Wraithwood Botanist

Chapter 108 - Stories

Kyro groaned after he hit me, taking a sip from his flask as I bled out internally. Then he pulled out a tiny bottle from a bag on his back, pushed me over, unzipped my backpack, pulled out my water bottle, squirted some of the liquid into it, then forced it down my throat.

It was like the Illyndra elixir. The feeling numbed my entire digestive system, and my stomach repaired itself while I could feel it. It was a disgusting experience that made me puke once I was finished.

"Note to self," Kyro said. "Body’s strong, but organs are weak as hell. What a pain."

I coughed. "You could’ve warned me!"

"That skin of yours automatically hardens if threatened," Kyro said. "And your guardian acts independently. Catching you off guard was the only way. Otherwise, I wouldn’t. Trust me, I don’t get off on abusing little girls."

"Are you trying to piss me off?"

"No." He took another drink.

A dull throb of a headache made waves through my mind, and I pushed myself up. "Did that count? Or did the water nullify it?"

"Oh, it doesn’t matter how you heal most of the time. Only matters if it’s tempering your healing system. So we can do this all day."

"And it’s gonna help?"

"Yeah."

"Then hit me."

"Again?"

"Yeah."

"This soon?"

"Yeah. But I’m fighting back."

Kyro sighed and clutched his head as if he were hung over. Then said, "Well... I guest there’s no way around it. Drop Kira and we’ll get started."

I released Kira without complaints and told her to back off. Then, the training began.

Continuous skin peeling was the worst thing I had experienced, but that was the next worst. Even slowing down the world to a crawl, I could barely see him hit me, and with each blow, he ruptured my organs, treating my ribs and abs like a xylophone. The only organ he spared in our mock battles was my heart. But when Trant arrived to check in on us, Kyro then ruptured it because he knew Trant could heal me. That was the most terrifying experience of my life.

It was awful.

But.

What a trip.

Even in a single afternoon, his hits did less damage to my organs. By the end of the day, I could almost handle a full hit.

Or so I thought.

The next day, after shedding all the excess vira leaf tea in ways that I won’t explain, I drank more and went to training, only to learn he was holding back. My organs exploded all over again, and he didn’t hold back on anything but my brain.

I thought I was going to die, but—as was the case the day before—my organs got stronger until I remembered how excited I was about the progress—

Till the next day when I found out he was still holding back.

This happened for five days straight, but at the end of it, Trant and Reta watched Kyro send me flying so hard that I broke through a tree, and I didn’t cough out blood. It just felt like a normal impact, like the aftermath of a cartoon impact where the wall craters, but the superhero gets up just fine after some wheezing.

It was surreal.

"Got some renlock?" Kyro asked Trant as I was brushing myself off.

"She’s not ready," Trant answered. "Her cores are really something, but they can only do so much. I’d wait a couple years. Don’t want her body to explode."

"You got some?" Kyro asked Reta after getting rejected.

"Musicians," I said.

"Yes... musicians..." She lifted her hands like a conductor, and an ensemble of Drokai with strange stringed instruments appeared all around us, playing the melody I was hearing. It matched perfectly.

"In Drokna, we have this saying: ’Gaelea iasa, skela trask ah.’ Those told the truth lie to themselves. It means that people hear what they want to hear, and look away from the things that they don’t want to see. And it’s the job of an illusionist to make them hear what they want to hear, and turn away from the things they don’t."

Suddenly, wolves howled in the distance. I immediately shot into action, activating Wood Wide Web, and saw nothing there. I sighed a breath of relief but then heard a bug near my foot. I looked down to pull my foot away, and when I did, I found a plant highlighted neon purple under the ground cover.

"Ah!" I screamed, stumbling back and hitting the ground. I scrambled up and looked into the ground cover and found the plant missing. "What...?"

"See?" Reta said with a protracted yawn. "You’ve lied to yourself, convincing yourself that no one can see this highlighting but you. Why? Because if you didn’t, you would have to question not only your surroundings but also your tools of survival. You wouldn’t be able to function. So you lie and lie and lie, and the moment that someone challenges that, you fall victim to it."

"But..." I muttered in a daze, lost and confused. "How? Can you actually see the highlighting?"

"Of course not," Reta said.

"Then how’d you know what color to highlight it? It was perfect."

"Was it? Covered in ground cover, peeking out, shaded by shadows. Was it perfect?"

I searched for a retort but found none.

"It wasn’t perfect, but it was close enough," Reta said. "Part of that was the story I told you. I stopped us, spiked your blood to distract you, then startled you with a bug, making you see a very poisonous plant that was hiding in a plausible location. You would’ve had that reaction no matter what, as you’re conditioned to fear purple plants, even if they’re not highlighted."

I took a sharp breath, speechless.

"But I know what your highlighting looks like..." she waved her hand, and the entire forest turned into a sea of purples that looked eerily accurate. "Because I asked you about your highlighting early on, then painted plants purple throughout our hikes. Some caught your interest; some made you avoid them. I painted hundreds to figure out what the highlighting looked like, masking them behind barriers to route you away from questioning them. Now, I can route you into any trap I want. It is this tactic that has allowed the Drokai to win large-scale wars for countless generations."

I swallowed. "That’s... super impressive. And I see the value in... battles and assassinations. But that wouldn’t help me in a normal fight, right?"

"You have books at your disposal. You should never move anywhere without having knowledge about your enemies. Besides, I did tell you about storytelling, right?"

I heard a rustle and saw Kline in his invisible form, glowing with soul aura as usual, but he vanished abruptly.

"Everyone sees soul force," Reta said.

"Leave the poor girl alone," Kyro said drunkenly.

I didn’t believe he was real, but I still felt intense anxiety that he might be behind me, so I still turned around. To my shock and dismay, instead of seeing an illusion of a fairy, I saw a tree talking with a huge, jagged mouth. "What the hell did you—"

A sharp blade suddenly pressed against my neck from behind, and I swallowed slowly, cold sweat pouring down my back.

"You’re dead," Reta said.

"This is disgraceful," I said, rubbing my throat after she released me. "Three for three, one after the other. Even when I knew it was an illusion, I looked anyway."

"Mira... you’re not listening to me," Reta said.

I groaned and looked at her. "I am listening."

"But you’re not learning. Mira... you’re not falling for the sights and sounds. You’re falling for the story. Kline stalking us to protect you. Lithco showing spurts of concern—as he does. All of them are believable, so when they happen, you’d rather suggest I’m tricking you by saying they’re not there than accept that they’re fake. What if they are there? What then? That’s why you looked, even though you knew it was an illusion. You fear the day it is real, and Kyro thinks you hate him, fluttering off to drown himself in booze."

I stared at my palms absentmindedly, lost in a prison of self-reflection. Then I whispered, "Those told the truth lie to themselves."

"Those told the truth lie to themselves," Reta said. "The job of an illusionist is to match images to a person’s narratives. Do that, and you can control just about anyone."

I stared at her in awe, and she yawned, sitting on my shoulder and leaning on my head to sleep.

"Does this mean that you’re going to teach me?" I asked.

"No... You’re still not dreaming. But..." She yawned again. "I’ll go with you to Misty Row. If you won’t dream at night, we’ll dream... when you’re awake."

I watched her lay her head down and drift off into sleep. Then, I stared into dead space, thinking of the implications of leaving months ahead of schedule. But if I were ready, it would change everything.