He dodged left to evade a branch, then rolled right in the same maneuver to dodge another, feeling the wind displace sharply as something massive passed within inches of his head.

Then his eyes locked onto a new set of plant-attackers.

Pod-like creatures the size of melons, launched themselves from hidden positions in the bark of the trees with compressed-air bursts that made them blur through the air at terrifying speeds like a projectile!

One shot past Finn's face close enough that he could see its surface. It was a dull green and brown, covered in tiny hair-like tendrils, with a circular opening at one end that looked obscenely like a mouth with thick lips and serrated teeth.

What the fuck—

Three more launched at him in rapid succession.

Finn reacted quickly, catching air and pivoting his body in a corkscrew motion that let the pods sail past him. But it was as if they were learning, adjusting their trajectories mid-flight with subtle directional bursts of compressed spores.

"They're targeting movement!" Althea called out as her Owl banked hard to avoid a cluster of pods.

One of the pods latched onto her Owl's wing and the soul mass screeched, but Althea quickly dismissed part of the wing into shadow and reformed it, dislodging the parasite before it could properly attach.

Tron wasn't dodging at all.

A pod shot toward his chest with lethal speed. And he brutally brought his hand down in a slash, summoning a battleaxe in a fluid motion.

The weapon materialized mid-swing, morphing from his shadow into a black, solid, gleaming metal. Its edge caught the pod perfectly, cleaving it in two with a wet crack that sprayed greenish goo across his Griffin's feathers.

He's very skilled… Finn noted as he caught a glimpse of Tron's display.

But quickly, he refocused his attention on the pods. More of them launched from the trees again.

Finn stopped dodging too. His wings snapped into a defensive configuration, and he began attacking, slashing with his wing-edges like massive bladed fans. The metal-like feathers caught pods mid-flight, batting them away or slicing them apart cleanly.

But one managed to latch onto his forearm.

Finn reacted quickly, but not fast enough. He already felt the instant contact of the pod's soft lips and its dozens of tiny serrated teeth piercing his skin, seeking... something.

There was a brief burning sensation, then…

Nothing.

The pod's teeth grated frantically, like a mosquito that had struck synthetic skin. It was trying to feed, but finding nothing to consume.

"Stop!" Althea's voice cut through the chaos. "Everyone stop! They can't hurt us!"

Finn hesitated, letting another pod latch onto his shoulder. Same result. The pod momentarily stung, then it began a frustrated move, writhing as it looked for something but found nothing it wanted.

Tron, mid-swing with his axe raised, froze and looked at Althea with visible skepticism.

"It seems they're mana parasites," Althea explained, her Owl now hovering calmly despite having three pods attached to various points on its body. "They feed on ambient mana in living creatures. But we're Ossuarists. We don't have mana, and our soul masses are chaotic remnants, not living creatures with mana circulation."

She gestured at the pods, which were beginning to detach from her Owl on their own, clearly recognizing they'd targeted the wrong prey.

"To them, we're... empty. Inedible. They can sting, but they can't actually drain anything from us."

Finn plucked the pod from his shoulder and crushed it experimentally. It burst with a squelch, releasing a pus of green goo that he waved his hand quickly to shake off.

"Hmm," Tron said, lowering his axes with visible reluctance. He'd clearly been enjoying the fight. But he had also confirmed Althea's suspicions as true.

He glanced at Finn, and for just a moment, something flickered in his expression. Something like a... reassessment. As if he hadn't expected Finn to keep up during the brief skirmish, let alone perform competently.

Then Tron turned away, looking forward.

"We should keep moving," he said curtly. "Document this section and let's push deeper. The real threats are probably further in."

They resumed their flight, now understanding that the pod-launchers were annoyances rather than genuine dangers.

But as they progressed deeper into the Weald, the nature of the threats began to change.

The creatures grew larger.

And smarter.

Finn spotted movement through a gap in the canopy. Something massive and wrong skittered across a tree trunk far above. It had too many legs, each one ending in hook-like appendages that dug into the bark of trees, and its body was covered in what looked like overlapping plates of hardened carapace.

It saw them. Finn watched its cluster of eyes track them as they flew.

Then it deliberately turned away, losing interest the moment it realized they had no mana signature.

"Did you see that?" Althea whispered.

"Hmph," Tron grunted in assent. "At least it's better than them wasting our time."

They flew on, and the pattern repeated. Creatures that would have been apex predators in any normal ecosystem spotted them, evaluated them, and dismissed them as irrelevant.

A plant-creature the size of a house, with a wide mouth lined with digestive enzymes, actually closed them when they passed nearby. Finn caught a glimpse of the interior and saw half-dissolved remains of something that might have once been a giant insect, before the mouth sealed shut with a sound like slamming doors.

It was eerie. Almost as if they were ghosts, invisible to the forest's natural order despite flying directly through it. All because of their nature as Ossuarists.

That thought hadn't played in Finn's mind for long though, when, as if in sync, both his and Althea's heads snapped to the right.

The movement was so perfectly synchronized that Tron halted his Griffin immediately, pulling out his axe from his shadow again.

"What?" he demanded, scanning the direction they were looking with vigilance. "What did you sense?"

Finn stayed calm and said nothing. But within, his mind was racing.

Damn. I reacted at the same time as Althea. She has a Transcendent fragment that probably enhances her perception of... some things. But I don't have an excuse. If I keep doing things like this, Tron's going to notice something…

"I..." Althea frowned, her ancient eyes unfocused as if listening to something only she could hear. "I feel something. But I can't explain what it is."

She urged her Owl forward, flying slowly toward whatever had triggered their shared reaction.

Finn followed right after, flapping his wings in a slow, steady rhythm despite the palpable unease growing in the air as he followed.

Tron paused for a beat, muttering something under his breath that sounded like: "What happened to being careful?" and, "Weren't you two the ones who stopped me from exploring earlier?"

But he followed anyway, holding out his axe at the ready.

They wove through the massive tree trunks, watching the light grow dimmer as they moved into a section where the canopy above was particularly dense.

Slowly, the sounds of the forest began to fade, replaced by something worse…

Silence.

They emerged into a clearing... An unnatural clearing.

The ground here was black — a lifeless black of ash and decay. Plants lay dead and shriveled, twisted into shapes that suggested they'd died in agony. Those few that still clung to life were gray and withered, with leaves hanging limply like the skin of corpses.

The air itself was stale with the stench of decay and rot.

And in the center of this blight, kneeling with its back to them, was a figure.

Humanoid.

But wrong in every way that mattered.

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