63. Trees and Blackouts
The tree comes into being with a jerk and a fanfare. The fanfare from your menu, a pop up filling much of your vision.
The jerk comes from the world itself, a visceral shuddering rejection, a total lack of acceptance of the thing you have created. The tree itself seems almost normal compared to the last one you attempted. The trunk is comprised of a dense network of root or vine-like structures projecting up around ten feet, before blooming into a dome of foliage. The whole effect was as if someone had tried to make a mushroom into a tree, or perhaps the work of a mad topiarist with a similar aim in mind. It's quite attractive to be honest, and you're struggling to see the demonic influence in it at all.
Which begs the question as to why the world is roiling in absolute rejection. The air is twisting in on itself like a thunderhead in miniature, the stone around the root base is churning; its as if reality is boiling in fever, denying that which you have wrought.
You're forced back as a noise, oddly like someone dropping jelly from a great height, rips through the cave. Mercy to your left throws a hand over her face as the storm in miniature in front of you gets worse and you stumble back a half step as the winds start to drag at you. A small pebble rolls against your foot as you look down in time to see gravity lose the battle – the stone is torn from the floor and whips through the air in a great spiral towards the tree, which...
You blink, and blink again as you back away again.
You know what you're seeing is just a strange visual effect, because the cavern you are in is still the same size as it ever was. So there is no way that the tree is miles away from you, yet so large it takes your breath away. The tree inside the mountain cannot be larger than the mountain it is inside. No matter that your eyes are screaming and the air is screaming and the world is screaming and it's getting louder and louder and LOUDER.
“MERCY!” you shout, your voice torn from your lips and swallowed by the now howling vortex surrounding the impossible tree. You dig your claws into the floor as you begin to slide, your sense of balance going strange as the tree continues to grow, your body convinced that the floor is falling backwards underneath you.
You open your menu, desperate for any way of stopping this, even if you have to delete the room you're stood in. Even your menu seems to be effected however, bending and distorting under your hand as the wound in the world gets ever bigger.
Mercy's feet give out from under her and she goes tumbling directly towards the sheer wrongness that is the tree. You reach for her but your eyes are convinced she is already far beyond the reach your mind insists you have even as her horrified eyes turn to yours and she tumbles backwards - the stump elemental's vines whip past you and wrap around her, dragging her backwards even as the elemental lets out a groan of tortured wood. You spare it half a nod. Maybe it needs a name too? Your eyes are dragged back to the reality defying abomination in front of you.
If I get out of this I'm going to deserve all the teasing I'm going to get from Sapphire.
“Good job... Stumpy.” You whisper, cracking a smile.
Your menu leaps under your hand, dragging your attention back to it even as your own feet begin to slip.
Your mind is blank for a moment even as your body tries desperately to stay attached to the floor that is now more wall than floor. Stumpy reaches for you too, but too many of its vines are wrapped around Mercy – far more than should be needed to reach the distance your mind insists is less than ten foot even as your eyes are sure she fell a dozen meters.
The menu leaps again
Your claws finally lose the battle and
everything
goes
strange
The wind drops to nothing, leaving you hanging in the air. Drifting. Nothing exists but you and the tree that stretches out, larger than the world, ahead of you. A strange serenity falls over you as you gaze on your creation. Leaves like the moon in scope and distance dance around you in an impossible display.
Huh. Now it's bigger, those vines kinda look like-
The menu jerks again.
And then again, placing itself against your hand so that a single claw taps the 'yes' button.
This pop up is red. How strange.
Another popup shoves the first out of the way.
The first shoves back.
The tree is getting very close now. Or perhaps it is even larger than you thought. Or perhaps you are very small. It's all you can see.
That last pop up almost seems petulant. You're sure that if air quotes had a text equivalent other than... you know, quotation marks, it would have used them.
The tree fills your ears and a rushing noise not unlike water fills your vision,
Strange
Goes
Everything
And then
You shake your head, and look at Mercy.
“Did... Something just?”
Mercy is shaking her head too. “I don't... Deja Vu?”
You can't resist a set up like that. “Did... something just?”
She laughs at that, and mimes slugging you in the arm. “Ass. Come on, we're probably only a few hits from finishing this thing.”
A strange sense of unease wriggles in your gut as you look at the unfinished outline of the tree, but you shrug it off. It's not every day you invent something entirely new to creation, after all.
The tree comes into being with a jerk and a fanfare. The fanfare from your menu, a popup filling much of your vision.
The jerk comes from both you and Mercy, as you both fling yourself away from it. The stump elemental seems to react as well – vines shoot towards the both of you, wrapping you tightly and almost flinging you to the far side of the room.
The tree, which is comprised of a dense network of root or vine-like structures projecting up around ten feet, before blooming into a dome of foliage, sits at the far end of the cavern.
You look at Mercy and the two of you speak at the same time.
“Right.”
“Well.”
Even the stump elemental manages to look embarrassed.
The two of you look look back towards the tree.
“It... doesn't look demonic?” you hazard after several seconds examination. Mercy snorts next to you.
“Amateur. Let me know when you see it.” She strides away from you, trailing a hand through the stump elemental's vines. And then your perception kicks in.
“Alright, who named the elemental Stumpy?”
Mercy stops and looks around, then down at the apparently christened Stumpy. Her lips twist as if she's trying to keep from laughing.
“Hate to break it to you Red, but you're the only one who can name things around here. It's your lair after all.”
You shake your head in refusal. “I didn't name Charlemagne, he named himself.”
“Nope, sorry. He may have picked it out, but it's your agreement or refusal that makes it true.” She flashes you a smile. “On some level, you must like the name 'Sand' too.”
You look back at Stumpy in mounting horror, and then fix your gaze to Mercy.
“Sapphire must never know.”
She laughs and you cross the room in two quick bounds, until you are able to push her shoulders and take her feet out with your tail at the same time. A low growl builds in your throat as you stare down at her. She gives an exaggerated gulp, and although you can see her giving you her full attention you can also feel her legs fall open. An invite and a distraction you cannot afford right now.
Not if you want to fend off the ultimate evil.
“Sapphire must never know.”
Mercy nods, a languid movement like a tigress stretching. “As you say.”
A waft of pink magic and a wave of her hand and you are suddenly marginally closer to the half demon beneath you as her wench outfit dissolves into sparks. You raise an eyebrow at her.
“You don't want to check out your tree first? Save yourself for the party you were talking about?”
She arches an eyebrow at you in turn. “Save myself? Are you perhaps confusing me with some other woman who was not born from two of the most sexual creatures on the planet?”
She shifts a little more and you are hard pressed to keep upright as one of her hands strokes up the side of your ribs.
“Hmm? It's only been... what, a dozen hours? You can't be that pent up already!”
You answer her tease with a glare, rolling off of her chest and shaking yourself down like a dog.
“Come on, are you not even a little interested to see if it worked as well as the quest seems to indicate?”
Mercy sighs as she pushes herself into a sitting position, although she makes no move to cover herself. Some of her bravado seems to leak away as she stares at you for an indefinable moment.
“Truth be told,” she sighs, “I'm... more scared than I thought I'd be.”
You turn back to her, seeing her still sat where you left her. Nodding at your silent prompt, she starts to talk again.
“You've given me an awful lot of hope, lately. And some small... no, quite a large part of me worries that at some point you won't be able to deliver -” she holds up a hand, although you hadn't planned on speaking. “I'm not blaming you, please understand that. This is... well, it's wonderful. You pull miracles out of your ass better than any god. It's amazing. But that doesn't change the part of me that has been let down in the past, doesn't let me trust you completely. And, if I'm worried that one day you'll fail... why would that day not be now?”
She takes a long look at the tree behind you. “And that part of me wonders if it would not be better just just keep that hope alive, rather than risk it.” She turns a wan smile in your direction, although you're not sure she's truly looking at you. “If you forgive me for waxing poetic, then hope is a small flame, and all the world is a harsh wind. I don't yet have it in my to trust you to be the tinder needed to... grow the flame?” she ends, somewhat questioning her own words, and you let out a grunt.
“Yeah, I think you killed that metaphor for all it was worth.” You step over to her and, with some finagling, get her upright. “Come on. I still can't see the corruption that's apparently so inherent in this thing.”
With that, the melancholy air seems to break and Mercy offers you a more genuine smile.
“Really? What about now?” she asks, stroking one hand over the bark of the trunk.
Ah
The trunk writhes like a bag of snakes, and between one blink and the next, you find that what you had thought was vines or roots are actually... people. Small, wooden people, wrapped around each other, folded over each other, and, as the tree moves, involved in the smallest yet highest participant orgy you've ever seen.
And then somehow it gets lewder.
The... people... move and shudder until the entire trunk opens up, splitting from floor to branch and revealing a cavity inside the opening. An opening that looks an awful lot like a...
“Really?”
“See the corruption yet?”
“No, I mean, Really? Succubus corruption couldn't be more subtle than a great big wooden vagina?”
Mercy takes a moment to school her features before responding. “The... great big wooden vagina is actually from the dryad side. Fertility, birth and motherhood, all of that. The tiny orgy is the demon bit.”
You shake your head and turn your attention to the insistent pop up that's been flying around your head.
You hit yes, frowning as the menu shudders for a moment, other words flicking over it, before a soft whump sounds and five other, slightly smaller, trees burst into place.
A huge thank you to my patreons NA, Lictor Magnus, Spockk Kirkk, Un Casualsniper, and Tyrant615