The offshoots of the trunk flashed by as Lillian ran full tilt across the branch. All her carefully laid plans were wasted as she vaulted off the end of the path and fell thirty feet to the branch below. The impact rattled her joints as her muscles screamed and her bones groaned from the abuse. The jelly’s mana wasted no time in infusing itself into her micro-fractures and the small tears in her muscles. The small injuries healed before she could register the damage as she got back up and continued her mad dash.

  There was too much mana inside of her. The simple training method she had devised under the arch to cultivate the poison mana into her muscles was too slow. Breaking down her muscles naturally would take too long. She needed to bleed to force the mana to disperse before the tumors grew too large.

  She continued to crash from branch to branch until she made it to the tree, where she had seen the ants the day before. The surroundings faded from her mind as she caught sight of one of the armored creatures. Lillian readied her spear as she rushed towards the ant.

  Like a mad bull, Lillian charged the warrior ant and dove into its outstretched limbs. Her spear missed its mark and glanced off the shelled carapace before lodging itself into the trunk of the tree. The startled ant reacted by lunging its pincered maw at her. Lillian became a whirlwind, throwing fist after fist into the shelled carapace. The mana overload had muted her rational mind, and the poison was clouding her judgment. She didn’t try to defend herself as she turned her fists into misshapen lumps of flesh. The pain of the ant’s resistance was background noise. The bones in her hand shattered and reformed as the ant tried its best to catch her with its powerful maw. The tumors slowed their growth as the muscles in her arms inflated. Her body was so much stronger than it used to be. She could swing her fists for hours if the mana supported it.

  Her bloody fists caused cracks to appear in the bug's shell, and her toxic blood entered its body with every swing. The ant and the girl continued to exchange blows as the mana ran its course through her. Wounds littered the ant's body, but unfortunately for the bug, Lillian's wounds were effectively superficial. The ant’s desire to fight began to fade as the poison began splitting its shell. The cracks in its carapace bulged as the tumors beneath began to expand. Lillian’s mind discarded any thoughts of self-preservation and risk as she jumped onto the fleeing ant’s back to continue the battle. There was still too much mana rampaging inside her.

  The ant was part of a hive. It valued the nest's safety far above its own and decided that this rabid attacker was too dangerous to lead to the others. It tried to escape around the bottom of the branch while the girl pummeled away at the back of its head. The poison in Lillian’s blood finally showed another of its new traits when the ant’s joints locked up; paralysis arresting its movements. It stopped resisting gravity and released its hold on the branch, causing them both to plummet towards the forest floor below.

  The wind whistled in her ears as she fell slowly through the air. The danger of the situation ate through the haze in her mind. She twisted in the air, adjusting her descent, leaving the paralyzed ant on the bottom to absorb the impact. She leaned forward, forcing them through a patch of leaves that mitigated a small amount of their velocity. The freefall took far longer than Lillian wanted it to. Seeing the ground slowly get bigger was nerve-racking. With a force of willpower, she manipulated the overflowing mana within her body a small amount, shielding her organs as much as possible.

  They hit the ground with the force of an artillery shell. The ant's body exploded into a mess as its shell shattered, throwing black shrapnel into the surroundings.

  Thump

  Thump

  THUMP

  The popping of her ears rebooted her consciousness as the tumors drained their stores of mana into her shattered body. Lillian stared at the branches far above as her body repaired itself. Her broken spine straightened as the last of the royal jelly mana was absorbed into her shattered bones. The healing started at the more vital areas first and worked its way outward. Her bones snapped back into place and her lacerated organs returned to their natural shapes and positions. The flood of mana finally abated as her skin finished stitching itself together.

  A sigh of relief escaped her bloody lips as she examined the state of her body.

  I lived bitch.

  The mana had invaded her body much more deeply than before, and she felt that almost 50% of her muscles had been tempered. She even felt that some of her bones had been reinforced during the process.

  “Hehe, HAHAHA!”

  Lillian couldn't help but laugh out loud as the euphoria of her survival receded. The reality of what she had done fully dawned on her.

  What is wrong with me? What the hell is going on?

  The continued recklessness of her actions was ever-present in her mind now. She was making terrible choices and was only able to recognize that she was taking massive risks afterwards.

  It must be the mana!

  The only difference between Earth and her mindscape was mana. It was insidious, leading her down the path of violence and unnecessary risk. She was much more cautious than this!

  Lillian was snapped out of her thoughts when her gaze caught another pair of eyes at the base of the tree. There was a filthy man who was crouched in the brush with his mouth hanging open. He looked sickly and malnourished. Something about him was familiar to Lillian.

  With a quick push, Lillian righted herself and pulled the remaining shards of the ant’s carapace from herself, struggling to reach a piece that was stuck in the small of her back.

  “Can you help me, please?” she asked the terrified man. She felt they had a connection. She was just struggling to remember where she knew him from.

  The man’s glazed eyes seemed to shrink as he left the safety of the bush and approached the bloody girl. He seemed in pain as he approached, trying his best to seem small and nonthreatening. His limbs were hidden beneath a filthy blanket; the rest of him was covered with mud and blood. Lillian had nearly mistaken him for a corpse. He had a full head of hair and a beard. Clearly, he had returned to Earth earlier than she had. The tempering didn’t spare anyone's hair.

  Lillian ignored his strange behavior, turned her back to him, and tried to point at the offending shard.

  Hopefully, he speaks English.

  A shaky hand escaped from the safety of the blanket and clenched the shard, but he seemed very reluctant to remove it.

  “Hurry up. There is an entire nest of these ants, and they might come looking for their lost warrior. If we don’t move quickly, we might have company.”

  The man tore the shard from her back with a quick pull. His eyes widened in horror as Lillian extracted the core from the gore beneath them and swallowed it. Pale-faced, Lillian came to another realization about mana and body tempering. The body was repaired with mana, but the blood she had spilled was not replaced nearly as quickly as her flesh re-knit.

  Feeling lightheaded, she pulled the man through the muddy forest until she found the hive tree again. The mud seemed to finally be hardening, so the journey was less difficult than when she first arrived back in New Louis. The man’s mouth had closed at some point during the journey, but he remained silent. The fear in his eyes had only grown during their short trip. Lillian was doing her best to scout for danger, but the man seemed terrified of every bush that blocked even a bit of sight. The fall of the leaves made him flinch.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Both of Lillian’s hands grasped the man's filthy head and tilted it upward. “Do you see that wasp hive? We need to climb the tree now and get to that hive.” Lillian looked for any signs of recognition but was only met with the look of a man resigned to death. Without delay, she began scaling the tree. The first trip up the tree had been difficult and slow because she had to carve out the hand holds. This time, she would need only a few minutes to climb up to the branch.

  Lillian pulled herself onto the first branch and began her scouting routine that had fled her mind less than an hour ago. Off in the distance, she could see hundreds of black dots scouring the tree branch in the distance. The ants were aware that their warrior was missing. She hoped that they would find someone else to take out their fury on.

  The man eventually made it to the branch, which he collapsed onto and grasped tightly. He continued to hide beneath the blanket during the climb, even to his detriment. The ascent had taken two or three times longer with the covering in the way.

  “Let's move; the hardest part of the climb is already over.”

  Lillian started leading again, but when she turned back, the man was still clutching the branch for dear life. His labored breath billowed out from under the makeshift hood. He hacked out a wet cough and wheezed.

  “L-leave me. I’m afraid of heights,” he said with tears in his eyes. The tears were black by the time they reached his chin.

  “If you don’t want to come, I won’t force you. I doubt I can finish all the delicious honey on my own."

  At the mention of food, a dangerous gleam appeared in the man's eyes as he leapt up and kept his feral gaze on Lillian.

  “Is there really food up there?” asked the man with a raspy voice. Bloody phlegm sprinkled on his blanket as he coughed.

  The desperation in his words surprised her as she nodded to him. They both had more questions for each other, but the middle of a branch was neither the time nor the place.

  “Here, hold on to this and keep your eyes on my back. We will make it up in no time," said Lillian as she secured the nylon rope around her waist before handing the other end to the sickly man. The man grasped the rope tightly, staring at it intently before wrapping it around his own waist.

  The pair made their ascent unobstructed, and Lillian took the man straight to the honeycombs after entering the hive. She had experienced starvation during her survival training, and she would not keep the man from a meal.

  A broken moan escaped the man's throat as he shoveled handfuls of the golden honey into his mouth. Dirty black tears rolled down his cheeks as he struggled to get the syrup down. Lillian took a handful herself and savored the sweetness.

  “Water?” asked the man with more energy in his voice. The fear behind his eyes had abated, but the man was still a mess.

  “It’s stale, but it's wet," replied Lillian as she pointed to the soggy cell that had collected dew. The dew trap she had set up in the opening of the roof had collected enough to keep them both alive.

  The man grunted in affirmation and dove into the open cell, getting on all fours to slurp the liquid.

  Lillian chose to give the man a little privacy as he struggled to drink the water without tainting it with his filth. She hoped that if she were in a similar situation, others would allow her to keep that last shred of dignity.

  Lillian explored the dark chamber that held the wondrous royal jelly in detail for the first time. It was hard to tell how much jelly had been in the cell in the beginning, but only a scant few inches of the blessed substance remained. A small poke with her stinger confirmed the depth as she made her way back to the man.

  His visage in the darkness tickled the back of her mind until she recognized where she knew the man from. He had been there in the woods that night. He killed Zac. She would never forget the look of him beating that man to death.

  Lillian sat across from the disheveled man and began the interrogation she had thought of while they climbed the tree.

  “This substance here will heal you right up,” she said as she waved the stinger in front of the man's face. As he registered the words, he grasped for the jelly, but Lillian pulled the stinger away from him at the last second. “If you want this, you are going to have to answer some of my questions.”

  The man seemed too tired and broken to care as he nodded his head in agreement.

  “Here, take it, but be careful.”

  The man didn’t hesitate, pulling the jelly off the stinger and shoveling it into his mouth. His ratty blanket fell to the ground in his haste.

  His hunched back straightened, and his sickly, shriveled frame relished the influx of mana. Lillian watched over him as the many small lacerations littering the man's arms and legs pinched together and scabbed before her eyes. His swollen head seemed to morph before her eyes as his broken nose straightened with a loud crack. Something about his body was still wrong though. His skin had a deathly pallor to it, and he was far too thin for his frame. His broken body was mended, but the curve in his spine was still pronounced.

  He climbed up here in that broken state!

  The man’s eyes rolled into the back of his head after his visible wounds mended. He looked completely drained and was drifting off to sleep.

  “Hey dickhead! Wake up. You owe me some answers!” shouted Lillian as she tried to shake the man from his stupor.

  The man forced his bloodshot eyes open and sat up.

  “You’re right, we have a bit to discuss. Please call me Fred, Mrs..?”

  A vision of Genius wearing her ring flashed in her mind as she let a small giggle escape.

  “Lillian.”

  “Well Lillian, How the hell are you alive?” Fred asked, wincing as the memory of their fateful meeting flashed through his mind.

  “The ant and I got into a bit of a scuffle, and we wound up falling from a branch together. The ant was a nice guy and took the brunt of the fall," explained Lillian.

  Fred shook his head and continued articulating what he meant.

  “I watched your brain pull itself back into your skull. I saw your lungs re-inflate and your limbs snap back together like some sort of sick puppet. I watched the shell fragments fall from your chest. The thought of it is still giving me chills.”

  Lillian's mind raced at the description. Had she really been so far gone?

  “Was my heart still beating?” she whispered. Her memories of the loud thumping she heard before getting up flashed through her mind. She remembered falling for what felt like forever, but the moment of impact was missing.

  “How should I know? The healing did begin at your chest though. It was the only part of you that remained mostly intact to be honest.”

  Is the brain the true holder of consciousness when mana is involved?

  “Well, I’m alive because I had ingested a large helping of jelly before I fell.” Lillian could see that Fred had another question on the tip of his tongue, but she cut him off. “Let's get back on track. I am the one who has questions; you are the one that needs to answer. If that isn’t agreeable to you, you can leave whenever you want," she declared. She wasn’t sure she could bring herself to attack the man, and her spear was lost. Her hands rested on her stingers as she awaited his decision.

  Fred swallowed his words and kept his eyes locked on Lillian's hands as they rested on the handles of her dangerous blades.

  “St-stop, there is no need for that.” Fred almost looked like a wounded puppy who was beaten by his previous owner.

  “How long have you been back on Earth?” asked Lillian. She felt strange as she watched Fred acquiesce to her demands and how scared of her the man was. She was never an intimidating figure before, yet she had cowed the man before her.

  Fred rested his head against the wall of the cell that held the honey and seemed to lose himself in thought for a while before answering.

  “It’s been about five months, or maybe six? The days blur together when…” He became silent once more as tears rolled down his cheeks.

  Lillian started to feel bad for the man as she watched him bawl his eyes out. She was alone in these woods, and trust was hard to come by.

  “What happened to you? Why do you look so ill?” She probed gently.

  Fred took a minute to gather his thoughts before gesturing to his chest.

  “This was from before the change. There was a complication during my mother's pregnancy that was caused by that landfill fire. The radiation messed me up. My immune system has always been shit.”

  Lillian reached for her eye patch when she realized that it had been off the entire time.

  “I was born with a similar dysfunction.” She searched the floor that was covered in her dried blood until she found the knit patch and secured it over the hole in her head.

  Lillian couldn't help but ask, “What did your Sect trainer in your mindscape tell you to do?” If the various trainers had given different clues, she could find a more effective solution to her mana network problems.

  Fred seemed confused by the question.

  “Sect trainer? Mindscape? I woke up on the ground inside Eden. I’ve never spoken with a trainer.”

  Puzzled, Lillian thought about the implications of the sect abandoning people like Fred but still investing a little in her.

  Eden?