An Unconventional Interrogation

The Blight was not a brave man. His expertise lay in skulking, sabotage, and poisons delivered from the shadows. Being held fast by sentient, unnaturally strong tree roots under the watchful gaze of a legendary assassin was an experience far outside his comfort zone. He whimpered, struggling uselessly against his wooden bonds.

Ren walked over, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, his expression one of pure curiosity. "What's all this, then? The trees are being grabby tonight."

"This 'pest' tried to poison your crops," Lyra explained, her voice cold. She nudged the discarded lead vial with the toe of her boot. "The substance was necrotic in nature. Highly concentrated."

Ren frowned, looking at the terrified man. "Poison my tomatoes? But why? That's just mean." His simple, earnest condemnation seemed to cut the alchemist deeper than any threat. The sheer lack of understanding of such petty malice made The Blight feel small and foolish.

"Let me… interrogate him," Lyra said, her hand drifting to one of her daggers. Her definition of 'interrogation' usually involved the strategic removal of fingernails and a great deal of screaming.

"No, no, that's alright," Ren said quickly, holding up a hand. He didn't want any unpleasantness on his farm. "He looks scared enough already. Maybe if we just ask him nicely?"

Lyra raised a skeptical eyebrow but deferred to his wishes.

Ren crouched down in front of the trapped alchemist. "Hello there. I'm Ren. Sorry about the roots, they get a bit protective. Could you tell us why you wanted to hurt my plants? And who sent you?"

The Blight, caught between the terrifying assassin and the bafflingly polite demigod, started babbling. "Valerius! Master Valerius of the Mercantile Guild! He hired me! He said to ruin the farm, to blight the soil so he could study what was left! He paid me in gold!"

"Valerius," Lyra repeated, the name clicking into place. "The merchant from yesterday. I knew he was trouble."

"So he didn't get what he wanted and decided to throw a tantrum," Ren surmised with a sigh. "Some people are just sore losers." He looked at the trapped alchemist. "And what should we do with you?"

"Please, let me go!" The Blight pleaded. "I'll disappear! I'll never practice blight alchemy again! I'll take up baking! Anything!"

Ren considered this. He didn't want to hurt the man. He just wanted him to stop being a pest. An idea, a farmer's solution, sparked in his mind. "I'll make you a deal," Ren said. "You seem to know a lot about soil and plants, even if it's in a… negative way. I'll let you go, but first, you're going to help me with my compost."

The Blight, Lyra, and even the sentient roots seemed to pause in confusion. "My… your… compost?" the alchemist stammered.

"Yep!" Ren said cheerfully. "I have a big pile of organic waste—weeds, kitchen scraps, clippings. I want to make the best fertilizer possible. You're an alchemist. You can help me balance the nutrient levels. In exchange for your labor and expertise, I'll let you go. And I'll even give you a carrot for the road."

This was, perhaps, the most bizarre punishment ever meted out. The Blight, a master of necrotic arts, was being sentenced to community service in the form of compost management. Faced with the alternative—Lyra's daggers—his choice was clear.

"I… I accept," he whimpered.

With a mental nudge from Ren, the roots retreated back into the earth, leaving the alchemist free but trembling. For the next hour, under the watchful eyes of Lyra and the brilliant glow of the farm, the world's foremost expert on agricultural decay was forced to lecture Ren on the finer points of nitrogen-to-carbon ratios, aeration techniques, and the benefits of adding crushed eggshells for calcium. Ren listened intently, taking notes in the journal Ser Kaelen had given him.

It was, The Blight later reflected, the most surreal and humiliating hour of his life. He also learned more about life-affirming alchemy in that hour than in his entire career.

True to his word, Ren let him go, pressing a single, glowing 'Energized Blue-Leaf' carrot into his hand. "For your trouble. Now, no more trying to poison things, alright?"

The Blight nodded dumbly, took the carrot, and fled into the night, his mind and soul irrevocably changed. He did, in fact, give up blight alchemy and later became a moderately successful baker in a distant city, known for his surprisingly insightful bread recipes.

With the immediate threat handled, Lyra turned to Ren. "Valerius will not stop. He will be furious that his plan failed. He has money and connections."

"I know," Ren said, his good humor finally fading, replaced by a weary resolve. "It's like dealing with persistent aphids. You can pick them off one by one, but eventually, you have to deal with the whole colony."

He looked out over his glowing, vibrant farm. This was his sanctuary, his peace. And people kept trying to ruin it for their own selfish reasons. His power had, until now, been entirely passive, a background effect of his existence. He had never tried to wield it consciously, to direct it with intent.

"Maybe," he said softly, more to himself than to Lyra, "it's time to send a message. A warning that this farm has its own… immune system."

He walked to the edge of his property, the border that faced the direction Valerius and his men had camped. He knelt and placed his palm flat on the living, energy-infused earth. He closed his eyes, not focusing on any particular plant, but on the land itself. He didn't think about destruction. He thought about protection. He thought about setting a boundary, about defining what was his and telling the world, "Do Not Touch."

He drew on the immense, peaceful well of power within him, the conceptual authority over 'Growth & Harvest' that the Bored Primordial Entity had gifted him, and pushed it outward.

There was no sound, no flash of light. But Lyra, with her enhanced senses, felt it. A wave of pure, concentrated life energy rolled out from the farm, not explosively, but like a silent, unstoppable tide. It flowed through the forest, past the borders of his land, and continued outward.

A few miles away, Master Valerius was in his tent, fuming over the failure of his agent, when he felt a strange sensation. He watched in horror as a single, vibrant green blade of grass pushed its way through the canvas floor of his tent. Then another, and another. Within seconds, the entire floor of his tent was a lush carpet of unnaturally healthy grass.

Outside, his men cried out in alarm. The entire mercantile camp was being overrun by a tidal wave of explosive, verdant growth. Flowers bloomed instantly on barren ground. Saplings sprouted and grew into ten-foot trees in under a minute. A thick, impenetrable wall of thorny, flowering vines erupted from the earth, completely encircling their camp, trapping them inside a beautiful but inescapable prison of hyper-accelerated nature.

Valerius stumbled outside and stared, his face pale with terror. This wasn't blight. This wasn't destruction. This was life. Uncontrolled, aggressive, terrifying life. It was a horticultural cage, a warning written in leaves and petals. It was a flex of power so profound and so alien that it broke his greedy, mercantile mind.

Back on the farm, Ren stood up, dusting the dirt from his hands. "There," he said, a sense of finality in his voice. "That should keep the pests out for a while."

Lyra stared in the direction of the distant camp, able to sense the massive, living barrier that had just sprung into existence. She looked at Ren, who was now calmly checking on his sprouting Moonpetal Beans.

He hadn't just built a wall. He had rewritten the landscape with a thought. And he had done it with the same casual air as a man putting up a "No Trespassing" sign.

She finally understood. Ren wasn't just overpowered. He was the very definition of power. And the world was just beginning to find that out.