Stepping through the door was an odd sensation. My senses, imbued with Impact as they were, and bolstered by my Perception, were always working in some capacity, even if I offset most of the conscious ones with Focus so I wasn’t listening to flies in another hemisphere every second of the day.

So even though I wasn’t actively trying to sense what was going on around me yet, my subconscious lit up with a tide of completely different stimuli over the course of a single step. Humidity, temperature, ground elasticity, wind chill, once I stopped and actually reached out to check the situation, all those subconscious warning bells became very obvious changes I had to catalogue.

Firstly, I felt Death here. Capital D Death in a way I hadn’t known was even possible. It took me a second to recognize what it was actually, but I quickly connected it to the way Archie made me feel, but backwards. This was a Path energy.

Strakkenthar’s inner world was absolutely polluted with his Path, even after he’d been dead for so long, and I could feel it almost clinging to my own. I grimaced, activating Zagan, and sighing in relief as the flames of purification washed away the clinging taint of that horrible Path like good soap taking off a coat of grease.

I was starting to understand the one month timeline of this harvesting mission. This oily energy would be nearly impossible for most people to dispel, and it was almost definitely going to cause damage to the Paths of the people who showed up here.

Within a month, I imagined it would be simple enough to push off the effects when you left, but if you stayed too long, the native Path in this world would most likely subvert the Paths of those visiting. I hadn’t really heard of that happening to anyone, but I knew that seeing or experiencing certain things could alter your understanding of a Path. It made sense that you could taint a Path with another, stronger Path.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t keep Zagan active my whole stay. It was too attention grabbing, unless I used Mornax on top of it to contain the signs, but that would be two of my three forms down.

So I dropped it, and shifted to something that shouldn’t cause almost any strain. Sammael.

In the blink of an eye, the world…changed. The wind felt warmer, the sky a bit lighter, and the air had a welcome, peaceful vibe instead of the foreboding claw of lingering death. I blinked in shock. I’d expected it to help given Black Sorrow’s connection to Strakkenthar, but not THIS much. This place felt like my backyard now.

With a shrug, I withdrew the stone that Callie had mentioned. The one that was supposed to help me find the path to…whatever I was here for. Unlike the shadow replica, the real stone was a translucent gold color, and as soon as I took it out, it seemed to suck something from the air, condensing some kind of ambient aura into a small black cloud. Before my eyes, the cloud started shifting, changing shapes and forms until it settled on being an arrow, pointed directly north.

“Well,” I said to myself aloud. “At least they’re not being vague about it. Whoever made this knew what they were doing.” I set off following the arrow, heading toward…I stopped. Grimacing, I stared ahead of me toward the changing landscape. I’d landed in a forest (because of course I had), but it was slowly shifting to something more wetland in appearance. Sinking trees, watery ground, lots of mud…almost marshy.

Groaning, I rubbed my temples. “Obviously. Why didn’t I just assume that. ‘Don’t go to the Marsh Shane, it’s ten times worse than everywhere else and will probably kill you’, where else was I expecting this mysterious thing to be?”

“Are you talking to yourself?” asked a familiar and very amused voice. I almost jumped out of my skin, whirling to find my smirking wife in all her shadowy glory. “They say that’s the first sign of insanity. Or the second. I’m not really sure, I never listen when people talk.” She put a hand on my arm worriedly, despite the flippant tone. She’d heard what I said.

“I’d noticed that,” I replied with a chuckle. “Did I flood the bond with annoyance or something? I’m surprised you’re here.”

She frowned, glancing around worriedly. “No. Not exactly. There was…some kind of interference. It went away after a second, but I came to check on you. Did something happen a few minutes ago?” I explained to her about the Path corruption floating around here, and she grimaced. “Well that’s not a great sign. But at least it doesn’t effect you in your Sammael form. I was testing that one out by the way, VERY cool. I look amazing with wings.”

“You would look amazing with antenna on your head wearing a poncho made of lime green plastic wrap,” I said with a laugh. “But I was interested to see what it did for you. Any boost to your abilities aside the obvious ones?”

“My range is expanded,” she said happily. “And it’s easier to shadow jump. Plus the harder punching. I don’t think it’s quite as big a boost as it is for you, but still, the extra strength is nice.”

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That was interesting. All my other forms seemed to work more or less the same for Callie as they did for me. Sammael being diminished was odd. I wondered if it had something to do with the racial trait aspect of it. I knew they weren’t really supposed to work like that, being able to just grab one and make it function like that.

I suspected that had to do with a lot of different factors, my access to racial trait charges, Dantalion, my ancestor’s book, and the weird nature of DS Mastery itself, which had become, through the constant mashing together of random skills and imagery and techniques, something incredibly complicated.

I’d reworked my forms to make them more stable, eliminating weaknesses and shoring Skills up, but it was still an extremely complex and nuanced ability. I could make it function and repair it, but honestly it was kind of beyond me as a whole. I learned new ways of thinking about it every time I picked up the book.

“Shane!” Callie said sharply, snapping her fingers in front of my face. “You’re letting your Focus outpace your Perception again, aren’t you?”

I froze, thinking about that. I had been pushing Focus for a while in order to maximize Dantalion. I’d kind of stopped because it almost made things worse, but with a Focus of twenty two thousand and a Perception of sixteen thousand, I had definitely let the numbers fluctuate. It wasn’t unmanageable, plenty of Ascendants had bigger stat gaps, I’d just gotten used to keeping them mostly in lockstep.

“Yeah, I’ll work on that,” I reassured her. “For now I’m good, thanks for reminding me. Now, I need to get into that marsh, which is apparently horrifically dangerous, to get the…whatever I’m here for. I think I’ll go around for now, see if I can find a pass through where I don’t need to go into the death swamp.”

She shrugged. “Seems like a decent plan. Is Archie around here? He might come in handy.”

I shook my head. “I left him on the Acheron with Bella. I considered bringing him, he’s definitely useful to have around, but…I just got a bad feeling. It might have been my Fatewalker instincts acting up, or maybe paranoia, but I felt certain that it wouldn’t be safe to bring Archie.”

“Fantastic,” she said in an unamused tone. “Your vague future telling powers think this place is too dangerous for your purification based phoenix. That makes me feel great about your chances. Promise me you’ll be careful? You said there’s natives around here, right? How strong are they supposed to be?”

“D-rank,” I told her firmly. “Everything here is. I didn’t get why until I showed up, but now I do. It’s this Path. The corrosive nature of it warps other Paths nearby. Solid Paths are more vulnerable, because they’re concrete. They’re stable, so they can’t be warped as easily, and instead get worn down. This is energy from a dead god too. I bet it’s worse the stronger you are.”

That actually seemed counterintuitive at first glance, but thinking about it, it made sense. This energy wasn’t aware, but it was more than just a field of power. I’d felt that much in the creeping way it tried to pervade me. The more solid a Path was the more of a challenge this stuff would find it.

Whispering to illusory Paths would be screaming at Solid Paths. It was why I’d been so immediately thrown when I arrived. In fact, thinking back to my reaction, without Sammael or Zagan, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t have lasted the whole month. Maybe not even a week.

“This whole thing reminds me not a small amount of the Moonsong Glade,” she said worriedly. “Do you think Strakkenthar…”

“No,” I cut her off. “Felicity, the goddess not my cousin, really didn’t like her dad. He was an abusive dick, and she has control of this place. The Glade was basically lost out of the way of people’s notice. It was left unattended for too long, there’s no way the Lady would allow that.”

She nodded, relieved. “Good, I don’t like the thought of you taking on a god on your own. Though adding a godslayer title might help you catch up,” she winked at me and I laughed.

“I’m doing ok on my own,” I told her amusedly. “Don’t worry about that. In fact, I’m expecting a big bump in renown after this trial end.” With the victory, plus my introduction to the other finalists, I was betting there was no small amount of digging into me going on. Mephistopheles was new and mysterious, word was bound to get out.

I was looking forward to seeing what kind of stats I got off this windfall, because between my victory and all the others interested in learning more (especially higher ranked people) I was betting it would be a sizable boost, and one I sorely needed. I wondered if I’d have enough to make it to a hundred and fifty thousand, or maybe even more. Maybe I’d be able to push past twenty five points per wish.

We circled around the edges of the marsh, making sure not to stray onto the wet ground as we followed the periphery of the arrow, making sure to keep it aimed to our outside. By checking the heading we were able to get a small idea of how big the marsh was, the amount of distance travelled and the angle of the arrow giving us a baseline.

Dantalion was able to intuit the rest, combined with the plant life and ground condition and a dozen other things I couldn’t even consciously process. We stopped after about a half hour.

“Fifty miles,” I said with a grimace. “That’s nothing at top speed, even if this place is weirdly heavy for a B-rank world. Still, rushing means we might miss a threat, or distrub some predator or poison or a dozen other things. Sighing, I shook my head. “I need Zagan for this. You should go. Zagan and Mornax on top of Sammael should be plenty to both ward off the poison and defend me, but I won’t be able to concentrate worrying about your clone.”

She scowled at me. “You’re lucky you had the presence of mind to say the word clone just then. Fine. Be safe, and call me when you can talk. I don’t want you getting too isolated here on your own.” She put a hand to my cheek, staring fondly up into my eyes, then vanished.

Smiling at her now absent form, I triggered Mornax and Zagan, the stony form concealing the signs of my amplified purification form. Then, I turned toward the direction of the arrow. I considered walking, but remembered what form I was in. I grinned, spreading my wings grandly before beating them a few times for altitude, then I settled into a leisurely glide. Best form ever.