Hard packed ground, trees uprooted and stolen, these were crimes that no forest dweller could ever commit. These were crimes that could only be carried out by outsiders. The level of destruction they had caused made my blood boil, but it was not what sent my anger over the edge. This wasn’t just needles destruction it was a violation of the natural order. These outsiders had broken the very laws of nature. A crime on that level was something that I could not overlook.

When I had seen the part in the quest given by the heart tree about fixing the damage caused by outsiders I had expected something much smaller. What I face instead is something that cannot be overcome with force of arms or some simple magic. I could sense the extent of the damage and to fix it I would need to plant thousands of new trees. With my current abilities fixing this would take me a lifetime.

I wracked my brain for a long time going through all of my skills and magics trying to find a solution, anything that could help me to complete this task. I found nothing. With no easy solution in sight my anger quickly faded into depression and I had to fight hard not to sink into despair and wallow in self pity. No! I can’t just give up. Not on something like this. If I can’t solve the problem right away, I will start working at it and come up with something while I do!

There is no easy plan so start simple. First, find a seed. Next, try something to get it to grow. After that repeat while changing the method. Find something that works.

With a slight semblance of a plan I set to work. Finding a seed was easy as the ground was littered with them. After picking one I made my way back to the scar. Okay as it is now the ground wont allow anything to grow so I have to churn it up. Man do I wish I knew how to use earth magic right about now. No matter I know water and I know wind, with those and my pure mana I can find a way to make the ground softer.

I started with water. Collecting a mass of it I started to apply it to the ground. With how hard packed it was the soil refused to take the water, instead just letting it run off. Okay so it’s not going to be that easy. Time to move on to the next method. This time I created long spikes of pure mana and thrust them deep into the ground. That worked relatively well but again the ground was packed to tightly for the water to take easily.

Alright so piercing the ground helps but just piercing it isn’t enough. I need some way to finely chop all of the dirt within a small area. Perhaps creating a system of spinning blades would do the trick. If I used something like that it would need to be shaped something like my arrow heads but with the blades angled to the side rather than out. I should also add an additional set of blades on the inside to really dice up the earth while the outer ones dig down. Let’s try it!

Putting thought to action I began to form my newest creation. It took a good amount of time and a lot of effort but finally it was done. My practice with creating blades made out of mana was a big help. With high hopes I set the entire construct to spinning and watched with joy as it easily sunk into the earth leaving one patch of nice loose earth. “Success! Alright now onto the next step.” I exclaimed happily.

Taking the seed I had picked up and placing it in the newly turned earth I started to draw out the spell circle for growth. I had learned this circle while trying to fix the blight. Since I couldn’t directly manipulate nature magic yet this was my only option. The spell circle is essentially a written formula for a spell. By writing it out or forming it out of mana a spell is formed. Once formed it will follow all of the variables inscribed in the circle. This will allow the circle to take mana directly from me and convert it into the proper type and use it in the correct way. By using the spell circle I could sidestep my inability to directly manipulate nature magic or any other type of magic and cast any spell I knew the formula for.

I was about to press my hand to the completed circle and apply my mana to it when I hesitated. To grow this seed into a fully sized tree I will need to use almost all of my mana. If I do that then regrowing this entire section of forest really will take a lifetime. Looking for a solution to the problem I glanced back over the circle I had created. My eyes landed on the portion that dictated mana input, specifically the symbol that designated me as the one who would need to provide the mana. I wonder… Acting before I could second guess myself or logic my way out of it I changed the symbol. Now rather than selecting me as the target the circle would draw mana from the environment. I reached out and activated the circle.

Nothing happened. Damn, well it was worth a sho- Suddenly there was a slight change in pressure around me and the circle began to glow. There was a bright flash of green light and a faint tremor in the ground as a tree quickly began to sprout. It rapidly grew in height until I was left staring at a fully grown tree. “Yes! I did it Mel! I didn’t think it would work but it did!” I shout triumphantly, until I hear an all too familiar chiming noise.

Ding!

Skill acquired – Enchanting!

Enchanting – You have learned the craft of creating prepared spells. By using and manipulating spell circles you can create spells or magical effects that require no input from the caster. These spells and effects can be placed on anything from the ground to a physical object. With the proper application of spell circles it is possible to create any effect or even multiple effects. Increase knowledge and complexity of applied spell circles to increase skill level. +1 Intelligence per skill level!

Enchanting has reached level 1!

“Oooh I got a new skill out of that little test! Hang on a minute. If I can prepare a circle that will act all on its own to grow the tree it should also be possible to make a circle to do the entire process at once! Well actually I haven’t yet tried to combine multiple effects so I should probably figure out all of the required circles before I start trying to combine them.” Filled with new hope and having a goal in mind I set to my new task.

Developing the circle for my spinning blades of earth chopping was much harder than I had anticipated. If I wanted it to work correctly I had to define everything. My first attempts were mostly failures due to not getting the shape right, the failures later on were a bit more… extreme. Most notable of these were failing to specify a direction of movement which sent a tornado of mana blades spinning off into the forest, and failing to specify a depth which caused the blades to just sink endlessly into the ground. After dozens of attempts I was finally able to craft the circle correctly.

With the spinning blades of earth chopping figured out I moved on to learning the next circle, water. This circle would generate a small amount of water that would soak into the earth and get it ready for a new tree. Luckily for me this circle was much easier to create. The task to be done was much simpler and my previous mishaps had taught me a thing or two about being more careful. The water circle was created after just a couple of tries.

Now it was time for me to work on combining two circles. Since they were for two different spells the circles would need to be drawn concentrically around each other, the only question was which way to order it. With a shrug I took a guess and drew the circles. I guessed wrong. As it turns out the circles would activate from the inside out. My mishap resulted in me getting a face full of muddy water. I might have been a little upset about that if I hadn’t gained a level in my enchanting skill. The next test ran perfectly.

Pleased with the progress I moved on to trying it with three circles. Digging, water, and growth. The result to this test brought further experimenting to a grinding halt. For the seed to grow and be the target of the circle it would need to be at the center when the first circle activated. This however resulted in the seed being chopped into tiny little pieces by the spinning blades of earth chopping. With the seed destroyed the final circle failed. I did however get enchanting to level 3.

“Well this is quite the pickle isn’t it Mel? I can’t start the seed in the circle or it will get chopped to bits, but if I don’t start it in the circle then the portion that will grow the tree won’t be able to work. We need a way for the seed to start in the circle and not be there when the blades show up but also be there when the grow spell starts. Hmmm. Maybe this would be a good place to try out spatial magic. If I can find a way to create a small space with circles that has a time limit on it I could fix this problem. Well time to run some more tests.”

The tests with spatial magic were a real pain in my tail. They were slow and I had many times more variables that I needed to balance. The first couple of tests resulted in only twisted balls of mana. After that came a long series of tests that created various effects. The most common of these was accidentally sucking the entire circle and a portion of the ground into a separate space that then just vanished, leaving no trace of the missing earth. From there things slowly got better. Finally, as the sun was setting I was able to create a circle that worked. When activated it would store the small object at its center in a separate space pocket and hold it there for the space of several long breaths before depositing it back at the center of the circle.

Too tired and mentally drained to cheer I could only smile and make my way up into a tree before falling asleep. Waking early the next day I jumped straight back into my work.

My first task was to create the new combined circle. This took a good amount of time. Balancing all of the variables and adding in new symbols for timing I painstakingly lined up all of the circles. With that done I stood back and triggered the new formation. I held my breath and watched as each circle activated in turn. Letting out a loud cheer as a new tree was grown I danced happily. “The circles work Mel! They actually work!”

My joy only lasted as long as it took me to remember the size of the task still before me. In one day I had managed to only grow a couple of new trees. I needed to find a way to move faster. I already knew the circles I needed but there was just too much distance to travel and the circles took too long to draw by hand. I needed to find a way to use magic to overcome both issues.

Deciding to tackle the issue of circle drawing first as it was much easier than the other problem I started a new round of experiments. This process though time consuming was simple. I took a seed and used a filament of mana to etch a command to draw a circle into it. I started with just the water circle as it was the simplest of the lot. To get the draw circle to work I would surround it with the circle I wanted drawn. This caused the water circle to be etched into the ground and then activated. Happy with these results I began the process of engraving the entire circle formation for growing a tree onto the seed. The task tested both my concentration and mana manipulation abilities. I failed several times but after about a dozen I was rewarded with a working product. I had designed the enchantment on the seed to activate when it was tossed on the ground and the results were not disappointing.

With that problem solved I turned my full attention on the issue of space. My current abilities in spatial magic allowed me to create a larger space inside of no space or a small space without affecting the outside world. With the way the spatial magic skill had been worded and using simple logic I deduced that the opposite should also be possible. I was going to try and compress a large space into a smaller one without effecting anything outside and then bring it back to normal size. If this was possible then I had a slim chance of being able to fix the scar.

My guess was that to do this I would have to reverse the process of making pocket spaces. I would have to wrap a shell of mana around the space I wanted to compress and use that to hold the boundary in place. I would then use spatial magic to try and compress the interior of the sphere. This would result in two concentric spheres of space. One would be holding the boundary of real space and keep it from collapsing in while the other would hold the inner space and keep it from expanding out. In between… Well I didn’t really know what would be left in between. My skill had warned me about creating spaces between spaces but if I was going to pull this off then I would need to be there, so I had to get this right.

With the fear of getting lost between spaces as my motivation I started practicing. I used stones or patches of earth as my targets. I quickly learned that my method was correct and that carrying it out was much harder and much more dangerous than I had anticipated. I learned that if either of the holding spheres collapsed bad things would happen. If the outer sphere collapsed everything around the area would be sucked in to fill the hole in space. If the inner sphere collapsed then everything that was inside it would explode outward with such force that whatever was inside at the time was destroyed. Worst of all if anything was between the two spheres when one collapsed it simply ceased to exist.

I was eventually to create a stable compressed space field the size of several fists. This was where I ran into the real problem. The spell to compress space was power hungry. The larger the area and the greater the compression the greater the power. Both sides of the equation would exponentially increase in power demand as both the size and compression ratio increased. If I was going to be able to complete my task then I would need a level of power that was far beyond anything I could reasonably achieve.

Well there is one way that I could get the power to preform this spell. But do I dare to risk invoking the third law? If I try and am rejected then I will likely die. If I do it and succeed in my appeal then I run a pretty high risk of dying and destroying a large portion of the forest in a failing spatial field. I don’t really see any other option though. I have pretty good grounds for invoking the third law, but if I do that then the power influx I gain won’t last me long. If I do this then I will have to be ready to finish the entire task in one go. So how do I gather enough inscribed seeds to replant the entire scar in a short amount of time? It takes me too long to gather and inscribe the seeds. To do it fast enough I would need to go entirely without sleeping. If I really am going to do this then I will have to use tireless hunt.

What I was planning to do was pure madness. One does not invoke the laws of nature lightly. Almost any way I looked at it I was risking death. There was the chance of death by invoking the third law. The chance of death in a spatial accident, and the certain slow death of slaving away at this for years on end. I ran my hand slowly over the scar on my chest. I had faced death before and come out on top. I had made a promise to get stronger at any cost. I could do this. I would beat the odds. I would get stronger. Without any further hesitation I activated my tireless hut skill.

A haze seemed to come over my mind and all of my worries, my doubts, faded away. All that was left was the hunt. I was consumed by one mission, gather and inscribe seeds. The task became my entire world. I ran through the trees without noticing them gathering as many seeds as my spatial belt could hold. I inscribed seeds until my mana ran dry. I didn’t grow tired, I didn’t have the urge to eat.

Days passed without my notice. I repeated the same action again and again. Gather. Inscribe. Gather. Inscribe.

Six days. It took me six whole days of doing nothing but gathering and inscribing a mountain of seeds to get enough.

When the skill finally wore off I felt like I had been run over by a dragon, no it was an entire hoard of dragons. Do dragons have hoards or is it called something else? Wait why am I thinking about this? I need to keep pushing. I don’t have time to rest right now.

At some point during my gathering spree the trees had given me a warning. I was being hunted and the hunters were closing in. I wasn’t given any information beyond that and that I couldn’t let them catch me. It would be a battle I could not win.

With a new death sentence hanging over me I gathered the fraying ends of my mental control and dragged my aching body over to the base of the tree I had piled my seeds around.

Touching the tree I plunged my mind into the forest’s network. I then spoke the seven most dangerous words of my life, “I wish to invoke the third law.” Instantly all activity in the entire network ceased. Invoking the third law was something that the forest could not ignore. I waited in tense silence as my mind was probed again and again to see if my appeal had merit. Eventually the probing stopped and there was a long moment where the forest considered my reasoning. Then my request was granted.

My mind nearly cracked as control over the entire network was handed to me. My senses expanded to encompasses the entire forest. I could feel every tree, sense every animal, and comprehend all of their needs. Without hesitating I quickly started to seal off portions of the network before the overload of information drove me insane. My mind was shaking under the strain of maintaining the connection and every nerve in my body was tingling with raw power. Enough power to complete my task.

Using my new awareness, I formed the two massive spheres that I needed. The size was mind boggling. Taking a deep breath, I started to draw power from the forest and began compressing the inner sphere. As I worked the entire forest held its breath. No animal moved, no leaf rustled, nothing wanted to distract me. As I compressed the inner sphere further and further, I was left to drift in the space between spaces. It was an odd sensation, more accurately it was odd because there was no sensation. No noise, no sense of touch, no sound, nothing. Cycling a small amount of air mana around my head to keep breathing I worked quickly.

When I sensed that drawing any more power from the forest would be dangerous I stopped compressing space. I was now staring at a large swath of forest that had been reduced to my height. The scar that had once been huge was now only the thickness of a hair. Using a long thread of mana I started picking up seeds and feeding them into the scar. They shank into little more than specs as they followed the thread into the compressed space. I watched in awe as the scar was slowly filled. New trees grew quickly under the guidance of my enchantments. A process that should have taken a lifetime was completed in just a few hours. With my task done I slowly expanded the sphere until the two fit together perfectly and disconnected from the network.

When I disconnected, I was slammed with a tidal wave of mental fatigue and bodily aches. I was also hit by an overwhelming sense of danger. The hunters were here.

Faint voices could be heard coming my way quickly. It sounded like a group of four and if I didn’t act quickly, they would be able to see me soon enough. I guess it is lucky that I prepared a contingency for this very event days ago. With shaking hands, I pulled a small empty seed shell from my spatial belt. When I had been experimenting with mana I had found that combining water and wind would make storm mana. However, if the ratio was adjusted rather than generating a storm the result would be fog. I had enchanted these seed to collect and combine mana in that ratio. It was a portable fog bank. I threw the seed as far towards the approaching voices as I could. A smile crossed my face as the voices quickly turned to panicked shouts as a dense bank of fog exploded into being.

I turned in a random direction and started hobbling away from the voices. Nearly blind I forged ahead. I thought my hiding trick would buy me time but apparently they still had some way of following me without sight. I could sense them getting closer and closer.

I was too tired to run and too exhausted to cast spells. I was left with only one option. There was one power that I could call on that would give me a chance. I would have to call on the power of a song.

There was one simple reason I had not called on the power of either of the songs since first discovering them. The laws of nature.

In nature there are three laws that are absolute

Everything has a price Everything dies If either of the first two rules are violated nature will strike back

When I had invoked the third law to use the forest’s power I was setting myself as the force that would strike back. When the outsiders had carved the scar into the forest they had done so with no regard to the first law. They had not payed the price for what they had taken. Since they had violated the first law I was able to call on the power of the entire forest to carry out my task. The price I paid for that power was fixing the scar. If I had failed to do that then I would have been killed.

These laws are also why I only ever take what I need from the forest. The price for these things is low. If I need to hunt the price is the effort I put into the hunt and the use of anything that I gain from it. If I was to take a branch or fruit from a tree the price would be something like regrowing the limb with magic or giving the tree extra water or energy. The songs though are different.

They are pure primal force and thus demand a much higher price. The price for first discovering them is knowledge. By having the knowledge and understanding of the element the song would come to me. To use the song again though an equal sacrifice for equal power would be demanded.

I didn’t want to kill my hunters as I didn’t know if they deserved it. With no options left I took a deep breath and began to sing the song of water and as I sang my blood began to boil.

[Lilly POV]

We had been on the trail of our mystery girl for days now. From the first clearing with the remains of the Defiler we had tracked her to a large clearing. The place was a real mess. It was clear by the numerous shattered trees and craters covering the ground that a large amount of lightning had rained down here. At first, I had been worried that she might have been killed but with no body to be found that possibility was quickly ruled out. Unfortunately, the storm had cost us precious time and destroyed a large number of tracks.

It took us nearly three days to explore the remains of the clearing and once more locate her trail. From the start it was clear that she was quickly learning to move with a fair amount of stealth. If it hadn’t been for Will’s skill in tracking, we likely would have lost her at the second clearing.

From there we continued at a much slower pace. With the way the tracks were leading we soon surmised that our target was heading towards the Greenwood Forest Road. Once we realized that we picked up our pace. If she made it to the road before we caught up with her we would be hard pressed to track her movements.

We were closing in. Fresh tracks made today had been spotted. That was when the forest went still. The birds stopped chirping, the trees quit rustling, even the wind seemed to stop blowing. We also froze. When things get that quiet that fast it is a sign that trouble is close. We stood frozen for a long time waiting for some massive creature to pass, but nothing happened. Will turned to me and raised a questioning eyebrow. I had no clue what was going on so I could only shrug.

With no sign of imminent danger we started making our way forward again. Moving slowly and as silently as we could, we continued. After making it only 50 or so steps we froze again as we saw it. A massive shimmering field of energy stretched as far as we could see in every direction. Through the field everything distorted in strange ways seeming to stretch and compress. I had never seen anything like it.

Cautiously I stretched a hand out towards the field when I was yanked back. Turning around I was about to rip into Adam when I saw he had gone completely pale and was visibly shaking. “Wh- what’s going on? Do you know what that is?” I asked. I was thrown by the way he was acting. The entire trip so far he had been nothing but brave and confident. To see him like this rattled even my nerves.

“Th- that, that i- is s- spatial magic. S- someone is m- manipulating s- space on a massive s- scale. It is s- similar to a s- storage item b- but reversed. Th- they are literally c- compressing space. T- to do it on th- this s- scale should n- not b- be possible.” He stammered. The explanation chilled me to my bones. I had never seen spatial magic being preformed before but I knew how dangerous it could be. If whoever was casting this spell messed up even in the smallest way we would all die and everything around us would be destroyed.

We all waited with baited breath and whispered prayers for the spell to end. After what felt like an eternity the forest came back to life and the field vanished. The shock nearly scared all of us to death. “We need to hurry. If whoever cast that spell is still in there then they should be totally exhausted. If it really is our mystery woman then this could be our best chance at catching her.” I shout to the others.

Not wanting to let our quary escape we quickly started making our way forward. We were close now. I could sense her presence even though the forest tried to hide it. Why? Why was the forest protecting her? As it turned out she wasn’t out of tricks yet. Just before we would have seen her a massive bank of fog exploded out of nowhere. Instantly we were caught in a cloud so dense I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. No! I am too close to let her get away! I can still sense her. She is moving slowly and we can catch her.

“Follow me!” I shouted to the others as I created a ball of light in my hand. After getting everyone to link up I pushed ahead closing in on the presence I could sense. As I got closer I started to summon wind magic to disperse the fog. I was so close. That was when the singing started.

The voice was beautiful. It ebbed and flowed like the tide, speaking of things I couldn’t remember. As the music started I stopped. At first I was entranced. The song was so primal that I couldn’t help myself, then my blood began to slow. I felt myself grow heavy and tired. My heart beat slowed down, my thoughts growing sluggish and hazy. Wha- whats happening? What p- power is this? Mya was the first to collapse, she was followed shortly by Will then by Adam. I fought it as long as I could but was soon falling to my knees, then to my chest. The song just kept going.

As my vision started to fade a figure started to appear in the mist. All I could make out before my vision faded was the outline of a small girl with steam rising from her body and eyes that glowed a star speckled violet. As my consciousness started to fade the song ended and a soft hand brushed my cheek. The last thing I heard before the darkness claimed me was that same smooth voice. “Be warry outsider. Our time to meet has not yet come. If you truly seek to find me, prove yourself worthy. Obey the laws of nature and our next meeting will be a happy one. I will be watching.”