Despite Janaxia’s continually drifting into a blissed-out stupor and long sighs of pleasure, they made good time, the treeline retreating behind them, terrain shifting from forest to craggy hillsides and mossy rocks, the few trees all stunted and withered, clinging to bare rock and somehow surviving. There weren’t any obvious signs of danger, although Stathis wasn’t a skilled tracker. Hopefully Parth would show up at some point, if she had managed to avoid getting herself killed – having a tracker that could hide well was normally an asset, but not when they just disappeared! Still, with the mountains looming ahead, it wasn’t hard to keep heading in a roughly straight line.

The only signs of life were occasional goats, giving them suspicious glares as they passed. Semari amused herself by harassing them, scampering up to them and jumping over them, using their horns to aid her somersaults. None of them attacked with sorcerous hell-fire or indeed anything other than angry bleats, so they were probably ordinary goats and not demonic hell-goats, despite their weird eyes. After last night, Stathis was too tired to rein Semari in, and at least she was enjoying herself, and was tough enough to probably survive an angry goat, unless they swarmed together into some kind of hellish gestalt-goat.

After an hour of riding, they turned around a blind corner, riding out onto further mossy hills. With a bleat, a goat charged towards Semari, who barely dodged in time, flipping out of the way. It gave her an evil look and pressed the attack, while Semari tried to defend herself, her skills not well suited to wildlife, a strike to its head achieving little other than to anger it.

‘Semari, stop harassing the wildlife. It’s probably had a hard life out here, without you pestering it!’

She jumped out of the way, managing to grab a handhold partway up a rock wall, locking down at it with a smug expression that turned to horror as it began making its implacable way up the sheer wall towards her, making her scrabble for escape. Butchering a goat seemed in rather poor taste, and it really was a problem for Semari to resolve. Ignoring them for the moment, she looked ahead, trying to work out their distance – the mountains lay ahead, seemingly no closer than when they started. A crook in the path tickled her memory, a familiar-looking scratch of scrubby bushes. Another goat, atop the rocks, heard the commotion, and started ambling towards them, trapping Semari in a pincer movement, as she found herself surrounded. She managed to uppercut the newcomer before pushing off the wall and running away down the path, Stathis kicking her horse to a faster pace to keep up.

This path was definitely familiar – looking down, there were even hoofprints from their previous passage. Great, now it was some druid or some other nature guardian, protecting their patch.

‘Janaxia, there’s weird wood magic stuff going on. Can you do something about it?’

She twisted around – Janaxia was slumped in her saddle, eyes rolled back in her head, broad grin on her face. Stathis rode closer, snapping her fingers in Janaxia’s face, eliciting the slightest of reactions as massively dilated pupils rolled into sight.

‘Certain venoms can have… strange and… intriguing effects.’ She was barely conscious, gasping between her words. ‘This is… research.’ With that, she lapsed back into her twitching, vacant stupor. No help there, then. And Semari was busily dodging goats, who now seemed to have multiplied, a pack of the things keepings her on the defence. So no arcane advice, and their tracker had vanished, and hopefully was alive, and hadn’t been murdered by an angry goat swarm, her body decaying in a ditch somewhere.

They made faster time on the repeat, several blind twists resulting in them coming back to the same place they’d started. The third time around, even taking a different path didn’t help, doing nothing but bringing them back to the same point. This time though, a familiar figure stood atop a rocky outcropping, raising a hand in greeting before jumping down, Parth ambling towards them, looking totally unconcerned. Stathis sighed. Well, better late than never.

‘Where the hell have you been? Do you have any idea what we’ve been through!’

Parth shrugged. ‘Escaped.’

‘Gods, did you think to come help us at all? There was a whole murder-cult thing going on, we could have died!’

‘Didn’t though.’

‘Yeah, only because Janaxia bravely sacrificed herself!’ “Lustily” would be truer than “bravely”, but for Janaxia, it was about as noble as she was likely to get. ‘Have you at least been scouting out the way, or did you just hide out here?’

‘Hidden path. Tree spirit.’

‘Well, at least that’s something. This the violent, murder-y type of tree spirit, or one of the friendly ones? I don’t think Janaxia’s up for, well, pretty much anything.’

Parth tilted her hand rapidly, irritatingly vague, considering how distinct the two options were. Well, Parth had survived, so it couldn’t be that bad, whatever it did, and a hidden trail would probably have less goats trying to murder Semari. ‘Fine. But try to maybe help us out next time there’s an ambush? Just because you can run away and hide doesn’t help the rest of us. You can take point.’

They were led onto narrow pathway, wending between high crags, barely enough light to see by, a confusing maze of tiny paths, although Parth seemed entirely confident as to which direction to go each time. Semari kept jumping along the walls, finding foot- and hand-holds in the mossy stone, like a particularly bouncy goat.

Eventually, the path opened up into a large, wide clearing. Countless streams ran into a single pool, the water perfect and crystal clear, golden offerings and treasure gleaming beneath the surface. An ancient tree loomed in front of them, its thick bark tough and scarred, a few weapons barely visible, buried within it, where some attack had been interrupted and the tree then grown around them. The only intrusion of humanity’s craft was an altar, a slab of stone cut into a deep bowl, worn runes etched deep into the dull rock. More worryingly, the bowl was edged with dark brown stains, dried blood stains. Stathis approached cautiously, one hand on her sword just in case.

As expected, the bowl was filled with ash, burnt offerings to whatever spirit dwelt here. The place had an aura she could feel, ancient power coming to a focus, all in one place, a soothing, hypnotic lure, to just lay down in the moss and rest. Experimentally, she found a stone, tossing it into the moss, which let loose a puff of thick pollen from the impact. Gods-damned nature spirits, looking for prey. Although with Janaxia still wrapped up in her daze, and Semari climbing up the wall, it didn’t seem immediately dangerous.

Something rustled behind her, and she spun, sword clearing her sheath. A shape, almost human, was before her, an assemblage of roots and bark, shaped into something approximately the shape of a person, although with hideously mis-matched arms, a ribcage open to the air, and eyes formed of particularly shiny stones. A wind blew through the clearing, sending up a momentary storm of leaves.

‘Steel-bearer, born by heaven’s light. Come to offer blood to the forest, have you?’ Its voice was a hissing creak, shaped through its entire body. ‘For heart’s blood, I hunger.’ One of its arms expanded, the ‘fingers’ swelling into razor-sharp thorns.

A sharp whistling tone rang out. ‘Blood was paid. Blood for passage, blood for toll.’ Hearing Parth say more than a single word was unusual, but at least she wasn’t selling them out to an angry tree, as far as Stathis could tell. ‘She bears steel to fight scale, the sky-flame of old. Would you wish their return, revered ancient? Steel may bite, but fire burns to ash evermore.’ Parth stepped forward, a flint knife in her hand as she slashed her upper arm, opening a recent injury and blood trickling down her arm. The thing shifted shape again, thorn-fingers reshaping into vines, reaching towards Parth, the tips blossoming into flowers, initially white, then bursting into brilliant crimson petals as they caught the blood. Parth whistled again, a lower tone, the thing answering with its own soft breeze, a whickering purr as leaves rustled together and thorns clacked.

The main body kept shifting, erupting into flowers and fresh growth, stark wood now covered with soft petals and blossoms, the stone eyes keeping their constant, wary vigilance, even after Stathis sheathed her sword. As the thing fed, its body gained more solidity, twigs growing into branches, but still keeping the same disconcerting imbalanced, almost-human form. After what seemed far too long, it withdrew, Parth swaying slightly.

‘The sky-flame lies attainted, bound to endless black by itself, a lie bound to false eternity. For blood, for safety, for ancient pacts fulfilled, I have a gift for the sacrifice.’ It was strangely lyrical for something made of wood and leaves, ‘voice’ whispering on the wind.

With a soft tearing noise, the great tree opened, a hole appearing, vine-like tendrils bearing forth a dagger of ivory, an arm-long white curve, shaped from the fang of some creature. Parth bowed deeply as she accepted the gift, checking its balance before tucking it away.

‘I thank you for your aid, Amber-of-the-Frost.’

The almost ritualised sense of agreement was abruptly broken by a loud bleating from up above. Semari had climbed up, and was now engaged in a struggle with an angry goat, the two straining against each other, shortly before allies arrived, surrounding Semari and slowly pushing her back towards the cliff edge, even as she tried to fight them back, holding an even-decreasing patch of ground. Even the spirit managed to look slightly taken aback, insofar as it had expressions.

‘Drink of my waters, steel-bearer of heaven.’

Another arm shaped itself from the thing, the ‘hand’ a curve of wood, filled with glistening amber liquid, being offered to Stathis.

‘Is it safe?’ She glanced over at Parth, who just shrugged. ‘If this is a murder-sacrifice thing, I’m going to come back and haunt you.’ She looked down at the liquid, a thick, sticky-looking sap, bending down to take a long draught, the taste sweet, honey and sunlight clarified into physical form. Her headache cleared instantly, a moment before the other effects kicked in, her vision blurring for a moment as though she had stared into the sun, before fading back in.

Except now everything looked different. The dull green moss was now a deep, vivid emerald, the water a brilliant crystal blue. The spirit’s true form could be seen, a writhing, twisting thing of red and green flitting about inside its nest of fresh growth, the stone eyes now real, a glistening deep black. Beneath the ground ran lines of what looked like iron, dull and grey, winding in mazy paths, twisting back onto themselves in a mazed hex. With Janaxia still blissed out on snake venom, there was no-one that could precisely say what it was, but some massively complicated magical working seemed likely.

There was a loud crash as Semari was defeated, smacking into the ground, moss exploding into a haze of pollen. Above, the leader of the goats bleated in triumph, pawing the ground to show it’s dominance.

‘I thank you, for your boon, wise spirit.’ Trying to maintain the formality as Semari hurled abuse at the goats was quite hard, even moreso when the goats began making their implacable way down the rockside, Semari ducking and hiding behind Stathis. ‘I think we need to be leaving though. Semari, apologise to the goats, just in case they’re some weird curse monster.’

Semari mumbled something under her breath, before running away, Stathis having to direct her to avoid the concentrations of power. Whatever the spell was, it covered the entire area, thick bands of dull grey underpinning the moss and trees. Given the spirit was helping them, it probably wasn’t their doing. Something enforced, rather than druids doing whatever they did. Gods, it would be a relief once this damn thing was done and they could get back to somewhere vaguely civilised, or at least with decent drinks!