After destroying the small copse of Living Trees, a name I found weirdly amusing, Adra and I quickly noticed something wrong. Their destruction caused a strange, magical echo, almost akin to a beacon.

“What do you think?” she asked me, as we stared at their withered husks, slowly shedding the magic they had devoured in life.

“Not sure, but at a guess, something is coming,” I frowned, considering things for a moment. My first impulse was to retreat, to remain cautious and avoid conflict until we knew what we were dealing with. On the other hand, my previous attempts to discover the nature of this place had completely failed, so some direct reconnaissance was necessary.

“Rai, join me,” I ordered, already starting to weave together some Darkness-magic. The shadows beneath the thick canopy were deep and a wide variety of shrubs provided ample cover at ground level. “Adra, deal with the plants, we need to remain hidden.”

Once Rai stood with me, I urged him to add his own abilities to mine, our teacher-disciple relationship faintly helping to harmonise things, as the foundation of his magical skills came from my teachings. At the same time, Adra was chanting next to us, her magic influencing the plants and gently shifting and encouraging them into letting us blend with them. Remembering how Tani had concealed the rebel village, I tried to emulate the effect, carefully studying the Astral around us and trying to meld my concealment with the surroundings, achieving some effect. How much, I couldn’t really be sure but time would tell.

With the three of us working on it, we only needed a few minutes to create a magical shelter we were happy with. It was stretched, encompassing Sigmir and Jenn and all five of us quietly settled in to wait, curious who or what might be attracted by the escaping Astral Power.

We didn’t need to wait too long, maybe for half an hour, before things started to happen. At first, there was only a slight fluctuation in the Astral River, a faint scent tickling my nose or maybe a gentle breeze flowing through the trees. I had to focus on the spell I was maintaining, adjusting it to the changes to keep it meshed into the background, to the point that I could barely see what was actually happening around me.

There were about a dozen small figures flying towards the area the trees had been, maybe ten centimetres in height, though the bright, green light they shed made it difficult to tell. In the dim light of the forest, they were like fireflies, buzzing around on insectile wings, circling the area. As they circled, the scent of rot and death, still lingering after the destruction of the Living Trees, was rapidly fading, forcing me to work extra hard.

I didn’t dare try to Observe them, hoping that Rai would manage, his personal and active concealment even better than mine, especially with the help I was giving him already.

The strange, small beings didn’t stay long, only a few minutes of buzzing and when they vanished, flying back into the depths of the forest, the withered husks of the trees were completely gone, replaced by small saplings. The saplings looked far too large and old to be natural, no tree should be able to grow from nothing to the thickness of my arm and three metres in height within a few minutes. Looking with Lenore’s sight, I could see the lingering Astral Power, though the exact mechanisms involved were a mystery to me.

After the small beings were gone, we quietly waited for another thirty minutes before we slowly crept away, constantly keeping the concealment active, just in case they left behind some sort of hidden watcher.

Once we had taken enough distance to relax our vigilance a little, we crept into the shadows of a couple of trees and I relaxed my mind a little. The concealment wasn’t tremendously intensive in the Astral Power department, but it required incredible focus, leaving me with a faint headache, as if I had been staring at a screen for far too long, constantly working spreadsheets to find a balance.

Letting out a deep breath, I looked at Rai and Adra, “What did the two of you see?” I asked, hoping that they would have some insight.

“The trees were communicating with them, quite similar to the way I do.” Adra began and I noticed she looked a little pale around the nose, “I think they didn’t ask the right questions, or maybe they didn’t care to ask, I was unable to understand them. It was as if they didn’t really care what had happened, just to do their job and absorb the lingering power,” she shook her head, still looking a little disturbed. “I’m not sure my influence over the trees would have won out against theirs if they had tried to assert themselves.”

“I managed to Observe one of them,” Rai added, sounding slightly confused and apprehensive, “It came back as a Level ninety-eight Forest Sprite, whatever that is.”

“Obviously, trouble,” I replied, though I had little actual information. Looking over to Jenn, she could only shrug in ignorance, obviously not knowing more than we did.

“So, some sort of Fairy or something, acting as a messenger or patrol, but not taking things too seriously, or they would have checked what actually killed those trees?” I asked, thinking out loud.

“But why did they come in the first place? If they don’t care who destroyed the Living Trees, why show up at all?” Rai asked, his question making me frown. Why exert effort, it it wasn’t needed?

“The Astral Power escaping from those trees, Adra, what do you think would happen to it normally?” At my question, Adra began to frown before her eyes flashed with understanding.

“It would fade into the Astral River, returning to the cycle once more. But here, it would also impact the balance of Life and Death in the forest, pushing it a little more towards the side of Death,” she hypothesised, making me nod in agreement, as her idea made sense. If there was some power in the background that used that balance, maybe harvested some of the power, it would make sense that they wouldn’t want any random event to disrupt their scheme. Which would make the Sprites the equivalent of mall cops, barely competent to do their job, apathetic about the circumstances and generally uninterested to do more than tick the box and collect the pay-check.

“But who controls them? Or should that be, what?” I mused as I considered my current hypothesis, that there was some elder power in the Forlorn Forest that had created the peculiar balance of Wild Magic and maintained it for their own reasons. It made quite a bit of sense, much more than thinking there was some random area of Wild Magic that just happened to be in a highly complex and volatile state of balance by sheer chance. Sure, it wasn’t impossible but outside agency was the far more plausible answer.

Sadly, it was also the far more troublesome answer, the difference between taking some random stuff from the ground and breaking into someone’s home to take their stuff. With the hypothetical “someone” being capable of employing high-level Sprites to do their bidding, even if they were unmotivated.

“You mean those things serve a master?” Jenn asked, having caught up to the conversation between Rai, Adra and me. “Then shouldn’t we try to make contact with that master, if we want to create a road through the forest?”

For a moment, I considered her question, before shaking my head. “I doubt it would be so easy. If it was, the Empire would have done just that a long time ago and maybe they even did just that,” I shrugged, before I elaborated, “Think about it, I doubt we are smarter, stronger or more experienced than the collected Adventurers’ of the Empire, going back a few hundred years. I mean, sure, we are awesome, but it would be the height of hubris to put us on such a pedestal,” I shook my head, as I considered our objectives and the supposed difficulty. It couldn’t be impossible, or the quest would likely have indicated that. Instead, it had indicated that our task was merely “hard”.

There had to be a solution, one that wasn’t brute force. To negotiate was a potential solution, but I couldn’t rely on that avenue, not with my past track record. Even if Adra was somewhat skilled in the field, she wasn’t a specialist and unless there was something weird going on, that would be whom the Empire had sent in the past.

“Let’s gather some more data, maybe if we see more, the picture becomes clear. We might just be missing the forest, due to the trees,” I joked, looking at the dense forest all around us.