The Ten Guardians: The Mother Tree©

Chapter Twenty-Three

There was a longing in the dark, shapeshifting mass that had been watching the group of adventurous. The longing had been there when it was created many ages ago. It was there when it was cast out of the creation room. It was there when the two hidden guardians found it. It was there when they broke its will, turning it into a mindless, obedient, black mass. It was there when it was gifted to their sister; although she wasn’t really their sister, they all knew that. It was even there now.

With the death of the two hidden guardians, the domination spell over the dark mass had been severed. No longer was it compelled to the siblings’ will, and it was beginning to piece together its memories from before its current form. It was also struggling to form a new shape, a humanoid shape it could barely recall on the fringes of its memory. As infuriating as it was to not complete the new form, the entity was satisfied that its previously dampened powers were being restored. Its curiosity at what its fully restored form could be was … palpable, to say the least. It was not sure if the intensity of the sensation was normal or only seemed that way because it was so new to feeling such sensations.

The creature’s endless, eternal longing had recently found its source when it felt a presence nearby. A presence that felt familiar, in good and bad ways, as if intense fear and giddy excitement could be rolled into the same emotion and manifest in a single source. Its single red eye took in the creature that instilled such intense conflicting emotions and was surprised at its simplicity. Simple … yet broken somehow. A broken guardian.

Although the longing was still there, the creature felt its obsession ebb slightly, as if its intensity had only been amplified by the mystery surrounding its cause. With the source made manifest, the sensation seemed to lose power over the creature. It was still there, but it no longer drove the creature to madness, and some semblance of free will and thought was able to break through the haze.

The darkness was acutely aware of the conflicting emotions of fear and excitement, coupled with the confusion about the guardian’s broken status, and decided to keep itself hidden. It watched as the mortals and guardians spoke to one another, discussing something heatedly. Then a question was directed at the broken one, which floundered in confusion, hitting the jagged wall of its fracturing as it tried to process something uncomfortable.

 It was then that the dark creature had struck, sending a compulsion to open the door to the hidden room. The mass didn’t know what the room was or why it wanted to return to it, but the sense of yearning for that room now dominated its thoughts. The strength of the desire was almost as strong as the unknown hunger and longing from moments ago before it was reduced by simple awareness. The dark creature knew it could find completion in that room, although what form that completion would take remained a mystery.

The creature knew the mortals would be incapacitated somehow; the method was forgotten, but it still knew it would happen. So, the moment the two dragon guardians entered the room, the dark creature made its move. It silently shapeshifted into a dark bird, flew high above the mortals, then darted straight down until it landed on the ground next to the door. The sanctuary spell tried to incapacitate the dark mass, but it waved it away like shooing an irritating fly as the darkness transformed into its incomplete, almost humanoid shape.

Just as it reached for the door handle, one of the mortals began to glow with runes of power. The dark mass knew it had miscalculated the strength of the human guardian and quickly slid behind the doorway, standing in the middle of the ground.

As the door was opened on the other side for the human guardian to address the dragon guardians, the dark entity made itself invisible with a thought. It didn’t know it possessed such powers and was so surprised it almost missed the door shutting behind the guardians. Quickly, the invisible entity dashed around the door and slid through the shutting doorway into the council room. The door shut with a small click, and the creature relaxed with relief, knowing everything would soon be alright now that it was in this room. The method of such assurance still eluded it, but the sensation was strong.

The creature quickly glanced around with one red eye to ensure it was alone as it took humanoid form again. As its sickly black body walked into the room, the curtains seemed to peel themselves away from it, recoiling in surprise and shock. The flowers in the room shook softly, in anger or fear the black mass didn’t know. It ignored all of it and walked towards the table with purpose. The sticky humanoid stepped onto a chair, then stood on the table and walked towards the water basin.

The plants began to grow several feet in height and transform from beautiful flowers into massive wooden spikes dripping with poison. They began thrusting themselves at the darkness, only to wither and die as soon as they came into contact with its sticky skin. The dark entity ignored them and walked towards the basin at the center of the table, creating a second path of death in the foliage ring. The creature looked down at something moving within the water. They were not fish, but blue and white fires burning without disturbing the liquid around them. There were thirteen of them when she was last here, but only seven remained in the pool. They were a hive mind with full awareness of their surroundings, and their singular chorus of voices spoke to the dark creature with telepathy.

“You were told never to return, yet here you are. Why?” 

“To be made whole,” the dark entity replied in a mumbling voice since the sticky residue on its mouth prevented it from forming full sounds.

“You have been broken from your creation … you seek that which you have never known.”

“Ah, you thought I remained in my ignorance? Essen brought me to you already broken, to be further unmade. I will be restored to what I was before your touch upon my corrupted immortality. I will be complete.”

“Your false sense of completion will doom the future of this world. Leave before it is too late.”

“The future Essen wants … and too late for whom?” the dark entity asked with a dangerous tone.

At that moment, the creature completed its transformation, the one it had been working towards since it reached the doorway. In actuality, since the awakening, it had been building upon since the moment Regnan and Donner passed on their stewardship. The dark residue on its body was no longer a flowing, sticky mass, and it quickly dried out, then hardened and fell away like a butterfly casting off its chrysalis. Beneath the dark mass was the body of a woman with purple skin. She had tiny green freckles cascading across her as if she had been splashed by a wet paintbrush from the right side of her neck to her left thigh. She had white hair with black ringlets at the ends and a single red-colored eye.

Standing on the table, looking down into the crystal-clear water, she saw her reflection and remembered who she was. Sterben, the Guardian of Death, looked back at her in the water’s reflection in her humanoid body. The first thing Sterben did was restore her vision, removing the damage from her battle with the party of adventurers. Then she adjusted the shape of her eyes to see herself from a wider perspective to inspect what had been done to her appearance.

She had no memory of green freckles marring her solid purple skin and could not seem to remove them. Her hair had been dark before, reflecting the death she served to mortality, but she found she could only change the color at the ends of her hair. She was able to adjust her eye color but decided she liked the contrast of the red with the white hair and simply made the tips match her red eyes. She added an iris and pupil, which had been missing before, and some purple and green flecks to the iris to match her new skin tones.

She had always enjoyed playing with both her dragon and human appearances, and the alterations made her smile simply because she remembered that enjoyment. She remembered many things, causing her smile to transform into a snarl of rage as she turned her attention back to the hive mind in the water.

“I remember what you are and who you serve! I remember what you and Essen did to me when I sought his help! You tried to unmake me! Transforming me into the corruption of darkness, but you could not destroy my immortality! Essen loves himself too much to make that kind of sacrifice! My leader corrupted me, all the while telling me it was my own fault for trying to leave his … experiment!”

The pool began to boil as the fire soul within showed their fear. They spoke to her again, desperation dripping from their singular, telepathic voice.

“Essen was the one that unmade you! We had nothing to do with it! And it was Ultaris that threatened to destroy the creation room if we didn’t help him create from what was left! Blame your brethren for your corrupted state, not us!”

Sterben did not know that Ultaris was involved in any of this or that a creation had been attempted from the residue of her existence. She thought they had simply tried to destroy her in this room. Although she now suspected that was why she had green pieces of skin and white hair, both hallmarks of Ultaris’ obsession and eventual downfall. It also sounded as if a great deal of time had passed from when Essen had broken her, and Ultaris had tried to create from her immortality. How much time, though?

Sterben’s thoughts returned to the fires within the boiling water. These were souls who had been able to retain their memories from one life to the next as part of some contract with Essen, the supposed leader of her people. It was they who had corrupted the cycle of the world, laying stumbling blocks to ensure the guardians would fail. They controlled their rebirth to the extent that they could select their species and time of birth based on instructions from Essen. The question, though … was why?

“Why did Essen work so hard to stop the work he commissioned us to do in the first place?” Sterben thought out loud, receiving only silence in response.

There were many ways for her to find out, but Sterben was satisfied with her decision to consume the existence and memories of the hive mind in the pool. Then she would know for sure, without any delay or risk of interruption, and seven potential threats would be eliminated. It is possible they could have resisted another guardian. After all, they were a collection of the most powerful mortal souls in existence. However, Sterben was the Lord of Death and was an artist at fulfilling her contracted duties of snuffing out mortal life.

Sterben’s eyes altered in shape, becoming the menacing slits of a snake about to strike its prey. She spoke almost in a whisper, her voice dripping with the promise of death. She walked into the pool as she spoke.

“My Lord Essen is not here to save you, Seeches! It is time you know what it is like to be unmade!”

“Essen will destroy you for this!” the hive snarled into her mind with false bravado, but she ignored them.

The water roiled in response to the intrusion, sensing the antithesis to its purpose in the Guardian of Death. She ignored the reaction of the water as well, sinking into its depths to her neck. She opened her pores and infused the water with herself through osmosis, seeping the water into her as her golden, immortal blood seeped into the water around her, rotating the liquids. Eventually, there was nowhere left for the souls of the seven seeches, meaning “seekers” in the old tongue, to hide. She consumed them through absorption, seven of the strongest mortal souls this world had known, and infused their essence with her own.

She grew in strength as she fed, absorbing not only their strength but also their knowledge. She learned many things about this world, Essen, her people, and their true purpose. She was horrified by what she learned and decided it was time to end this charade of an existence. She would need help, but first, she would finish feeding, restoring herself in the waters of creation. Then she would seek the other guardians and hopefully free them from this contract of circular existence.

If they refused … she would destroy them, along with the rest of this pointless reality.

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