Anastacia, Emilia and the two simulacra accompanying them didn’t have the luxury of being able to hang around Anastacia’s old camp for too long, as they needed to get as deep into the forest as possible during the day. Though the problem with that was the fact that they could barely tell if the sun was up in the first place. At times the thick treetops above them let out a single ray of light through, which was their only hint on how much time had passed and if they were nearing the evening.

While their travel was largely unimpeded, the lack of scenery made it impossible to even estimate the distance they had traveled. They had passed what felt like an infinite number identical trees, pools of water and groups of stones that felt ever so slightly unnatural, like someone had made them, but it was impossible to actually tell as they were covered in a thick layer of moss.

For the first few hours, Emilia pretended like she was keeping track of their progress, but eventually had to give up because of the obvious futility of it. There was nothing more they could do than to trust Leggy to guide them in the right direction.

The cloaked simulacrum at least seemed confident in where she was heading, but every now and then she stopped to gaze somewhere into the darkness, still on the lookout of whatever it was that agitated her and the priestess.

Anastacia had been asked to keep an eye on the surroundings, but had found nothing even slightly interesting, in fact, even the fauna of the area appeared to be particularly bland, as countless deer, rabbits, squirrels, mice and birds the necromancer had no chance of identifying littered the forest, but not once did she catch even a whiff of a wolf, bear or a bobcat, and much less of something actually interesting or threatening.

King was either familiar with the forest thanks to his earlier and likely long stay in there, or simply didn’t care what was going on around him. All that appeared to matter to him was keeping the necromancer within arm’s reach and not letting leggy get too close unless absolutely necessary.

“I should probably tie you to myself, now that I think about it.” Emilia realized when she noticed that Anastacia was falling behind after stopping to converse with a squirrel.

“Do that and I’ll make you carry me.” The young necromancer threatened and cracked an egg from the pan she was still hauling along with her.

The priestess sighed and kept walking. “I we really can’t afford losing each other here. Trying to find you in a city is one thing, since I can just follow the chaos, but this forest is massive, and we can’t even see the sky. But luckily… I have something to keep you in check.” She said and smiled sneakily. From under her cloak, she pulled a tiny vial with yellow tinted clear liquid in it. Sealed with a tiny bit of wax, its origin was far from a mystery.

“NOOO!” Anastacia screamed and leaped at her friend.

Emilia lifted the vial out of her reach and the necromancer could only uselessly wallop her chest plate, mostly only hurting her own hands.

“Freshly squeezed oil blessed by a certain saint. If the said saint is being difficult for no reason, I’m sure the blacksmith’s depraved brother would pay quite a bit for it, and what happens after that is not on my conscience.” The priestess smirked. “But I will make compromise with you; no rope, but you have to walk in front of me.”

“Whatever, I’ll tell Rosie about the cult and that you’re blackmailing me.” Anastacia pouted and started walking onwards again.

“Do that and you won’t see a single cup of coffee in the inn again.” Emilia calmly raised the stakes. “She may adore you, but this is not a competition you can win, not by a long shot. Besides, I now have a legal responsibility of not letting you get lost in a forest.”

“Do you have the legal responsibility to be a dick about it, or is that just you going the extra mile for it?” Hissed the necromancer.

The two continued to bicker for quite a while over the matter, which coincidentally kept them from losing one another just as effectively as any rope would have. While at times the argument got heated a bit beyond what the subject actually warranted, it never escalated much beyond throwing eggs – and eventually a pan once the necromancer ran out of ammunition.

As they quarreled, they failed to notice a steady increase in the amount of stones in their surroundings. What had started as slightly unnatural-looking arrangements of just a bit too conveniently shaped rocks, had transformed into dilapidated but still recognizable pillars, clear remains of collapsed arches and spots of road paved with massive slabs of marble in places where it hadn’t been covered in moss or broken up by roots. Many of the larger pieces of masonry had been engulfed by the massive trees over what had to be at the very least centuries, likely more considering the utterly worn-down condition of the structures.

The gradual change in their environment was first spotted by Anastacia when she almost stumbled over one of the marble slabs that had been slightly lifted by a tree root growing under it.

“What the… ruins? Here?!” She exclaimed in surprise and ran her hand over the surface of the slab. Time had made sure to erase any and all carvings it had once displayed, and the only unevenness was caused by the changes in the stone’s hardness and resistance to erosion from one part to another.

Emilia gazed forward into the direction both they and the ancient road appeared to be heading in. “I wonder if this will take us through the forest. Leggy, do you know?” She asked from the simulacrum guiding them.

Leggy nodded.

“Well that’s handy. Were these made by the same people that made the machine fortresses and the simulacra?” The priestess wondered out loud.

“No.” Anastacia said and scratched the surface of a nearby fallen pillar with her enchanted knife. The dwarven metal found no meaningful resistance in the stone. “This is not the stuff they used to build their things, just regular stone. The ruins here are safe from weather too and yet are in a lot worse condition than any machine fort I’ve been to.”

Emilia agreed with the reasoning despite not really knowing all that much about the matter. “Suppose that makes sense. Maybe these are what’s left of whoever owned this ‘garden’ then?” She suggested half-jokingly.

For a while longer, the structures by the road became even more apparent, but never enough to even loosely imply that there had been entire buildings by it. It seemed as if the road had simply been an overly grandiose passage through the forest.

Eventually, with no clear idea of how long they had walked, the party came to a wider circular area that had been paved, almost wide enough to form a clear gap in the treetops but not quite. With a bit of guesswork, it was possible to make a relatively safe assumption that the sun was on its way down, based on the reddish hue of what was maybe a tiny bit of sky visible when standing right in the middle of the clearing.

Hoping that the circle meant the halfway point through the forest, the adventurers decided to make a camp there for what was probably the night, even though Emilia wasn’t too excited to sleep with the constant feeling of being watched from somewhere. There hadn’t been even a single hint of any such presence, not a sound, no shapes moving in the dark, nothing for Anastacia to detect, nothing for Leggy to spot, but still the feeling bothered the priestess in particular.

While King gathered the firewood they would need for the night and Emilia prepared to cook, Anastacia and Leggy took a gander at the area. They walked by the edge of the marble slabs embedded into the ground, inspecting and prodding the broken-down pillars that had once surrounded them.

The only even remotely interesting thing they found was a small outcropping on the circle. Only a couple of meters across, it contained what had once been a seat or a throne of some kind. Made from the same stone as the pillars, and had faced the same fate of being largely broken – most of the back rest had crumbled, but there was just enough to tell that it had once faced away from the clearing and the road.

The necromancer cleared away the twigs and pieces of rubble from the seat and hopped on it, only to discover that the stone was rather cold to sit on. She hopped back up, asked the cloaked simulacrum to sit first and then sat back down on Leggy’s lap. Though she didn’t generate nearly as much heat as King, it was still a clear improvement over the throne that had not been sat on for who knows how long.

A few meters into the forest beyond the boundary of the circle, directly in front of the throne, was rather unsurprisingly yet another tree. However, this particular one appeared somewhat malformed, like it had grown through or around something. While the other trees were almost unnervingly uniform in shape, this one had a weird bulging part near the ground and was generally abnormally wide for the first couple of meters of its height.

Suddenly, a grand and commanding voice echoed seemingly from within the tree itself. “A child of death has sat upon the throne once more. It has been… a while.” It said, sounding exhausted but somehow happy at the same time, like it had met a friend it had missed for a long time.

Anastacia’s eyes widened and she turned to look at her friend, who was dicing some ingredients almost at the other side of the circle and must not have heard.

“Emilia! A tree is talking to me!” She yelled to get the priestess’ attention.

Emilia lifted her gaze from the potatoes for a bit and saw the necromancer just loafing around, but nothing interesting beyond that. “That’s great, sweety. Ask it if it wants any stew!” She responded, clearly not believing the necromancer at all and returned to cooking.

“A hearty stew would not go amiss. Pour it upon mine roots and it will make its way here someday.” The voice almost laughed. “I am glad to see manners have yet to go extinct. I was right to allow you passage.”

Anastacia turned to her friend again. “It says yes! Also, it says you’re dumb and should give me the oil!”

“Tell it that if it has a problem with me, it’s free to come over and square up.” The priestess responded, this time without even looking up.

“It has been some time I’ve spoken, but perhaps not long enough for words to be put into my mouth, child of death.” The voice commented sternly but didn’t sound actually angry. “Does your fire-kissed companion often challenge the likes of trees? Has such a thing become commonplace during mine absence?”

Anastacia shrugged. “Not really, she’s just passionate about punching, also why am I talking to a tree?”

The tree let out the sound of a strenuous thinking before it answered. “While technically accurate, I am not a tree, or rather, was not one. It appears that one is no longer even allowed to die briefly without having a tree grow on them.” It lamented. “As for the reason of our engagement; you placed thine hind upon the seat of my master, though indirectly; and considering you hail from the same locale, I made an assumption you were here on his behalf, but your surprise betrays my assumption to be incorrect.”

“I’m here on no one’s behalf, and I do not know who your master is.” The necromancer admitted. Her conversation partner seemed rather relaxed and she doubted it would lead into much trouble. “Is your master from Valor as well?”

“Valor? This is a name of a city? My master sits upon his throne in the center of his empire, in Mournvalley. You have the marks of a necromancer on you, little one, are you not in Emperor Alabaster’s service?” The tree asked curiously and named the ancient white one, whose skeleton Anastacia had dethroned after uncounted number of years. “Well, if you have the chance to reach his ears, tell him that Kipouros is glad to report that all is well. We may have suffered a single casualty – namely me, but the forest stands unmolested as he wished. I would much like to give such a flawless report to him myself, but woe is such that I died and became a tree.”

A sudden weight fell on Anastacia’s heart. “Kipouros, was it? Do… do you know how long you’ve been here?” She asked and weighed her options between keeping quiet and telling the tree that not only had King Alabaster passed over a thousand years ago, if not thousands, his remains had been destroyed and what little of his spirit stuck in a trinket had been killed off. His empire was barely remembered by anyone and even Mournvalley had moved on.

The tree remained quiet for a moment as it calculated the time that had passed. “A decade or two? Can not have been more than a century at most. Sometimes it is hard to tell time when you’re a tree.” It guessed, obviously off by more than a bit.

Anastacia felt bad for Kipouros and couldn’t bring herself to reveal that the world it knew was gone. She held her hand on her heart and faked a smile. “I’ll be sure to tell him then… But why don’t you tell me a bit about yourself and what you’re doing here.” She suggested, guessing that a bit of company wouldn’t go amiss.

Leggy must have noticed the necromancer’s distress and grasped her arm as well.

“Does the name ‘Kipouros’ say naught to you? The First Wolf? Nothing? Ah, well! I suppose I have been guarding this forest for longer than you’ve been out of your cradle.” The tree laughed cheerily, getting a chance to talk with someone must have been a welcome surprise. “I am… was the first wolf to be brought into existence, something you may choose to take as literally as you wish. I ruled the lands here and near for some time before I met my master. I snarled and bared my teeth at him and the other one, but not more than a single glance from him did it take for me to understand what I was dealing with. He wasn’t called ‘emperor’ or ‘king’ at the time, just Alabaster, but tell I could that he would become one! We understood one another and I allowed him passage through my lands, in exchange, he returned with a whole gaggle of wizards and mages to give me the gift of speech! Thankful of such a nice gift, I willingly submitted to his service.”

“A wolf, huh? This Alabaster sure sounds like a… nice guy.” The necromancer forced out what was almost certainly a pure lie in the end. The ancient necromancer was known for nothing but cruelty as far as she knew.

The wolf-tree sighed longingly and paused for a brief moment. “He certainly used to be! As he built his empire, he needed an unpassable wall here, so with the aid of the nature spirits, he planted this forest for me to guard and tend - even to this day, I’ve not let a single soul pass without my permission. During a more peaceful time, he built the road through here, and that bench for him to have seating and talk to me at every once in a while, sometimes with news, sometimes he’d just sit there and listen, like you.” it reminisced. “I do wonder if his mood has improved though, in our last meeting, he was alone and furious. He did nothing but sit there and boiled in his own hatred, I didn’t have much to say that time, but I’m not sure he listened anyway.”

“… I see…” Anastacia nodded quietly. She was desperate to change subject to one where she didn’t need to hold back as much. “So, how did you become a tree? I’m fairly sure trees have grown on dead things before, and none of those have talked to me so far.”

“You’re such a wee pup, so I will not blame you for not understanding – perhaps you will once you meet Alabaster… If someone like Alabaster asks you to watch a forest, something as simple as death is not enough to free you of your obligation, not nearly!” Kipouros boasted proudly. “But us wolves are not made for longevity; as the first one, I enjoyed life much longer than my kin tends to, but the lifespan of a human is too long for me to even fathom. So, a time came when I simply did not wake up again, that is, until I had become a tree. For a while I could feel my remains within the bark and between these roots, but slowly, they became dust.”

“At least you seem to be taking it well.” Pointed out the necromancer.

The ex-wolf laughed. “If anything, being one with the forest does naught but make my duty easier. I was even able to follow you the whole way here, and I can tell that it’s not the first time you or the other machine are here, I’ve allowed you passage before. Though if the memory of this old one serves right, you, pup, were naught but a pathetic weakling at the time – ‘tis good to see you’ve made something out of yourself since then.”

Meanwhile, the priestess had gotten her stew started and was now tossing in the remaining ingredients. “Does the tree mind if I put cheese in the stew?!” She interrupted the two by yelling from the campsite. A talking tree seemed like nonsense to her, but she decided to play along anyway – oftentimes it was the easiest way to deal with the necromancer.

“It has been great many moons since the blessings of cheese have found their way to me. Not much cheese to find in a forest. Have you any to spare, I will gladly take it.” Kipouros said with all the enthusiasm of a dog who is sitting by the dinner table and waiting for anything to fall on the floor.

Anastacia leaned over the armrest to answer her friend. “The tree says it wants the cheese! Also, the tree is a wolf!”

“What the… a wolf? Yeah, sure, that makes sense.” Emilia muttered to herself and stirred the stew.

Still feeling extremely bad over being unable to tell the deceased wolf about its master, Anastacia wondered if there was anything she could do to help it.

“Is there a way to free you? I mean if you want to…” She inquired, hoping that maybe she could at least release the wolf from his watch.

Kipouros hummed and pondered for a while before answering. “The is a way, but no reason. My master will return to end my duty once the forest no longer needs the guardian. Until then, I am quite content being a tree amongst many.” It declined the offer. “I can not even pretend to understand politics or war, but I am certain it all takes time, but no matter, I remain patient. Master Alabaster will return and show me the empire he has forged while I watched the forest.”

Every word the naïve wolf said twisted a knife in Anastacia’s chest. There must have been a point where explaining that Alabaster was not going to be returning, in any shape or form, and much of it was thanks to her, was the kind thing to do. What made it even worse was that she wasn’t entirely convinced that the ancient white one had intentionally abandoned Kipouros, or if he simply couldn’t make it back for a one, final time. After all, there was no reason for someone like Alabaster to use deception, though he was a necromancer and might have just done it to be evil.

Anastacia swallowed awkwardly before speaking. “What… what if he doesn’t come back?”

The wolf laughed once more. “Pup, it is clear as day that you have not met my master – but for the sake of your question, I will answer; I do not care.” It said, suddenly in a completely serious tone that shook the trees around it. “This is the task I chose to accept from the master I chose to serve, if it means my duty is to watch these trees until the world unravels and comes apart from its seams, then I will do so with gusto.”

The lack of even the slightest hint of regret Kipouros displayed was almost blinding to look at, but it did ease the necromancer’s agony a fair bit.

“However, since you are a curious one, I’ll tell you this: I am to be released from my task with a riddle.” The wolf added. “My master said that when the time for me to leave this forest came, only ‘the light of his life’ would be able to do so. It is a though one, but I’ve never really cared for thinking about it. The only such lights I know of are the sun and the moon, and to be frank, I don’t trust either of them to be of much help.”

“Yeah, can’t help you there. I have a reputation for being a bit daft, and don’t know your master nor his lights.” Anastacia admitted.

The two conversed further about the forest itself and Anastacia’s job as an adventurer while the priestess cooked. Kipouros was very interested in the guild itself and reasoned that it must have been some group Alabaster had set up to solve minor issues he or his countless servants didn’t have time for.

As expected of an animal, the wolf didn’t have much to tell about things that didn’t generally matter to wolves. The subject of simulacra was grazed briefly, but they had never caused much issues to the forest, so Anastacia ended up being the more knowledgeable of the two. Kipouros did however know of the machine fortress they were heading towards, and according to it, its lights had often piqued its curiosity when it wandered near the edge of the forest. He was able to confirm that the party was on the right track as well, and that the remains of the road would lead them near the fortress.

Eventually, the conversation devolved into Anastacia explaining the finer things about coffee to the wolf, while it shared the best ways to catch a few select preys.

When Emilia finally deemed for their meal to be ready, she called for King to come back with whatever firewood he had found and join the rest of the party to plan for how they would arrange the night watch. As a joke, she actually took out a third bowl for the supposed talking tree, and even gave it an extra-large portion with more meat to mess with the necromancer.

She picked up the bowls and somewhat sneakily approached her friend, just in case she wasn’t paying attention and didn’t detect her. Managing to successfully get right behind the bench, she planned on to startle Anastacia, but just as Emilia was about to open her mouth, she heard a strange voice from the forest.

“Ah, the iron-clad lass has brought us the stew! I can not even begin to express how delighted I am to eat cooked food once more!” The tree greeted her.

The priestess froze in place and blankly stared at the deformed tree. For more than a couple seconds, she just stood there, hiding her astonishment and surprise with a blank expression while mentally preparing to nonchalantly give the talking tree its stew, just to deny Anastacia the chance to smugly announce that she should have believed her.