It has been three months since Mind crash landed through the Professor’s ceiling.

  The professor decided to retire early, given that he has plenty of money to sustain himself and the school might not need a professor in the years to come due to the impending change.

  The duo spends a lot of time in the lab. They like to fish in the ponds behind the Professor’s home every week to see who can out-fish each other... Mind can win but lets the professor win which, of course, the professor knows.

  The professor got a cat named Athena... Mind says it hates it, but the professor found out that Mind's telepathy torture doesn’t work on the cat, so it’s funny to watch the cat pounce on Mind sometimes. Even though Mind acts like it doesn’t like Athena, they cuddle together on Athena’s bed sometimes.

  Most nights are uneventful, just the professor watching the tree grow. After several migraines that Mind gave him over the past couple months about the Professor wanting to save humanity, he finally accepted the fact that he can’t stop the awakening.

  He did try to lock Mind in a steel cage once and run, but... Mind just laughed when he closed the door to the cage and it fell apart. The Professor stopped in his tracks before he hit the door. Mind didn’t even punish him for that one because it found it so funny.

  The visions were repetitive. Just the Professor standing in the slowly changing jungle and watching the tree grow. Mind would always sit on the edge of the bed waiting for the Professor to wake up to get updates on Acrid’s progress.

  After a long day of studying newly arrived fossils, the Professor laid down for the night preparing himself for the usual vision. Mind and Athena cuddled beside him.

  The air was thick with the scent of smoke from campfires, a frightening development. In the heart of the rainforest, a jungle tribe set up camp about a mile away from Acrid’s tree. This tribe travels the forest and makes camps to harvest cacao to sell to the markets for pennies.

  Five young tribesmen walked through the dense brush, slicing through Acrid’s vines which sent a pulse through the roots into the sacred tree. The youngest among them was barely old enough to carry a blade, but he walked with the others with the pride of an elder.

  The group stopped in their tracks after seeing it… the giant alien flora they have never seen before. Born in the jungle and never seeing a species of foliage is unheard of for any jungle tribe. It rose out of the jungle like something from another world, so wide it dwarfed the surrounding forest, so tall its uppermost branches pierced the low clouds. Its bark pulsed faintly with a green glow. Massive leaves, unlike anything they’d seen, shimmered like glass in the light.

  The Professor’s heart dropped seeing the group standing in front of Acrid’s sacred home.

  The youngest of the group stood in fear and dropped his machete as he fell to the ground on his hands and knees. His hand grabbed the ground as he bowed and started to pray to the God of the jungle.

  The Professor bent down beside the boy and noticed a branded mark of the tree behind the boy’s ear that they must receive after birth. Turns out, this boy was from a different jungle tribe than the other four tribesmen.

  The others stepped forward like the tree was calling them over.

  Four vines slowly rose from the undergrowth, coiling gently toward them, from the ends of the vines, a golden fruit began growing from the vines, dripping with a green fluid and steaming. The fruit looked sweet and irresistible. After a long journey through the forest, they couldn’t hold themselves back from trying the foreign fruit.

  The boy opened his eyes just in time to see his friends about to take the fruit.

  He scrambled to his feet trying to stop the boys from reaching toward the vines. The Professor, frantically begging Acrid to let the boys live.

  But it was too late.

  They bit into the fruit.

  At first, silence.

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  Then screams that was instantly deafened.

  As the Professor expected. Acrid's acid was eating through their mouths, throats, bodies. Their skin and muscle melted from their bones. Flesh dissolved into a paste. Tools fell and turned to ash in the soil. In seconds, there was nothing left. Not cloth. Not weapons. Just a pile of a green slime on the ground that was consumed by a single root of the tree, sending a blinding pulse to the bark. Four green glows one after the other shot up the tree. The limbs and leaves illuminated a bright green light before going dark. Specs of green glitter floated to the ground all around the massive trunk and surround trees. Tiny saplings began to grow slowly from where the glitter landed.

  “From death comes life.” The Professor spoke to himself.

  The boy stood trembling, staring at the place where his friends had vanished.

  He ran. He didn’t look back.

  The boy ran through the jungle without stopping, guided only by instinct and the terror clawing at his chest. Thorns tore his skin, branches whipped his face, but he did not slow. Not until he reached the edge of his village, collapsing beside the central fire.

  The tribespeople rushed to him. His elders, hunters, mothers, children. A healer knelt by his side and called for water. His breathing was ragged. His eyes wild. They carried him to the healing tent. The healer, an old woman with soft hands and tired eyes, cleaned his wounds and placed a cool cloth on his forehead. For hours he drifted in and out of sleep, muttering in his fevered dreams. The entire village waited.

  When he awoke, he said nothing. He rose in silence and ran from the tent in a panic.

  The healers followed him, unsure, watching. A few others stepped out of their tents, sensing something had changed.

  The boy made his way to the birthing tent. Inside, resting in a ceremonial bowl near the fire pit, were two branding irons: one shaped like a tree, the same brand that was placed on his neck at birth, the other a simple circle.

  He picked them up without hesitation and ran to the central fire. People gathered. Voices fell silent. The elder approached the central fire and saw the branding irons resting in the flames, knowing what was about to take place. A sacred ritual that hasn’t been performed for thousands of years but one that this tribe are taught and know very well.

  The tribespeople knelt and gathered around the boy, locking arms in circles around the fire and began to sway from side to side.

  The boy held out the leaf branding iron to the elder. The elder grabbed the iron, glowing a bright white and orange color. He reached down at the edge of the fire and grabbed a pinch of ash and pressed the black paste across the boys forehead. He then bent down and pressed his forehead onto the boys as the ritual began.

  One by one, the villagers sat in a circle around the fire, arms interlocked, heads bowed. No one spoke. No one needed to.

  The elder readied the iron, his sweat hissing off of the hot brand.

  Before the first brand, the Professor appeared beside the boy. Confused and puzzled where he was. He recognized the boy from before, cuts on his body from Acrid’s briars and realized some kind of ritual was about to be performed. He saw the brand of the tree and knew from his education instantly what kind of ritual this was. He knelt beside the boy. No one else could see the Professor but the boy’s gaze met his and the Professor saw Acrid in the reflection of the boys dark eyes.

  The boy closed his eyes as the mark of the tree burned into his skin. The Professor felt the same pain on his arm as the boy, the veins in his arm protruding and the Professor began to fall on the ground but somehow the boy took his hand to hold him up.

  The boy threw the circle brand to the Elder. He immediately pressed it into the boy’s arm next to the tree brand. The Elder, not knowing how many more brands are to come. Tears running down both the boy’s and Professor’s face.

  The boy nodded again. The Elder’s expression changing more and more concerning, knowing the young boy will not be able to withstand much more. The boy and the Professor not breaking eye contact.

  Their bodies trembled with pain as he nodded a third time. Sweat poured from both of their faces. A tribeswoman rushed forward and wiped the sweat off of the boy’s brow with a damp cloth. The Professor felt the cold cloth rub across his forehead but no one had touched him.

  The last nod from the boy and the last brand pressed into the boy’s skin. This time, neither the boy or the Professor made a sound. They just stared into each other’s eyes. Tears running down both of their cheeks, knowing that they were connected on a different level and their lives would never be the same.

  The villagers continued to sway for hours, arms interlocked, heads bowed in absolute silence. Only the sound of the campfire crackling remained throughout the night. The boy and the Professor never broke eye contact, their hands intertwined like they would never break their bond. They finally lost their grasp of consciousness and fell into darkness.

  The Professor awoke on his bed covered in sweat. Having slept over 24 hours, Mind knew that something terrible happened in the last vision. The Professor grunted in pain and looked at the brand marks remaining on his arm before they vanished and the pain was gone. The Professor sat up in his bed exhausted from the draining vision.

  Mind approached the Professor with dry towel and a bowl of soup. Mind said nothing as it knew that the Professor had witnessed the first true sign of Acrid's abilities and wraith.

  The Professor saw the tribesmen that cut through Acrid's vines and realized that even something as small as cutting a vine is enough to interrupt a dragons' progress and to justify death.