“Not there, that would be silly! Why would you go down there?”
(Because it’s passable easily and has what looks like good foraging ahead?)
Again, there’s a flash of mirth from Ave. A titter at Adris’ willingness to go down the winding forest trail ahead because it looks tempting. It should be perfectly safe from non-human dangers if going by Adris’ wilderness scouting experiences, for predators avoid clear spaces.
“Mmmm, Kol would say same, to go down there.” Uncalled for, but appreciated, Kol leans in to look, too.
“Shouldn’t we follow the… spirit, going where it plays?” Adris gestures, but then Ave shakes her head and sidewinds toward the hard facing of spiky bushes adjacent to the path.
“But it’s not the right way, taking that path through shade elms~! It’s here, instead.”
“The… wall of thorns is…?”
“Safe! Follow your heart, not your eyes.” So says the smiling elf, before skin-rending leaves shake when she plunges straight into the thicket.
“Safe for… membership of lower stoutne—!?” Dragged along, Neesiette’s voice cuts off when raked over by enveloping greenery. An emerald tail swishes to disappear within and leaves Adris wordless at how cleanly they entered.
Only for a moment is there hesitation before Adris plunges after.
(I swear I’ll kill myself one day by trusting…!)
Once he’s wholly within, two more sets of crashing feet behind him throw in their own lots.
Hundreds of sharp ends rake over Adris, but not a single welt seems to raise or any liquid gathers on his exposed face when pressing further into the brambles.
All that strikes him brushes off like a sigh. His jerkin and pants stay his alone, with not even his armor catching to tear bits free.
(Oh, I’m not hurt?)
“Our plucky guide seems happy to be trusted by you, Adris!” To answer that claim, the unseen strings ahead play faster and more cleverly. “But it’s so dark and clustered in the world tree for we who adore the sun…?”
No matter how loud the music and rustling, he can hear her musing whispers that always seem to add downcast details after the happy ones.
Ever ahead of Adris since taking off down the huge branch they entered on, Avenalliah’s mood is now as mysterious as this land that is unknown to all but her.
(Why isn’t it matching your expectations?)
But Adris has no time to decide that; for, one detour becomes several, each stranger than the last.
When a trek through a thicket ceases to be the path, it’s at the base of a curving tree that meets another to form a circular loop above that Ave stops to gawk upward.
“Ever-winding door, maybe…? I see, so that’s the next trial!”
“‘Trial’, for others’ sakes explai—ning!?”
Neesiette’s question isn’t fast enough to stop Ave from scooping her up and then diving through the airborne loop directly from the ground far beneath. As if a gust shoots her at it, Ave is sucked into the obscuring greenery behind the loop with ease.
(What the fuck!?)
“When did she learn to fly!?”
{‘Now’!?}
Still races with Adris to catch up, passing under the loop. Ahead is a cultivated path with small trees raised beside a mossy road with no obstructions. Far into the distance, Adris swears that he can see movement of human-like figures.
But to their surprise, the crashing of branches no longer comes from ahead but from behind. And there’s no Ave up the path.
“Boss! Come back!”
Kol points at the noise and shaking of branches where Ave jumped through, only seen through the looped tree trunk.
“Where… did they go?”
{It’s? It’s some fey conduit! Hurry, before we lose the damn skink!}
Still pulls him to the tree, joining Kol. Both hustle up on either side.
(Conduit?)
Without missing a beat, Adris just bends his knees and wishes to the rabbit boots to send him somersaulting with a comical bounce through the looped tree circle. He enters it just as Still tries to climb in.
(Huh!? It… is somewhere else!?)
Adris’ balance twists out the end of the loop, for the “ground” that he’s drawn to is no longer his old “below”. Grabbing onto a branch and then swinging from it to correct his orientation, he lands within a clearing of tall, seed-bearing purple grasses.
A witch drops gingerly beside him, while a squire crashes into a soft bed of fluffy weeds.
“HYAACK!? … Guh, Kol, hates these plants!” After sneezing powerfully in the cloud of white puffs, Kol rips up and barrels into the sea of grasses ahead. “Elf in purple!”
“But Finnelis is supposed to be red…?” So whispers the voice from within the swaying sea; not waiting for them, Ave merely takes in the surroundings that dreamily sleep beside a lake of overly deep blue that cannot be water.
(There was no lake!)
“I didn’t feel any disorientation like with Falke’s gates?”
{Fey are the masters of goose chases.} Still snaps two fingers toward Ave, then dives in after Kol.
Adris’ own senses tell him to walk the path beside the lake, especially his aura ones. His “north” is always a constant and functions even here to tell him that it approximates their previous direction.
It’s reassuring, that constant, but becomes a negative when wildly shifting during his chase after a green shadow nearly disappearing ahead again.
(Why would north change!?)
His breath catches when pondering the spirit that is their guide and that Ave seemingly receives directions that he doesn’t; yet, he can’t call her wrong so far. A sea of purple grasses is just as good a direction as any other.
(Shouldn’t I be able to interpret any language? But this spirit doesn’t use words.)
Because, while his body feels in control of his fate…?
The more changes that come in nonsensical sequence prove his fate is out of his reach: low lakesides that arch overhead to cross the branch they tread on, leaving him walking beneath the river; fields of boulder-like closed flowers with tendril vines snaking about that smell alarmingly of saffron and other rare, enticing herbs; and hidden open areas hosting trees dissimilar from their cousins, ones with low-hanging fruits that glitter in the dark of their shade.
They’re all so alien in how they warp expectations, much less perspectives, at times that Adris would gladly stop to learn more about them. If only an elf didn’t constantly drag them toward the next suspicious and narrow side route instead.
(Every path she has chosen has been safe, though.)
When Ave asserts a different path, the hair of his hands tingles when led through. Danger and safety are chosen correctly by Adris alone, if he believes his eyes and ears as he always does. A sufficiency that has kept him calm in the wilderness is one that the logical Adris revolts at here.
(It can only be impossible for me to know where we are, where we’re going, or what’s safe, yet I believe I can!)
But he cannot allow for hesitation over the issue, because Ave becomes like a fading ghost if he lags behind.
Through hollowed trees bedded into detritus, to labyrinthine criss-crossings of herb gardens grown tall on natural tresses of dried vines, the chase after her and the anticipation that scratches at everyone escalates.
Still and Adris share the same glances at each other when the music surrounding them keeps jolting into a totally new melodies with different players, and again they realize there’s a difference between the “before and after” of passing under an innocuous overhang of bluish vines tied into a bow.
“Sneak, not quite as sneaky as elves, huh?”
At Kol’s jab, Still only lifts her shortsword briefly before drooping it back down.
(Our bodies are lying to us. We’ve gone a great distance…)
All the disorientation is made worse by the sole “living” inhabitants of this endless forest they pass through being “birds” of bright paint strokes that flap without hurry. Each is of a similar color to the lakes of colors lapping gently at the great branch’s side. The many-winged creatures of light and floating viscosity silently gather in scores to dance upon their surfaces.
“These aren’t like any birds I’ve seen. They’re more like Neesiette’s magical light pets.”
{They’re… fairies. Ethereal ones.}
“I see. Beings like what I briefly became when drinking that potion?”
(Half here, half not?)
They buzz in his aura sight as corporeal existences, yet seem intangible to his extended sense of touch as they flit around him. Unwilling to come close, they veer away from his path with some sentient reaction to stay always a flap ahead of where he might reach.
{Like that, but more connected to nature. If ethereal, they can’t even touch u—}
Still’s hands freeze though when one of the “fairies” lands upon a twig to swish its wings. Its apparent weight bends the twig.
{… us, much less harm us. Probably.} That sheepish addendum is given before turning from his wilting gaze of pity.
(If you don’t know, then just say that!)
Only the strangest feelings coat Adris when searching the woods with his extra-sensory perceptions to test if there are more such beings. An almost forgotten tinge on the back of his neck, the one that always hits right before an ambush, flares up when something sings at him from the periphery of their position.
(That’s not a fairy.)
Suddenly he’s very aware that he’s lost in an unknown mystical woodland with bizarre beasts. Kol’s speedy walk shifts slower, her tail whipping just as she notices his alarm.
“Nnnn, Boss? Bushes rustling, heard?”
“No, there’s something dangerous. A large impression of existence ahead.”
Still takes up on his left side so that Kol can have his right when he says this. Not aggressive yet, both fall into his own rhythm to find what he felt.
But it’s strange that they’re not immediately afraid of what Adris pulls back from when it growls loudly. A volume much grander than a beast the size of even a bear.
“Monster…!” Adris’ call sends Still’s shortsword flicking free and Kol kicking her poleaxe’s mechanism to lengthen it
“Where, Boss!?” Kol sounds dumbly unsure, but when Adris points ahead, the strange, garbled roar escalates to prove its location. “Hear it! That sounds like…?”
(I know that sound!)
The waves of danger crashing into Adris from the path Ave has led them to, now littered with bones as it winds behind a burnt tree, wash over them as the memory firms.
Still and Kol both point weapons at it, finally identifying the threat creeping up.
“Ahead! Ave, don’t go there! It’s going to strike!”
“Attack…?” Again, Ave seems confused. She still drags Neesiette toward it.
(ARE YOU INSANE, AVE!?)
“Unregistered pseudo-Art phenomenon, desist from intrusion before analysis.” Putting her heels to the moss, Neesiette shows reluctance, if not deserved terror.
“You keep saying that every time we reach a trial?” When Ave stops moving, Adris’ stomach churns at the smell of rotten sulfur that creeps out to choke them.
A horrible, burning stench of death. One entity is owed caution for originating it.
(There’s… one of those… “dragons” ahead, the giant lizards that breathe fire!)
“Get ready to…” Adris’ frenzy needs an escape, and decides on one. “There, run, Ave! We’ll find a more defensible location!”
Ave glances between this darkly-lit avenue of death up the large branch where heavy breathing can be heard from, to the other route Adris points to that dives off the branch to descend into an easy escape. It runs across meeting smaller branches to a separate parent branch of the world tree, then into thicker terrain that would hide them better.
Adris’ dread has a balm down this way, he feels it with clarity!
If Ave were to take it, she, too, would be safe…!
The gently glowing snake Elf coils up with furrowed eyebrows cast at Adris’ visible concern, then turns to the doll she still holds by one hand with disbelief. “Do you… also see something ahead?” Neesiette dares not stray, as unnerved by the shadow of a long-necked creature coalescing into being down the burnt path as Adris is, but keeps her tone even to match Ave’s. “Chaotically overwhelming ‘magical’ wavelengths of different quantities and qualities produce false readings. Unregistered phenomenon detected, obfuscating its true details. Registering to others possibly as some visually perceived danger. Identifying… differently, would one?”
“Really? That’s…”
Ave releases Neesiette, then uncoils to slide up into the depths of hell.
Huge red eyes glare at Adris from afar, dropping the boy into a low stance with his cross in his left hand. Ready to run in any direction, but feeling compelled to bound down the easy escape trail to another branch, Adris blames in his mind that the dragon is responsible for the shaking he feels all over.
Still is at his side, pulling him toward the path he wants to flee to. They won’t take eyes off the great winged beast that stomps toward them through the wavering haze of fumes, already within range of chomping on Ave but still not seen as more than a red shadow!
“… strange, because…?” The dragon whose head is high lowers its serpentine neck. It opens its jaws as it nears the forest carpet, so that Ave slithers right into her death…!
(R-RUN, YOU STUPID ELF!?)
“… there’s nothing ahead except the outer edge of our resting place.”
And she passes through the monster, which wisps away into nothing more than the swaying of thickly leaved branches beside her.
Adris gasps at the omnipresent doom that was ahead suddenly burning away, a new taste of the sweet and mossy world tree’s air shedding the acridness of before.
What he thought were bones are only fallen sticks.
(Where’d it go?)
“We’re here…!” Ave’s hand brushes over the bark of a particularly green-trunked tree, more like a living crystal than wood. “Finally, after so long, I’m going to…!?” Ave turns when speaking two tongues, swishing her cloak of leaves and nearly squealing with childlike glee before noticing everyone staring at her. “… be able to share my first experiences with you, my friends. How exciting!” A naked grin becomes a controlled one when the elf daintily coughs into her hand. “I’m not certain what everyone seems bothered by, but it’s probably just a rush of anticipation from some things being confusing?”
(Rush me to the closest bar instead!)
No angry eyes are glaring ahead, only occasional fairies fluttering by.
Some strange delusion he was having had the simple trodden path appearing as a desolate, burnt avenue to his own doom. The odd, glowing birds without solid forms hover around Adris now, though, yellowish glittering adding to them as their base color slightly shifts.
At least until Still lashes out with her sword at them, which passes through their bodies without a single slash catching. As if offended, they simply flap away.
“Something pressed upon us, Ave. An… illusion of some kind that we all witnessed.”
“Oh, that’s just a trick of the woods, no doubt.” Ave waves her hand at them, before giggling. “Nothing here will hurt a guest of kin, that is our promise. If it wasn’t only us kin here… well, the spirits would have told me of outsiders.”
(Please tell those spirits that. Whoever…)
It’s again an itch that Adris can’t scratch, that the endless greenery, and other colors of the world, sway only with the wind that is alive between the huge branches here. There has never been a single animal that Adris has caught sight of or sign of its existence.
No prints of crushed moss, fresh scents on trees of markings, or territorial scratches by claws.
Deprived of bird song, utterly alone except for the incessant “music of the spirits” that changes according to their own wills, Adris longs to see a single squirrel.
(If the spirits are the only living creatures here, then wouldn’t they have to be responsible?)
“Come on! This was the last! Ahead there are… kin waiting!” Ave curls her hand and beckons. Then, she blurs again to join the forest.
“Stop… outpacing your benefactor!” Adris grabs up the gear he dropped to chase after.
With Neesiette in Still’s arms now and Kol struggling to keep up, Adris ducks branches to keep flashes of emerald within sight for the rest.
{There!}
Still and Adris are side-by-side when he comes to a meeting of paths. Around a bend of three trees tight together a shadow makes a sharp turn.
“Three-hundred-and-eight degrees!”
Neesiette’s precision throws them the opposite way downhill, for ferns shake still after a passing streak went by.
“Ribbon!”
Then over a mossy rise to his right Adris catches that fanciful tail ornament whipping out of sight!
(You’re an elf, NOT A FOX!)
“Get back…!”
Adris flings himself over the entire rise to crash through the foliage down its back, his cheeks and arms stinging from the slaps. To a landing so far down that he has to plant his palms to the moss to absorb it is where he meets again with the runaway.
(“Our guide”!? You’re trying to abandon us in a place we have no idea how to—!?)
“Hol dreth ayel Ysanne (FAR YOU’VE COME TO FEED THE WORLD TREE).”
Adris’ blood turns cold from the curse that creeps into his tickling ears.
After blinking at the unfamiliar words, and especially the voice stuck between masculine and feminine, Adris’ whole body tingles with the proof that he’s not hearing simply a message send to him.
A near call for war escalates contrary to feeling no life except the greenery around him. It’s a torturous denial of his urge to throw himself aside that forces his head to raise to capture what’s before him to comprehend that urge.
The brushwork forest shakes in waves before Ave, coiled up in front of him with her arms crossed before herself.
A wind, quiet and deadly, slowly spins from deeper within the gloom to spindle around three huge arrow points levied at the snake elf. Shining tips are like polished seed husks, their shafts straight branches, and fletching the brushes of palms.
(There’s nothing there, but I can see enemies!?)
Empty of all presence, the shaking forest swells high overhead with massive guardians looming that hold their bows drawn tightly. Leaves and wood as their figures, bone, skin, and tattered woven-vine clothes pulled close.
Encompassing Adris’ guide in the shadows of their wide green cloaks, tree-made defenders that creak harder with the wind’s snapping around them await a response to this spoken challenge.
The moment Adris innocently delivers it, those enormous arrows suffused by crackling branch smoke and razor sharp with clinging distortions of light will be loosed.
If the rest of the party bumble in with shock equaling Adris’, tromping nakedly and stirring up a storm of detritus, the same result of skewering will grow to five victims instead of two.
So, Adris holds his breath so tightly and awaits the answer from the foreign lady whose surprise ends with a light, cheery tone.
“From deep within where dwells no sage, my… wind (SELF) was loosed to save this Age.”
Lifting her hand palm up in greeting, Avenalliah Aurmaris’ response is carefree, but also impossibly heavy.
A wonderful dichotomy of measured glee not matching the message calling for such grandiose salvation.
“Long forgotten Mandostesse; its memory returned, I bless!” Avenalliah, without fear, invites the ambushers closer.
At the obviously insane appeal by presence, Adris’ throat finally clicks from a dry breath escaping.
(NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO TRY AND BE ME!)
Now is the time to apologize and explain themselves.
To ask for the way back to where they came from with a sheepish smile and a promise not to pick up anything.
Petripolis will be glad to have Adris and co. return to add their meager plundered wealth to its burgeoning economy!
Adris has so many, many projects and objectives that require not being weighed down by feathered sticks with sharp ends attached…!
“… Ahg…?” The middle guardian croaks like a frog, its ire slackening alike to its forest-wrought giant figure’s own release of tension. A bow lowers, its arrow pulling forward with the weight of the drawstring reducing to then point flacidly at the green-carpet floor.
“… Mandostesse… returned…? Impossible, it…?
… Be!” Languages must change, for Adris’ ears ring with the insecurity of the speaker. “… Third Age come, darkness eternal that city shall see.”
“‘Impossible’!?” From where Ave rests, “This curse learned from those condemned to suffer, then know sorrow…!”
The leaves are spiraling in flight before Adris even knows she’s danced forward.
Preceding the other giants raising their bows once more, the center one bursts loose to become the backdrop of nature without form, for from the base of where it stood is flung forward a forest-clad being.
Short of height and slim of figure, it drops its own bow by shock so that its hand can be held tightly by a snake elf.
“Beg not for such thoughts, nor dwell upon what kin should not borrow!” Out of the gloom the ambusher is dragged, despite struggling to pull free.
“… Dwell… not…!?”
“All shall be possible for kin without fear, for with the wind (eternity) our choices do steer!”
Bright, cheerful, yet reverent as if speaking an essential truth overlooked but needing to be said, Ave lowers her large snake self to further scrape the wet moss. She comes face-to-face with this vagabond-looking opposite.
Because a thick turban-like covering of some furry plant fiber wraps around the opposite’s face, Adris cannot tell the reaction of their enemy, nor see the impact of Ave’s expression that’s hidden.
“… That’s… your…?” The only tells of how this one carries itself is how their mood plummets, as though a heaviness has returned after danger passes for it. “And our… truth…
… that’s… the name of ‘kin’, which is ‘wind’ (AELF).”
From the emotional utterance, long and drawn out, drags a pall over the agreement that belies the truth both share.
A giant hunter, suddenly so small when pulled from the gloom, stands only slightly taller than Kol. The other two diminish somewhat in Adris’ mind as threats thereafter.
Their shock has yet to lessen even a bit, even though their arrows are still knocked to fire.
Each can only be the same type of threat native to this world tree.
(These… are elves?)
Utterly missing from view, even if seen firsthand.
“Adris! Speak up and be re-secured!”
Neesiette’s demand coincides with the rustling of moss. The only presences that Adris can pick out slide to join at his back.
“Foes?”
“Nah!? Kol, didn’t smell…!”
A bruiser clanks forward, but freezes when Adris’ hand strikes her breastplate.
(Don’t unsettle them!)
Already on edge, whatever greeting between Ave and them has started must be allowed to finish. Adris can taste the disconnect between what words he’d offer and the effectiveness of Ave’s own.
Even incomprehensible as “missing people” are to Adris, Ave’s greeting has deeply shaken their mentalities.
(That… elf isn’t looking at us like we’re with her… but more like we’re…?)
Adris shivers when the small guardian seems like it’s judging Adris and the girls as threats not to it, but to Ave.
“With great distance comes variety of kinful friend!” Ave somehow reads the mood for once and lifts up her free arm with her magical trapeze bag held from it to show off Adris. “It pleases me to share those sworn by oath, for all evil we’ll cleanse!”
“Sworn… to kin?” The small guardian sounds incredulous.
(Good! Good, sworn! Very tactful, Ave!)
“… No [breathless regret] (UNDEAD)… shall persist without ‘freeing’, even if a chore…”
The giant guardians lift their arrows to point at another.
“… return now, from nothing to nothing, evermore.”
Adris hears that “another” kick a foot back and free her second blade when the small figure reaches for the bow dropped to the ground.
(STILL! PLEASE RUN!)
Ave wrenches the cloaked elf forward, drawing it to her embrace so that Ave can point toward Still.
“More than nothing: my friend in happiness and joy.”
Clutching upon who she’s called kin, Ave’s voice is low. A face near wrath painted on Ave’s beautiful canvas, tears in her eyes, revealing the closest to pure anger she’s ever shown.
“Heart and hopes just, with such ‘regrets’ do not toy.”
After the “request”, Ave releases the elf and slithers with arms wide to intrude between arrows and Still.
(Who are you?)
Only Ave stands between Still and certain perma-death at first. Then, another adds no visible barrier but still casts her lot by moving.
“Harm not this lady’s friend.” Neesiette is before Still and behind Ave, making no motion to activate the scepter in her hand.
(Now I act!)
But with action, not words. Adris steps back slowly once the tide shifts, reading only the minutest of intents from the enshrouded elf warrior that stands in the open.
“Ghhh!?” Kol growls when dragged unwillingly further behind Ave and into Still’s path, but otherwise accepts being second in the protective stack.
(If those arrows go through Ave, they should stop with Kol at least, right…?)
Adris’ quick hopeful mental calculation lets him grim up his expression with confidence, offering a verbal challenge back after a minute passes.
“Would ‘kin’ turn arrows upon their own?”
“… A branch cannot harm the tree…” At that, they offer no surrender. But, Adris is satisfied when the visible elf no longer desires its weapon.
The elf haltingly speaks to Ave instead of him after, searching her over.
“… What… [fancy]… motiva—OOOOOH!?” A jolt runs through it then, ending the question abruptly with a screech.
The giant guardians twist their bows and prepare to loose, their canopy-length cloaks billowing with the gathering of powerful air; but, then they falter back with equal shock when the elf that Ave drew forth crumbles to its knees.
“H-Hmm?” Ave makes her cute note of surprise, lowering her arms when the elf’s own raise up.
They cross over themselves to be raised in some sort of greeting, where the elf’s hands face outward with fingers spread and thumbs joining together.
A tree spreading out is what the gesture strikes Adris with. He gains no mystical interpretation of it, though.
But the effect of an elf kneeling before Ave is chaotically apparent, for the towering forest guardians swish, stepping back…
(They… ran?)
… then like when this elf was pulled out, the forest they’re carved into shakes lightly with a breeze blowing by to wipe them away. No remnant of bow, arrow, or hard wooden clothing endures once the hunting shapes withdraw.
Adris heard nothing flee, not even a single rustle that would prove they existed in the first place.
“…” Ave stares down at the elf that she slithers up to, silent and with her finger to her lips in incomprehension.
“…” That still faceless being stares at the mossy carpet of the branch, offering up this constant gesture that can no longer be a greeting.
From those who covered their eyes in the presence of bush mystics to the many schools that offered the raised fist in salute to the Emperor’s name carved into their sacred walls, it can be said that Adris has a breadth of education regarding religiosity.
(That particular gesture is a sign of obeisance.)
“… These… these are my friends.” Without letting it stop her from progressing, Ave offers a kind smile and gestures toward Adris.
“Adris, a [Returned One] like the gale that brought him…”
The elf shudders, but looks nowhere else but the ground.
“Still, a kind soul that death came too soon for, she brings revolt to the Alchemaster.”
Again the elf jerks.
“Neesiette, creation of the foreign moon… who does good, instead of bad!” Ave nods approvingly of that description, though Neesiette’s chin raises with annoyance.
“And Kol, our protector. She’s come to the world tree to learn about many things, and she is to be a knight one day.”
“First thing Kol wants to know, is what is going on, but Elf’s introduction got important things, so Kol is happy~!”
Finally someone intrudes, causing the elf’s vision to raise and judge Kol. Adris can see the briefest flash of yellow behind the slit in its wrappings. Those eyes soften at the sight of someone who would be a knight.
(Did its breathing change…?)
“Kol, this is one of my people.”
“Wears weird thing on head? Seems more like Alchemaster’s Pawns.”
(That’s not wrong, but also not the right time!)
The elf gives no indication of if it’s an insult or not, only remaining still.
“A wrapping of the ranger, it’s grown by the forest and endowed with its quietude.” Ave’s expression grows humored by this, like a teacher listening to an ignorant student. “But, with our greetings, the same should be heard back.”
Ave reaches down, trying to avoid the religious sign that the elf still holds up to pat it on the shoulder.
“The wind calls me Avenalliah Aurmaris.”
Rather than just jolt,
the elf tries to swoon.
“Eh!?” Ave grabs onto its shoulders to hold it up, and finally the elf’s arms drop. After a moment to recover itself, Ave asks something with as much kindness as she can salvage from her surprise. “Please… let us know how the wind names you?”
“…” The elf’s silence is perpetual, and in response it only appears to turn its gaze away from everyone.
After a time, there’s still no response. Only the rustling of trees and the floating of fairies entering around them all, the color of green deep within their spirit forms.
“… a whisper adds nothing to the sky.” An abrupt rejection-in-intent slyly hisses when Ave’s hands won’t leave it.
“Every breath adds back.” Ave smiles harder, an expression of depthless patience and kindness forming.
“That… is that…?” The elf nods, then Ave pulls it upright. “… that is… it must be true if you speak it.”
Ave’s happiness lingers, though Adris feels it a strange reply.
The last of the tension between the group and the elf appears to pass when the elf stands up beside Avenalliah to face them.
“Oh, before that, please, even though you should wait until you reach the communal grounds, allow me the joke of their responses to something dramatic! My friends have never met another elf.” Ave sticks her tongue out a bit as if this is a prank when speaking her second tongue, reaching for the elf’s fibrous turban.
“…!?” Kol clanks forward when the elf rears back and seems as if it’ll bolt! But Ave’s hands are faster, clenching the elf’s arms yet again.
“It’s just a jape! If… it isn’t a pleasant one…?”
“NO! It’s… the humor does feel forthcoming.” The elf comes back to her side obediently, as if understanding something no one else does.
“Ahem: unlike humans, kin do not stand shoulder to shoulder.”
At roughly the same height and turned toward the party, Ave leans toward the elf just as the elf’s turban comes free.
Ave leans in, joined by the elf whose face is so stoic that Adris wants to elect her as head of the old scholars’ group that raised him.
Their outside arms go wide and raised up, and Ave shouts.
“Because! Kin can only stand ear to ear! And it’s usually a duel it brings!”
“… Hah!” For a moment, the elf breaks her moroseness to chuckle at how long elf ears seem like they’re fencing when Ave wags her head. After this… she looks askance as if this is some bizarre ritual, trying not to be witnessed with the same enthusiasm for being small that Ave usually practices.
(It’s… totally unfair yet again.)
In the dimness of the huge forest that obscures all sunlight, these two have their own soft radiance that supports the angular features of their faces to make them almost like soft crystal. A forestman’s rough outfit designed for hiding must be necessary to keep such alluring appeal from giving them away.
Ave is definitively more beautiful than the other girl with how the snake elf’s crystal-green eyes invite you to fawn over how they change so dramatically with the elf’s many moods; yet, their dress is conservatively similar enough to not say that this other elf feels any less elegant. Each wears a green cloak of leaves, though the other eschews a hood. Ave’s dancing outfit has the same-or-similar patterns replicated upon the protective material of the ranger’s tight bodysuit. Long, glossy, dark green hair tied in a bun doesn’t match the same vibrancy of Ave’s, but they clearly are of the same race.
(Flat as a board, too.)
“The wind calls me Mython.” The unnamed elf must offer a name in elvish after the dumbest of jokes, because no one but Adris and Ave register understanding. Then, she returns to being aloof.
For their differences…
(Ave’s jewelry and armored bodysuit seem unique. The elf only wears what looks like normal silver jewelry.)
A bow that appears shaped of wood instead of carved has bark still attached. This bark is smooth, even soft where the hand grips. It and the arrows in the hip quiver that’s made of rolled splints possess a lazy haze when staring at them. It’s a light-distorting field similar to what covers Kol’s weapon when the squire is enraged.
But neither has the same craftsmanship as Ave’s whip, nor do the arrowheads claim the same silverish-blue sheen that attests to that whip’s deadliness.
“Elf looks like an elf. So what is the point?” Kol just yawns, throwing her poleaxe over her shoulder.
(Besides that, the joke is a bit strange. I’d expected more arrogance from elves.)
Rather than arrogant, the way this elf seems to glow is more muted. Her eyes gaze more sternly, a tiredness to them that Ave has none of.
Adris feels a little bit of a burn in his chest seeing the two elves side-by-side while he’s apart, then checks a glance at Still.
(Huh?)
The sneak’s hands are frozen in front of her, some question locked in place. All Adris can read is {… really…!?} out of it. Still pulls them behind her back then, her mask a polite smile that can’t hide the lasting mental impacts she seems to be accruing.
(Don’t you go crazy now.)
“The others went back to tell them of our arrival no doubt, but we shouldn’t give them time to spoil the surprise too much.” Ave grins at this claim, then tugs on her new acquaintance. “Let’s go to the communal grounds. I’d like to share the way the wind calls them myself!”
“… By the fancy of Pellaeon, inspire one less shining.” The elf stores her wrapping within a bag cinched to her side, then turns without warning and walks off into the thick forest in a direction adjacent to where the ambush faced from. At the instant of hitting the close branches that should stop her, she just… vanishes within the outreaching embrace of the woods.
“Let’s continue on. We’ll need to move a bit more stealthily now, as we wouldn’t want n’er-do-wells to trail us home.” Ave twitches her long tail, flexing the muscles before winding it with more care to her trail. With that… Ave, too, shifts through space faster than the eye and seems to meld into the forest before he’s aware she’s moved on.
“Wait! Halt, Ave!”
“Yes, Beloved One?”
Adris tears toward where the other elf seemed to enter. After a second of sprinting, Adris slides to a halt upon Ave just appearing out of the greenery roughly ten feet from him.
“You!? You… are moving off from your benefactor far too quickly.”
“Eh? How silly you are, I’m not moving any faster than normal.” Ave lifts her hand to laugh into it, then Neesiette catches up and speaks toward Adris.
“Establish geometry of vanishment quickly, conveying solution to dilemma after this.”
(Got it, you’ve the right idea.)
Adris suspects what is now proven by him stepping back.
Both alien elf and Ave, who do nothing but observe his study, seem to shake out of sight at around fifteen feet away. Their green colors become the many leaves, their pale faces and Ave’s shining bodysuit become the shine of the sparse light through the dark forest, and what they wear strips away to return to its original form as a plant.
(BULLSHIT!)
All of Adris’ aura senses burn at their highest intensity, provoking a throbbing headache and a feeling of pressure when trying to pierce this effect.
He even waves the black cross before himself, then touches it to his forehead, earning only a strange grunt from Kol.
“Not just Kol? Also for Boss? Kakaka, that, a relief!” Kol’s satisfaction with not being the only one fooled doesn’t help Adris, who steps pace-by-pace toward where the dark forest claimed Ave.
“Does something bother you?” Ave tilts her head after the colors of her being pull back from the foliage to swirl into a snake elf. The elf beside her stays stoic, but this elf’s yellow eyes glint with an unknown feeling that fascinates.
(That’s… that’s impossible. To fool me… is…)
Hiding without his knowledge is possible.
Hiding in plain sight of aura senses is something inexplicable.
(Talents work by intent!)
“Ave, what are you trying to do currently?”
“Move without being seen by outsiders?” Ave checks over her tail, finding it satisfactorily not leaving a huge impression in the moss. “Just like what you do, Beloved One. And what we do within the Castillo.”
(She’s just wanting to hide? And not even from us!?)
Adris’ tongue is dry, his lips hard and cracked, but he spits out the hateful request his mind is tumbling over anyway.
“Ave… try to hide from us.”
“Hide? From you? Why?”
“Please, just consider it a ‘joke’.”
“Huh? Well, if it’s just for a joke…” Ave grins at the strange request, then…
“E r r o r: memory fault, fractional corruption, numerous sectors.
R e c o v e r y: unrecoverable, faults not identified, lost sectors still in protected mode.”
Adris blinks, then turns to look down at Neesiette.
Within the dark forest, anything that makes the doll say something bizarre like this is a potential threat.
“Boss, why is Kol here?”
“Why? What do you mean?” Kol is the first to actually get a word in, violently sniffing the air. “We’re at the world tree, Kol, so that we can…”
Adris’ left hand holding his cross presses to his lamellar armor, over his heart.
(Why… does my heart hurt!?)
It’s the kind of pain he feels when thinking about them, that things might go wrong. There’s no danger to the three of them, Still, Neesiette, and Kol, so no reason for Adris’ heart to be aching.
“Adris, this alarm be paramount to address.” Neesiette crowds him with a face tight with indignation. “Corruption of memory of Lunamaton designated Neesiette vera Luna, threat level of cause be beyond normal scale!”
“Boss, why are we not beating up that pointy-eared guy?”
(Why would we!? We just got done talking her down!)
Still, too, crowds with Kol to yank on Adris’ half-cloak. Her signs aren’t completely readable, but Adris has the same idea that it’s some complaint about their destination since one sequence reads [—THE HELL OUT OF—!].
“Be calm! We’re not in any danger from this elf!”
“Boss, tell that elf to prove it by surrendering to Kol.”
“To you, disciple…!?”
(There’s a lot we have to do that doesn’t involve winning, idiot! It took us this long to get into the Castillo and to the world tree, so we need to not burn any contacts we make! After all, we have to—!)
“… We… we have much to do here.”
“E r r o r: cannot recover corrupted memory.
Addressing this be paramount, Adris! Alteration of memories be evident! Address dangers!”
All three of Adris’ girls yank on him, something missing between them that drives such a brutish display.
(Everything is fine! Don’t freak out about what we don’t know we don’t know…
… why is my heart tearing itself apart!?)
Adris stares at his left hand, four fingers, but only three luminous rings that glimmer into sight with red, green, and blue that he recognizes.
“This world tree… we came here to find…?”
The fourth he’s never seen before. A yellow ring that reads of the “air” or “wind”.
“Boss, why… crying?”
(I’m not crying!? What… why is there a tear on my mask…?)
Something is missing deep within.
Or it’s there, but he can’t see it.
Three planets orbiting, the fourth so far away, and a… fifth!?
“You… what have you done to us?” Adris can’t stand it anymore, the pain too much, and he raises the cross against the elf that was leading them. An alteration to his Inner Expanse is absolutely suspicious!
This stoic woman’s eyes are wide with shock, switching between Adris and the girls, and to an empty space beside her.
(This IS your fault!?)
“Dare you… to attack us?”
Kol’s poleaxe points at the elf at the same moment the cross is pointed. The bruiser seems unusually violent, though Still keeps shaking at Adris’ back.
“Pfft!” The elf’s laughter and sudden grin jumps out at them, a vicious stab after perpetrating this kind of mental assault.
“Kol, destroy her.”
“GLADLY!”
Their fearless guide, leading Adris for a reason he can’t remember, doesn’t even arch an eyebrow as Kol roars and then—!
“Stop!? STOP!”
“AHGAGAGAGA!?”
The gagging kobold is forced to the moss carpet, unable to mount any defense against the pressure on her throat from her own poleaxe’s length pressed against it by Ave’s grip.
Fear, folly, adoration, rejection, and a thousand reasons to feel all four unleash from where they were sequestered to flood Adris’ psyche!
“Why would you attack my ki—?
OH!?”
Adris’ embrace doesn’t drag down Ave at all, leaving him feeling like he’s clinging to the softest tree.
“This is quite… the strange punchline to a joke!” Ave pats his back.
“Elf. Kol has many grievances.”
“Why? All I did was stand here, silly Kol!”
Adris whispers in her ear to disprove that claim.
“You deprived us of your connection for that moment. Be cautious: here, you’ve become more.” Because he’s lost so much esteem by lunging, Adris decides to make Ave pay for it.
She hugs him tightly for that mental stab, earning an internal sigh from Adris.
(Don’t ever do that again.)
The fear won’t go away, either. All Adris can do to fight it is to offload it, and even then it’s a thorn within.
Still lingers outside of the group with Neesiette, patting Neesiette’s head while the doll’s violet eyes dance with fury. After calming, Neesiette marches up.
“Linking hands be necessary, Avenalliah.”
“Oh? If you say so, Neesiette, then that sounds fun! Let’s form a chain, then~.”
The pretty elf girl hesitantly takes up Ave’s and leads on.
Ave stays on the outside of the line with her long tail swishing, a pleasant smile lasting as she seems to swim through the thick foliage that doesn’t obstruct her, or anyone in the group, so long as these two are first.
(Elves… elves are…)
It’s some time thereafter in this too-happy configuration that they travel without Adris being able to keep track of their changes in direction. So long as the two elves wish not to be seen by outsiders, the forest behind them seems to swoop in to devour their trails.
And under the lights of lakes of many colors, they eventually come to the end of the branch…
“It floats between it all of its own volition. More loving of the wind than the tree?” Ave’s assessment is what their elf guide nods to. It’d been absent in the distance before coming to the giant branch’s final end where it’s thinnest, but now the colors peel away.
A mossy block the size of a neighborhood of Petripolis floats within this floating lake of many hues. One end of it angles out of the lake, while the other sinks into it. Trees and plantlife grow wild here, only on top of the island, and a clearing in the center must exist because the canopy that enshrouds this disconnected land thins.
Sort of below their vantage point, Adris sees no connecting lines between any of the branches which stay well clear of this disconnected piece of the forest to make it defensible from any direction.
(An optimum fortress on Xin, they control an entire sky island.)
“So many? What does the wind call it?”
“… [Môrmasto] (VILLAGE OF THE SHADOWED), Priestess.”
Ave’s face blanks at the name given to this place, though Adris can’t tell whether it’s that or the title used.
“Why?”
For the first time since meeting another elf, Ave doesn’t slink closer after releasing the elf’s hand. The elf guard stands expectantly and respectfully awaiting an order, while Ave turns to gaze at the village that must be contained within the conflicting radiance of colors and shadow.
“And how do we reach it?”
When Adris asks the most important question, the tension between both elves vanishes. They share a look, and then both smile, an infuriating kind of shared humor that makes Adris the source of the presumed joke.
“How else? You jump~.”
(Okay, let’s go home, Still.)