Wraithwood Botanist

"Oh, it’s not going away," Kyro said, unscrewing his flask. "It’ll stay like this all the way to the edge of the Kana Mountains. If anything, it gets worse." He took a drink.

"I… okay." I turned to him hesitantly. "So where is it?"

Kyro put down his flask and pointed downriver. "We got about six hours that way, then…" He pointed to the northwest. "A few miles inland."

"How the hell’d they expect people to find this place?" I asked.

"I’m sure they expected that people wouldn’t."

I smiled wryly. "Well, thank God we have a guide."

Kyro chuckled and took a long, pensive swig before coughing and shivering.

"What was that for?" I asked.

"Come on, Mira. Think about it for a moment. What’s the purpose of the first trial?"

"To find the place. Which is what you can do."

"Yes. But… hold on. The trial’s to find the crypt. And why, Mira dearest, is finding the crypt a trial?"

I folded my arms and looked to the left nervously. Then to my right. Ahead and back. It was all white fog, screaming and howling into the distance. Even the hazy silhouettes of the trees were fading by the thick fog, leaving nothing but snow blindness and haunting voices and cries to guide the way. There was no frame of reference, no milestones or landmarks. I couldn’t hear or see and could barely taste.

"And con~sider," Kyro said in a sparkling tone. "What can corrupted beasts do that normal beasts can’t?"

A loud screech rattled in the distance, and I stumbled, causing the ship to rock back and forth, threatening to tumble and send us into the water below.

"Hmmm?" he pressed. "What is it?"

"These beasts…" Another creature roared in the distance. "They can enter the water."

"Cor~rect. And that means that we’re all going to die if you don’t start working on the trial."

I wrapped my hands around Kline and looked forward. "And what do I need?"

"Soul sight."

"Soul sight? Like… seeing souls?"

"As the name implies," he said sarcastically, taking a drink.

"Words aren’t always literal. In fact, they aren’t most the time."

"There’s that, too." He took another drink. It drove me crazy to watch how much he drank, but at the same time, severe alcoholics can only physically and mentally function with alcohol unless they go through extreme measures to quit, so I just turned a blind eye, paused for effect, and asked:

"Is it a spell?"

"Not exactly. It’s like… no, it’s probably a spell, at least in the way you think about it. Soul sight’s like… a mold. Imagine that someone put a bunch of rocks and seeds and bones on a smooth stone tile. Your eyes are closed, and you can’t see it and even if you were able to touch the stones, it would be chaos trying to pick up things and visualize them in relation to the other items. Now, if your life depended upon it, you would die, would you not agree?"

I nodded. "I do."

"Good. Now imagine that you take clay and press it onto the objects on the tile and let it bake. Once you remove the stones, your fingers can pass over every groove in context, and whenever you’re near one indent you can run your fingers around its neighbors in any direction for context. Do you understand the difference?"

I closed my eyes and pretended to turn the mold 180 degrees. "Yeah. Even if you turn it, you can always see where things are in relation to it."

"Exactly. It’s an omnidirectional reference that’s always within context. That’s what soul sight is."

"... Great. But… how does it work?"

"Well, that’s a bit more complicated. Aura is… generally… the clay that soul sight works with. And by connecting to the aura in a place like…" He looked around. "This… you can effectively see for miles. As for how you do that… I don’t know. This’s one of those things that your mind discovers during enlightenment and then takes another few decades to adapt to."

I raised an eyebrow. "What’s enlightenment?"

"That…" Kyro paused and rubbed his eyes. "Evolutions have different requirements, and for the third, you need a whole lot of neara because once you evolve, your mind expands like your core. Doesn’t fix stupid, unfortunately, but it increases your ability to process information. Like your acceleration spell—it’s limited by the amount of information you can intake before your mind cracks. That expands. And with that expansion comes the natural ability to perceive aura. Then you can use that to experiment until you figure it out. That’s just how it works for us. But you’re different. You have a soul core already, and you’re doing a whole lot more advanced than this. So…" He shrugged. "So… ask your fancy ’guide,’ or something."

"Oh… okay." I opened up my guide and called out to Lithco. He showed up in a canoe, paddling right past me before slowing down.

How do I learn Soul Sight?

Lithco looked over at me with a slight smile. "You know what I think’s funny?"

"No. And I don’t care."

"What I think’s funny," he said glibly. "Is that you risked your life for a legacy tab you haven’t even messed with."

I pulled up my legacy menu and went into my skills tab and was shocked to see dozens of tutorials and spells available.

"Soul cleansing, soul cooking, Mental Shielding, soul elixirs… I mean, come on," Lithco said. "Everything you’ve learned recently has been soul related. The fact that you haven’t come here’s kinda offensive. No wonder Brindle’s not talking to you. I wouldn’t either."

I shivered and opened the legacy skills tab and saw that Soul Sight was a starter skill that was free to learn. I smiled bitterly and chose it before turning back to Lithco.

Well, I’m here now, so teach me.

"You know you look like a psycho right now, right?" Kyro asked as he drank.

"No one asked you," I snapped. "Now give me space."

"Yes, ma’am."

Lithco looked between us. "Tragic. Truly tragic."

Shut… up… and help me… learn this.

"Yeah, yeah. You know the drill." Lithco chanted the words in a smooth melody as I followed behind, slow at first and then building confidence by the second cadence.

It was difficult because the souls outside were whispering and screaming and howling all around me, but there was something… familiar about it… as if the skill were the prerequisite to one or more of my spells, and within minutes, the sounds in the forest disappeared, and a half hour later, I obtained some clarity. It was like… there were white wisps of energy moving through the blackness. It started weak, but after an hour I saw Kyro’s form in the white flames, and when I looked down, I saw my little warrior on my lap, practicing Soul Sight for himself.

That ability was so useless and insignificant in the long-term scheme of things, but by the third hour, I learned that Soul Sight worked through connecting to the aura tapestry. It started by connecting to water droplets, and then when they came together, they created a flood that washed over the area. So, the longer I focused on it, the more intense it became until the point where I could see the forest. It was mostly blank, but some certain trees and flowers lit up like beacons as we passed. And then it got even more intense, getting to the point that it started to turn topographical, and that’s when my brain pulsed with a dull throb, and the sound of the voices got more intense. I focused there, trying to keep everything together—

—until it attacked.

A beast like a praying mantis screeched in the forest, and I could see it rushing at us from the other side of the river. It moved with ferocious efficiency, and I instinctively activated Moxle Dilation and reached into my chest, summoning Nymbral.

Eyes still closed, I pulled back the string and charged. There was no time for water, but I had a whole lot more power. So, I kept the output thin and low but pulled as much mana into it as I could.

Kline shot up as I released the arrow.

It wafted through the air, and when I opened my eyes, I saw a tornado of clear air puncture through the cloud, hitting a beast in the head and making its head explode before its body crashed into the river. The boat rocked, but Kyro righted it, looking back and letting out a long, protracted whistle.

"Just a second ev, but… damn, was that slick." He took a drink and looked at me with a wry smirk. "Fucker. Please tell me that was a cheat spell. If you learned Soul Sight that easily… I’d… Please just tell me it was a cheat spell."

"Kinda. I mean… it is? I don’t need enlightenment or nothing. I just… ask for a spell and there’s a chant that teaches it."

"That’s ridiculous…" He paused. "Does it… Is it spoken?"

"It is…" I studied his pensive expression. "If you’re asking if I can teach the Drokai… well, yeah."

He looked at me and back. "Would you?"

"Not now. That’s for damn sure."

Kyro took a drink and said, "I don’t blame ya." His words felt genuine, and drinking was common to the point of being inconsequential to him, but… there was something different about his words and actions. They were traced by a melancholy acceptance that spoke volumes. It made my bones ache.

"But maybe not forever. We’ll see."

Kyro’s lips curved into a tired smile, and then he pointed toward the river bank. "This’s a good place to touch down."

I blinked twice. "Here? I thought it’d take hours to get there."

"You’ve been out for hours." Kyro stood on his little feet and stretched, bending his back twice before leading the boat to shore. Then he hopped off. "You can keep going, but we don’t wanna get lost downstream. It’s a bitch coming back up."

I docked and joined him, looking around. Everything was white as cotton, with only three feet of visibility before Kline and Kyro disappeared. I closed my eyes, activating my new skill. It activated immediately, but I couldn’t see soul force past a fifteen-foot radius—and even then, I just saw a few soul plants, with the rest being white.

"Ummm… how far away is it?" I asked.

"A few miles," he said casually.

"And you’re just supposed to happen upon this place?"

"Like I said," Kyro said, cupping his mouth and yawning. "This place’s drenched in aura. Get good enough with your skill, and you can see for miles. ’Course I can’t do that, on account of my curse ’n all, but… Technically… and huge technically at that—you can. So… set up your fancy barrier and pray."

Kyro fluttered to my backpack, pulled out his alcohol and a small container of cooked meat, and then yawned, touching down on a smooth rock and lying down.

"Pray for what?" I asked.

"That you can figure it out."

"Don’t you got any tips?"

"Yeah…" Kyro yawned, bringing his shoulders to his cheeks before relaxing. "Talk to your guide. I was a fourth ev before I tried this, and… Brindle left me here for months before I figured it out."

"Months? We don’t have months."

"That’s why I told you to pray. Now please… do your thing and…" He yawned again. "Leave me out of it."

I brooded as I set up the barrier, wishing that it would stop the whispering and cries and shifting sounds in the fog. The sounds were eating away at my soul, and I was increasingly certain that our situation was just as bad as Kyro made it out to be. And since Kyro wouldn’t give me any of these answers, I unfairly placed the burden on the shoulders of the other man in my life.

Hey, so I’m about to die here, I said to Lithco in my thoughts. How can I cut every corner imaginable and come out on top?

Lithco walked out from behind me and stopped in front of Kyro, pulling out a chair and sitting right beside him, almost for spite. Then he glanced at Kline, who still hated his guts, and then to me.

"Normally, no," he said. "But you already invested in something that… excels in this exact area."

My eyes widened when I remembered it. The night I learned soul cooking and went through my rewards, I did buy something that was perfect.

Lithco smiled when he saw I caught on. "Well, well. Then shall we begin?"

2.

Kyro awoke to Mira shaking him. It wasn’t a frantic shake, more the type that mothers give to their children on their days off. It confused him. "Huh?" he groaned.

It was dark outside, and when he looked over, he saw Mira smothering the dying embers of a fire. Realizing that so much time had passed unintentionally filled his heart with terror. He was getting weaker and weaker, slowly drifting into sleep and staying there longer and longer than before. His injury was worse than he thought.

"Everything okay?" he asked.

"Yeah," Mira said. "We’re just running out of time. Best to hit the road early."

"Uh… no offense. But the time we leave doesn’t change the point where we get there. It’s best to practice—"

"It’s cool." Mira finished rolling up her tent as Kline circled her, looking up as if waiting for attention, then slinking off. "Let’s just give it a shot. If we get lost, lead us back, and I’ll practice more. Now let’s go."

Mira cut the barrier and waited for Kyro to get moving. So he did, yawning and fluttering over to Mira’s shoulder. Then he sat down on it, expecting her to swat him away. But she didn’t. Her eyes lit up as if he were the cutest thing in the world. If she didn’t purify the stench of booze and sweat and dirt off him and then blow hot air on him like he was a dusty doll, it would’ve been cute. Instead, it made him feel a bit bitter.

Mira didn’t make a big deal of it, though. With surreal confidence, she walked through the forest, weaving between large fog-covered trees, dipping into small meadows, and then skillfully climbing over deadfall. It seemed lucky, but he quickly figured out it wasn’t.

"This way, Kline," Mira suddenly said, cutting a perpendicular line into a dense and gnarled section of the forest.

Kyro looked between the pleasant path ahead and the forest. Up until that point, he was certain that she was heading straight for the crypt, but now she had suddenly veered off course and was moving straight for a patch of dangerous deadfall. He closed his eyes and released a divination pulse, double-checking that she didn’t sense something he didn’t. The results came back negative. He could only use a fraction of his soul strength, but he could see far enough to know that there wasn’t anything remotely near them. It was strange.

"Ummm… I’ve been pretty hands-off and all," Kyro said. "But I feel duty bound to tell you that we should’ve kept—"

A sudden cry rang out in the fog, a mile in the direction they were just walking.

Mira developed a right dastardly grin and looked at him. "What were you saying?"