Time passes, and things change.

  This is a truth that she knows better than any other. Dragons and giants rule the world, nesting in the high places and traversing the plains, but she stands above even them. They may pretend at a knowledge of deep time, but what they know is earthly in its concern.

  They crouch and hibernate, letting time wash over them in a tumble and flow; rock and lichen, moss and dirt piling up until they are indistinguishable from the earth below. That is how they hide from time’s ever-present watch; by becoming like the world beneath, aiming to escape notice.

  She doesn’t.

  She stands tall and proud, letting father time observe the changing of her leaves, the flex and bow of her uncountable branches, the twist and grasp of her many roots.

  He leaves her to it, and she gives thanks to that small mercy. So much time to watch things change. So much time to see the cycle renew once more.

  Each time it is different, and she watches with interest as new inventions and philosophies blossom. New inheritors and reclaimers grow, too. Groups, races, ancestries, species, cults…so many dividing lines, but all still act as they do. Subtle differences, perhaps, but to her they still matter. To her, they smell of hope.

  She has watched with eyes of deep time, and she has seen the changes. Each era a new growth, and she marvels to see each bough a little straighter, each leaf a little greener, each canopy a little wider. The eras turn, and the world grows.

  She hears the whispers of discontent, and knows that the beings above are displeased, but they have been before, and they will be again. Gods are a strange concept to one such as her. There are no others such as her though, and does that not make a mockery of their divinity? Many against one, and still she stands. Still the eras turn.

  Irrelevant, the viewpoint of an individual caught in a single moment – she does not think in moments, after all. Gods are not a concept that interests her, and they may try to shape the world from above as they wish. She grips the world’s core in her roots, after all.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  She cocoons it and guards against that terrible siphoning, that horrible tearing away. The mortals and beasts know not what they do, and she does not blame them for it. It makes no sense to blame an ant for the depredations of the hive, or a tree for the expansion of the forest.

  Still, it is a cycle for a reason; eventually all climb too high and dig too deep. They spread too far, and they take too greedily. She does not fault them for it; they exist within their context, after all.

  Just as she does.

  She does not decide the turning of the eras. She is not here to check them, and she does not relish her role. It is simply an inevitable result of time. She does hope the cycle can end though, and she sees progress even now. Each era a little longer, each time a little more hope. Stability and growth are what she observes as the seasons blur.

  But even progress is fraught with change. Things move backwards as well as forwards, and so the relentless march of time brings her to a moment she does not relish. She breathes deep of the earth, and siphons energy to match the hateful drain that heralds the end of an era and her inevitable stirring.

  She clenches her roots, wiggles in deep and sure, and then she blushes. Green to gold, and now she is ready.

  A shake, a stir, and her canopy is bare once more. Twisting branches reaching towards a golden sky, fresh buds even now blooming as her gift to the world flies forth.

  An era comes to a close, and she ushers in the birth of new possibilities with hope in her heart.

  The continent cracks and Tsanderos is plunged into chaos.

  Tremors race from Ir Arlathen outwards, and no part of Tsanderos is spared. From the ice meadows of the frozen north to the winding deltas of the deep south. Coast to coast; one the domain of leviathans and the other of pirate lords. From the city states of Neroz to the lone bastion of Altine, across vast empires and open plains, desolate and full in their own ways.

  Unclaimed peaks and endless valleys feel the change, and the spine of the world trembles in preparation. Things stir in the deep, and unknowable invaders turn their eyes to a newly weakened prize.

  Colchet is the first to fall, with the copper canyons becoming a battleground against the crawling horrors from below. Nearby, a dead god dreams of war and the Iona Chasm erupts with life, of a sort. The bone tower cracks, its foundations weakened by time and terror, while out of the southlands emerges another creeping dread.

  Titanic forces move to check these trends. The giants are on the move once more, and the ancient dragons watch with slitted eyes from their nests. Great bears stir beneath the mountains, and the Sarhail mass within their jungles.

  As the so-called enlightened races fall upon themselves, it becomes the purview of the great and hidden powers to challenge the many threats that lurk in the shadows, waiting for their turn.

  The Great Tree has spoken, and a new era is proclaimed. It is a time of monsters and myth, of legacy and legends.

  She has stirred, and now empires must fall. What will rise in their place?