TOL ~ 5/7

Fueled by his revelation, fear and a newfound hunger pushed Maine to continue absorbing the lifeforce of the elementals in the world, rationalizing his actions as a simple consolidation of Life.

The more he took, the easier it was to continue taking; both in a moral, and literal way. With every elemental drained, his own power grew, his life force rekindled, and his ability to impact the world around him shifted drastically. After absorbing the island, which had been covered in earth elementals, and surrounded by watery versions, not to mention all the minor elementals in the stone and plants, he had felt an unprecedented fortitude weave into his being, and a simple test proved his durability had magnified beyond measure. 

Without exerting extreme force, he couldn't even scuff the bark on his tree.

His smaller varieties, the nodes he had set up around the world, did not gain this newfound strength, but Maine was actually pleased with that development. In a world where natural disasters literally moved around, it would be far too obvious if a simple sapling stood strong against sundering stone. Just as his fear drove him to try again, to take more, it also taught him subterfuge—how to hide things from those he typically shared everything with.

He captured wind elementals in his leaves and mines, draining them in the instant they brushed against him. From them, he gained a strange agility which allowed him to rapidly move branches and sections of his trees in new and exciting ways—ways which allowed him to drain more of the free floating entities faster. Metal elementals were particularly resistant, but when the first eventually succumbed to his strengthened will, and his immense fortitude, his own ability to drain similar versions was greatly augmented.

 Maine focused his attention on outlying islands, entities deep within the planet no one else saw regularly, creatures of the ocean which had no formal territory. With every single one of them, Life's domain expanded, in reach, depth, control, influence, and power.

On the world of Eather, change was constant and therefore practically no one noticed when it happened. Unfortunately for the tree, this was only true when the change was not cataclysmic and potentially world-ending. His unchecked growth and accumulation of power did not go unnoticed. His allies, especially those on the surface, slowly began to see the shift in balance, finding fewer and fewer entities outside of the continents. 

No one knew it was his doing, and Maine participated in their conversation, trying to find a cause for the strange occurrences. He waited for a decade or so before continuing, allowing their attention to wander once more. During this time, he searched for unique and potent elementals which would grant him more than simply physical characteristics. 

Thanks to being on edge constantly, suspicious of the others around him, Maine spent much of his time simply exploring the world again and again. 

It was a tragic day for Eather when he realized there was a gap in his root system. It took him years to send his secondary body in person, to cross mountains and oceans, but when he arrived, Maine found exactly what he had been searching for. 

There was an island deep in the ocean, as far away from other land as possible, which was surrounded by a strange immaterial presence which caused his roots to grow around it instead of over it as he had intended so long ago.

It took him only a few years of directly controlling his roots, sometimes needing to physically move them into position, for the sanctuary of the island to be breached. In under a decade, he had spread across the small haven and fully explored what it contained: elementals of a type he had never come across in his millennia of searching the world could be found here.

He couldn't send concepts across to them, though he could tell they were Eidolons just as he was. Finally giving up on attempting communication, he grasped one of the energy creatures and yanked the life and power out of it, leaving nothing but a sprinkling of dust where it had stood moments previously.

As the power settled into him, he finally understood what he was dealing with. Entities of pure, arcane energy. Strands of meaning and ways of thinking began etching themselves into his mind as he absorbed the life and experience of the creature. What he found there left him salivating with desire for more; within the year Maine had fully completed his conquest, absorption, and destruction of the elementals of magic.

Now, in possession of a full magical language, and a new-to-him runic magic, the tree gained access to a potent form of sorcery which allowed him to move past his concept—which until now had only touched on the physical, and begin absorbing those of his kind which he had thought were beyond capture.

Eidolons of starlight, sound, vibration, heat-but-not-flame? One by one he figured out how to identify, isolate, and capture them. From there, it was the work of mere moments to add their life and capabilities to his own.

Now he was a Greater Eidolon, similar to a high concept such as Duality, which was a being of both physical and immaterial.

It was at this point Maine realized he wasn't bound by the same limitations he had been previously. His body was nearly impervious to the ravages of outside entities, so he shed much of his fear of discovery and began to enervate and absorb enormous swaths of Eather. He didn't stop at islands, pulling entire continents at a time into his lifeforce.

Only when he heard a sharp voice entering his mind, and featherlight touches against his bark, did the Greater Eidolon snap out of his gleeful rampage and look around.

<Maine. Why are you destroying the world?>