The Blight

Alabaster diligently searched the blighted forest. It was not the first and he expected it wouldn't be the last blighted forest he searched.

Rumor said he would find someone cleaning up the blight, trying to fight the abnormal disease that slowly wiped out hundreds of acres of forest. Superstition said she was spreading it, but Alabaster knew better than to trust superstition.

He had been here two weeks, nearly three. He expected he would be another two before giving up. The last took about that long to drain his hope. Decades ago, the first he swept through quickly. A week and a half before he returned to civilization, not from lost hope. He simply had not been prepared.

He had lost count of how many he had searched. But every two or three years another town near the wild forests would report blight. Fire too. He helped more directly to fight those. There was much more an experienced mage could do.

His stamina and preparations could now last him months if need be. Yet his search methods had also improved, so a few weeks was usually all he needed to determine the mythical figure was absent, or didn't want to be found.

As he came across a seemingly untouched tree stump, he decided to rest. Setting down his pack, he began to loosen his armor and footwear.

The old leather was stiff, its once deep browns faded to grays and tans. He knew how to use just enough force to prevent the leather from creasing or cracking. He still oiled it, of course, but his preferred oil was less effective in keeping the material soft and workable. Instead it had almost no scent, burned poorly, and was surprisingly cheap to make. He didn't even need to get it from an Alchemist or tannery. He had had the armor for almost two decades, having commissioned it exclusively for blight trips.

His clothes underneath he replace more often. Burning them after his blight expeditions. They were much harder to clean. To keep costs down he chose undyed linens that had been previously used and washed, softening the fabric. Comfort was important.

His pack was similar to his clothes, washing the blight out of a leather pack had proved difficult. He didn't need the durability and cloth was lighter and cheaper anyway.

His footwear was the exception to this ensemble. Expensive and soft leather, fitted well and broken in for at least a month for maximum comfort. Then enchanted for durability. He probably could have hired a small team of scouts for what his shoes cost. But money wasn't really a factor. His penny-pinching more of an old habit.

He rummaged through his pack for trail rations and his waterskin. The waterskin showed another expensive enchantment. Clean water was important. As he ate and drank he worried his hands through his hair. He had cut the white hair very short before he left, and now he regretted it. It grew unevenly, the left side much faster than the right. He wasn't sure how bad it looked, but it felt bad to run his hands through. He had preferred it long, he could tie it back to make the length difference unknown, but that wasn't the popular style anymore.

It had gone gray unevenly as well. From stress, he was sure. An expensive magic treatment had returned its color, brown instead of red. Then black when it went gray from age. Now it was white and he wasn't certain it would stand up to another treatment.

His third major expense was the silk handkerchief he pulled from his shirt pocket. The fine cloth had been enchanted with a cleaning spell. Keeping it perfectly sanitary. He removed his shoes and wiped the sweat from his feet and inside the shoe, doing so quickly in case he needed to be back on the move suddenly. Cleanliness was important, and in the blight, it was vital.

Before packing up his brief campsite he made one final adjustment to his equipment. A flat piece of metal on a leather harness sat over his right shoulder blade. The harness was under his shirt, the metal contacting his skin, it was inconvenient and often chaffed. Yet, he needed it to further protect his clothing and gear. He lifted his shirt and ran the cleaning handkerchief carefully along the edges of the plate, his expression all stern focus. He examined the handkerchief, checking for damage and contamination. Satisfied, he returned to clean under the leather straps, starting at one sore spot where a buckle had been digging in. The magic in the silk stinging his tender skin slightly.

As he finished the tedious task, his focus wandered. His eyes glanced out into the field of dead and dying trees. Some hundred meters out, his unfocused eyes passed over a small ball of dark green magic. It floated three meters off the ground drifting lazily east deeper into the forest. Its height kept it up among the lowest branches and canopy, some of which still held the odd green leaf.

As his mind cataloged the ball his calm snapped. He stood swiftly, knocking his pack to the ground and leaning into a run. He moved with the speed of someone at least third of his apparent age. Parts of his loosened armor fluttering ineffectually. The brigandine vest lay discarded on the tree stump.

He made it to where the mana orb had been, only to find it nearly as far away again, this time slightly south. Further away from his pack and armor. He had only slowed to a jog to get his bearings, so renewed his sprint in the new direction.

This was not the first time he had abandoned camp to chase a mana wisp through a dying forest. He hoped it would be the last. The wisps were not the pixies or fairies of myth, they were not tricksters as far as he knew. He had sometimes believed they could be testing him, or simply directing him away from their masters. Yet still, he chased them, hoping for a different outcome this time.

The mana wisp led him off in a slightly new direction a second time. The third he lost sight of it among slightly denser trees. The fallen branches and uneven terrain forced him to slow for the final third of his sprint until he burst into an open clearing.

Casting his eyes around the upper canopy he almost missed the statuesque figure facing a tree some 20 meters off from him. He was quite sure the figure now stood in the direction he had come from, but for this encounter he could not be certain.

The humanoid form he had been led to looked like a rough sketch of a short woman, carved from stark white cloth. She was a head shorter than him. With thin limbs, a white belt at her waist accented her form, pulling the cloth in and causing it to puff out above and below. Alabaster identified that as the core reason he mentally described her as female. Secondarily a larger bundle of cloth had been gathered behind her head. Not hair but the allusion to it.

As he examined her more, he noted the cloth was pulled tight and left baggy in several places. Baggy around all the joints, so the cloth could move freely without binding, and tight on either side of a joint to prevent large sections of loose fabric, stopping tangling and snags. Any womanly figure she might have was hidden under those baggy sections. No he had identified her as female out of bias, because the being he was looking for was female. All dryads were female presenting.

As he drifted closer to her, the wisp appeared again, from behind a tree to his left, some ten meters away. He slowed down. His carefully prepared introduction caught in his throat. This wasn't quite what he expected to find.

"You are quite persistent, I'll grant you that. Yet, why would you bring that antipode, into my presence, into my forest?"

He looked around uncertainly at the dying trees, "Uh, I didn't-"

"Yes, I know you didn't cause the blight. I'm not an idiot. We would not be speaking if I thought that." She repositioned slightly, shifting her body around the tree, her right hand moving to a higher position on the bark. As she moved it, the glow of bright green life magic shone, so dense it nearly dripped off her gloved hand.

The nearly blinding magic was like looking at the sun to Alabaster. He squinted reflexively though it did not hurt to look at. Her interruption reminded him he was here for a purpose. "I apologize if my condition offends you. My name is Alabaster Lions, and I have been seeking your persons for decades. I would like to consult with you on a somewhat delicate matter." His words were carefully crafted, he had done his research. Firstly, he needed to entice her to ask follow up questions.

"Decades? You do know that there are correct ways to contact my people? A few seasons should have sufficed."

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"Your people are hard to find. I have tried the old ways, the flower circles. The stone doorways. Nothing I did even trembled mana as much as a new apprentice sneezing. I have many human contacts but none were able to arrange proper meetings." After a short pause he added. "I feel entitled to nothing, and make no demands."

The tone around the white figure changed briefly, the tree she was in contact with trembled and one of the branches snapped, falling to the ground. Unlike the rest of the tree, it was dry and free of green leaves. A second wisp emerged from the trees on the right side, flanking both of them. The figure leaned into the tree, her hands moving more, but now in a more gentle circular pattern. It reminded Alabaster of someone consoling an upset pet, or mother consoling a child. He thought she might even be whispering to it, with how her face was near the bark as well.

The new wisp interrupted his thoughts. "One moment, please remain silent." It was the woman's voice, but sounded slightly hollow.

To himself, he thought 'A direct request? How odd.'

He waited silently for the woman to finish her task. He would be patient, he had already waited so long.

Some time later, she shifted and withdrew her hands, drawing out an impossible amount of life mana from the tree. Alabaster shifted in surprise, his stiff knees and spine popping from the change. The tree itself was far more withered and clearly dead now, though Alabaster could not say exactly when the change had occurred.

The woman in white lifted both glowing hands before her, and began to compress the life energy into a ball. As it shrank, a point at the center stayed bright, nearly white. The light shined out even to those without mana senses. Yet the outside grew dim and dark green. Finally, with care and motions that spoke to ritual, the woman withdrew a small packet of cloth from the front of her suit. The packet and spark of life slowly moved into the same space in front of her. The mana slowly being absorbed into the square of cloth.

Alabaster could tell that it wasn't being absorbed by the cloth itself, but something inside it. He shifted uneasily at the sight of dozens of the packets stuck to the front of the woman's suit. The life mana in just that one packet was dangerous. Not in the way that fire or ice mana could be dangerous. Life mana had its own set of unique threats.

Finished she turned to observe him more directly. Yet her body language didn't match what Alabaster saw was possible, as her suit had no face mask. No openings for air or sight. It was clearly one whole piece of continuous cloth. The only opening bunched up behind her head to tie it off while giving the aesthetics of a hairstyle.

A bolt of nostalgia ran through Alabaster as the suit brought forth his own attempts at something similar. Hiring out scouts or messengers to search the blight would have been cheap if not for the need to protect them from the blight itself. It was not as deadly as any human disease. Hardly toxic at all really, since it fed only on plants. Yet, its nature meant that it could be easily brought to other locations, going unnoticed trapped in fabrics, or hair, or even the small folds of skin around the eye. That was only the main difficulty with the outside of the body.

Enchantments like the one on his silk handkerchief were expensive and impossible to make to the scale required for proper decontamination. So he had attempted to design, and then commissioned a design for a sealed suit. A full body covering that could prevent direct contact with the blight then be removed and disposed of without cross contamination. It had been an expensive foray into the limits of modern tailoring and manufacturing costs. The need for sight, air, and food for those in the suits making the task nearly impossible.

The woman's white suit was possibly the perfected design, he closed his mouth before asking about it. She must have been using suits like it for far longer than he had been alive.

She had been staring at him for two minutes. Alabaster assumed she was trying to take a measure of him, a test of wills to see if he would suddenly break. He chose not to.

"Thank you for remaining silent." She finally said, her voice wasn't dismissive, she clearly meant it.

Alabaster nodded in return.

"Unfortunately, it is possible you have made an error that has wasted a lot of your own time and a little of my own. My sisters have spoken of how lost humans have become. Their knowledge of history has grown corrupted and is collapsing in on rumor and ghost stories while ignoring obvious truths due to misplaced faith."

Alabaster shifted uneasily under the criticism. To some degree it was a direct attack on his research efforts. He remained silent.

The woman in white sighed loudly, the sound echoing through the two wisps around them. "Your earlier language, and now your choice to not ask for clarification suggests you are looking for a Fae. A creature of myth from long dead history. So tell me directly, who or what are you looking for."

She delivered the question like a command, which Alabaster found much easier to reply to. "I seek any ancient being, any who has lived so long as to see the forests she planted die of old age. One who-"

"Speak plainly and properly, you fool." She interrupted, irritation plain in her voice.

He nodded in apology. "I seek a Fae dryad. Which I believe you are."

She shook her head, "Dryads are not Fae. All of the Fae left this word thousands of years ago. They left at the same time as the gods and demi-gods. Yes they are also gone, yet we hear that you still pray to them. They cannot hear your words, and could do nothing even if they did hear them." Her tone was blunt and shifted towards bitter.

Alabaster froze still from the first statement. Clearly he had failed in his research. The one solid truth about Fae was that they did not lie, which meant...

"So I ask again. Why did you not try more conventional means of contact? My sisters might be hard to find but surely your own ghost stories spoke of their oneness with the forests. You could have wandered the wilds shouting at the trees and found one of us after a few years."

This conversation was not going as Alabaster expected, he let his tongue react before his mind. "Would I have found you specifically, or would another dryad really meet with someone carrying my burden, you clearly sensed it immediately."

"Your burden," she said viciously, "A stockpile of death mana is not a burden, it is a weapon. Why would you bring it with you?"

Alabaster stood calmly, yet he could not prevent his frustration and anger from coloring his voice. "It is a burden because I cannot bring it anywhere else. It is a part of me, fused into my very being, impossible to remove."

The woman in white did not react to his anger. She paused briefly before walking towards, then around Alabaster. Tilting her head to survey his form. "Hmmm, I had thought you were simply trying to hide it. That metal plate would probably prevent most creatures from intuitively sensing it, even without trained mana knowledge."

He remained calm, trying to restrain his anger and frustration. His research had assured him she would know and understand his curse. Not simply assume it was a weapon as most people did.

"Remove your shirt." She directed. "Then the plate, assuming it is stable."

He was shocked by the request, so complied slowly. Pulling the garment over his head. In doing so, he found he was still holding his silk handkerchief, clutched firmly in his left hand. He decided himself lucky today, that he had not discarded it during his run. "It is stable." He spoke as he loosened the leather straps to remove the plate. "It is not to hide it, but to protect my clothes and armor, the death seeps out, inevitably rotting anything over my back." Carefully he removed the plate, ensuring the leather straps did not touch the once protected skin. Then he used his handkerchief to wipe it down, it was a rare opportunity to clean it properly, and he had not finished with his earlier attempt.

As the plate cleared his body, the dryad sharply inhaled a mirror of the sound coming from the trees all around them. He heard her step closer. She was behind him and he chose to trust her, even if many mages would think that foolish. "Hmmm." She considered. "Yes, I can see how you wouldn't leave that behind. I assume you know that removing it will cause your death?"

He nodded, "Yes, of course. Even draining it weakens me significantly."

"Yes, as it should, antipodes are a careful balance. We dryads usually consider the quality of an antipode equal to how much of it you can draw off before it becomes unstable, preventing further use. Have you tested its limits?"

"Not really. The few times I've drawn more than a hundred units out of it, it begins sloshing around, making me queasy. And I cannot tell what percentage that would be, the mana is too dense inside it."

"Hmm, yes, I suppose that doesn't matter anyway, you can't really sell it off to a passing merchant. Well then, if it is stable, and you don't want it removed now. Find me again when you do, I can safely end your suffering." With that, she walked past him, back to the cluster of trees she was tending to before he arrived.

"Bwhu?" He stammered. "What? Wh- Why would I want that?" Seeing she wasn't stopping, he called out "That is not at all why I came to you."

She slowed, turning slightly. "Me, specifically? Yes you did mention that before. Indulge my curiosity then, what do your people call me these days."

He heard an air of humor in her voice, if it had been anger or warning he wouldn't have shared as much. "Usually it is The Spirit of the Blight. While reliable sightings are few, the stories survive. Tales of the twilight witch, or the mourning crone are also common, but they are less tied to the blight itself."

"Hmmm, and how do you think of me, what fearsome title comes to mind when hearing a branch suddenly snap while you search the blight?"

"I do not think of you simply as another scary title. I believe you have a proper name, as most beings do. So I think of you simply as the dryad." He coughed. "Or in my more dramatic moments, the dryad who chases the blight."

"Hmmm.." She considered, while turning to face him properly again. "I feel you know that truth a bit more than most. So what is your scary title, and why have you sought me out for so long."

He stiffened at the accusation, but pushed forth to accomplish his goal. "By necessity I am one of Her Majesty's Royal Mage Knights: The Black." He paused.

The dryad tilted her head, Alabaster could imagine her mouthing the words, like most did when hearing his title. "Huh, excellent wordplay, my compliments to the chef." She replied.

He continued without missing a beat, he had heard every possible reply to his name and title. "I have come to you, who has seen the last fall of man and gods. I seek guidance, the wisdom of the aged, for I am burdened with immortality."

She shook her head and spoke in sullen denial. "Immortality is a myth. Go talk to a therapist."