Despite the early time in the day, the thick canopy overhead did little to provide more than the barest amount of light for their march. The woods themselves were more of the same, thick trunks separated by twenty or almost thirty feet at least gave them a clear enough view of their immediate surroundings. The way the trees seemed to grow in a staggered pattern made it difficult to see great distances. The undergrowth was just as treacherous as it had been before as well, roots rising up out of the ground to trip an unsuspecting traveler or deep pockets where some animal had dug a nest only for it to have been buried in fallen leaves.

The compass proved to be less than helpful. As they began to travel in the general direction the needle was waving in it would occasionally swing hard to the left or right, forcing them to stop for several minutes at a time until it settled or held its new direction. What should have been a straight path became a weaving procession through the trees, stopping and starting every half hour or so. Teyva wondered just how long the compass added to their travel time, an hour? Two? When the goal was to make it to their destination before dark every minute counted.

“Hold up, it’s waving again,” Teyva sighed, coming to a stop. Azrael let out a groan and Nephral peered down from his perch on Teyva’s shoulder and frowned. Teyva held still, staring down at the object in her hand while Azrael turned in a complete circle, a pensive look on her face.

“What’s up Az?” Teyva asked, catching her expression.

“We’re being followed,” She said, her hand once again going down to her weapon.

Nephral yawned and joined the conversation with a lazy tone, “Yes, wolves if I am not mistaken. Noticed them a while ago.”

Azrael turned to scowl at the Sphinx; “And you said nothing?”

“They are not hostile so I did not see any need to mention their presence,” The sphinx yawned again, laying his head back down against Teyva’s neck. Teyva turned in place, looking for their pursuers. When she spotted a leg and a tail darting between trees about a hundred feet out she turned to Azrael. Azrael’s expression was stony but she let out a long-held breath.

“It doesn’t look like they’re interested in attacking. Why follow us then?” Azrael wondered.

“Maybe Deshan wants to keep an eye on us,” Teyva pointed out.

“Why, though?” Azrael repeated, turning back to Teyva and glancing down at the compass. The needle had finally stopped wobbling again.

Teyva shrugged; “No idea, we didn’t part on the best terms but he didn’t seem to want another fight with us,” She said. The great golden wolf had been remarkably willing to end their fight when the two women had taken down several of his wolves. She had figured they had seen the last of the mighty beast but she supposed she was wrong. In any case, as long as the wolves didn’t attack them they really didn’t have much to worry about and it wasn’t like it was a problem they could solve then and there. “We should keep moving.”

Azrael hesitated and looked back over her shoulder before nodding, “Right, let’s go.”

It was noon by the time they reached the first signs of the Aberrant Grove. They were hard to miss. The first noticeable difference was a change in color of the leaves. Vibrant greens were replaced by sickly purples and blues. The bark of the trees began to darken as they went as well and soon the wood itself began to twist and coil in on itself creating hazardous pathing. The walk was quiet, otherwise. Azrael commented on that several times, pointing out that there should be other predators and animals in the area like bears and hawk-owls. Yet nothing disturbed them as they made their way further into the eerie grove.

“What could change a tree like this?” Teyva asked, stopping at a particularly twisted tree. The branches had bent almost into coils and the trunk itself was bent at an almost seventy-degree angle. She ran her fingers over the surface and found the bark to be slick with some kind of oil. She pulled her hand away and wiped it off quickly onto her gambeson. In her satchel, the Mockeries shifted in discomfort, alerted to the strangeness of the place.

“I’ve never seen corruption like this before, something wicked is at work here,” Azrael said, picking a leaf off a tree and sniffing it. “These leaves are producing ground oil,” she said, wrinkling her nose.

Teyva blinked and turned to look at Azrael, looking down at her hand and sniffing the air again. The realization hit her like a brick but she had to be sure she heard her correctly. “Ground oil?”

“Yes, occasionally we find the substance while we dig for wells out in our territory. We have to dilute it before it can be of any use but it makes for remarkably strong torches and lanterns in a pinch. Terribly flammable.”

Teyva rubbed her temples, pacing back and forth. She’d paid enough attention in science class to know exactly how petroleum was formed. Decaying organic matter compressed over time. She looked at the leaves and felt an uneasy feeling coil in her gut. “I think I know where all the animals are.”

“What do you mean?”

“I remembered something just now, though I don’t know how it could possibly apply to trees like this,” Teyva said, then went into a brief explanation of how crude oil formed beneath the ground. Azrael’s eyebrows shot up and she looked up at the tree again, her eyes going hard.

“That is… unsettling,” Azrael said, “We should keep moving before we lose any more light, we cannot risk using torches here.”

Their path took them another hour before the trees started to thin out. Eventually breaking up altogether and opening into a wide clearing formed around the biggest tree Teyva had ever seen. Through the thick canopy of the forest, there had been no way to see it from a distance but with the clearing open around them she could make out the entirety of its majesty. Hundreds of feet tall with a canopy that spread out over the entire clearing, the massive tree had to be as big around as some of the houses in the settlement. Its roots were so thick that she imagined she’d be dwarfed by them if she stood close enough.

Around them the earth had turned almost black with decay, plants had wilted and turned an off gray. As the wind blew they did not even move. Azrael knelt down and tapped one of them with her finger only to have it fall over and crack to pieces. “Stone,” She said grimly. “This place is accursed.”

Teyva took in the rest of their surroundings, here and there among the choked dirt and black-tinted grass were pools of black bubbling liquid that popped and hissed. Occasionally a bone poked out of the surface of the liquid, bleached clean of all flesh. She shuddered and brought her hand up over her mouth. The smell was awful too, a mixture of oil and decay that left the air seeming almost toxic. She checked her stats to see if there was indeed a debuff to being here but found that, thankfully, nothing had shown up yet.

“What is causing this?” Teyva asked, “It’s horrible.”

“There’s a space beneath the tree there, under that root, do you see?” Azrael said, pointing toward the tree. Teyva squinted and followed Azrael’s gesture to the foot of the massive plant. Indeed one of the roots had arced at some point in the past and revealed an opening that seemed to go down into the earth beneath the tree. From where they stood they could only see darkness beyond the entrance. Teyva checked the quest and made sure she had read it correctly. They needed to find the source and choose whether or not to deal with it.

“Well, we’ve found the Grove but we’re still far from done,” She said, stepping further onto the mottled land. Nephral sat up and looked around, a low growl coming from his throat. “What is it Nephral?”

“Madness in the air,” The creature hissed, bearing his teeth. “They come from below.”

Teyva used [Simple Shift] on her arm, turning it into a blade. Like Azrael instructed the previous night she kept her head on a swivel, her eyes combing over her surroundings. “Azrael?”

“I heard him,” Azrael grunted, drawing her own weapon and moving in next to Teyva. The two split their attention to either side, covering more ground as they proceeded closer to the tree. Only then did Teyva spot the first of the horrible things that began to crawl their way out of the tar pits.

The thing was vaguely humanoid in shape and no larger than three feet tall, its body was emaciated and covered in dripping viscous blackness. It seemed to have some kind of fur on it but she couldn’t tell for certain. It’s jaw hung open, lopsided and vacant as it raised itself to a partially bipedal stance. It was the eyes though that sent a chill down her spine. The creature had six eyes that pointed in all directions on its head, all of them filled with a mixture of wild terror and madness. Teyva used her journal.

[Lesser Wightling] - Hostile - Level 2

HP: 100% MP: 100% SP: 100%

“They’re called wightlings! Not super strong!”

“Just going to be a lot of them!” Azrael exclaimed, “More coming from my side!”

The wightling across from Teyva drew its mangled hands up to its chest and let out a garbled scream that echoed across the field. She winced, feeling something cold rush through her blood and fade. She checked her combat log as it began to lope its way in her direction.

Lesser Wightling used [Horrifying Scream]

You have resisted [Horrifying Scream]

“Their screams cause some sort of magical fear! Stay focused!” Teyva said and reached for her bag. “Okay darlings! Time to come out for momma!”

As the first wightling drew closer more began to crawl out of the ooze. They shrieked and twisted their broken bodies, trying to find a shape that would suit them as they hunted down the intruders. She pushed away those thoughts to focus on what was to come, the buzz of thirty pairs of tiny wings roaring past her ears as her Mockeries swarmed out of her bag and formed a glittering cloud in the air; darting toward the first of the creatures. She could feel their ravenous hunger building like a bubble at the back of her mind and drew that hunger in the direction of the first wightling. They landed on it, covering it and sinking their acidic teeth into its blackened flesh. It screamed and began clawing at itself trying to remove the deadly swarm from its body. A few mockeries fell away, slain, but in a matter of seconds, the creature fell to the ground, green acidic ooze pouring from across its body and hissing on the ground.

She didn’t have time to celebrate, more were coming. This time she joined in, holding out her left hand and letting out a breath. A cloud of freezing air escaped her lips as she cast [Pale Bolt]. A single mote of white light formed on her palm, frost beginning to stretch across her fingertips. The dart of white light coalesced into a streak that leaped forward, screaming across the ground and catching one of the wightlings in the chest. A patch of frost formed at the impact point and the creature staggered but kept moving. A few Mockeries leaped onto it and began to bite while she moved on to her next target, releasing another [Pale Bolt], then another, and another.

She kept an eye on her MP as she cast her fifth [Pale Bolt]. Spreading the damage across the five wightlings that were now struggling to tear off her precious Mockeries. She felt a tightness in her chest each time one of the little things fell to the ground and went still. She pressed her lips into a thin line and glanced back at her MP. It had almost dropped below twenty with that last bolt but was steadily going back up again with the help of Nephral. She wasn’t sure how much health the creatures had each but she knew her [Titan Slayer] achievement would bump the damage a little bit.

When her MP hit thirty-six she held out her palm and cast another pale bolt at the first again. This time the white light spread across its body and it seized up, falling to its knees and plopping face-first onto the ground. The Mockeries that had been clinging to it quickly moved on to the next, biting and tearing eagerly to help their mother.

“Mother, behind!” Nephral called, his head turned toward where Azrael was fighting.

She turned and spotted Azrael holding her own against six of the creatures. A seventh had darted away from the fight, narrowly avoiding the Azar’s gleaming blade to throw itself in Teyva’s direction. Teyva struck, swinging down hard with her sword arm coiled in frost as the creature entered striking distance. She caught it across the chest as it leapt into the air, a splash of frost forming on the wound as it dug its claws into her upper arm. Pain seeped through the injury and into her elbow. She felt it begin to stiffen as something black formed on her skin.

“Little bastard!” She cursed, swinging again and removing its head from its body.

She checked her stats as she canceled [Chilling Touch]. She’d lost ten health from that one attack and now had a debuff called ‘Blightrot’.

Affliction: Blightrot (Disease)

The infected target’s Agility and Physique are reduced by 3 for the next 10 seconds. Healing and regeneration abilities are nullified for the duration.

Her eyes bulged. She glanced again at her stats and sure enough, they had stopped regenerating. She swore and looked back to the remaining four Wightlings that were fighting her Mockeries. She could feel the little voices in her head growing quieter and quieter as more of them were slain by the horrors. She bore her teeth and threw out her palm anyway, casting [Pale Bolt] over and over until she felt the weariness of her mana dipping out. She had three MP remaining when she felled two more of the wightlings and four seconds left on Blightrot.

“Two more…” She gasped, looking back over her shoulder to see Azrael kick one of the creatures in the head and bisect another. She hazarded a glance in Teyva’s direction and nodded, shouting an incantation and sending a blade of wind through a third. She looked back at her side of the fight and watched as more of her swarms fell away. Chewing on her lip she glanced again at the Blightrot timer, two, one. Her mana began to regenerate again. She held her breath until her mana rose back to nine and cast another [Pale Bolt] destroying another wightling and leaving only one left standing.

Behind her, she heard Azrael let out a victorious shout and felt her shoulders sag with relief. The last Wightling on her side succumbed to the swarm a few seconds later.

Azrael hurried to her side while Teyva recalled her swarm. Of the thirty she had begun with, only twelve remained. She sank to her knees and tried to steady herself. The abuse of mana had left her swaying and she felt a headache coming on. A firm hand clapped down on her shoulder and she looked up into Azrael’s beaming face, she was covered in sweat and the black blood of the monsters.

“You did well!” She barked, “Much better! Those strategies worked out.”

Teyva shook her head; “I still lost so many Mockeries,” She said sadly, looking down into her bag again. She crossed her legs and caught her breath. She knew she could just summon more but the feeling that these little creatures were so willing to die for her made her stomach twist. She was their mother. That’s how they saw her. She swallowed the feeling for now and checked her arm, it could bend again.

“You noticed their poison?” Azrael asked.

“It stops regeneration.”

“Dangerous for you, then.”

Teyva nodded and caught her breath as she finally acknowledged a prompt notification that had been screaming in the corner of her mind. The window blasted to life in front of her eyes with great fanfare.

LEVEL UP!

You are now Level 2

You have 15 (3 Base + 12 Racial) attribute points to spend.

You must rest for at least one hour to use your attribute points.

An Aspect Shard has been added to your inventory.

You may unlock one ability per aspect at this level.

Your [Old Satchel] has improved! You now have 30 item slots within its space.

Your control limit for [Create Mockery] has increased to 35.

“Yes!”