I thought that I was hallucinating once the intense waves of soul-core evolution sensations subsided in my body. The room’s mossy walls were now picked bare, the colorful garden was now barren, and I thought I was drowning in a post-flood wreckage scene. The clear water was covered in plant fragments of different colors, and right in the center of it was a tiny human floating on his back.

I then turned in a daze and saw Kline half on the shore, half on the water, like a shrimp in a cocktail glass.

Then, cortisol surged in my brain when I realized we were on a time crunch. “Kline… you up?” I whispered. “We need to go.”

He looked up weakly, and when I activated Soul Sight to investigate, I saw that he had a soul core. It wasn’t evolved. “When did you…” I paused. “Your guide doesn’t work down here. Unless… you somehow… Gah. We don’t have time for this. Kyro!”

I would figure it out later. I turned and found Kyro to get moving and found him floating in the water—motionless.

“Oh no… No-no-no-no-no. Kyro!” I rushed forward, creating a small wave as I grabbed his tiny body in my hands. As soon as my fingers curled over him—he promptly freaked the hell out.

“Hey!” he cried. “What are you doing?”

Kline woke up weakly and turned to us and then lay his head back on his paws. Then I dropped Kyro and he splashed in the water face first. I took one look at the scene and panicked.

“Sorry!” I tried to grab him again, but he turned and whipped his hand, and a huge blast of water and plant matter blinded me.

“Didn’t you just hear me?” he asked.

I paused and wiped the plant matter from my face, slapping it into the water as I glowered at him.

He puffed out his chest.

I slapped the water, splashing him pettily.

He splashed back.

We exchanged half a dozen splashes before Kline forced himself up, walked out of the water, and meowed at us with the inflection of a hiss before shaking off.

Kyro and I looked at him apologetically, turned back to each other with a stink eye, and then started chuckling. It started low, but soon we were laughing. It must’ve hit me then that Kyro was alive and well, and his hands were fine and healed because tears streamed from my eyes.

“Oh Yakana…” he groaned as he stared at me. Why’d you bring this thing to us.”

“Hey!”

He laughed and turned to Khor, who I hadn’t noticed. He was glued to the wall in the corner like a plant fixture. “You ready to return?”

Yes. Khor said telepathically. I’m so tired.

My jaw dropped when I realized he could speak. He was giving me the silent treatment.

Come, girl. It’s time.

I nodded. “Just tell me what to do.”

He detached from the wall and walked on his viney briar legs into the other room. He pointed at the only patch of flowers that remained unpicked. You can save that flower. Fertilize soil with it, and the plants will follow you readily.

“Wow… really?”

Yes.

I pulled out a preservation chamber and picked one of the beautiful purple flowers and put it into my last preservation chamber as Khor crawled onto his podium and touched the crystal ball.

“Ready?” I asked.

Ready.

“Then tell me what to do.”

Just touch me and repeat the transfer spell. If you can transfer a soul from a soul medium to a plant, you can do the same in reverse.

I nodded and walked up to him, putting my hands on his thorny briars.

“Thank you.”

Thank me by allowing me to sleep. Living is challenging when you’ve known the peace of eternal sleep.

That statement hit me hard for some reason, so it took me a moment to get my head on straight. But I pressed on, fulfilling his wish.

It turned out that it’s infinitely more complex to transfer a soul into a plant than it is to put a soul into a ball designed to hold souls. The soul sucked straight out of the Omoxilain and into the ball. As it did, I heard a lingering, Thank you, in my mind, and it made me feel a strange sense of sorrow in my heart.

“Is something wrong?” Kyro asked when he saw me staring at the crystal ball.

I opened my mouth and felt Kline pawing at my leg.

I knelt and picked him up, holding him to my breast and rubbing his ears while processing my emotions.

“Yeah…” I said finally. “It’s just a lot to process.”

“What’s a lot to process?”

“I mean… I don’t know. It was just his gratitude. It made me realize that soulmancy… it’s not inherently bad. And that there’s things… like stripping memories and emotions… identity… that sound heinous but aren’t… necessarily.”

Kyro nodded. “That’s right. It’s, um…” He paused. “It’s good—unless it’s not. And you decide that.”

“Where’s Brindle on that?” I chuckled.

Kyro smiled. “Mostly good, actually. He puts all souls to rest unless they wish to live. And he sets his enemies free. All things are temporary with Brindle. Sure, he’ll break people or… turn them into weapons for a time. But he always sets them free, even if he steals a being’s casing. It’s like… he’s a dark, twisted, backward liberator.”

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“He steals from the rich and gives to the poor type of thing?” I asked.

“Uh…no.” Kyro furrowed his brows. “He steals if he wants and gives to himself. But he’s… polite about it?”

I frowned. “Never mind.”

Kyro turned to the door. “Come on. I’m not sure how long we’ve been here, but we gotta go.”

My blood pressure suddenly spiked, and I panicked. “Jesus. Let’s go.”

We ran up the staircase and reached a tunnel which seemed to go on forever, like a tunnel system in World War I. But what felt like a few miles in, we finally hit the final staircase and reached an ominous cellar-style door tattooed with a complex network of arrays.

I pulled my arms to my chest. “Is this safe?”

“Of course not,” Kyro said. “Well, kind of.”

“Which one is it?”

“It leads to the guardian’s den. It’s not gonna kill us… unless, um… we piss it off. It’d be a shitty trial if the reward for success was certain death.”

I ran my fingers through my hair.

“Relax,” he said. “You already befriended one guardian. What’s another?”

“Emael tried to kill me without saying a word, then she barely spared me on round two.”

“Oh,” he said. “Well then you’re fucked.”

I glared daggers at Kyro, but he shrugged his shoulders and put his hands on the arrays.

“Wait! I’m not ready!”

“Too late.” Kyro activated the arrays, and they lit up like moving cogs in a watch. Then the door unlocked with a shish and a click and opened.

The smell was horrid.

“See?” Kyro said as he fluttered out. “There’s no—”

A massive hand suddenly swiped Kyro out of the air, and I screamed, “Kyro!”

I didn’t think. I activated Moxle Dilation and the world slowed far slower than I ever imagined possible. The dirt kicked up in the cave I came out of was moving at an inch a second, but the guardian looked like a human holding a TV remote, lazily deciding what to watch. It moved that fast.

I got a good look at the guardian for the first time. The giant looked like a walking cat, if anything. It had a humanish body but a short muzzle and animal ears with short hair over its entire body—and it was holding Kyro’s lower half, staring at him.

I pulled out my machete, but Kyro lifted his hands at surreal speed and pumped them. I sped up my world a bit and heard, “Don’t!”

The giant turned to me and cocked his head. It didn’t look… unfriendly.

I put up my hands, and Kline shot in front of me, hissing.

“He’s just grumpy to see me,” Kyro said, each word slow and elongated from the time dilation. “You cannot challenge the crypt twice. Now if you would kindly show off your core.”

The beast suddenly dropped Kyro and flew over to me, walking on his hands and knees and sniffing at me at surreal speed.

“H-Hi,” I said. I pointed at my chest.

It sniffed me with its feline nose, pulling my hair towards its nostrils with every breath. Then, its voice penetrated deep into my mind.

Pure…

I nodded hesitantly. “I’ve been told.”

It sniffed me a few times and then turned to Kyro. Help? The guardian pointed at me.

“Khor wouldn’t let me even if I wanted to,” Kyro said slowly.

I released Moxle Dilation so I could hear him.

The guardian looked back at me. Want?

Kyro looked over. “He’s asking what you want.”

“From the forest?”

“Yeah.”

“Ummm… live?” I said, trying to make my message simple.

“Just talk to him,” Kyro said. “He understands as animals understand and can tell if you’re hiding something.”

“Oh…” I looked up at the guardian. “I’m Brindle’s student, and his student. Kind of.” I pointed at Kyro. “I have a deal with Emael and Nethralis to loosely protect this forest once a year to live here. I also have deals with humans, but I seek to use those to the forest’s advantage. But like I said… I just want to live. Be free here. Study plants. Maybe bring a person or two in so I’m not super lonely. You know? So… live.”

It cocked its head and then stood up on its legs. Even in its smallest form, it was ten feet tall, and I saw firsthand that it could become two hundred feet tall, a true titan of legends.

“Now, while I’m happy to see you again…” Kyro said. “This one needs to get to Thorvel before he kills her.” He paused as the beast cocked his head. “We see her as a guardian. He doesn’t. So if she doesn’t prove that she can use… yeah. Yes, Emael. Nethralis, too. You know, we could use your help. It’d be a pain to cross the Fifth as a first ev, and we’re on a time crunch.”

The guardian turned to me and Kline and then dropped into a plank position and increased in size to twenty feet.

“Wow…” Kyro turned to me. “On his shoulder. He’s gonna give us a ride out of the FIfth Ring.”

“Wait… what?” My heart rattled.

“Don’t you keep him waiting. Guardians don’t take kindly to hesitation.”

I put aside my perplexity and ran forward, turning and jumping onto the guardian’s left shoulder like it was a swing. Then I thrust out my hands to Kline. My little warrior looked back and forth three times in a panic and then flew forward as the beast was standing, bounding ten feet into my arms.

I rocked back and forth, unbalanced from his standing and released Kline so I could grab the creature’s fur, wondering how in the hell I would hold on as it moved. But once it left its cave and entered the foggy mist, it ballooned in size, and I found myself lying on the creature’s shoulder like a shag carpet.

I couldn’t help but laugh when it stepped forward, and I could see it walking down a treeless path—his path—with rows of massive trees behind it. They looked so big before but now they looked tiny and insignificant.

“You might want to hold on,” Kyro said, hitting me with a wave of magic that glued me to the beast’s fur.

“What…” I wheezed. “Are you…”

Suddenly, the beast put its hands to the ground like a sprinter, and I understood.

A moment later, we blasted off like a rocket ship, crashing through the forest at a speed I couldn’t possibly comprehend. This was power. True power. Power that was halfway to becoming a lower god.

I checked the date and time in the corner of my eye once the guide reactivated. “We still have twelve hours!” I yelled over the howling wind. “We can make it!”

I couldn’t help but giggle and scream with joy as the Guardian flew through the area, making our chances of making it to the Bramble before the Harvest a reality. I felt like I was on a rollercoaster as my hair flew all over the place, crashing through the foggy meadows of the Fifth Ring.

It was fun—but it soon turned chilling.

Beasts like toads the size of two-story houses hopped around, fighting long-limbed beasts the size of trees. These were the big ones—the ones that I could see. I couldn’t imagine the ones I couldn’t—the ones that had reached the pinnacle of the fourth evolution despite remaining normal-sized.

The ones like Kline.

It only took two minutes for us to exit the Fifth Ring, the area where we had to naturally split ways with the Guardian. I wanted to say thank you, but Kyro grabbed Kline and me and yelled:

“Thank you! We’ll be back on the way to Nyralith. So we’ll see you soon!”

Without as much of a goodbye, Kyro seized Kline and I, and jumped off the colossus and flew at an absurd speed, soaring over trees.

I turned back at the guardian, who has already turned away, moving north to the Kana Mountains, where the sacred location Brindle gave me as a legacy reward—Lake Nyralith—made its home. Soon, its body blended into the mist, as if a ghost, and disappeared.

We flew on.

I was surprised to fly as far as we did. It wasn’t by much, but we made it out of the fog and back into northern Fourth Ring territory by the time he stopped to drink his wine. And by the time he took a deep breath, alcohol dripping from his lips like a rabid animal, I knew—

—we had survived. We had actually survived that nightmare.

Now, it was time to make it to Thorvel before the Bramble began. There was no time for rest, so Kline turned into his panther-tiger form, and Kyro and I hopped on. Then we burst through the forest at ghostly speed, blinking from shadow to shadow on our way there.

It was time to face Thorvel and earn the forest’s trust.