There was something other than Sigmir’s comforting smell in the air when I woke back up. It smelled of charcoal, almost as if someone was grilling some delicious meat nearby but once my brain was fully engaged and started to trace the Astral Power that came with those scents, the saliva that had gathered from the smell of grilled meat almost turned into gastric acid and I had to fight my gag reflex.

The air around me was thick with the power of Sun and Life, strong enough to make me nauseous and when I pushed myself up to look around, I began to wonder if we had wandered into hell. The forest around us was still teeming with life, the trees slowly swaying in an unseen breeze, their leaves almost glowing with power as they absorbed the energy of their surroundings.

“Don’t try to move, some of those are dangerous,” Sigmir warned me, pulling me into her embrace.

“What happened?” I asked, trying to remember the escape from the giant tree, only to come up empty. After Sigmir had put me on Ylva’s back, I only remembered brief flashes of silvery fur and Ylva’s unique scent, a mixture of ice, snow and canine.

“The forest became rather busy. I think in addition to the mess Adra and you made of that tree, you managed to wake up some other being, there was something in the air, a suffocating feeling. Rai worked desperately to hide us and he must have managed, or maybe that being didn’t care so much for us and was more interested in other things, I’m not sure. Either way, we managed to run away. The trees around here are mostly placid, eating up the power you unleashed, but a massive amount of animals have become serious trouble.” she explained, sounding incredibly tired.

“You need to rest, I’m fine now. Let me keep watch,” I told her, gently pushing her to reverse our positions, with her resting on the fur and me cradling her head, gently stroking her hair. The fact that I had easily been able to push her down spoke of her exhaustion or she would likely have put up some token resistance at the very least and given me a couple of kisses on the way.

Her breathing evened out within moments and I could feel her mind settling over our connection as she fell into a deep sleep of exhaustion. I kept watch, guarding her sleep and took a glance at the log, curious what had been gained.

There were dozens, if not hundreds, of lines indicating partial credit for a kill, the actual EXP gained an utter pittance but the sheer number made up for it. The biggest one was from the first kill we had struck, namely the destruction of an Ancient Sapling, the name implying all sorts of curious things, but that was to worry about later.

One new type of message was the notification that a quest had failed and our relationship with the Free People had become unfriendly. Looking at the massive mess around us, I had a feeling that unfriendly relations were the least we had to expect on that front. But maybe we’d be lucky and get out of human lands before the mess could boil over.

The upside of the large number of kills was that I had gained another level, bringing me to 119 while my Darkness-Magic and Death-Magic each gained a single point, rising to 79 and 25 respectively. There were no titles or traits gained, but I had a feeling that Adra had reaped the glut of the benefits this time and began to wonder where the intrepid Dryad was.

I didn’t have to wait for long, and soon, I noticed a change in the shadows around me, their behaviour just a little unnatural. If not for my high affinity for Darkness, I wouldn’t even have noticed, but previous exposure and experience allowed me to see through Rai’s concealment and immediately detect Rai and Adra quietly moving through the trees.

“Welcome back,” I greeted them, looking at Adra who was wandering next to him, her spear out and ready.

“Thanks,” she replied and just from looking at her, I could barely tell that she had grown stronger. There was something more about her and I thought the way she moved carried more power and grace, but she wasn’t radiating danger, not unless she wanted to.

“Are you pleased with your gains?” I asked, prodding to satiate my burning curiosity, though it would be incredibly impolite to ask her outright. Luckily, she knew me quite well and simply laughed, quietly, so she wouldn’t disturb the sleeping Sigmir, and answered.

“A new road has opened for me, one that was quite unexpected. I’ll need some time to think and consider,” she shook her head, preventing any additional questions.

“How are you? I couldn’t have done this without you,” she admitted, her eyes now filled with concern and gratitude. Not enough gratitude to tell me the details of her gains and progress, but genuine gratitude.

“I’ll live, which is a lot more than we can say for Jenn. I don’t even know what happened to her, I didn’t have the time or mental capacity to worry about her. Grabbing Rai and Sigmir was the best I could do,” I shrugged, mostly disappointed about the failed quest.

“She kinda just…” Rai looked visibly uncomfortable, “I don’t know fell apart? Didn’t take more than a second, her arms were gone before they hit the ground,” he shivered from the memory. Suddenly, I was quite glad that I hadn’t seen that particular event.

“At least it wouldn’t have hurt for long,” I swallowed, quickly pushing the image from my mind.

“We’ll need to move soon,” Adra added, looking in the direction I thought we had come from. “When I took the power, I interrupted something. I’ve got no idea what was actually going on there, other than the tree being a giant collector for a variety of powers, but it belonged to someone. And we made a mess of it.”

“And they might want to have a stern conversation, especially with the one who took some of their carefully gathered power for her own use and unbalanced the whole system,” I raised an eyebrow, incredibly pleased that for once, it wasn’t me who had caused a large-scale magical event.

“You know, the humans might want to sue you for the damage you caused to their forest, to say nothing of the monsters you unleashed. Pretty sure those monsters will spread out quickly and make a massive nuisance of themselves, don’t you agree?” I prodded some more, not even trying to hide the schadenfreude I was feeling.

“Rai, you should provide your sweety there a Cloak of Shadows, who knows if the powers that planted that tree are capable of magically tracking her down? If so, I’d prefer to have her concealed at all times,” I added for Rai, realising that it might be a future problem. He turned a little pale at the idea and I felt the shadows subtly shift.

“That hopefully helps. I’ll try to come up with some warding of my own, but having multiple layers of protection will be useful,” Adra nodded, mostly looking at Rai.

“Why don’t the two of you get us some dinner? I’ve got a feeling that we won’t be easily able to buy food, not if word magically spreads that we were involved here. The rebels will most certainly have an inkling, so it will likely filter to the government at some point, too,” I asked them. Sure, rebels and imperials were enemies but if both their interests got damaged by a third party, I had no doubt that the rebels would share some information, trying to get an advantage out of it. And the identity of a criminal who caused a major, magical disaster would certainly have some value to those in charge.

“Um, sure?” Adra nodded, looking at me with a certain doubt, clearly wondering why I wanted them to leave.

There were two reasons for that, the more important one was that I didn’t want to disturb Sigmir’s rest. I wanted to leave once she was back up and running, which meant she needed all the rest she could get. Knowing her, she most likely had made Rai rest for some time after getting here but hadn’t rested herself. My silly love.

With silent pressure from me, I waited for Adra and Rai to slip back into the shadows, looking for some mostly uncontaminated beast to hunt. In the meantime, I leaned back, getting my torse away from Sigmir without disturbing her, conjured up a bit of magical concealment around me and opened my magic bag, looking for the second reason I had sent them away.

The crystal of corrupted Moonlight and Death I had inadvertently created. The power contained in that thing was no joke and having a massive amount of Death-attuned Astral Power, alongside the Moon’s power, even if corrupted by Death, would most certainly come in handy at some point. Or it would kill me. One or the other. Or both.