55 Tree of Life (1/2)

Days passed by and turned into weeks. Eventually, those weeks grew into months. Time continued to pass but the Eternal Forest cared not. The giant, ancient trees of the forest continued to sleep and dream of past days. They thought it preferable to daydream eternally than wake up. Better a free man in their dreams than a damned prisoner in reality.

It was escapism at its finest but could anyone really blame them for it? Lu'um couldn't. The odds were against them. Against everyone. Against everything that once was and could be in the future.

She couldn't blame them for surrendering in the face of the end. They had the right to do so. But she didn't. And neither did he. They'd have to bear their burden once again and this time…

A thin film of sweat covered him as he struggled against himself in his sleep. His eyes tightly shut, as if he wanted to avoid seeing something. The Anima that rolled off of him was chaotic and unpredictable. Sometimes it'd monstrously swell and sometimes it'd recede back to normal.

The instability was something she'd prepared for since it was an expected symptom. Managing it was feasible, but taxing since she never knew how strong of a flare he'd release at any given moment when he was asleep. It could be a murmur — a faint whisper of the past — or a frightening storm that'd threaten even her if she were caught unawares.

It was like shepherding a hurricane away from a coast before it landed and destroyed everything.

But he is recovering… the severity of his outbursts is lessening. The more he recovers, the more we'll be able to restore… in due time, of course.

The flares were no longer as powerful as they were in the beginning when she'd met him. It was a nightmare in the beginning. His flares were so strong he nearly erased the Spire and its surroundings for kilometers once, if not for sacrificing half of her body to block the horrifying outburst of raw energy.

An injury like that should have taken no more than an instant to recover from with her abilities. Instead, it took her two whole days to recover from his outburst in secret. Even in slumber, his Anima still contained the same scorching, all-consuming qualities it had before…

He's even started picking up some of his old, irritating idiosyncrasies too. He's become a lot better at lying, but his classic tells are all still the same.

She was sure that he knew and understood more than he was letting on. That was something she was certain about. The way his eyes gleamed whenever certain topics were brought up made it painfully obvious to her. His uninterested, slightly bored facade was endlessly amusing to watch. It reminded her of better days…

Her strength slowly faded as soon as she saw the sun peaked out of the forest and weakly shone into the room. Before she even realized it, her eyes had closed and everything blurred into darkness.

”...”

Lu'um had entered the world of dreams by the time Reed was woken up by Mira. As far as he was concerned, sleeping beauty lived by her own rules and that included staying in bed past morning. If it meant that she'd stay out his hair for a couple of hours, he was all for it. He was more than fine with her sleeping as long as she wanted.

It'd give him more time to digest what he learned or rather, what had been forced upon him. Memories of a long-forgotten past, feelings that belonged to someone else, and secret, profane words and skills that granted strength to those who spoke them. Things that Lacrima and Lu'um would no doubt interrogate and forbid him from studying on his own.

These memories have been becoming increasingly more detailed and lifelike, as if they were actually real. It feels more like I'm observing a real-life than having a vivid dream.

Over the course months, he'd been forced to train his skills in reality with Lu'um during the day. At night, he'd dream and experience the memories that the hooded man had left him — he ended up becoming his second mentor.

The hooded man had left him detailed memories — intrusive visions — of his knowledge and techniques. In his sleep, he learned how to shape Anima in increasingly complex ways by observing — living through the hooded man's perspective — as his living shadow. Although rare, sometimes he was even barraged with visions during the day too. They came and went on their own and Reed was powerless during the entire process.

The familiar chill on the back of his neck told him that he was about to receive another vision. Whether he liked it or not, he had been pulled into the hooded man's memories once again as an observer of his work.

...

The way he spun Anima was sublime in a way that could not be described. The glimpses he saw of the hooded man's skill were enough for Reed to realize that he was nothing in comparison to the hooded man.

Mas...…eed?

The man was akin to a genuine god that could create and destroy anything with but a gesture. The universe itself seemed to be a product of his own thoughts. The layers that made up reality trembled whenever he brushed his fingers past them. His words were natural law and were the universe's new truth.

He was an artist of the highest possible status, a transcendent figure who had the ability to paint the life and death of stars with his mind alone. His mind — the brush; Anima — his paint; the Universe — his personal canvas.

This was the true essence of Anima. Everything made perfect sense even though Reed could not explain it with words. His intuition screamed at him that this was beyond his pay-grade; it was an unspoken truth that only the wisest, most perceptive beings in creation could ever learn about. And yet, it'd been given to him, of all people…

Lo...eed… Is...someth... Are…yo... Is...the...?

He'd left the acting stage and had become an observer of everything. It was the first time he saw the sum of all creation as it was, through his eyes. A large trunk of space and time made up Reed's universe itself. Alongside the trunk were branches and leaves that formed the adjacent parallel realities and minor universes of everything that could be.

A seemingly infinite amount of worlds, lives, and dreams were contained within the care of this Tree of Life. It was self-contained multiverse of limitless possibilities. Home.