Something cold tickled Rayna’s cheek. She startled awake, swatting the leaves away from her face. They swished as they moved, settling back into their original place.

Rayna yawned, peering blearily at the dim forest. Had she fallen asleep?

She was in a large clearing that was surrounded by densely packed trees. In the middle of the clearing was a small pond, and next to it, a massive willow tree.

The willow’s trunk was at least as thick as Rayna was tall—although, that wasn’t saying much at the moment. The branches spread out, covering the clearing in a pleasant shade and dipping down to create a thick curtain around the edge.

One thing was for sure, this was not where Rayna had fallen asleep.

Hadn’t Rayna earned a map when she completed the first tutorial?

Rayna pulled up the map, hoping to figure out if she had sleepwalked or if she was teleported somewhere again.

The map was blank—or more accurately, it was black. There were no indications of any landforms. There weren’t even words to indicate where the cities should be. Rayna’s little white dot was the only marker that she could find.

“Umm… what’s wrong with the map?”

I have no information with which to populate the current map. Please visit the local System Hub to download the information. This will also complete the second tutorial quest.

Tutorial II — Update your Map at a System Hub, located in any System registered city or at the entrance to a dungeon. (You can find active System Hubs on your map)

Duration: unlimited

Reward: +100 Essence Points

Rayna zoomed out as far as she could, finding no hubs near her.

Rayna gave up on the map and circled the clearing, trying to find a place where she could pass the thick wall of trees. It was like the trunks had grown together, creating an impassable barrier. Could she climb over it?

Rayna pushed up her sleeves and started to climb. Every time she made it higher than a few feet, she lost her footing, falling back to the ground.

Rayna grimaced, rubbing her tail bone. It wasn’t worth healing away, and she was beginning to realize how spoiled she had gotten having an automatic bruise remover.

Soul-Locked items can be recalled with Mana.

“Wait, seriously?!” Rayna perked up. That was fantastic. Maybe she could soul-lock other items. She would never lose her keys again!

“How do I call back my amulet?” Rayna asked the System.

Hold out your hand and call to it like you do when you pull it out of your Soul Realm. If it is in range and you have enough Mana, it will appear.

Rayna raised her hand, palm up. “How much Mana do I need?”

She had a good amount for a Level 9 Warrior, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to waste the Mana when she was lost in the woods.

It depends on the size of the item and the distance at which you recall it. If you are a few steps away, it might take only fifty Mana to recall. However, if you try to recall an item from the other side of the continent, it can take more than a hundred thousand Mana. Remembering where you left the item is a good way to minimize the Mana loss.

Rayna lowered her hand. “That was not helpful.”

I suppose it was a little premature, but I thought it would be better to tell you now when you are in the same forest as the object, rather than later when you are in another country.

“You won’t find me in another country,” Rayna said with a sigh, sitting down next to the willow tree. “I’m not one to travel much.”

Were you not in another country on your home planet?

Rayna lifted her eyebrows. “How did you know that?”

I have access to limited memories in order to better help with your progression.

“Right…” Just another thing on Ember that Rayna wasn’t thrilled about. “Well, yes. I was in another country, but that’s different. I moved to follow Emma. If it was just me, I probably would have stayed in Chicago.”

I see… Do you miss Chicago?

Rayna narrowed her eyes. “Since when are you so chatty?”

Am I not allowed to be curious?

“Well, curiosity is one thing, downright nosy is another.” Rayna didn’t like the AI prying into her personal life. “Besides, can’t you just read my mind anyway? I don’t think I want to give you more than you’ve taken yourself.”

I didn’t mean to intrude. Is there something I can do to apologize?

Rayna was taken aback. She didn’t expect the System to care what she thought.

“Umm… It’s fine, I guess,” she said awkwardly. “But maybe just ask next time?”

Isn’t that what I did?

Rayna gave up.

“So, how do I get out of this clearing?” she asked, trying to change the subject.

The System obliged.

Your best chance is to climb over the wall of trees as you were attempting to do. If you can’t get over them, perhaps you could cut a path through them.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Rayna shook her head. “I’m not sure where my knife went, and I don’t have anything else to work with.”

A thought occurred to Rayna, and she immediately dismissed it.

It could work.

“What am I, a beaver? I am not chewing my way out of here!”

Rayna suddenly grew anxious. She sat up, grabbing a rock near her hand and raising it defensively. She was getting better at responding to her anxiety, which had become far more useful on Ember than it ever was on earth.

Did you sense something?

“Maybe…” Rayna said.

Her nervousness gave way to confusion, and she dropped the rock.

“What—?”

A moment passed, and Rayna started to feel giddy. She burst out laughing, unable to contain her bubbling joy. Excitement coursed through her like a puppy seeing its owner come back from a long vacation.

What the hell is going on?

Rayna’s own fear mixed with the foreign excitement, mingling in a jumbling ball of conflicting emotions. Her stomach turned and she heaved, bringing up whatever was left from her breakfast.

Concern and shame filled Rayna, and she closed her eyes, trying to block out the emotions.

Is this some sort of mental attack?

Rayna looked around, trying to find the source of the attack. Nothing was there but the pond and the willow. She closed her eyes again, searching for the monster with her other senses.

Magic pulsed at the center of the clearing, so deep and old that it spooked Rayna more than the errant emotions had. She backed away from the willow, retreating until the wall of trees stopped her from moving further.

The emotions dulled with distance, disappearing altogether when she reached the edge. Rayna sighed in relief, leaning against the tree wall.

Magic pulsed beneath the clearing. Before Rayna could react, a wave of soil threw her off her feet and toward the willow tree. As soon as she was back in range, the confusing emotions returned, this time adding desperation to the mix.

Rayna caught herself and rolled, taking advantage of her Dexterity and propelling herself toward the other end of the clearing. The tree tried to knock her off her feet again, but this time Rayna was ready for it.

She jumped into the air, grabbing hold of one of the willow’s thicker branches to keep herself above the wave.

The willow’s branches swayed, pulling Rayna toward the tree.

She abandoned them, dropping down to the ground and having to immediately jump to avoid another wave of soil.

Rayna climbed the tree wall, realizing too late that the willow had control over that too. Branches grew rapidly, encircling Rayna’s wrists and ankles and holding her against the wall.

Rayna squirmed, trying to get her teeth close enough to gnaw the branches off her wrist, but it was no use.

The tree Rayna was tied to shuddered, and her stomach lurched as it uprooted itself, walking her over to the willow. The restraints loosened, dumping Rayna onto the ground. A bubble of branches grew around her, trapping her in a thickly woven cage.

Rayna’s hair provided the only light in the small dome, and she took a second to tie it back in a pony tail with a hair tie that she had gotten from Nali.

“That’s how you want to play it?” Rayna snapped.

She didn’t have any weapons, but that didn’t matter. There are two ways to deal with a tree.

The first one is an ax. The second…

Rayna pulled her camping kit out of her Soul Realm. She had only seen it once—when she had first pulled it out to see what it contained—but she didn’t have any trouble remembering its contents, mostly because it had seemed silly at the time.

Rayna started with the brandy, taking a swig for good luck before she started pouring it on the branches around her. The tree’s confusion filled the space, but the moment Rayna pulled out the flint, its confusion turned to panic.

Rayna struck the flint, sending sparks toward the brandy-soaked branches.

The tree retracted the branches before they could catch fire, drawing them into the ground. Rayna threw the travel kit back into her Soul Realm and made a break for the opening in the tree wall.

She made it just before the willow closed the opening. Rayna ran as fast as she could away from the clearing, squeezing through trees placed much too close to each other. Scratches appeared on her arms and legs where she had to push through interwoven branches.

Before she could get more than a hundred yards out of the clearing, the ground opened up beneath Rayna.

She fell, terror rising in her chest as dirt filled the hole above her.

Was the tree trying to bury her alive?

Rayna tried to dig herself out of the hole, but she could feel herself moving deeper and deeper.

A notification popped up, blocked from Rayna’s view by the wall of soil. It took all of her self-control to keep from screaming and getting a mouthful of dirt.

The notification disappeared and another one replaced it, this one just as obscured as the first.

Could you leave me alone for a few moments, I’m trying to dig myself out.

“Focus on holding your breath,” an unfamiliar female voice said. “I think the tree is dragging you back.”

Who the hell are you?

“I’m the System,” the voice said. “I didn’t see any other way to talk to you. Just do what I say, all right?”

Rayna stopped trying to dig herself out; not because she believed the voice, but because her arms were too tired to continue.

Unhindered by Rayna’s attempts to escape, the tree’s pull grew faster, dragging Rayna back to the clearing in a fraction of the time it had taken her to try to escape.

She gasped as her head came out of the dirt, choking and spitting to try to clear her mouth of the grit.

“Do that again and I’ll torch the whole damn forest,” Rayna snapped at the tree.

Frustration rippled through the clearing.

“Well, I don’t give a shit,” Rayna snapped, thoroughly done with the willow’s heavy handed attempts to get her to stay. “What do you want, anyway? I don’t have time to play with a homicidal tree.”

The willow paused, its confusion growing.

Rayna ignored the tree and walked over to the pond, kicking away the branches that grew to try to stop her.

“I’m not trying to escape,” Rayna snapped. “I’m trying to wash the dirt out of my eyes.”

She bent down and splashed some cold water on her face. She pulled a hand towel and her travel kit—which contained soap, thankfully—out of her Soul Realm and started to scrub the grime off of her skin.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much she could do for her clothes, and she was not going to change in front of a sentient tree.

“So, you can talk then?” Rayna probed. “Is there a reason you’ve been making me read this whole time?”

The System was silent for a moment. “I’m not really supposed to be able to talk,” she said. “But the situation was urgent.”

“Uh-huh. I call BS,” Rayna said. “You’ve been chattier since I told you about the System. And you’re using the first person pronoun, which you didn’t do before. Fill me in on the change, would you? I’m really sick of being confused all the time. Might as well take ‘immunity to confusion’ out of my traits list, since it doesn’t seem to do anything. Oh and ‘calm’? That’s a load of crap as well.”

Rayna knew she was only ranting because she had just almost suffocated and her anxiety was getting the better of her, but it was rant or cry and she really didn’t want to do the latter.

The System was quiet for a long moment before it finally said, “I was curious.”

Rayna frowned. “About what? Confusion?”

“Talking,” the System said. “People don’t normally talk to me, so I was curious what it was like.”

Rayna wasn’t sure how to respond to that. If nothing else, the strange answer managed to take the edge off Rayna’s growing panic attack.

“So, you got a name?” Rayna asked. “Or am I just supposed to call you the Administrator?”

She was fairly sure she was dealing with the actual Administrator, not just a Liaison, like before. It made sense. There was only one person in the System, why wouldn’t the Administrator give Rayna her whole and undivided attention?

There was a moment of silence before a notification popped up.

You can just call me System. I don’t need a name. And we have too much to do to waste time on pleasantries. Have you found a way out of this clearing yet?

Rayna sighed. Guess it’s back to reading.

Yes, it is. And don’t forget I can read your thoughts.

Rayna glanced at the Willow tree, considering how she could get away. It didn’t seem to be able to read her thoughts. It only responded when she said something out loud. Could it feel emotions like it could project them?

Rayna tried thinking of sad puppies, only for her traitorous brain to give her images that were actually sad.

The funeral hall smelled like bleach and strong perfume. An endless procession of people dressed in black went to the casket to pay their respects. It was closed. There wasn’t much left after the car crash. Rayna had been the one to identify their bodies and she almost couldn’t. A distinctive mole on her mother’s arm and her father’s receding hairline were the only thing’s she could recognize on the mangled mounds of flesh.

Rayna pushed the image away. Bile rose in her throat and a tear slipped down her cheek.

Rayna drew in a shuddering breath.

The tree responded with slight confusion and concern.

All right, it’s either a psychopath, or the empathy is only one way. That’s a relief.

That wasn’t a very good way to test that theory.

Yeah, well, I didn’t have many options. The tree already knows I’m pissed, and I didn’t expect… never mind. Just be quiet and let me think.

She could try running again, but she wasn’t in the mood for another dirt bath. The tree hadn’t done anything but watch her since she stopped trying to escape, so her best bet was something that didn’t look like she was trying to escape.

Could she make a decoy while the tree was asleep? Did willow trees sleep? She could try talking to the willow, but the tree didn’t seem very reasonable.

If only she had a way to teleport out of here.

An idea sparked in Rayna’s mind.

Could it work? She asked the System, trusting her to keep up.

It just might, but are you sure you want to try it? It’s risky, to say the least.

Better than staying here until I starve to death. Do you think willows understand the concept of food?

The System didn’t respond, and Rayna took that as approval. Rayna approached the willow, hoping she wasn’t about to get stabbed through with a tree branch.

Once she was sure that no attack was coming, she started to climb.

At first, the willow was surprised, then pleased. Its branches swayed, the sound of them clicking together serving as the tree’s ecstatic giggles.

Rayna made it to a spot that seemed stable and sat down on a branch. The tree watched her curiously, trying to figure out what she was doing.

This better work.

Rayna used her hand to trace a circle on the tree’s bark. She hadn’t done this many times, and the last time she had, it hadn’t seemed very useful, but she was willing to try it now. The gray portal materialized on the tree’s trunk, once again giving Rayna no indication of what was inside.

Rayna took a deep breath and plunged her head into the portal.

It only took Rayna a few seconds to confirm that there was breathable air on the other side of the portal, but that was enough for the tree to panic. It grabbed Rayna and dragged her out of the portal, sending her flying with its desperation to get her out.

Rayna flailed in the air, panic rising in her chest as the ground quickly approached.

Time slowed to a crawl.

The tree tried to catch Rayna and missed.

Rayna stared at the ground with one thought in her panic-stricken brain.

I need a portal right there.

The silvery portal opened up and swallowed Rayna before the tree could intervene.