As my thoughts wandered, my magic kind of did as well. The image on the stone shifted again to a cross ringed by the sun and then the cross morphed into a three-tiered sunflower still ringed by the sun. After a minute, small curvy lines indicating a flowing river cut across the stone, I liked it. The symbology seemed to fit in my mind, the sun as the outer foundation, that which all of my power depends on in a tangential sense, and then the sunflower to capture and hold the sunlight as well as represent my nature sorcery. And then the water flowing around as the source of life itself, again keeping in line with my water sorcery but also to bring to life the meaning of older tales such as the undead being afraid or unable to cross flowing water. This symbol was odd in the way that it was everything that’s important to me, but specifically in the direction of fighting the Hungry Ones, the undead. All I really wanted to do was hermit down and relax for a couple thousand years while playing with my magic, but life has it in for me.

Fixing my mind on that symbol, I created a mental picture of it complete with all of the emotions tied to it and stored it away as a spell matrix in my brain as well as Gungnir. It almost seemed to hold a deeper meaning than what I currently attached to it. Standing up and stretching, my back cracking let Spot know that apparently I could be bothered.

“ACK! FFTPHT! Keep your damn tongue to yourself!” I sputtered, my hands useless against the slimy slug that was Spot’s tongue. Three licks later I was drenched in dog slobber. Conjuring a bunch of water, I rinsed off and then banished the rest of the mess.

“Something on your mind pup?” I asked, giving double scratches behind the ear. “Who’s a good boy who’s been neglected for too long? Do you need some lovin, some good ole fashioned SCRATCHES!?” Putting my back into it, I made sure to get behind both ears and then push him to let him know that it was belly rub time. My giant dog flipped over, more than happy to oblige.

“Does he really like that Master?”

“Wanna try?” I asked Meliad who was tiptoeing as if she were interrupting a special time. “Spot doesn’t really care who you are as long you give good belly scratches. Here, try.”

She timidly walked up and extended her hand out and proceeded to rub gently on his big belly.

“Aww come, get in there,” I teased. “Use both hands and give him some love. And while doing it, you always say, ‘Who’s a good boy’, or ‘You’re such a good boy’.”

“But doesn’t he already know that he’s a good boy? He can’t answer you anyways . . .”

“That’s not the point woman,” I said, trying to explain the simplistic relationship between a man and his dog. “You rub the belly. You scratch behind the ears. And then the whole time you coo like a child and tell the dog that he’s a good boy. That’s step one on how to treat a dog right.”

As she imitated what I was doing, I kept going. “And dogs are easy. You just love them and feed them and they treat you like one of their pack, kinda like I guess y’all have groves, maybe, not exactly sure how y’all work.”

“We are extensions of each other. Individuality is more foreign to us than it is to you or Spot.” She paused in her scratching. “The eldest commands the Roots, and the Roots command the Branches. Leaves are the youngest or most ephemeral of the groves, whereas the Oaks and Redwoods tend to be the Mothers. Silly fruit trees don’t live as long, so they tend not to be the Mothers, see?”

“Longevity equals authority, got it.” Several more questions popped into my head as I kept scratching Spot who was just loving the double amount of attention. “So what about Meliad, she’s a what?”

“A treant, neither a Mother or a Root, but a Thorn. Thorns guard the forest and all that are in it. If you elevate some more dryads, you can have your own Bramble!”

Still not really answering my questions straight out, gotta love their childlike mindset. “And what’s a treant exactly?”

She turned her beautiful green eyes on me, and I watched with fascination as they sparkled into shades of dark green and soft brown and then back again. “Treants are not just the guardians of the grove, but they are the forest. Because you made one so close to the World Mother, I cannot bear to imagine how powerful Meliad will be. All animals will come to her aid if need be and even the plants shall awaken.”

“Uh huh,” I said, motioning with my hands is if she were to keep going, “And what else? What do they look like, what can they do, can they travel, are they sentient?”

“Oh yes, Meliad will be even more beautiful than ever before! She’ll have several trees to call her own and even trolls and ogres won’t be a match for her! She’ll be big enough to pet Spot with one hand and walk a mountain range in a day! But she won’t be able to go far from her source of power.”

“Fuck.” I cursed, coming to terms with yet another idea not being viable for making an epic army capable of taking on the Hungry Ones. Images of treants and earth elementals rampaging through hordes of undead as I overlooked the battle left my head. Beast hordes won’t work as the undead as they can just kill’em and add them back to the horde. Treants can’t travel all the way out there. Damn, where’s a freaking swarm of fire breathing dragons when ya need one? The upper reaches of Canada and all of the Arctic favor the Hungry Ones, it’s their form of having the high ground. Only my earth and water sorcery will be helpful up there, but there’s not really enough heat or sunlight for me to be up there long term unless there’s some epic leyline I can work with.

Cursing myself for the millionth time for not picking a fire or portal related magic, my scratching was actually hard enough to annoy Spot who did one of those dog kicks when you hit the wrong area. The dryad caught me before I flew too far. With a huff, Spot looked at me askance and got to his feet, shaking the dirt off as he bounded away.

An almost inaudible ringing in my ears made me pay attention, my consciousness sorcery was pinging me. A background process I had set up a while ago was complete and had answers for the conscious side of my brain. Momentarily silencing the alert, I asked the dryad to find some seeds for sunflowers and thorny vines and have them ready when I got back. Rushing off to the Lab, I sat next to the mana generator and focused on the pinging which brought me to my mindscape. Looking around, I was in a futuristic classroom with gigantic touch screens instead of chalkboards. The statement at the top was ‘how to get rid of the Hungry Ones’. Pretty basic stuff, but underneath there were different solutions and some of them were crossed out due to lack of knowledge or power, but a few of them held serious promise.

“Grow a mini-Yggdrasil in the North and use it like a portal,” I read. “Then, it might be possible to funnel power, mana, or stored sunlight from the main Tree to the satellite to power a forward operating base. Huh, I like it.”

That actually might be possible. I could bypass the entire issue of needing a portal if I could figure out the damn tree in my yard. If sunlight really is the answer, and the Arctic or Antarctic don’t really get the kind of powerful sunlight we do closer to the Equator, then using the World Tree to bypass the distance may actually work.

“Find a usable leyline in the area and use runed sunstones to convert the energy to sunlight or a weaponized state to battle the Undead,” I muttered. “Also possible, but we really haven’t established if sunlight is the go-to weapon or not.” In smaller letters underneath read: If sunlight works, make solar bullets too!

I chuckled at what unconscious me came up with. I do love bullets. Option three was pretty cool but probably wouldn’t work due to the amount of time it would take. “Bring the forest to the Arctic. Make it grow northward and then let nature take its course. Hahaha,” I chuckled, imagining trees stomping on zombies. “Plants versus zombies, and here I thought it was just a stupid game. Okay, option four, assemble a strike team and assault the area. Eh, I don’t know enough people. Table that for later. Option five, find a magic user who can command the weather and use them to remove the evil cloud cover the Hungry Ones use. Then, all other plans will have a much greater chance at succeeding if their security blanket is gone.”

That’s right, they do use some kind of dark magic to create permanent cloud cover so they can walk about unhindered. It was in front of me the entire time but this bit of evidence points in the direction that sunlight is not their friend. Why else would you plan to cover the planet in darkness, duh. Option six was the last one on my imaginary touchscreen, but it was also the most ambitious. Back when the Earth was manaless, a lot of proponents of solar technology used to say that ‘if we could just harness the sunlight of the Sahara Desert, then we could power the entire world for free’. While I applaud their forward thinking, sunlight simply isn’t as dense of an energy source as oil or nuclear. With that being said, those poor hippies didn’t have magic.

“Option six, if the portal bypass system works with the satellite Yggdrasil, then establish large solar farms and energy banks in desert regions such as Texas, Nevada, and California and use that overabundance of solar based energy to assault the Hungry Ones. Sidenote, since Yggdrasil is a real thing, and it touches all realms, then maybe the frozen plane of Jotunheimr is real too. This would mean that the World Tree can adequately survive the frozen wasteland that makes up the polar ice caps.”

Damn, unconscious me is ambitious, I’ll give him that. Looking at the bottom, there was another note in even smaller handwriting. Leaning down, I squinted for a second until I realized it was literally all in my head. Waving my arms, the touchscreen zoomed in. “Large solar panels with perfectly efficient crystal batteries would allow for a foundation of a city, a society, a functioning civilization, just something to think about.” Turning around, I shouted at the blackness that was inside my head. “Fuck you unconscious me, I’m not playing king of the hill! If you see what passes for pride around here, tell him to shut up!”

Now that my self-indulgent venting was over, I turned back to the options and went over them again. I honestly liked them all, but for efficiency's sake, and because I love overkill, I figured that the most effective plan hinged on pooling most of this together, but it all depended on making a dependable World Tree based portal system work. Which, if I could get it to work, the implications would be earth shattering.

“Now, who would be better to tell me how to travel via tree, than an actual talking tree?” I mused aloud. Finished with my inner dialogue, I came to next to the mana-generator and hopped to my feet. Downing one ration cube that I pulled from Gungnir along with a bit of conjured water, I hustled back outside. “Meliad! Ohhh Meliad!”

“My lord sorcerer,” a familiar voice softly spoke, “Meliad is still currently in her Seed right now. She won’t be ready for another month.”

Spinning around, I saw Lyra standing submissively about ten feet away at the edge of the clearing. “Leafy! Thought you hated me?”

“I have been instructed in the error of my ways master,” she said quietly. “Meliad was quite cross with me. All nurtured fruit from my tree is given to the grove for the next score of seasons and I am to be your beck and call as well.”

“I don’t want a slave,” I said, a bit of anger darkening my features. “I just want answers, and without an attitude if at all possible.” Her head dipped even lower.

“Of course Master.”

I pushed her chin up. “None of that, just don’t be a dick, that’s all I ask. Now,” I continued, noting the hints of fear in her eyes, “Do you know how to travel via Yggdrasil?”

She gasped. “The Mother? Only the strongest of dryads dare to do so. We simply cannot bear the strain!”

“Wait, what? Then how the fuck did you get here in the first place?” Again, I was missing some crucial piece of information.

“We crossed through the tears. When the veil broke, many such rips were opened across the fabric of existence, and many things came and went. We took a chance as our world was dying.”

Not really what I wanted to hear, but she didn’t say no to my original question. “So, you could travel via Yggdrasil, but only if you were strong enough. What would it take for you to survive a trip through there? I’m pretty sure I can shield you from pretty much anything.”

“You would do that, for me?” Her surprise was not amusing. What I wanted was simple, but she was making it out to be some huge deal.

“I will shield you and take you on a journey through the World Tree,” I said slowly. “I just need a tree to show me how to travel by tree. Got it?”

She was so happy she couldn’t even speak, her mouth wide open and her hands clasped together as if in fervent prayer. I kinda wanted to poke her in the eye because she wasn’t even blinking.

“Today Leafy.”

“Oh yes of course Master!”

This version of the World Tree, Yggdrasil, my fiance’s incubator, was a ginormous monster of a tree. Even though it was less than twenty feet away, the scale of the monstrosity is hard to capture for anyone’s perspective. I’ve seen the redwoods a couple times in California when I visited family, but somehow this tree was bigger than even those. It was thicker and wider and exuded such a feeling of raw life and unconscionable power that it was almost uncomfortable. And that’s not even describing the amount of mana it gave off, as if it weren’t functioning like a normal tree where it gets its nourishment from the nutrients and water in the ground. This tree seemed like it was giving nourishment to the world, like the natural process was backwards.

Lyra shrank as we walked closer to Yggdrasil, eventually becoming the size of a small house cat and climbing up my armor to sit on my shoulder. “Now,” she squeaked, “Touch the tree and extend your shield to cover us up, but let just a bit of your hand actually touch the bark. Feel it with your magic, let your rhythm match the Mother’s.”

Accepting that hippy crap is now a constant part of my life, I slowed my breathing and extended my nature sorcery to Yggdrasil. While this was just a tiny cell of the World Tree, the amount of power and breadth of vastness of the main tree was too much for me to handle all at once. “Fuck, I’m not ready for this,” I cursed as it felt like I licked a livewire of the universe. Gritting my teeth, I grabbed Gungnir and touched it to the World Tree as my magic reached into Svalinn. Forming a three part system, I closed the circuit with Yggdrasil and the pressure eased.

With both hands somewhat touching the bark, Lyra’s tiny voice spoke up. “Now feel where you want to go. Any tree that has been touched by those blessed by nature have more life and can support you. Pick one close by and take a step.”

With the circuit of magical power closed and my magical tools helping to insulate me from the white noise, I could feel what Lyra was talking about. Soft green and brown lights stood out in an expanse of grey and black. Keeping my focus small as I could feel innumerable twists and turns in the vastness, I found a calm glow about a mile away from where we were. Turning my attention there, I started to take a step when Lyra shouted, “NO! Not that one! Meliad isn’t ready yet!”

My consciousness sorcery was reinforcing my focus enough that I didn’t act up or freak out. Taking a wrong step right now could land me in some weird or scary ass place. Another light glowed softly and I felt Lyra’s mind ping off of mine as I looked at it. A nice oak tree, full of life and one that welcomed the wash of mana since the Ripples came, sat proud at the edge of a valley south of where I was. “Oaks are good, oaks are strong, go there! Not too far either!” Lyra’s excitement spiked as I took a step into a from Fredericksburg, Virginia into a whirlwind of color. In that wild ride of pinwheeling colors, all I could hear was the “Stairway to Heaven” as I screamed my heart out.