Nic spent a good amount of time with Kline, helping him plant the new herbal specimens in his strange, demonic garden. The soil was dark and good, crumbling wetly under their fingers as they dug. Each time they implanted a new breed of herb, Kline would push energy into the plant with his Shard, feeding it until the faint wilt at the edges receded and a green, robust health returned to the specimen.

It was good work, and it helped Nic shake off the lingering memory of the cherry forest. The sun shone on his back and mud worked its way under his fingernails. These things rooted him down into reality again after spending an ageless time in the illusion.

It seemed good for Kline, too. The boy had been avoiding people since he was turned into a demon. Now, he spent an afternoon with someone else, silently but in good company. His stumbling voice stammered a little less by the end- some confidence returning.

But eventually, Nic had to move on.

Kline would find his place in the world and thrive- or Kline would shrink into himself and become a hermit.

In the end it was up to the boy.

Washing himself clean in a nearby stream, Nic nodded to the demon. “I’ll come back in a few days to see how those are doing. Don’t worry if the demonic taint spreads to them. It doesn’t bother me.”

And then he was on his way…

Deeper into the forest…

Until the trees became skeletal and ancient, encrusted with rose-pink cloudy gemstones. The forest petrified and turned to a land of mist and glinting crystal growths.

Fragments of stone drifted in the air, orbiting like stars in the night.

At the center of the crystallize grove sat an ancient creature. It was an ent, a treefather, a creature equal parts plant and man. It had bark-like skin, and a craggy, weathered face with the horns of a stag, its rough facial features outlined by moss like a green beard. Crystal covered its skin. It sat calmly, allowing itself to fade into the surroundings.

Nic knelt down on one knee in front of it.

“Old fellow.”

Two dark blue eyes flickered open.

“Young whippersnapper.” The ent replied.

“I’ve come to ask for advice.” Nic said, honestly.

“Mmm. I have little else to give but sadness and memory, but advice? Advice I might be able to manage.” From the waist down, the ent was entombed. Its body was completely frozen by the crawling, slow-reaching crystal, fused to the ground. Only one arm was still free, reaching out to slowly trace a symbol Nic didn’t recognize on the dusty earth.

“You used Primordial Mist, didn’t you? The Shard.”

“Ahhh.” The ent chuckled, a slow sound like the creaking of a tree under a storm wind. “So you walk the cursed road too, then?”

“I do.” Nic said. “Although I’m not sure what’s cursed about it.”

“Everything. It tramples on the domain of time, and that is not a place mortals can survive.” The ent sighed. “Even memory, that gift given to us mortals, is nothing but a slow poison. It will corrupt you with empathy. You will feast on your foe’s perspective and come out weakened, too indecisive to fight again, seeing no difference between yourself and those you kill…”

“You discovered a way to consume your foes memories?” Nic hazarded. “And it… took your will to fight…”

“Yes. That is how it happened.” Tiny deposits of crystal filled the grooves and wrinkles of his face, like a fine pink salt. Crystalline fragments fell down as his eyes moved. “I drank too much of my opponents, and forgot too much of myself. Empathy is poison for a warrior’s path. And yet, when I raised my hand to defend my own people, I knew too well the reasons and beliefs that drove my enemy- I could not say they were lesser than my own.”

“I see.” Nic said, slowly. It was true. He didn’t like it, but it was true. Empathy really could crush a warrior’s soul- and empathy combined with knowledge was worse. It was better to face a thousand faceless specters of war than a single living human with a face and a name you knew. “So you couldn’t fight anymore.”

“Fight? I couldn’t eat flesh. I couldn’t strike a fly from the air. I lost all wish to kill- and all wish to survive. Only my own life was without worth…” The ent’s slow voice rambled.

“So you decided on… this.” Nic grimaced. “Sacrificing yourself?”

“Yes, so that all I have killed will be remembered. There are countless memories growing here, a memorial to the dead. This way… I am useful again…”

Nic nodded. “Can you help me escape this fate?”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“I can. It would satisfy me to do so…” The ent reached up its one hand, and a drifting shard of crystal slowly descended into its skinny fingers. “The answer lies in Concepts. A warrior must create an unbreakable Concept of his own self, a Dao-Heart. This memory… contains a path…”

Nic took the shard carefully, feeling heat brimming from what should have been cold stone, as if it was alive. “Thank you. Do you have a name?”

The ent’s weathered, scarred lips bent into a frown. “No… Not anymore…”

“Alright. I’ll call you Old-Bough, then. Everyone should have a name.” It was the one small kindness Nic could offer.

“Old-Bough… Yes. It suits me…” The ent agreed.

And Nic, feeling an odd sense of melancholy once again, bowed his head to the elder and went on his way.

---

Nic cut his finger and pressed the drop of blood that welled up onto the surface of the Ghost-Toll Legion’s seal. That drop of blood was absorbed, sinking into the stone, and Nic watched as a doorway snapped open in the air. It was a dark, iron-gated portcullis, which slowly ascended up to allow a creature to crawl forward from within…

It was made of rotted, barely-solid flesh, impaled in a dozen places with golden spikes that let out belching ribbons of smoke. It had glass eyes, and an ever-present grin where its lips had shriveled back too far to cover its teeth.

“Master…” It groaned.

Nic was cautious, his hand waiting near Peacemaker. But the wretched thing only limped back into the darkness of the summoned gate and returned, hauling out a clay canopic jar. Then another, and another.

Within were the ingredients Nic had bought.

Next came the rifles, bundled in a dark gray cloth like a corpse beneath the shroud.

And finally…

The technique. The Ghost-Mirror Waterveil. It was delivered in a cup of carved bone, the technique contained within a blood red crystal that sat in the basin.

The undead creature bowed and returned into the darkness, which closed like a window rolling shut.

---

Nic sat himself down atop a large, flat slab of rock and took out the precious things he’d scavenged from the temple within the desert. The notes on the runes he’d been tasked with creating, the ‘Sigils’ of the ancient people who made the Scales of Sand their home.

And the runescribing technique…

His fingers almost shook as he flipped open the book, which was made of plates of dry wood tied together into pages. Vertical lines of hieroglyphs ran down each slab. For a moment, Nic was afraid he’d be unable to read the book, that its ancient language would be an impenetrable barrier.

And then the holy symbols lifted off the bark. The pages began to turn, each one sending up a stream of hieroglyphs that spun in the air like a whirlwind, until the book was empty, the last blank page snapping shut. The hieroglyphs descended, pouring into Nic’s skull through the spiritual node between his brows.

And he knew.

Before, Nic had been self-taught. He had learned to runescribe through painfully memorizing each character and then repeating it, over and over, until the memory was pressed into his muscles and bones.

That was one way.

But this technique focused on visualization. On creating the rune within the mind and letting it pervade the consciousness, through wakefulness and dreams. The spiritual aspect of the rune - the most difficult part - would become second-nature. When it was time to draw the rune into being, it wouldn’t be a difficult, nerve-wracking moment of concentration- it would be like letting an arrow fly free.

Nic smiled. This was…

Like opening a door to an unfamiliar world. It was somebody else’s lifetime in that technique. The work and pain and dedication to the art imbued into every word, in the hopes somebody else could carry it further towards the peak.

And now Nic had a whole new perspective to pursue. He had never thought of runescribing as spiritual. It had always been closer to…

To a way of expressing his own patience, his own control. Fighting was wild and adrenaline-sick and happened in sharp spurs of the moment; he fought by instinct.

But he drew by memory and dedication.

The person who created this technique had seen runescribing as a sacred obligation, passed down to them over generations. They had envisioned the runes as something existing outside themselves, as almost little gods, who had to be given proper respect and fealty.

Night and day…

Nic took out a sheet of talisman paper and began to draw. The visualization technique was slow, and took time to gather effectiveness, but he found even his pen strokes had altered slightly. Absorbing another runescribe’s experience had made him more sure, and more expressive. He made alterations to the design to suit his own patterns, his own Essence, rather than relying on repeating the same memorized forms…

Seeing things from new eyes allowed him to see the flaws in his own techniques.

He was learning.

For the next few hours Nic sunk totally into the world of his craft. Not only did he need to consolidate what he’d learned into new techniques, he had new designs to test. Runes that the technique had taught him…

Attacking runes. Straight-forwardly stronger than the crude explosives he’d used before, his new talismans summoned weapons made of starlight to strike at the enemy.

Defensive runes. Healing spells that slowly gathered energy to create a single drastic burst of regeneration.

And even stranger, summoning runes. These, Nic recognized, were the first step towards designing battle formations like Seoona’s troops used; they conjured his power into a shape with true flesh and bone. The summoning rune the technique had taught him was quite crude by comparison…

But it could summon an eagle whose eyes and ears would relay all they saw to Nic. A perfect scouting technique that could serve from high in the sky…

And all the while, with each penstroke and each drop of sweat that spilled from his brow, Nic was giving part of his will and mind to the visualization technique. Building a new rune step by step, as a temple is built brick by brick.

It was one of the sigils he had learned in the temple.

The Fractured Wadjet…

Symbol of Illusions and Lost Souls.

The one sigil that had nearly escaped his mastery to create.

With determination guiding his hand, Nic drew out the first slashing lines of the sigil, inscribing them onto a great scroll of talisman paper.