Dazzling light crept upon my check and warmed the skin there. Or so I gathered considering the flow of mana through my face as the enchants worked to keep my body temperature perfectly balanced. Now, where was I?

Go on eyes, go take a peek. Nope? Arm? Not a twitch? Et tu leg?

Erta groaned, muttering something along the lines of ‘shut up and go back to sleep' enriched by several draconic epithets then broke the link between our minds.

But sleep I could not. A new sensation, one that I had never experienced in my life, lingered at the edge of my consciousness. It radiated of neither malice nor benevolence. Rather, a simple statement. I am here. I await.

Soft wind tickled my nose with scents of pine and moss. A forest? Did the current washed my body somewhere in the wilds? With a bit of luck, perhaps, we were carried away from that dead city.

My eyelids choose this moment to oblige me and parted, exposing my surroundings to me.

Wood. Instead of the endless blue I grew so accustomed to witnessing every time I awoke, a celling of neatly carved and polished wood hung above my head.

Erta?

I probed for her presence but only silence answered me. Instead, my nose decided to join my consciousness and announced an excessively potent fragrance lingering about me. Flower oils? Did someone scrubbed my body clean of the stench of grime and burned meat I acquired in the dungeon? An appealing change to say the last but, who would do such and for whatever reason?

My arms stirred at long last, sliding over the soft blanket covering me. As comfortable this arrangement might be over my past abrupt awakenings, Logic dictated I should be alarmed. Well, consider me alarmed. With that out of the way I gave my arms a shrug and they rewarded me with a delayed nudge. Not much to work with but still an improvement.

I gave my sorry ass five tore minutes to gather itself while I continued my favorite pastime, observing the complexity of the horizontal plane suspended above me. To put it bluntly, I stared at the celling.

Fascinating. Whoever did this would either be genius or neatly fit into a padded room in one of the institutions I used to frequent. The amount of detail somebody put into carving all this, the people, the plants the animals, not one same as the other. All carved and shaped into perfection. Almost life like. Hunting, fishing, building, dancing, singing. Going about their day, all above my head. A world full of life.

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Twitching toes broke my concentration as my legs signaled go ahead. I cast away the cozy blanket and forced myself to sit up at the edge of the bed somebody put me into. It did not go so well.

With a laud and satisfying *thwack* my face kissed the floor, bending my nose at an unnatural angle. I did not feel the pain, rather, as I rolled onto my back, I sensed mana rushing toward my face and heat building up there. Letting out a disgusting, crackling, *squelch* sound, the bone righted itself and the healing commenced.

*I leave you for a moment, you refutable dolt and you already managed to hurt yourself.*

“I’m glad you joined us sleepyhead. We may have a new issue at our hands.”

*Well, that I see. The gown they gave you not at all matches your eyes and that flimsy excuse of an undergarment is riding up your ass.*

I reached down and tugged at the offending fabric. Erta let out a sigh of gratitude and continued.

*Much better. Now, where are we?*

“Sprawled on the floor, sticking my butt out to whoever comes.”

And leaving a steady trail of blood dripping from my broken nose, staining the white and puffy carpet.

*Brilliant observation my dolt.”

She applied some of her own magic on my nose, likely to block the pain, and went through my memories. Somehow, the more she did that, the more aware of the practice I became. Up to a point I even thought I could resist her.

“There’s an open balcony there across the room, if we can get there, we might take a look at our surroundings.”

Erta said nothing and applied a strengthening charm to my body. If I were to risk a guess by the sudden shift of her fillings, she already had a rough idea where we were.

*Go slowly, we don’t want to fall off.*

“Fall off? From where?”

Shuffling my feet unsteadily, I edged myself onto the balcony and emerging from between the floating curtains of silk I grasped upon the railing. A playful gust of wind choose this very moment to tug at my gown and my braided hairs. The translucent curtains rippled behind me, their susurrus joining the magical murmur of myriads of leaves dancing in the wind. As far as my eyes allowed me to see, enormous branches zigzagged this and that way, stretching far up and beyond. Huddled among those branches, hundreds upon hundreds of homes spread in each direction, basking in the emerald glow, filtered through the whispering leaves.

Each of the houses, lavishly painted and decorated, while different from its neighbor, kept to some common theme. As if a forest grew upon a forest. Rooftiles cut and shaped as leaves. Walls chiseled to resemble bark and painted with sprawling wines. Precious stones glittered and reflected light akin to fresh dew. Marble does, birds, hares and other animals perched upon moss marked pathways between branches and buildings. All composed to form a beauty my words failed to describe.

In my entire life I have never whiteness anything this wonderful.

*Why…*

Erta’s mood sagged even lower as her hopes vanished.

*Of all the plagues and curses, why were we washes upon a town of those accursed tree huggers.*