Visions and Plants

At first, the mass of foreign memories and vague impressions were indecipherable, always moving and jumping, in one moment there was a illusion of a child staring into the distance, another a dream of a roaring hearth in a well-warmed home.

But eventually, Wanderer's soul managed to latch onto one of the slower-moving visions in the whirlpool of thoughts, and they began to experience them as their own.

Their first experience was through the eyes of a child, Emio, he was called, he was sitting bored in a room with many others of his own kind, his head resting on his desk.

They were all being taught by a young human, (as that was the name of their kind) on the nature of magic and its use.

“Now magic,” the teacher declared, “leaks from the Spirit realm, it is everywhere, in the dirt, in the sky, all around us at all times. It is naturally attracted to living things and it is by this attraction that all sapient races are able to use magic”

Emio’s head perked up from its resting place atop the desk, as the boy heard something that interested him.

“Now when a Magi wishes to perform a spell, they begin to repeat a series of movements, and as the magic chases their moving body, the specific movements form a series of runes that give a spell its effect, once the spell is complete, these runes instruct the magic to display the encoded effects in the real world”.

After a moment, which the teacher used to catch their breath following their passionate speech, the teacher requested questions from the class, immediately the hand of a girl sitting in the corner shot up, and after receiving permission to speak, she asked.

“Is that why the powerful Magi dance when they use a spell?”.

Immediately following the young girl's query, the teacher became embarrassed, as if they could not have imagined that such a ridiculous question could occur.

“They are NOT dancing, they are performing spells of incredible intricacy, such that it requires their entire body to weave the complex runes necessary to complete it”

The child looked confused for a second.

“But if they’re not dancing, then why do they wear ballerina shoes?”

She replied, their young mind still failing to comprehend how dance and magic could coincide.

A round of snickers passed through the class, many of the children predicting the nature of their teacher's reaction, Emio included.

The teacher's face turned red as flame, going from embarrassed and exasperated to actively offended.

“Ballerina shoes! Why never in my life!" They began "Magi do not wear ballerina shoes, especially not the Great Magi, the shoes of a true Magi are brilliant works of art…”.

Slowly the memory began to fade, its allotted magic dwindling, losing momentum and clarity.

And so, though confused and dazed by the sudden influx of information, Wanderer jumped upon another memory in the spiralling vortex, spurred on by an unknown force.

As the second memory began, Wanderer noticed that Emio was a child no longer, but a young man of six or seventeen, sitting around a campfire with a small group of friends.

Wanderer recognised that the girl from the previous memory was there, as were four more teenagers the Golem vaguely recognised from the previous vision.

They were all chatting happily, their voices too blurred for the Vessel to make out, but as the memory came into focus, the familiar youngster made a comment that caused the rest of the group to fall silent.

After a moment, Emio spoke up

“You know we are not meant to talk about the verdestry, it's better to leave any mention of their existence unspoken.”

Hastily, the young woman replied.

“But why? What good is there in letting something that threatened us so severely fade from our memory? Isn't that just dooming us to fall to them again?”

“The verdestry are gone, just leave it be”

Despite their friend's insistence, The girl continued,

“They are meant to be the “ultimate enemy” of mankind and yet, they seem to be nothing more than some random plant monster”

“JUST some random plant monster”, Emio outburst, “They killed half of the damn population! Is that good enough for you to stop asking questions?”

With that, the whole group fell silent, and the scene faded away, returning to the once-whirling vortex of visions.

Wanderer's juvenile mind was in chaos, thoughts and memories not his own forcing their way in, confusion weighed so heavily on them that they hardly registered that the once seemingly infinite number of visions was now reduced to a feeble few, inching their way across the strange mindscape.

But the Vessel had little time to sort their thoughts and feelings before they were thrust into a final memory.

As the Vision came into focus, the Golem discerned that Emio was now sprinting through a forest, not unlike the one that the Vessel had previously explored.

Emio’s friends were following close behind, the now familiar girl was there, though perhaps she could be called a woman now, as along with the other four of whom Wanderer did not know, all of them looked considerably older.

Disturbingly, the entire group had looks of intense regret and anger upon their faces.

“How could we let this happen!”, Emio growled in frustration, more directed toward himself than any of his friends, ”they hid right under our nose for four damn weeks, how the hell did we miss that”.

A voice from the back of the group spoke up, unfamiliar to Wanderer.

“Nobody could have expected that anyone crazy enough to try and recreate the verdestry could exist”.

In the distance, sparks of green magic could be seen striking the sky, bouncing off the trees and plants around its source, and a feeling of panic overcame Emio.

“Crap, they've started the ritual, we might not be able to stop them!”

The familiar woman responded in an exhausted manner from the back of the group, having fallen behind the party.

“We will make a way, we have no choice.”

The sentiment echoed throughout the group, and a grim determination rose within them, the final thing that Wanderer saw in the world of memories was the towering figure of the abbey in which they currently resided, before the scene faded once again.

In the real world, the effects of the spell had taken only a fraction of a second, Wanderer barely having time to stumble before they were forced back to the realm of the living.

Their head was screaming, thoughts and knowledge not their own attempting to settle in a mind that didn't have the capacity to contain them, their Spirit was in an uproar, warning about danger and calling them to act, to do something.

In their confused and desperate mind, the Golem did the thing their instincts told them to do and drove their club into the head of the reason for all their pain.

The man’s head shattered like terracotta, his withered skull not having been made to take the force of a Golem-propelled club, in an instant he fell limp to the floor, dead.

As he fell, his magic died with him, the once purposeless energy now shot up their vine conduits and the other Magi who once barely contained the powerful ritual now lost their control, being woken from their slumber by the oncoming calamity.

A dreadful power began to gather above the Vessel, spurring them to leap to the side of the temple and press themselves against the wall, hoping to avoid the oncoming wrath.

The assembled Magi had only just managed to stir before the power reached its zenith, a bolt of green lighting descended at unimaginable speed, lighting the once-dark room brighter than the brightest day and causing the vines in the room to be whipped into a frenzy.

The waking Magi were vaporised instantly, not even given time to realise the dire situation before their sudden demise, and their corpses not even having time to hit the floor before they were turned into fuel for the rapidly growing vines.

As suddenly as it came, the power left, in its place a shining rune floated, jumping and transforming faster than Wanderer could track, its complexity outshone any rune or spell that they had ever witnessed, and, they realised, likely ever would.

In the time it would take to move a single step, the rune began to pull, not on Wanderer, but the ever-present vines and creepers that smothered the walls and floor.

They began to fly into the glowing rune, crushing and collapsing, smaller and denser until all the plant matter had been used, magi included, and the small ball fell to the floor with a dull thud.

Carefully the Golem crept across the now empty temple, their mind once in chaos was brought to a precipitous calm by their near-death experience, the burdening knowledge and weight of their actions having relented for a moment, waiting for a better moment to strike.

Having learnt from their previous mistakes, the Vessel did not approach the verdure entity, instead seeking advice from their Spirit, and receiving none.

The Spirit having been stunned into a brief silence by recent events and so, Wanderer slowly bent down and grabbed a piece of debris from the barren floor, throwing it toward the intertwined ball.

A tendril shot out from the creature, far faster than the Vessel could track, grasping the scrap and stopping it dead,.

Eight other tendrils burst out, grappling the walls and lifting the creature up off the floor, a red-green rune appeared in the centre of its twisted body, a fragment of the one that Wanderer saw before but more stable, and this newly formed eye fixed Wanderer in its gaze, sending a cruel chill down their earthen spine.

In the Golem's pressured mind a single thought formed, a name taken from the memories of the Magi and a description matched to the carvings on the walls.

“Verdestry”