Annabelle’s Bastion

The Titan Forest, a land so vast that it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to say it dominated most of Sorana. At least most of the continent. Each tree was so wide that it could easily serve as a room for shelter from the night-time cold. Not just rooms, but houses.

But that same wideness made it difficult to navigate through.

If one were to walk through, starting from the field of grass the expedition used, they’d see markings on quite a few of them. Some had smiley faces, others had frowns. They could be used to track Anna’s path, though it would take ages.

That was Anna’s marking system, ingeniously developed during the first few weeks of her isolation. If a tree had a room big enough for sleep or food, she’d put a smile; if not, or had other problems, she’d put a frown. Very simple—very effective. Not only did it help her remember which trees to sleep in, but it also ensured she wouldn’t get… too lost.

Carving the trees was Anna’s morning routine, and the days always began like that: scour the area, search trees, and leave markings.

She stared at her carving—her last one—and rubbed its frown. If things went according to plan, it would be the last one for a while.

Something below caught her eye, and she snickered.

Beneath the tree and nestled between its roots was an entirely pink berry with a texture like candy, scentless… and tasteless. It almost looked fake.

“My biggest regret has to be that I didn’t purchase a book on what poisonous alien plants look like,” Anna said, shivering at the memory. “Big mistake.”

She kicked the berry away; the memory wasn’t a fond one. The last time, she only took a tentative bite. Just a nibble! But it left her muscles significantly weaker for a good hour!

That was during the dark ages, though. During her first week stranded on Sorana, when she was so anxious and afraid of starvation that the only option was to pray something was edible. Embarrassingly, she barely moved from the expedition site during that time.

At least her suffering wasn’t entirely in vain.

“How many of those do I have now? Two hundred, last I checked.”

They had potential; her first inclination was to store all the berries she found. And she did; she had her storage full of them. They could probably be used as a neurotoxin. The food problem that made her resort to trying anything was solved ages ago by looting some of the abodes built into the trees.

It took a while and a lot of strenuous searching, but she did find some usable food.

Anna looked around the area once more: nothing of note. Trees surrounding her and trees in the distance—nothing new. Same old, boring Titan Forest.

She sighed. “And now, I return to my super awesome hideout,” she said sarcastically. “Unless you think I should explore some more to find that stupid key?”

No response—of course.

Anna clicked her tongue as she had every other time she tried directly speaking to it.

“Lucky I’m alone,” she mumbled, shaking her head.

If someone heard her, they’d think she was crazy!

But ever since Eclipse said “I need the other” to her, she had been attempting to communicate with what was likely some entity living inside her.

It wasn’t a comfortable thought, but she got used to it.

Eclipse definitely didn’t seem like an idiot; he sounded so matter-of-fact and sure of what he was saying that Anna believed him. He knocked her out just to speak to it! Then, she woke up with new powers and her body in a different spot. It was pretty much certain that she had something.

Yet, she didn’t entirely dismiss that it could be crazed delusion fueled by loneliness; she knew how she’d sound to an outsider. But the former—an entity within her—seemed like the better option.

Loneliness and sadness overwhelmed Anna during her first month on Sorana. She spent so many nights listening for that fog-horn-esque sound that accompanied her silently crying herself to sleep. No hope, no indication of a rescue, and nobody to talk to. True isolation. A horrific reality that took a while to accept—she had been abandoned.

It made sense, too. Of course, they wouldn’t care if one person in an expedition was left behind, likely declared killed in action. The mission itself was probably labeled a success. Anna believed her importance would lead to her rescue, but who knew how long that would take.

That was partly why she had the marking system... so they knew she was still alive.

But her so-called importance was probably only to a few who couldn’t do something like operate on another planet.

Well, that hope had become passive at this point. She had waited at the expedition site for too long and decided to leave a while ago.

While at first a herculean struggle, she eventually pulled herself up by her proverbial bootstraps and worked on accepting her new reality. No easy task, but it had been long enough. Her first steps outside the expedition site also marked her last—without the marks, she wouldn’t even remember how to get back to it.

Now, the mystery of Sorana is what kept her going. That, and the mystery of herself. Discovery!

Talking to herself, communicating—trying to, anyway—with whatever was within her helped more than she thought it would.

Anna rubbed her carving and shook her head, breaking from her melancholic state; she found herself doing that a lot lately.

She wryly chuckled and shook her head. “I didn’t think you would agree. Don’t say I didn’t ask for your opinion!”

She pulled the knife back into her storage space, a black glow covering it before it popped in.

Whoever informed them to pack basic kits before was a genius. She had spare clothes from the pack she stored, plus what others more carefully selected: a few water bottles, some lighters, and a handy knife.

That knife alone saved her so much effort… and brought immense comfort—safety. It belonged to someone named Katie, per the carving on its blade. Anna would remember that name; her personal vow was to return the knife to its owner. Sentimental things usually meant a lot. It did for her, at least. It helped.

“Well, home we go!” Anna raised her fist in fake excitement.

With her routine finished and her last carving done, Anna quietly returned to the only notable thing she found in the oversized ocean of trees.

The finding that marked the ending stages of her exploration of the Titan Forest.

It was a tree so much larger than all the others, serving as what she guessed was a hollowed-out tower. Below the canopy was a large circle engraving with a draconic eye in the middle. The eye covered the entire trunk body and glanced downward like a god observing its world. The tree’s base was somehow raised upward, creating a massive opening beneath it. It was held up by the enormous roots that seemed to stretch into the ground of the forest beyond. Those roots were how she found it.

Under the tree was the only presumed entrance Anna found: a circular platform with complex spiral patterns on its surface. Around it was a gazebo of interwoven branches. Above it, on the tree itself, were similar spiral patterns that mirrored the ones on the platform.

It was a spectacular find that reignited her faltering spirit after a long while of nothing.

But that only lasted for a short time. It lost its luster when Anna realized she couldn’t activate the teleportation device. She tried everything, from magic to any odd-shaped objects in the vicinity.

The only clue she had was the indentation in the platform’s center that looked like a spot for a key.

At least it gave her purpose; since discovering it, her days were spent searching the tree homes and the surrounding forest for that cube. It may have been a fool’s errand—a more likely case as time passed—but it gave her something.

Near the platform was Anna’s temporary campsite. She didn’t use it to sleep or store things, but it felt better to use it for breaks, eating, prepping, and meditating.

“Nothing else to do, so let’s get started right away.”

She sat at its center, surrounded by gatherings of rock, branches, and different colored plants. Before her was a larger rock she had been using as a table.

Her black ring whirred around her forehead, and she pulled out the basket of pink berries.

The pink berry should make her plans easy.

Just a bite made her feel weaker than when she was a child. She couldn’t imagine what it would do if she used it as a poison to stab something or trick a creature into eating.

“Prep work first,” Anna said, pulling out a few berries and placing them atop her relatively flat, large rock. “Just because intelligent life is gone doesn’t mean there won’t be more dangerous animals like that Goblinfish.” She wryly chuckled at the memory of that discovery. “I still can’t believe that was my first encounter in this place.”

She was told they could face things like that. Expecting it was one thing, but to actually experience it? She wasn’t as brave as she thought.

Finding that lake was a blessing due to its close proximity to the tree-tower, granting her easy access to clean water. She even used it for a few days without issue while she focused on training her mana. However, that changed a week ago. The disgusting creature—one Anna had first hoped wasn’t violent—had her fleeing for her life in a desperate state of panic.

It was a species of beasts that inhabited the lake and likely attacked anything that approached. They looked like a literal mix between a shark and a goblin. There was a single fin on their back, gills on their face, and distorted greenish, gangly humanoid bodies. Because of their appearance, Anna dubbed them the Goblinfish.

She wasn’t sure why, but giving it a name helped her drum up some courage. She decided that she couldn’t just leave it and look for another lake over such a small creature. Not when she would experience far worse in the not-so-distant future.

But words were just words, after all; even after amping herself up, it took quite a while for her to work up the guts to even begin studying it. Thus began a dangerous game of cat and mouse, one that repeated daily.

“If all goes well,” Anna muttered, “then I can finally stop…” she paused, embarrassed by her past actions. What would Aria think? She self-deprecatingly chuckled. “She’d definitely laugh at me for behaving like a coward.”

Every day, she’d have to run her enhancements at maximum capacity to fill just a single bottle—multiple times. And every day, she’d have to run for her life repeatedly. She had four bottles that could give her about two liters of water if they were all filled, but she couldn’t even fill one. The creature discovered her quickly, no matter how well she snuck around or where she hid.

Even after gaining the control necessary to activate her abilities through one ring, it didn’t give her the confidence to fight that thing. Not because of strength but because she couldn’t shake her fear of seeing and feeling her flesh ripped off her body should she fail.

She may have discovered her Apex Sigil, but it didn’t give her any combat abilities. Not only that, but it took time to activate! In fact, she was just as helpless as she was fighting the core!

Luckily, all that fleeing gave her plenty of information, and she had a plan to hopefully go about fixing all her problems.

“I’m the intruder here, so I feel a little wrong doing this,” she said. “But I’m just trying to survive… just survive. It’s not like I want to kill it—but it won’t let me even take a single fish!”

The lake had so many fish in it, and Anna was running out of looted food. There were few tree homes with supplies, as most seemed cleared out. And when she did get lucky enough to find one, the supplies had either rotted or weren’t fit for consumption. But then, she’d only get a scant amount of food.

It was a miracle she lasted as long as she did, and it was a time when she was grateful for her smaller stature.

She felt her storage space, felt the dwindling supplies, and was once again assured of her decision.

“This should be good,” Anna said, swishing around the berries liquid inside the bottle. She then placed the bottle to the side.

Her ring expanded above her palm, and she willed a fresh-ish fish out of her storage space—one she nearly lost an arm for.

Time for the gross part; cutting and preparing. She pulled out her trusty knife and slowly, carefully got to work.

“Ew… so disgusting. The smell, the texture…” Anna muttered as she poured the smashed fruit into precise slices that she definitely didn’t use enhancements and wasted many fish to get right. “I’m gonna use my water to clean my poor hands.”

Her plan had to succeed anyway. Who cared if she wasted a little water?

With her supplies low and the lack of any findings the last few weeks, it was nearing time to leave. But if she wanted to explore further, she’d need food to store and water to fill. Hopefully, enough to last a few days or even a week.

“I’ll test my Apex Sigil on it,” Anna said, observing her creation—her fishy trap. She stood and dusted her hands. “Let’s do this right away, shall we?”

She knew what she had to do, and there wasn’t any time to delay.

And with that, she carefully placed the poisoned fish on top of a giant leaf in her storage space. Once she finished washing her hands, she drank the small remainder of her water as a way to force the activity today to happen.

Anna clapped once. “No cowering out now! I either walk away with a Goblinfish… corpse… or I learn about my ability!”

With those words, she left her humble abode and made her way to the oh-so-familiar path to the lake.

Today, she would find out how her Apex Sigil really worked.