Magical groves were a pain even if you didn’t have to get to a precise place at a precise time, but Izzy wasn’t going to give up her plans so easily. She hadn’t gone through all that work to meet Zentha Qitris and spending too long stuck ‘ethereal’ for nothing. She was going to go through this portal- if it really existed- find Turlough, give him Uvithar’s bundle, and then…

Then what, save him? He’d already been alive and well when he’d been scryed on. As for Zentha, she’d only said cryptic nonsense like ‘what you wish for is not what you think’. There was also more practical advice like probably not being able to come back on a whim, but what was she going to do here anyway? Continue to live on the road as a messenger with no family or friends? Sure, the latter was kind of her fault, but there weren’t really opportunities for growth either. She might level up, but there was no way to get involved in the interesting parts of the world without connections she didn’t have.

Izzy crept through the brush, watching carefully for anything that had the gall to move on its own. She could handle normal vines and twigs, but magic ones were still a pain. Just because she could escape from something that wanted to throttle her to death didn’t mean she enjoyed having to do it.

If all went well, nothing would know she was here. As she moved about she caught sight of potential enemies, parts of the magical grove that wouldn’t want her to be around. Plants that were too alive, and if this was the wrong kind of enchanted grove plants that were too hungry.

But Izzy was small and trained for moving through difficult terrain, so she continued onward. She wasn’t going to bet on this being one of the friendly groves, especially considering her merely tangential affinity for nature. At least if it came down to a fight she’d studied plants and where their weaknesses were. Moving plants, anyway. There was no way she was just going to stab a normal tree and cause any serious damage, but anything mobile had flaws.

Fortunately, she didn’t have to. She made her way towards the center of the grove where the portal was… supposed to be. And found there was nothing, even though Madam Qitris had specifically said to look for the fairy ring, a giant circle of mushrooms up next to some sort of twisted tree with moss hanging down like hair.

There was about enough time for Izzy to silently curse both wide open spaces and the lack of a portal before it appeared and she was only left with the former problem. With a few masses of vines slinking around the area and some ambling halfling sized weeds she’d find it rather difficult to ignore the notice of all of them. Especially as they seemed focused on the portal. And now they were going through. Great.

-----

No matter how much his mom discouraged him, Jerome never failed to walk her to work after he got home after school, and he would be outside to meet her when she got home. He might have stayed outside her work but he was likely to get chased away since it “wasn’t for kids”. He knew that. He wasn’t stupid, and he could read. Even before Mage started teaching him he could read enough.

Depending on the season it would still be light out when his mom got to work. At the current moment it was that weird state of twilight where it wasn’t really dark but would rapidly shift over.

The first thing Jerome noticed was actually something good. It was like a gentle bay breeze except without the salty smell, or maybe some nice beach waves. Refreshing. The weird part was that there wasn’t an actual breeze even though it felt like it.

Then there was the bad parts. It started with people screaming, which was never something good. Jerome heard it first and immediately stopped, holding onto his mom’s wrist. She turned back to look at him, doubtless to ask what was wrong. As he looked at her, he saw something strange come out of a side alley. There were certain things Jerome was prepared for. A thug was first on his list. Next was some sort of super- villain or hero or merc or whatever.

A thornbush shaped like a man was not one of those things, but as it turned the corner it smoothly transitioned its bulbous ‘fists’ into a swing at Jerome’s mother. Time seemed to slow down. Jerome was now pulling even harder, but his mother was stronger than him and he had no time to explain. Even so, he had to save her. If only he could use magic. Mage had been trying to teach him, demonstrating his abilities. Jerome never really believed it would work. Supers just weren’t like that. Even so, he appreciated it. But he didn’t need someone nice trying something, he needed magic. Like that shield.

He called upon that gentle breeze, recognizing it as a source of power by instinct. A round, barely visible barrier appeared between his mom and the plant-thing. There was a loud thud as they connected, but the creature staggered back as the shield held firm.

Since Jerome couldn’t do magic, he knew it had to be a dream. But in that case he figured he should be able to do a Firebolt as well. His hand pointed towards the thin, spiky figure in front of him and flames shot out. It went up easily. Great.

Jerome’s mom looked down at him, wide eyed. He shrugged. Dreams would be dreams, it wasn’t like he could really do any of this. But there were still people in trouble, yelling and screaming. Down the street was another thing, this one with thicker tendrils of vine pulling it across the ground. “Get back!” Jerome said, gesturing to his mother.

He stretched out his hand, shooting fire. The creature was supposed to be incinerated, but instead it shrugged off his attack. That was odd. If this was a dream, he was supposed to keep succeeding. Unless it was now a nightmare?

But it was neither, he would discover later. For the moment he flopped forward to the ground as his consciousness left him.

-----

What the hell was up with this plane? She’d thought it looked slightly different when she’d seen Turlough in weird clothes in a strange house, but this place was crazy. Black and yellow and gray streets along with glass windows everywhere. That could all be sorted out later as there was an immediate problem of unhappy plants trying to kill people.

Izzy was glad she had kept herself hidden, as there was no way she could have taken on an entire grove of murderous plants. But just because she couldn’t fight them alone didn’t mean she wasn’t going to help when she saw people getting attacked. She had her short swords out, dashing around as she sliced into the little fiddly bits at the joints of the various plants. Speed was important, her attacks augmented by her class abilities as she moved across the battlefield.

She felt surprisingly light on her feet, as if the fatigue of battle wasn’t getting to her quite as quickly. Was this whole plane a place of power, or was it that they were still kind of near the grove? She didn’t have the answer to that, she just kept cutting her way through things.

“Careful of the mess,” Izzy commented to one of the humans. “It might still be alive. I’d step back.”

In response they said… gibberish.

Did these people not speak common, or was she going crazy? Well, that was something she’d have to think about later. She flipped over a tendril trying to trip her up and kept moving. There weren’t too many of these things, but she was sort of following a trail as they weaved their way away from the portal. She saw a flash of fire, and rounded a corner to see a burning spiky twig guy. Then there was another, a real firebolt right into the center of an assassin vine. Sure it was pretty awful without proper concealment, but what kind of mage used a fire spell on a wet plant creature?

As the dark skinned figure flopped forward onto the ground Izzy realized he was a young man and not a tall halfling. So probably someone who had no idea what they were doing. With the creature still moving towards the kid and his mother, Izzy chucked a dagger into it.

It was pretty awful, as it had dozens of tendrils and poking a little hole in one hardly mattered, but it would hopefully get its attention. She couldn’t tell, because something like that didn’t have eyes or a front or back, but it was slow enough she was able to reach it before it was within range of the two humans.

As it turned out, it was paying attention to her. Grasping tendrils reached out for her, but she slipped between them- slashing into them where appropriate. She really needed to attack the main body, but when she couldn’t reach that the limbs coming for her would have to do as well.

There were a few close calls, but even if it got a hold of her for a moment she knew she’d be able to slip out. It still wore her down to avoid all of its attacks, but she managed a few good cuts. And then it was smashed from ‘behind’ by a board half full of rusty nails. It only stunned the thing for a moment, but it was enough to let Izzy stab her shortsword into its core area, where it had something resembling vital organs. She stabbed a couple more times even after it stopped flopping about just in case.

For some reason the mother looked worried for Izzy, even though Izzy was the stronger of the two of them. She still definitely didn’t speak common though, so there wasn’t much to do about it. A short break to catch her breath and Izzy would see if there were any more monsters nearby. After that, she’d find Turlough. Somehow.

-----

One portal opening up to an area with a high density of mana was a coincidence. Two of them would have made me think that maybe there were more worlds with powerful mana than I thought. When the second faded and I was finding my way towards the next portal, only to sense powerful mana from that one, I knew it was on purpose.

What purpose, though? That I was unsure of. The problem was that the portals were not magic. As far as I could tell- and what the Power Brigade seemed to believe- they were still made by Doctor Doomsday. He wasn’t flinging about his Dimensionatron or whatever, but all of the signatures matched. Speculation was they had been rigged to appear ahead of time, and were meant to distract from some big heist. Like a bank or something, which was weird. I was pretty sure people kept most of their money ‘digital’ in this world, so what could he take?

I couldn’t think about that long as I noticed something weird near the portal. The shadows were all wrong. Especially the way they were attacking people. I felt weird shooting firebolts at the ground, but when the creatures recoiled I felt justified. “Aim for the shadows!” I called out to Shockfire, who had come to meet up with me. “Anyone with energy attacks, watch the ground and walls! If anyone has light powers, use them to reveal unnatural shadows! Everyone else, just leave!”

Fortunately fire magic kind of worked and I was able to take out a couple shadows. I was already backing away, since I’d been running low on mana this whole time- even with extended time spent in high mana density areas I couldn’t keep up. There were still a lot of the worming their way around along the surfaces towards anyone that looked tasty.

Then a bright figure came from the sky, stopping just short of the ground. A wave of wind was sent in all directions from the force of the motion, and blinding light burst through the area, eradicating the shadows.

I took a good long look at Shooting Star’s back as she stood tall and proud, then posed for one of those ‘drones’ that reporters who were too afraid to get near battles used. I carefully slunk away around a corner in case she thought to turn around. Seeing there were no more shadows ripping away people’s life force… I was inclined to give her that one. Sure, she was a tad late but everyone was understandably busy right now.