I was exploring the forest again, with my body asleep back at the naga home cave. I zoomed past the few hunters that were out, also exploring, they didn’t see me, in my current state no one could. The further away from the mountain, I got the less dense the amount of mana in the air became. I also saw more animals and beasts able to live and move around on the ground out here where the vegetation was less lively. Many of them I recognized, such as the crab thing we had bumped into on our way to the goblin’s cave. They seemed to be herbivores, and mostly solitary, all the other wildlife avoided getting close to them. There were animals from the mainland here but blown out of proportion, having grown to ridiculous sizes. I saw a squirrel as big as a dog scurrying up a tree. There were other things, too, things that I struggle to describe. I hadn’t seen any of the truly monstrously sized creatures we had caught a glimpse of when we first got her, you’d think spotting something of that size would be easy, but so far I had had no luck, or perhaps it was luck, what would I do if I ran into one of those things? I knew that they were out there I might not have seen them, but the signs of their passing were apparent, footprints the width of a barn, or huge claw marks left in trees at least a hundred meters from the ground.

My goal for today was not to find those behemoths, but instead the company of wizards and adventurers that had set up camp on the coast. I had watched them before, always at a distance for fear of being spotted again. As far as I could tell, my surveillance had gone unnoticed so far except for that first time. The mage had somehow noticed me, how I didn’t know, but they were wizards, after all, perhaps they knew more about my magic than I gave them credit for. Maybe they could teach me something, that thought sent a chill down my spine, the mage who had spotted me had sent along some sort of passenger in my mind. It had fed on my memories, making me forget what had happened. That made me distrust them immediately, besides I had plenty of good teachers back at the cave, Lubus for one, but Red had become a lot more talkative since it had set itself up as a sort of dungeon town. Whoever heard of a dungeon doing something like that? I had a feeling this was something special, something the world had never seen before, and I felt lucky to be a part of it.

My thoughts were interrupted by a commotion up ahead, and I sped towards it. I was closer to the beach than I had thought, and the trees thinned out as I came upon the scene. It was a battle, with a company of mages firing spells from behind a party of adventurers. They had two fighters in the front, one with heavy armor and a large shield, the other one had lighter armor he danced around cutting down lizards left, and right while the shield guy took all the attention. They had an archer in the back lightening the heavily armored guy's load by thinning the enemies numbers with well-aimed shots from her bow. Only three people were managing to hold off a practical horde of treskles with the occasional flashy spell thrown by the mages giving the adventurers time to breathe and recover. No, not only three people I saw now, he was hard to spot, but a fourth person was popping in and out of sight behind the lizards, stabbing them in the back.

“We need to retreat behind the wards to resupply, I’m running out of arrows here,” the archer said during a lull in the fighting.

“I agree,” the big man in heavy armor replied and took a big swig from a glass bottle with a shining red liquid inside, “that was my last health potion.” The rest of the party nodded and turned their attention to the mages. They looked frustrated, one of them clenching his fists before sighing dramatically.

“Fine, but it’s your pay on the line, in a month we have barely made any progress into this bloody jungle.” One of the other mages lay a hand on the first guy's shoulder before speaking calmly.

“It’s fine, the resources and materials we have found so far would make this trip worth it, not to mention all the mana in the air, this is an ideal environment to research new spells.”

“You’re probably right, but aren’t you curious about it, where does it all come from, think what we could accomplish if we found the source of it, let alone learned to recreate it.” The first guy said with wonder in his voice and an almost manic look in his eyes.

“If we want to make it further into the jungle we can call for reinforcements from the guild, or hire a guide,” the second mage said and looked straight at me, he raised his eyebrows meaningfully as if he could see me. He kept staring, not looking through me, but at me, his eyes even tracked me as I floated to the side. No, this was not happening again. I would not allow myself to become a host to some twisted spell.

“Alsam, wake me up now please?” I said and suddenly sat up back in my old body to find the big troll looming over me with two different expressions on his faces, Ugo was worried while Alsam looked mildly curious. The troll wasn’t what had my attention though, but the wizard.

“So, what happened?” Both heads asked at the same time, both in line with the different expressions they bore, as they stopped acting like a giant sun-blocker and sat down with a thud I could feel through the ground.

“I was discovered,” I said hesitating. “I think.” Both Alsams and Ugos faces were now both firmly lodged in the worried spectrum.

“By what, a wizard?” Aslam asked, and I nodded, still sitting on the ground, Aslam's head promptly lolled to the side fast asleep. Ugo rolled his eyes and leaned forward, letting his hands hover over my body as Aslam examined me from his dreams.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

“You know we could go smash them if you want,” Ugo said, the idea was appealing, but I dismissed it a moment later. The wizard hadn’t done anything, just looked at me, so maybe not all of them were bad.

“No, but thanks for the offer, he just looked at me I’m pretty sure, didn’t even attempt to cast a spell,” I said, and Ugo nodded in understanding. At that moment Alsam's eyes shot open and the troll brothers sat up straight.

“I can find no passengers riding along inside you, what did this wizard guy actually do? Did he say anything to you?” Alsam said, the curiosity back in his voice. Now that I thought about it, he had said something.

“Well, he did say something, but it wasn’t really directed at me. He said that they needed to hire a guide and sort of gave me a suggestive look,” I explained with a shrug. The brothers were silent for a moment, gave each other a look before standing up from the ground.

“Well, suggestive looks never hurt anybody,” Ugo said and lowered a hand for me to hop on, when I didn’t, he raised an eyebrow at me. “Didn’t you want to go to the forge today to see if your arrows were done?” I nodded and clambered on, and Ugo sat me down between their two heads where I could hold on. Ugo and Alsam were the mountain troll Eshanai had fought in Red’s dungeon on the mainland. Red had summoned them again as he had done with Lubus, they were on our side now, well, they had always been on the dungeon cores side. The troll used dream magic just like me and had proved a great source of insight into my abilities. But where the troll was a master, I was still learning, but I still managed to come up with some breakthroughs with their help. Alsam could travel through his dreams and bring someone with him if he wished. It was similar to my dream walking, but he brought his whole body into the dream, and when he didn't he had his brother to watch out for him, while I was vulnerable sleeping outside my dream. I had still not mastered it, someday I would.

We were in the garden of the home cave, in a glade close to the wall. I was pretty sure the garden was much bigger on the inside then what it looked like from outside, you could wander for hours here if you didn’t have a destination in mind. We did have a place in mind, though and with our destination set, the travel time would only be a couple of minutes. We passed plenty of Naga on our way to the forge, most of them were not doing much at all, laying together in the sun, taking in as much warmth as they could. Others were coupling, I had grown used to the sight by now, and it didn’t bother me as much as it had, oh and did I mention that they were all naked, that didn’t bother me at all by now. I had clothes on of course, and there were Naga who weren’t naked, they didn’t have clothes on though but armor. We passed many of them sparring and training with each other, their weapons disappearing to be replaced with another to suit the situation.

It was the armory, a gift from Red, that allowed them to do this. It was a sort of bag of holding that was shared with all of them. Their collection was small so far, mostly consisting of their old flint tipped weapons. The armory would only grow in both quantity and quality as the Naga grew more proficient at the forge.

Red could, of course, provide all the weapons the Naga needed, but they had rejected that, saying that they wanted to grow strong on their own and not depend too much on the core. Red had only provided all the materials the Naga needed so far, but that would probably soon change as they discovered how to mine the mountain by themselves. They still had their amazing bows though, and I watched spellbound as one naga jumped up in the air only to switch to a bow in mid-air and shoot at her opponent as she fell to the ground. Luckily the other Naga was just as fast and summoned a shield to block the spear like shafts. The impacts rang like bells through the garden and were enough to push the blocking Naga back a few paces. She never dropped her shield though, and soon leaped after her opponent, crashing into her as she touched the ground, shield still raised. I tore my eyes away as we approached the forge, it was built into the mountain wall, smoke rose high into the air as the group of Naga currently at the forge operated the bellows, and I was reminded of another one of Reds gifts to the Naga. Almamu, Shisha, Khosis, Suma, and Lezoz were the current group learning how to forge. The Naga had let everyone have a go, to see if they liked it. Almamu stopped her hammering and came up to me, she only had one arm, but I tried to look her in the eyes as she spoke to me.

“Ah, young Lilian, and big troll,” she said with a thick accent, she had to look up to speak to me so the brothers went down on one knee so I could talk to her better. “Here for arrows?” She asked in a questioning tone, that was Reds other gift to the Naga, the archive. All the knowledge the gem had at its disposal was available to them with but a thought, that didn’t mean that they could suddenly speak common. They still had to learn and practice like everyone else, the archive was like an instruction book in their head to help them. That went for everything, from how to craft weapons and armor to magical research, anything the core knew they also now knew. The arrangement went both ways though, anything the Naga learned the gem would also know.

“Yes, Almamu,” I said, “Are they done yet?”

“Yes, they done this morning, I get them.” She came back with a bundle of arrows, she handed them to the bother who took them and put them in my lap.

“Thank you, it was very kind of you to do this for me,” I said, trying to offer some gratitude. I had no money to pay them with, although I didn’t know what they would do with money.

“No need to thank, it was good practice, harder to make something so small,” Almamu answered with a grin.

“How do you like working at the forge anyway?” I asked, suddenly curious.

“It’s fine, can be boring sometimes, making same thing over and over, but is good way for me to help make us strong,” She answered, indicating her severed arm.

“Yes, well, thank you again, and I’m sorry for what happened to you.”

“Was glad to do it, and no sorry, could beat all these younglings with one hand anyway,” she said with a hearty laugh.

“I agree with Almamu, this good way to help village, make us strong, still prefer fighting,” Lezoz suddenly chimed in from where she was heating metal in the forge, her scales had healed nicely. It was barely visible unless you knew what to look for.

“Yes yes, you all right, but I miss ocean,” Suma said with a wistful sigh, from what I had heard she had been a great diver before the jungle had changed. With that I said my goodbyes, we found the glade again, and I set about carving the runes me, and the brothers had discussed into the arrows, it would allow them to take in my mana.