Wraithwood Botanist

For perspective, the second largest organism on Earth when I left was the Armillaria ostoyae, also known as the "Honey Fungus," which was in Oregon’s Malheur National Forest. It spanned 3.7 square miles—or 103,150,080 square feet—covering most of that space by spreading out in all directions.

While the Honey Fungus wasn’t ectomycorrhizal and couldn’t form root connections, it proved the power and scope of mushrooms and the reason that they can support vast swaths of life like the rainforest.

The Wood Wide Web spell was like that—

—but magical.

The first step was using a specialized mana equivalent of Soul Sight called Mana Sight that penetrated the ground to find a soul vein underground. After I walked to one and closed my eyes, I could connect to it and follow the mana pulsing through all life forms in an area. So long as the mana in an area had life forms—like plant roots—within three feet of each other, I could follow the mana trail from one location to the next. And when I found a monster, it would light up like a beacon and tell me to get out of dodge.

That’s how I approached getting to the crypt—instead of fighting the dozens of beasts lurking in the fog, I simply avoided them.

It was powerful, and it got to my head. That’s why when Kyro said, "Ummm… I’ve been pretty hands-off and all, but I feel duty bound to tell you that we should’ve kept—" and a monster roared three-quarters of a mile out in the distance, I said, "What were you saying?" arrogantly—

—and almost died.

I strode forward twenty steps when Kyro suddenly grabbed my neck with telekinesis and threw me back just in time to avoid thousands of barbs shooting out of nowhere. He did the same for Kline, who hit a tree with intense force and got up hissing, but when he saw the barbs, he backed away.

I felt the same, staring at them with a rattling heart. They were the size of icicles and I couldn’t see into the mist where they came from. Whatever it was, it was big—

—and there was no warning from the Guide.

No notification.

Nothing.

"Guuuuuuuh," Kyro groaned. "What the fuck is wrong with me?"

"With you? This is my fault. I think…" The notification didn’t go off, but Kyro literally just told me not to move in that direction.

"No, it’s my fault. I haven’t told you anything. Not about this place… or the traps or the… crypt’s location. I’m just so…" He sighed and looked up. "Look. I don’t know if you know this, but Brindle didn’t… uh…" He paused. "He didn’t write everything into that fancy guide and he sure as fuck… didn’t talk about… this place. So… um… just… be—" Kyro groaned and collapsed.

"Kyro!" I flew forward and caught him before he hit the ground. "What’s wrong with you?"

"So… tired," he said.

"What’s wrong?" I cried.

"Just… soul leak. Just… be quiet a sec."

I calmed down.

"I haven’t been here forever. And by that I mean… tens of thousands of… Oh fuck…" He held his head. "Listen… Just… be careful. I don’t know how you’re doing… whatever you’re doing. But it’s good but… pay attention. I’ll do my best to show you because… I don’t have time to train… you…"

"Don’t you dare die!"

"Oh… I won’t. I think… this isn’t the first time… fuck just get going."

I hugged him vertically against my breast and stood up. "Okay…"

Another roar resounded in the distance.

"That way…" Kyro pointed east.

"But that’s the… wrong direction."

"Better than being trapped or eaten."

"Fair…"

I turned and started hiking in the direction he pointed out, trying not to communicate my panic with my raging heart. It wasn’t so much the thought of dying. I was long numb to that fear. But… Kyro… I didn’t realize that he was dying. I needed to figure out how to heal him—and fast.

"That way," Kyro said. "Should be a steep ravine there. Looks sketchy, but it’s actually kinda cool. If something attacks, well, it can’t surround you. Pretty narrow. Just watch out from above."

I stopped on a mana vein and closed my eyes and activated Wood Wide Web. It showed me mana veins for half a mile, pointing out small creatures here and there like rabbits but no big beasts. In the center was a narrow passage of life that directly moved northwest.

"Okay," I said and walked forward into the cold and unforgiving mist, trying to ignore the whispering of creatures and haunting howls that were often indistinguishable from real creatures.

Five minutes later, I reached the ravine. It was a massive ditch, ten feet across, with walls of dirt and roots that extended far beyond my ability to see. Wood Wide Web showed that the tree roots on the side went up probably a hundred feet. It was a tiny canyon in the mist.

I walked in hesitantly with Kline in the lead. He was sniffing, ears twitching as he moved between plants. It was fine at first, but a mile in, he paused and raised his hackles.

"What’s wrong?" I asked. I panicked and activated Wood Wide Web and saw that there were beasts on top of the canyon watching us. "Perfect… just perfect…"

Kyro was asleep, and the beasts were stalking us.

"Let’s run," I said to Kline. "They jump in, we’ll kill ’em."

Kline nodded and increased his size to a tiger and lay down. I mounted him and Kline glued Kyro down with mana. Then, Kline burst through the ravine. There were no shadows for Warp Step but he was still fast—faster than I would’ve ever imagined.

Suddenly, howls rang out, and silhouettes of creatures jumped at us from above. I pulled out Nymbral and pulled back an arrow and aimed for a silhouette. I released the arrow and missed—but I controlled the arrow to get back on track. It hit the creature in its eye, and its head burst like a rotted cantaloupe.

It was a second ev.

We could do this!

Kline burst forth as unknown silhouettes of freakish creatures flew at us in a pack and I pulled back arrows, hitting most of them. At some point, I stopped charging the arrows, using them as a deterrent, hitting them in the skulls like I was throwing stones, and it worked. One shot after another, I shot dozens of beasts as Kline dodged over a hundred. And I thought we would make it without incident but when we got to the end, I saw a massive creature in the fog.

It rose to its feet like a fairy tale troll, and I said, "Oh hell no!" as I lifted my bow and summoned a massive hurricane arrow.

"Keep going!" I yelled as Kline glanced back at the creatures approaching from the back. He trusted me, flying forward as I activated Moxle Dilation and used it to create a hurricane ball the size of a beach ball.

Please work, I thought as the troll took a deep breath and roared. I released the shot.

I shot through the ravine like a missile, slamming into the creature’s chest. Judging by the way that water exploded in all directions like it hit a wall, I ventured it didn’t kill the beast—but it sure as fuck sent it flying. It flew back a hundred feet and hit the ground with a ground-shaking impact that cratered the earth and sent dirt flying down on us in all directions.

Kline roared and flew forward as rocks fell around us, weaving between them until he reached the troll. Then he jumped right onto the creature’s stomach as it was struggling to get up and leaped over the rest of the body as hundreds of beasts swarmed the injured giant.

My chest tightened, and acid hit my throat as I pushed through. My arms were heavy as lead and when I looked down and saw Kyro still safe, I only became more intense.

I would make it there—no matter what.

2.

Kyro opened his eyes slowly and found the barrier over him. He looked around for Mira but didn’t find her. But when he looked down, he saw human arms around his torso.

"Mira…?" He looked up and saw Mira sleeping against a statue—a familiar statue. Mira had made it to the crypt. But… how? There was a treacherous path on the way to the structure with a hidden passage that he was certain Mira couldn’t find alone.

Kyro pried his way out of her arms and looked back and got his answer: she didn’t find the passage. Mira’s clothing was fine but she was soaked crimson. Kline was worse. His fur was matted with dried blood.

Salas? Kyro thought. Thank god she had water.

Whatever it was, she was alive and breathing, and she didn’t have any crazy rashes. So he relaxed, and as he did, he got tired and found himself crawling into Mira’s lap and falling asleep.

3.

I woke up with Kyro curled in my lap. It was the cutest damn shit I had ever seen, but I was too emotionally exhausted to really pay attention to him.

I nearly died on the trip to what I imagined was the crypt. The whole area was surrounded by a miniature Bramble that screamed death under my Guide’s highlight. Half the plants were neon purple—the sign of plants that caused paralysis, necrosis, and other terrible ailments—and half were unhighlighted—with nothing in between.

I would have rather taken my chances with the neon purple than risk unmarked plants, but there was only one opening I found with Wood Wide Web, and it went through an unhighlighted section.

We were careful, passing through it like heist movie protagonists dodging alarm lasers—but it was to no avail. At the very end, Kline and I snagged on an invisible bush I couldn’t see in the fog—and hell broke loose.

My body webbed with a striped rash like I was a zebra, and it started turning black and blistering, ripping and leaking like rotting tomatoes within a minute of touching it.

I drank Diktyo river water and used my cleansing cream, I did. But it struggled to fight back. My hands and wrists and arms healed and blistered and healed again in this terrifying cycle. It sucked.

But we did survive.

We had passed the mini Bramble by that point, and we crawled out and puked our brains out, barely making it to a freakish structure before sitting down and falling asleep.

I grabbed Kyro’s tiny body and moved him over into a patch of grass and stood up, overlooking the Tranea Crypt—or at least what I assumed was the crypt.

It wasn’t made of stone like some ancient burial tomb you’d find in ancient Egypt or housing King Arthur. It was closer to a Hobbit hole, a round structure made of thousands of roots that had been woven together in an intricate basket. However, there was something that screamed that it was an artificial structure rather than a nest—

—the statues.

Three statues led up to a door—each with a cylindrical podium with a crystal ball before it.

The first was a simple diagonal stick on a stone block. The second looked like an abstract work of art, geometric and jutting out in multiple directions. And the third was a massive plant monster made of roots like a spaghetti monster. And upon closer inspection, I could see that it had complex arrays hiding between the roots, presenting obvious foreshadowing as to the nature of the test at hand.

It was a trap.

It was definitely a trap.

Yet I couldn’t help but examine the stone cylinders with crystal balls before each statue with fascination and run my fingers across the directions written in an ancient language on each podium with deep curiosity and excitement. I couldn’t wait for Kyro to wake up.