The Spring

The Spring is a magical life force with divine origins. It has the power to fill and push back The Heat and the Dark, but is also one of the primary threats of Spring in Hieron due to its hostility to life on Hieron. It manifests in the form of overgrowing plants that can sometimes adopt the shapes and behaviors of animals.

“

There's a desperation in their mode? There's a sort of like - I have to grow as quickly as possible. I have to fill in everything. ... There is no desire to blend in with the world, there's no equilibrium... You expect to hear the thing that all plants say, which is about what they need to grow, and it just doesn't do that, and is actually kind of hostile to your presence. In fact I think at one point, a little ground vine wraps around your leg, and you’re able to pull yourself away, but it pulls back almost like a snake. There’s a moment where this flower blossoms and it looks almost like a bird opening its wings, and you turn to look at it and it closes shut. Spring is here.”

– Spring in Hieron 03: Hospitable to You

When Fero first encounters the Spring, Thing Talker lets him hear the impulse of the Spring plants, which have a vicarious need to grow and fill space not present in the normal plants of Hieron.

Plot

During Marielda (season), Samothes creates the Sword of Samothes as a weapon intended to end kill him and transform his life force into a form capable of healing Hieron and destroying the Heat and the Dark. Although Samothes ultimately died to the Blade in the Dark instead, it is likely that if he had been killed by the Sword of Samothes as planned, it would have resulted in a phenomenon similar to the Spring, the manifestation of "the breath and love of Ingenuity Alive".

Instead, the Spring is first seen at the end of Winter in Hieron 29: Slow Justice. Ephrim kills Dark Sun Samothes using the Sword of Samothes, and from his spilled blood Alyosha is able to call forth the first plants of the Spring, the manifestation of "the breath and force of Ingenuity Alive". Alyosha continues to work Samothes' forge for over a decade, gradually growing the Spring into the abundant life that appears during Spring in Hieron.

Throughout Spring in Hieron, the characters repeatedly run into hostile creatures made from the Spring, and slowly more and more of Hieron becomes overgrown with Spring. An enormous tree begins to grow up rapidly up through the land under The University that resists all attempts to remove it.

Blue J. has a Ranger animal companion that is a fox-like creature created by the Spring.

The Second Spring

During Spring in Hieron 37: Ingenuity and Love, Hadrian, Hella, and Adaire use the Blade of First Light to attack an enormous structure of starstuff controlled by Samot. This act manifests "the breath and unity of Ingenuity Alive", transforming the starstuff and fusing the Stars with the existing Spring to create a new type of life, one that can grow with even more incredible speed.

At the end of Spring in Hieron, the Second Spring has grown quickly enough to replace the dead land of Hieron, creating a planet-sized lattice of branches, roots, and flora upon which the people of Hieron must make their new lives, known as the Rhizome.