Communication…

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.

Was it easy?

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'.

'Why not just die?'

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.

DING!

~----~

[System Notification!]

[New Kin Detected.]

[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.

Crackle!

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.

I didn't trust it.

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?'

I knew…

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.

And so, I acted.

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.

DING!

~----~

[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.

It was hunting me.

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.

'What the hell!'

DING!

~----~

[System Notification!]

[Alert] – External agent identified.

>Classification: Predatory Beast.

>Designation: ???

>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.

I retreated inward, folding my outer vines into a protective dome, leaving only my sensory roots buried just beneath the soil like antennae.

My breath, if it could still be called that slowed. The territory was listening.

The ash thickened.

The enemy? It drifted from the canopy, sifted between the air like slow-motion embers. Not a fire. Not yet.

But the heat in the soil told a different story. It was soaking into the ground. Spreading. Cooking the topsoil alive, terraforming the soil I called home.

An intrusion. No, an invasion.

'Just what type of enemy is this?!' Tension bubbled within me like coiled muscles, heightening my adrenaline levels.

My tendrils whispered across the forest floor, slipping through brush and roots, touching the corpses it left behind. A shriveled moss-patch, veins seared black. A withered pitcher plant, cracked like dried leather.

Everything in its path was dry. Dead. Like someone had dragged a sunbeam through the jungle.

And then…

DING!

~----~

[System Notification!]

[Damage Forecast Active] – Prolonged exposure to thermal aura may induce withering in peripheral stalks.

>Suggested Action: Defensive adaptation.

~----~

'Great!' I am so enthused.

A first look at this set of notifications would emphasize one thing, danger.

The encroaching, creeping danger threatening to suffocate me, slowly driving me crazy.

But I didn't focus on that. Instead, I read in between the lines; I looked at something else entirely that this system notifications showed. These notifications meant encroaching danger, but they also meant that the enemy was close. Closer than ever before.

I hissed under my breath, my internal core thrumming with tension. I didn't even notice my leaves shivering until I saw my kin plant; a slender fern-like creature barely half my height, curling inward, mirroring my dread.

He had no idea what was coming. I wasn't sure I did either, but the dread curling through me infected him.

Twenty meters now.

The tension was palpable now. I could feel the subtle tremors of its movement. I could feel it literally reverberating through my stem, singing a lullaby of dread, and death.

Then I heard it.

A step. Not loud. Not heavy, but purposeful. Measured.

A foot pressing into the scorched forest, pausing just long enough to taste the silence, then moving forward again. The rhythm and stalwart confidence of a predator who knew it had already won.

'The nerve of this bastard!' I snarled.

Seventeen meters.

Spite and rage was simmering again, but I forced calm into my system. This time, I felt like giving in to rage would do more harm than good.

Instead of giving in to rage and chaos, I embraced order. Calculative order.

Control. Order. Instinct. My vines slithered just beneath the dirt, positioning themselves in tripwires and razor meshes. I adjusted pheromone excretion to mask the breath of life, camouflaging myself as decaying flora. Still. Waiting.

Maybe it was all useless. After all, this was not a plant, but a beast who could see with eyes, but I did it nonetheless.

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