We did as she suggested and pretty soon could see out over the vast open fields that were completely covered in fog. On the southern edge of the valley, however, I could see the beginning of a forest, the large pine trees looking as if they were floating above the fog.

"Why is this place unguarded?" Artemis asked. "Shouldn't they be keeping tabs on who enters the realm?"

"What is there to guard here?" I replied, looking around. "It's just fog and a few trees."

"If they had someone standing guard, then perhaps Ares wouldn't have been able to come into their world to fight them," Artemis said.

Aphrodite flicked her shoulder before putting her finger in front of her mouth. "Hush, I'm connecting with him now." She was holding a smooth oval-shaped black stone in one hand.

* * *

Item: Black Onyx of Realm Communication

Type: Magic Item

Durability: 1200/1200

Grade: D Grade

Weight: 40st.

Description: One half of a stone that allows telepathic communication with the person that controls the other half. The location of each stone is not available to the other person, but communication can take place over any distance as long as the two stones are in the same realm.

* * *

"Brother, can you hear me?" Aphrodite asked, holding the communication device close to her chest.

A few seconds passed, during which Aphrodite held her breath listening for the tiniest sound that might come out of the stone in response. Her shoulders sank when after a few more seconds, no response came.

"I guess he isn't in this plane anymore, or--" She stopped explaining suddenly when the stone's outline gave off a tiny flash of warm yellow light.

"Aphro?" The voice of the god of war emerged from it, and now I understood why she disliked me using the name so much. "What happened? Are you here? Is everything okay?"

"Everything is fine," she replied, throwing daggers at me with her eyes, as if I was the one who'd called her Aphro. "I'm here with a couple of friends, and we would like to meet with you."

"What do you mean, 'friends'?" he said, and I was sure I heard the clanging of swords in the background followed by him grunting. "This isn't a resort."

"Are you seriously fighting right now? Can't you stop for a couple of seconds so I can talk to you?"

"Sure, let me just ask the hordes of draugar to stop attacking so I can speak with my little sister," Ares said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

I couldn't help but smile a little, which--of course--Aphrodite caught, and she immediately flared up in anger.

"Just tell me where you are, you stupid goat," she said angrily. "We came through a gate surrounded by lots of fog and--"

"That's actually quite close," he replied. He let out a battle cry before continuing. "Go south and you'll see a forest. Walk through it and you'll see a fire blazing at the side of a lake. That's where I'll be."

"Fine," Aphrodite said, and threw the stone back in her inventory. "He's so obnoxious sometimes. I'm not even sure I want to go meet him anymore."

"We came all the way here, so we might as well now," I said, trying to be as non-confrontational as possible.

"Fine!" she repeated, to me this time. "Did you see a forest to the south?"

"There." Artemis pointed at the trees I'd seen and we were soon walking toward them, taking care to avoid being ambushed by any more fog elementals.

The forest was significantly colder than the valley around the gate. The bark of the trees was covered in mostly frozen resin and I caught sight of a few birds huddled up on their branches, trying to keep their bodies warm as they slept.

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"Their trees are different to ours," Artemis said.

"In what way?" Aphrodite asked. "Even Olympus has pines."

"But look at all this resin," she pointed out the substance on a nearby tree.

"I'm pretty sure our pine trees also produce resin, Artemis," I said, taking the opportunity to side with Aphrodite. "Nothing unusual here."

"Not this much," Artemis insisted. "Look, it's all over it. And it's purple. Why is it purple?"

She wiped a single drop of resin from the bark and just as she brought her finger forward to show us, something swept her off her feet. Before she could react, a thick root from the base of the tree wrapped itself around her legs and yanked her into the air, holding her upside down.

We all got our weapons out for the second time, ready to eliminate whatever this monster was. Despite hanging upside down, Artemis had already nocked an arrow on her bow and was aiming at the tree, which was violently flailing its other branches left and right.

* * *

Name: Pine Ygg

Type: Magic Creature - Plant

Level: 51

Disposition: Passive

HP: 1470/1470

Physical Attack: 446

Magic Attack: 309

Speed: -

Attack Range: Melee

XP: 3936

Description: A species of pine that has become sentient and sapient by connecting its roots to Yggdrasil, the tree of life. The tree is unable to move and very territorial but will not provoke the wrath of other creatures as long as they respect its dominion.

* * *

"Don't attack," Artemis said, slowly loosening her bow and putting her arrow back in her quiver, which was somehow still holding all her arrows in a way that defied gravity. "This tree will not hurt us."

The tree offered no answer to this, of course, but its branches did seem to become less tense and it didn't do anything else to harm her.

"I apologize for invading your space," Artemis said.

Miraculously, the tree slowly set her back on the ground.

"I thought you came here to hunt things," I said as she patted herself down. The tree returned to its unmoving position again.

"Monsters," she corrected me. "This is no monster."

I looked at the tree and reached for my lance again as one of its roots momentarily rose from the ground, but it only gently pushed Artemis a little further away from it.

"I don't think it wants us around it," Aphrodite said, and we all agreed to move a few steps further back.

"But how will we know which of them are alive like this one?" I asked. "It won't be the only one in the whole forest, and if you don't want to fight them--"

"There's no reason to fight them," Artemis insisted. "They haven't hurt us, and they don't want to hurt us. Besides, it's pretty easy to tell."

I had no idea how she could know the difference, but I didn't want to admit that to her.

Aphrodite rolled her eyes at the silence that followed as Artemis waited for one of us to ask. "How?" she asked eventually.

"The birds," she said, and pointed at a couple of sparrows--or whatever their Norse equivalent was--sitting on the branch of a tree. "They know where they're allowed to sleep and where they shouldn't."

"So we have to look for trees that have birds sleeping in them?" I asked, getting slightly frustrated at the increasing complexity of simply walking through a forest.

"Or sitting in them, singing, watching--" she continued.

"I get it, I get it," I said and the started putting one foot in front of the other, heading toward the closest tree with birds on it.

"You were the ones who didn't want me to go crazy hunting in this place," Artemis said in protest. "Well, I'm not."

"No, you're right," Aphrodite said. "This is the safest way. Even if it takes slightly longer, it's never a bad thing to respect the residents of a place you're visiting."

The last part of her sentence was obviously directed at me, but I couldn't care less. I just wanted to get through the forest and even though I'd much rather do it in a straight line, I guessed I should follow Artemis's example and be respectful of the place.

It took us more than an hour of constant zigzagging and occasional backtracking to pass through the forest. To Artemis's satisfaction, we hadn't bothered any more of her leafy friends and were finally reaching the end. The pines were scarcer at this edge, which overlooked a steep slope leading down to a huge lake, the expanse of which was lost over the horizon.

Directly beneath us was a rocky shoreline, with a blazing fire sending smoke high in the sky. A few feet away from the bonfire was a small tent with the figure of a man sitting right outside of it.

"This must be him," Aphrodite said, starting to head down the slope.

"Aphrodite," I said, "before we go down there, I need to ask you--"

"Is it about my brother?" she asked, stopping in her tracks.

"Yes and no," I said, and tried to find the right words. "It's about his reaction to us."

"There is nothing to worry about," she said, offering me a comforting smile. "He doesn't care what I do in my life and I don't care what he does with his. Which is absolutely nothing, by the way."

"What do you mean nothing?" Artemis asked. "He's here in a distant realm, fighting monsters."

"Yes, but that's all he does," she replied. "I've never seen him do anything other than fight. Never seen him in contact with another person. Only when the person ends up dead a few minutes later."

"Sounds like the reason why you've got double the charisma," I joked, but she didn't smile.

"It's sad really," she said, looking down at the figure sitting in front of the fire by themselves. "He is only happy when he's at war. Only through fighting does he find any pleasure. He will never know the joy of love."

"Hey, if he's never tried it, he won't know what he's missing," I said, and shrugged.

"I guess so." She nodded and we continued down the hill.

Within a few seconds, Aphrodite stopped again and retrieved her communication stone from her inventory.

"Yes, it's us," she said and then waved the stone at the figure who was now looking up at us.

She put it back in her inventory before the man had the chance to reply and we resumed our descent to meet the god of war.