When I stepped outside the tent to follow the little bird, my head was pounding in pain. The potions of rest I had over consumed had finally caught up with me. There wasn't much that [mending] could do to help the headache; my mind was overtaxed and exhausted, but not outright injured.

I'd decided the follow the bird, regardless of me just wanting to sleep, but I quickly realized what that consent meant when I found myself somewhere other than in the camp.

My tent was gone.

The forest above me had become a towering lattice of silver branches and filigreed leaves of wet-looking gold. Soft snow hung suspended in the air, unmoving, and I heard not a single footfall or birdsong.

My eyes widened at the beauty of the frozen beams of filtered starlight that coalesced into hundreds of softly humming rays through the dome-like canopy above. But there was much more awe to be seen in the realm that I now found myself in.

A palace, more beautiful than anything I could've imagined, and constructed of pristine and textured marble rose high on the far away horizon.

Closer to me, a single oddly antler-bearing doe sipped, her head bowed in what seemed like holy reverence, from a stream that appeared made of more light than liquid. And her white-furred head lifted slowly to regard me.

The great deer's eyes were a deep gold that I could see even at such a distance. They transfixed me, through no magic or spell, but merely with their presence alone.

The bird which had guided me flew through the suspended, unmoving snowflakes and past me.

The ivory doe leapt forward over the blinding stream she had sipped from. Her body shifted at odd angles, not with ugly utility but with natural grace, as she entered into the mist hanging above the stream.

I blinked. When I opened my eyes, the white doe was emerging from the edge of the mist closest to me. She had covered a great distance in no time at all, and she was now changed.

Her upper body was that of a human woman, with flawless luminous skin that glowed faintly in the twilight. Her long, silver hair flowed over her shoulders, blending with the snowflakes that did not move around her. Her eyes, deep and endless, were an natural gold, holding the knowledge of countless lifetimes. Her lower body remained that of the doe, elegant and poised, her fur as white as the untouched snow, shimmering faintly in the concentrated beams of starlight.

Eurynome looked at me with a quiet intensity, her gaze both comforting and piercing, as if she could see every thread of what I was. Her voice, when she finally spoke, resonated like the first breath of spring after a long winter, carrying both warmth and the weight of something ancient.

The little bird which had guided me out of my tent flittered and chirped happily, as it landed on the woman's antlers. Antlers that looked very much like my father's and that lacked all of the violence of the ed Man's bestial spikes.

“You step into a place between the breaths of the world, little one,” she said softly, her words carrying the timeless cadence of something beyond just the forest. “You have severed a thread that was tangled, but in its cutting, you have touched the web that binds all life. Your strings touch upon mine through another's. You are seen now, as you see me.”

Around us, the shining forest felt alive, more than any place I had ever known. It wasn’t just a collection of shining trees and star beams; it was a sanctuary, a place of power magnitudes greater than the Horned Man's had been, where life itself seemed to gather and flow. Snowflakes floated in lazy, frozen spirals; the trees, previously silent, began to whisper their secrets in Eurynome's presence. I stood awestruck, feeling as if I was both completely insignificant and profoundly connected to something vast and eternal.

I felt the need to fall to one knee, but I resisted the urge. Eurynome seemed to me like a god, but not quite. She had nearly all of the ethereal grace of Lumina, though less eldritch, and the divine bearing of Auromor though less arrogant. But something was different. I felt with assuredly that if I touched her luminous, copper and brown-hued skin that I would feel a mortal heart's beating. She was something different than a god, but something greater than a wild spirit.

My mind recalled the carvings of Lumina's children. They had been the mortal children of gods, but so powerful that they had bound their parents nonetheless.

Mile barked happily and ran forward towards the half-woman. Eurynome laughed good-naturedly and settled down to scratch at his ears. The snow across the ground did not seem to bother her at all.

"Eurynome?" I stuttered.

Her kind lips settled into a gentle smile. "As you know me, I know you. Welcome, son of my heart." The bird chirped on her shoulder and she inclined her ear slightly to it. "I believe you are called Pery by your friends?"

What did she mean by calling me the son of her heart? She'd taught my father once. Was he supposed to be important to her?

"My name is Peregrine, but you can call me Pery if you want to," I told her. "Did you bring me here because you knew my father?"

"Because I know of what has happened to him," Eurynome told me. "Student of my beloved student, I do believe it is my duty to teach you in his absence."

I stepped forward; in Mile's eyes her spiritual aura made her glow like a compressed sun. "Can't you save him instead?"

She shook her head. "I am sure you have asked that of more than just I, and more than once, but no. I am sorry to give you an answer you may have heard too many times already."

My head pounded. "Why not?"

"It would displease my mother greatly for me to interfere with a deal that had been struck with Perenine," Eurynome said.

"Your mother? Why does that matter? It sounded like he was important to you."

"My mother is greater than I. Your father gave his word, dear one. I was the one who taught him to never break it. I will not break it for him," she said.

I clenched my fists. "Why do all you spirits and elementals obsess over that?"

"If the sun did not keep its word to rise, we would all suffer for it," she told me. "Were my mother to go against her nature of being ever-present, events would flow forward and back at odd and lethal angles. Pery, I am a steward of her domain. I can not diminish it by sundering the oaths of others, even for my Alexander. But I would care for you in his place."

My teeth bit against one another. But I slowly released my fists. The hanging snowflakes in the air pulsed in their places. I now realized who her mother might be. "Your mother is time."

"A facet of her, of which I know less than I'd like," Eurynome agreed. "My father is even more unknown to even myself, but I suspect he is of the primalities."

I stared at her. "She doesn't speak to you? Neither of them do?"

"She speaks to no one, dear one," Eurynome said. "But my father has spoken more than her, yet remained more of a mystery than she."

"I'm sorry. But why do you keep calling me that?"

I wasn't trying to be rude, but my head really did hurt.

"Alexander was more than that to me," she said. "You are his and he has taught you to be mine."

She spoke oddly, but in a more grounded way that the other beings of the ethereal I had met.

"You mean because he taught me druidry?"

"He taught you our druidry. You walk in my ways and his. Without a parent to continue your training, I would offer myself for the role."

She was talking to me in a possessive, albeit not overbearing, way that made me feel off-put. And she was speaking of my father in a manner that spoke of a deeper connection than just a friendship, though she was not being rude about it. And she had called me hers.

"I already have another parent. My mother; my father's wife," I said.

Eurynome's face remained soft and empathetic. "And you have a teacher already. But could you not use another one?"

"Why?"

"Do you not wish to learn more of what your father knew?"

I hesitated. I was being rude. And to someone it seemed my father was close with.

"I would," I admitted. "I just wish he was here."

"He will return to you," Eurynome promised me. "Perenine is as bound to her word as your father is." Her voice hesitated for the first time since she'd approached me. "And the spirit cares for him as well, in her strange ways."

I didn't want further information on her last statement.

"You're sure he'll come back?" I asked.

"As long as Perenine still persists. I am sure she will not break her word," Eurynome told me. "It will be some time before it is possible, but I could show you a way to speak to him briefly."

My eyes widened and I stepped forward. "I could talk to dad?!"

"It is possible," Eurynome told me. "The elementals hold counsel with mortals whom they have no ties to at each year's Advent. Perenine will heed your calls on that day if they are made through the established rites. And she would grant you one small request."

"My family could talk to him?" I asked.

"For one hour's time each year, before he is freed," Eurynome promised.

I fought back the tears welling in my eyes. "What do you need from me?"

She tilted her head at me. "I require nothing from you. As I said, dear one, you are mine. If you would learn from me, then I will teach you anything that it also mine."

I looked up to her. "Advent is still months away."

"I can meet with you only once every three months," Eurynome told me. "I will teach you anything you desire of the old ways each time we meet if you choose to return to me. On Advent, whereas the elementals will heed calls and grant requests, I will be also able to walk freely in the physical world and I will show your family how to summon Perenine."

I swallowed. "Thank you. I'm sorry I was rude. You don't mind that my mother will be there?"

She shook her head. "No, dear one. I would not do that to Alexander or you."

"Okay," I said. "Thank you. I'm sorry. I've had a few long days."

"Your mind aches and is overtaxed by alchemy," Eurynome observed. "May I relieve you of your exhaustion?"

I smiled, hesitantly. "If you want to?"

She waived her hand, which was encased in a faint sparkle of druidic magic. The touch of her magic was like a gentle, infinite caress across my mind. When her mana passed back out of me, I felt more rested and at ease than I ever had.

"Now, is there anything you'd like to learn here upon our first meeting?" she asked me.

"Right now?" I asked, not exactly ready.

"I will not be able to reach you for another three month's time," she reiterated to me. "I will return you to among your companions once we are done without any time having passed in the material."

I tried not to focus on the magnitude of meaning behind the promise she made so casually.

"I have my father's journals, but... I have been having trouble with something," I admitted.

"Show me," Eurynome requested.

"It's not exactly just druidry," I said.

"Mana is more than just the old ways," Eurynome said. "I will help you if I am able."

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

"Okay," I said and lifted my palm up to her.

I allowed a sigil to form on my hand using [lesser shapeshift] and then charged it with my [shield] spell.

"May I?" she reached for my hand.

I gave it to her. Surely enough, as I had expected, her skin was warm and alive.

She turned my hand over in hers and inspected the sigil. "You're storing spells with shape changing? What bothers you with how you've done this?"

"I want to use it to pre-spend my mana, so I have more spells when I need them," I admitted. "But the sigil draws on my mana anyway, just not as much as casting the spell. It's better than nothing, but it means I have to always plan ahead carefully."

Her golden eyes continued to exam the sigil and her fingers traced up the wrapping of roots I had around my wrist. "This is a starved thing, a fragment of a soul that has become something else."

"It came with me from somewhere called crepusculum," I answered, deciding to trust Eurynome with the fact that I'd been in a god's realm, if only because I was at her mercy regardless. "I know its alive, but I'm not sure how."

Her gaze met mine seriously. "Do you serve that place's master?"

I didn't dare pull my hand back from her, despite her sudden seriousness. "No. He took something from me, something he said was precious, but didn't tell me what it was. Just so I could get out in time enough to save my family... but I didn't save them. Not really. My father still had to do what he did to save me."

"I do not sense his touch upon you," Eurynome said slowly. "He is... tangential to my mother's source of being. But I do not believe him to be good for the mortal world. He was sealed away long before I was born."

"How long ago was that?" I asked.

She smiled again, but did not give me a direct answer. "A long and short time ago. I do believe I also taught your father that it was rude to ask a woman that."

"Do you know what Aur—" I started to say, but Eurynome cut me off.

"Do not speak his name here," she said. "Please. We are in-between the ethereal and the outside."

"I'm sorry? The what?"

"He is still trapped, yes?"

"Yes," I answered.

Her sudden tension softened. "No, it's fine. I am sorry. He may still hear us, but if he is trapped then it is of no consequence. You must not say the names of gods lightly, though, Pery. It draws their gaze."

"Are you a god?" I asked her. "I know time is a fundamental force, but you don't seem like one."

Her eyes studied me and she released my hand gently. "You know more than most. But no. I am not a god. I live and breathe as a mortal does. I have just found my way more closely towards the spheres of my parents."

"Okay," I said. "Do you know what he took from me? He wouldn't tell me."

"Does your character sheet not tell you?" she asked.

"No, it just says an unknown potential was taken from me."

"What did he say when your deal was struck?"

"Just that he promised not to hurt anyone I cared about and that he would release me from crepusculum. In exchange he wanted a potential inside me; one that he said wouldn't weaken me," I answered, hating to call upon the memories of Auromor, but wanting answers.

Eurynome began to pet Mile again absentmindedly as she pondered what I'd said. "Then there is no way of knowing what he took. I believe you should avoid him at every turn, however. He is sealed, but if he allowed you to go free without freeing him in exchange, then he did it for his own benefit. You know how he was sealed, yes?"

"By his children and their mother," I said. "He needs worship to be freed, but no one remembers him."

"Then you know that you can never call upon him?" Eurynome asked.

"I wouldn't. A friend I made told me not to trust him. She said that gods lie."

And Lumina had died to help me, in a way I still didn't understand.

Eurynome nodded her antler-crowned head. "I believe you. Ensure you do not tell others of him if you can help it, lest they not be as wise as you."

"I won't," I promised.

Eurynome let out a long exhale that hung on the cold air. "Then let us return to your question. I do not practice the magic of sigils. But I know enough of it. Seeing you seek to combine my ways with it is new to me, but it may just be time to bring the old ways into the new. I believe the solution to your issue is closer than you might think."

"What do you mean?" I asked her.

My mind began to swirl around the meaning behind her words and the possibility that I might learn more of the magic that I practiced. That I might learn something new that no one else knew.

"Did my Alexander teach you [lesser shapeshift]?" she asked me. "Or did you teach yourself?"

"I learned it from his journals," I said. "He didn't talk of you in them, up to where I've read, but he described how he had learned the spell."

"I was indeed the one who taught him to unlearn that his shape was defined and different from the shape of other living things," Eurynome revealed, and I saw a very human desire in her eye to ask me more of what my father might have told me about her, but she seemingly resisted the urge. "Shape changing works by believing you are not so different from what you want to become, and that I believe is how you may overcome your problem."

"I need to use shapeshifting in a different way then?" I asked.

"You need to practice it and refine it, yes," she told me. "But you also need to go from seeing it as a way to just become something else to a way to break down the walls between you and other things."

"I don't really understand," I admitted. "I think I see where you're going, but how does that help me with my sigils drawing on my mana?"

"It is simple," she told me. "If you do not wish your stored spells to draw on your mana, then you must give them the mana of other things to feed upon. By taking what was once or is still alive into yourself, you may yet do so." She rose from the ground, now towering over me. "Will you come? My home is not far. There is much I can teach you of this. And we have only three days in my domain's time for me to do so before you must depart for your own safety. It would not be good for you to stay in-between for longer than that as you currently are."

My eyes drifted to the large, flawless palace on the horizon. And I would've been lying if I said I didn't want to see inside it.

***

Eurynome's hands were in mine as we sat in her courtyard's abundant garden. Her mana flowed freely through mine, guiding and directing it. I knew she would stop the process if I became uncomfortable, but I had grown to trust her over the previous two days. To trust and respect her. She was charming, patient, humble, and kind. She reminded me a lot of my dad; maybe he had learned some of those traits from her.

I felt the bracelet of roots stirring on my arm against the touch of my mana.

"It has known centuries of hunger and neglect. But it has grown to trust you as much as it is able, but it yearns to feel itself truly be a part of the physical realm once more," Eurynome told me. "By its nature, it draws upon the ambient mana in the material, feeding as any predator might, but no amount of energy will forever sustain it as it is."

I remembered how the root's had so gladly taken in my mana and attacked the Horned Man. But I also recalled the horrible, half-dead existence of the souls in Auromor's realm; how they hungered for life-force and mana.

I felt bad for the roots as she explained their plight.

"Were they a person before?" I asked.

"Perhaps a piece of one, but its shape has been forever altered. It is now alive and not, unable to feel spiritually grounded to the material. This is where you two may help one another," Eurynome revealed.

In only three days with Eurynome, I had upgraded my [lesser shapeshift] spell to [shapeshift] and pushed my [direct flora] spell from novice to competent. I could now harden my skin into thick bark, and my controlling of plants was much more mana-efficient than it had ever been for me. I had also asked her about my wind magic, but she had known little of it.

Everything she had taught me had led to this. I was nervous, but I trusted her.

"Is this really safe?" I asked.

"Druidry is the magic of empathy and of understanding," she revealed to me. "By bringing them to the mortal realm, you have half-freed and formed a bond of fate with the fragmented soul of the roots you wear around your wrist. It seeks to truly live as a part of the material, bereft of merely clinging to borrowed time. And you seek to borrow what it has learned by necessity. If you each understand this, if your empathy for one another's wants is aligned, then there will be no chance of unbalanced gains. Reach out to the sapience of the roots, resonate with it, and we shall explain what you offer."

"Okay," I agreed.

I allowed my mana to flow into the roots, and Eurynome's own magical energy guided mine. She did not grant me strength but merely coaxed my energy along more efficient pathways and into more solid shapes.

The roots on my wrist jostled and spun as my mana flowed into them and with it my intentions. I felt them understand, slowly but surely.

"Forget the boundary between you and them, as I taught you, and guide them into what you see as yourself," Eurynome said.

I reached for the state of detachment from my body that allowed me to shapeshift. I remembered the words that Eurynome had spoken to me over the last few days that had allowed me to upgrade [lesser shapeshift] into [shapeshift]. I reminded myself that I was alive, but so were the roots around my wrist; I saw us as different, but we were both living things, and each of our shapes could change as surely as any living thing's could.

The roots, still being fed my mana, began to send me mental impulses of a reluctantly believed hope. I used [direct flora] to order them to attempt to push into my skin, while also trying to believe with everything I had that my skin was not separate from their bark. Both were just living matter, both were at least somewhat alive, I told myself.

The roots flowed into my arm. I thankfully felt no pain, but their hunger did flash into my mind and felt like my own as they entered me. I experienced how the roots were only partially taking the form of bark and wood, how they were just as much spirit than anything else, and how they had been forced to draw in mana and life-force from any source they could just to sustain their half-life for as long as they could remember. I felt their years of pained near-starvation and how they had barely been able to hang onto a shape they had been forced into by a wrathful god's hand for the entirety of their own personal eternity. I felt that the roots knew they were flawed, built in a mockery of life, and that they were missing the spark of complete and true life that made something real and stable.

"Be steady. I am here, and you are under my protection," Eurynome told me.

Her mana guided my own into accepting the hungry life-force of the roots as they became a part of me; as my mind accepted that the roots were just another living thing despite their flaws and that I, as another thing trying to live and grow, was not so different as to be wholly separated from them.

"Separate from you, the roots have no true claim to existence in the physical realm. They have been shaped and fractured too far from their original form to pass on to what awaits beyond the final wall without first dying again. To live their half-life alone they must feed and remain hungry things. But joined with you, as you, they may live as surely as you do without their hunger," Eurynome intoned.

I accepted her words. And together we pushed my acceptance of her meaning into the life-force and mana of the roots as its energies spread through my own. Our energies mingled and slowly combined until our now shared hunger began to abate, and their existence became my existence, and my life became a part of their own. No, they became the same life, I realized. The roots finally experienced true life once more and their gratitude echoed as my own in my chest.

[You have acquired the Integration spell.]

[You have gained the Soulwood Arm trait.]

Eurynome's hands left mine, her mana leaving me carefully, and she gestured towards the arm of mine that the roots had once wrapped around. "It is done."

I glanced to my arm, feeling my mindset shifting away from the trance-like state required for shape changing. But I felt no unease when I saw that the skin of my left arm had become bark where I looked at it, or in that I instinctively knew that the changes extended all the way to the core of the limb. I moved my now wood-clawed fingers one at a time, and felt as the ambient mana entered its changed flesh at a steady rate.

"Your arm will now absorb ambient mana as did the roots, enough so to stabilize a number of your stored spells I'd imagine," Eurynome told me. "And they now truly live for as long as you do, reinforced by your intact and now shared soul's inherent right to exist. They will no longer suffer or hunger."

"This is amazing," I told her and looked up to meet her golden eyes. "Thank you."

"Of course, my student," she said.

But the loud rumbling of my stomach interrupted my offering of my gratitude. I was starving. I realized through my elation at learning Eurynome's magics, that using my new [integration] spell had exhausted every part of my body, and that my mana was all but depleted.

Eurynome laughed and then commented on the rumbling. "I believe we could both eat, yes? We have some time still before you must return to the material."

***

Eurynome smiled as we ate at her large dinner table. Despite having appeared to me with the lower half of a deer, she now bore only two human legs. It seemed her form was as malleable as her will to some extent.

She lived in a home that seemed very human if grand. The arched ceilings were a thing of gleaming beauty, with long crystal chandeliers hanging from them. I'd never seen architecture such as that of Eurynome's palace, except for maybe vaguely in the crumbling bricks of the old Yordian watchtower on the edge of Forbas.

"This Cedric does seem to bother you, but I recall your father had a rival as well and that they quickly became friends," the woman said and ate at a piece of meat as we talked of my life.

"I don't know if he and I could be friends. Maybe, if he could stop being so rude," I said, and Eurynome merely watched me as I pawed at a piece of bread. "Who was dad's rival?"

"I believe his name was Renalt."

"Master Renalt?" I asked.

"You know of him," Eurynome said as more of a statement than a question.

"He's been really good to me, because he was dad's friend."

"I see," she smiled.

"That doesn't mean Cedric and me will be like that. Not everyone can be your friend."

"Not everyone wants to be," she corrected me. "But half of that is your responsibility."

"Maybe," I agreed and took a bite of my bread. "He just bothers me."

"And there lies your share of it. I'm sure you bother him in some ways too," Eurynome replied and then frowned. "I'm afraid you will have to leave soon, dear Pery. Your time here is running short."

"Oh," I said. "You really have taught me so much in such a little time."

The woman had been exceedingly good to me. She may have been fond of me for being my father's son, but I had grown to greatly love her company. She was calming to be around and she seemed almost lonely.

"Will you come again?" she asked me.

"I will," I said and then added, "master."

Eurynome's golden eyes shone. "Then you need only enter any forest of the world and call my name at midday or midnight, my student. In three month's time, we will see each other again."

After we'd finished our meal, and talked about what she might teach and show me during our next meeting, Eurynome led me down the steps of her palace and back into the woods surrounding it.

The suspended snowflakes of her realm shuddered as we returned to where I'd first met her.

"Our time is ending. We must say farewell for now," she said to me with some sadness in her eyes. "I promise I will come when you call."

She had refused to tell me why she was limited in when she could interact with the world. But it didn't matter. She had been good to me.

"And I promise I will call," I told her. "Thank you for everything. And for what you said about helping me to see my dad again. Even if it's only for one hour. We all miss him."

Eurynome smiled gently at me as the suspended snow began to descend for the first time. "Time will always see that you reunite with him and any others you may lose sight of, dear one."

The snow grew thicker as it fell. I lost sight of her in it.

And then I found myself on the edge of the camp I and my friends had made. Rosaria looked up at me from beside the campfire. "Pery? I didn't see you leave your tent."

I walked over to my friend and sat down on one of the two log we'd rolled out of the woods to use as benches. "It's a pretty good story."

Her face grew puzzled at my tone. I lifted up my now black bark-covered arm to her.

"What story? Are you okay?" she asked me. "What's wrong with your arm?"

"I’m better than fine," I promised her with a genuinely happy smile. "Want to hear it? It involves us seeing my dad again.”