A creature trudges through sand monotonously. Both the creature and its surroundings seem to mirror each other's colors, expanses of white with streaks of black running through them.
A wave of wind brings the sound of screeching, causing it to look up and towards the origin of the noise.
Its white, pupil-less irises make out a moving spot of black, coming in its direction.
Another screech sounds.
A small black creature, less than a third of its size, and emitting large amounts of black mist that surrounded it, leapt up towards it.
Then suddenly, a pressure emitted from the white creature as a shockwave caused all the nearby loose sand to be blown away.
The shockwave hit the attacking creature, and it shattered into black mist.
An armored arm was raised and the black gathered into it.
The creature gazed at the black in its hand as it moved into its hand, merging into it without any visible changes on the body of the creature.
It dropped its arm and continued its walk.
An unknown amount of time later, a great noise sounded, accompanied by a shaking that seemed to affect the entire world.
The creature looked around in alarm, trying to find out what had happened as it jumped out of the sand that had fallen on it.
It could not see anything out of place.
It did not feel anything abnormal, so it continued its walk.
As it walked, the black in the ground and sky grew more and more prominent, until it occupied an entire fifth of the white.
The creature surveyed its environment from its place on top of a hill, searching for more prey to consume.
It spotted a strange protrusion on the horizon and jumped down from the hill towards it.
As it drew closer, it realized that it was not prey.
It was something else.
It drew closer to the strange object.
A minute later, it stood before what seemed to be a large purple crystal carved into the shape of a leafless tree.
The creature looked at it with curiosity, its interest piqued by this abnormality that it was seeing for the first time.
It looked beyond it and spotted four more of these structures in the distance.
A wave of strong wind blew some sand up, breaking the creature out of its trance.
It looked at the crystal tree.
A hand reached out to touch it but stopped a few centimeters away from it.
The creature knew that all the other creatures got absorbed by it, and it didn't want it to happen to the first thing that had broken its monotonous world.
The hand withdrew as it stepped a few steps back and looked at the ground beneath the tree.
It was completely covered by black for a few meters, breaking the strange harmony of black and white.
The creature crouched and started digging the sand around the tree and throwing it out, parts of it turning white as the black was absorbed into it.
The task in front of it was enormous, but the creature toiled in silence, growing the pit slowly, digging out the entire structure of the tree without touching it.
An unknown amount of time later, the entire part that was previously buried was revealed for the world to see.
A large purple crystal stood at the bottom, with a few crystal veins rising up and merging to become the tree that spread its branches above the sands.
The creature looked at its work in silence, admiring the glinting light from the crystal.
It raised its hand and looked at it for a moment.
Then it looked up towards the other trees in the distance.
It made up its mind and jumped down from the pile of sand that it had made, to the giant crystal at the bottom.
A single blade-like finger touched the surface of the crystal, and a moment later the entire hand touched it, followed by the other hand, and a moment later, the creature's face.
The crystal was cool, transmitting a comfortable feeling to the creature.
It stood like that for a moment, before trying to wrap its body around the crystal.
A few failed attempts later, it stepped away from the crystal and looked up.
It scanned the tree, then crouched slightly, before pushing off the sand and jumping.
It landed on one of the thicker branches.
And immediately fell down as its landing sunk the crystal on the bottom into the sand, throwing it off balance.
It looked at the crystal in silence, then it buried the bottom part in the sand again.
Then it jumped up again, hands spread out in case it fell again, it did not.
It moved its hand and broke off a small piece from the end of a smaller branch.
It sat down on a branch and examined the piece in its hand.
A few moments later, it closed its fist and started crushing the piece.
Its fist trembled and its blade-fingers sunk inwards slightly, crushing the piece into even smaller parts.
The fist unfurled to show a shattered crystal.
Another hand was placed was top of it.
Fingers curled around hands that were not connected to them, and pressure was applied.
A few seconds later, the hand was removed.
The crystal was now a powder.
The hand moved close to the eyes of the body it was connected to.
A pair of eyes examined the powder.
Then the hand flipped over and dropped the powder.
The creature stood up and looked at the branches.
It broke off one of them and jumped down onto the sand.
It gripped the long piece of purple crystal in its right hand and made its way towards the closest tree.
This one was similar to the first one it had seen, both in size in color.
The creature looked at it from a distance for a moment, then turned changing its walking trajectory towards the next tree.
This one was the same as well, so it changed its direction again.
Fortunately for it, the fourth tree was different from the previous two.
This one was green in color.
It was also much shorter, but its branches were much more horizontal and thinner as well.
The creature stuck the purple crystal into the sand a few meters away, just outside of the pitch-black zone that had been below all of the other crystals.
Then it began its digging.
The green crystal trees buried part was different.
It was thrice the size of the purple crystal, but it was much thinner and was buried twice as deep.
A hand touched it.
A few moments later, the hand withdrew as the creature's head tilted to the side, confused.
It could not feel anything from the green crystal.
It buried the bottom part again and jumped up.
It took a branch and continued its walk.
As it walked, the trees grew more and more numerous, with almost all of them being purple, with a few green ones here and there.
As a creature ten times its size with a part of its chest missing was absorbed into its hand, a different color caught the creature's eyes.
It looked towards the new color and made its way towards it.
At this point, there was a tree every dozen meters.
The creature walked, dragging two crystal sticks in the sand.
It stood in front of the new object.
A tree that was only half of the creature's own size, with a dazzling bright red color.
The creature reached forward to touch it, only to pull back the instant it did so.
It looked at the finger that had touched it.
It had a wisp of smoke rising from it, and its point seemed to be melting as it sizzled and fell to the ground.
The creature looked at the tree, threw the two crystal sticks a few meters away, then crouched down and started digging.