“Then I have one condition. That we aren’t going to leave anyone behind, including those who are sickly.”

“You may endanger their lives that way you know.”

“Not if you carry them.”

The elf paused.

“...That’s a lot to ask, Racheal.”

“Well…if you can’t do that, then the others and I will stay behind.”

Kushal ruminated on the options, humming and hawing before making a decision.

“Then we’ll do it like you said.”

…

Well, that had been Racheal’s argument, but when it was put into practice in reality, the fungoid woman didn’t know if she had made the right call after all. The complexion of Emera and the others who were still suffering from the illness had improved, but her face was still strained while her body laid back against the makeshift stretcher. A small mercy was that at least the two current strongest and most fit of the group, Kushal and Kabir, were carrying the stretcher in between them as they walked through the forest.

None of the others were so ill that they needed similar treatment, but that didn’t mean they weren’t under duress as well. Racheal looked around. The traveling group wasn’t in good spirits, but was that her fault? No.

Racheal’s argument had been sound. If they were going to meet their savior in order to cure the sickness, it was better to travel with the actual patients. Although it was risky for their health to travel long distances, Racheal believed the immediate care that would come after a few hours of strenuous travel was better than waiting even longer for them to come back to camp with a solution.

No one knew what the illness was exactly, but an extended time without any sort of treatment likely wouldn’t be good for anyone.

Besides Kushal and Kabir apparently. Who it seemed were growing more energetic every hour of the trip. Racheal wondered why that was, but wasn’t as suspicious as Emera. She figured they might be like the children, whose tolerance to the illness she now suspected to be a result of the blossoms they had consumed. Perhaps Kabir and Kushal had found something like that too.

“Wait a second!”

“Huh?”

“What is it?”

One of the elves called the attention of the group.

“Does anyone hear that?”

“Sounds like ruffling leaves.”

Eleven pairs of pointed ears trembled underneath unkempt hair. The commotion even having grabbed the attention of those very ill, namely Emera.

Racheal heard it too. It sounded like it was far away for now but fast approaching. A rumbling noise. Of leaves or earth, she could not tell. Was it Licht? She could only hope.

Despite her many attempts along the way, she still could not contact the friendly nature spirit. An ominous sense of foreboding took over her.

Kushal quieted the group and spoke calmly.

“Everyone settle yourselves, it’s likely a passing beast. With the sudden change in the forest, such migrations are unavoidable. It should miss us as long as we pause here.”

Everyone nodded, relieved to hear a plausible explanation. Although the possibility there was a beast so audibly close was nerve-wracking, it was less likely to find them than other possibilities.

If the rumbling had been thought to be coming from other people, soldiers, slavers, caravans, or the like, their response would have been a lot more kinetic. Alas a beast was a far more probable explanation in their current wilderness environment.

A rising tension hung in the air as the elves waited.

Rumble.

And waited.

Rumble Rumble!

And waited, while continuing to hold their breaths and bodies in silence. Despite the slight chill from the morning weather, some started to sweat as well.

RUMBLE!

“What?!”

A large shadow passed through the trees and overhead the group. Faster than any could follow with their eyes, a huge mass of roots and wood flew over their heads, just missing by a hair’s length. Then before it left their vision again, in less than a second it came to a complete halt on the other side of their position.

“Ah…”

Stolen story; please report.

Coming to a standstill in midair, the egg-shaped mass of wiggling roots was suspended by adjacent branches and roots. No elf said anything, and none could take their eyes off of its alien form.

No one could move or say anything it seemed, aside from Kushal, who let out a sound.

“Hoh! There you are everyone, our protector is here!”

A series of confused faces turned toward Kushal. As if breaking the elves free from their chains of stupor, a timid flurry of questions rained upon the elf’s ears.

“That's our savior? The one who released the chains?”

“How can you tell, Kushal?”

Kushal approached the egg instead of replying. It had paused just on the other side of the group, so Kushal didn’t need to walk more than twenty feet or so from where he had been standing before he was close enough to touch the object.

Which he tried to do, as he reached out an open-faced palm toward the bark of the egg.

Racheal internally prayed as she watched silently.

“Please let that be Licht!”

Rumble. Crrrrrack.

But before Kushal could lay his open hand on the surface, a jagged line traveled up the egg, and sinews of wood began to split apart. Kushal stepped back, looking more than a little shocked.

…

What is this?

That had been Felfit’s first thought as it watched the massive egg shaped object set itself down across from the group. The slime-like parasite’s first thought when it saw the form of Licht wasn’t one of gratefulness that it had found its target, but confusion. What the hell was that?

It was true that Felfit was a well-practiced agent of Blackreed. Although it happened to have the talent for accessing spectral arts artificially, that didn’t make it cocky nor prone to overestimating itself. No, it had been on many missions similar to this one before, and knew what to expect. It always prepared itself well, assessing based on its type of target what to expect and how to best use its environment to destroy it.

It was exactly why it had chosen to use the elves, who it knew had contact with the target. Across its career of missions, deception and numbers were what it had found to work the best against wood-type plant lives. There was no more experienced agent in Blackreed when it came to wood-life type hit missions.

That’s why when Felfit saw the cocoon it was confused. There was no plant life it knew of that looked like this. And being so mobile as a wood-based organism? Was such a thing possible?

Mrmrmrrmmhm.

What was that? To Felfit it almost sounded like mumbling coming from the inside of the egg. Was the being itself inside of the egg? Felfit found the prospect that the egg itself was the target less likely as each second passed.

Crrrrrack.

“What?”

Felfit unintentionally took a step back in Kushal’s body upon seeing the crack.

The parasite looked backwards briefly, confirming Kabir was there. Though Felfit had split itself up, it was still technically of one mind. Even if there was an equal portion of its body present in both the elves, it could only exist rationally in one body at a time, with the other following a basic set of directions until he next interfered with it.

As for all of the other elves that had pieces of it inside them, its presence within them was too small to give new directions to. This didn’t matter at the moment anyway, as the small pieces were already primed to be a part of Felfit’s plan against its target.

After making sure Felfit would be able to switch to Kabir in case Kushal died, Felfit looked back at the crack. It started to expand rapidly. Bisecting the egg and letting its two halves to fall to the side and reveal the standing figure that had been within.

A wooden giant was revealed. Standing upright before the crowd of elves, nearly everyone held their breath. The eyeless gaze of the creature froze people mid motion.

Surely this couldn’t be their savior? Everyone thought.

But Felfit recognized the signs the creature was showing. Silently taking more AF from the now nearly dried husk of the parasite it had taken into Kushal, it felt the familiar signatures radiating off of the woodland giant's body.

Kushal mumbled below his breath.

“A spectral, it’s confirmed. This is the target. But the body…some kind of undiscovered woodland evolution.”

It didn't matter, Felfit knew. Blackreed could study the corpse. Now that he knew his target was in front of him however, he would get to work. Felfit directed Kushal’s hand to the handle of his sword.

In the next moment however, an incomprehensible mumble came from the giant. One that only Racheal and Felfit found meaning from.

“Droso ferus wrisis? Felun ris? Ranul?”

A strange sounding language, not Aurum as the elves knew or Silver, the common tongue.

…

“Woah, damnit!”

Licht strained his body, nearly bursting his hands that were busy manipulating the wood with such a fast stop. Looking back, he saw the group of elves that he had nearly barreled through.

Wait, elves? What the heck?

Licht confusedly realigned the constructed egg body to get a better look. If the canvas bags and sacks were anything to go by, the group was traveling north. Their sickly gray expressions gave him pause as well, and one of them was even in a makeshift stretcher. What had happened while he was away?

“I hope that’s not because of my evolution.”

Licht sighed and dispelled the egg brought forth by [Construct Body]. After a moment it cracked apart and fell to the side. Licht stepped out and surveyed their expressions.

What the heck? Why do they all seem so tense? Licht found a recognizable face in the back, sitting alongside two elf children who seemed to be pretty tense as well.

“What’s happened here? You’re all moving north? Racheal?”

Licht realized after speaking that the shocked looks of the elves were warranted. After all, he had really never interacted with most of them after their night battle. Most, he imagined, had probably remained unconvinced of his existence until now. He hadn’t been seen by all the elves that night, after all. Not to mention he had only interacted with Racheal since then.

But more so than shock, the faces before him lacked any recognition of his words.

“Oh, there seems to be a language barrier.”

Actually, there were a couple present who seemed to recognize his rumblings as speech. Racheal, who was at the back, and Kushal, the elf man who was closest to Licht right now.

“Licht!”

“Racheal?”

Licht’s focus was drawn to the back of the crowd for a brief moment, missing the swift movement of Kushal withdrawing a bronze sword coated in green slime.