The Sapling waved at the scenic view of the hill. From there, one could look at the sky, with nothing blocking their view until the horizon, or at the valley below, where a snaked river crossed the land in twists and turns. "I am afraid of you, Verhen. I remember your blade and the excruciating agony you inflicted upon the Tree. Yet I’m also filled with joy and curiosity, two powerful emotions that have allowed me to keep the madness and trauma at bay. "You have nothing to fear from me because what I know makes me a wonderful tour guide, not a threat." "How are you resisting the call of the other fragments?" Lotho asked. "As I said, I’m different." Xaphen replied. "My fragment contains the yearning for freedom the World Tree bloodline has suppressed for countless millennia and has no desire to be chained and ignored again. "The essence Verhen holds wants to settle down, call the elves to themselves, and resume their task of collecting knowledge with the help of the Chroniclers. My fragment, instead, wants to travel. To be more than a dusty, living library." "Let me guess. You don’t want the mantle of the Yggdrasill." Lith extended his ajar hand and the Sapling closed it until no light came out anymore. "You’re right, I don’t. It would be torture for me." Aalejah recognized the look in the Sapling’s eyes. The look of someone who wanted to be part of something greater but, at the same time, craved freedom and didn’t want to be chained by duty. It was a feeling she had experienced during the centuries she had spent as a Chronicler candidate. Yet unlike her, Xaphen couldn’t walk away. Once the fragment was removed, he would lose his memories and go back to being a Sapling. In due time, he would grow big enough to be a city for the Fae, a haven for the plant folk, and a prisoner of his own making. "Then I won’t impose this burden on you." Lith replied. "Yet I still need to take your fragment." "Wait!" Aalejah stepped between them. "I’ve looked at him with Soul Vision and I can tell you Xaphen is sincere. His fragment holds no useful knowledge. There is no reason to take it away. "You could purify him to make sure the madness of the previous Tree doesn’t corrupt him and let him be. We can come back after collecting the rest of the fragments or let him out of this. What point is there giving the next Yggdrasill dreams they can never follow? "Maybe without Xaphen’s fragment, the next World Tree won’t fall into madness because they won’t care about exploring Mogar and their role as keeper of secrets won’t burden them so much." "I’m sorry, child." The Sapling moved past her and offered his hand to Lith. "I appreciate your kindness but you got it all wrong. Without my fragment, the next World Tree will go insane in a matter of years. "Without the love I feel for Mogar and the wonder for discovery, the Yggdrasill would consider their repository of knowledge not as a treasure but as a weapon. They would seek a new purpose to fulfill their existence without a care for the civilizations they destroy. "My fragment is the reason the World Trees never dared to abuse their knowledge or leave their Fringe. They cared too much for the elves and every other living being to endanger innocent lives. "The Yggdrasill never intervened in conflicts not because they were indifferent to the suffering of those they observed but because they knew they would only make things worse. Outside the Fringe, the World Tree’s power is limited. "To stop a war or defeat someone like Thrud, the Yggdrasill would have been forced to resort to Forbidden Magic and pay its bloody price. Once the World Tree started doing the wrong thing for the right reason, there would have been no stopping them. "The actions of the Yggdrasill would have changed Mogar’s history and their success would have only prompted them to intervene more and more often, becoming a shadow tyrant until the Guardians intervened to stop the Tree." Experience tales at empire "If it’s not the craving for freedom that drives a World Tree insane what does?" Solus asked. "The same thing that drives white cores, undead, and Abominations insane. The inability to reproduce." Xaphen replied. "As silly as it may sound to someone as young as you, children are important. "Without them, someone like the Yggdrasill has eternity but no future. They are safe and powerful, but the passing of time only makes things boring since nothing can affect them. "Once you experience everything and there’s no serious consequence to your actions, life loses its meaning. You start pushing the boundaries of your own morality just to feel something, and once you get used to it, you have to push even further. "Soon you have no boundaries to cross and turn into a monster without even realizing it." The Sapling stared at Zoreth who wrung her hands and nodded. "He’s right. Until I met the Master, I thought my life would have been an eternal cycle of fighting and feeding for survival. I was strong, but my strength had no purpose. I was immortal but I had no direction. "I wasn’t a person anymore, I just existed. Every day was identical to the one before and I knew the next would be just the same. Everything changed when the Master offered me a second chance at life. I finally had purpose and companionship. "The present was no longer my prison and I had a future to look forward. I’ve lived more in one day with the Master than in the thousand years after I became an Abomination." Lith pondered her words, finding them as scary as they were true. ’I too was powerful and had centuries of life ahead of me despite my cracked life force. Yet I was unwilling to change until Elysia was born. That day I realized that my life wasn’t just mine anymore. ’That everything I would have done from that day onwards would have rippled into my daughter’s life and shaped it into a future that I had no qualms about inflicting upon myself but would never let befall her. ’Elysia deserved better so I became better.’ "It’s not just that." Xaphen continued. "A World Sapling, just like a human, an elf, a Treant, and a Behemoth, knows kinship. Mogar is filled with people like you. A World Tree is eternally alone. "There is no one like them. No one who can truly understand them. Verhen and Xenagrosh know what I’m talking about but while he now has his daughter and Xenagrosh has recovered her draconic nature, there will always be only one World Tree. "Imagine how you would feel, being like that since the time of the first Awakened. To see Mogar change while you remain the same, trapped in the same place. Imagine knowing that you’ll have no child, teach nothing to no one, and leave no legacy worth remembering. "A Yggdrasill isn’t even allowed to pass down their feelings, only their knowledge is inherited by the next generation. But for that, you don’t need a heart or a soul, just a book."