“That fellow was a tad rude,” Milo says as we’re exploring the Wisteria Garden.

“He might still be able to hear you,” I say.

“I truly do not care,” Milo says. “I do hope it’s what Meadow was looking for, though.”

“Yeah,” Anise says. “You know, my old party leader would complain about Milo and Meadow in the same party. Names too similar.”

“What was your old party leader’s name?” I ask.

“Spike.”

“I… don’t think he has room to complain about anyone else’s names,” I say.

Anise snickers. “Hey, I think I see a pond over there. Maybe if the dungeon is feeling pity it’ll spawn a fishing rod for us.”

We approach a shimmering black pond, like an oil slick amid the gardens. Writhing purple grass grows along the banks. The path winds around the water, and the trees on the far bank have eyeballs instead of leaves.

“Uh,” I say. “Is the pond… supposed to look like this?”

Anise frowns deeply and holds up a hand to indicate we should stop walking, rather unnecessarily as we already did. “No, it most certainly is not. Did the dungeon change since I was last here? It has been a few years but I’m sure someone would have said something if they noticed.”

I peer at the purple grass with Clairvoyance and try to glean as much information from the vis it’s putting off without getting any closer than I have to. Comparing it to the normal grass not far from it, I carefully pick out a concept.

Category Plant Type Grass Rank Basic Aspect Eldritch

Aspect, that’s a good way of putting it. As I’m starting to be able to make out more information about things I’m looking at, the system helpfully fills in the gaps in definitions.

I turn to Anise and ask, “You ever heard of anything ‘eldritch’?”

“Only in rumors and bad fiction,” Anise says. “That’s eldritch? Ugh. What’s it doing here?”

“Squirming, primarily,” Milo puts in helpfully. “Grass should not squirm.”

“Right, let’s go back to where we left Meadow and Valerian,” Anise says.

We return to the wisteria gazebo, carefully stepping over the flowerbeds so that we don’t have to walk the long way around to get back there. There’s no sign of either of them or the ladder they used to get to the second floor, but that’s not going to stop Anise from cupping her hands and yelling up at them.

“Hey! I don’t know what you’re doing up there, but the pond has turned eldritch for some reason. Thought you should know!”

The branches shift and a ladder appears again, but Valerian just casually drops down through the hole and leaves Meadow to climb down the ladder while awkwardly trying to carry an easel.

“I warned you something like this would happen,” Valerian says. “This is your doing. You came here and brought corruption with you.”

“Oh please,” Anise says. “We did nothing, and we’ve never been in contact with any sort of corruption.”

“Meadow Corwen!” Valerian says. “It falls upon you to fix this, or die trying!”

“Uh… I’m not too keen on the prospect of noble sacrifice,” Meadow says. “But I’ll see what I can do.”

Valerian returns to the second floor and seals the opening behind him, leaving us to wander off back toward the pond.

Once out of (probable) earshot, I say, “You know, he could just as easily do it himself, I’m sure, if it were so pressing.”

“Yeah,” Meadow agrees. “This is just a chance to get a Deed, I suppose. I’m not nobly sacrificing myself for this.”

“I don’t like that fellow,” Milo says. “I’m not a bloody villain.”

Meadow gives him a look but doesn’t remind him aloud that he tried to murder her uncle.

“I just decided to trust Drake’s word over Grandma Griza,” Milo says. “And Grubwick decided not to tell me what to do. Though if it wanted an actual villain, it shouldn’t have chosen a Canadian businessman. Anyway, life’s better this way. Especially since I didn’t get stomped by your Legendary relatives.”

We arrive back at the pond, and Meadow frowns deeply upon seeing it. If anything, the eldritch weirdness may have even spread in the time it took to walk there and back. With a sigh, Meadow sets up her easel.

“I don’t know what he expects me to do about this, but I might as well take a shot at it,” Meadow says. “The Art is about painting the world as you wish it to be and using your vis on the image to make the alteration. Valerian is Epic rank and can take a lot of shortcuts. Like scratching in the dirt and calling it Art.”

Meadow starts painting with the sky, a hazy purple around the edges with a great orange sphere taking up the majority of the view, and dots it with green skymotes and puffy clouds. She follows this up with painting green trees and a clear pond. Aside from the weird sky, this could be a Bob Ross landscape full of happy little trees. As she works, I watch vis slowly trickle out of her and into the canvas.

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Once she’s finished, Meadow sighs and gazes over the pond. “I dumped all of my Inspiration into that and not one leaf got slightly greener. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. Even the system told me this is a Poor quality painting.” She huffs indignantly.

“That’s Poor?” I say. “Rude.”

“Paintings are supposed to move people, aren’t they?” Meadow asks. “This is just… a picture. Of a place. It’s bland. I suppose I could add some more detail but I don’t see what difference it will make. I only even learned to paint in the first place in hopes of eventually learning the Art because it seemed cool and powerful and now I’m starting to wonder if I should have just aimed for a more straightforward sort of magic instead.”

“Maybe you should—” A long, dark-purple tendril snaps out and wraps itself around my ankle. “—ack!”

I pull out my dagger to try to slice it off, but it yanks my feet out from under me with a sharp tug and I lose my grip. I only get dragged a meter before Anise swoops in with a flaming sword to cleaning cut through the tentacle.

“You can do flaming sword?” I exclaim as I climb to my feet and retrieve my blade. “That is so cool.”

We back up and give the tentacles a bit of a distance while we re-evaluate our options. The eldritch has spread and is only spreading further.

“Maybe there’s a specific thing we need to cleanse in there,” I say. “Not just try to purge the whole thing at once.”

“Good point,” Anise says. “We can cut a path through and see if we can find anything like that. And if we run into something that kicks us around, we can go back and yell at Valerian.”

Meadow packs up her art supplies to carry on her back and brings out a long knife. We start making our way around the pond, along the path and trying to avoid getting too close to either the eyeball trees or the tentacle-filled water. Meadow takes point, Anise stays close to me, and Milo brings up the rear.

As we’re moving, a tentacle lashes down from a tree at me, but I manage to dodge out of the way this time. A system box promptly pings me in response.

Skill acquired: Athletics (Dodging) Your Recollection (Skills) skill has increased to level 2.

I have probably done a lot of dodging through my existence. Getting out of the way of things becomes second nature, and that first attack had just caught me flat-footed.

With fire, blades, and fiery blades, my companions cut a swath through every tentacle that comes at us. Since they have the combat handled, I keep an eye out with [Aura Sight] for anything unusual. That is to say, more unusual than everything being purple, made of tentacles, and covered in eyeballs.

Beyond the pond, the path leads to a clearing with a large tree in the middle of it, reminiscent of the last two nature-themed dungeons I’ve been in. This tree, however, is purple and its branches have been transformed into tentacles.

Category Monster Type Treefolk Gender Female Rank Elite Aspect Eldritch

“Looks like she’s corrupted too,” I say quietly.

“She?” Milo asks.

I shrug. “My skill says ‘Gender: Female’, so who am I to argue? Were you expecting tree-ladies to have breasts?”

“Do you think this is the source of the corruption?” Meadow asks. “If I can revert this tree to its natural state, maybe the whole area will be affected?”

“Hmm,” I hmm.

In Corwen, I could tell that all the vis in the village slowly swirls around the core like a whirlpool and makes its way inward. If I can pick the stray eldritch vis out of the air, maybe I can pinpoint where it’s actually coming from.

Eldritch vis writhes through the air like invisible tentacles. It’s already trying to affect us and is staring to cause Sanity damage, though at our current level of exposure we’d have to stand here for hours even if everyone here has subpar Sanity meters.

“It’s not coming from the tree,” I say. “See that path to the left? We need to go that way.”

Giving the corrupted treefolk a wide berth, we make our way deeper into the eldritch grove. After another cluster of tentacle trees, we come upon an open garden area. Glowing flowers with fangs line cobblestone walkways and try to snap at us as we get close. In the center of the garden stands a fountain with an abstract statue. In the basin sits the strongest knot of eldritch energy. All the waves of corruption are coming from that one point, a small shimmering bead rippling with impossible colors.

Category Material Type Stone Rank Elite Aspect Eldritch

“There,” I say, pointing to the pebble in the pool. “That’s the source of the corruption.”

“Oh yeah…” Anise says. “That’s… what in the Void is that thing?”

Meadow sets up her easel away from the tentacle trees and out of snapping range of the feisty flowers. “Alright… if I’m only going to try to change one thing, I should just paint the scene exactly as it is to start off with, I suppose. No matter how horrible and ridiculous it is.”

“How’s everyone’s Sanity meters?” I ask. “Mine’s ticking down faster this close to the source.”

Anise distributes bottles of tea. “Manageable. Not seeing or hearing things yet.”

“I guess I should paint faster,” Meadow says. “I suppose if it’s eldritch, it won’t mind being painted in a hasty, slightly abstract way.”

Anise and Milo guard her while she whips out a painting that does a good job of capturing the essence of the scene if not the exact position of every flower.

“Well, the system called this painting Fair this time,” Meadow says. “I think it’s an absolute mess, but I’m not much of an art critic I suppose. And I’m feeling a… resonance with it. Hmm. I didn’t exactly have the proper colors to paint that rock as it is because those aren’t real colors, so let’s see if it will accept being a nice, normal gray.”

She pours her vis into the painting, focusing on the stone in the middle of it. Its counterpart in the real world dulls and slowly loses its eldritch aspect as it takes on a basic gray hue.

Congratulations! Your party has cleansed the eldritch corruption in the Wisteria Garden.

Your Max Sanity has increased to 12.

My second Sanity boost this year, nice. At this rate, I might soon be at the point of it being merely below average, and not abysmal.

There’s still eldritch-aspected vis in the air, but without the source it’s starting to dissipate. The plants around us slowly return to normal before our eyes.

“That did it…” Meadow says with a wide smile. “I got the skill!” She laughs and hugs me and Anise.

“Congratulations!” I say.

“I think I might still pick up a bit of Sorcery,” Meadow says. “Not everything will wait around while you paint a picture of it, and Sorcery is the easiest, most primal sort of magic anyone can do.”

Anise is smirking. “I’m not even offended.”

Meadow goes over to pick up the formerly-eldritch rock and examines it further. “Might be a useful crafting material now. I’ll take a closer look at it when we get home. It’s not still emitting anything harmful, is it?”

I shake my head. “Nothing I can detect, at any rate.”

“I want to see if the tree lady will play cards with me now,” Milo says.

I sigh. “If we must.”