Mike crawled faster and faster the closer he got to the towering tree that was his spawn point.
'if I can get close to even the farthest one of it's roots…..'
The tree was considerably massive compared to any other tree specie he knew. In simple terms it was gigantic in epic proportions. It had a width of around one hundred metres around it's stem,the tiniest one of it's roots that was above the surface of the ground was about ten metres thick and fifty meters long and and the tree grew so tall, twisting and branching off as it did, that it's tallest crown seemed to disappear into the dark skies above.
The closest root to him was just a few paces away…..
" ROAAAARRR!"
... and his assailant, Chromo, was even more closer.
Just as he was an arm length away from from grabbing unto the root of the tree, a large hand , no, rather,a very large paw grabbed him by his left leg and lifted him up in an inverted position , the very same way he would have lifted a rodent by it's tail. There, suspended in mid – air , Mike watched as Chromo approached him .
Chromo was not crawling this time. Instead, he was being gently lifted by a pair of translucent, cyan hands…..
' It is using an ability!'
...the very same type that was suspending him in mid aier.
Unfortunately, he had realized it too late.
" ROAAAARRR!"
Chromo had caught up. And it's eyes promised not to release Mike in to the embrace of death until he paid the debt of blood he owed in suffering.
Suddenly, a bi-pedaled , muscular-but-not-brawny-looking, Elt shaped creature materialized just beside the Chande like creature. It wore a sleeveless, dirty looking top along with combat trousers. Also, it bore a heavy war axe that promised nothing but violence and death to anything that dared to oppose it. Beneath it's skin, muscles rippled like steel wires as strange, seemingly unintelligible, golden yellow symbols flickered across it exposed skin.
'Has help arrived?' he asked himself.
Just as the flames of hope rised up in him, it was thoroughly dashed when the new arrival knelt down, dropped it's axe on the forest floor with as much care as one would lay a baby in a cradle with before it picked up Chromo , and hoisted it across it's shoulder, an action that simultaneously showed that they- Chromo and the brute- were, at least,on the same side and caused Mike to fall deeper into despair.
Thus, it was not surprising to him when ,like a bolt of lightning falling from stormy skies, the new arrival struck Mike , who was hanging mid air with a heavy blow that neatly connected to his mid section, pushing the wind out of him and sending him sailing through the air like a kite with a broken string. Even before he could land, another heavy and devastating blow neatly connected to his torso from behind which sent him sailing through the air in the direction opposite to the one he was initially headed to. He did not get a chance to land on his own though, as the creature picked him by his leg mid flight and slammed him like a rag doll on one of the roots of the tree on which he was originally supposed to land.
Within that short interval of time when he received that short one sided beating , Mike knew, from the sensation of pain that he was getting, that his body had sustained more damage than it ever had through out his life time prior to now. All his floating ribs, both on his left and right sides, were broken causing him to experience severe levels of pain with each breath he took . Also, flakes of his skin peeled off from his body with each physical assault he received which also dislocated some of his joints in the process. After a while, broken bones began to jut out from beneath his skin into full display. Mike was bleeding in buckets and the roots of the tree that was his spawn point was, without the knowledge of any one of them, greedily absorbing all the blood he bled out.
And, as Mike's blood was rapidly being absorbed by the root of the tree that was his spawn point, the sparsely spread, ever present white mist , which characterized the forest was converging towards the same tree.
Chromo was not done with him yet. For it, the suffering Mike was undergoing was a relatively small, insufficient price to pay for the crime of taking the life of it's kid. And,wanted the debt to be paid in full.
Mike's senses were gradually shutting down on their own so it could save his brain from the sensory overload of processing so much pain signals. The condition he was in truly set the record for the worse shape he had ever been in, and by a very wide margin which was not good news. Now, the pain he was experiencing before falling into the hands of Chromo's brute seemed like bliss in comparison.
.....he was still bleeding, the tree's roots were still greedily absorbing his blood and the ever present white mist that characterized the forest was becoming even more dense around his spawn point.
Even right in his miserable state, strange thought found it's way into his mind.
' At least my theory seem to be sound'
Chromo was not faring much better as Mike noticed, it's skin was gradually drying up and turning into what seemed to be the bark of a tree the more it strayed near the direction of any of the trees that was within the Drant forest. Then, Chromo, who seemed to have noticed, ordered it's brute to place it down just outside the range of the tree under which Mike was receiving a beating. That did not put a stop to what was happening to it. Rather, the rate at which it was being turned- to whatsoever it was being turned to- visibly slowed down .
Then, through his swollen eyelids and with his gradually blurring vision, Mike notice what seemed what seemed to be a hand mirror suddenly materializing on the forest floor right beside the brute in the very same way that the brute had done.
'What is that thing?' Mike asked himself, not because his blurring senses was preventing him from fully processing what it was , but because his rational mind considered it to be dangerous. The last thing that made a similar entrance was responsible for his current state.
Then, as if to confirm his instincts, the brute picked the object up after setting it's liege down before walking towards him. Then, it picked him up and choke-slammed him onto the bark of the massive tree's stem, causing him to cough up more blood.....
.....which in turn , like a chain reaction, caused the roots on which the blood fell to greedily absorb it.
Then, as though a certain threshold was met, there was a sudden, forceful upsurge of the mist that had been gradually accumulating. From where it was, Chromo let out a sudden, sharp, frightened cry before growing silent.
...….The last thing Mike's clouded sensory ability perceived before he lost consciousness was beng suddenly dropped by Chromo's brute.