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24. The All-Mother
🕑 Added 2023-05-02 17:45:35 +0000 UTCLiam's head was spinning, a feeling of unnatural fatigue, right hand over the right of his chest where a deep throbbing pain resided. He picked up his war scythe, storing it in his inventory before walking toward the fissure pushing the vine aside, nearly falling in the process thanks to a dead viperwolf he didn't see.
'Smart enough to do that but not enough to aim at my head.', he thought of what just happened with a bloody sneer before coughing blood and venom, the taste of his own blood mixed with the acrid one of venom far from pleasant. The feeling of the thing stabbing in his lung moving as it happened only amplified it.
It clearly was premeditated to some degree, the viperwolves pack was immediately followed by this red creature or it was the sound of battle or the smell of blood that attracted it. Either way, it was of little importance now.
But a very good reminder of how dangerous this moon was and that preparation as good as it is, isn't an indestructible shield against the unknown.
The idea that he was going to go in and out of here injury-free never once crossed his mind, it was a ridiculous thought as proven by what unexpectedly happened.
Coughing blood for what felt like the umpteenth time Liam noted with slight worry how his body started to feel sluggish but not too blood loss. The wound in itself wasn't mortal on the hemorrhage aspect but the venom was a problem.
Hurrying himself he stopped just a meter away from truly entering a massive room of which he could glimpse what was inside and would have appreciated its sheer spectacularity of it all in other circumstances, however, he recognized what it was.
Above growing from the cave ceiling toward the ground was a massive willow tree, pearl white bark contrasting deeply with the darker shade where a lightning bolt scar split it in half.
The roots of the tree were of the same color as the regular white bark spread all around connecting floating stones together and dove in the pitch black crude and odorless oil rhythmically pulsing oil they plunged in. Above they formed an entire natural structure from bridges to platforms of which one massive one rested below the inverted tree.
Each of its sinuous branches supported several hundred ethereal pink tendrils lighting the room like a natural chandelier, their light continually reflected by the precious mineral within the wall. Thousands of small jellyfish-like 'creatures' drifted within the air as if swimming, woodsprites or atokirina'. They were seeds and so much more.
A Tree of Souls, an Utraya Mokri in Na'vi, from Tsu'mong's knowledge about the horse clans, this one should be the Tree of Divergence, supposedly only these same migratory clans knew where it was. Well, now he knew as well.
A tree growing underground wasn't the craziest thing he saw even if it was high on the ladder.
Even more considering he currently couldn't see particularly well far away, so at the moment it was even truer. Yet an undeniable pressure and presence were emanating from it but he could instinctively tell this place was safe, safer than the outside at the very least.
'Fuck does it hurt like a bitch...', Liam thought while he took off his helmet and gauntlets and unclasped his chest plate, the front part was taken off carefully as the back part fell, clanking loudly on the ground.
His buffer coat was also rid of but he hissed in pain as he took it off feeling the proboscis shifting inside his lung with the movement. Then he sat, his back against the oddly smooth white root behind him.
The thing embedded in his chest with blood was all for him to see, a bottle of fresh saline solution, uncorking it with his mouth he quickly rinsed his hands before pouring all that remained on his wound.
Teeth grinding together at the cold feeling washing over the wounded area and the pain that came with it. His eyes focused, blurry sight over the foreign object in his right lung he grabbed the part poking out, and with one swift yet careful and decisive motion, he muffled a groan of pain and took it out.
It felt oddly relieving amid the pain.
"Thing is at least half of my forearm…", he mumbled in slight disbelief at the roughly 20 centimeters (~8in) long proboscis.
If he wasn't the way he is both internally and externally this would have impaled him all the way through even if he had stopped it.
Another fact he remarked was that the venom didn't even come from the pointy end either, it was dozens of pores in the middle.
Right after he started his last coughing fit, blood and venom were expelled from his right lung like someone that nearly drowned until all was gone, it was excruciatingly painful yet very relieving to be rid of.
The wound was deep, he could see his ribs and lung amidst the blood, a perturbing sight now anchored in his mind but nothing vital was hit so it was always that. A few centimeters to the left and it would have been his heart, however. If it was luck it didn't hit there or bad luck he was hit at all he didn't know and it wasn't the time to dwindle on that.
Another bottle of saline solution was brought from his inventory with a soft fiber tissue, the process of cleaning the area was hard, and the numbness of his limb didn't get better, now they felt like logs and it didn't numb the pain at all. In fact, it seemed to progressively amplify it.
The good thing was that it only truly did that, a horrifying end for whoever got shot and then eaten alive while losing all their motor control and with pain multiplied tenfold. The next part was the hardest, disinfecting needle and strings.
Good thing he was preventive enough to have put the string in the sewing needle's head already. Because when you need it generally you aren't the ablest to do this delicate sometimes nigh impossible task.
It wasn't pretty, two dozen stitches a majority going too deep and all irregular, he nearly lost the needle inside his wound too.
The only reason it didn't happen was he got hold of the string otherwise getting it out would have been… Complicated and agonizing. After this, he cleaned again and bandaged this part of his chest.
The fatigue had gotten worse and worse, he knew it wasn't a good idea to let it win but he couldn't do anything to stop it, and moving was an even worse idea for evident reasons, not that he even could as his limbs were numb to the point of walking or holding thing was a titanic task.
'Fuck… I'm insane. But it was worth it.', he couldn't but thought, schadenfreude at his self-induced predicament, even speaking was hard now. He was in such a pathetic state that anything could kill him right now, yet he felt safe here. It was puzzling.
It was the venom plus having to go down here, the fight with the viperwolves pack even if fairly easy, then getting gored like a shish kebab, and having done an emergency heavy surgical operation on himself without anything to numb pain.
Banging his head against the root he breathed out painfully, his tired gaze followed the woodsprites elegantly floating about in specific places, blocking entries and exits many of which he never knew existed. One even landed on his implant before following its brethren.
'I will take a nap, stay safe in the base.', he sent through his link with his tame, it was accompanied by a feeling conveying he was fine and so he closed his eyes. Sleep came soon after even with the pain, the strange blanket growing out around him soothing him.
Liam opened his eyes after what felt like an instant to an alien sight and his 'body' and mind feeling just as alien as how he was used to.
A very familiar yet fundamentally different situation, but he didn't panic, his mind felt clear, clearer than it ever was before and ever than he thought imaginable. He couldn't panic the mortal bodily function for this to happen currently lacking.
He was floating in a fetal position within a fourth-dimensional prism his mind could only perceive as its three-dimensional distorted yet clear shadow.
Hundreds upon hundreds of hexagonal metallic particles orbited at speeds varying from slow to the point of appearing immobile to supra luminal, they moved in a chaotic yet perfectly ordered and calculated path as if they were a swarm.
He directly saw both his wrist, and the lack of any implant on his left wrist was immediately remarked, the next was his tanned skin or current apparent lack of therefore instead it was a pale bluish translucent film that carved out the shapes of his every muscle were defined, he could even feel his shoulder length hair as if they were fully functional body part instead of mostly keratin threads, each and every million of hair follicles from roots to tips were floating in the air as deep underwater behind him.
Yet they weren't really hair at the same time, they as well were no muscles, tendons, bones or any real tissues be them dead or alive, the only aspect that had a resemblance to a human's biology were veins or nerves pulsing with energy to the beat of a non-existent heart. He moved each of the five digits of his hands with curiosity.
Instead of any would-be vital organs in his chest, there was his implant, five purplish threads connected to it. His tames he instinctively knew, and they were currently all in a deep sleep. And it was only the surface, the first layer of this state of being.
At a moment he remarked that the bluish film shifted to his tanned skin before glitching for lack of comparison back to its transparent form in a never cycle, at some point, his hand might appear normal and at another, he could see through them. There didn't seem to be any patterns.
He put himself in a standing position, feet not touching the metallic ground, staying afloat within the soothing and protective embrace of the prism as if it was an egg, he observed his surroundings with wonder, below and above him if this notion even applied here.
Metal and metallic root-like structures pulsed with electric blue energy, Element he instinctually could tell, and it flowed to the rhythm of his heartbeat.
"Hmm is this where my Engramic Matrix resides? Fascinating…", he asked no one, his voice having a deep ethereal note to it. Yet an answer still came from behind him.
"If by Engramic Matrix you refer to the beginning with no ending that is the Mind and the ending with no beginning that is the Soul and the Spirit existing since the dawn of time then your words are partially correct, strange little one of strange origin so farther away than We can begin to fathom.", a voice consisting of untold amounts yet functioning as one spoke, one distinctively feminine in essence, young but old, harsh and loving, quiet and loud, no small amount of surprise and curiosity were within, even shock.
Liam's ethereal body snapped in the direction the voice and new presence came from, his eyes currently made of pure blue energy widened ever so slightly at what he saw, it was as if reality suddenly shifted.
An invisible wall cutting reality and gluing two contracting parts of it together, one of metal and technology beyond what any species within this universe could comprehend and the other of primordial life, of both good and bad that this aspect of infinite potential brought.
A body grown from the wood in the vague form of a female Na'vi yet different, legs fused at the knee transforming into a trunk, two long arms ending in roots instead of four digits, hair similar to the tendril of the Tree of Souls, her body made of white bark, a lighting strike scar along her chest.
Her face as hauntingly unsettling as beautiful had unknown glowing runes, two normally placed glowing eyes, and four smaller ones on her forehead, the one in the middle bigger by a small margin.
"Eywa…", Liam thought his first guess, which came out as a mumble to his surprise, his lips not moving a fact he didn't notice earlier, but he stayed deathly calm, his gaze fixated onto the wooden Na'vi woman's eyes who only smiled gently at his instant vigilance.
"Partially correct little one, We are Eywa yet We are not, We are but a smaller part of a greater whole that is perceived as me by my children. We are known in this time as the <Utral Yak Si>.", she spoke approaching the invisible wall, this earned an immediate reaction from Liam, metallic roots pulsing with Element started to grow all around the prism in a protective cocoon.
"We do not wish you harm little one, We cannot do so presently here in this state even if We wished so, this place We and you are in the very surface of the Sea of Soul of the great plain. This is but a reflection, a dream, of We and you are on the first layer of my deepest being, We suppose. We are confused. This has never happened before… This is unprecedented to my knowledge, little one you are a very curious being, even more than We imagined.", this seemed to grab Liam's interest, stopping him from forcefully waking himself up by tugging on one of the threads connected to him.
Liam stared at the being that apparently was both Eywa and not Eywa, mind racing over what was said and the current situation at hand that he was face to face with a being considered divine. Now he could understand why to a deeper degree, this was the tree he was physically right next to.
"Greeting All-Mother… On what points is this unprecedented?", he spoke, choosing to be polite and formal to this being even if he had the feeling she wouldn't remotely care if he were to insult her.
"Everything. You can hear me clearly a feat only possible to the most gifted of my children, little one you are an enigma to me, a lost child from unknown origin, body, mind, soul, spirit, will, emotions, knowledge, actions, goals, purposes, and more than the language We are using to communicate to you have words. We do not expect answers from you as you do not have one for them all and We are not ought to know them all. Yet one must be answered. Do you seek to harm me or my children?", her voice becoming frigid, her expression cold, this caught Liam off guard, but it didn't affect him in any deeper aspect if caused the Element to pulse brighter and the metalic hexagons spins faster.
There was a silence then Liam spoke, voice unwavering and true, "No, I do not seek to harm the All-Mother or her children. But I did, do, and will continue to do so. I'm as you said and how the People call me, lost and a child searching to survive and if possible find a way home and say my goodbyes. My life comes first before all and I will do what I must to keep it even if it aggravates you or anyone else."
The sliver of the All-Mother nodded her expression softening and a smile graced her face of white bark seemingly pleased with the answer if it was how she felt or a mask, Liam didn't know but he seriously hoped it was genuine, then a small frown made its way on her feature, again with a hint of surprise.
"It is time to depart, soon you will awaken, little one. May We and you meet again, the process to do, of which you know and have experienced. Farewell Lost Child.", and so after those last words from the All-Mother the dream ended.
