While Maeve finished carving the glyphs into the cicada chitin plates and Gael barely finished brewing up a new batch of symbiote elixir with his back turned to her—he'd gathered plenty of ingredients, after all, but he still would rather die before letting anyone know the final main ingredient of the elixir—the herb retrieval squad of Cara, Fergal, and his five goons returned to the village with satchels of goodies.

Oh, good. They didn't mysteriously vanish outside.

Once he finished dumping his entire pot of symbiote elixir into small bundles of vials and pouches—and he modified the elixir just a little bit this batch around—he beckoned the herb squad to drop everything they'd gathered in front of him. Violet bloodroots, duskberries, and tons of ghostshade fungi. Perfect. He shooed them all away as he dumped all the ingredients into the still heated pot and filled it with water.

As he'd said, it really was a simple medicine. Once a sweet, slightly acrid scent filled the air, he immediately set out a few dozen bowls on the ground in front of him, scooping the hot medicinal broth with his gloves and ladling it into each one.

"One whole bowl for every villager," he said, handing the first bowl out to Cara. "Make sure they drink the whole thing. Not a single dribble on their chin. I dunno what'll happen if they only drink half the medicine, but hey, feel free to test it out for scientific adv—"

Cara ignored him, waving the Repossessors over. "Help me out, boys! Let's do this quickly!"

The Repossessors scattered with the rest of the bowls, their heavy boots echoing across the tree hollow. Gael followed their movements for a moment as he kept portioning out the medicine, and then he turned to the little girl Liorin was still kneeling beside, handing out a bowl to the boy as well.

Everything should work out just fine.

Once he was done portioning out bowls, he fell back on his ass and craned his head up, taking in the view of the village. His eyes narrowed. The carvings on the inner walls of the tree hollow were detailed, intricate, and old—far more ancient than anything he'd ever seen. The scenes they were trying to depict could clearly use some work, because he was either too drunk or too stupid to understand what most of the squiggly lines were referring to, but… the Petalborn had clearly been defending this forest for decades, killing Nightspawn and culling Myrmurs as they rose.

So how, again, were things allowed to get to this state?

"... Ever since the villagers fell asleep, nobody else has taken up the duty of culling the Myrmur count, which is why they have grown so numerous," Maeve murmured by his side, handing him the completed bioarcanic equipment attachments. "But how have the Petalborn been killing the Myrmurs up until now, and what Hosts are those tiny Myrmurs connected to? None of the villagers here have umbilical cords coming out of them, so what are those Myrmurs feeding off of?"

Gael's eyes flickered from the village around them, over to the carvings again, and then back to Liorin kneeling nervously by the little girl's head.

Half out of curiosity—and the other half out of boredom while waiting for the medicine to take effect around the village—Gael snapped his fingers at the boy as he slapped the two plates of carved cicada chitin onto the heel of his boots. The hot tree sap Maeve had lathered on the inside of the plates made them stick right on.

"Show me your Swarmblood Art again, kid," he said, catching Liorin's attention with another click of his tongue. "How do you Petalborn normally protect yourselves from Myrmurs and other shit?"

Liorin stared up at him blankly. Or maybe it was some other equally befuddled expression. He wouldn't be able to tell with that featureless wooden mask. Even still, the boy was smarter than he looked. Liorin bounced to his feet, skipped over to a giant five-petal flower planted next to a thatch hut, and wrapped a hand gently around the thick stem.

At first, there was nothing, but then the flower's colors shifted.

Gael's eyes widened in surprise again as the petals began to change, the single vibrant hue of blue turning violet, then green, then red and the rest of the color spectrum, swirling and glinting as though the surface of the flower had become crude oil. It took on the sheen of liquid metal, and even after Liorin took his hand off the stem, when he curled his fingers inwards to make a claw, the five petals mimicked his movement, responding as if it were an extension of his own body.

"That's… incredible," Cara muttered, awe creeping into her voice as she and the Repossessors finished handing out all the bowls and returned to Gael's side. "How does that work?"

Liorin tilted his head, staring at her as though the question didn't make much sense to him. Sure, his wooden mask really didn't help with any form of expression, but his body language suggested he didn't fully understand his own people's Art either.

Makes sense.

If it works, it works.

Still, Gael had a theory. "The flower's not really turning to metal," he said, stepping forward to inspect the giant flower closely. The plant was still soft and fleshy when he poked it with a finger. "Only the epidermis is taking on a metallic sheen.This means there's two parts to the Petalborn's Art: there's the 'control' part, where they manipulate the plant like their own body, and then there's the 'color', where they change the surface appearance of the plant to make it more vibrant than it usually is."

And he paused, considering the implications. The Petalborn, with this Art, could probably manipulate vast sections of the forest at will. If all of them shared the same class—and most likely, they'd stolen their Symbiotic System from the first wave of scholars and engineers who'd come into the forest half a century ago looking to demolish the forest—then the Petalborn could easily disorient and confuse any Myrmur or Nightspawn trying to attack them, turning the forest into a deadly maze of shifting colors. There was a reason why beasts and bugs tended to avoid brightly colored plants, after all.

A telegraphed trap is a gravestone with your name etched in before the dirt's even turned, after all.

The Petalborn had both 'real' defensive ability in the form of plant manipulation and 'fake' defensive ability in the form of poisonous, vibrant colored plants. It wasn't a surprise now that they could survive this long in the forest.

But, before he could think further, a cough interrupted his line of thought.

The little girl Liorin had fed his medicine to suddenly convulsed again with a weak, shuddering cough. Everyone's eyes snapped onto her, but Liorin, like a bolt of lightning, immediately rushed to her side. His tiny hands hovered over her, eyes wide, repeating a string of worried and nervous words in his local tongue that Gael couldn't catch.

"Is she alright?" Maeve asked quietly, glancing at Gael as her voice filled with worry as well.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

For his part, he didn't respond immediately. He moved back over to the girl, nudged Liorin aside, and pressed two fingers to her forehead. Two more fingers went to her neck, checking her pulse.

"... Eh." He shrugged casually, turning around to give Maeve and everyone a thumbs-up. "She'll recover."

While Liorin helped the little girl sit up straight, Cara wandered over and gave Gael a light pat on the head. "Good job," she cooed. "You really can be nice when you're trying."

"I'm always nice."

"No you're not. But don't you dare try to extract any Marks from them now."

Gael's lip curled slightly, a sharp retort just at the tip of his tongue before he thought better of it and snorted. "I wasn't gonna ask for coins anyway," he muttered under his breath. "Do they look like they can pay in coins?"

While Cara and Gael squabbled back and forth, the air filled with the murmurs of the villagers slowly stirring from their deep slumber. The first signs of life from the village came as eyes fluttered open, groggy and uncertain. Liorin, ever the optimistic soul, caught sight of what appeared to be his parents waking from their long nap in front of his thatch hut, and his gestures immediately hastened with a childlike eagerness.

Without hesitation, he sprinted to them, his little legs moving fast, his arms outstretched for an embrace. The rest of them glanced over at the scene. It seemed like a simple, warm moment—a son reconnecting with his parents after a long, strange sleep—but something still gnawed at the back of Gael's mind.

Liorin reached his parents, practically launching himself into their arms, but his parents didn't embrace him. They sat there stiffly, their eyes wide but vacant—like they weren't quite sure who he was or why he was there.

Gael's gaze shifted from the boy to the villagers around them, who were all waking up in the same dazed, confused manner. They all had the same blank expressions as they checked in on one another, but their eyes had no warmth. No recognition. Liorin rushed from one villager to another, his voice high with concern, asking if they were alright, but no one returned his enthusiasm.

Indifference was one thing. Active avoidance was another. The villagers were steering clear of Liorin, and their gazes darted away whenever the boy tried to make eye contact.

It was only now that Gael realized that although all of the villagers were halflings—even the adults were the size of children—Liorin was the only one wearing a wooden mask.

… Ah.

I see.

Clearing his throat, he shifted his weight, jumped—without much grace—onto Maeve's shoulder. She cursed as her balance shifted beneath him.

"I swear, Doctor—"

"Enough chatter, dearest wife." He grinned, a drunken gleam in his eye as he clapped his hands for full, waking attention. "Hello, Petalborn! I cured all of you of your little sleeping curse! You're welcome!"

The villagers stirred sluggishly, their frail limbs trembling as they tried to stand. He grinned wider at the effort it took them.

"Now, considering all the effort it took me to fix your asses," he continued, "I'm gonna be asking for ludicrous amounts of payment, alright? We've all got needs, haven't we? How about telling me where I can find some of those aero-resonating stones you've all got wrung around your necks?"

It was at that moment when the atmosphere shifted, like a bucket of ice-cold water being dumped over them. Gael's smirk faded slightly as the villagers suddenly turned towards Liorin. The boy, still clutching his mask to his face, looked at them with a hint of confusion. His stance grew more rigid, and just like that, everything seemed to freeze.

The villagers, frail and tired as they were, moved together as one. Without warning, they all fell forward onto their palms, a synchronized motion that made Gael raise a brow.

The air shifted again—sharply—and in an instant, the tree hollow around them began to come alive.

It wasn't immediate, but when it hit, it was undeniable. The walls of the tree groaned. The thatch huts creaked. The giant plants, vines, and roots all around them began to twist, sharpened tips and saw-like petals curling inwards, their surfaces flashing with a dozen metallic sheens that reminded Gael of something out of a drug-induced hallucination fest.

Fergal was the first to react, instantly leaping forward to defend Cara with his five goons. Maeve wasted no time, either. She threw Gael behind her and off her shoulder, putting herself between him and the growling villagers with her umbrella snapped out.

"There was a better way to ask for a reward," she grumbled.

Gael stumbled, but he didn't fall. He straightened up with a grumble, dusted off his coat, and began to observe the villagers again. His eyes narrowed as he noted something odd.

Where each of the villagers' palms were pressed flat against the ground, the grass was only a single metallic shade. All of them were identical like that, and what it meant was obvious: each villager could only change the colors of and manipulate one plant at a time. But Gael remembered Liorin had pulled open the giant wall of vines outside the Mournspire Pines by himself, and that wall was made of multiple species of plants, and he'd given all of them multiple metallic shades by himself.

The boy wasn't like the rest of them. He had more control and more power over the forest than any other Petalborn.

"... Ungrateful fucks," Gael muttered under his breath as the villagers began shouting in their strange tongue. Some of them raised bows, arrows, and spears. Big talk from people who couldn't even keep themselves from falling asleep for possibly years on end, but…

Well.

He'd rather not fight the Petalborn in their own territory. Even with Fergal and his goons here, there were too many of them, and their menacing-as-all-hell plants were already under their control.

"Whatever," he grumbled. "We're getting outta here."

He didn't even wait for them to respond. He turned and started walking, waving a hand as if he was shooing away flies. Maeve and Cara were right behind him, while Fergal and his goons still kept their defensive formation around the group as they made their way towards the tunnel entrance.

The villagers didn't stop them. They didn't even try to attack. Gael spotted Liorin looking at everyone anxiously over his shoulder, but it'd be for the best if the boy didn't associate himself with the 'dangerous outsiders' anymore.

It's still a tough life, kid.

Good luck.

Once they stepped back outside, Gael let out a small, hefty huff. The morning air was fresh and crisp, but not nearly fresh enough to make him less irritated about having spent four days healing people who didn't end up paying him.

Cara patted his head again, squishing his top hat so hard the metal plate bonked his head. "They could at least be thankful, yes, but a good deed is its own reward. We're building good karma."

"Sure we are," he said, scowling as a wall of vines closed the tunnel behind them. Evidently, the villagers really didn't want them to come back. "And now we're stuck in the forest with no stones, no guide, and no way back. What the fuck are we gonna do?"

Before Cara or anyone could say anything, the ground beneath them seemed to vibrate. The sound of heavy footsteps reached their ears, growing louder by the second. They all whipped around to face the sound, and that was when they saw a horde of halfling Myrmurs climbing over the giant wall of vines surrounding the clearing, falling and stumbling over themselves as they charged straight at the eight of them.

Gael really was happy Fergal and his five goons decided to tag along now, because there was nothing more reassuring than to see six Repossessors standing as meat shields in front of him.

"About… forty of them, by the looks of it," he grumbled. "Great. Just what we needed."

His mind raced. The living forest had attacked them with a vengeance before, but now? Now, the same forest wasn't even batting an eye at the Myrmurs, who were obviously pests the Petalborn wanted dealt with. No living roots stabbed at them. No branch came swinging overhead to decapitate them. The forest would actively repel any outsider, but it wasn't going to touch the Myrmurs?

Why?

His gaze shifted toward the halflings, now surrounding them on all sides as they snarled, bared their fangs, and jabbed their spears and sticks at them.

Something wasn't right.

He squinted harder, his mind trying to lock onto something—anything—and then he saw it.

A little glow inside one of the Myrmur's chests.

It was faint, but utterly unmistakable. It was a glow green as the moss on the tree trunks, pulsing faintly with every heartbeat transferred to it through its umbilical cord… and speaking of umbilical cords, he tracked all of theirs and followed them to the side of the clearing, where every last umbilical cord led into the dying, rotten Mournspire Pine like overgrown vines.

And the realization hit him like a ton of bricks.

"... Ah," he whispered. His grin widened, all the pieces clicking into place in his mind. Now he knew why the living forest wasn't attacking them, and now he finally felt like he had the full picture. He kinda knew why the villagers all fell asleep. He kinda knew why Liorin was the only one who'd stayed awake. He kinda knew why the Myrmurs in the forest exploded in numbers, and he one hundred percent knew what the Myrmurs were all connected to.

He turned to the others, his grin widening.

"Guess what, kids?" He cackled, yanking his bladed cane out of its sheath. "We're getting our stones after all."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.