The Great Core's Paradox

I commanded plant-flesh to rise, and so it did.

Stalks of greens and golds and blues and browns thrust themselves towards the ceiling of the many-nest’s cavern, growing at a pace that caused the many Coreless around me - their numbers having grown ever greater over the previous days - to break out into an [awed] susurrus. Even I was a little taken aback; though the speed didn’t approach what I had once managed in the spore-covered many-nest in which I had first gained the ability, [Verdure Parasite] was feeling strong, the result of growing seed after seed after seed in recent days, with the power and speed of the ability becoming ever-greater with each new bit of plant-flesh from which to draw.

And now, I was finally making use of all that I’d created.

In my mind’s eye, I could make out the lines of yet-to-be-grown plant-flesh that stretched across the cavern. They ran from tower-nest to tower-nest to tower-nest again, each bit of plant-flesh painstakingly placed by the faithful in preparation for this very moment.

The moment that the Great Core’s might would once again be revealed for all, even the most blind among the Coreless, to witness.

Where once there was empty space, with nothing to stop the approach of bad-things and blasphemers both, walls of dangerous plant-flesh came to be.

First came massive pillars of darkwood, placed in great droves along the paths’ edges, the first line of defense against any invaders. Each was an offspring of the Darkwood Guardian itself, that massive example of plant-flesh that had presided over the many-nest from which I had gained [Verdure Parasite] in the first place - and though they were nowhere near its strength, given the sheer difference in size between offspring and ancestor, I knew that each held the power to crush many a blasphemer or bad-thing beneath its boughs. Darkwood creaked loud enough to echo through the cavern around us, overpowering even the susurrus of amazement that continued to flow forth from the lips of watching Coreless, like a constant roar to announce the Great Core’s claim over its newest territory. Just as quickly as they were grown, much of their insides were shattered into fine dust, wrought by the constricting grasp of spore-roots into new homes for the Coreless in the same shape as what I had made previously. Great plumes of dust rose into the air, coating the stone for many, many not-Needles in every direction.

Next came something simpler; glow-caps, formed in a great multitude to light the way for any traveling Coreless and mark the safety of the Great Core’s pathways. One by one, they sprouted, giving off an overwhelming wave of luminescence that formed along the vast lines of darkwood and the bits of empty stone that still lay between them.

Darkness fled.