I wake up with a start, unsure when I actually fell asleep. I feel like it was five minutes ago, but a layer of dew has formed on my exposed skin, and my clothes are soaked. The star is already burning overhead, but that translates only to a soft light streaming through the trees. With a groan, I push myself to my feet and head over to where our packs are piled up next to a large tree in search of a water skin. Halfway through, a voice comes from overhead.

“You have recovered. Somewhat.”

I blink at Thetzeke for a moment before realizing what he means. “Oh… yeah, guess the rest did me well.” I tentatively move my Energy around to see if that has also improved, but it grudgingly slides around just like before.

Fuck everything. “...Not well enough though.”

“It would be unwise to take another day, my people will likely rally in search of us soon-”

“I get it, I don’t think rest will solve the rest anyway. We can head out whenever.”

“Very good.”

I shrug and grab a vial of red flower concentrate, preparing to start a fire for heating food and drying off.

“No fire.”

“What? Why? We had one yesterday.”

“Yesterday the sky was full of smoke. Today it is clear. We would be noticed and found.”

He looks at me, as if expecting something, but I just sigh and put the vial back. He’s not wrong, but damn if this isn’t shaping up to be a shitty morning.

“Sorry I missed my watch last night.”

“Creature…” “Amadeus.” “Amad..eus… you went through the interrogator’s ministrations. Such treatment usually results in disfigurement, loss of ego, mind, and ultimately death. To be walking one day later is unprecedented. We shared the watch, though the female watched over you even after her shift.”

“I know, I’m special. I hear that a lot.” I look briefly at Lauren’s serene face. A pang of guilt.

“An anomaly.”

A silence falls between us, and I go back to pulling rations out of the packs. Maybe I could make some kind of diluted red flower concentrate… something you could rub on food and it would heat it up without burning anything… but then it would be soggy… only work for soups and drink- “How did she die?”

“Hmm? What?”

“My… mother.”

“...Oh. She was determined to take down the archive along with the elders, and the protective magic killed her. I told you yesterday.”

“She simply died? You said before you collapsed that she wanted me to support you.”

“We figured it out beforehand. She didn’t tell me about the guarding magic, but we both knew we’d likely die.” Not entirely a lie. So much easier to be convincing that way.

He looks dissatisfied, but doesn’t press further. Instead he sits atop his massive Cathid with a look of concentration on his face.

“The last thing she did was trick an elder into being killed by his own protective magic. It’s what gave me the knowledge I needed to win against them.”

“Odd.”

He wouldn’t say why he thought that.

We break camp shortly after Cerberus and Lauren wake up and Thetzeke guides us from overhead. In the short bursts of conversation I manage to make with him, I find out that the Deepwood Moss grows exclusively beneath the massive trees I saw on the way over. Consequently, all but one of those trees currently houses an outpost of Thetzeke’s people (he calls them Ferins), and that one is not occupied because it’s absurdly dangerous.

For whatever reason, the system is incredibly aggressive about making sure that area remains unsafe, so new monsters will almost constantly appear to replace the old ones. Of course, the Deepwood Moss grows much more plentifully there when compared with anywhere else in the forest. Apparently the Ferin would make excursions into that place to retrieve large quantities of the moss for use in sacred rituals, but they would usually bring around thirty qualified warriors to ensure minimal casualties, and the next day the monster forces would be back at full capacity.

Thetzeke had never been given the honor of attending.

The last important thing, aside from the excessive danger of a system dungeon and the need to get there as stealthily as possible to ensure we don’t get ambushed by angry Ferin, is that the moss loses all potency when exposed to light, and gives off hallucinogens when harvested. Something I’m definitely looking forward to when I’m already mentally unsound.

---

According to my map, we traveled far to the East and South to get to the city of Levas, and are now travelling North and East to get to this danger tree. We make much faster progress with Thetzeke guiding us, and he gives some useful, if clinical, advice about what is and is not safe to be near in this place. On several occasions, we come across massive groves of the ‘Hanging Vines’ that are fucking endemic around here, along with large clusters of the fire plants he calls ‘Incindias’. At one point, something that looks much like an old, fallen tree blocks our path, which we immediately move to jump over, but my stomach twists weirdly and Thetzeke’s staff whips down and blocks us.

Without saying a word, he points the stick back the way we came, and his Cathid carefully crawls back with us confusedly in tow. When we can no longer even see the log, Thetzeke reveals that that was, in fact, a creature that was not made of wood in the slightest. A short sketch later reveals that the thing is pretty much a snake but with an excessive taste for camouflage. The creatures, called ‘Moks’, will go to great lengths to conceal themselves, including affixing decaying logs to their bodies, in order to fool prey and disguise their presence. If we had continued, as soon as the first person jumped over the log, we would have triggered its trap and been bound and slowly killed.

I have my doubts that it would have succeeded normally, but with my Energy being less useful… I probably would have killed myself while ripping it apart. Without Energy, the Mok would have been a difficult fight at best. That log was at least a meter in diameter, maybe more. Fuck that.

The day passes rapidly, leaving us about halfway to our destination by the end. Whether it’s because I slept so much yesterday, or because my body just refuses to calm down even after a day of hiking through the forest, I don’t feel the slightest bit tired. My body is a little, but my mind is firing on all cylinders, and most of that energy is being used to torment me.

Throughout the day, Lauren had been glancing at me… a lot. I know she’s probably confused about what to do, and unsure of how to help me… but it’s not like I have the answer either. I’d tell her not to worry, but she’ll just worry more, and it makes me feel worse that my shitty brain is bringing both of us down instead of just me. She offers to stay up with me for first watch, but I just smile and tell her to rest, and that I owe everyone two shifts anyway. Cerberus’ gaze weighs heavily on me, and I know he’s putting a lot of stock into how I handle this shit I’m going through. Because why not add more pressure.

When everyone has gone to sleep, I call Kaythe out to keep watch for me while I delve into the Energy space again. I should name it… the Self? Too edgy. Sanctum? … I guess. It’ll be the Sanctum for now. The forest stretches around me again, with the massive trees breaking up the endless canopy. Wait- trees? Yesterday there was just one, over by Lethin, but now a second one towers over the landscape. This tree looks much more like the ones I saw in the distance: shrouded in an impenetrable darkness underneath.

There’s the mother fucker.