Rosemallow watched the tiny form of her student break through the layers of cloud and gas, leaving equally tiny vortexes in her wake.

Maybe I should have thrown her on to the Top, she mused. Oh well.

She could only blame the crushing power of the trap she had carelessly entered for her distraction. And for that, she could only blame her own hubris, and possibly the Archon.

He could have warned me easily enough. Or at least allowed me to use more of my power. Jerk.

She knew it was foolish to attribute any motive she could understand to the Archon, who was almost omnipotent within his domain. To the extent that she understood him at all, it was through something an Outsider had said to her many years ago.

Why is there evil in the world? In order to thicken the plot.

She figured that the Archon was all about plot thickening. She generally appreciated this attitude, as it made her existence much simpler. Struggle abounded everywhere that evil showed its face.

She pulled herself to her full height and surveyed the situation. The trap had slammed down on her like a ton of bricks as soon as she descended to rescue her student, siphoning her mana and health, crushing down her attributes and restricting her movement. An array with that kind of power had to be the work of multiple Grand Masters, and specifically tailored to boot. She had run across similar setups in Purgatory, often in zones meant to exclude beings above a certain power level. In a sense the entire Garden functioned in that way, but she had never expected to find an array of this sophistication waiting for her in Averdale.

Now she was stuck in a somewhat enclosed space with around twenty dhrowgos. Under normal circumstances, this would have provided her with a momentary distraction at best, but in the grip of the array-trap surrounding her, she might be in for a rough morning.

Never mind whatever the Outsiders were doing. So far just throwing potions and watching.

Let’s see. No mana left. Attributes falling. Limited range of motion. I haven’t felt like this since I was below level fifty.

Her face broke into a wide grin.

This is going to be fun!

***

I’ll bet you didn’t see that coming, Lilijoy thought as she pulled herself to her feet and surveyed the enormous corpse in front of her. She looked down at the gem embedded in her palm, then back to the Nasty Hanging Tentacle Monster she had landed on.

This is insanely powerful. There must be some kind of limit, something to keep me from bringing over an army of these things. Or dropping entire trees on people. Heck, why not bring the whole fort? I could put it up on a mountain somewhere and use it as a base to send forth my evil minions.

She may or may not have cackled at this point.

She had landed somewhere in the middle of the cleared area around the base of the tree. It was still filled with a twisted tangle of roots, though thankfully they seemed to be behaving like roots were supposed to, rather than grabbing everything that moved and conveying it up to the top of the tree.

That would have been ironic. Landing safely, only to be brought right up there again.

She hadn’t been terribly worried about that possibility, as she herself had been responsible for most of the root manipulations, borrowing from the skill set she had developed with her midges. She didn’t think the Greatwood was quite capable of controlling so many different parts of itself on its own.

The sounds of distant combat brought her attention upward.

It must be crazy up there. Dhrowgos, roots, Sinaloa warriors and a pissed off Rosemallow. Except she didn’t seem to be in good shape at all.

It was disturbing. Lilijoy would have bet anything that there wasn’t a force in the Garden that could make her trainer even break a sweat if she really let loose. She could only surmise that Doctor Quimea had prepared something special for truly powerful enemies, some array-type trap that covered the entire Greatwood.

And now she was supposed to break it somehow and rescue her trainer. While she felt sympathy for Rosemallow’s distress, and she suspected that thwarting the purposes of Doctor Quimea could only be a good thing, she had to admit that the prospect of bailing out the mighty Rosemallow was alluring for other, more petty reasons.

She’ll never be able to live this down. But first I have to find it. And I guess she did rescue me from a really disturbing situation. I owe her for that.

She knew that time was precious, but she also needed to pull herself together and take stock of her situation. An awful lot had happened in a very small amount of time.

Hmm. Do I process the fact that I might have damaged my brain, that I just gained six levels, that I have a vastly overpowered artifact in my hand, that I was used by Head Treetouched to give the Greatwood consciousness, and as part of that more-or-less single-handedly destroyed Sinaloa’s century long hold on Averdale, or that I need to find and break an array powerful enough to capture Rosemallow. Who Sinaloa thinks is a Tier Five subset, not that I’m surprised by that, and who just showed up out of the blue to rescue me from horrible corrupted elf-creatures who reached under my skin and ripped out a good chunk of my stats for the next twenty-four hours.

It occurred to her that she might need time to process the sheer amount of things she needed to process.

Oh, and I forgot that I need to think about my conversation with Doctor Quimea, and decide for the time being whether it matters if the Outside is part of a greater simulation. And whether the Nasty Hanging Tentacle Monster is still alive because its tentacles are moving, and..oh holy crap. I need to run!

Thoughts of matters trivial and profound fled from her mind as the nightmare she had brought forth from the Trial began to gather itself up and move toward her, tentacles reaching out to grasp exposed roots as it pulled itself along the ground. A faint layer of steam, or smoke rose from its… skin-like surface everywhere it was exposed to the bright morning sun.

Lilijoy turned and began running clumsily, stumbling from root to root, heading to the forest. Her motor cortex was still a hot mess, and there had been no time to address the issue. Logging out wasn’t an option, due to the fact that she was in a contested space, even if the Tentacle Monster was somehow friendly, or her minion, or something along those lines. She had her doubts about those possibilities, as she felt no connection of any kind to the creature.

So that’s the first limitation. Things I summon might want to eat me. Maybe even me in particular. I’ll have to check that with one of those small lizards. I’m pretty sure I can handle those guys.

As she ran, she surveyed the state of her system. Upon finding that Stage Two was close to entirely recovered, she split her mind, adding her Jiannu self back to the situation. There was no need for a discussion. Jiannu began to refine the previous work addressing her damaged motor cortex, and Lilijoy continued to stumble-run. The Nasty Hanging Tentacle Monster was gaining slowly, though it was clearly suffering in the sunlight, and having difficulty navigating its mass through the maze of looped and twisting roots.

Just like old times. I probably got most of my starting Flash thanks to you. Or your relative. Guess we’ve both ‘fallen’ on hard times since then. Ha. Ha.

There was a bit of a punchy feeling in her head, a sense of detachment, which she assumed came from being absolutely overwhelmed by events in every way. Either that, or Jiannu was using most of their shared processing power. If she was, it was to good effect; after just a few seconds she began to feel a bit more coordinated, and soon she had pulled ahead by a good margin. She was almost disappointed not to hear the creature’s forlorn wail. Almost.

It occurred to her that if the Tentacle Monster lived, it would be more than happy in the ecological niche once occupied by the near extinct Dangling Creepers. Perhaps she had done a good thing by bringing it to a new home.

What could possibly go wrong? I bet the elves will throw me a parade if they ever come back. I’m sure they’ll love what I’ve done to the place.

Soon she was making her way through heavy thorn hedges and briers, this time with no convenient path to follow. Several times she was forced to pull out the evil knife and hack her way through, a task that caused it to radiate contempt for her life choices.

“Look, I already fed you,” she told it. “A little sap never hurt anyone.”

It twisted sullenly in her hand.

“Well, it’s not like you have any choice in the matter. Still...”

She squeezed a few drops of blood from one of her latest thorn lacerations onto the knife.

“… I guess we’re in this together. Just don’t go expecting me to organize any mass sacrifices.”

She continued on through the dense growth, clearing out her notifications as she went. Most of them were about some status effect or another, many no longer applicable. She winced as she saw that her Kinesthetic Awareness had been reduced all the way down to four initially, though it had since bounced back to twenty-two.

Wow. So this is what it feels like to be average? I sure hope I can get that damage repaired.

There were also all the temporary hits to her other stats to clear out, and the too-little-too-late notification of gaining Initiate in Gliding. But the most exciting bit of news was the new title she had received.

You have been granted a Title:

Awakener

+5 to all Charm Traits

She had some mixed feelings about the bonuses to Charm though. It was great, of course, worth forty free points, four entire levels worth. It was hard to put her finger on why it bothered her; maybe just that she didn’t need all those points in Charm: People, didn’t want to be a manipulator. Even charming animals felt like it might not be something she would like. She’d rather gain their trust normally, or just let them be.

Still, getting all those free points made her feel just fine about spending the nine points she had left from her leveling extravaganza. Since Rosemallow had told her to do what she wanted, she raised her Hand Weaving skill a notch, and then, more practically, raised her Unarmed Combat.

When she was done, she looked over her character sheet.

Name: Emily Level: 16

Defender of the Young

Dark Lady of the Thorns

Blessed of Nandi

Awakener

Free Points: 22* (2 + 20 Direct)

HP: 75

Natural Traits

STR: 16/23 (20 effective)

END: 54/59

SPD: 57 (177 effective)

KA: 22/152

Magical Traits

POW: 5/18 (+25% STR)

INV: 41

VIT: 5/20

FLASH: 42 (+210% SPD)

MW: 79/129

MG: 10%/100 Sec.

Elemental Affinities/Immunities

Fire: 33

Earth: 60

Water: 30

Air: 28

Charm:

People: 34

Plants: 78

Animals: 67

Abilities

Scan III (Universal)

Echolocation IV (Uncommon)

Infrared Vision III (Uncommon)

Low Light Vision II (Common)

Two Minds One Self (-) (Unique)

Earthen Sense I (Very Rare)

Mana Manipulation (Rare)

Skills (VP)

Nature: Animals: Enhanced Journeyman (25)

Nature: Plants: Enhanced Journeyman (25)

Unarmed Combat: Enhanced Journeyman (25)

Acrobatics: Enhanced Journeyman (25)

Manipulation: Augmented Apprentice (9)

Stealth: Augmented Apprentice (9)

Medical/Healing: Augmented Apprentice (9)

Weapons: Blade: Short: Augmented Apprentice (9)

Weapons: Blunt: Club: Augmented Apprentice (9)

Climbing: Upgraded Apprentice (6)

Deception: Augmented Apprentice (6)

Hand Weaving: Upgraded Apprentice (6)

Meditation: Natural Journeyman (4)

Gliding/Flight: Upgraded Initiate (4)

Weapons: Projectile: Sling: Upgraded Initiate (4)

Teaching: Natural Initiate (2)

Disguise: Natural Novice (1)

Dance: Natural Novice (1)

It felt good to see so many changes, though the lingering effects of the dhrowgos’ drains were annoying. As she continued hacking her way through the tangles, one last thought occurred to her.

Oh, wait… wasn’t there a message from Anda somewhere?

***

Anda patiently guided a small group of his flowers into Lilijoy’s brain. Initially, he had been a little reluctant to think of them as ‘flowers’, but he had to admit that the radial symmetry and elongated flowing petals made a convincing case for the label. He was only using a small amount of the flexible nanobots, a few thousand carefully conveyed into her left eye, and from there to the optic canal.

It was a very different experience from maneuvering through his own anatomy. There, everything was mapped out, and the combined input from hundreds of thousands of nanobots created a vivid sense of presence wherever he chose to wander. Moving into Lilijoy's brain was still better than his previous system, which had kept the user at a much greater degree of remove. With his old system, there was far less focus on the anatomical realities, and much more on the function. You could tell it what to do, and, if it could do it, then it took care of the rest. If it couldn’t, then you were out of luck. As far as he could tell so far, the only limitations on the Tao System were know-how, imagination and effort.

He was pretty sure he had the last two, though who doesn’t think they have imagination? There were still times he felt the burden of his preconceptions weighing on his creativity, mostly every time he was around Lilijoy.

Midges, of all things.

It wasn’t long before his probe had reached the cerebral cortex. He pursed his lips as he surveyed the damage.

Could be worse. Could be much worse. No major zones of cell necrosis. Cytokines are pretty bad though. Where are her bugs?

Anda would have expected this part of her brain to be swarming with flowers addressing the damage. After a few seconds he found one, dim and barely able to overcome the viscosity of the extracellular fluid. Soon he found others, all similarly feeble.

Deva, what do you make of this? he asked.

Their power reserves are low. Given time, they will regenerate.

Anda pushed his curiosity about exactly how that was accomplished aside. There was a more important question.

How long will it take?

About an hour and a half to regain reasonable functionality.

That was bad. The body’s reaction to a brain injury could be far more dangerous than the injury itself.

What about defense mechanisms? Will our bugs cause any problems? Immune response?

The primary defenses are found in the Stage One units. As they are currently non-functional, that won’t be an area of concern for some time. Only Stage Two units provoke immune reactions.

All right, then. We’re going in.

Anda leaned his head on Lilijoy’s and marshaled his forces.

***

Rosemallow spun and clubbed the Dhrowgos with the body of the Outsider she was holding. Or was it the other way around? Honestly, she had lost track some time ago as her vision faded and she became lost in the frenzy of battle. The Outsiders had thrown one alchemical solution after another into the area, no doubt in an attempt to find one that would bring her down.

So far they had been unsuccessful, though she was blind, dizzy, weakened and taking steady damage from something she had inhaled.

Sure wish I’d raised my Vitality a bit more, she thought.

Thankfully, most of the magic attacks were fire and earth based, her strongest affinities, and she didn’t need vision to track her many opponents.

How many have I thrown off the tree now? Thirty? That sounds about right. I’d really like to get out of this without a respawn, but the little boogers just keep coming. I haven’t been on the wrong side of a boss fight for ages. I’d forgotten how annoying it is. Shouldn’t this be about when the groups in the forest realize that most of Sinaloa’s defenses are down?

An arrow hit her in the leg and bounced off, simultaneous with the crack of its release.

Stupid supersonic arrows.

She hurled the body in the general direction of the archer, and cast about for a new weapon. She’d lost her club the first time they brought her down using some type of electrified net. Her enemy must have taken it, though she was a bit surprised they had anyone who could even lift it.

Come on, where’d all the tanks go? I need someone with a little more heft than that last guy.

The immediate area was empty of opponents, though she could hear them all around her.

“What are you waiting for?!” she yelled.

“I’ve been waiting for a very long time,” came a voice.

Not this guy again. Mr. Charm.

“I know what you are,” he continued. “I have to say, I’m a little disappointed.”

“I’ll dress up nicer next time,” she replied, watching her health slowly dwindle. “It’s a nice trap you built. I’ll have to incorporate it into my training methods.”

This was the second conversation she had with this guy. The first one he had wasted his breath trying to convince her that he only wanted to talk.

No wonder the Archon sent me and not Ani. He’d have talked the guy’s ears off. Wish he’d sent Masgret instead. That’s a conversation I’d pay good money to see.

“Are all the Tier Five as resistant to reason?” he inquired.

“First of all, they’re called Gongen. And if I was one, you’d be very wise to put away your toys and go home.”

“And why would I be inclined to do so?”

“Because Gongen have another source of power beyond Mana.”

His voice became excited. “Tell me more.”

“I think I’ve said enough. Just something to keep in mind.”

“You must understand that it is futile to continue this struggle.”

Rosemallow allowed herself a smile that showed her magnificent teeth.

“Struggle is never futile.”

With a roar, she charged back into action.

***

It was another thirty minutes before Lilijoy reached the cool dark of the woods.

I’m lucky to have Anda watching over me, she thought.

Anda had been very upset with her for not respawning and logging out immediately.

Already, she could feel the effects of his efforts on her behalf. Not only was he using a huge number of his flowers to help minimize the damage to her brain, but he had contributed a full dose of normal med-bugs to supplement their activities. She winced a little as she recalled their conversation though.

“You know perfectly well that every second counts with a brain injury. What were you thinking?” he had asked. This had been one of many cogent points he had delivered in a well deserved tirade addressed to her apparent irresponsibility.

Lilijoy had no good answer for him, and the more she considered this, the more it bothered her. What had she been thinking? Granted, it wasn’t like her mind was firing on all cylinders, but as she had vastly more cylinders than a normal person, that wasn’t much of an excuse. It called for serious introspection.

What do you think, Jiannu?

It all made sense at the time, her alter-ego replied. I remember feeling that our immediate concerns were more important. That everything was going to be fine.

I know. There was a feeling of lightness and...

Clarity, Jiannu finished for her.

Do you think it’s because we believed the Doctor at some level?

No, I know we don’t. Or rather, if we did, it wouldn’t change our behavior.

It just seems like that feeling of clarity might have been false, an illusion or something. And that means…

They both knew what it probably was, but Jiannu said it.

We were forced to run our consciousness entirely in Stage Two, and it changed our priorities and how we feel. Changed us.

But we’re still mostly in Stage Two. It doesn't feel that different.

It doesn’t mean that we can’t exercise reason, or that we don’t have continuity. We just need to be more careful, like someone who doesn’t feel pain around a hot stove.

In this state, we’re missing some emotional alarm bells. Urgency.

Even healthy fear.

That should worry us...

Shouldn’t it?