Cara woke the others with breakfast at dawn. “Fresh berries, and roasted greklin!” It was nice to be able to cook on an open fire, even on the Forest floor. Without Jeremy, it would have been too dangerous, too much risk of drawing unwanted attention.

“Smells… delicious,” Ted said, a fake smile plastered across his face.

It was good to see he hadn’t wasted any Oratory point on Deception, at least. “You’ll like it.” Hopefully. Cooking was another profession skill, yet again unfairly limiting her ability to improve, no matter how hard she tried. Stupid skill system.

Jeremy had something he wanted to discuss after they ate. Beyond that, he said nothing, sticking to eating with his usual efficiency. Whatever it was, it had to be important. It hung over breakfast like a dense fog, smothering any hope of pleasant conversations.

Why wouldn’t he tell her already?

She ate in large bites, chewing quickly. No amount of badgering Jeremy would make him spill the beans early—bitter experience had made that abundantly clear. The quicker they ate, the sooner she’d know.

What could the secret be? Magical items? Scrolls? Was he defying orders and going with them? Why wouldn’t he tell them already?

Did he enjoy making her wait? He didn’t show it, but he’d kept his trips to the ruins a secret, too. What else was he hiding under that strait-laced exterior? Did Elivala know what he’d been up to? Had she put him up to it?

Ted didn’t cooperate with the plan. He ate slowly, even reading as he did so. It was a book on Archeology, a time-honored classic, not that many wood elves ever read it.

Cara had, cover to cover, more than once, each time wishing she could slip away and explore ancient ruins, discover all that hidden knowledge out there lost to the depths of time.

She clenched her jaw, a bitter taste in her mouth. Of course, the stupid System rules would have meant either wasting the Archeology experience or losing hard-earned levels in Bowyer and Leatherworker. It wasn’t worth it, no matter how tempting. Just like woodcarving, she’d never be any good at it.

Thank the Forest the book’s enchantments stopped it from getting damaged. The librarians got way too upset about books not coming back the way they left. Books were meant to be read, not sit on a shelf until the end of time.

How could he eat so slowly? Didn’t he care about knowing? Was the book really that enthralling for him?

At least she’d get to see some of what she’d missed out on all these decades. There had to be cool stuff there. What was it? How would they break the seal? What was Jeremy not telling them?

The moment slowpoke Ted put the last bite of breakfast in his mouth, Cara demanded that Jeremy tell them what was going on.

“I have told you both of Sigurd,” Jeremy said, like they didn’t both already know that.

Cara clasped her hands together and flexed her knuckles. “More than once. Come on, spill it, we’ve got a ruin to explore!”

“That is not all.” Jeremy paused, as if the waiting wasn’t torture. “He traveled with a non-Hero called Elenkar. Elenkar became Siguard’s Companion, and leveled like a Hero from then on.”

Cara’s stomach fluttered. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be.

“Did he come back to life like a Hero?” Ted asked.

Jeremy sighed and shook his head. “Alas, he fell fighting a dragon. He did not return.”

A shame. Not that Cara would want to be a Hero, anyway. Ted being one was bad enough, but he wasn’t like those from the Age of Heroes. He’d been kidnapped and forced into it. He hadn’t chosen it.

It’d be useful.

That treacherous voice in her head could go and bury itself in the Deep-Forest. It didn’t matter how much faster she’d level—Heroes were a blight on the world. She would not be an accessory to that. She couldn’t.

Cara ground her teeth, and held back a string of Wood Elven profanities. No matter how called for, that wasn’t a helpful response. “You better not be suggesting what I think you are.”

Jeremy’s infuriating confidence didn’t waver. “You’re a Ranger. You’ll do what must be done.”

Her heart thundered and her fists balled up. “Dishonor the fallen?”

Ted’s wide eyes darted between them, clearly trying his best to stay out of it.

Coward. The next words out of her mouth would only make things worse, but knowing that did nothing to stop her. “It’s bad enough you’re a Hero, without making me complicit.”

“Cara…” Ted bit his lip and held his hands out in front of him, palms facing down. The human probably thought it was a calming motion, rather than an incitement to riot. “You don’t have to do this.”

Jeremy’s look said otherwise. Worse, the Prowler was right. She did have to do it.

Damn you, world, damn you to the end of time. “Do it.”

***

“Do it.” Cara spat the words out with a venom that Ted hadn’t thought her capable of.

Knowing he shouldn’t take it personally didn’t make it any easier. There was a reason Jeremy had waited to tell them, the same reason half of the Keepers had shoved him out of the door even after he helped save their village. “You sure?”

She glared and silently offered her hand. Not an ideal response, but it would have to do.

It was the logical decision. They couldn’t afford to give up any advantage, not with a quest to save the world and a party of a mere three, soon to be two.

Ted took her hand and a dull heaviness pulled at his chest. Cara was never sweaty or jittery, not until now. He couldn’t even begin to imagine how this felt.

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Was this really worth it? It wouldn’t make her a Hero, but that might not matter to her fellow wood elves.

She gripped his hand tight and nodded curtly. “For the Forest.”

He bit his lip, closed his eyes, and focused inward. There had to be something about Companions.

Companion slots used: 0/1

Do you wish to make Cara Tolabar So’aroaska your companion? Yes/No.

Yes.

Awaiting confirmation.

Cara’s lips curled and her nose wrinkled, but she didn’t look away. Would she regret it?

Would she hate him?

“It’s not too late to—”

Companion confirmed: Cara Tolabar So’aroska

“I’m a Ranger. We do what needs to be done.” She turned away with a growl and set off toward the ruins. “Let’s go.”

Cara led the rest of the way, setting a pace that forced Ted to jog to keep up. Fortunately, it wasn’t far. The trees soon gave way to a grass clearing at least a hundred yards across.

In the middle of the clearing sat a 30-foot-wide circle of five stone blocks, arranged like a decagon with half the pieces missing. Each block was ten-foot-wide and several stories high, with a gap of ten feet again between them. In the center of those was nothing but grass.

Or so it appeared—there had to be more to it. Ted activated Discern Magic and, sure enough, the whole ruin lit up with power, a swirling mass of colors dominated by teals and blues with golden highlights. “There’s magic all over the ruins. I can’t tell what it does, but it’s extremely powerful. Tidy, too.”

Ted and Cara stopped a little way back from the stones. Jeremy kept walking. Without a moment’s hesitation, he strode between two of the rocks and vanished in a flurry of blue magical activity, disappearing from front to back.

It didn’t look like teleportation, which moved someone all at once, even if the color matched. Invisibility? A portal? Disintegration? Ted hoped it wasn’t the latter. “Think he’s alright?”

Cara bared her teeth and howled with rage. She glared after him and shook her head. “Yeah, he’s fine. It really isn’t his first time here, is it? All those times I wanted to come and he wouldn’t let me!”

As frustrating as that had to be, at least it meant Jeremy already had the inside scoop. Whatever the magic did, it probably wasn’t disintegration. Ted braced himself and stepped through the gap.

Nothing happened. Ordinary grass pressed against his boots and the stone blocks loomed around him, but there was no Jeremy in sight. Weird. And what was keeping Cara? He looked over his shoulder, but she was gone as well.

Did the magic affect only wood elves? He backtracked out of the stone circle and checked all around the corner. Still no Cara. They were both gone.

Another burst of magic and Cara reappeared from the threshold of the stone circle. “Come on, we’re waiting!”

He glowered back at her. Did he look like he wanted to be the one left out? “It didn’t take me.”

“Huh.” Cara’s eyebrows pulled together, and she pondered for a moment. “Take my arm.”

They linked arms and shared a cautious grin. Maybe it would work, only one way to find out. Ted braced himself and they stepped over the threshold as one.

Magic tingled across his skin, passing from front to back. Cara clung to his arm as they passed the threshold, bouncing with excitement and looking around like a kid in a candy store.

The grass and stone had vanished, replaced by bark much like that in Tolabar, except here they were decorated with carvings depicting wood elves, trees, and the various creatures of the Great Forest. No, not carvings—they had grown out of the wall, formed by magic rather than by anything as crude as a knife.

Warm, silvery light filled the room, emanating from the five ethereal orbs floating in a pentagon above. Amidst the many wonders before them stood Jeremy, who noted their arrival with a mere cursory nod and a stoic expression that verged on boredom.

The room’s dimensions and shape mirrored that of the stone circle in the Forest. Five blue, shimmering portals sat in the oblong openings around the wall, each no doubt leading back into the forest clearing. Between those gaps stood five ornate wooden doors, set into the bark walls and sealed shut.

The multicolored magic along the walls of the room was denser and brighter than any Ted had seen before. It formed an intricate tapestry, clearly woven with love and care over many years, if not centuries. There was a pattern to it, a structure built up from smaller pieces coming together to form a larger whole.

Sections were reused, modified, and built upon in an all too familiar way. The longer he marveled at it, the more certain he became that, at its heart, magic was a form of code. Beautiful, elegant code woven into the fabric of the room. Logic made manifest.

Was the room itself magical? The magic that had brought them here was clearly incredibly powerful. Just how far had they traveled?

Was there even an answer to that question? Whatever the spells in the walls were, they were beyond anything else he’d seen, and included a dizzying array of different magical types. For all he knew, this could be a pocket dimension, an area of space created for the wood elven mages to gather in.

Ted allowed himself a few moments to soak in the majesty of the magic before him, letting the questions of how and why fall aside. For all its power, the magic wasn’t merely functional. Wood Elvish words were woven into every strand. Comments, stories, love letters—form and function brought together with all the time and care in the world.

He could spend a lifetime studying it and still never understand it all. Alas, time was one thing they did not have, certainly not enough to waste admiring the work of dead artists.

Very different magic sat across each of the five doors. It was a harsh magic, brutally efficient in design, lacking even a hint of elegance or flair. A tool, and an ugly one at that. Had they been in a hurry, or had they simply not cared?

Cara’s breath tingled upon his neck, suddenly right behind him. “What do you see?”

“You don’t have Discern Magic, do you?”

A pause. Her breaths grew heavier. “No. I can’t justify it.”

“A tale of two parts,” Ted said, trying not to let the pity she wouldn’t want creep into his voice. “There’s wood elven magic woven into the bark—I doubt it’s an actual tree—and… it’s glorious. Imagine a hundred lifetimes woven into spells and saved for all eternity.”

“Incredible.” Cara’s breath caught, and her voice quietened. “Imagine what we could have achieved if this place had never been destroyed. The other part is the seals, right?”

“Yeah.” Even as an outlander, it hurt to see the cultural vandalism. For a wood elf, it had to be heartbreaking. “As expected, I can’t see any way to undo the magic. There’s writing burned onto the doors, but I can’t read it.”

“Divine Script,” Jeremy said solemnly. “‘By the blood of the Divine Emperor, I seal this heresy for all time.’”

Ted tensed up. Did Jeremy think he shared the emperor’s blood? Was that why they were here?

Jeremy pointed at one of the seals. “The current Emperor is human. Your blood might be enough.”

The tension in Ted’s neck eased a little. That connection made sense. Maybe it would work, but using his blood for magic wasn’t plan A material. Maybe plan C, plan B at worst. He needed a plan A, and fast.

The seal was ancient and powerful beyond reckoning. Where to even start? It wasn’t as if a few more moments were likely to reveal secrets the elves hadn’t found in millennia. “Maybe. I’d like to have a look around first, before I resort to spilling my own blood.”

“Make it quick.”

“Will do.” Ted activated Archeologist’s Sight, and his head spun. Information flooded into his head, hot pokers stabbing into his temple. Too much, too damned much.

He deactivated Discern Magic and the pain dropped away. The garbled mess that Archeologist’s Sight had been shouting at him slowly came into focus, its insights floating to the surface of his thoughts.

The circular shape of the doors was a reference to the equality of their order. The five doors represented the five villages.

Archeology skill increased 1 → 2!

Neither of the insights were based on new knowledge. However, instead of needing to be dredged from the corners of his mind, they rushed to the front, eager to serve. It was like having a virtual assistant in his head, categorizing everything, and highlighting what he needed.

Did the skill affect his thoughts like telepathy, or was it fundamentally changing how his mind worked? A worrying question, but one that could wait. At least he could turn the ability off whenever he didn’t need it.

“Here.” Ted pointed to a spot above the door. “You’d expect a sign here, but there’s nothing.” If this was a place for mages, wouldn’t they all be able to see magic? Ted switched back to Discern Magic, and the sign was exactly where it was supposed to be. “It says, ‘Mend the Body’.”

Each of the five doors had a similar sign above it, corresponding no doubt to what lay sealed beyond. “Commune with Nature. Grow the Forest. Shapechange the Self.” Ted trembled as he read the last sign. “Rebirth the Fallen. Guys… I think behind this door is resurrection magic.”