 

All that mattered to him was getting back what was his. He knew somewhere deep down that he could no longer find what he was looking for, but his pride could not be stopped that easily. He would cut the world in two if it meant he could get what he wanted.