Lilijoy rocked back in surprise. The attention she devoted to Magpie shifted to the new presence, this man who had stepped out of thin air as if emerging from behind a tree. She felt a wave of confusion pass over her as she attempted to discern his features. He was… dark skinned? No. A redhead with… a dark goatee and… a broad face with a scar that… didn’t exist. The heat map of the blood flow under his skin fluctuated at odds with what her normal vision was telling her, but it was just as inconstant.

He smiled, or at least she thought he did, though with his constantly shifting features she wasn’t sure what to believe. But his voice sounded like he was smiling.

“Very nice to meet you, Emily. Allow me to apologize on Magpie’s behalf. She really is just a minion, you know. My name is Jack.”

Is this what a high level Deception skill looks like? Or is it Disguise?

Either way, it was uncomfortable to look at. She forced herself to meet his changing eyes as she replied, using every ounce of her ability to analyze this new situation. She kept Magpie in her sight line by expanding her focal visual field to include all the light entering her eye.

“Nice to meet you, Jack. Are you her superior?”

He chuckled. “In many ways. I wanted to clear up this unfortunate misunderstanding.”

Magpie didn’t react to the slight, but that wasn’t surprising. Lilijoy had seen the moment that the girl dampened her emotions and substituted artificial physical responses. The delayed responses of her heartbeat and capillary dilations were a dead giveaway.

Instant psychopathy. Very convenient. I wonder how she decides to come out of it?

It was a shame that this Jack person had intervened though. She had thought that Magpie was about to tell her something that might be true, or at least a new lie. The old ones were getting tiresome, though she did enjoy the ‘my trainer made me do it’ spin.

“How do you propose to do that?” she asked with genuine curiosity.

“It’s simple, really.” He spread his hands. “Your trainer, the esteemed Rosemallow, approached my superiors some time ago. We owed her a favor and Magpie had just finished her Trial, so it seemed like it would be a nice chance for her to get some experience. Strings were pulled, situations were manipulated, plans were laid. It’s what we do. But it was all for a good cause. Magpie’s been working for you the whole time.”

“I suppose the next thing you would point out is that if your organization intended me harm, it would be simplicity itself to have captured me any of the times I went to town.”

He laughed and turned to Magpie. “There, you see? Real thinking isn’t that hard.” He turned back to Lilijoy. “Now, for all of her faults, Magpie has worked very hard on this operation. I can’t say I like your odds, but I have a little incentive for you to at least try.” She thought he might have winked. “This whole ordeal is serving as something of a final exam for Magpie, and I would hate to need to engineer another situation as challenging as this one. Finish this up, give it your best shot, and if things don’t work out we’ll make it right for you. Win-win.”

Crap. There’s no way on earth I can trust this guy; he’s the very definition of shifty. Except absolutely everything he said was entirely plausible. Yet another situation where thinking fast doesn’t help. Worst outcome has always been capture, but we all have redundant respawn techniques. Even if he’s lying about helping after, I’m no worse off than I was. Still doesn’t feel right.

Her intuition was unhappy, probably because Jack’s appearance itself seemed unwarranted. What could Magpie have told her that she didn’t know already? Why step in at all?

I need advice.

She slipped into her fastest subjective time and wrote a message to Anda, explaining the situation. Then she addressed Jack.

“I need some kind of assurance that you can help me.”

He made a show of tapping his ever-shifting cheek with an index finger.

“Hmm. A little taste of what we can do? Let’s see… okay, I’ve got just the thing. It’s not confirmed, but there might be a lead to your friend’s current location.”

“Is he okay? Can you tell me anything about his health?”

“Yes, I can. Theoretically.”

Magpie broke in. “Jesus dude, just tell her if her friend’s alive!” She looked at Lilijoy. “This guy’s a huge ass. I’m sorry I got you mixed up with all this.”

Lilijoy was relieved to see that Magpie’s emotions were back, but she kept her gaze pinned on Jack.

“Well?”

He held his hands up. “Okay, okay! Last I heard, he’s alive. That’s all I know about that.”

“There, you see?” said Magpie. “Not being an asshole isn’t that hard. Now the two of you can continue your little chat, but I’m going to go down some long, crappy mud-hole, sneak into a place full of horrible people, and die.”

She got off the ground, brushed some leaves from her butt and stalked away.

Lilijoy and Jack, otherwise known as Raven, continued to stare at each other. Or at least that’s what she thought he was doing. After long seconds he spoke.

“Well?”

It had been sixty-seven seconds since she messaged Anda. He was keeping an eye on her Outside self and was ready in case she needed advice, so she figured it was taking him that long to read and compose a reply.

“Why don’t you come with us now?” she asked.

He sighed and turned to see where Magpie was. When he turned back he was a round-faced Asian man in his twenties with chubby cheeks and a sparse mustache.

“Sorry for all the op-sec. That was as much for Magpie’s benefit as anything. The short answer is that I will be coming with you, but only as an observer. You won’t see me.” His face turned earnest. “I stepped in so that Magpie wouldn’t compromise herself and fail her mission. We didn’t understand your abilities when we assigned her, so it really became inevitable that you would catch on. It’s not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things, but I thought I could take a shot at repairing the situation.”

“So you understand my abilities now?”

He barked a short laugh. “Ha! More like shifted things from the unknown to the possible. Anyway, I’m just trying to give her a shot at success, and I guess you too, as a side benefit. Honestly, I just want to be done as her handler- it’s really thrown off some other projects I have.”

Anda’s message arrived just as he finished.

Reminds me of our discussion about going into the city. It doesn’t really matter if you trust any of these people. What matters is whether you have confidence in your own strength. Well, that and your respawn methods. Trust me, you don’t want to get stuck in that annoying situation. Anyway, don’t overthink it. The stakes aren’t life and death.

It was nice to have his perspective. It came to her that she was feeding off his experience, in a way.

Imagine if I had thousands or even millions of perspectives to combine with all the knowledge I already possess. Is that what Guardian is doing?

She knew it wasn’t quite right, but she felt like the thought had something to it; a nugget of truth. She resolved to contemplate the issue sometime when a mysterious operative from an unknown organization wasn’t waiting for her to decide whether she should risk her… what was it she was risking again?

I guess I really have been overthinking this. Maybe that’s the biggest danger of having the Tao System, that my brain is now capable of deity-level analysis paralysis.

She gave Jack a thumbs up, and ran after Magpie.

***

The tunnel wasn’t as bad as she had feared. It probably helped that she liked being underground, and had no issues with claustrophobia. Others in her cohort weren't thrilled, especially Skria, who didn’t have room to ride on Jessila’s shoulders, nor room to fly. It seemed that taking long hikes in dark, constrictive passageways wasn’t really her thing.

Jess was as happy as Lilijoy had ever seen her, even when she had to squeeze her body around intruding roots and rock formations. Lilijoy would have loved to ask her about her source and life in general, but they were operating under strictly silent conditions. Still, she was sure that she heard the large girl humming under her breath once or twice.

Magpie was all business. She followed their Badger-kin guide with precise, fluid movements, never once looking back at the rest of the group. Lilijoy could only wonder what was going through her head.

It was over an hour before they came to a series of wooden supports where the tunnel reached its end. They had been briefed on what was about to happen, so no one was surprised when their guide turned and left without so much as good luck. The Wraiths had built their tunnel network over many decades, and they were very serious about keeping as much of it secret as possible. It was only a thirty seconds before they heard the section of tunnel they had just passed through collapse.

No turning back now, thought Lilijoy. Hope this next part works or this will be a really short mission.

Jess pulled a support beam out and quickly stepped back. The ceiling here was a bit higher than it had been, about ten feet, so she was able to avoid the falling rocks and dirt that revealed a small patch of afternoon sky. Lilijoy had asked about the timing of the assault before they started the arduous tunnel-portion of the endeavor, as it seemed odd to begin operations under the midday sun. Magpie wasn’t talking, but Skria assured her it made perfect sense. She and Jessila had spent their time learning about the area from a few of the Wraiths they had met.

“They called in a big aerial campaign, all the tempered fliers from miles around. Most of them do best in daylight. Plus, just about all the Sinaloa Outsiders on the other side have some kind of low-light vision, or goggles that seem to do the same thing for them. The Wraiths learned years ago that night attacks don’t really help at all.” Skria had said.

Once they had clambered out of the loose earth of the collapsed tunnel, the warmth of the sun was welcome on Lilijoy’s face, even if its revealing light wasn’t ideal for their purposes. They were at the edge of a clearing, just under outstretched branches of towering trees. If she faced into the forest, the nearest trunk that Lilijoy could see was at least thirty feet in diameter, and similar giants thrust from the earth every hundred feet or so.

Even though she knew better, her expectations of the interior of Averdale forest had been influenced by the pictures of the giant redwood forests in her internet memory. What she was seeing was something entirely different, bigger and darker. These trees were towering giants over two hundred meters tall, twice the size of the largest redwoods, and their branches spread and reached out from their trunks, often meeting and twining with that of their neighbor. The result was a dense canopy that started a hundred feet or more from the dark forest floor, with huge open spaces between the mighty trunks where no plants could grow.

Even so, the largest of these trees wouldn’t have come to the knees of the Greatwood she had seen in her mystic library visions.

Behind her was the Cut, a shattered moonscape of destruction where Sinaloa had cleared the woods all around the outermost perimeter of their territory. It reminded Lilijoy of home.

“Alright,” Magpie said in a low voice. “No magic of any kind for this next part. All items in inventory.”

Jessila sighed and removed her hood and cloak. Lilijoy noticed that her braids were no longer in the tightly woven configuration provided by Mr. Sennit. She looked down at Nandi’s boon on her right palm.

Here’s hoping it doesn’t count as a magic item. Can’t exactly chop off my hand and put it in my inventory.

A host of irrelevant possible experiments flickered through her mind. Would the boon stay if she cut off her hand? If it did, what would happen when she grew a new hand? In her many attempts to get some kind of response from the stubbornly inert crystal she had sent all different kinds of mana to it, tried to pull ambient mana through it, and even tried to use Two Minds One Self on it, but cutting off her hand would be a new one.

Suitably stripped of anything that might trigger the coming set of wards, the cohort set forth under the trees.

***

According to Magpie, the magic detecting ward was followed by the first of several level detecting wards. This far out from the Sinaloa base the wards were set to detect high-level beings who would pose serious danger, where an early warning of their arrival would be crucial to orienting the defensive arrays. Defensive magics included such things as shields against magical and physical attack, but their mana cost grew prohibitive as the protected area expanded. As far as Lilijoy understood, it was related to the area of the shield, up until that area enclosed more than forty percent of a space, at which point it would switch over to being contingent on the volume.

Needless to say, those magical crafters who specialized in building and arranging the networks of items that composed a defensive array tried to avoid making shields that passed the volume threshold. Instead, they built responsive arrays that moved shields into place in response to specific threats. Lilijoy figured this was a purely arbitrary balancing mechanism to ensure that defensive positions always had weak spots.

Privately she called it the exhaust port mechanism, and she was thankful for its existence, since otherwise their little band would simply come up against a solid shield they had no hope of passing through.

They passed through the night-dark forest, twixt ever larger boles as they approached their end. Now and then they heard the sounds of distant explosions, signs that their allies of convenience were doing their part. Here and there Lilijoy saw rings of glowing fungi and other faintly luminescent growths embellishing the mighty trunks, perhaps some of the valuable alchemical ingredients that prompted Sinaloa’s conquest of the area.

“This used to be one of the most dangerous areas of the Garden,” Skria whispered from her perch on Jessila’s shoulder. “Now the great slime molds and the dangling creepers are almost gone.”

Lilijoy wasn’t sure if she should be sad about this or not.

“It still is,” hissed Magpie. “Only now the slimy creeps are on patrol, so keep it down! In fact, we should stealth it from here.”

“I’ll head up then,” said Skria. “Don’t worry, I won’t use any spells.” She leapt to the nearest tree and scurried up towards the canopy.

They were still being careful with active magic use. There was no real way for them to tell what wards were in effect, but the word was that the outer ward screened for all magic items and spell use, but inner wards didn’t, due to the need for patrols. Lilijoy wondered why Sinaloa bothered anymore with the outer wards, since it seemed they were easy enough to circumvent. In general it seemed to her like the whole ward system would be a nightmare to administer, especially over such a large area.

Lilijoy and Magpie moved forward in stealth, hoping Jessila’s cloak would keep her hidden should they cross paths with a patrol. The forest floor was not simple to navigate, with broad surface roots taller than Lilijoy running every which way. There were very few fallen leaves and twigs though, so even Jess was able to move somewhat quietly, other than the occasional stumble.

After a few more minutes, Lilijoy was startled by a message on her internal awareness.

Entering Territory held by Sinaloa Clan

Continuing past this point without permission

is considered a mutual Declaration of War

and will remove your immunity to damage from

Sinaloa Clan affiliated forces.

So that’s how that works, she thought. I guess this is where the real fun begins.

The sounds of combat filtered through the trees more regularly now that they were in the core territory. At times, Lilijoy could feel vibrations through her feet with her Earthen Sense, though the ability didn’t work very well now that she was on such a mixture of soil and roots. Back on the mirrored plane, she had wondered how a tier-one ability could possibly be so powerful, but it turned out that the setting had helped. Unlike the unbroken and uniformly dense material of the stone sea, the ground beneath her now was more plant than earth. It was like the difference between the clear air of an elevated lookout and a dust storm.

Even so, she caught just a hint of a vibration before she heard Magpie cry out.

“Crap! Ambush!”

She dove and rolled along the root in front of her and felt the passage of something fast and sharp just inches from her head. Her attacker’s stealth was broken, revealing a figure in a dark gray outfit of leather and cloth wearing a grin beneath outsized round goggles and a hood.

“And I thought noob patrol would be a waste of time,” he said. “Thanks for making my day.”