It was a very common word, a word that people often took for granted, but it was only when I was isolated in a strange world, this world, Echoterra, with my own world coming to an end that I knew the importance of communication.
Every day, I lived in constant fear of death, in constant war with the world.
Every day, I face the grindingly ruthless crucible of Echoterra, fighting, striving, killing, expanding my territory just so I can survive.
No. Definitely not. Sometimes, I feel like I'm on a moving train running so fast that I can't stop it. As if I'm on a ship moving violently across a sea and I have no control over it. Just flowing with the tide, without any control or finesse.
Sometimes, I feel like just dying.
'Why go through all this suffering?'
'Am I secretly a masochist?'
'Death is easy. Death is peaceful'.
I've had these thoughts not once, not twice, especially after suffering the fresh pain of a new injury against the hazards of this cursed world, and yet one thing kept me going. I know you know it, but yes, spite.
Without my spite, I'm nothing.
It was the one anchor that kept me glued to my roots.
It was the fire that kept me going, burning so bright in the depths of my soul that even the inherent darkness of Echoterra could not extinguish it.
It was also the reason why I decided to take the new guy in.
Living in the absence of humans, in the absence of every common sense I knew growing up in the outskirts. After all, who cares about philosophy when your life is on the line?
Influenced by all this, without knowing it, my psyche was already changing. Little by little, I was going insane.
I was beginning to think more like a plant than a human, till he came. And that was why I held on to him so tight.
He was a beacon of light in the deep darkness of this world.
When he tried to communicate, I felt... human again.
I tried responding. My vines flicked, my stalk shifted, but nothing happened. The old network, the pre-language of the wild. It didn't work.
Our signals misaligned. He was from a different evolutionary strain, a different war and so we were inherently different.
Still, he stayed. Nestled beneath my canopy.
I extended a tendril and touched his stalk. He didn't' flinch, neither did he resist.
He was wounded, but not weak.
And now, he was part of my territory.
[System Notification!]
[Protocol Link Established: Protective Dominance.]
[Subordinate Territory Absorbed: +5.2 square meters.]
[Total Territory: 44.7 square meters.]
I wrapped his form in my thorns, not to pierce, but to shield. A nest of living blades around a flickering ember.
My instincts, once honed for conquest, bent now toward preservation. For the first time in this wretched world, I was no longer alone.
But peace doesn't last in Echoterra.
Something had changed.
The first sign was subtle, too subtle for anything other than instinct to notice.
The damp, earthy air that normally surrounded my domain grew dry. It wasn't sudden, not at first. A creeping aridity, like the breath of a distant desert, whispering through the underbrush.
Leaves that once shimmered with dew now curled slightly at the edges. The scent of damp moss and chlorophyll was giving way to something... acrid.
A tiny sound, like dry twigs snapping.
No movement. Just the sound of heat; dry, invisible heat rolling across the floor of Echoterra like a low tide.
Something massive was coming, I could tell immediately. And this guy, he was different. A sovereign of death. A beast that swallowed territories whole.
'Well, when have anything here not been a sovereign of death?'
The next war was about to begin.
I could not help but smile darkly. 'Is this... punishment?'
'This world is supposed to be a fierce crucible to challenge and force trial candidates into evolution individually'.
'By taking another candidate under my wing, did I violate this rule?'
'Is this why this new guy is here? To just punish me, or to execute me?'
In the end, it didn't matter though.
With or without taking my new friend in, I would still have to fight against the threats of Echoterra that I would face sooner or later in my quest to get to 100 square meters as soon as possible.
I immediately pulled all the outlying vine-sentries closer, huddling them tight within the central 44 square meter core of my territory. The younger plant, my newly adopted kin quivered beside me, sensing the shift.
Even without a shared network, fear was universal.
[System Notification!]
[Instinct Activation: WARN]
>Sentient Flora in your domain sense approaching heat-based anomaly. Defense response initiated.
The hairs on my thorned stalk stood on edge.
My leaves trembled, though there was no breeze. Then came the ash; soft, lazy motes descending from above as if snow had forgotten it had winter and decided to burn.
Each flake dissolved upon contact with my body, leaving behind a singe I could feel. Not pain, worse, violation.
This wasn't natural. This wasn't random. Something was indeed moving.
'A beast'. The thought came suddenly.
Then, my territory quivered, all flora within growing tense.
Photosynthesis slowed. Life itself recoiled.
I extended my perception tendrils to the very edge of my reach; there, a scorched fern, its body reduced to steaming mulch. Further still, a chittering insect drone, aflame in midair, spiraling downward in a fiery death dance.
[System Notification!]
[Alert] – External agent identified.
>Classification: Predatory Beast.
>Estimated Threat Level: Red.
>Distance: 27 meters and closing.
I hissed, thorn-petals retracting.
I couldn't see it. Not yet, but I knew. The hunter had entered my jungle.
And I would either adapt... or burn.