“How… dare…”
“C l a s s i f i c a t i o n: biological dampening projector.”
Ave’s ire transitions to the “how” of the “dare” against her, for a lady from Traveler recites information quickly at Ave’s side that sounds as if rotely enunciated. “H a z a r d: paramount of ancient threats.
Limitations of dampening diameter apparent, proceed not into—Ave?”
The elf that entered with tremendously calm presence slithers past, the gentleness of her features shifting to a demon’s scowl. Her lifted arms shake… and then a sparkling emerald blur slips past like a howling gust tearing up leaves.
(… H-Huh?)
Smothering white radiance spikes when a crash resounds. A steady singing escalation of refusal turns Adris from Neesiette to gaze in the distance, where the helix trees many yards away explode outward. That spear is now hot with the rush from it of milky, disgusting white that diverts from the outstretched hands pushing ever forward.
“Contest not its territory! Ave!” Neesiette screams out this order, but their mild-and-meek teammate pulls her tail toward her to widely brace.
(How did Ave get there so fast!?)
“SHAAAA!” Cracked earth swells beneath Ave. Ave’s enormous push and the ground that lifts her up breaks each defensive screen!
(No, stop!)
The projections of the spear fold back on themselves when Ave pierces to the trees’ side to bring her hands closer to the dangerous object. Space around the helix trees orbits with a hellish turbulence against crumbling dirt.
“Ave, don’t touch it! It’s lethal!”
“Flee! Dampening shall turn toward one fully, catastrophically!”
Black vigor flecks out from cuts writing across shaking hands that grab onto the spear’s butt.
The incensed girl that nearly cried at the waterfall showers is absent. When she rises up into the air and wraps her tail around the tree’s trunk for more aid, her determination is more crushing than the spear’s.
(How can you be so reckless against your natural enemy!?)
“Pellaeon’s spring and smile…” Ave’s skin has paled, while her lips turn blue from exposure to the light, yet she yells without squeaking. “… turns toward you, DESPOILER, no longer kind…!”
Bracers of earthen stone and gem flash!
What was already instilled into Ave’s soft body flares as a green suffusing glow that sparks against the tendrils. It’s joined by the rage of jagged stone cairns erupting in a circle around a precious daughter.
The spear’s radiant aura sparks and sputters, for the jutting cairns blur sight when stolen white tendrils are forcibly spun around them.
“… NOT GENTLE, HIS BREATH…”
In the moment of losing control, the Invader’s weapon is torn out by a slight elf without harming the petrified trunks.
Drawn from what it imprisoned, the spear is shown the same mercy it gave. Between two hands and pulled over her back, Ave begins to bow its middle upward as if to snap it when pushing forward.
“BUT ROARING, HIS TEMPEST!
WROTH, SINCERE!”
The air that pushed outward to escape the spear’s aura now rushes toward it when its deflections subside. Adris holds onto Kol, both mesmerized when the ground around them lifts and groans to overcome the spear’s hum.
The earth circles toward the flexing elf.
Like a serpent homing in…!
That serpent is the depths themselves. Growling higher above where elves have claimed than below where natural with faults, simply because holy bracers wish that gaia’s hate be shared.
The shadow of something enormous rises to fill the shrine after escaping the cracked earth, cast on the conical walls to darken the marble. Its face is hidden by a veil, but serpents writhe on its many arms that reach down to join where Ave’s hands grip tight on the spiral artifact.
“High!?” More consternated white slaps out from within the translucent spear to batter Ave. These new smaller tendrils hit only lightly against the green aura she’s clad by before sucking toward the thrumming cairns to shred with the rest.
Ave’s timid muscles now flex with definition befitting a monster’s crushing strength. “SHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”
Glass-like material bursts to glitter in the air, and then something sickly white sprays out from this break at its midsection!
Ave’s back-break launches the broken halves flying from her with a total destruction of the spear; but, from the hollow within, a third dully-shining object escapes upwards at speeds rivaling Ave’s from moments ago.
Its head is like a thin and long forked arrow’s, but its longer tail is separated by soft segmentations that let it whip about unpredictably as it soars. Almost a see-through snake, it more resembles sea life that learned to fly by radiating light. Its brightness is tarnished by lacerations at its middle, leaking pale fluids that evaporate within the glow from below.
(Ave harmed it!)
“Retire immediately, enemy bioservant!” Neesiette barks out an order, the rarest of events.
At the name used, the squiggling, thin tendril stops in mid-air three-quarters of the way through its escape. Adris sets his truest sight on it, as its own single eye, dead like a fish’s, locks upon him in turn.
[Juvenile Reacher] is what the wordless shimmering upon its slick, damaged flesh jolts into his mind. It comes not from some blackness intrinsic to it like Rantil or Fehr, but from within Adris’ Inner Expanse as an echo.
A powerful memory left by Emperor-knows-what awakens, flashes of a white tower with tendrils of the same descending from the sky to match this thing.
(It’s… one of the Invaders!?)
Witnessing it sends Adris’ balance spiraling out of control. So tiny it is in comparison to the black dream’s tendrils, but it’s still as omnipresent.
All other unknowable threats have left him with reflexive repulsions and the imbalancing of his bodily humors when they’re active; yet, the fears of the dark were instinctive and old, but mercifully timid if witnessed, and vanishing readily with the spoken truth like fog facing sunlight.
What this creature inflicts is so grandiose that its existence does not fit its frame or the space it is stuck within.
Suddenly, it’s not flying to Adris.
It is unmoving, letting the world flow around it, instead.
The response to Adris’ instincts is merely a flicker from it of recognition of his aura senses measuring it.
Without rationality or logic, Adris’ Inner Expanse bloats out to receive what emits when it relaxes its barriers.
Not as a peer is Adris framed within its understanding.
Perhaps not fully conceptualizing Adris as more than an object within the environment it fills with mostly itself.
Absent emotion entirely except for what distills down to one bias, the rest is a completely foreign paradigm of thought that he cannot meet. It’s so disturbing how isolated he feels from his normal “reading” of others that he almost howls at it.
THIS ABOMINATION’S HATRED IS ALL THAT CAN BE MUTUALLY COMPREHENDED, OVERFLOWING FROM ADRIS TO PROJECT BACK AT IT AS IF IT WERE ADRIS’ OWN.
An overload of consciousness like mania unleashing, where all he can do is drown in that hate until it’s his sole reason for existing.
(I don’t understand this thing!)
Adris’ eyes bulge with stress at discovering his own limitations to comprehend more, but pride compels him to tear deeper.
More drips of understanding that fall into his consciousness burn with visceral pain as aura pathways jump. An alarm born of meticulous mental training calls for him to cut away what of himself might be distorting, even if not appearing twisted by this prolonged contact!
(I’m… I’m corrupting myself!?)
The black cross rings out violently against some hidden effect, shattering the invisible conduit between boy and white worm. Incomprehensible screams of anger and mirth deafen Adris from all around and within himself.
Watchers of formless night scream a word that is both warning and rare uniting desire.
The compulsion has the same taste as the word [INVADERS] does.
(… KILL…!)
When the boy averts his aura senses, all that’s left behind of it is an eternal coldness up his spine within its presence.
It comes from knowing that the starborn’s dead stare contains no chance for common ground.
No compassion.
And with Adris having lost this struggle, it’s soaring again without wings a second later. The world moves so that it may traverse away with knowledge of Adris’ location.
(THAT SPY CAN’T GET AWAY!)
Adris’ cross rings again, but it is toward the rim of the open shrine above that he gasps at wordlessly with faith felt. A blue shadow lies in wait just at the lip.
Preparing.
Fear of being hunted has his heart racing as he conveys that compulsion for murder through their link, and that particular beat echoes within the torrent of equally pressing terror that colors his sight red with her response.
The racing alien creature becomes an obsession seen from both high and low, a method of extermination planned in an instant. A horrible gambit, one which leaves both Adris and Still on a mental knife’s edge.
Stuck at the precipice, on her end.
(END IT, STILL!)
Adris’ unleashing of the hatred he felt from it defrosts what finally launches itself at the abomination. A leaping shadow sends the prey juking with a shriek that no animal could vocalize when unfolding parchment papers scatter toward it.
[OBLIVION, ANATHEMA, SORROWFUL FATE], all three thoughts spelled out across the innumerable parchments shoot thin purple threads that weave into an expanding pentagram. The configuration is a jellyfish that envelops the Invader.
Witchspun threads ignite when the starspawn thrashes against them. An ozone scent reaches Adris’ nose from the explosions of white and dark purple. Cast off watery sparks that distort light also reek of death.
(When you thought nothing of US, you chose poorly.)
{BE UNMADE!!!}
Two partners share the same murderous glee when it can’t burst free. Black shears just long enough to cleave through the wriggling prey meet with a swish.
Through her own combusting sorcery Still plummets, to ferry small flames on the tail of her cloak out the other side. The airborne reaction sucks into the dark wake trailing from where her blades met.
[Thievingways] pilfers until the very last hate pops away.
(But… you jumped from so high up…?)
And then Adris hears a clacking sound for that problem, followed by the tumbling acrobat near her demise tossing a sparking ball into her impact path. A fuming cloud of thick black smoke explodes to consume once more.
She doesn’t exit out the end a second time, though.
“Geh!?” Adris nearly keels over when something yanks on his half-cloak. He’s swung around almost into his own shadow, where black-meshed hands struggle to find purchase enough to pull out of the gloom. Still keeps heaving back and forth once partway out, like an animal stuck within fallen branches which goes wild with terror.
“Hold on!” Adris grabs on and leans back. He laments that the witch’s butt is so fat when her hips get stuck halfway out. Sickly white radiance leaks from Adris’ shadow. This door made too narrow for Still closes tighter with it welling up.
(Can’t you stretch!?)
Still’s painted gritting teeth are full of fury when Adris ultimately yanks her sideways, and nearly tears her skirt off to rocket her out of the collapsing portal. They tumble on the ground until coming to a stop. Adris’ shadow smooths out and the white radiance is smothered.
“You… only you could steal your enemy to death.” Though he tries to sound nonchalant, Adris earns a grateful, very sincere thumbs up from the shivering witch.
Neesiette rushes up next, swishing to stand over Still. “Translocated to what plane, assuring no alert to our existences or the transpired events be the pinnacle of necessity!”
{… It’s… where all the things you people forget go. Hoo, whatever it was, anyway, it shouldn’t be happy there for much longer~!} Still seems content when drooping her tired hand after signing that. {… Very little gets bored there… too busy decaying…}
“Assuredly trapped?”
{Definitively, unless it learns to jump shadows. After it crumbles, though? If it has Recompense…?}
“Impossible that be, for very purpose of its construction and, especially, foreign composition naturally rejects metaphysical manifestations such as Zennian—
Ah.”
The chattering doll abruptly stops when Still tilts her head with curiosity, then blinks at Adris as a warning before turning away.
{So, I won’t have to choose ‘its ignorance’ as my reward~?} Since Neesiette ignores Still, the witch asks Adris. {Then, what would you say it was…?}
“It’s one of those things that come after me often, Partner. Dangerous if spoken of.”
Still balks at the enunciation at the end, but only barely leaves off of the signs she starts for “Don’t you Partner me!”
(Let’s keep this between us?)
“Defeating it is fine. But, what about Ave?”
{THAT BEAST!? Why wouldn’t she be fine…!?} Still clambers over Adris to see for herself, then her hands freeze when both take in a somber sight.
“Thank Pellaeon.”
An evil spear, its broken halves snapping still into bursts of glassy powder, failed to kill what now awakens. The strange trees that curl around each other while seeking the sky continue to make cracking noises. Their bark shifts from gray to a dull sandy yellow as a continual breeze comforts them. Ave’s hand upon one of them moves with the tree that limbers up enough to sway with the wind that sends its supple leaves rustling.
“Ancient ones, never fear that again. For your sakes, our promise, we kin will safeguard you more stringently!”
Ave continues to whisper encouragements and promises. Strangest of all to Adris is that he can swear the creaks of the tree she strokes are an intentional response in some way, but no words are understood.
Only… feelings.
Ire, discontentment, relief. These feelings are a sequence that ends in… pride for another, perhaps also tinged by sorrow alike Still’s sorcery.
(Are the helix trees alive… like a person would be?)
The elf that freed the trees seems diminished for her trouble. Still stops shivering, for the holy power that assaulted the shrine sleeps again with Ave’s sigh of tiredness.
{All the shadows are… fluffier after her tantrum.} Still timidly signs this before standing up to walk toward the snake elf. The witch takes her time, but then rushes when Ave turns with a smile and shows her hand to wave “hello”.
{Foolish child!}
“Ah? Oh…!? My hands…?”
Smeared on the tree too is black Vigor because the elf’s hands were torn up by the spear. The paleness of when it drained her has recovered, but not yet burst palms.
{How could you be so stupid!? Attacking a curse like that without even thinking!}
“But!? But… it… to the sacred ones? They dared to strike at… our covenant!”
After smothering them with her healing balm and sticking a thin cloth square on each hand to keep them covered, Still “yells” at Ave further.
{Forget your covenant! What about you?} Ave’s face goes wide with shock when Still keeps ranting. {That spear was draining you dry! At best, you’d have been sent beyond the Castillo. What about that is smart?}
“A true kin… when faced with that…?”
The elf changes expression a few times, from lessening shock, to a small private smile, then to a troubled look past Still that seems to be an invitation to Adris.
(No, don’t look to me: why did you hold back if you could do that all this time?)
Adris’ thought blanks him completely on how to respond, only touching his temple when he realizes that the thought seems different from Still’s angry one.
Instead, another speaks for him.
“Idol of covenant defiled, sacred trees of elves endangered, predictable such a chaotic action be…”
Neesiette offers a hand to Adris, helping the boy up with great effort on her part. “… if performed by an elf.”
Still drops her hands that she has on Ave’s shoulders, leaning over in total befuddlement to stare behind at Adris and the lady that hands him her stone-bound tome over for carrying.
“Forgivable the rush to save sacred objects be. Sharing this assessment in unity, this lady’s Emperor also does?”
“She threw herself at an unknown threat. Without asking…” Adris’ tone is grim, but he softens it when Neesiette reaches up to straighten her cravat. The icy look she gives reminds him of her expectations.
“No, it is forgivable.” His voice turns colder to match his new take, staring at what’s left of the crumbling spear. “If anyone diminished your esteem of me, much less attacked me, I’d expect you to punish them with that severity.” Adris can only forgive this because it doesn’t matter now.
It’s an accommodation and accommodating, for Ave and to Adris, to support the berserk elf.
(Ave overcame something I wouldn’t have tempted alone, so she doesn’t need my permission. “Victory is its own excuse”, right, Serras?)
“Still, elves have different temperaments. It’s our pleasure to aid her after she… bravely destroyed the enemy.”
{… Is… that… how it is?} Still’s usually acidic sarcasm is missing when she mechanically turns to start checking over Ave. {Then… the elf… where does it hurt, Ave?} Their elf that’s named checks Still out back, arching her eyebrows at how the witch seems spooked despite everyone being content.
“I’m hale, kind friend.” Without shying away, the strange Ave of now gracefully holds Still’s hands and squeezes.
“Thank you for your aid against that evil thing. For the sake of the trees of covenant, you put yourself in danger to prevent it from escaping its crime. We kin shall remember that, and praise your name!”
{!?}
Still lets Ave hold her tightly for a minute, despite flustered bodily shuffling. When let go, Still cockily rocks her hips.
{Yeah, no… painful issues for you…? Glad… to be a part… of the team.}
(You’re acting like that fretting rat Cherie that my financial agent also frets about in turn.)
Ave’s borrowed dignity was let go of, and the elf’s mood seems eerily calm enough to hide her holy power. Still’s nervousness has no basis in pain or failure.
“Nnnn? Elf, doesn’t keep strength?” Kol squats near Adris with her poleaxe sunk into the upturned earth.
“No… without properly relaxing and releasing, becomes an inhibitor such ‘strength’ does.” Neesiette flicks out her communion orb wand. When extended, the slits open to bathe their little area in green warmth of the earth. “Observe, pupil, the worth of restraint as a second example.”
Adris listens as the doll whispers an extremely thick command full of details.
(Wait, didn’t you just DROP THE ENTIRE STAIRWAY THE LAST TIME YOU TRIED TO DISCONNECT A TWELVE-FOOT-LONG STRETCH OF IT…!?)
He readies to run if the shrine starts quaking, but it instead settles with the weight that falls upon him too. The ruined grounds that swelled up to leave him standing taller than Still collapse back to flat and level under his feet. Cairns summoned by anger are all that shake before sinking out of sight.
(When… did you learn to control those spirits that seem to dislike you?)
With the retreat of all that the earth delivered, what replaces it is the stronger rustling of the small grove and the sacred trees.
A gale without an origination sweeps by, in its wake only gentle repose.
A dreamy feeling settles over the shrine.
“Oh!? I can…?” Ave slithers past the helix trees, lifting her arms toward the grove. Her sashes lift up, soaking in the unique scents filling Adris’ nose. “I hear them.”
“Hear what? Nothing there! Kol would know.” Kol scowls at the antics going on, then jumps up when from the grove comes a “hoot”.
“Nah!? Bird?”
No bird is its origin, since the branches are bare of animals.
Instead, it’s mists that rise from the ground at the trees’ roots that answer. Coiling up, they then flow outward and upward.
“World tree’s embodiments of intrinsic natural systems, non-elemental ‘spirits’ be classified as. An… elf would first hear their call.”
“Che? Kol’s ears, usually best!”
A reed instrument sound, full of rougher emotion than a trained musician’s, tests its audience and finds the kobold that grimaces suddenly smiling at what she hears piping louder.
“Hmm, hmm, humans not play that sound!”
One hoot becomes more, progressing in a faster beat that is joined by whistles from different branches. When the mists rising fill the grove’s half of the shrine, Adris’ pulses of life begin to play along with this organic music.
Knocks against bark are percussion.
The shrill whistles are long and swerving in their pitches.
“Not even kobolds make such noises. Beat good? What does Kol need to play this?”
And all the time, some cross between insect chorus and the wind’s play through leaves serenades them.
Too chaotic to be intentional, but all of the “instruments” in some way complement.
(There’s another world beyond the back. It opened so slowly that I didn’t notice it…)
One shouldn’t fit within the small shrine, but Adris can recognize the signs after having crossed between so many different planes.
An invisible weight centered on the helix trees calls the mists to snake toward them.
“Boss, Kol feels… something now. Moon speaks true.” Kol’s face ceases to be visible when the squire plants her helmet on her head, latches it up, and then pulls on the wolf’s jaws to set her visor.
“Very different? Never felt before, even in Big Bird house with weird doors to everywhere!”
Stuck between aggression and excitement, at his side she readies for whatever might come out of the mist.
“It’s an invitation. What you hear, I mean.”
Ave, fearless of the sudden manifestations, slithers toward the boundary of the grove. She coils up warmly within the kiss of these mists and sways with the music.
“They’re waiting. For us!” A cheerful announcement with waving hands ushers them to join in.
“Why make them wait~?”
(WHO is waiting?)
“Why a feeling called ‘warmth’?” The rhythm of the strange, almost-musical calls changes when questioned further by Ave. The sunlit afternoon seems more toward dusk as Adris walks with Neesiette beside him. “Sunlight is… rare?”
(I… don’t get what’s going on. I feel nothing of the usual pseudo-aura. Not magic, but… there’s something thinning…?
Ah?)
Adris leans over to let the small hand that reaches behind his half-cloak find what it was searching for. A hidden codex is what Neesiette opens up instead of [Brings an End].
Only Adris and her are drawn into the conversation that begins when Neesiette almost touches an empty page, a hesitation to how she hovers, then she presses down.
[ONLY ANOTHER OUTSIDER MAY PROVIDE THE TRUE SOLUTION.]
The language of Luna, not Rantil’s dark glyphs, spreads with the allip’s black ink across the page. Adris keeps his expression tight, only nodding lazily when Neesiette taps the word for “solution”.
(Bold of you to touch what you don’t comprehend, Neesiette! And Rantil allows herself to be found…? Solution to what?)
Who he must help isn’t explained, but the words after these contain an image that suggests it.
[EVERYTHING WILL BE EXPLAINED, BUT THE TRUTH OBTAINED WILL NOT GRANT THE OBJECTIVE SOUGHT.]
The moving image is of a green serpent chasing the alchemical glyph of “wind”, trying to coil around it as it escapes.
Adris’ slight smile darkens, for a lady far more brilliant than him to make this prediction has implications that cause stomach ache to bubble up.
[LAMENTING THIS, WHAT TRANSPIRES AFTER BE DEPENDENT UPON ONE WHO CASUALLY UPENDS “WHAT CANNOT BE CHANGED”.]
(What should I do? Have I become some sort of cult leader, one who’s expected to also have OTHERS speak in the riddles I usually use?)
After this, Neesiette closes Rantil and hands the codex back to him.
Everything she wrote by sharing herself with an evil book was something she apparently will not dare to speak within the presence of those with exceptional hearing.
As passive as ever facially, but with her eyes shining brightly, Neesiette makes a sad admission after for others to hear.
(Ave seems perfectly capable of doing anything right now.)
“Paradox, thusly, that future condemns past, absent understanding conveyable which might check future. Limitations of causality, presenting always with worst timing.
And, yet, already all blame be laid mostly upon an Emperor.”
“Why is it my fault?” Adris reaches to grab Neesiette, but the doll hurries off.
“Calculations, perfected. Unshareable.”
(Who really needs me at the moment?)
Adris wants to share that question, but swallows it back. Another cold feeling, but this time in his chest.
(What is my fault?)
“As expected, an elf would be promptly invited.”
“Ah!?” Ave turns when Neesiette trots up to her and offers a hand to the elf that was moving faster than the rest toward the grove.
“Leave not behind those most anticipatory of witnessing this home offered.”
The shock at such a friendly gesture Ave reveals again…
“… Yes, my home!” Then lets it change into a youthful, naive smile at its fullest intensity when she grabs on firmly to both Neesiette’s hands and swings their arms playfully.
“I’ll prove that some places on Zennia can be as beautiful as your home, too!”
“Indeed? Then, proceed at one’s own pace. Objective and unbiased shall this lady be… enjoying the offered challenge.”
“Heehee~!”
Into the mists of a small grove, which no longer feels small where the walls of the shrine cannot be seen any longer, Ave slithers while matching pace with Neesiette. “Heaven and earth” start to vanish from sight to merge with the strange “music”…
{Hit me with the cross.}
“Why!?”
{I want to wake up from this. Or not be awake any longer. Either is fine, just choose.}
“I need you conscious. And hurrying, they’re getting ahead.”
(Why are you so worried? If it’s Neesiette… and Ave, we add…?)
Still clings onto him, trying to steal his own emblem as he struggles to drag her after Ave.
“Smells safe? Fine…?” Kol takes up Still’s other side, dragging the unwilling sneak more quickly. “Hmm, Puddle, scared? That is VERY interesting!”
Nothing of their destination has been explained.
No dangers made clear, only proof provided that Ave wasn’t lying about a way forward.
After single-handedly defeating a weapon of the Starborn Lords, their over-talkative elf has instead chosen to become a timeless ancient sage as they’re led into…
(The world tree… nobody has told me what it actually is?)
Mists creep up to sigh and caress Adris’ face.
The number of trees in the small grove was only sixteen, but by the time he’s halfway into it, Adris has already counted over forty ahead…
(I shouldn’t have this many fucking questions already!)
Every last forest giant of unique bark patterns, some soft with fuzz while others are scaled as beetles, diverges from average to become an otherworldly odd. The mists have thickened to become solid fog if choosing to venture away from their slithering guide, who acts as the lodestone for their travel through this “tunnel” of real between the shrine and… wherever is ahead.
{Touching her? Willingly?}
“You’re the one who is reluctant to touch others. Kol and Neesiette are both quite warm.”
Banter over the growing mysteries is all Adris can rely on to keep him grounded as the incline keeps taking them further uphill.
{Our Princess of Precision? Unbothered by a squishy, stinky palm?}
“Neesiette is… very considerate.”
{For an hour?}
(For me, Neesiette could be kind for an hour! But… they have been keeping awfully close to just be Neesiette aiding me in keeping Ave from bolting…?)
“Sweet? Not sweet. Those, easy!” Kol whines again, shaking her head. “Rest, so… many…!? Nnnn, too many scents! Ackaaa!”
Sniffles and sneezes have come over their vanguard-become-rearguard. Kol’s close proximity to Still for drinking in the sneak’s misery has transformed within the thick of forest into constantly venting about how noxious it is.
“Gnnn!? Easygoing Boss, elf place is land of endless fog and kobold hating?” And a little resentment that Still and Adris aren’t bothered, if going by her snarls from behind her visor.
“Not fog, just a passage.” Like the gates of Falke’s demesne, Adris can feel the transition strangeness lessening. Soon, the other side should show.
(I hope so, because fog is the home of maniacs who experiment on you!)
In place of the Castillo gardens’ turf, Adris feels the softness of treading upon endless mosses of light and dark greens mixing in thicknesses of layered accretions. No grasses are to be found, excepting where growing from layers high of decaying mosses.
“Seven layers, seven deep…?” Ave is stuck on similar depths regarding their dimensional passage. “The Petripolis baths could never match the many leylines that thicken to bursting at the shrine. Is this the sort of intensity needed to connect to a world tree?”
Yet Ave presses on without concern for the fog, keeping Neesiette at her side. Eyes always ahead, Ave whispers to herself in her own language. Her mood is fluid with anticipation, glancing back to Adris every few minutes after inspecting one of the trees they pass by for a reason to justify her attempts.
Despite so many fantastical features to them, to Adris, he tastes a hesitation to her enjoyment of the plantlife.
{Have you ever, even for a single moment, considered Neesiette able to put ‘kindness’ over being ‘accurate’?} Yet Still’s fingers meanly dance. {Helpful over clean?}
(Don’t lean into my face when asking something heavy like that!)
“Change is inevitable.”
{No, madness is. This is… the land of… it’s going to be…}
“Be fine. Think of what you just slayed. How can you fear elves after besting a Lightlord’s spy?”
(As much as I’ll tell you of their nature, you did defeat one of… whatever they are.)
{—I— didn’t best it, you damn suck up.} Still tries to pull away from his side, but then a shrill call of something mimicking a bird, but not quite making it, sends her bumping back.
{… Ave… my ‘thieving’ wouldn’t have latched on normally. Only because it was so weak, it got caught in my sorcery. I… masked its existence to steal my own sorcery with it scooped up.}
“You… can’t steal a person?”
{The fuck, thieves don’t steal people! Am I a natural borne kidnapper, or do you think I have a lot of experience!?} Still’s mask is a cruel smile of outrage, then when Adris turns from her to inspect a tree…
{Heeeeey~.} She reaches in and yanks on his chin to get him back. {Just what sort of witch do you classify me as? Not the ‘turns kids into pies’ kind… RIGHT?} A beautiful painted smile innocent at a kind grandmother’s is her offer.
“Well, you can cook. And you don’t like it when your marks fight back, so logically, kids would be…?”
The wrong answer earns his middle finger getting grabbed.
“Cherie might also judge you as fairly experienced.”
Adris goes stoic when she starts to twist it at the second wrong answer, hiding the discomfort behind his decades of aura training.
{My, my, my, be veeeeery careful, a damp forest like this will leave you feeling…?} Appearing in her free hand, a familiar drawn bag chills him to his feet. That hand dances with words as it hangs by its drawstring.
{Itchy, Partner, with a new kind of crazy straight from the Gardens.}
(I’m quite happy with that gone, so let’s not…)
“Smells worse than trees!”
{!?!?!}
Kol eyes the bag she now holds up by pinched claws, swatting Still’s hand repeatedly with her poleaxe when the sneak tries to swipe the bag back.
“Boss, dangerous, this?”
{GIVE IT BACK, MUTT!}
Kol runs halfway to Ave, walking backwards to swing the bag in front of Still. When Still doesn’t let go of Adris to chase, only shaking violently in rage, Kol unleashes a pleasant cackle from her closed visor.
“Kekeke! If Puddle could be more than kid, maybe could get it back…?”
(Kol could never steal from you unless you were horribly distracted.)
Still calms immediately when Adris stares sidelong in fascination. Continuing to keep just behind Ave, always within proximity and away from the fog that’s following them, Still’s behavior does occur to Adris as the first time he’s ever witnessed the independent sneak stay with their group when traveling in dangerous places instead of at its periphery.
{I’ve got plenty more, feel free to just bury your face and take a huge snort.}
“… Puddlefraid, Puddlefraid, kakaka~!”
{I’ve got bravery to spare: let me carve some into you.} A shortword curves out, an empty threat instead of the usual thrown dirks.
(You’re actually afraid?)
And so Adris is the one that snorts instead, wrapping his scared lady’s arm up into his to hold on tighter. Her bosom bumps into him, then she kicks at his leg to force him to dodge it.
“Do watch the ground, dear child! I’ll keep you off the rougher paths, my innocent Still~.”
{… You.. You…} Still’s sword repeats the same word, but Adris is content to have Still’s “first”.
(To see you so defenseless, sticking to ME?)
Neesiette turns back, a complaint levied as she takes her eyes from the path, too. “Be attentive, lest wanderings take the errant to a distant egress point!”
Such a petty play might be worth a night’s sleep to see.
[A dream of being Still’s savior.]
It makes Adris recall many such dreams, about Serras and home, whichever it was at the time. Even some recent ones that tormented him, but left longing behind to match the pain.
([Paradise]. What does such a thing look like, Ave?)
That was what she promised him…
“The great world tree… [Ysanne]!” Ave calls from ahead, her announcement becoming one with the flurry of leaves that sweep around Adris. When he closes his eyes to keep them from being cut, a vision of Still reaching up for aid that only he can give seeps in…?
(Oh, that would be very endear—ING!?)
A trance breaks.
Feeling it end, Adris can only recount that he was walking through fog, though now there is none.
Ave is ahead, her long tail turned to halt them in their tracks.
Arms spread wide, she has a gleeful smile as innocent as Adris might want of Still for a good joke.
“We’re here! We’re finally here!” That Ave is also perched on a wooden knot of where some enormous branch once grew before falling off isn’t a joke, however. The omnipresent glows from around them leave her emerald self wisp-like in a way that diminishes the Neesiette that was once beside her.
Already beautiful before, an instant ramping up of it leaves Ave’s angular features softer.
“The world tree that calls the wind.”
All pulled from the dream suddenly seek the safety of friends, including their haughty doll.
Kol is pushed out from the huddle, not scared like the rest but dubious of the surroundings all the same. She’s made to be the first barrier against “the new” by unanimous decision of three separate hands.
“When did we arrive?” Adris asks, but Still is too busy clutching with both arms around him to sign anymore.
“Kol blinked, so… maybe then.”
“Translocation completed during temporary distraction, usual trickery of fey beings be this.”
Despite there being no visible ground, Neesiette simply stays at the middle of the rather huge branch they’re traipsing along on instead of mentally collapsing at heights existing like she normally does.
(Where… where is the earth you hate, Neesiette!?)
Moss is the common texture of the… giant pieces of bark they’ve been walking on, befitting a tree that is its own world. Great sandy pieces that are the same color as the trunk which grows above Petripolis.
All around weaves the many huge branches of that towering entity that used to be part ghost, thought illusory when imagined to fill the sky. Life clings to the full circumferences of each branch within sight, flora even growing downward without fear of falling into nothingness.
“Oceans… of lights? Held high up among nothing?” Adris calls out with genuine wonder at this sight, for like the Sea of Stars, the all-encompassing surroundings of bramble-close tree branches are filled with colors.
While the Sea of Stars shone from the bottom with rainbow glamor, the gargantuan parent branches that stretch almost forever into the distance and into so many angles have lochs lapping at them of ever-changing waters. Streams amble off wherever they please, their surfaces blown by gusts that circulate in so many different directions within this biome.
A forest for elves grows here, smaller trees clinging to the mightiest one.
Wizened and rarely straight, these diminutive kin shepherd under their omnipresent shade the bushes and shrubs and vines of a thicket grown too clustered.
But there are more colors than just the variety of plants, oh so many.
Furious reds that remind of blood and war,
Dragging blues that are reminders to never hope for more,
Vibrant yellows that shock the tongue and urge him to sprint until he gasps for breath.
These paints and many more choose the bark of branches as their boards to spread upon, perhaps in waiting to be used. They are the only real local sources of light in the world now thrown into near darkness.
(They’re so… vivid in comparison to Zennia!)
An eating blackness resides here in the hidden elflands too, buoyed among the spaces between the claustrophobic branches that choke each other and serving as what the vibrant colors like to gather nearby.
Color and darkness both wash over the tree, some tidal shifts vying for position evident even now.
Adris cannot judge the limits of this plane, for sight is blocked by the twisting wood as much as by the rivers of light and seas of pure dark; but, an illumination that cannot be sunlight also reaches through the thick tree limbs and makes him long for the Zennian sun’s warmth.
(How can plants live in a place so shaded?)
Cold stars burn in the absences where branches and their giant leaves curl out of the way instead of obstructing sight, the perpetual twilight burning gold from the unseen horizon that is piercing through the rest of the colors. Perhaps stealing warmth instead of granting it, he does not want to gaze too long at what can do this.
(There’s… no landmarks.)
Only what is alive exists here. No rocks within sight, nor any structures made by sentients.
A veritable infinite variety of plants is a mind-boggling problem to take in for a boy so used to knowing the dangers of the lands he will tread by studying beforehand.
Other than them rustling: only the silence of all but wind and “spirit”.
“Hmmmm!?” That wind that rises to shake the labyrinthine forest blows over Ave strongly, who shivers at it as it passes. A thought pops into Adris’ mind.
(Waiting for… who!?)
Cloying and heavy, the wind that licks at the meeting of Adris’ hairline with forehead fills him with an idea that this forest was always here, waiting for him!
He stared up each day he awoke, wondering what he’d find if entering it.
A feeling that he could witness something incredible had come to him at times.
Something urges him onward, to search for…!
Standing upon one branch among a great dozen, utterly lost within its immensity, he would’ve found how small he actually is in comparison to the world if he’d come here firstly. The only thrill that could sate what he now knows is waiting must be found deep within this forest…!
“Who said that?”
A subtle question stirs Adris from his daydream.
(Who said what!?)
Ave’s long ears wag as the elf keeps turning to search for something, then she brings a finger to her lips. “… That… was a…? Hmm? Why are you all so…?
Beloved Returned One!”
Ave appears before Adris before he can even recognize movement, sending him almost shooting his bones out of his body in shock.
(HOW DO YOU DO THAT!?)
To outpace all Adris’ senses, even his aura ones, means being more than swift.
Still starts to climb over Adris to escape merely because his tension is eclipsed by her own when even more “spirits” add in louder attempts at music. They react more when Ave’s expectations seem peaked.
“My apologies. I… drifted, Ave.”
“The woods filled with dreams can do that! Does your heart swell with joy upon seeing all of… this?”
Ave turns with a troubled arched brow at that question she asks herself, gazing up at the lakes and streams of colors that flow along the branches.
Then, to the sheer darkness of the space between branches where they do not meet.
“… This is where I belong… or, one place among a few. It is… a very important dream for me to share it with you.” Ave’s certainty fades a bit, but then she sighs dreamily. “Oh, but it’s where you once ruled, too, so it’s not that new? Is it strange for ‘twilight claimed’ to have meant this, isn’t the explanation from Rouvenor’s tale lacking? Is the world tree of now… normal for what you remember of it?”
(If I had ever been here, I would be the first to know, you weird girl!)
But, it appears Ave is under the belief that he knows of it. Adris tries to remember what she called him at Falke’s manse, but can’t at the moment.
“…
… As… a memory very distant, I’d rather enjoy your impression.”
Only Ave read the book that came to life, the one that guided them here.
“My impression? How strange, not to share~?”
Ave pulls away, a difficult smile as she inspects it all again, making Adris wonder what of it she learned from Rouvenor’s tale. “Well, my impression? It is important. I should experience more of it to have the best one, then. I wonder… which way is it to the communal grounds…?” As Adris musters the courage to speak again, the idea of asking “which way is back the one we came” is given up.
Because, the cacophony of independent musicians of nature gains a dissenter. This one squeals like a tremorous reed bow along strings, overriding the rest and causing the melody to shift too abruptly.
“Oh!?” Ave jumps in place with a ripple going all the way down her tail, then turns to listen to the notes. From just ahead, that squeal trails off deeper into the thicket.
“Really!? So close?” Ave slithers off down the branch and past prickly bushes that bleed a silver sap from their leaves, almost leaving the entire party behind before turning back. “They must LIKE visitors, then! Hmmm? Why aren’t you guys moving!? We have to follow, before the spirit gets bored!” Ave frantically waves, urging them all!
“Where?” Adris inquires this, but Ave sighs with the kind expression of a mother whose child asked as silly question for the fifth time.
“Where else but to my kin? … My people…! The first born of Zennia!”
Ave draws away without bothering further with them, pressing on toward the violin.
“Indeed… then, halt!” With a resolution that exceeds her reticence, Neesiette is the first to move away from the huddle and give chase. She takes back up Ave’s hand.
“Demonstrate all to this lady, including manner of foreign introductions. By examination and interrogation of… specimens, deceiving to non-inhabitants fey lands be classified as to this lady.”
“Ah? Yes, the signs, I’ll need to share them. Thank you, Neesiette.”
With nowhere else to go and Kol also trotting ahead with excitement (even though she still regularly sneezes), it’s up to Adris to…
{Well, I hope you all have a wonderful time, I’m going to walk backwar—PUT ME DOWN!}
“There are women who would pay for this treatment.”
{YAH WANNA BE ‘SUAVE’, PACKMULE!? TRY HOLDIN’ MY BLADES UP YOUR—!?}
With so much baggage already held from his shoulders, adding one sword-swinging witch as a princess carried by him is hardly extra when relying on the Mountain King’s bracer.
If everyone is concerned, then it’s fine for him to also be inside, if not outwardly.
If everything is unknown, however, then how can he let that be permitted?
(Everything will be made simple once I am the one discovering the truth. Chief of which is what could make YOU scared.)