Our travel through the passageway was uneventful, other than a loud organ call from one of the strange four-winged bird things startling me so badly that I physically jumped from the pavement. Though the experience was remarkably terrifying and proved a theory I had that the area above the passageway was accessible to the bird-things, it also provided Kliviero with a good laugh, much to my chagrin.

A few more minutes passed by as we continued to work our way through the shady passage until, after what felt like far less time than the last time I traversed this path, we found ourselves standing at the edge of the Sail-tree woods. Much to my surprise, the woods appeared unchanged from my last journey here. The old slab path melted away into the knee-high grass just like before, vibrant, neon plants all around, the faint crimson hew to the air from the unusual sap extruded by the Sail-trees high above in the canopy. In truth, it was nice to know that there was some form of consistency here, although the pit in my stomach and the chill running along my spine was telling a very different story.

"Right then," I murmured while sweeping my eyes across the edge of the woods, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that finding what Farinosa needed here was not going to be a quick, or easy, job. "We've got some plants to find." I reached for my coat and retrieved the notebook, once again performing a brief scan of its pages to get a rough idea of what we were looking for, prompting me to place it back in my coat. Hopefully, Klivieros' knowledge of such flora would accelerate this process considerably, but either way, we were still investigating an entire forest for a token handful of highly specific plants.

"Let's get going then." Kliviero hopped free of my shoulder and started floating towards the woods, sweeping around some of the matted clusters of bushes, brambles and thickets of grass in search of what we needed. "I'll let you know if I find anything." She calls out after disappearing into the foliage; how precisely she thought I'd be able to hear her if she pottered off into the depths of the woods, I'll never know. Instead, I resolved to pick up the pace and pursue her while sweeping what she'd gone past to make sure we didn't pass up anything on the way.

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We performed a broad arcing sweep upon entering the woods, which brought us far to the left of the entranceway and quite a distance from the overgrown path. After a few minutes of walking, we came across a shallow groove in the land, kind of like an exceptionally short ravine that led us to the second plant we needed upon a hazard-free descent.

At the bottom of the short ravine, nestled in the side of the claystone walls, was a cluster of so-called 'Leachvine', a rather aggressive plant which, according to Farinosas' notes, has a penchant for violently attacking anything and everything that tries to harvest it. The plant, while highly aggressive, lacked barbs or spines to cause any real damage. Instead, it was covered in tiny syringe-like needles protruding no less than a centimetre each, with which it rams into the skin of an attack, hastily sucking as much fluid out of the attack as possible. Hence its name. The plant itself looked similar to a ball of roots, dark brown and surprisingly well camouflaged against the claystone wall from which it sprouted.

However, what made this worse was that the plants' vine-like structure was partially prehensile, a detail that Farinosa had decided to omit from her notes. I resolved to have a stern chat with her about such information once we finished the predicament here.

This one was quite the hassle to harvest, especially since I couldn't do anything to it without getting hurt. I had to resort to taking a large stick that had fallen into the ravine to physically pin the Leachvine against the wall so that Kliviero, with her arm reconfigured to a scythe again, could cleave what we needed from it. Thankfully, once the vine was cut free from the cluster, the vine went limp, and its needles retracted, a fortunate turn considering the complexity of handling such a thing. Once the vine went limp, I unzipped my bag, and Kliviero chuckled the cloven vine into storage, dusting herself off while I zipped the bag up.

"Leachvines are always a massive pain," She muttered while retrieving a small cylindrical stone from some kind of internal storage inside her waist, with which she started running it along the blade of her scythe honing the edge. "That one wasn't quite so bad thanks, I've seen far worse and far more aggressive ones than that in my time."

While she spoke, I felt an intense pressure being exerted upon my head, not from the outside like something trying to crush my skull, but rather from within, as if my very mind was trying to break free of its osseous prison. The pain grew stronger and was quickly joined by a desire to look up out of the ravine. Upon doing so, I saw something, only briefly, but I definitely saw something.

I saw it for such a short period of time that I could barely discern details, other than it was an umber brownish, and that there were glimmers of something reflective like glass.

I had no idea what it was, but I was already regretting not trying to bring the zab'erim with me when Farinosa sent me here. Who knows if that thing was hostile or not, or perhaps a scout for something far more malicious?

Now that it was gone, I couldn't discern its intentions, but considering the flash of umber and the glimmers of glass, I had a pretty good guess for what precisely it was, and if I was right, it was far from a good answer.

"Hey, are you alright?" Kliviero asked while fluttering up to check on me; she drifted upon her wings no more than a few inches from my face, the non-scythe hand pressed against my left temple. "Did you see something?"

"Yes, well, no," I answer, dumbstruck by what I think I saw and the sudden ebbing of the pressure within my head. "I don't know what I saw; one minute, something was standing by the edge of the land above us. The next moment, it's gone," I explained. Around this point, my subconscious suddenly kicked back in and flagged something up, most notably that the thing I saw, whatever it was, made not the faintest of sounds.

"Well, whatever it was, it's gone now." Kliviero reasoned before briefly flying up to the top of the defilade and checking the immediate vicinity. "Smells like Zhivaq incense, but far too little to be anything overly scary, we'd best keep our wits about us, though."

"Yeah," I shake my head vigorously to snap out of the splitting headache, an act that fixed the problem almost immediately. "Let's get going, find some more of those plants we need," I mumble while walking my way back to the grassy flats around us and taking a deep breath. The air did indeed smell of faint burning incense, but it was in such trace quantities that, had Kliviero not informed me in advance, I wouldn't have detected it.

Looking around the woods which surrounded us, nothing was amiss. The crimson sap mist surrounding us was doing nought more than waft gently through the air in large cloud-like banks, the visible particles of the fog clinging to whatever it could come across. Somehow the stuff wasn't toxic or irritative to breathe, although I decided to track around mist banks when I could to avoid prolonged exposure to the stuff.

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The third plant, thankfully, was much easier to find and significantly easier to collect. 'Myopic Moss' was the name Farinosa had given it, although I was unsure if this was its actual name or merely a nickname, considering how informal it was. It appeared to be a form of purplish moss which grows up the sides of sail-trees. The larger the tree, the more moss can be expected to grow upon its side, which in turn meant greater harvests. This description turned out far more accurate than the previous sparse description of Leachvine, as the collection of the moss was entirely uneventful. A few Ashen Bees wandered by, probably investigating this humanoid interloper in their woods and why said interloper was pulling chunks of moss from a tree.

According to her notes, Myopic Moss was a requirement for any kind of warding that worked around reducing or shortening any Protasi related effects, whether they be beneficial or not. Apparently, this stuff is necessary for creating textual wardings, specifically 'protective and directive' wardings, whatever that meant. Whilst I would find out eventually what she meant by this, I hypothesised, based on what I knew, that this moss acted like a vacuum or a magnet with which an item could be imbued to draw Protasi energy into it, either to cancel it out or to move it in a desired fashion.

After pulling several handfuls of the moss free and stowing the clumps in my bag, I turn to see where Kliviero had gone. A brief sweep of my view all around failed to find her, which worried me substantially considering what we've learnt above the Statue and her little Bee tricks.

"Hey, over here!" I hear her shout to my right, and a glance over that way saw her just rising over the edge of some bushes and unkempt hedges which had, somehow, found their way out here this far into the woods. "Found something that might be useful." She exclaimed while descending behind the plants again.

With no other leads, I rezip my backpack and head towards where she was buzzing around. Around halfway there, I start feeling a throbbing sensation inside my head, exactly the same as my previous headache a few minutes ago.

Stopping dead in my tracks, I grit my teeth intensely and throw myself around, aggressive searching my surroundings for the source of such pain or whatever enigmatic figure was the root cause of it.

Once more, I see the partial figure of something daring behind cover to my flank, still not enough to discern just what precisely it was, but enough to form an educated guess. Judging by the presence of umber and glass, the faint trace of incense and how quickly the thing appeared to move, I surmised that I was being stalked by a Zhivaq, presumably of an unknown group and with entirely unknown motives.

The way this thing darted out of view, it was as if the thing had some kind of premonition or some ability to read the strands of the future to discern possible outcomes to a given thing; for it to move as fast as it did, it must have known I was about to turn to observe it.

Whatever or whoever it was ultimately mattered not; what mattered was that it wasn't trying to harm me at this time, other than the headaches, of course, and it wasn't trying to approach me. I reasoned that, if my theory that it could look into the future was correct, perhaps it was trying to read my mind to discern my motives. Maybe it was doing nought more than act upon its curiosity which, in turn, inadvertently led to my headaches.

No matter, I would have time to formulate my reaction to such a thing at a later date, I had far more pressing issues to attend to, such as finding where Kliviero had vanished off to again.

Following along the path I was taking before the headache and the second sighting after retrieving my notebook once again, I eventually find Kliviero working away at something within the blades of grass. After but a few moments of observation, it was apparent that she was having some difficulty with whatever she was doing, which prompted me to take a closer look while thumbing through my notebook once again.

Kliviero emerged carrying several bulbous mushrooms, which appeared similar to giant puffball mushrooms in the real world, albeit small enough to hide within the knee-high grasses. After flicking through the notebook for a moment, I found Farinosas' notes on this particular plant, or rather fungi. 'Grassorb' is exceptionally vital to the propagation of warding, especially protective warding for 'Those dabbling in sorcerous activities' as the notes described. Farinosas' notes claimed that the fungi were also exceptionally easy to cultivate and grow, plus it was edible and fostered a heightened rate of Protasi development. However, I wasn't entirely sure of this myself.

"I couldn't find any more down there, unfortunately," Kliviero expressed regretfully while sweeping around the grass a little more. "I think something came through here and foraged some of the orbs before us; usually, they spawn in clusters." She ominously explained although I doubted that something or someone found this exact cluster of Grassorbs oh so conveniently before we had.

Once we had finished stowing the orb-like mushrooms away, Kliviero landed upon my shoulder again and returned to honing the edge of the scythe. In all honesty, I enjoyed this little adventure so far, out in the field performing some research and collecting samples; it was all so intriguing, especially with notes on hand to point me towards what I was looking for. However, that was all about to change...

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We had gotten our bearings and decided upon a direction to continue our search, with Kliviero fluttering ahead after a few more seconds of edge honing. We started walking deeper into the woods, only for the pulsing headache from earlier to return once more. This time the pain was far more significant and far more precise, as if something had taken a blazing hot scalpel and started a live vivisection of my frontal lobe above my right eye. This horrific, almost perfectly rectangular area of agony grew from nothing too debilitating within the blink of an eye, borderline incapacitating within a second.

"A-are you okay?" I hear Kliviero ask while she fluttered back towards me, my vision began to blur, and her voice trailed off into a numb, reverberating mess before I could formulate a response.

I collapse to my knees and grab at my head; I have no idea why I was, but I must assume I was trying to do something to combat the agony. While heavily reverberated to oblivion, my hearing could hear voices whispering about something; though it was too quiet to understand, it was far less reverberant than everything else.

I witnessed a series of bright lights emerging from the corners of my vision, only to rapidly approach the centre and consume the world around me in blinding white light. So bright were these lights that I could feel all of my exposed skin burning from the intense luminosity.

The blinding light ebbed away and left me in the same Sail-tree woods I was before, only this time there was no Kliviero, no shoals of crimson sap, even the shadows were different and what stars I could see seemed brighter.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

A thin purplish hew permeated over all I could see; nothing was spared from being tinged slightly towards pure purple, from the grass to the arcs of energy dancing and pirouetting high above the canopy in the heavens above.

A loud cracking sound called out from the left, followed by rustling leaves, which caused me to snap my view to identify the source of the noise, a noise that was far too crisp considering the state of my hearing a few moments ago.

Much to my dismay, a group of five Zhivaq come skulking out from behind some foliage in a rough column formation, foliage which was oddly absent before whatever the hell I was experiencing right now, a vision of the past, a premonition?

I wanted to hide or seek shelter from them, but I couldn't move. It was as if I was nought more than a fixed point of view, like a tripod camera watching and recording the event.

"Any sign of the beast brothers?" One of the Zhivaq spoke up. Judging by the rough direction of the partially distorted noise, I assumed this figure was the one taking point. One of the Zhivaq hunters swung its head around and looked towards me, but it couldn't see it, or at the very least, they didn't acknowledge my presence.

The Zhivaq were wearing typical Zhivaq attire, woven fibres for clothes, albeit far better constructed than the clothes I witnessed the Zhivaq bodies in the hedge-maze and the camp in the woods wearing. Their weapons were far better made, no crooked or knobbled timber but instead well-shaped and well-carved hardwood with a shining silvery spearhead which visibly cacked with unknown energy, one of pale sapphire and sickly emerald. Of note, however, unlike my previous encounters with the Zhivaq, they all lacked both the wicker-clay shields I had came to recognise them by or the abundance of backup weapons should their primary break. Confidence in their ability to fight possibly?

Wait a minute. I thought they could barely vocalise anything other than clicks and grunts, let alone a complex language with syllables and pronunciation. Why are they speaking English?

Though I could not get any answers from this place, I came up with a theory, not a very good one, mind you, but it was the best explanation I could come up with at the time. I think what was happening here was that my mind, or whatever was causing this to happen, didn't just want me to see this vision but to understand it as well. A level of understanding and comprehension that sight alone could not bring about, a level which only speech and inflexion could provide, and most importantly, in an undeniable way.

"No, sir." One of the Zhivaq closer to the column's rear responded, its head sweeping from side to side in an active scan of our surroundings. Judging by their slow, cautious movements and how they all appeared to be searching for something, weapons at the ready, I believed that they were hunting something potentially dangerous, which made the reality that they lacked shields rather unusual.

It was only now that I noticed that these Zhivaq were wearing masks of some kind, masks which bore a striking resemblance to Farinosas' and the Quires from the other night. Though their masks were absent of any amethysts or gemstones for that matter, pure uncaring blazing white, cuneiform lettering ran from brow ridge to chin in an unbroken line. Combine this with their far high quality attired and their objectively superior weaponry. Were these Zhivaq looters? Or were they perhaps working with the Amethyites somehow?

"The sooner we find that thing, the better." The leading Zhivaq complained while raising the head of its spear to head height, appearing to inspect the weapon closely. "I trust the weapons of those sorcerers as little as the rest of us, brothers, but if what they told us was correct, then we will need every advantage..."

"Assuming those gem-addicted, mind-twisting backstabbers would tell us the truth, even about something this serious?" One around the middle scoffed, rousing a chuckle from a further two of the group. "That's bold, even by your standards..." A loud crunch echoed to the groups rear.

"Shut it, both of you." The one at the rear stopped entirely in reaction to the crunch, raising their off-hand to gesture the group to halt while tightening the grip on their spear. "I think I heard something to our..." Before the figure could finish speaking, a series of loud stomps erupted from around the direction of the crunch, booming stomps that were getting louder, faster and closer.

By the time the rest of the group turned to face the stops and levelled their silvery spears, the hulking form of something came charging through the thickets. It was a blurred shape around ten feet in height that glowed with pale radiance in such a fashion that it seemed like the very colours of the world around it were being snuffed out and replaced with only sterile white.

This radiant behemoth descended upon the patrol in utter silence, save for the stomping of its boots, with both arms held aloft. The blur was too strong to discern exact features, but it appeared to be wielding some kind of great two-handed monstrosity of a weapon nearly equal in length to the height of the beast.

The Zhivaq closest to the rear of the formation cowered at the approaching thing; its eyes must have been filled with visions of impending doom as it staggered backwards, spear shaking and legs unsteady. As a display of immense bravery or sheer stupidity, it cried out in defiance, locked its spear with both arms and threw itself into a desperate thrust, only for the blurred weapon to come crashing down upon it with a sickening, clamorous crunch.

It took a moment for me to process what had just happened. The spear had indeed impaled the blurred monstrosity, a blurred mass that was slowly coming into focus and mainly appeared unaffected by the considerable injury it had just sustained. It rose the now bloodsoaked weapon from the saturated grass below, a weapon which, much to my dismay, was now almost entirely in focus.

The weapon appeared to be a bastardised hybrid of a Lucern hammer and a bardiche. The terrible axehead was the side brought crashing down upon what remained of the rearguard, a rearguard whose body had not just been split in twain but crush inwards and crumpled beneath the weapon, laying in a messy pile upon the crimson-stained dirt.

The remaining four yelled something which I couldn't understand; they shouted over one another in such a way that the shouting had become unintelligible during the unfolding carnage.

The warrior closest to the rear of the formation tried to rush in; spear crouched as if it were performing a mounted lance charge upon the blurred beast. The beast barely even reacted to such an impending attack; instead, it released its grasp upon the pole-weapon with its right hand and delivered a half-hearted punch to the Zhivaqs chest.

Half-hearted or not, the disgustingly loud sound of wood cracking and bone rending was a clear enough descriptor of the fate which had befallen the second warrior, as if the white stumps of compound-fractured ribs protruding from beneath its left shoulder wasn't a good enough indicator.

The third and fourth lunge forward in a pincer formation, one either side as the thing was pullings its clenched fist back from the sundering strike delivered upon the second warrior.

Much to their credit, the fourth managed to deliver a wicked stab to the left thigh of the monster, the warriors reward for such an opportunistic strike was to become intimately equated with the four-pronged spear-butt the beasts' polearm, which ran it through from chest to spine.

The blurred beast was now finally coming into greater focus. Its body was marbled from head to toe with armour and attire incorporated into its body. Massive plates of stone had been carven and worked to produce a near-perfect suit of protection covering every solitary inch of the thing, assuming what it was wearing was armour and not just part of its construction. It was like I was looking upon a statue...

Now that I think about it, it did indeed appear to resemble the Statue to a certain degree, although this hardly narrowed down the possibilities of what precisely I was looking at. I doubted the Amethyites would go through all the trouble of making just one, only to give up when it didn't go quite as they had hoped.

With only the fifth warrior, who was holding back for some reason, and the third still standing, the already fleeting chance of besting this thing was growing slimmer and fainter by the moment.

The third, presumably in the midst of a panic attack, swung its spear in a wide hew towards the beasts head. Just like the fourth, this strike connected with the marbled mammoth of a thing, pale energy arced far and wide, some reaching back to the spearshaft and burning parts of the wood.

More importantly, though, this blow had sent the beast stumbling back, recoiling from the impact. With the polearm still impaling the fourth and with the wielder recoiling from such a hit, the lifeless form of the fourth warrior was sent tumbling through the air towards the fifth, who stepped aside as its fallen comrade came to rest by its ankles.

In response to such an assault, and with some distance between it and the third Zhivaq warrior, it calmly, and without a shred of remorse or thought, rose its polearm aloft and brought the spiked head down upon the warrior. The deafening wet crack of the hit was beyond disturbing to hear, and the sight of such a proud warrior being, quite literally, folded in half from the strike was profoundly upsetting to witness.

With only the final warrior left alive, the odds of this story having a happy ending were, to put it charitably, non-zero at best. Judging by the posture of the last survivor and how they moved cautiously away from the juggernaut, I suspect they had come to the exact same conclusion I had.

The marbled beast withdrew its terrible weapon from the freshly folded corpse of the last Zhivaq it struck, and blood fountained from the wound briefly as the now entirely crimson-drenched weapon was brought back into the woeful grasp of such a horror. I stood, lock still, waiting, watching the last survivor, its boots occasionally shuffling forward by an inch or two, closing in on its prey like a predatory animal.

Every second that went by as the giant grew closer to the last Zhivaq to remain felt like an hour like a giant spring was building up tension or a coil of rope accruing and storing torque. It was as if at any moment something was about to snap and the pressure released in a final crescendo of viscera.

The snap finally came when the beast surged forward and swung its polearm in a wide arc towards the Zhivaqs chest. The Zhivaq managed to duck beneath the swing and threw its bodyweight into a one-handed thrust, embedding the spear's head in the beasts' helmet with a deafening crack as energy lapped around the smashed visor.

Stumbling back, the beast whipped the spear-butt of the polearm around, catching the last survivor in the head. Within a moment, a horrific twisting and grinding noise rang out as the Zhivaqs' head corkscrewed around, visibly broken free from its' body.

The final warrior went limp and toppled over; the now broken free head bounced and rolled away, coming to rest nought more than a few feet from where I was viewing. Its' lifeless eyes gazing upon my position without a flicker of the life which was, only moments ago, found within.

I looked away from the snapped off head and witness the true extent of the damage done to the lithic constructs helmet. The helmet was broken into several pieces, which had since fallen away from the things head since the fatal blow that slew the final Zhivaq. It reached up and grasped the shattered helmet, which it proceeded to tear away and fling to the side, causing it to snap in half upon impact.

And then, I saw its face...

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It appeared to be the Statue, albeit in far, far better condition than she was currently. Her face was fully intact, and she had only one set of eyes, but she was otherwise identical in appearance, save for the heavy stone plate armour, though I assumed it was broken off through attrition over time. Her head, now exposed by the removal of the helmet, appeared to shimmer in a way not dissimilar to the stone in the city I saw; perhaps she was fabricated from the same material as the very city itself, a rather odd decision if true but not impossible.

She, it, I really should make my mind up on how I address the Statue; it was clearly female but was it alive or just an animated construct?

Whichever she was, for the sake of clarity and to reduce my confusion, I shall henceforth refer to the Statue as she instead of it, lest my already troubled mind and confused consciousness wander yet further down the road of perpetual perplexion.

The Statue stands tall, her polearm resting by her side as blood slowly tricked down the weapon towards her hand. The air appeared to resonate around her as if she was emitting some form of an acoustic field that tampered with reality itself.

Her head slowly turned to face where my view originated from, her eyes locked with mine own as the world began to distort. The trees erupted into geysers of butterflies that swarmed around her like a perpetual cyclone. Her body was entirely wrapped in colours so great in number that she was effectively disappearing behind it.

With this swirling mass of colour enshrouding her in its embrace, the world around us was slowly losing its shades, and the hewed and hushed tones were melting away into monochromatic apathy. I could see the light shining through, and through the light, I saw the place I was in just before this vision as if the vision was merely an overlay levelled atop of reality.

And then she spoke; she uttered only four words as the temporary reality I observed melted away around us, with her at its centre.

"I know you're watching."

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"Hey, are you okay?" Kliviero rushes back to me to check on my condition; she appeared visibly shaken by what had happened to me, although what precisely I had experienced was a mystery to myself as well.

I had collapsed on the floor at the time the vision had begun, crouched down with hands locked around my head, breathing deeply and eyes unfocused.

I unsteadily returned to my feet, still reeling with disorientation from what had just happened; had the thing I saw occurred at this very spot in the past? Had I witnessed some kind of historical event which affected the course of history in the Abyss with living eyes?

"Y-yes, I'm fine," I grunted while standing back up, clutching at my head and catching my breath as my senses returned to this mortal coil. "I-I think. I think." I murmured through gritted teeth.

"Are you sure?" She asked while landing just in front of me. "You look pale. Did you see something?"

"I guess you could say I did," I nodded while rubbing my head and cheeks, my senses had returned, and the pain had ebbed away to nothingness. "Though what precisely I saw is beyond me."

"Did you see anything like, you know, specific?" She asked.

"I think I saw that statue lady we know, but she was more 'complete', far better condition than she is now, though," I explained what I saw. However, I held no belief that Kliviero would believe what I was saying, but whether she believed what I saw or not ultimately didn't matter.

"Maybe we should take your mind off of that thing you just experienced?" Kliviero asked while fluttering back into the air. "Let's keep looking for those plants, see if we can find something interesting; better to think about that than whatever you just saw."

"Sounds like a good idea; let's get going," I murmur once I finish getting to my feet, unsteady as they were, and took point, leading us deeper in the forest. I had no idea where I was walking, but so long as it was away from whatever I had just experienced, then it can't be too bad.

After a short walk into the woods, we found the fourth plant on the list. 'Temporal-pines' were short, stubby bushes that grew long, sharp, barbed leaves not too dissimilar in shape to those produced by pine trees. According to the notes, these leaves were vital to accelerate the alchemical breakdown of any ingredient used in creating alchemical concoctions, kind of like a catalyst to expedite the melding of different elements, it would seem.

Harvesting the plant went entirely without difficulty, which was highly unusual due to the sharp appearance of the leaves we needed. I was expecting to come out of this with dozens of nips and cuts across my hands, yet not a single mark was left while I handled them.

Once stowed away in my bag, the pair of us continued to wander through the woods in near silence; I believe the tension left behind by my vision had shaken Kliviero to some degree. The poor person probably had no idea what had happened when she was 'killed' by the Statue, assuming what happened to her could be likened to death.

We must have spent the best part of an hour or two just wandering through the woods after our last finding; we could find not a single solitary sign of the other plants after far too long had been spent wandering into the crimson banks and rolling mists.

"I don't think we're going to find anything any time soon," I raise my voice while performing a final sweep of our surroundings, not wanting to try and leave while the things I were missing was within such proximity. "I think it'll be best for me to head back and report my findings." I was happy with what material I had collected so far, though it wasn't the entire list I had managed to requisition the most important plants.

"Considering you came back around the same place you disappeared last time, I think I'll stay around here and wait for you." She fluttered up and sat on a low-hanging branch of one of the nearby sail-trees, a younger one judging by how much smaller I compared it to its leviathan neighbours. "Just, don't be gone for too long, okay?"

"I'll try to come back soon, I promise," I answered while fishing around in my pocket for the ensorceled fountain pen, which I pulled out and inspected. The cuneiform markings had remained, albeit a slight bit dimmer than they were back when Farinosa engraved them; perhaps fresh blood would make them bright again?

"I hope this works," I murmur, removing the pen's lid and hesitating with it in my hand. Was I really about to do this?

It's not like I had a choice or a say in the matter, for that matter; if I wanted to go home with what we had found, I would have to place my faith in what Farinosa had provided.

I gritted my teeth, steadied myself, and stabbed myself in the thigh with the pen. The pain was far greater than I had expected, but something had happened, much to my amazement. The cuneiform upon the pen erupted in bright amber light, a light that consumed my vision and silenced the sounds of the forest.