The path wound and circled through the woods, looping around and reconnecting with itself. Based on the frequent benches and intersections with wooden signs marked with distances, Iris guessed the old path to be a scenic walking trail. Though getting lost had been a concern at first, the girls soon found a roofed bulletin board that housed a basic map of the trail, including a few exits marked with which sections of the city they led to. There were words on the map in a script neither of them recognized, and while inspecting it Iris realized that the distances were measured in a unit she didn't know either.

They had a brief encounter with a pair of patrolling guards who spoke to them in a language they didn't know, and then with a thick accent and clumsy words in the language they spoke. Iris and Victoria were young women wearing mage robes and armed only with Victoria's mostly ornamental saber and Iris's nondescript walking stick, the guards didn't suspect for a second that they had come from the Gaping Maw. Instead, they explained that the trails were closed due to the pirate attack while Victoria convincingly feigned shock and ignorance and Iris put on her most convincing confused-and-scared expression. None-the-wiser, the guards directed them towards the exit they had already picked from the map and they were soon on their way again.

Sounds of laughter and conversation joined the breeze as they neared the end of the trail, which terminated onto a solid stone sidewalk. Instead of a road beyond the sidewalk, however, a short tarnished-silver fence blocked a sheer drop to a canal several feet below. The branches of the trees behind the sidewalk extended out over the canal and no small amount of leaves floated alongside the small boats that traversed it.

Though the sidewalk they now stood on bordered only the heavily wooded walking trails, the opposite side of the canal was lined with buildings each spaced far enough apart to accommodate large trees and a foot path between them. Most were built of white marble, though some were built from bricks or redwood on marble foundations. The oldest looking buildings were all built on old slabs of formed grey stone, the sides of which had been eroded into concave curves where they met the canals.

There were as many birds and butterflies in the air and the branches over head as there were people on the sidewalks. Most of those people were green-skinned elves, though there quite a few orcs and the occasional pale-skinned elf among them. Notably, the pair didn't see any humans, though they often saw one or two people of various other species, including a few gargoyles, a pair of women with pink-skin and horns like two of the witches Iris had met, and a trio of halflings. They didn't see anyone else using powers and guessed the usual city decorum applied, so they simply walked rather blipping or floating.

The feature of the city that struck Iris the most wasn't its gleaming white buildings or crisscrossing canals, but the sheer fact that there were more trees than buildings. At every turn she expected to step into the city proper, were buildings dominated the land and trees were relegated to edges, planters and too-small parks, but it never came. It seemed the entirety of Fale Nalore was built within the swamp, rather than in place of it.

Victoria smirked slightly when she caught Iris wistfully staring up at the cracks of sunny sky in the canopy, "Everveil's like this too, every elf city is. It's a common saying that there should be at least as many trees as people. We don't have this many canals, though."

"You'll have to take me there one day," Iris smiled, "I'll make sure it's on my list."

The girls earned a few odds looks from apparent locals, though not as many as they had expected. For the most part, they seemed to simply blend in with the other travelers from afar. They noticed that in most conversation between orcs and swamp elves the old language was used, while most conversations involving anyone noticeably non-local used the same language as Iris and Victoria.

After quite a bit of walking, the eldest tree they were looking for -- according to the note Iris had been given -- turned out not to be the tallest tower-tree. Without any other ideas, they resorted to asking strangers for directions. No one seemed to recognize the name Clariel Fogborn so they simply asked about the oldest tree, and the locals certainly knew the answer to that. Since they couldn't read street signs, they relied on sequential "left-then-right" instructions and sometimes as little as a point in the right direction, so they repeatedly asked passersby along the way for to make sure they hadn't gotten lost. Each swamp elf they asked seemed surprised and even sometimes delighted that a pair of travelers wanted to see the "the old tree," and happily told them which way to go.

By the time they finally found it the pair were breathing slightly heavier than usual and sweating heavily -- though Iris wondered if it was actually sweat and not dew settling on her skin from the thick, humid air. She was struck with the sense that her body was overworked, and that her magical attributes were carrying most of the weight instead.

"Are we out of shape?" Iris gasped as they stopped before the old tree.

"Yeah," Victoria spoke quickly between breaths, "I've been flying too much."

"I'd done a lot of jumping and running," Iris said, "but I don't think I've just walked this far since the hunt."

"If Eli finds out about this," Victoria paused for one more breath, "he's going to make us walk everywhere."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Iris groaned at the thought, and the pair turned their attention towards the tree. It was a tall one, certainly, punching through the canopy and high into the air above, but it didn't seem to be the same species as the enormous trees and didn't remotely approach their monumental height. Instead, its leaves and bark matched those of the most prominent type of tree in the swamp, though its shape was quite different. Its trunk was a wide as six or seven of its kin and had a wavy shape to it as if actually comprised of many thinner trees fused together. A half-crescent walkway surrounded one side, with a few footpaths leading into the understory of smaller trees that crowded around the trunk. On the opposite side of the tree from the half-crescent was an expanse of dense, seemingly untouched swamp.

"It's a pretty nice tree," Iris said earnestly, "I wonder why it's shaped like that?"

"I think it's the vines," Victoria said, "at least, that's what they told me about the trees back home when I was a kid. When a tree with vines lives long enough, some of the vines grow old with it and grow into thick trunks of their own. Over a long enough time, the tree grows wide enough to envelope those vines, absorbing them into part of itself. Trees like this are said to be connected to the heart of their forest, and some druids even worship them as deities."

"Whoa," Iris whispered, looking upon the tree in a new light.

Victoria certainly looked upon the tree with reverence but she wasn't enamored by it like Iris, who was seeing an ancient tree for the first time. She leaned past Iris to get a better look at something, and then pointed, "there's our red temple."

Situated on the sidewalk just beyond the half-crescent surrounding the old tree was a humble temple built of worn and faded bricks. It was on an old stone foundation block, protected from erosion by the much more recently constructed sidewalk but still pockmarked with depressions and channels carved by lifetimes of rain. Though it seemed cared for, the building appeared vacant with no lights, sounds or movement from any of the windows.

The double doors were built from thick, dark wood and banded in iron, and seemed old but still much newer than the bricks that framed them. They were securely locked with a large padlock that didn't look often used, and a bronze plaque in the ancient language was embedded in the wall beside them.

"It must be a historical building," Victoria said, "but this has got to be it, right?"

Iris blipped onto the sidewalk from atop the short steps of the temple and looked around in every direction, "I don't see any other brick buildings or temples, but there's a way down." Iris pointed.

Victoria joined her on the sidewalk and followed her point towards a set of stairs up against the side of the temple, seemingly carved directly into the foundation. They were steep and narrow, and obscured by shadows of dense foliage.

"The note said beneath the temple," Victoria shrugged.

Iris hesitated for a second, "I don't like it."

Victoria looked at her with mild surprise, "you sound--"

"Like Eli, I know, but this witch -- Dala -- she had some idea in her head that it was her place to teach me to be more careful, and seemed willing to do some messed up stuff to do it. I was willing to see this through if we found an active temple full of people who said 'oh yeah, we know Clariel, she's the best!' -- but this place doesn't fill me with confidence that it's not part of Dala's scheme."

Victoria looked back towards the building, or rather below it, with her auravision, "there's definitely a room down there, but it's warded somehow. I can't see through it."

"It's a dungeon," Iris's tone was matter-of-fact but tinged with disappointment, "let's go."

She had already blipped and started walking off before Victoria called out with more impatience than urgency, "Iris, wait."

She kept walking for a moment, but sighed and blipped back when she realized Victoria wasn't following.

"You're right to be cautious--" Victoria began, "I mean, it's great that you're being cautious now, keep doing that. Maybe we should think about this a bit more, though?"

"It really sounds like you're about to try to convince me not to be cautious," Iris pointed out, "don't start flip-flopping lectures on me or I'm gonna flip too."

Iris had made up her mind, ripped the bandage off and fully committed herself to the safe course of action this time. She wasn't about to walk into a trap and give Dala the satisfaction of being right about her, and the only way she knew how to how to commit to something was with every fiber of her being.

"Look, sometimes caution has to be budgeted," Victoria began, "I know you think you're tough enough to get by with a nightmare haunting you, but it hasn't even gotten bad yet. Whatever you're going through now is just the start, and it'll only get worse the longer you're stuck with that thing. I just think this is a time when a little risk is warranted."

Iris stared at her flatly. She didn't necessarily have any problem with Victoria's words, in fact they were more or less what she had wanted to hear. Every drop of her desire was yearning to go blipping down those stairs and find out what secrets awaited her beneath an old vacant temple in a charming elven city deep in a giant swamp -- but her willpower was firmly allocated in the opposite direction.

Iris loved to be reckless, but this was a situation so blatantly suspicious that she refused to let herself charge into it, if only to prove that she wasn't naive -- that she could make the right decision sometimes. Something clicked in her head like a notched lever finally slipping into place with one last push.

"You know what, no!" Iris shouted, causing Victoria to jolt, "fuck that witch, and fuck her stupid lesson!"

Victoria slightly twisted her head and furrowed her brow at Iris.

"I'm so tired of everyone thinking the problem is that I'm stupid!" she shouted before switching to a mocking voice that sounded kind of like Eli, "'why'd you do that Iris, didn't you know it was dangerous?' 'of course there was a monster in there Iris, how did you not see that coming?' I'm sick of it! I'm not an idiot," she stopped to motion dramatically at the temple with both arms, "I can see the danger! It's right there! I'm not about to walk into it because I'm too young and naive to know it's there, I'm gonna walk into it because it'll be fucking cool! Because that's where the adventures are! Because I fucking want to!"

Victoria took a breath as she realized Iris wasn't finished.

"And you know what?! I'm not going to deny myself that just to satisfy someone else," she let out a quick breath and slowed the pace of her speech, "I don't care how they want me to live, I'm going to do what I want, and what I want is to go explore that creepy, definitely unsafe temple basement with my friend."

Victoria allowed Iris a moment to settle, and then smiled faintly, "let's go then."

Iris nodded a few times as she took a steadying breath, and then blipped to the stairs.