Quoted By:
“Szoreny worked well for me so far. I’d rather not deviate for now.”
“As you wish. But first, a story. There once was - not a maiden for a change - but a tree. It was the first thing that could be called a tree. There never was, nor will there ever be another tree as tall or magnificent as it. That tree was Szoreny, The World Tree. His silver branches reached higher than heaven, and grasped ever higher. The Silver Tree bore leaves and flowers of cinnabar that were said to cure all maladies of the world. Even death. It was perhaps for this reason that after the First War, the victorious Exalts, jealous of his magnificence and fearing his power, inverted great Szoreny as they plunged him into Hell. It was so that his magnificent corona was forever hidden from the world, that no matter how much he tries to grow now all he ever achieves is digging himself further into the bedrock of Malfeas. Now only his roots stick out of the ground, reaching for the green sun of hell so that one day they may reflect a fraction of his former magnificence. And it is so that these roots became known as The Silver Forest.”
Markolab chuckled.
“Well. Are you prepared to take on that mantle?”
The training was a lengthy and involved process. But it was going to be, no matter what he chose. He first learned how to secrete vapors with a faint floral smell from his pores. When inhaled it poisoned him with mercury, but since he was mostly immune to it Jet only received mild shakes and headaches from it. But the upside was that it helped speed up his already rapid recovery immensely. Muscle sores, wounds and broken bones that can take hours or days now recover in minutes. That helped speed up his training but it was not enough.
With mild alterations to the essence pattern of the vapors they could also provide additional benefits, such as pain relief or a stimulant that helped him stay awake for a full seven days with no sleep, at the cost of crashing afterwards for a full 24 hours. This way Jet had much, much more time at his hand and the drug fueled haze helped maintain his focus until he developed methods that are more directly useful in combat. But in hindsight he may have regretted that.
One day as he was turning a training dummy into splinters one of the pieces of it ricocheted off the ground and threatened to gouge one of his eyes out. The piece of wood was stopped however when a silvery arm sprouted from his back and snatched it out of the air. It was an odd sensation. The mercury that’s been building up in his system burst through his skin, out the back. But it did not cause him pain, nor did it feel odd at all. It was like he always had that limb, he just did not know it.
