I fail to get a fire started before my mom decides it’s time to enter the Spooky Grove and locate our wayward wannabe Rogue. The gate creaks ominously as we pass through and enter the dungeon. We try to be stealthy, since even if the dungeon is safe for children, that doesn’t mean the challenge isn’t real. Just that the consequences for failure don’t include horrible death.

Glowing eyes blink at us from the bushes and shadows around the path, accompanied by scurrying sounds and moans. I peer at them with [Aura Sight] to try to pinpoint the telltale red outlines of any monsters around us, but the auras are yellow and only encompass the eyes themselves. Not a color I’ve seen on any living being. Yellow is usually associated with Perception. Does that mean something is watching us that isn’t actually here? I decide to tentatively classify them as “cameras” for lack of a better term.

The forest is full of so much noise that it just sounds like a “spooky ambience” background album you might play at Halloween in a haunted house. Dirk’s echoing cries only add to that. The wind rustles the leaves and brings with it ghostly howls, and an entire murder of crows springs up in front of us, cawing as they pass over our heads.

A small white humanoid with an oversized head sits on a tree limb to the side of the path. The mouth and eyes are just black circles of three different sizes, and its head jostles as it watches us silently. My [Aura Sight] cheerfully pegs these things as plants. As I examine the vis coming off of it more closely, I pick out what seems to be spirit vis in addition to tree.

Your Clairvoyance (Aura Sight) skill has increased to level 5. Your Clairvoyance (Vis Analysis) skill has increased to level 2.

Just walking into a dungeon and analyzing some weird auras has already done as much for my skills than weeks of staring intently at things.

Category Plant Race Spirit Gender None Rank Basic

As I’m watching, several others appear out of the corner of my eyes, but my analysis has taken something of the mystery out of the mysterious tree spirits.

Deeper within the grove, we come to the source of Dirk’s continued loud weeping. A monster tree stands in a clearing, much like the one in the Hedge Maze, and Dirk is caged in its branches.

Trees that are monsters and monsters that are trees. Tempest is a delightfully arboreal place.

“Oh, by all the cores, help me!” Dirk wails.

“Congratulations, we’ve traumatized a thirteen year old,” I say.

“He should be glad we didn’t cut off a hand,” Anise says.

“I thought you said we don’t do that,” I say.

“Does this one belong to you?” asks the tree. “He poked me with a knife.”

“Nah, he’s not ours,” Anise says. “He’s just an idiot we tricked into coming here to spook him because he kept trying to steal from us.”

“You lied to me!?” Dirk exclaims.

“You can get mystic sap here,” Anise says. “It’s not my fault you were bad at it.”

Dirk starts crying loudly again.

“Oh, for pity’s sake,” Milo mutters. “Be quiet!”

Dirk immediately stops making noise.

“Thanks,” Anise says.

“Do you want him back, or shall I keep him?” the tree asks. “His bones would make a lovely addition to my branches.”

Dirk silently starts crying.

I sigh. “Alright, this has gone on long enough. Dirk, you’re not hurt. Nothing here will actually hurt you, just mess with you.”

“Aww, come on,” Anise says. “You get more experience if the fear is real! He might’ve unlocked some cool new skill!”

“I will release him once the dungeon is cleared,” the tree says. “To do so, you must answer a riddle and defeat me in a game of Leaves.”

Milo pulls his cards out. “I brought my deck!”

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“What’s the riddle?” I ask.

“Two orbs circle each other in the sky,” the tree says. “One is the truth and zero is the lie.”

I only have to think for a moment on it before realizing that this is another riddle that I’m the only one here who could possibly know the answer to. “Binary.”

“Hmm, hmm, binary is correct,” the tree says.

“I have no idea what that even means, but great!” Anise says.

“Now, for the cards…”

We play a game of cards with the tree. The rest of us get roped into it as well even though we barely know how to play. Meadow and Anise shrug and go along with it, because it’s just a thing you do in dungeons. We play obligatorily and are unsurprised when we get knocked out early.

Milo brings the tree to a hard-fought victory, or at least I assume it’s hard-fought given the expressions that keep crossing his green face. I’m not even entirely sure what’s happening, but I’ll take the clear all the same.

Congratulations! You have cleared the Spooky Grove. Your Max Sanity has increased to 11.

Max Sanity, for that? I suppose I shouldn’t try to make sense of dungeon rewards.

The tree’s branch-cage opens, dropping Dirk unceremoniously to the ground. He runs toward the exit, screaming loudly, Milo’s command having apparently worn off.

“He didn’t even stop to check the chest,” Anise says. “Who held his hand to get him to Elite?”

She goes over to open the chest and scoops out a handful of coins, which she splits between us, a Leaves card that she hands to Milo, and a stick she tosses to Meadow.

“Is that a magic stick?” I ask.

“Crafting material,” Meadow says. “Arcane heartwood isn’t especially rare, but it’s only found in this form in dungeon chests.”

With our rewards collected, we follow Dirk down the path out. I keep an eye out for any signs of secret doors like in the Hedge Maze. This time, I’m adding [Aura Sight] to the mix in trying to locate the core room.

It’s not sight that catches my attention, though. Another sense, as though detecting a vibration in the spiritual plane. I look in that direction and spot one of those little white tree spirits. It cocks its head and vibrates at me again. It’s then that I notice that the creature is sitting right above a hollow hidden between the briars.

[I found something,] I send to my nearby party members before crawling inside.

Congratulations! You have discovered the core room of the Spooky Grove. Skill acquired: Clairvoyance (Spirit Hearing)

Oh, fantastic. Now I can hear ghosts, too. Why did I want this? The tree spirits are very weird and now that I can hear them, their constant chattering is a little obnoxious.

“What did you find?” Anise asks, poking her head down behind me. “Is that the core room? Can you reach the bonus chest?”

“Yeah, hold on,” I say. “The voices in my head are driving me insane.”

“Do you need tea?”

“No, I’m fine,” I say. “I just unlocked [Spirit Hearing].”

“Another new skill?” Anise asks.

“It was completely unintentional,” I say. “Those spirits did it. The little white ones with the weird faces.”

I find the chest in front of the shimmering crystalline dungeon core, and open it up to retrieve a handful of coins and a small bead that looks gray at first, but turns black when I touch it. I return to the party and show them what I found.

Anise picks up the bead to take a closer look at it, but it remains black. “Huh.”

“What is it?” I ask.

“Dunno,” Anise says, tossing it back to me. “It probably doesn’t explode.”

I shrug and bag it, and we leave the dungeon. Dirk, in the most sensible thing he’s done all week, is sitting back at our camp in a fetal position rather than running madly through the forest.

“Hey, kid,” Anise says. “What are you going to tell your Uncle Jasper about what happened here?”

“I’m a failure,” Dirk mutters. “I’m never gonna be a Rogue.”

“Yeah, I hate to break it to you, kid,” Anise says. “But when you turn fourteen, I suggest you take the option least likely to lead to you going into mortal peril. [Apprentice Coward], perhaps.”

“I think he gets the point,” I say. “This is just bullying at this point.”

“Eh, yeah, yeah, you’re right,” Anise says with a shrug. “Look, Dirk. Your family will you love you no matter what. Sometimes you just have to accept that something’s not happening. Give up your dreams, and go bake bread! Woo…”

Dirk whimpers softly and looks back toward the dungeon gates.

“No, seriously though,” Milo says. “There’s no shame in being a coward. Normal people, and not these bleeding lunatics, are scared of scary things. Corwens are a more adventurous breed than most, but you don’t have to be an adventurer.”

Dirk is slightly mollified, and by the time we break camp in the morning, he has decided to stick with becoming a stage hand and not embark upon a life of failing to commit crimes.

“I didn’t fail my quest…” Dirk says. “It doesn’t even have a time limit. It will just sit there until I eventually get some sigil ink, I guess.”

“You could have just bought it,” Anise says.

Dirk sighs. “Yes, yes, I made everything harder on myself. I hope Uncle Jasper doesn’t throw me off the skyship.”

“Figuratively?” Anise asks.

We return to the village to find Jasper both worried and furious. It seems Dirk didn’t even speak with him before sneaking out of the ship that last time, and he had to find out from Grandma Laurel where the boy went. Given the circumstances, he didn’t take it well when the local authority told him that her people had taken him out in the woods.

“Oh, my nephew, my foolish, foolish nephew!” Jasper exclaims, hugging the boy. “I knew not whether these mad forest barbarians would bring you back alive! I told you not to provoke them. Adventurers are a whimsical and dangerous brood. Are you alright? You must have been terrified!”

“I’m alright,” Dirk says. “It was scary and I don’t want to be an adventurer anymore. I couldn’t even handle a dungeon that’s just scary and doesn’t hurt anyone.”

“We should be moving on now, regardless,” Jasper says. “I believe we’ve overstayed our—”

“Wait!” Milo exclaims. “You can’t leave yet! I need to beat that guy at cards first. I even got a new card drop I’m dying to try out!”

Jasper looks at Milo and chuckles. “Very well, we will stay for another day so that you can complete any outstanding side quests you might have, and then we’ll go.”