Dark Forest

"Oi pest, I need a knife to butcher this thing," Ken said extending his hand towards Yag, hinting at the Qarin to shapeshift.

Yag hesitated. "You really wanna eat that?"

Ken just grinned. "Why do you ask?"

"No reason! Just seems risky for you, dear friend," Yag replied nervously. He feared becoming Ken's next meal.

"I know!" Ken gasped, whilst a maniacal grin painted his face. "You could try it first. See if it's safe for me to eat or not."

Terror flooded Yag's face. It recoiled after hearing Ken's diabolical proposal. The boy was hinting at the unspeakable.

"Kidding," Ken said calmly. "A shame, I really want a taste." He headed towards the trees.

Not yet, but soon.

Shifting, Ken went back to the physical realm. He activated the new Meta-Object and began to draw faint dust from the air into his physical form.

Sighing, he stopped using it and shifted back to the astral realm, pondering his next move. The Meta-Object granted an understanding of its rules along with the dust's purpose.

"What are ya' doing!" Yag asked cautiously.

Ignoring him, Ken focused on the nearest tree's essence. He attuned his sight to the astral plane's monochrome black and white, making its energy easier to perceive. There - he realized this tree's essence flowed from a much larger source.

He followed the essence, but couldn't reach its origin from the ground. Looking up at the hundred-foot tree, Ken began to climb, tracing the glowing stream into the distance. Yag shapeshifted into a black bird, flapping close behind.

At the top, Ken finally located the source. Attuning his vision to colors again, he beheld a colossal banyan tree stretching skyward for hundreds of miles. This titan nourished the jungle, distributing essence to the trees below like a cosmic tree of life.

It resembled a luminous nebula, branching streams of light fueling the jungle's trees like tiny light bulbs on a vast circuit. Ken stood atop his tree, gazing up at the intricate glowing channels flowing from the massive trunk.

That tree resembles Felinn, the sacred tree that grew under Bayad.

Looking up, Ken realized it strove to grow even larger, reaching for the swirling in its place dark sphere overhead, reaching for Sawad that was dominating the dark heavens, a sphere of which true scale and nature defied description.

It's trying to grow taller like Felinn is reaching for Bayad.

But even with his spectral sight, Sawad's true nature eluded Ken.

Perhaps Sawad isn't spherical at all! Ken thought, watching the titan tree draw dust-like light from Sawad.

Glancing around, Ken tried grasping for more black spheres—more Sawads—fueling titanic trees scattered across vast distances.

While doing so, he began to comprehend this place.

As far as the eye could see, the Underground stretched endlessly beneath the formless dark of the sky, an uncaring void of darkness. No stars or celestial bodies shone their light upon the flatlands stretching to the fathomless horizon. No sun moved overhead to indicate directions or judge the passage of time.

The only illumination from the sky came from the faint luminous rim of Sawad - the colossal Sphere of Dark.

He then threw his sight eastwards into the distance, where titanic glowing shapes lumbered amongst the dark trees - massive denizens of the Underground going about their arcane business. Ken's sight drifted nearer, intrigued by their massive auras.

One particularly interested the boy at first. However, its swirling constellation of eyes made Ken freeze under the intense scrutiny. He hastily looked away, as if he did not want to provoke the vast giant. Even though to it, the boy was just a distant grain of dust drifting in an impossible distance.

Are they real?! Ken's eyes widened in wonder.

Throwing his sight again within this realm of endless flatness and anomalies beyond human understanding, he observed the vast fungal jungles as they blanketed the dead-flat terrain, threaded with alien vegetation. Within the primordial badlands, nameless terrors hid.

Towering above the fungal carpets rose grinning Skull Mountains and skeletal spires - petrified remnants of creatures that once strode this realm in ages past now sprouted with fungal growth. Their ossified frames now thrust skyward like monoliths.

No hills, dunes, or true mountains interrupted the endless ground. Distances distorted amidst the crushing scale, leagues appearing footsteps away. Orientation seemed impossible to maintain amidst the desolate badlands, without those landmarks to guide the eye across the bleak, unchanging horizon.

He looked westward and saw massive, continent-sized floating rocks hovering in the strange sky overhead. The levitating landmasses dotted the void, motionless yet defying gravity.

Some floated solitary off on the remote horizons, reduced to tiny specks at impossible ranges. Others congregated in shattered clusters, suspended unnaturally. Jagged fractures and chasms could be glimpsed overlapping their surfaces.

Those look like the hovering fallen scales of ObsidianScales up home! Ken grasped. So they are floating because of…Not now. He stopped his train of thought from drifting.

Squinting, he could just make out a small dark blob in the far distance. One more sphere was confirmed, though it appeared tiny from here.

I'm right, that tree was not unique, just the nearest. Ken gasped innocently, curiosity beaming out of his eyes.

Peering into the blackness, Ken searched for further signs, but the limits of his sight left other spheres unconfirmed. Not yet, eh!

Ken turned his gaze back down from those bodiless masses, for now, focused on the more graspable giant tree and its eldritch presence. In time, all these realm's abstractions would be deciphered and mastered.

The tree is like the Shaitan. Ken began to consider.

The dust of Sawad is energy that exists in both planes. Ken understood. This means self-sustainment works like photosynthesis, but instead of light, water, and nutrients, it relies on Sawad's dust.

How could it have slipped my mind? Perhaps because it was too obvious!

As he intently looked at the tree, he recognized another spirit coiling around the titan tree - a snake-like essence spiraling from root to crown.

At that moment, Ken recalled a symbol, the crest of his tribe; the SilverEyes. A serpent Dragon coiling around a Banyan tree. They called him, The Dogma of Wit.

Could it be the SilverEyed!

"The king of this jungle." Ken gasped grin widening.

Ground shattering strength! He looked at his hands as he began to laugh maniacally. And sweet revenge as extra. He clasped his palms into fists.

I must go to that tree.

After which he climbed down his tree in silence, a grin filling his face, Yag tagging along.

When his feet touched the ground, "Oi pest!" Ken called.

"Ya!" Yag replied, turning to the white wolf.

"Let's go. And warn me if you sense a Shaitan."

One less threat to worry about. Ken started towards the titan tree, Yag following anxiously.

But first, shelter, Ken thought, exhausted. Soon he would seize his prize. Fatigue necessitated a brief respite first. He had to be ready.

They walked for hours.

Yag, his ever-present Qarin, proved to be both a valuable source of information and an unrelenting distraction. The Shaitan's voice echoed in Ken's mind, recounting past stories he claimed to have heard from other invisible Qarin like himself while Ken was keenly observing the creatures in the physical realm, pondering survival.

With wary steps, Ken remained vigilant, never dropping his guard and so were the creatures around him, since threats were everywhere. Lurking behind every twisted tree and under every foul leaf were endless dangers ready to strike.

As he ventured deeper, he entered a clearing filled with bioluminescent herbs and fungal patches. There, he spotted a pair of stealthy PhaseProwlers, their legs temporarily intangible to silently stalk a juvenile GraviDeer nibbling nearby. Swiftly they brought it down. But before feeding, they cleared away the toxic CrimsonCreeper vines surrounding their kill with their razor-sharp obsidian claws.

After hauling the carcass to safer grounds, the PhaseProwlers consumed handfuls of lumi-lichen growing on a nearby fallen log, their razor jaws glowed after. Only after ingesting the lichens did the PhaseProwlers finally tear into the fresh meat.

Nearby, a pair of Saberfoxes hunted a GraviBird, before gobbling up the proximate lumi-lichen with their razor-sharp teeth. As bioluminescent juices splashed, the Saberfoxes' jaws glowed brighter, aiding their consumption. Yag rambled about tricks he once played, but Ken tuned it out, intent on his surroundings.

They were clearly carnivores, so why would they do that? Unless these blue-green lichens must detoxify wounds and the meat of the kill. Preparing their metabolisms to safely process the meal.

Clever, Ken thought. Focused yet weary.

Suddenly, an opportunistic SonicHyena let out a burst of subsonic barks focused through its acoustic-metamaterial vocal cords, temporarily stunning the Saberfoxes. As they recovered, the SonicHyena dragged its GraviBird carcass to a secluded hollow tree. Safe in the astral plane, Ken observed as it rubbed against stim-leaves, absorbing revitalizing fluids through its hide before collecting droplets of moisture condensing inside the grove.

Useful, Ken noted mentally, filing the information away. He paused, catching his breath. Yag's voice rang in, echoing through Ken's thoughts like a mischievous whisper. "Ah, dear friend, did I ever tell you about Zaraq, the Qarin who once played tricks on a powerful sorcerer? Turned his potions into rainbow-colored frogs, he did."

Just then, a horde of PlasmaLocusts descended, their chests glowing from the contained plasma within their metamaterials, lighting the way forward through the gloom. They swarmed toward a stand of Suppressor Trees, whose psycho-reactive leaves generated a psychic field to confuse the locusts' senses, diverting them away.

However, a few locusts broke through, drawn toward the nectar within the vibrant Siren Flowers beneath the Suppressor Trees. As they fed on the sweet nectar, the petals of the Siren Flowers reflexively closed around the oblivious insects, trapping them within the deadly blossoms to slowly digest later.

Clever plants, Ken thought. He could use similar tactics. Yag continued his inane stories as Ken marched deeper, increasingly fatigued.

Ken's patience wore thin. "Oi pest, now's not the time for your tales. I need focus."

But Yag continued gibbering on.

Ken pushed on through the stand of Suppressor Trees, to find himself near a hulking MegaCubus –wolverine-like creature- as it fed on the minerals embedded in a giant tree. Its grinding metamaterial metal-like jaws were effortlessly pulverizing the surface.

Then it moved until finally reaching a small, gurgling stream. Before drinking from the nearby stream, it rubbed its hide against reeds growing along the bank and mixed it with the water. Once disinfected, the MegaCubus sucked down gallons of water through its filtering orifice.

Yes, immunity is key here, Ken realized. He sat heavily, needing a brief rest. Yag obliviously nattered on about old friends. The reeds could disinfect the water of any harmful compounds or microbes that could sicken the consumer.

There, Ken also spotted several creatures cautiously drinking and replenishing themselves. An Armadilloid slowly ingested the glowing aqua algae covering the wet rocks, the blue light splashing into its mouth. Its armored hide shimmered with light-bending metamaterials providing camouflage as it drank. It then tunneled underground, silently stalking vibrations to ambush prey. Nearby, a Tetrapod's four metamaterial limbs work in concert to suck up and filter the water through its respiratory system as its auditory fins listen for danger.

Ken observed intently, formulating plans. Yag's chatter barely registered now.

So some were naturally immune while others needed help!

I must learn from these creatures that continue to persevere through ingenuity and vigilance.

Observe, learn, adapt.