The yellow forest is a welcome change from all the blue we’ve been having to look at. The Grove is beautiful but I'm more than ready to not be surrounded by blue except for the skies above me. Every single tree’s bark is on a spectrum of creamy whites, the leaves shades of yellow. No wind hits them but there are rustles nonetheless. I look up at a sky Kikito described only hours ago: seemingly stuck at sunset despite the black sun, swirling magenta clouds floating by as if propelled gently by something only it knows of. I can still smell the woods even if there's no wind to throw scents at us.

I have a vague feeling of where to go but really we’ve just been thrown down in the middle of this forest. The Kobus would have done a better job of navigating but we all gotta start somewhere.

“This is beautiful,” Mirana says. She runs her hands along the bark of one of the trees and recoils. Her brows furrow.

“What was that for?” I ask.

“I don’t know. I can’t tell if this tree is alive or I’m just feeling differently about things.”

“Aren’t all trees alive?” Kikito asks.

I touch the tree in question, not feeling anything from the tree itself but the forest feels like it's watching us, sure.

“Well yeah but this feels weird,” she steps back towards me, “let’s work our way out of here.”

“I feel like we should go this way,” Kikito says, pointing in the direction I want to go in too.

“Me too, actually,” Mirana says.

We take a trek reminiscent of the Grove but spookier. The light gives it a forever-Halloween vibe. Smaller animals scurry away from us up into trees or into yellow bushes before I get a look at them. Others seem curious, like this dog-sized creature with the body and colorings of a ferret and with long thin frills framing its face like a lion. Several end up dancing around us like ferrets do when they play, brushing against our legs and making chirping sounds. Their fur feels wet, implying they might be more reminiscent of our topside beavers than anything. The frills do kind of look like the gills Axolotls have.

Mirana laughs at them, crouches to let them sniff her hands before petting them. Kikito does the same thing but they seem to take a shine to her. I pet any of the ones that approach me but I'm not eager to force it. Their small eyes look gleefully up at us as they hop around.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

What is going on down here? Paradise? Hell? I wanna call it both.

I see the same odd structure every so often; they're about as tall as me and made entirely of what looks like creamy silk. One tall pillar surrounded by a circle of smaller ones holding up the big one. All the ones I see are on the ground relatively close to the thicker trees. We don't see very many of them but they're enough to tell me this forest isn't as safe as the Grove.

The ferret creatures take notice, suddenly flinching and making distressed sounds. They get low to the ground and take slow steps before looking at us. They do this several times before they scurry away with the aggressive rustling of branches. A creature crashes to the ground in front of us, resembling a big spider so much there's nothing else to call it. Its many legs scramble to its feet and look at us, front legs immediately raising into the air. I throw out my hands without a thought and blast it. It strikes the spider with an over-the-top force, sending it sliding across the ground on its back. It catches fire, the flame getting so high branches recoil from it. I nearly fall apart in the process, splitting into separate versions of myself until I force them back together with effort.

I look up after the spider is definitely dying, legs quickly retreacting as the blood flow stops circulating through its body, and I see several many legged, many eyed creatures looking back in the gnarled entanglement of branches. Not spiders despite that description: many legged and armed with human-adjacent appendages with humanlike torsos and pale skin. The eyes are more akin to a spiders in being black and beady but the resemblance ends there. I put my hands up and after a moment they scurry back up the trees into hiding.

"Did they just throw a spider at us?" Kikito asks.

"I think it was expelling from the branches, actually," I reply.

"The forest don't seem malevolent. More like--

"Protective," I finish her sentence. Her smile reminds me of how often our conversations played out like that and I laugh quietly. "It's safe to say I shouldn't attack anything again until Dark catches up to us."

"Unless we wanna burn the whole forest down," Kikito says and then jumps and faces the trees, "I didn't mean that we don't want to burn you."

We laugh at his apology but they still make sure I'm okay before we continue. He manages to trip on several roots on our way out.

The forest takes forever to traverse but we do. Eventually we come to a clearing on a hill that dramatically obscures our vision until we see it. A giant Wall made of the ground around, gemstone encrusted black stone, taller than anything I've seen in person. That isn't much but I know this is pushing skyscraper heights. And towering above it is a massive humanoid made of the same material, rearing its head from the top of the stone with a giant green eye swirling madly around. We only get glimpses of the neck but the head is always tall enough to scale the Wall.

"I'm not sure how you're going to absorb that thing," Kikito says with an air of humor, "but we'll figure it out."

"I trust you. I've been the one steering us wrong," I joke back. We share a small moment that Mirana joins in on, and we start for the base of the Wall.