Chrysalis

The Grove Keeper did not have a name, none of the bruan'chii did. Not in the sense of the sapient races, or even the Colony, it would seem. They lacked many things that others had. No first or family name, no gender, no homeland, or indeed, any real history. They possessed no spoken language, little industry or cultural artefacts, no religion or relics or indeed anything that outsiders might think was essential to bind them together.

And yet, no people on Pangera were more united than they. The reason for this was simple, and impossible for any other group to replicate: they were of one soul.

The Keeper could remember being born. A splinter of Mother Tree had broken away, not her physical form, but her very spirit, and been cupped in her loving hands. Embraced by the Mother, that shard had begun to grow. Ideas, thoughts and emotions had coalesced slowly inside that timeless realm within the Tree as the Keeper had been nurtured by its sole parent. Over time that tiny shard had grown into a bright, burning spirit of its own, a fully grown entity, ready to be unleashed on the world.

Yet that had not been the way. Rather than being sent out into the world, the Keeper had been kept close to the Mother, released from her hands and allowed to mingle with the other spirits she had raised.

How to describe that world? The Keeper didn't have the words to paint an accurate picture. There was warmth, and comfort, and safety. More than those things, there was community. Thousands upon thousands of bruan'chii frolicked there, held within the Soul Home. In that place they experienced a wordless joy as they enjoyed the company of quite literal kindred spirits. Of one soul, they had no need to communicate, able to share thoughts and emotions on a primal level that transcended physical reality.

The Keeper had spent most of its life in the Soul Home, beyond time, beyond the individual, held in the embrace of the Mother.

Now though, the Keeper felt the push.

gentle suggestion, but one that not a single bruan'chii had ever refused. As the Keeper's spirit began to move, so too did many that were close, all of them shifting with increasing speed as they departed their home and entered the wider

the journey and each other's company. The Keeper felt a deep satisfaction. This was what it meant to be

at their destination, they found the Mother had prepared their vessels, as she always did, and they leapt into them like children into a burbling stream. It was always a strange shift of perspective, when they joined with a body. They transitioned from beings of pure

steady flow of life mana poured in and in response the Keeper grew. Powerful, trunk-like arms swelled with strength as

sense the others growing alongside

form broke free of the root on which it had been

Keepers and regular bruan'chii alike shook their new bodies as they connected with each other via

and powerful that it dwarfed their flickering selves, lay a gentle hand on them, and through that,

together with their kindred and then setting off through the

group, a fierce energy

them back for so long, but at last they had been set

The aid of