They broke camp the next day and spent nearly an hour being directed to pick various flowers from the field. In the morning shadow’s the flower field lost none of it's beauty, but it had a different feel. Where the evenings shadow’s gave it a warm, soothing feeling the morning brought a sense of energy and excitement.

  “An’ make sure you grab plenty of any clustere’ white ones y’see. No no’ if they grow in a cluster Temate! If they’ve go’ a cluster of seeds in them!”

  “Definitely Surrender, jus’ like tha’, any deep reds or brigh’ reds!”

  “Aye Toni, the pink one’s trus’ me, you’ll like em!”

  “An’ you, stupi’ bir’ if you’re followin’ us aroun’ you’re pullin’ you’re weight. Yeah you, Snowball! I can tell you understan’ me! Go grab the green broa’ leaf pnts! You better or I’ll be cookin’ fowl tonigh’!”

  Temate shook his head, the owl had stayed overnight and seemed to enjoy being near Toni. So they’d allowed it to stay with them, but the clearly very intelligent bird was… Proud was probably the nicest word. Though it had accepted being called Snowball by Toni, and refused to respond to anything else.

  Each of them filled a small pouch with various pnts, not just flowers, as Pipuck directed. From the tip of the glowing petals down to the very roots and dirt they grew from. When they handed their bags to Pipuck the Spiras looped them into small straps on the outside of their pack. By the end Pipuck looked like they had a small garden on their back!

  “You look like a flower seller Pipuck!” Toni teased, but the little Spiras just smiled in satisfaction. Their hand ran gently over some of the flowers which glowed brighter for a moment.

  Then they smirked up to Toni, “Well one of us 'as to bring beauty to the realm, don’t we?” Toni feigned insult and smiled back.

  “At least you’ll smell nice for a change!” She teased back and both just ughed. Surrender looked to Temate and tilted her head.

  “But Toni pretty, and Pipuck not stink?” She said in a half question.

  “They’re just poking fun at each other, Surrender, pyful teasing. It’s almost better that it’s something that’s not true.” Temate expined quietly as the two kept ribbing each other. Surrender thought about that for a moment and nodded.

  “You two come or sap fall first?” Surrender shouted, interrupting their bout, then looked to Temate. “Like that?”

  Temate chuckled as the other two stared wide eyed and then ughed loudly.

  “Yeah Surrender, like that.” He patted the girl on her head and scratched her ears. She purred, and not long after the four hit the road.

  There were few other notable events on their trip. There was a hot spring a few days in they camped at. They found the water stayed hot, even when removed from the spring. Putting some inside one of their water bricks caused the whole brick to grow hot.

  “Fascinating.” Temate commented.

  “Tha’ will make cookin’ easier. Won’t have to wai’ as long for water to boil.” Pipuck pointed out.

  “And it makes other water it comes into contact with heat up as well, I wonder…” Temate imagined a boiling ocean, but he wouldn’t be the one to test that. Intentionally at least. Though he doubted it worked like that, there was probably a certain volume it could affect. Otherwise this probably would have spread already.

  The second notable event was the wolves, Surrender sniffed them out the day after the hot spring. The group made camp carefully that night, in the hollow of an old tree with rge, bulbous pine needles. Temate chewed on one of the needles, which Surrender had taught them were quite edible.

  “Here needles Toni.” Surrender handed a pouch of the needles to Toni. She bnched at the needles but, seeing Temate happily chewing away, she took a bite.

  “Oh my god, it’s like… Like a pear, or a peach! Why is it so soft?” Toni excimed.

  Surrender just shrugged. “I not know.” Then she handed some to Pipuck who took them and ate them without comment.

  “How many trees like this exist in these woods Surrender?” Temate inquired.

  “Mmm, most like this in cold times, which soon” she said. “Needles close to trunk get big with juice. Very yum!” Surrender grinned.

  “Mmm, nutrient storage. I guess tree’s this big would need something like that.” Temate grunted around his needle-fruit. After their dinner of fruit and some simple rations provided by the bears, they settled in. They lit no fire, a bad idea both in an unventited area, and under a tree.

  It would also ward off the wolves, who had tracked them there.

  Which they didn't want.

  The wolves prowled into the tree's roots, following the scent of the strange travelers. The wolves weren’t much rger than normal wolves, but they were much more dangerous. At least to an average person. They knew that, so did many creatures of the woods they called home and hunting ground.

  Six rge beasts slipped through shadows into the strangers resting pce. They sniffed at their prey, resting quietly. They moved slowly, cautiously, two to each body as they prepared to pounce. This was why they were dangerous, they were smart. Cautious.

  And brutally efficient. They looked between each other, moving one wolf away from the smallest form towards the rgest one. It was rger then they'd thought from a distance. They were almost to their companions around the rge creature when they felt a sting in their leg.

  Something had cut their leg from behind! They yelped, and stumbled down feeling their strength drain. As they turned to look, the small creature they had abandoned burst into light and the rge figure rose up! Fast! Faster then something that big should move!

  As the rgest of the wolves leapt a big pte of gleaming white bone appeared to grow out of the creatures arm. It smmed into the rge wolf tossing it off bance, a metal sword shimmered in the sudden light as it followed the shield, right at the rgest of them. Right at their hunt leader.

  The big beast snarled, stumbling up. This was fine, the creature was big… And terrifying… and it looked like a troll… But a troll on its own, without a tribe, they could handle that. They could-

  Bang!

  An explosion rang in the room and nearly knocked the wolf out on its own! Between the fear the rge one made it felt, and the shear terror of the sudden noise, it chose to run! But it's body did not move, how could it? After all, its head was on the floor, separated from its body.

  Temate rubbed his hands against his still ringing ears and shouted.

  “DAMN IT TONI, DON’T FIRE A GUN INSIDE LIKE THAT, YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT!”

  “I PANICKED, LOOK AT THOSE THINGS, GOD PIPUCK!?”

  “HUH, WHA’ YOU SAY LASS?!” The Spiras rubbed something into their ear canal.

  It took several minutes, and a rge amount of a soothing balm made by Pipuck from the flowers they'd found a few nights before, for their ears to stop screaming. Temate grumbled as he searched through his pouch.

  “What are you looking for?” Toni asked, wiping some of the warm water out of her ear as they sat around a campfire outdoors.

  Temate grunted as he found what he was looking for. He pulled it out of his bag and held the wrapped object out to Toni. She took it and beamed.

  “A present?! For me! Awwww thank you Daddy!” She blinked and blushed as she looked over to Pipuck, who kept carefully carving the wolves up, with Surrender's help. Seeing no response to what she'd just said from either, Toni coughed and unwrapped the gift. Her smile faded into confusion as she saw what was inside it.

  “Wait, isn’t this…” She held the long carved bears cw up to the firelight, examining its fine craftsmanship.

  “The ‘shortsword’ Timbear carved, it’s long enough to be useful in a fight, short enough to be easy to use. It’s good for someone without any martial training as well.” Temate expined, Toni looked up at him, her eyes scrunched in deeper confusion.

  “But… why?” She asked. Temate shoved a thumb over his shoulder to the hollow they’d pretended to sleep in.

  “Next time we’re in close quarters, especially inside, use that, don’t blow out our eardrums. Unless we’ve got equipment for that.” Temate said. He was still grumpy and Toni could see that.

  “Right. Sorry about that… Again. I’m not… used to fighting really.” She mumbled. She looked up at Temate and after a few moments decided to ask. “Where did you learn to fight by the way? It’s so unique, and so… I don’t know, it just seems like you have a lot of experience.”

  Toni grimaced as she saw Temate’s face change. His face was always set a bit firmly, like he was grumpy, or thinking about terrible things. He wasn’t though, she knew that, it was just how his face was.

  Now however, she saw his face deepen and darken for real. His eyes grew sad and his lips pursed tight. She coughed and held the bde up, taking a moment to try and cover what was apparently a very serious topic.

  “I really like this though, it’s so pretty, and I mean look how sharp it is!” She swung it at a small rough shrub growing near the rge fallen branch she sat on, cutting it cleanly. She smiled broadly and looked at Temate as he stared into the fire. His face softened and he sighed.

  “I… grew up rough. My Ali-ah, my father insisted on teaching me to fight from a young age. To defend myself, and I… Took it too far.” Temate frowned heavily. “I… hurt a lot of people Toni.” Temate looked apologetically at her. “More than that, and worse I enjoyed it for a long time.”

  Toni didn’t really know what to say to that. God why did that have to be an important question! She thought he’d taken fencing csses or something! It was just supposed to be… She was terrible with important stuff. She shuffled her feet on the ground for a moment then spoke.

  “I’m sorry, Temate.” That was all she said. She didn’t really know what else to say, what else do you say to someone telling you about a rough childhood? Her dad was a cop, sure, but she hadn’t grown up rough. Her mom was an engineer, and brought in most of the money. The only bad experience she’d had was…

  “I uh… I was… raised pretty well myself, not that I’m trying to- I mean I’m not- I jus-” Temate held a hand up.

  “I understand Toni, you don’t have to share, I didn’t share the details myself.” He smiled sadly at her. "Though if you want to, I'll listen."

  “Right…” Toni waited for a second, took a deep sigh, and continued. “Anyways, my dad was a cop, well technically a detective, and a good one, but he always said he was a cop at heart. My mom was a weapons engineer, specializing in guns.” Toni smiled at the memory, watching her toes wiggle. Very aware of Temate's eyes on her, encouraging her.

  “I used to hate both, thought it wasn’t ‘girly’ to like guns cause all the other girls said that, and all three of my older brothers used to tease me about how I’d never be a proper girl cause of our mom and having three brothers.” She smiled at that, a bit sad and wondering how her brothers were. Were they worried about her?

  “Well that’s kind of ridiculous and childish.” Temate added in the pause as Toni looked up at the stars.

  “Yeah, well most of them stopped in their te teens, so I imagine they realized that too. My parents both encouraged me to follow whatever my interests were. I swam, I did dance, but my eventual love and passion was track, cross country, running.” She spoke the st word with such reverence, Temate couldn’t help the broad smile on his face.

  “That’s good parenting there. The kind of dad I want to be.” Temate said.

  “Yeah, they were great.” Toni whispered, then she looked down her face becoming a frown. “I got into guns eventually because of a bad retionship. An… abusive one. He took my first time in a lot of things, he was… Bad, it’s hard to talk about, even now almost a decade ter." She muttered, the thick bnket and her arms, tightening around her shoulder.

  "After that I made my dad teach me to shoot, and started self-defense csses.” She felt her face growing dark. "It was... I was in a dark pce for a while." She felt herself choking up. Then, she felt two rge arms wrap around her gently, soothingly, protectively. The pain fled in a moment, surprising even her as Temate began to rub her head.

  “I’m sorry little Firestick, that’s a terrible thing to experience.” He whispered softly in her ear. She smiled at that, tearing up slightly but with joy instead of anger or fear. Like she normally felt remembering that time. She had been so young, so certain she was so mature and smart.

  “Thank you. Thank you so much. That means a lot.”

  The two sat there like that for a while, just enjoying each other’s presence. Eventually Temate started humming, Toni didn't recognize the song. It was surprisingly fast paced, almost dancelike, but so fluid that it felt soft and soothing. Especially with his deep rumbling intonations.

  “I not know dad, I just know mother! She amazing! Teach me lots!” Surrender chirped, surprising both of them as she stepped over with the wolves hides wrapped up.

  Toni ughed at that and for the rest of the evening, they just reminisced about happy family memories. Temate talked about his younger brother and sister, and beating up bullies for them. Surrender talked about learning all about sneaking and surviving, and Toni talked about learning to forge her first flintlock.

  Pipuck’s stories were the most interesting, they described flying with siblings as light through realms unimaginable. Stories of strange worlds, where making a child involved two ‘people’ who told a story together which became their child. Or one where great wyrms were the only inhabitants. Or one where nothing existed but stars who spoke in pictures.

  They enjoyed their night and woke the next morning excited to travel and see magic, and the world. Toni pyed with her fire all day, practicing creating and controlling it, even mixing it like martial arts which prompted Temate to call her a firebender. A reference he seemed disappointed she didn’t get.

  It was Surrender who saw the first signs of the Collective, though she didn’t recognize them as such at first. She skittered ahead, watching, listening, sniffing for any sign of danger. It was for that reason she saw the strange fungus spreading loosely across a few trees.

  When she went to examine it, prodding at it gently, the tree began to move, a rge branch swinging with surprising speed at her. She jumped back in arm and then remembered some signs Pipuck had told her to look for. Tree’s which defended themselves were one. She ran back to the other’s with urgency.

  “We here! We here!” She shouted, Temate stopped and Toni put out the small ball of fme hovering in her hands.

  “We are?” Toni asked, “Where is it? How do you know?!” She was excited, her first, well second if you count the bears, fantasy culture! Which why would you count the bears for that.

  “I poke tree, and tree try hit! Like Pipuck say, pnt defend!” She squealed with excitement, pointing over her shoulder.

  “Well look a’ tha’. Made goo’ time, now let’s go see what the locals are like eh?” Pipuck said, ughing. “Not tha’ they’re any more local than the bears!”

  The group moved forward smiling and chatting casually. For once, Temate felt telling them off was unnecessary, after all they were near the Leshy collective. Pipuck had said they were safe in general, so long as you did no harm to any members of their community. So he let them walk and talk, slowing to look at the mycelium.

  It grew gradually thicker as they went deeper. So did the tree's, which also grew in height. The fungus seemed to be bioluminescent, giving off soft blue green light despite the ck of sunlight this deep in. Temate smiled at the beauty of it, here was magic, or at least something he'd never imagine in his world.

  Every now and then light would race along the fungus, which started connecting trees together as both grew thicker than was realistic healthy. There was barely enough space for two people to walk abreast now, and it was getting hard to see. Not just cause of the ck of sunlight, the fungus more then made up for it.

  No, there were spores in the air. Thickening like a cloud of dust, and the lowest branches of the trees seemed to reach out to grab at him. To block his path, choking his space and vision more. Temate felt a bad feeling crawling down his back.

  “Hey Pip, is this normal for a Leshy collective?” He asked.

  No response.

  Temate started and looked ahead, he couldn’t see any of his group, and the hairs on the back of his neck began to raise. A true sense of danger washed over him. He felt something watching him, his new skill [Oversight] drew his attention to a tree.

  To a threat.

  He shifted, dropping his bag on the ground and drew his machete. He formed a thick bone pte shield rapidly thanks to [Ossification], the second of his three new skills. He couldn’t see the threat, but his [Oversight] was telling him it was there. Then it shifted in an instant to his right, he turned to look for it.

  It wasn’t that the thing was moving particurly quickly necessarily, but that [Oversight] worked more like radar. It pinged for threats occasionally and drew his attention to them. So he needed to find it before-

  “FOR THE ALDAGARD! [FALLING ACORN]! ” He heard the shout over his shoulder and whirled! Pnting his feet he activated his third and final new skill [Spire of Bone] feeling his body grow rigid and sturdy. He lifted his shield towards the noise and blinked.

  A bright red squirrel smmed into his shield, nearly three times as rge as a normal squirrel, but just… a squirrel. In one hand it wielded a branch which split into a long, vicious looking green and brown steel bde. In the other it had a split seed core forming a sturdy buckler.

  It wore pte armor made of robust, ruddy acorns and wore a tabard of leaves and vines atop that. Atop its head sat a horned helmet of the same acorn, the horns made of what looked much like cherry stems. A deep bck raven’s feather sprouted from the helmet and seemed to glisten even in the fog of spores.

  All that he caught in a moment as the squirrel knight's bde smmed into his shield with a thundering noise. Temate grunted under the weight, as the bde dug into his shoulder despite his shield taking most of the impact. It was like the spider’s fangs all over again. No, it was heavier somehow.

  However, while his shield cracked, it held thanks to the durability [Ossification] also afford his constructs. His hardened skeletal structure from [Spire of Bone] dampened the blow slightly, but Temate still stumbled back. The squirrel spun as it continued falling, using the momentum to strike again. Temate deflected it and stabilized his stance.

  Temate felt the thrill of battle fill him and he leapt forward, immediately opening with a [Vicious Strike], his machete hummed as it cut through the air.

  And he missed. The squirrel nimbly slipped beneath the bde, using its own buckler to redirect Temate’s momentum!

  “Well I’ll be a rotters feast! You’ve got some fight in you sirrah!” The squirrel complimented him. It caught Temate off guard as he brought his bde around again and he stopped, blinking.

  “Sorry?” Temate asked.

  “Well don’t stop! This is a fight sirrah! Have at ye! [Branch Lash]!” The squirrel knight whipped his sword out and it extended! The bde shed at Temate like a serpent seeking to get around his shield. He managed to block most of it, the bde grazing his arm, but the shield was heavily cracked now and Temate was gasping for breath.

  Three strikes, three cuts, mostly blocked by the shield but still wounding him. He grunted and took a different tact.

  “Stop!” He spoke an [Iron Order] to the squirrel as it rushed him. The squirrel stumbled, and then stopped. For a moment it blinked, then it snarled at him. Temate didn’t know a squirrel could make such a fierce noise.

  “What a formidable [Power] you have, to command even they who wish ye harm! Hmph. Name yourself, vile trespasser!” The squirrel practically growled at him.

  “I’m Mate, I seek the Leshy who live near here on behalf of Warden Timbear of Bearbhaile.” Temate said, adopting a fighting stance as best he could while taking deep breaths. His [Iron Order] faded, but to his surprise the squirrel didn’t continue the assault.

  Instead it ughed! “Oh Ciels words I do apologize Sirrah Mate, I mistook you for an aggressor! The Aldawood in this area reported a sharp jab and several trespassers. Ah, but where are my manners?” The squirrel knight tossed its sword and shield on the ground, both rapidly beginning to rot. Small green pnts sprung from their husks.

  “I am Aldaward Laurel, Aldagard of the Grand Ceil of the Vardenweld! Welcome, sirrah! I will accompany you to your destination!” The squirrel, Aldaward Laurel, saluted Temate and then bowed. His tail twitched and he looked up at Temate grinning merrily.

  Temate was confused, and decided to ask the only question he could really think to ask right now. “Have you seen my companions?”

  “Ah, yes I do apologize. Aldawood! Disperse the spores!” Laurel turned to the nearest tree and tapped it with his foot. Immediately the trees around began to swing wildly like giant fans and the thick spores dissipated. All that was left were several trees covered in thick, glowing fungus. Did the forest feel more... open now? Less restricted?

  “Right this way sirrah, your companions are not far!”