I ripped away splinters of wood that melted into slime the second they were removed from the tree, dodging writhing tendrils of copper that were thicker than my forearm to get a better look at the hollow spot the lichenthrope had burst out of. More liquid-like tendrils were already winding themselves into a mostly solid core, but shied away from my touch as if my armor was poison.

The hollow center was more than big enough to fit a person and seemed to go on as far as the tree was tall. But there wasn’t a single speck of moss to be found. I frowned and bit my lip; the only places I’d seen the moss were on the rocks surrounding lichenthropes and inside the creatures. But it all had to come from somewhere, right?

“What do you see in there?” Jun called from behind me.

“Not much.” I replied, backing out and watching as the tendrils merged together into a solid copper core. “It’s hollow all the way to the top, but the stump’s completely solid. No way underground that I could see.”

“Well, it does make sense. Finding the right way after just one fight would be way too easy.” Jun crossed her arms and nodded confidently, staring down the forest as the first cracks of a flood rang out. “Maybe we should try following the water? It’s all flowed the same way since I got here, so could there be somewhere it’s all going?”

I didn’t have any better ideas, so I grunted in agreement. “There’s no way that was the only lichenthrope we’ll see, so always be three seconds away from being ready to fight. We probably won’t get ambushed in a level one hazard, but you never know.”

“Okay, this has to be something important.” Jun snorted, gesturing with her sword at the massive tree that was made of green-tinted water and rusted metal tendrils.

“‘Important’ and useful are two different things.” I pointed out, walking up to the water-tree and pressing my hand to it.

The surface tension took a not insignificant amount of strength to break, and I felt the water spiraling both upwards and downwards at the same time. If it weren’t for floodwalker, my hand might not be attached to my body after the tree’s attempted ravaging.

“We know this is where all the water drains to.” Jun said excitedly, stepping around the tree’s massive trunk to look at me from the other side. “We just saw it suck up all the water from a flood that came from this side. How isn’t this the heart of the hazard?”

I retracted my hand and shook the water off it, considering Jun’s suggestion. From what I knew, level one hazards were beyond obvious in what you had to do to clear them. If I were in a double-digit hazard, I wouldn’t hesitate to call this place the hazard’s heart and start a search for anything useful in the vicinity. But level one hazards didn’t make you search.

I told Jun as much, but she didn’t seem convinced. “We have the swords, so why not use them? If we jumped into the tree, it might take us up above tree level.”

“If and might.” I grumbled, but reached for my sword anyway. We didn’t have any better leads to go on, and the worst-case scenario I could come up with didn’t lead to either of us dying. “Lead the way, miss stat-monster. If you start getting damage notifications, yell down at me; I can’t survive what you can.”

Jun grabbed the hilt of her sword, twirled it around, and held it out to me. “Your sword gives you power and speed, but mine gives resilience and speed. We should trade so you don’t get hurt.”

“A very good idea.” I said with a nod, handing Jun my sword and accepting hers in return. “Good luck.”

“Well, like you said, the person with higher resilience should go first.” Jun said with a smile in her voice, stepping aside and gesturing for me to go ahead. “And now that you have an extra 8…”

I’d been played. I shook my head and laughed, clapping my hand on Jun’s shoulder as I walked past her. “You make a good point, Jun.” I conceded, pressing my shoulder through the tree’s tension.

The first thing I noticed was just how warm the tree’s water was. The raging currents were barely noticeable when I was fully immersed, pushing against me from all directions like a slightly strong wind. It was nothing like the slightly sticky floodwaters, even though they’d all found their way into this one tree.

The second thing I noticed were the constant notifications telling me that floodwalker was active. Standing in one of the floods before had only triggered exactly one notification, but this one was flashing in the corner of my vision multiple times per second. Almost as if each current was its own individual flood.

And finally, there was the fact that I was almost through the treetops. The ground was so far below me that Jun was just a small yellow stain, and I was so close to the massive leaves of these trees that I could hear the pelting rain falling like tiny thunderclaps. And then I was above the leaves, continuing upwards inside this one massive tree while all the treetops began shrinking below me.

“Shit!” I cried, forcing myself out of the tree before I got so high that the fall would do any sort of serious damage. Even then it was almost too late, and I began plummeting down towards the massive pools of water held inside the trees’ bizarre leaves.

Shielding my head with my arms, I twisted and turned to make sure I’d hit the water and not the plant-metal mixture that surrounded it. I slid through the water without much of a splash at all, smacking my fingers against the bottom of the leaf within a second of being underwater. And this water felt exactly like the floodwaters, slightly sticky and a little denser than normal.

//RUSTING: THE PREVIOUSLY CLEANSED BLADE HAS RUSTED ONCE MORE.

//RETURN TO THE VERDANT SOURCE TO CLEANSE THE BLADE.

I stared at the error messages for a little longer than necessary, then reached down to feel for Jun’s sword. I raised the three-foot long blade to my eyes to check for myself, but it looked exactly as it had minutes ago. Small holes eaten through the blade itself, thin lines of copper drawing a pattern along the length that I couldn’t make out through the patina, and a handle and guard that looked like they’d been created from dead versions of the tendrils that made up the lichenthropes.

“It doesn’t look cleansed.” I mused, scraping my finger along the blade’s dull edge.

//DID YOU NOT READ MY MESSAGE?

//IT PLAINLY STATES THAT THE PREVIOUSLY CLEANSED BLADE RUSTED ONCE MORE.

//PAY CAREFUL ATTENTION TO MY WORDS, AS THEY MAY EVENTUALLY SAVE YOUR LIFE.

“Once you’ve been shot out of a water-tree, you try focusing on things.” I laughed, slapping my sword to my thigh and looking up at the water surrounding me. “Thanks, though. I would have completely missed that it’d changed.”

The error messages went silent and I went about finding my way out of this leaf-pool. I tried swimming up, but my armor dragged me back down to the bottom like an anchor after the initial jump. I sighed and walked over to the sloped edge of the leaf, my hands struggling to find purchase on the waxy surface, and my feet failing quickly thereafter.

“Well that’s a problem.” I sighed, trying to press my fingers into the leaf. It felt stronger than a leaf had any right being, and I drew my sword to cut jagged ridges for handholds. A deep green substance wafted from the leaf’s wounds into the water, cold nipping at my skin through the armor as the liquid condensed into something familiar.

I’d found where the moss came from. It coated my chestpiece and both of my arms within seconds, chilling me to the bone as I watched my armor’s battery start to drain. Whatever this stuff was, it ignored all the defences I could muster and went straight for the heart. And if I couldn’t get it off, I’d have to survive here without any of the strengths my armor gave me.

My arms felt heavy and cold, but I pulled myself up slash by slash until I was free of the pool and utterly covered in moss. I grimaced and flicked my hand out to the side, dismissing my right gauntlet and arm with a thought for a split second before calling it back. The moss flew off to the side, unable to follow my gauntlet into my inventory, and splattered into the water from where I sat on the leaf’s edge.

Half of me was panicking, but those thoughts were slowly growing quieter and quieter. Even the other half of my thoughts, the ones reminding me that I was going to be absolutely fine, weren’t as loud as I expected them to be. And somewhere in the middle was someone telling himself that he was going to be fine while also shaking like a leaf with self-worry. As if my memories and personalities from the old and new worlds were coming together to make whatever I was now.

With both my arms and legs cleaned of moss, I began scraping my chestpiece with my sword. My armor’s integrity went down the smallest bit with every scrape, but it wasn’t anywhere near enough to make me stop.

Looking down at my white and blue armor brought back thoughts of Garrett, the chosen of the Embodiment of will. Was he going through the same stuff I was? Were his memories coming together into a bizarre lump that wasn’t quite the person he was, and wasn’t the person he was supposed to become? Or was that just me, since I didn’t have the blessing of an embodiment–whatever an embodiment was–to protect me?

“Whoah!” Jun yelled in surprise from somewhere in the distance, her voice somehow making it through the thunderous din of rain. “SEB! ARE YOU OKAY?!”

I turned and scoured the treeline for her, but couldn’t find a single speck of black and yellow. “I’m fine; just watch out for the pools!”

“Thank the skies you’re okay!” She called, her armor popping up only two pools over from me, right next to the huge water-tree. She must have jumped out at a much safer time. “I’ll be there in a second!”

She truly meant what she said, and with one jump Jun slammed into the edge of the leaf I was sitting on. I heard all the wind leave her sails when her stomach caught the leaf and she scrabbled to get a hold of the waxy ledge, her fingers digging in deeper than mine ever could thanks to her substantially higher power stat.

“Watch out for the moss.” I warned, grabbed her by the wrist, and pulled her up next to me. “It comes from the inside of the leaves and drains your armor’s battery. Use your sword to scrape it off if any of it got on you.”

Jun looked down at her hands, then began picking off the few splotches of moss that had stuck to her. I shot a glance at the sword hanging off her back, which had transformed into something strange and beautiful. From what little I could see, the blade was forged from the same copper that was inside the trees and armored the lichenthropes, but with a slight green tint to it that matched the massive water-tree. Pure copper etchings ran the length of the blade, runes and symbols etched among the branches of a massive tree like fruits of knowledge. Even the holes had disappeared, the artful design of the sword unhindered by rust or damage.

But there was something wrong with the hilt. Something that writhed and split to show forest green spots under the thin, unraveling threads of copper.