The sight of the goal invigorated Finlay. He coaxed his tired body forward—bear with it a little longer.


    He thought he was home free, but there was one last obstacle he had almost forgotten. And then another problem showed up. The good news was that they might cancel each other out.


    “Make a move already,” Finlay grumbled, peering through the cover of leaves.


    The toppled obelisk Cogwyn had mentioned as a landmark was in sight, the broken pieces of its body absorbing moonlight instead of reflecting it. Finlay couldn’t check if this obelisk could still suck natura from the ground because everything would be just light in his basic Aethersight this close to the lifestream. Straight past this obelisk, over the mound on the other side, was the opening to the sinkhole.


    A terror bird traipsing next to the obelisk didn’t want to make Finlay’s journey any easier. It must be quite hungry to roam around at night. It tilted its head, maybe curious of a faint foreign smell. Were the crushed medicinal leaves not enough to mask the scent of Finlay’s injury?


    Or did the terror bird sense its impending end? This time, it was the hunted, not the hunter.


    Finlay scanned the surface of the obelisk. An odd shimmer against the black told him of camouflaged tendrils snaking closer to the terror bird—a kudzun. Good thing he remembered Cogwyn’s story about their near-deadly tussle with this aggressive vine monster. According to Cogwyn, they nearly lost Beor in this particular kudzun’s body if not for Trance honing on his anima and Cogwyn digging him out in time.


    You’re taking too long, Finlay thought to the kudzun.


    The flightless terror bird suddenly flew a dozen feet above the ground. It squawked in panic as spiked vines wrapped around its body and smashed it against the obelisk, injecting it with paralyzing toxins and digestive juices.


    Finlay sprinted past the terrified terror bird and the kudzun starting its dinner.


    The ground angled steeply upward. He dropped on all fours, madly climbing over the small hill with hands clawing on rocks and dirt. Move fast! The terror bird had fallen silent. The kudzun would go for him next. Assume vines were zipping after him.


    He went over the peak and let gravity help him on the way down. He rolled but didn’t try to halt his fall. Seconds, scratches, and torn clothes later, he tumbled into the edge of a shrubbery. Thorny and thick. He stopped moving, even breathing, and listened for any sign of the kudzun.


    Crumpling dried leaves and crunching pebbles. The kudzun was after him! Its vines moved fast, ignoring stealth because it knew that he knew it was there.


    With no time to find another path, much less think, Finlay dove into the thicket. He crawled on his elbows, avoiding the thorny branches. It was like those war movies where soldiers trained to move under barbed wires. Because of the rustling leaves and breaking branches as he moved, he wasn’t sure if the kudzun continued to reach for him. Its tendrils couldn’t be this long, were they?


    Keep moving, Finlay decided.


    The Kudzun’s capture rating of twenty-seven was deceptive. It was a measure of the average kudzun. There was that ‘average’ nonsense again. Young kudzuns could have the range of an acre—the area a groff could plow in a day—while ancient kudzuns were known to take over entire forests if unchecked by predators. Not wise to assume this was a small kudzun without having seen the rest of it.


    Thorns raked Finlay’s face. He kept his head low, eyes opened only in slits.


    Forward. Faster. Was he going the right way? Darkness everywhere.


    No, there was light. Moonlight?


    He inwardly cheered as he emerged out of the thicket. He pushed himself to stand up but his hands didn’t find any ground—they went through the leaves. Off-balanced, his upper body toppled forward. This was the sinkhole’s edge!


    He hooked his feet onto some plants and stop his fall. No time to feel relieved. Were those slithering sounds he heard?


    Shadows and foliage obscured the rocky features of the cliff wall going down, but the moon’s brushstrokes revealed some ledges. Maintaining composure, he mapped his descent in a snap while ignoring the tremendous drop. Careful or his next mistake would be his last. He grasped a plant growing sideways from the rocks. Praying to any god that’d listen to make the plant’s roots sturdy, he swung his body over the edge. The plant bowed from his weight but held.


    Above him, tendrils stretched over the cliff, stark black against the cloudless sky. The kudzun hadn’t given up on him.


    The plant he hung from drooped a few inches. And some more. Finlay then found himself falling. The kudzun reached down to the sound of the breaking plant.


    Finlay madly grabbed at other plants and succeeded in entangling his arms in some vines. He alternated tightening and loosening the coiled vines around his arms to gradually lower himself, stealing glances at the kudzun following him into the sinkhole as he gauged where to go next below.


    Dangling from the vines, he ran sideways on the wall, as far left as he could. Then he jumped and swung to the right, aiming for a tiny ledge. The vine snapped. He was mid-air. He reached for the ledge and grabbed it with anima-infused strength. Momentum tried to pull him away. He didn’t let go even if the tips of his fingers were scraped raw. He slammed against the rocks but remained hanging on.


    Is it still after me? Shadows of kudzun tendrils wriggled above, a mass that blotted out the stars.


    Finlay held his breath.


    Finding nothing or probably extending too far, the spiked vines retreated.


    He chuckled in relief. “Who else wants to eat me next?”


    Coming as no surprise, it wasn’t the end of his troubles. The ledge protruded a mere foot from the wall and couldn’t accommodate him if he climbed on. It was beginning to loosen. He let go and dropped almost thirty feet to a bigger shelf below. It was still small that he didn’t have space to roll on the ground and lessen the impact. He landed on his two feet and bent his knees to somewhat absorb the force. Some nasty bone cracks. Then he leaned back onto the rock wall and held on.The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    Blood streaming down his leg felt hot as cool air whipped him. His wound had widened. He rewrapped it and checked himself for other injuries. Some of his fingernails had broken off. More scratches. A few spongy bruises. Small price to pay for surviving—he expected a dislocated joint at the least.


    Finlay’s heartbeat settled and so did his breathing. All in a day’s work.


    Part of him missed the feeling of genuine fear. Many moments could’ve been his last during this trip, and yet they were child’s play compared to what he had gone through before.


    Yet, it wasn’t so good to be fearless. Toward the end of his past life, he had accepted death would claim him. He was just delaying it. Only a cynical sort of survival instinct remained.


    Now, he shouldn’t die. Could not allow himself to die. Weight of the world and all that.


    If the events to play out this month were different, he would’ve trained himself for a couple of weeks before heading to the Big Bowl. But there were many things to do and so little time. Unknown variables were also at play. What would the World Tree look like when planted? How much guarding would he need to do? What did a growing World Tree require?


    It wasn’t just the World Tree he should worry over. He couldn’t have a civil war going on next to the precious World Tree. The sooner he could plant the seed, the sooner he could assess how to go about stopping the lords fighting over Worwick. Oh, and he also had to figure out how to handle the upcoming Speckle rush.


    And, and, and…


    It was more like ticking chores off a list than saving a world. Or maybe this was how saving a word was supposed to be. He didn’t know because it was his first time. Just think of it as a quest log in a computer game.


    “Been a while since this felt like I’m in a game,” Finlay mused as he stared at the moon sailing on the black seas. The moving moon now revealed more of what was below him. He took in the breadth of the sinkhole that could comfortably hold the whole of Worwick in its bottom.


    If the Big Bowl was a different world in contrast to the outside, this unnamed but ancient sinkhole was also a world unto its own. Sheer limestone walls surrounded it, the moonlight revealing the beautiful bands of varying shades formed by eons of geologic movement. Finlay just wanted to sound fancy in his head. He couldn’t even recall what the difference between geology and geography was.


    The trees at the bottom of the sinkhole were gigantic even if few. Connected with branch bridges that could fit wagons, their gnarled trunks spiraled upward instead of growing straight. Cloaks of vines and leaves draped over crystalline formations that caught the moon and stars, hinting at vibrant colors in the daytime. He was no expert but those crystals could be Speckles sucked dry of their energies.


    There were two waterfalls, maybe more he couldn’t see, cascading down the limestone walls—streams that drained into the sinkhole. If there was plenty of water here, there were bound to be some animals.


    And the lifestream should be here. The sensation assured him it was there even if he couldn’t see it.


    Unfiltered primeval natura rejuvenated his battered body, similar to the healing effects of the world pimple though much more pronounced yet seamless. He barely noticed when he was no longer exhausted. Absent was any light-headedness, unlike the effects of stale natura emanations. His mind was as clear as could be after a good night’s sleep.


    He knew how it should feel because he had visited two lifestreams before.


    The first ran under Vinthir, the capital of the Solvi empire, with its exposed portion housed inside the vast imperial palace. Finlay didn’t get to see it because he wasn’t exactly free to explore the palace. The other one traversed the Cindrest Canyon between the territories of the dwarves and elves. Rather than give life, it was the source of many conflicts and deaths between the two races. Finlay got to see the actual flow of the lifestream of Cindrest before both elves and dwarves had to abandon it with the coming Sporeal Tide.


    There were four more lifestreams on Ilaya. He didn’t have the opportunity to visit those because the Sporeal Tide had already taken over them. Those blasted mushrooms must have evil designs for the lifestreams. Counting this one in Big Bowl, that was seven lifestreams in total he had to protect.


    Seven he was aware of. There were bound to be others not yet discovered or kept secret for obvious reasons.


    If only he knew how the invasion of the Sporeal Tide progressed so he could figure out which places to fortify. No official records because chroniclers were dead. He only had rumors passed around, which weren’t so reliable. And his memories of those tidbits were likely faulty.


    “One at a time,” he said with a sigh, wrenching control of his mind from worries.


    Having no kudzun trying to catch him, Finlay was deliberate and careful in his journey down. No luxury of a crack on the wall like when he entered the caldera. But he was strengthened by anima manipulation and primeval natura. His fingers gripping the slightest of holds could support twice his body weight, and his muscles didn’t know tiredness.


    There must’ve been a vein natura deep below the sinkhole, a remnant of that explosion that created the Big Bowl—that was the reason for the lively ecosystem here. The recent earthquake then pushed a world vein upward and exposed it to become a lifestream.


    Halfway down the limestone walls, the perilous descent softened into a slope. “Is this… soil?”


    Finlay gingerly lowered his foot and tapped the greenery to check if there was ground below. He hopped down and found it solid enough. It was steep but much better than climbing straight down while clinging on harsh rocks. Why was this huge pile of soil against the wall here? Plant life wasn’t extensive, just a grass cover.


    Whenever it rained, floods from the top must’ve carried soil and deposited them here. Grandpa Swaney has a smaller version of this problem in his farm when it rained. Layer by layer, over a long period, these slopes formed. Trees couldn’t grow because they’d get piled on.


    As Finlay went down—mostly slipping on the wet grass; superstrength couldn’t help with that—the seed in his pocket became warm and started to pulse. Did it mean he was getting close to the lifestream?


    So… where is it?


    Cogwyn must’ve described its location in this sinkhole but that didn’t stick to Finlay because he hadn’t been here before. This crystal or that crystal? Did Cogwyn even mention a crystal? A tree? Which part of the sinkhole did they enter? Should be different from Finlay’s path because they had some shenanigans with the kudzun.


    Finlay ended up playing a ‘Hot and Cold’ game to find the lifestream. A literal version of it. If the World Tree seed cooled, he was going the wrong way. He had to go in the direction that made it warmer. It became as hot as a bread roll fresh from the oven.


    “I’m so hungry I could eat a—what’s that?” A wisp of unearthly glow caught Finlay’s eye. Rushing to it, he was prepared to be disappointed, finding perhaps just a firefly.


    The tail end of a snaking greenish-blue light beckoned at him. As he followed it, the thin ribbon became folds of unearthly gossamer cloth hovering close the ground. A slight tingle went up his legs as he stepped on the light. The aurora borealis, the northern lights of Earth, came to mind, though he had seen only pictures of them. But these were more beautiful, and they flowed around him instead of up the sky. There was pink, gold, purple, every color he could think of. Then he came upon a crevasse bubbling with colors he couldn’t think of. His mind turned to mush trying to comprehend the lifestream that he had to close his eyes. Staggering from a pressure that quaked his anima, he backed away, shielding his eyes from the light that seemed to pierce his eyelids.


    He turned around and climbed up looked for a place to plant the seed. Ribbons of the inexplicable light reached for his pocket. The world was guiding him to a certain spot.


    Kneeling, he dug a hole. He then took out the World Tree seed and looked at it for one last time. It wasn’t his family heirloom, but it was still from Earth. Once he planted it, he’d have no more anchor to where he came from.


    He dropped the seed into the hole and lightly covered it with loose soil. Light swirled around the patch like drained water. A powerful force emanated from the ground, knocking back Finlay several feet. He quickly crawled back to the patch, praying that everything was okay.


    The tiniest curl of a seedling poked through the soil.