Walking into the area of wild magic physically made a massive difference. Compared to my scrying during the night, where the visual changes had been few, to the point that I could barely tell it was an area of wild magic, the changes in the Astral River around us were strong enough to make themselves felt like a hammer blow. The air was almost sparking with magic, the scents and taste in my nostrils and mouth almost overpowering, cloyingly strong and pervasive. Compared to the dry, dusty sensation in the Dorrian Mountains, the Forlorn Forest was teeming with life, but also decay. The clash of those disparate natures was radiating outwards, both extremes pulling at the other and causing an ever-increasing resonance. Outwardly, the powers were in balance, but I could only shiver when imagining what would happen if that balance broke.

If Death became overpowering and devoured the Life, the resulting wave of necrotic energies would be enough to lay waste to dozens of kilometres of forest. If Life became overpowering, the explosion of vitality would cause spontaneous mutations, cancerous growth sweeping every living thing in an equally large radius, turning previously simple creatures into monsters.

A small part of me found it amusing that life would be the more destructive force in this case. Death would only destroy a finite amount of land, turning massive swathes of forest into dust and killing countless living creatures. But their remains would slowly nourish the earth, allowing life to spring forth once more.

On the other hand, the explosion of life would spread outwards. Initially, there would be a wave of newly empowered monsters, infused with immense amounts of vitality and mutated by the pure essence of Life. The struggle for survival would mean that those monsters would spread, trying to take over as much land as possible. For themselves and their descendants, for the prime instinct of living things was to procreate.

“This could be interesting,” I muttered, looking over to Adra. If nothing else, she was a dryad and, thinking back to Tegi, she had been able to absorb some of the powers of life and death to propel herself across the first Divide. Looking at her now, I could see a faint sheen of sweat on her brow, the sheer amount of power probably quite intimidating to her.

“What do you think?” I asked her directly, a grin on my face, “Want to risk it all?”

At my question, her face turned quite pale as she considered my idea. It was audacious to the extreme, failing could have massive consequences, not just for us, but for countless beings all around the area. Absorbing all the power would be impossible for any mortal, but taking some of it would likely unbalance the whole resonance and cause it to spiral out of control rapidly.

“You mean, take some?” she asked, swallowing hard as her senses expanded outwards.

“There has to be some sort of nexus somewhere, not a full nexus I think, nothing like the one in Neyto, but a conflux of power. If we get there, we should be able to do a couple of things,” I explained, a grin on my face as the plan took on more concrete forms.

“It could work,” Adra admitted, now also considering things from a practical standpoint. If nothing else, it was near impossible to find another source of such potent Life- and Death-energies, especially not in a nice balance that wouldn’t require us to balance the energy ourselves.

“We’d have to be careful,” I reminded her, already feeling out the streams of energy, trying to get an idea about where they’d congregate and form a nexus.

“What are you talking about?” Jenn asked, inserting herself into the conversation.

“They are trying to gauge the nature of the land here, the magic of it,” Rai quietly explained, sounding a little annoyed, “If you are unable to understand, keep quiet and don’t disturb them, we need to rely on their senses.”

After a few more minutes, Adra and I came up with something resembling a plan. First, we had to scout some more, maybe find out what, other than the sheer amount of magic, was dangerous in the area. Once we had a better understanding, we would be able to make an actual plan.

“We should go this way,” Adra suggested, her eyes following one of the streams of power in the area. It was mostly comprised of life, but not solely.

“Sure, why not,” I agreed, even as my face twisted in distaste at the vibrant energies of life the area was teeming with. It was almost as if I could feel the countless worms and insects crawling across my skin, filled with that filthy energy, driven to feed, procreate and die, forming a constant cycle, without ever coming to a proper end.

“I’ll lead the way,” Adra decided, already moving forward. The rest of us formed into a formation behind her, Jenn taking the second spot, I took the third while Rai and Sigmir brought up the rear. By now, moving in formation had lost quite a bit of importance. While all four of us had their competence and speciality, we had branched out enough to be adequately competent in personal protection. The only weak spot was Jenn, her level and attributes simply not en-par with the rest of us, but that was her problem. We wouldn’t coddle and escort her, she would have to keep herself safe.

Not long after we had started our trek through the Forlorn Forest, Adra raised a hand, signalling caution. Looking past her, it took me a second, and Lenore’s sight, to realise the problem. While the whole forest teemed with energy, the area in front of us had a particularly strong sheen, almost radiating the energies of life and death, flavoured with a lot of decay.

Whatever was there, it was greedily devouring any living thing that came close, letting the vitality inside decay, before using the energies released as nourishment for itself and the area around it.

“Let’s see,” Adra muttered, barely audible to my long ears. Right afterwards, she raised her hand and mumbled something, this time completely under her breath and inaudible, before a strange, green orb formed in her hand, almost looking like a ball of leaves.

Moments later, she gently lobbed it forward and as it tumbled through the air, it unfurled, forming into a small, leaf-green rabbit. Once it landed, the rabbit hopped forward, indistinguishable from a normal rabbit, if not for the colour.

After a few hops, the rabbit entered that strange area. For the first three hops, everything was fine but in Lenore’s sight, I could see movement in the soil. On the fourth hop, just as the rabbit had jumped off, roots shot out from underground, easily skewering the rabbit mid-air, causing the magically formed construct to instantly dissipate. I could see the energy Adra had used to construct it get instantly devoured, vanishing into the soil, but from what I could see, things weren’t over just yet.

“Spread out,” I called out, noticing the magic in the soil stretching towards us, “Those roots are coming for us!”

All five of us moved back and apart, making it difficult for the unseen attacker to catch us all. At the same time, I realised that we weren’t just fighting some sort of magical tree, but that about a dozen trees in front of us were moving weirdly, their branches swaying in an unseen wind.

After a moment of consideration, I leapt up a different tree, one I was confident wasn’t part of the strange, living collective. Crouching on a branch, maybe halfway up the tree, I quickly formed a magical formation, a grin on my face. If the trees wanted to move and be spry like it was spring, why not remind them that winter was always coming?

Drawing runes of Ice and Darkness, I conjured up a freezing cold mist, infusing it with Death-Magic at the same time, before sending it forth to enshroud the few trees up front. Given that they couldn’t really move, only stretch their roots and sway their limbs, escaping my attack was impossible.

With Lenore’s sight, I could see how their vitality started to contest against my magic, as I slowly but surely channelled more and more power into the spell, letting it linger and devour the life within them.

It took far longer than I had anticipated, the trees able to withstand the devouring power of Darkness and Frost for almost ten minutes but finally, the trees stopped moving, their withered husks looking like a strong gust of wind would be able to blow them over.

At the same time, I noticed a notification in my log, telling me that we had defeated fourteen living trees, their levels between eighty and ninety.

Hopping from my arboreal perch, I looked for the others, realising that the ground nearby was quite devastated from their efforts to dodge the roots and prevent them from uprooting the tree I had sheltered on.

A quick check on them told me that they were mostly fine if a little dirty.