"Keh Keh Keh!"
Yellow eyes glint amidst the forest foliage. Goblins, hungry for their meal and eager to feed their brood mother, eye a deer amidst a clearing. Their malformed hands struggle to keep their stillness as they grip rocks and branches, adrenaline surging with the desire to devour.
Completely unaware of this danger, a doe steps into the clearing, and from the tall grass beside her, her fawn emerges, its spotted coat blending with the surroundings as it begins to feed and grow. Innocent and unaware, and attractive to the goblins, its appearance is like a squirrel to dogs. Their hungry eyes widen for a split second, their bodies coiled and ready to spring.
One near the front finally takes action. A drooling, excited grin spreads across its face as it whips back its arm to hurl the rock at the fawn.
-Crack-
Like their previous tension, a sharpened root with the thickness of an adult forearm plunges through the goblin's chest. It lets out a gurgling screetch in pain! The deer and fawn snap too as the goblins began hooting and howling before trying to make their getaway.
In this split second, some goblins that turned find themselves whacked with heavy branches and others, still fixated on their prey, go to sprint out. Excited, gleefully malicious laughter is cut short into pained gurgling as vines descend around their bodies and neck. And in a matter of seconds, the band of goblins is all killed or unconscious. The unconscious ones? Of course, they were killed. Perhaps in an all too similar and disturbing way as they Smiling Tree of Wishes as their unconscious bodies sink into the soil beneath like their deceased kin.
"May their souls find peace," Eleos's soul muttered from the ethereal plains. His soul was no longer shapeless or a shimmering, invisible orb. With time, and his growing strength, it had morphed to match his previous elven body.
His senses were still the same. He could see what was happening throughout his domain of influence without actually being there. Before, however, he couldn't peer outside of it. Now he could.
Relief flooded Eleos when he could finally do this. Decades of staring at the same patches of land, with only the relief of passing animals or his visiting family, started to chip away at his sanity. And it wasn't like he could see normal colors, smell the fresh air, or feel the soft grass either.
Smell? Touch? Sight with normal color? These were all things he had lost in his decision when he forced his soul into the tree. The consequences of his choice hadn't settled on him until the passage of time began. Eleos thought initially, especially with their god's help, it would be an enlightening experience! But this hopeful expectation had fallen apart.
Even with his parents often coming to comfort and speak with him, and he was ever grateful, it wasn't enough. Nor were the passerbys of other humanoid creatures, as they were brief. His prison bars were made of soil instead of metal. What he had loved became his prison.
Eleos's heart tickled with delight and joy, however as trickles of mana and essence from the goblin corpses expanded his cage. He could almost literally feel the bars of his prison expand. This wasn't something he noticed when he was first transferred. It took him a while to learn and understand these experiences.
When an animal died, its physical essence and faint mana traces within each creature expanded his field of influence and power. This became easily identifiable after several months when he found he had nothing to do. Now his cage, which started as only fifty meters in circumference, was close to three hundred.
And their souls? The red, corrupting tendrils that beckoned them to their doom? The same ones that nearly drove his father mad? He'd sever them and allow them to remain in his domain.
At first, it was entertaining. They played games, chasing each other or zooming around his domain as glowing orbs. But he could see with time their joy and sanity start to be chipped away too in displays of shimmering and shaking.
He felt sorry for them, but couldn't do anything about it himself. But every time there was an incursion he let them all know. And every time a goblin incursion happened, an invisible swarm of observing souls from all kinds of creatures would watch. A spectacle that once scared many away became the center of attraction while the souls were mercilessly ripped apart by Eleos.
A grim problem Eleos faced was that as his sphere of influence grew, so did the number of corpses that were required to expand a mere foot. On the bright side, his hosting tree became a magnificent sight to behold. His bark held a glistening shine like glass while his branches grew out in spectacular and mesmerizingly twisting patterns that bloomed flowers of crimson red, sapphire blue, and gold.
The landscape too had become a sight to behold. In the past it had been a regular forest and waterfall with lush greenery and hidden delights. Now it was more of a magical mystery with flowers of many colors and magical properties blooming from every corner. Vines, dotted with flowers, crawled the cliff face around the waterfall. Even the waterfall and river that ran through his domain sparkled beautifully, as if enchanted, and added to the glow.
The animals that lived here thrived with enhanced senses too. Shimmering eyes of different hues after feeding on so many magical plants, tails or tendrils that bloomed from mana. Some could be felt. Others passed straight through you, leaving behind heat or cold residue.
Even the deer that Eleos saved were larger than average. The fawn was the size of a normal deer, and the mother had antlers that glistened and radiated magic. The mother may have been able to defeat all of the goblins by herself even as from her antlers she could send magical waves that could blast the goblins back into the trees or stone.
"A beautiful tree in a barren landscape."
Eleos sighed. His words stirred the swarm of souls, and they instantly swam around him with peaked interest. It was a beautiful sight. If someone were capable of peering into this realm, his soul would be a golden outline of an elf with glowing blue orbs swirling like autumn leaves, but with him at the center of the vortex.
"I've watched these creatures with love," he says as his vision watches the mother and her fawn race through his domain. "But I can only watch for so long before becoming bored..."
This was how Eleos felt as he watched the same patch of land for over two decades. The magical mysteries soothed his mind, as did any visitors, but it was always brief.
"We'll attract people, and we won't be bored anymore."
Eleos smiled with faint hope. Some of these mutations and magical adaptations were purposeful by him, as it was now as he siphoned off a portion of the goblin's essence and magic toward the plants and trees in his domain. And like that, a new flower bloomed instantly with glowing pollen puffing out into the air, and a tree began to shine like glass.
His parents and some elves would visit soon for the coming-of-age ceremonies that still endured. This time, Eleos thought, he would convince them to move their homes to his forest. This would ease his boredom, help his people, and perhaps further expand his domain.
Eleos had tried before, but the elves were unwilling to up and move. Well, his mother and father, Flora and Aello Faewynn, were willing, but none of the other elves. It was their natural attachment to their current homes on the forest bordering the lake and on the lake. And they couldn't simply abandon their responsibilities as leaders to live in the forest.
Months of planning after the last time were spent devising his latest persuasion attempt. This included an attempt to bribe them with these magical creatures and plants. His soul shifted excitedly as he thought about them coming to live there before suddenly freezing.
His tree pulsed energy like a heartbeat, painting the landscapes like RF mapping in gradient colors. Energy cartography, while sounds added depth and clearer outlines, echolocation.
But these creatures he had never seen before, and one of them made him stiffen with fear. A creature, an elf, but not like his own. Her body in his eyes held a solid ruby form without any need for mapping. Her eyes glistened a dangerous red while a massive creature, crushing anything under its weight, came into view. It's soul, similar to hers, didn't need to be mapped. Golden waves and threads coursed through its body to show its form.
And both of these creatures, with certainty in Eleos's heart, could destroy and kill everything here in an instant.