Quiet Contemplation in the heart of the forest (p)

Holding the odd stone in the palm of his hand as he wandered through the deeper wilds of Sakuramori, the raven haired swordsman was still getting used to this strange sensation he was experiencing. While the wilderness had always served him as a sort of natural relief and source of calm, this was nothing like that. Normally, he could always feel that there was another presence hidden away inside of him that wanted to get out. There were times when it was being really violent and loud about it, though most of the time, he hardly felt that Vetis was even there. But at this point in time, he could swear that he was gone entirely as he couldn't find the faintest trace of him no matter how hard and how deep he dug down into his subconscious. At first, he figured that it might have been a trick to get Solmar to go that far so the demon could get a chance at just dashing out and taking over.

However, after the things that happened with the elemental node after Vetis tried taking over for good, part of him felt like the demon had been ripped free from him entirely. And this wasn't just some random thought either, as it had a lot of possibilities attached to it. At the time of all of this happening, Solmar had taken the elemental node up to a cave in the Phoenix mountains, a place where he had defeated a Wraith and ended her child-killing antics for good. Because the node needed to be charged by draining away a buttload of negative energy, there wasn't a place Solmar could imagine that would be better for it than the cavern where this wraith had killed well over a hundred children over the course of roughly fifty to sixty years. When he brought the stone there for it to do what it was going to do, it had instead materialized all of that negative energy into the shape of Gindendith, otherwise known as the wraith.

Because Solmar had gotten a lot stronger since he had last faced her, he was much more well equipped to deal with her this time around, thus he ended up killing her shortly after their fight began. Though he did end up wounded from the fight, the fact that he had managed to kill her by himself this time proved to him that he had at least gotten better at protecting himself. However, by the time the node started drawing in all of that negative energy into itself in order to charge itself, it had also started drawing on all of that same energy that was dwelling inside of Solmar. Drawing out Vetis, the two had an internal battle for a short period of time, though he had been rendered unconscious and had no idea as to what happened after that. Outside of his knowledge, the node had drawn Vetis out of his body and used the blood that had been shed during the battle against the wraith in order to form a stone-like cocoon.

As Vetis's soul had been trapped inside of the stone and had been drawn from Solmar completely, by the time the latter awoke, he just figured that the node had absorbed Vetis and converted him into the type of energy that it needed in order to power itself up. Taking the powered stone of the elementals with him now that it was ready to be properly used, he hadn't given a whole lot of thought about the strange stone or rock that had appeared in the cavern after the battle. And who could blame him when all he really wanted to do was leave the place where so many innocent children had been killed just to feed into the delusions of an long dead woman. In so doing, he could not have known that this large stone was in fact a cocoon in which Vetis's consciousness had been stored. The node possessed, after all, a certain kind of power that was meant to give the wielder what it wanted most.

For Solmar, that had always been to find a place where he could belong, a place where he felt like he could truly be at home. But since Vetis and Solmar were two beings dwelling within the same body, it was likely that the stone, after being charged, had also sensed what Vetis wanted most. And what Vetis wanted most of all was to be free of Solmar, free to do the things he wanted to do without having to constantly struggle for control or being forced to witness life through the eyes of someone else, incapable of doing anything. So, the stone had taken it as a request and completely tore the demonic entity from Solmar's body, storing it inside of a cocoon from which a new body could be grown that was entirely his own. Whether it was truly what it had in mind at the time or not was not something the stone could do anything about though, for at the end of the day, it was just a mindless object.

But since Solmar hadn't the faintest clue as to any of that, the fact that his mind was now no longer clouded by the influences of the demon made him feel a plethora of things that had been foreign to him before. One of these things he felt right now was that his hearing, his sense of smell and even his ability to sense magical presences had exponentially grown. That, and his fire magic had been a lot easier to control and conjure. All of these things were all connected to one thing, the primary source of his magic that had originally been intended for him to use in the killing of demons. Now that he, for whatever reason, no longer possessed an actual demonic entity in his body anymore, all of the traits tied in with this magical power seemed to no longer be bogged down by it, allowing them to reach their true potential along with Solmar's own body feeling more healthy than it did before.


(1028)

Upon reaching a clearing in the forest, Solmar sat down for a moment in order to fully assess the situation that was his body and the lack of a demonic taint. Summoning forth his dragon slayer sword, he let the flames of his slayer magic flow through it, causing it to tower up into the air just as it had done during the time of the Summer Solstice. At the time though, his flames had been all but entirely out of control when he brought them out, which was why he had initially taken to secluding himself away from human settlements until the solstice was at an end. That said, it had certainly helped both him and Shane at the time when they fought against Cernunnos, the monstrous god of the hunt and the wild. Whether that had been a self proclaimed title or not, there was no doubt that the creature had been very powerful, and that the two mages had been fortunate that Solmar's own magic had been enhanced to levels similar to that of the goat god.

Additionally, it had also helped him during his fight against some of the elemental lords, which were fights he would not have won had his magical power not been greatly increased by the solstice. This time however, the solstice was not ever here, yet he managed to create the same output of flames, which was quite impressive if he said so himself. Letting the flames die down before he ended up setting part of the forest on fire, he sent his blade back to where it came from and rose back up to his feet. With the stone still in his hand, he turned around on the spot. While this seemed like a stupid and childish thing to do, he was actually trying to figure out where he needed to go. Holding out the stone while he was slowly spinning around in place, he watched as the stone got brighter and darker, thus acting as a sort of compass telling him where he needed to go in order to find the place he had been looking for.

Once he pointed towards the direction that made the stone shine the brightest, he started wandering towards it, heading ever further into the woodlands to where he knew the foot of the Phoenix mountains was also located. Wondering whether the two were in some way related, he started to think that maybe what he was searching for wasn't even in Sakuramori, a thought that he actually considered to be quite troublesome. While it was true that the stone would grant access to the thing someone wanted most, there was a chance that he himself did not even know what it was that he truly desired most. For all he knew, it could even be in the mountains, though he really hoped that this wasn't the case. Too many bad things had happened to him over too short a period of time for him to ever consider these particular mountains to be the place where he belonged, and that much wouldn't change.

Following the directions of the stone deeper and deeper into the forest, it eventually got dark, even though he knew that it was still daytime. Due to the density of the foliage above and how the treetops had grown to act like a thick blanket of leaves, little to no sunlight made it down to the floor of the forest here. This explained why the floor had little to no plant growth to be seen, and why it had gotten a whole lot more quiet the further he went. Though there were still plenty of birds in the trees overhead, animals such as deer and mice would not venture here as there was barely any food for them or places to hide, giving him a feeling that he was alone out here. This feeling was only strengthened further by the fact that he no longer had something gnawing at him from the back of his mind in an attempt at getting out, only adding further to the sense of being truly alone here.

Strangely enough, he did not mind this at all. Given the things he had seen from human beings up until this point, he could honestly say that he was not that impressed by the vast majority of them. Though there were some exceptions to the rule, as there were with everything in life, most of them were ruining everything around them either with their actions or with their behavior and many of them did not even realize it. In that sense, most of them were no better than the monsters or the demons they had him slay so they could continue living "peaceful lives". Truth be told, he was actively contributing to this by taking on such jobs and getting paid for it, a kind of deal that made him no better than the people he aided. Just because it gave him a feeling of satisfaction and the knowledge that people could go on about their lives did not make it the right thing to do after all.

Pondering on whether or not the things he had done for the sake of others meant that he was a bad person like many of the rest of humanity, Solmar could tell by looking at the stone that he had found the place that he had been looking for. Not at all being what he had expected, he looked around to see some really old structures, or what remained of them. Weathered and beaten, much of the stonework had entirely been covered in moss, got crushed by the advance of roots and altogether just seemed like they had seen better days. Moving in closer, the stone started doing what it did best, things that should not have been possible. Beginning to hum at a certain frequency, it seemed that the stonework and even the overgrowth responded to it. Coming together, the elemental node flew out of Solmar's hand and shattered into millions of tiny glowing pieces, merging into the structure.


(1017 // 2045)

As it did, the old structure started coming together as the moss and roots grew faster and larger. Once the stonework had been restored to appear like a large stone door, the moss completely encased the stonework by covering it entirely, roots surrounding it from all sides as trees grew on all sides of it. Within the stonework, runes started to form and glow up with an ominous shade of purple. Mere seconds later, a portal of green energy formed at the center of the stone gate, releasing a haze from it that incited all manner of flowers to grow at the base of the portal, spreading out to cover a radius of five meters around it. Still a bit awestruck at this sudden emergence of life, the young swordsman had no idea as to why this was all happening. Because as much as he enjoyed seeing nature be restored, this was not exactly what he had envisioned when he thought of a place where he could belong.

But as the portal grew clearer, Solmar could tell that there was a place behind it that seemed far more beautiful than this place, and that was saying something. In his mind, Sakuramori had always been the most beautiful place in all of Fiore due to the fact that it had some of the most lush woodlands he had ever laid eyes upon. Without really thinking of the consequences, he bravely ventured towards the portal and made his way through it, finding a portal that looked exactly like the one he had just set foot through. Stepping right into a shallow stream, he didn't have the time to be annoyed by his wet boots because of what he beheld right in front of him. Standing on a ledge with what seemed like a series of waterfalls heading down below, his eyes saw woodlands as far as they could possibly see. With strange glowing lizards flying overhead, he heard their roars echoing into the distance as they flew onward.

Venturing a bit deeper into the place and away from the portal, he looked on into the distance to see what seemed like a massive tree grown around a huge chunk of glowing green emerald. In a way, this massive rock resembled a part of the elemental node back when it was still four smaller pieces that had yet to be fused together. Resembling the earth stone specifically, he could tell all the way from here that this massive chunk of stone was also humming and glowing, which was just another thing the two had in common that made it hard for him to believe that the two were not in any way related. Feeling like he should be going down there, part of him told him that he shouldn't just go about blindly running from one place to the other when he had no idea as to where he was. Instead, he went down slowly in order to do some recon, knowing that he would have to learn more about his surroundings if he was to make his way back here at some point.

Making his way down to the foot of the cliffs, he looked around him, seeing where the waterfalls were all coming together in a large basin that in turn was leading into a river heading further inland. Heading towards the treeline, Solmar started walking through the forest, noticing that the trees had some rather peculiar shapes that made them seem like nothing he had ever encountered back in Fiore. After a couple of minutes of walking, he was shocked to see how a large bird-like head came down from the trees and snatched up a deer-like animal that walked underneath it. After it did, two of the strange trees seemingly uprooted and walked away deeper into the forest, showing him that these odd trees were in fact the legs of this large bird. Doing his best to learn from it what he could, he could not help but look up into the dense foliage overhead when he heard a soft creaking along the branches. Noticing a large eye staring down at him, Solmar continued walking onward.

Figuring that this creature did not consider him to be food, the thought of having these large beings watching his every move and deciding whether he was edible or not wasn't exactly comforting. Feeling like he had done enough exploring for the time being, he started heading into a different direction. Going towards a spot in the forest he had seen from above that seemed somehow different, he stumbled upon what seemed like a small village, but not one like he had ever seen before. While the people in the Beanstalk village lived in the place too, this village wasn't made in a tree, but made from trees. Being homes that were grown that way due to how the trees had moved, the one thing he felt to be even more peculiar than the houses were the inhabitants. Looking like walking, talking tree men, Solmar honestly did not know how to approach them.

Backing out and navigating his way back towards the portal, he had gone from not knowing what the elemental node had in store for him to suddenly knowing exactly what it was but having no idea what to make of it. This place where nature had completely taken the lead, as opposed to how humanity had done so back in Fiore and Earthland, was so very different from everything he knew that it was quite overwhelming. Feeling like he needed to head back and take some time to let all of this sink in, he also needed to formulate a plan of approach for the locals as he did not want to make himself seem like a threat to them straight away. After all, if this were to be the place the elemental node had decided was exactly where Solmar belonged, it would have been quite a shame if he messed up all of the hard work and all of the things he had gone through this early on. No, for now, he needed to get his head on straight and plan as far ahead as possible.


(1041 // 3086)
(End of Thread)