The Tree of Life (Chandre)

The little garden oasis was coming together quite nicely. Her tiny gnome workers had finished putting together a lovely little white picket fence and some other lawn ornament paraphernalia while she dutifully ‘watered’ the roots of the tree with splashes for red. The tree greedily soaked up this particular brand of fertilizer and Chandre could tell that this thing was just about ready to bear fruit. It all made sense considering the very fertile ground she had decided to grow the thing in, a sort of spiritual oasis in the desert. It was a little odd, but Chandre found that there were very distinct differences in sand from one area of Heuco Mundo compared to another area. The spiritual density of the sand seemed to shift, seemingly randomly, but Chandre had a few thoughts as to how this had come to pass. She surmised that hollows who died, but were not eaten specifically or entirely, decomposed naturally and suffused the surrounding sands with their spiritual energy. It could also be that arrant attacks such as Cero’s fired off into the horizon didn’t just dissipate into nothingness, but seeded the sand with the energy like a sort of rain. Over time, these areas drew in more hollows, attracted to the rich spiritual energy, and afterwards, more fights and more deaths made places like the one she was currently working in. Places like this were, of course, inherently dangerous because of the swarm of hollows flitting about, but they were generally weaker and intellectually blunt, making it unlikely that they’d try and burrow down to her tree. However, what Chandre had neglected to take into account was that a more powerful, higher intelligence hollow may come stomping along tempted not by the rietsu infused sand, but the churning mass of monsters fighting over it.

Chandre noted that two of her candles came back to life, signalling the nearly simultaneous end of her Vetruvian Homme creations that were fighting outside to protect her garden whil she was setting it up. Now, it wouldn’t be too strange if they had just ‘timed out’ since she could only support her more powerful Vetruvian Homme creatures for so long. Unfortunately, they both had quite a bit of time left on them, and that only meant something out there had managed to kill them both. This struck the wax-work hollow as a little odd seeing as most of the small fry out there were of little concern to her art, and it was sincerely unlikely that these two had fallen to such meager beasts, especially at the same time. She mentally prodded the scene outside, which was difficult to suss out what was what given the hundreds if not thousands of creatures flying around. She handed her watering can off to one of the gnomes absently mindedly and walked over to the entrance of her room, only to notice a crack suddenly appear along her wall. She stopped a moment, caution and curiosity fighting in equal measure and stalling her advance. It was only when a monstrous arm crashed through the wall and scooped her up in its hand that she decided perhaps caution should be the main thought in her head. The behemoth like creature pulled her free from the ground and held her aloft, its fingers squeezing tightly on its latest catch. The monstrous creature was easily twenty meters tall, and humanoid enough that Chandre could guess it was a fellow adjuchas level hollow. Small vent like holes dotted its surface, wafts of steam seeming to flow out in every movement, and an elongated mask opened wide with a bloody stench blasting from its gullet as it tossed Chandre toward its face like so many hollows before her.

Word Count: 623