Yulania’s Origin: Chosen Descendant – Teaser

Yulania’s Origin: Chosen Descendant – Teaser

The foreign feeling of the roots starts to fade as my body becomes numb. I see nothing, I hear nothing, I feel nothing. There's only darkness and silence.

As I wait until the Bed of Communion finishes connecting to me, the boredom makes me fall asleep, and I start to dream.

I see the Source of Life, the power Creation refined and infused in us. It's so pure and perfect that it attracts all sorts of living beings, almost fully covering the endless Source from my view.

Out of all the interesting and diverse beings drawing upon the Source, a simple vine spreading out catches my attention.

I follow it as it grows and grows further from away, bravely exploring the unknown all by itself, then it's stopped by a flower that takes roots around it and chokes it out.

The flower blooms, its beautiful and textured petals rearranging itself repeatedly like a kinetic sculpture, then it spreads its pollen around, creating more of its kind and filling the air with its fragrant perfume.

A short, flat, and fluffy animal appears and starts eating the flowers. Its small mouth nibbles on the flowers with blinding speed, quickly eating each flower through hundreds of little bites.

It suddenly squeaks and scampers away, but a Gatun pounces on it and kills it with one strike, then it runs off with its prey before other predators appear.

The Gatun runs and runs, its long and powerful limbs tirelessly swinging back and forth. It braves new lands by itself for it must, or else it'll become the food of something bigger than it.

Its muscles grow weary and weak, its fur loses its sheen and grays, its eyes start failing it and it misses its prey. Its body slowly starts to fail from old age, then it meets a predator stronger than it.

The two fight fiercely for every fight is one for their lives, and the old Gatun manages to scare the other predator away but becomes mortally wounded as a result.

After siring many children, eating countless prey, surviving in every foreign environment, the proud beast breathes for the last time and dies under just another common tree.

Its body rots and nature reclaims its flesh as it's eaten by bugs, then plants start to grow on its remains.

A vine takes birth from inside its bones, then bravely spreads out and away from its source towards the unknown. The cycle is starting over again, and again, and again, becoming faster each time.

From the plants, to animals, to the bugs, to the plants again. Their cycle becomes so fast that they all appear at the same time. The vine is eaten by the fluffy animal while it's bitten by the Gatun, whose lower body rotting, being eaten by bugs, and vines grow again from its bones.

The cycle of survival is neverending. They're always eating one another, spreading further from the Source of All Life, but in the end, they're all still connected to it.

I suddenly wake up as the numbing from the anesthesia reduces, allowing me to feel my body again. I've been connected directly to a live Eia, and we share our senses with each other.

I can see through its "eyes," but I see nothing right now, and the Eia would also be able to see through mine if I wasn't in complete darkness. But the purpose of this training is for me to take over the Eia, not for us to learn how to coexist.

Trying to move my body is useless, so I focus on my [Weaverism]. The roots of the Eia are in my body, inside my veins, drinking my blood, and I need to reclaim my control over my own vital fluid.

I gather some of my mana and send out a pulse, then I watch for reverberations outside of my body. My blood reacts to my mana, and it briefly returns to my control.

I send more and more mana out, and my connection with my blood grows.

This is mine. This belongs to me.

I grit my teeth and grunt in effort as I force my blood to move, and I feel the whole Eia plant twitch.

Good. It seems everything is under my control.

Plants don't have muscles to move individual parts of their body, but they can still move nonetheless through a connection, a shared "will" that allows them to make basic actions in perfect sync with each other, and I must copy that.

The hundreds of little roots that hold my blood are all parallel to each other, separated. I can see them as if they were threads of a loom, just ready to be weaved. They can't physically touch each other, but I can connect them all with my Life.

Almaria's teachings come back into my mind to help me focus.

Our bodies are our physical forms, able to act upon the world. Our spirits are our "diagrams," the patterns from which our bodies are created. Our Threads are our future, for the Overseer has already seen it all, but our will interferes with their omniscience. Our Source of Life is what powers us all and give us intelligence; different from mana, it's nearly endless but extremely limited in comparison. Our Life is our will quantified, it's a sub-process in raw form, and it's what gives us the impetus to move, consume, and expand.

Our Life is our will quantified, it's a sub-process in raw form, and it's what gives us the impetus to move, consume, and expand.

I repeat the last part in my mind many times as I gradually loosen my focus, entering a trance as I start to tap into my Source.

I can't sharpen my will to an edge like I'd do to create a sub-process, I need to keep it "loose" and "vague." I know what I want, but I can't control how things go, so I have to let it all take its own course.

I'm not the Eia, and it's not a part of me. We're neither a humanoid, nor Eia, we're a new, unique being.

I infuse my mana with my will and pulse it again.

My own Thread unravels and becomes many small strands that start to weave with each other, creating a "sheet" of myself. I'm not just one, singular being, but a fabric composed of many smaller parts of me, and I wrap myself around the Eia.

I see with the Eia's "eyes" strands of Life birthing from the strands of blood, and connecting them all to each other, weaving a cloth that allows me to truly fuse with the plant.

Once the weaving is done, I start to adapt to my new, extended body, becoming very comfortable in it, so much that I start to become sleepy. Just standing immobile all day while my roots absorb nutrients in a warm and hospitable small room just feels so good.

I tug at the weave and jolt awake. I have something to do, so I can't get comfortable yet.

I observe all of my weave and find the one spot that leads somewhere out of my control. It's a thin, single strand that connects me to the Life out there. It's not physical, so trying to pass through without breaking is almost impossible. Almost.

I groan, and my whole weave hums in resonance.

I hate this test.

I push my weave to one side then the other repeatedly, thinning it out at the middle. Once I feel like it's thin enough, I pull it forward, towards the small, single strand.

It's a slow process, but little by little, I take control of the strand. I can't take over it forcefully because my will is too strong, and it'll easily break if I try to, so I can only do it through this indirect way.

As the hours pass, my weave weakens along with my mana and mental will. Feeling like I'm about to fail, I become desperate and try to forcefully get through the last stretch, but the strand breaks, and I feel a sting as some of my Life is wasted away.

Godsdamnit!

Through the Eia's eyes, I see a new Source of Life appearing, and I have a good feeling that it's Almaria.

The person gets close to me and cuts one of the roots connecting me to the Eia, giving me another sting, so I start to return to my body. I undo the weave and return my Life to me, then I burst the blood at specific spots, cutting the roots connecting me to the plant.

Once all of the connections are severed, I release the blood from my hold, and the anesthetic from the Eia's roots starts to wear off, allowing me to move my muscles again.

After a few minutes, I open my eyes and see a faint light illuminating Almaria's fair face.

"Are you doing fine, Yulania?" She asks, her thin eyebrows wrinkled in worry.

"Yes..." I weakly mutter as the anesthetic is still acting upon me.

"Good..." She mutter and smiles, then she frowns a bit disappointingly. "Well, not so good since you failed the test, but you were doing good... until you weren't and failed, but it was mostly good."

I chuckle weakly, then she leans over me and starts helping remove all the roots still inside my veins. It stings a bit, but Almaria activates the [Regeneration] on the Bed of Communion, and all the pain goes away.

"I hate the single strand test..." I mumble and pout.

"Didn't you progress further this time? You'll get through it one day," Almaria tries to console me.

I sit up and start stretching. "It's just so boring...!"

She smiles kindly, and her small circular glasses gleam as they reflect her [Spirit Light]. "Yes, it is, but it teaches you a very useful skill. You need to learn how to be delicate if you want to learn how to be efficient. Brute-forcing everything will make your magic plateau easily, and you can't forever remain a mediocre mage."

I sigh and start putting on my thin clothes again as I grumble, "I know, I know. I'm the Chosen Descendant, so I can't go through any shortcut."

She pats my head and smiles. "Exactly, but if you want to rant, remember this again once you're done."

While I gawk at the beautiful colors of their leaves, Dad starts explaining, "I'd like to bring you here when one of the guardian dryads come visit, but they only do it every few years, so we'll come again next year for you to meet one."

"No, this is fine," I absentmindedly respond.

The song ends and the plants stop moving, then Dad pushes me through a narrow path, and I shiver as the Eias all purposely brush their leaves against us to "taste us."

My Life-senses even start to get stimulated as I feel the web all around us. Every Eia is so deeply connected to one another they're almost a single entity, but they're all still independent from one another.

"This is our gold, Yunia. This is why Escanso was built here, because nowhere else can we get Eia with such a high-quality," Dad proudly comments as we walk.

"What's so special about this place?" I question curiously. I've always wondered why our Eia is so good.

"I'd say that half of it is our water. The fish under our lake are very vicious, flooding the waters with nutrients and the right flavor of mana for the Eia. The other half is in the people..."

The song stops and I see a farmer cut his wrists with a dagger, then he starts to walk along the rows of plants while letting his blood drip on the dirt. The Eia all stop moving and start shaking faintly, filling the air with a faint buzzing all around us.

The farmer smiles brightly as he runs his hand over the "heads" of the Eias, then The plants crowd around him and even lower themselves so he can more easily reach them.

My Life-sense starts tingling again, and I notice how the farmer's Life is so connected to the Eia that I'm not sure if he's part of the plants, or the plants are part of him.

Dad follows my gaze and nods in satisfaction. "The people here have such a strong connection to Life that we weren't that surprised about your affinity to it," he continues, then his tone becomes a bit somber. "The Eia we produce is so important to the High Forest that the moment we stop selling it, we'd all be executed by the Elder Council and replaced."

This is a bit chilling. For as much as the Eia trade is our pride, it's also a chain on our necks.

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