Bernard woke up cold and alone. More importantly, he woke up in a bush and had no idea how he got in said bush. Most importantly though, it felt like someone had spent several hours stomping on his chest. He coughed, and his vision went dark momentarily as something cracked in his ribcage and sent a spike of agony through him. Bile rose in his throat, but he forced it back. He was not about to puke with broken ribs. Or whatever was broken. If coughing hurt like that he refused to experience the kind of pain vomiting would bring him.

He tried to roll over, and was pleasantly surprised to find that he did, in fact, know the bush he was in. It was his armor, and when he began moving around it tightened up around him almost eagerly. Is the color darker? As the foliage cleared his thistle came into view and he gaped. Before it had resembled a mace or morningstar, now it was closer in size to a greatclub, or greatmace?

He struggled to his feet, grimacing at the jolts of pain that struck any time he considered moving the wrong way. He suddenly found himself sympathizing with elderly folks everywhere. Assuming there were any left. Experiencing mind-altering levels of pain for no reason beyond deciding to get up in the morning sucked. Luckily the increased length of his weapon made it more than capable of pulling double duty as a walking stick.

Once he was up he inspected his gear a bit closer. The thistle was bigger in every way, despite seemingly weighing the same as always. His armor was heavier, and the color had shifted to a darker, purplish red. The reason for the change was easy to spot, seeing as he had practically been using the misshapen skull as a pillow. Somehow, learning that his gear had eaten a giant monster corpse didn't bother him. The scarring on his armor was far more concerning.

It had pulled back together and gave him impressions of solidity and strength, but he lifted his free hand to trace along the jagged ridges that ran to and fro across the grain of the wood haphazardly. He had to do better. If he was going to throw himself into fights the way he had been up until now he needed to either acquire enough strength to crush anything he encounters or learn how to defend himself properly. Letting things chew on him until they died was not a viable long term strategy.

"Bernard!" Henry's shout broke him out of his introspection and he turned just in time to take an adolescent missile to the gut. The impact jarred his damaged ribs, sending a jolt of pain through him that made his legs go weak for a moment. The next thing he knew he was moaning on the ground, using every ounce of willpower he had to stop himself from grabbing at his ribs in fear of causing more damage.

"Kid, ease up please, pretty sure my ribs are broken." He wheezed out.

"I wasn't sure you were going to make it! You just fell asleep and your stuff started to grow on that body. I healed you a bunch until I couldn't reach you anymore, and your armor wouldn't let me through. None of the others were willing to risk interfering with the Curupira's plans, so we just had to wait and it's been three days, and your stuff just got bigger and bigger, and a bunch of other stuff attacked the village, and some stuff even appeared out of thin air inside the village, and-" He stopped for a moment to take a deep breath.

"Hang on, three days?!" Bernard interrupted. "Everyone left me out here in this clearing, on top of a corpse, for three days?!"

"I told you, they refused to interfere with your plans! The last thing you told them to do was to 'bring you to your thistle' and the moment they did your stuff put down roots and nobody could budge you. My heal isn't good enough yet either, I can't heal broken bones very fast yet." He clambered off of Bernard a bit awkwardly and waved the arm that he had been clipped on. It was in a sling. "I don't know how you didn't die when that thing kicked you. It barely touched me and broke my arm."

"Benefit to taking the Guardian class I guess." Bernard said with a one-armed shrug as he sat up. "I'm beginning to think that miraculously not dying when I should is my superpower."

"That and getting chewed on." Henry said with a smirk. It wasn't quite as aggravating when it was paired with the tears running down the kids cheeks. "Maybe you can convince them that you're not a spirit if you bleed on them enough. Probably not though. You did just turn into a bush, eat a corpse, then turn back into a tree-man."

As though summoned by Henry's words a pair of hunters ran up to them. "Curupira! You return to us! You must convince the gods to help us! The village is almost completely destroyed, and more monsters attack every day!"

"Can your shaman heal at all?" Bernard said wearily. He certainly wasn't in any condition to fight more monsters just yet.

"He can't." Henry answered before the others got a chance. "He can predict the weather, point the hunters in the best direction to find game and forage, and summon weird spirits." When Bernard gave him a strange look he shrugged. "I started asking questions while you took your dirt nap. We should try to find others that were moved like we were. These people are almost useless."

That was… a pretty callous assessment from a kid. Bernard wondered what they had done to earn that response. "Well I need to heal up before I try to search for more strays, so far everyone I've met has needed rescuing and I'd prefer waiting for my ribs to heal before I get chewed on again." Might as well run with the kid's joke. What with it being based in a depressing amount of reality.

"Me too." Henry sounded a bit down about it. "I can't believe that thing managed to hit me. It seemed so slow."

Bernard realized the men that had shown up begging for his help were growing impatient. "Come on, let's go meet the shaman."

*****

Henry hadn't been wrong in regards to how useful these people were going to be in the long run. The shaman in particular was a waste of space. Henry had nailed most of the man's abilities in their earlier conversation except one. The man was able to produce remarkably potent hallucinogens, which he used to 'commune' with his spirits.

Because the only thing better than being in a monster apocalypse is being in a monster apocalypse while tripping balls on super-acid. Bernard thought to himself in disgust as the man continued to describe in excruciatingly unnecessary detail the intricacies of the various spirit journeys he had either taken or sent others on. It didn't take a rocket scientist to read between those lines and understand that he was referring to doping other people with his drugs.

Were it not for the broken bones he probably would have left already. The village was unsettling at best, and vaguely creepy at worst. The buildings were all half demolished still, with smoldering remnants of fires here and there. That wasn't what bothered Bernard though. No, it was the way he was cut off from the forest. For all that these people lived in harmony with the rainforest, their actual home was very much not a part of it.

His connection had faded quickly as he moved away from the trees and into the man-made clearing the village sat in. For something he had only had for an exceedingly short period of time, he felt naked without it now. Aegis had clearly forged that connection to the forest on a primal level and it was now as much a part of him as his own leg. This perpetual sense of loss and vulnerability the whole time he was out of the forest was definitely the shortcoming of his class.

He was mulling that over while he ignored the shaman's endless prattle when Aegis dropped a bomb on him. Not a literal bomb, but certainly a message that blew his mind.

Congratulations denizens of Earth! Enough void energy has been accumulated to establish initial Exclusion Zones. All sapient beings will be made aware of the closest zone to their current position for the next ten days.

He turned to face northeast. He suddenly knew that was the direction he needed to head in as soon as he could. "Wait, that sounds familiar, what's an exclusion zone again? I could swear I've heard that before." He wrinkled his nose in annoyance at Aegis's lack of details.

Exclusion Zones are areas in which voidling spawn is prohibited. This prohibition does not prevent them from entering the area after spawning. Sapients can utilize the void energy they have collected to expand existing Zones or establish new ones up to the Threshold.

"And what is the 'Threshold'" Bernard asked dryly, making finger quotes as he did so."

The Threshold is the point at which the creation of additional Exclusion Zones would result in planetary destruction in one of a number of possible ways.

"Got it, don't make fun of the super serious Aegis interface." He mumbled. In a louder voice he interrupted the somehow-still-rambling shaman. "We need to go."

"Go where, Great Spirit?"

"To throw you off a cliff." Bernard growled with a shake of his head. "There's a place that is much safer in that direction." He pointed. "We need to get everyone there as soon as possible and join with other people. Any other people." These idiots were still shooting Henry suspicious glances on occasion, as though he wasn't a child. He had even seen the kid playing with a couple of the native kids that had survived so far when he thought Bernard wasn't looking. It had been far more entertaining to watch them than it was to listen to the shaman.

Bernard suspected that the kid wasn't nearly as serious as he thought, and was just doing his best to keep it from him. Maybe he was worried Bernard would leave him if he didn't pull his own weight? Which was nonsense, of course. Bernard wasn't about to abandon a kid in the middle of the Amazon for being a kid.

One good thing about being seen as a physical incarnation of someone's beliefs was that when you ask for something it gets done. The few remaining people had collected their belongings, which wasn't much, in record time. They were on their way within an hour. It wasn't wise to travel on foot through the dense forest with broken bones, but knowing there was a place that would stop the monsters from just showing up randomly made it hard to want to linger in a half-demolished village that seemed to draw in monsters like flies.

Bernard took a deep breath when he finally stepped into the forest again. His connection strengthened, the forest sang to him, and its heart beat in sync with his own. He was home.