FMH ~ 31!

His blood was still running down his back, and there was a shallow pool of it on the top of the stone. The circle he created in an attempt to bind the bear was more like an oval, but even so Andre had high hopes for taking the next step. The Cave bear was weakened, it couldn’t struggle out of the circle, and it’s personal mana pool had run dry. The conditions were perfect.

“Bind by Blood!” Andre roared in pain as the wound on his back popped open and a surge of fresh blood joined what had been added previously. His freshly regenerated mana pool plunged; blood and power circled the bear in two distinct circles before joining together into a purple stream. Symbols and Runes formed, the seeming ease actually a product of a dozen years of study and practice. The circle shrank, moving from surrounding the entire bear to wrapping around its head like a crown.

Then it sank into the bear’s flesh, and the bear fell fully unconscious. 

Binding successful! Cave Bear (T3, level 8) has been bound!

Would you like to name this creature?

“Name is Arthur.” Andre sighed in relief as the binding took hold. Then he stiffened as a new question appeared, one that his mentor had never told him about before.

Erase the mind of the creature to impose your own will, or imprint the creature?

“I don’t understand the difference?”

Erasing the mind will allow you to have perfect control of your bound creature. However, the creature will not take actions on its own. It will need to relearn all instincts. By imprinting the creature, you will make it impossible for the bound being to attack you, but it will be up to you to convince it to follow your orders. 

“Imprint.” Andre ordered firmly. “I only wanted to get past this thing in the first place.” 

Imprinting. Congratulations! You have imprinted a living creature! You have gained the qualifications of a Druid of the Second Circle!

You have gained Potentia: 2,200. (1,200 exp pulled from ‘Arthur’, 1,000 exp gained by achieving the Second Circle while still in training!)

“Xan never explained how the sigil can give us exp…” Andre looked at the text hovering in the air suspiciously. “I bet they hold back on what they allow us to use after we gain it, or siphon it off somewhere.”

There was nothing he could do about that, so he simply decided to tend to his new bear companion. With a thought, all the plants fell off the bear’s body, taking most of the debris with it. Andre poured some fungus on the thickest sap and stimulated its growth, and in moments the bear was covered in sap-eating mushrooms. “Time to go look at the rewards!”

It was highly unlikely that there was going to be anything deeper in the cave. If there had been something stronger than the bear, well… Arthur would have been eaten. Anything weaker than Arthur would have been eaten by the bear. Nature at work. Andre shook off his thoughts and reminded himself that this all came together to indicate a safe trip deeper into the cave. He started walking, finding that the cave was as beautiful as he had expected it to be.

After he had sidestepped all the bones and offal that the bear had left at the entrance, he started looking for the plant that was practically calling out to him. The fluctuations were reaching a peak; which meant that the breakthrough was about to happen. He picked up the pace, finding that there was a huge network of tunnels hidden by the cave entrance. Without the energy guiding him, Andre would have become lost very quickly. 

He dropped glowmoss as he jogged along so that he could find his way back, and soon he had come to a huge, almost entirely empty, underground cavern. There was a soft sound of running water, and a single crack in the cavern high above that allowed a stream of natural light in. This light fell upon a single flower, which was glowing both from the sun as well as the energy building up in it.

Andre slowed down as he stared at the beautiful golden flower. He could tell that it’s petals were normally white, but right now all of it was gold. “What are you?”

There was clearly not going to be an answer, and Andre needed to make a choice. If he bound this flower right now, he would be able to pull out all the accumulated Potentia it had stored up. Breaking the tier limit meant that it was just reaching level ten in whatever tier it was in. That pure Potentia could be his, right now. Or, he could see what the transformation would accomplish, and bind the flower after it had gone up in power. 

It was a tough call, but he decided that he would let the process finish. He surrounded the flower with a binding circle and waited. Just before the last of the natural light vanished, all the fluctuations coming from the flower stopped suddenly. Red started to color the white of the flower petals, stopping halfway up each petal. As soon as the process ended, Andre bound the flower. He had been expecting resistance, a denial, a full-on magical fight. Instead, he gained a feeling of gratitude as the flower bound to him. 

“Why do I get the feeling that this is thanks for not taking the Potentia?” Andre muttered uneasily. Plants, even magical-ish ones, had never sent along a concept like gratitude. It was far too alien for their instinctual lives. Intelligence in a plant indicated power. Dangerous, deadly, focused power. “Let’s see what you are. I…! That’s not possible! I don’t understand… how… what?”

Sanctuary Lily (T10). This is the final form of a Peace Lily that has lived through a massive outpouring of blood. After absorbing enough blood, the Peace Lily becomes a War Lily, a Lily of the Valley, a Plains Lily, a Death Lily, then finally a Sanctuary Lily. 

Would you like to see the ability of the Sanctuary Lily?

“Yes!” Andre shouted instantly, his eyes scanning across every word that crossed his vision.

This lily has seen peace, death, the rising and falling of the world around it, and become death by draining the life, mana, and Potentia from all living things around it for decades.

Sanctuary Lily (T10, level 0), Full Domain: Harmonious existence. This Lily will only bind, or remain bound, with something that has not directly or intentionally killed any sentient being. Any living being coming into the area of its domain will have their bodies and mana held in a harmonious state, unable to stimulate either in a way that would intentionally harm or kill another, as well as being unable to deteriorate. This does not impact the bound Druid.

Domain size: 1 kilometer per level.

“I have a domain?” Andre fell to the floor, his mind weirdly whirling. When an ability or apparently a plant reached tier ten, all the other abilities that it had evolved over time became fused into a single ‘domain’ that perfectly controlled the area around it. There were higher evolutions, but those were things that only Paragons would likely ever see. Something at tier eleven could only be controlled by a Paragon, and even then it was… unlikely. Most of the time, natural treasures that reached that point of development were incomparably violent. “A Druid of the Second Circle has a domain.” 

Seeing that the Sanctuary Lily had just changed from a Death Lily that drained the life out of everything in a large space around it, the badlands outside of this area where nothing was growing made much more sense. It was likely that if Andre had come here sooner in the life cycle of this treasure, or drained away the accumulated Potentia to get stronger, it would have reverted to eating him to empower itself. “Alright. I can’t kill anything sentient. That’s the first rule. Good thing that I have the ability to gain Potentia in other ways…”

“I can use my mana to damage others, and I can use it to grow things, but no one else can do anything harmful in the domain?” Andre threw a handful of glowmoss up, controlling it as it landed on the ceiling. Mana poured out of him, and the patch of moss rapidly grew until it covered the entire ceiling and provided a soft twilight. “That’s a ‘yes’ then. I wonder what it means by ‘unable to deteriorate’?”

A few tests later, Andre found that he couldn’t give any Potentia to the Lily. That was settled at least. The Domain would need to grow naturally over the years, but if there was one thing an Ascender had, it was time.

“I’m going to need to get on good terms with Arthur, and then start bringing life back to this area.” Andre thought about how he kept getting projects that made him start from nothing and shrugged. He might as well get good at doing it: the Scarrocco desert stretched for hundreds of miles. Anything he could do now to refine that upcoming process could save him decades. “Interesting… I need to reform the life above this area, but I could start by making this entire area down here into a hidden grove.”

“That means I would need to find or breed plants that can handle the dark, Then I need plants that can live in sparse soil for a long time before I transition to larger and more stable plants. Night plants, regular plants. Animals too, gonna need to build an entire ecosystem. Eventually gonna have to do the land as well if I want a true foothold for myself and my kingdom.” Andre scratched his beard and looked at the rocky, moss-covered ‘sky’.

“I have no idea this sort of thing is appealing to me. All I’m doing is making my life harder than it needs to be. I shouldn’t take on so many decade-spanning projects.” Even though he said those words, Andre was beaming at the fertile black earth that had nothing in it. “It’s a fixer-upper, but it looks like I’ve found my new grove.”