Wraithwood Botanist

From the outset, I was inclined to believe the mound of nearan mushrooms with the mana flower on top was a symbiotic bait-and-switch scheme where the fungi were protecting a valuable plant as a way of luring in prey.

It was a good scheme. The mushrooms would kill the host, decompose it, and potentially provide nutrients to the mana-intensive plant.

There was just one problem with that theory: saprobic mushrooms decompose dead matter—not live prey. Even pitcher plants, famous carnivorous plants that lure in prey and decompose the body for nutrients with the help of mushrooms, only host the mushrooms to digest their dead prey. Once again, it wasn't living.

It was hard to draw a hard parallel for that theory.

Another grim suggestion was that the fungus was parasitic—like cordyceps—and took over the brain and nervous system of its prey, making the victim search for seeds of powerful plants to use as lures. Then, the prey would return, plant the seeds, and die, providing nutrients for the plant.

While that was a possibility, there was another explanation, evidenced by the fact that the flower was completely white—leaves and stem. That told a different story.

"The flower's parasitic," I muttered.

Ghost plant. Indian Pipe. These ghostly white plants obtain nutrients by infecting mycorrhizal fungi for nutrients instead of through photosynthesis—hence the reason the stems were white instead of green. That's exactly what I was seeing. And yet…

"But then…" I winced. "Why would intelligent fungi let itself be infected? Unless… this is just the worst fucking plant ever."

That wasn't off the table. This was Areswood—and the forest was as grim as it came. So it wasn't inconceivable that a sentient—or even sapient—fungi couldn't purposely attach itself to powerful plants and use them as a lure to bring in prey to kill. Then, it would decompose them to provide for a ghost plant. A bait and switch, symbiotic, parasitic death plant that killed live prey.

Either way, if that flower was bait, it had to be good—and while a normal plant would require years or decades of study to make sense of, I had a special luxury:

"I guess I should just ask it," I thought. It was a nearan plant; after eating countless fragments of intelligent consciousness, it likely became intelligent itself. That was the essence of nearan plants.

I flew a hundred meters away and touched down on the ground. Then I touched the ground and shot a nearan pulse at the plant, connecting to it in the same way that I connected with the freeters and the herbs within the crypt.

Yet this was a different type of plant. It was ghostly. Chilling. Empty.

It felt like I was sucked into a void once we connected, with my vision turning black and murky. It was empty inside. So empty. But I could feel a soul within that darkness—a large soul. A powerful soul, like a shark hiding in pitch-black waters.

The word that came to mind was Devourer.

This wasn't a soul harvester. It was a soul devourer—and somehow, I understood that there was a legitimate difference between the two.

"What do you want?" I asked into the abyss.

A laugh echoed in the darkness, but there were no words. Yet I could still understand this creature somehow, so I answered it:

"What can I offer you?" I asked rhetorically. "The corpse of a peak third evolution beast."

Suddenly, the ground rubbled in the real world, and mycelium shot through the ground toward me.

I severed the connection, spread my wings, and grabbed Kline and Sina before launching into the air. Not a moment later, mycelium shot out of the ground and wrapped around the trees.

I laughed and flew another hundred meters away. Then I shot a pulse and watched as the creature shot its hyphae at me above ground, stretching it further and further until the hyphae were thin as angel hair pasta. I flew back another hundred meters and put my hand on the ground again.

"Let's try this again," I said. I sent out a nearan pulse and reconnected to the void. Once I was within it, I skipped the lecture and said: "I have a peak third evolution beast meat outside my house right now. It's probably rotting, but I think you like that type of thing. Yeah?" I smirked when he bellowed. "Great… so then. If I gave you this carcass… what do I get out of it?"

A large white flower suddenly bloomed in the darkness, and when it expanded its petals, I could suddenly, by virtue of a strange form of telepathy, understand what the plant did—and why so many creatures died to capture it.

It was unique.

Special, even.

Or perhaps special wasn't even the word but rather a specialization so rare it might as well be unique—because of the relationship between the various forms of magic.

Mana. Aura. Neara.

This flower had all three. I didn't notice until it unraveled, exposing a complex network of mana knotted together with aura and neara. It was beautiful, marbled together like slowly mixing purple dye into white frosting.

Satisfying.

"Lithco…" I whispered. "What's the relationship between mana and neara."

I got no answer.

Right… I'm in my subconscious…

I swallowed the lump in my throat and negotiated. "I'll trade you the beast for the flower."

The darkness laughed back at me.

"Peak third evolution isn't enough?" I laughed. "Well then, how about this? I'll give you the meat—and I won't kill you."

Suddenly, I could see thousands of mushrooms in the darkness, each filled with plumes of dangerous spores, and the beast was threatening to erupt:

I laughed again. "I suppose I should introduce myself. My name is Mira Hill—and I am Brindle Grask's pupil. If you insult me with such a weak threat again, I'll corrupt souls and force-feed them to you."

The soul roared, and a wave of complex emotions waved through my body. My muscles shuddered, and my mind tingled—but I pressed on.

"Yeah, that's right," I said. "Brindle. And right now, one of your fellow soul eaters is trying to eat the huge soul underneath us. And my chances of convincing it to fuck off is zero to none right now. So, how about I sweeten the pot? I'll give you the beast, I won't set you on fire, and I'll put serious effort into convincing the mushroom that's trying to eat Yakana to fuck off. Yeah?"

2.

Felio sat on the porch of her home, petting Sina and the lurvines. Mira didn't call them by name. She was a bit of a wild child, speaking to them through some strange form of animalistic telepathy, but Felio wouldn't have it, so she memorized their names.

Sina, Kael, Kal, Ryn, Viel, Lira, Dain.

Now, if only I could remember which one was which. Stay updated with empire

Felio spent a good deal of time doing it today—because Mira was gone—and it eased her anxiety. She almost had an anxiety attack when she woke and found Mira was gone, so she focused on the lurvine—keeping her mind off the worst.

Felio wasn't worried about herself. She had over a thousand pounds of jerky and seven beautiful lurvines that brought in fresh quarry. She was protected and fed, clothed and sheltered. So she wasn't worried about herself—she was worried about Mira.

Felio had never had a friend, in the way that Mira described them.

She had acquaintances.

Family relationships.

Courtships.

The idea that people would just spend time together because they enjoyed each other's presence was a foreign concept that she was aware existed, but she had never experienced it herself. Then, Mira just showed up, talked to her about alchemy and plants, invited her to stay, and even went so far as to offer her requests for help on projects way out of her control. Why? For no reason whatsoever.

Or for friendship.

Felio loved that, and the idea that Mira would die was too much for her to bear. So she was anxious, petting the lurvine, watching Cassain and the guards lay concrete for the guard building across the way, expecting the worst, stuck in a maelstrom of anxiety,

And that's where she was when Mira suddenly returned.

It was an absurd sight.

Mira didn't just show up with Kline and a rabbit or sweaty from practice. She flew in with angel wings, swooping in and yelling, "I'll explain later!" as Kira shot tentacles of aura into the meat they couldn't harvest before it started rotting, hooking it and pulling it into the air.

"Wait!" Felio cried. "Take me with you!"

"Can't!" Mira yelled as she flew away. "This one's actually dangerous!"

"Dangerous?" Felio cried, jumping down and rushing after her.

Cassain flew out of nowhere and held her back.

"For you!" Mira said. "I'm fine. Promise!"

Then she disappeared.

But as Felio walked to the lurvine, Mira returned and said:

"Hurry up and get ready. For reasons that are hard to explain, I set up a meeting with my God in two hours, and I need your help. See you soon."

With those words, Mira destroyed any doubt that she would die while multiplying a new type of terror that was far, far worse somehow.

"Two hours?" Felio cried. She wanted to protest, but Mira was already gone. And to her immense displeasure, Mira had demanded her help for a god-related matter mere hours after Felio declared that she couldn't help her.

What's going on? she cried.

Yet there was no chance to hold back. The person Mira was meeting with was one of the most famous goddesses in the multiverse. As an alchemist, Felio would rather commit suicide than turn her down. So she ran to her room and quickly applied her makeup. It was going to be a long day.

3.

According to Lithco, if I wanted to make a pact with the roostrangler attacking Yakana, I needed to boost my nearan channels to be able to withstand the power it obtained by eating hundreds of souls from the Wandering Reaper and nearby soul plants. Unfortunately, obtaining nearan resources was difficult, so I would need to get it from soul meat—which was remarkably dangerous. That's why LIthco told me that I would need help from Brindle or Yakana, something difficult to do when I couldn't contact Yakana without risking my core in the river and with Brindle's unwillingness to help me unless I was in a crisis—and I had already done most of the work.

Yet this strange plant would change that. If I could make an elixir from it, it would increase my nearan channels dramatically, allowing me to learn neara threading without, you know, scrambling my brains like undercooked eggs.

It wasn't a solution to my problem—

—but it made training possible.

Dronami was telling me to succeed—so I would heed its call.

Luckily, I had a path to victory.

The cool thing about plant soul pacts is that they're just like any other soul pact. I told it that I was trading the meat and a promise to attempt convincing this thing to back off, and it, in exchange, told me that I could have the flower and it wouldn't harm me or my companions during the exchange. So I brazenly entered the beast's kill zone, fully aware that it would die if it tried to break its word.

"I've brought the meat," I said, unloading it a hundred feet before the mound that was freckled with a patch of mushrooms that looked like California poppies.

As I approached, wondering whether I should fly to pick the plant—and worrying if my wings would destroy the mushrooms or spread its spores. I was strong to worry—because some ultra bleak shit happened instead.

As if this mushroom were Stephen King's IT, the mound split apart like a horizontal mouth, exposing hundreds of tentacles of mycelium.

Oh hell no… I thought. My heartbeat hit unhealthy fibrillations, and I tensed up, body wrapped in goosebumps. Come on, Mira… I thought, don't back out now.

I walked forward slowly, entering its mouth, terrified it would snap closed on me, creating a prison of moist dirt and thick mats of sentient hyphae, but when I saw it pulling a bulb out of the ground, like a ghostly white coconut, only the size of a tennis ball, and noticed it was connected to the flower, my heart fluttered.

It's a bulb flower… I thought with fascination. It was hard to compare this plant with a tulip, but there I was, viewing that parallel with distinct confidence.

I pulled out the largest preservation chamber I had—praying it would be enough. And the second I opened and purified it, I screamed when the walls shifted around me. I thought it was closing, but to my amazement, it was just filling the chamber with dirt and mycelium.

"What the hell was that?" I thought. Then I got a strange link from the plant that said, Feed, and I understood.

I couldn't pick this flower—

—I needed to keep it alive.

I nodded as its tendrils brought the flower and bulb to the chamber, tucking them neatly inside the dirt and mycelium it filled the chamber with. Then, I closed the lid.

Leave, it said through strange telepathy.

"Thank you," I said. On my way out, I saw hyphae dragging six hundred pounds of meat toward the plant. I jumped out of the way as the meat entered the mouth—and then the spread dirt mound and hyphae teeth snapped closed. Two words: nightmare fuel.

I chuckled insanely after the experience. "Fuck. That." I turned to Kline and Sina pleadingly. "Let's go."

I made a meeting with Elana before leaving, and I was already late. I prayed Elana would forgive me when she saw me with an unidentified plant.