“So,” John began, speaking between mouthfuls of squirrel meat that tasted much better than he had expected, “your nature is celestial?”

“Gah! You weren’t supposed to just tell him!” Tim was flying around the two of them agitatedly, bobbing up and down between them in an attempt to stop their conversation.

“Yep, with a body focus.” Luna ignored his outburst, and instead clarified her position.

“Stop! You’re not supposed to tell anyone this kind of stuff!” The indignant cries of their guide rose an octave higher as his body of light took on a reddish hue.

Luna glared silently at Tim for a few moments before turning to look at her father again.

“But what does a celestial attunement do?” John coughed awkwardly, hoping to diffuse the tension in the air.

“I… I don’t really know,” she said as she wiped a bit of grease from her chin. “I cultivate much better at night, and marginally better at dusk or dawn. Tim says the true strength of celestial cultivation shows itself later on, but for now I can see better by starlight and can do some minor star-related magics.”

“Unbelievable!” Tim screamed as he jerked away from their conversation. “Just leak all of your cultivation secrets, sure! Go ahead! Not like anyone can use them against you or anything!”

John knew it was bad practice, but the idea of his daughter going down some unknown path made him nervous. When he finally did ask, making sure she knew that she didn’t have to answer anything if she didn’t want to, his daughter almost sighed with relief.

She then answered immediately, much to Tim’s chagrin. He understood the sentiment, but it wasn’t like he was ever going to be Luna’s enemy so why should it matter? They were family, and John would certainly be upfront with her about his own situation as well.

“Thanks for telling me,” he said, following Tim with his eyes as he stalked away angrily to his new favorite spot among the canopies. John found Tim’s behavior regarding cultivation secrets exceedingly strange, but he supposed the guide had never been anything but strange.

Relatively, of course. Perhaps by multiverse standards they were the strange ones.

“What about you?” Luna asked, drawing his attention back to their conversation.

“Well, it's a little complicated. For now, just think of like your dad can do anything, but knows how to do nothing. It’s probably not a bad thing, but—” He paused for a moment, making sure Tim wasn’t around to yell at him again, “And you really should keep this between us, but it may have made me something other than human. By multiverse standards, at least.”

Yep, he admitted mentally. He, at least, was definitely the strange one.

“Other than human? But that—” His daughter’s eyes had widened extraordinarily, betraying her surprise. John just chuckled as he placed a hand on her head and ruffled her hair until it was sufficiently disheveled.

“No matter what, I’m still dad. Multiverse standards are weird anyway. I am me, and that’s all that matters.” He touched his hand to his chest to emphasize his point, and tapped on the stone that hung from his neck.

With a smile, he pulled out the rock that was a reminder of his wife only to pause. It somehow looked different, lacking the blue-ish luster that it once had. Maybe an interaction with the energies of the multiverse? John wasn’t sure, but he was glad for it all the same. Its beauty lied not in its looks, but in its significance.

When could he reunite his family again? So much had happened out in the middle of nowhere in the past day alone that he couldn’t help but wonder how the rest of the world was fairing. Tim had said he accessed the internet, but that didn’t necessarily mean it was still functional by human standards.

If world-wide communication was compromised, it may be a long time yet before either of them could talk to Neah again let alone see her.

John tucked the stone back into his shirt and instead reached for another piece of skewered meat from the fire. He tore into it with some renewed vigor.

For now, that was something he had no control over.

For now, he needed to take care of himself and his daughter so that they could all see each other again in one piece. To that end, he was going to have to start being a little more proactive.

Previously, John had only asked questions of Tim that he wanted answered. He had only asked for advice on topics that he was already considering. That, he finally realized, was the wrong way to make use of a guide. After all, who hired a guide to a location and only received answers to questions they already had? Questions they knew they had?

As he tore into a well-roasted squirrel thigh, he came to the begrudging conclusion that it was because of his own pride that he never asked Tim on his own what his best course of action was. It was his pride not just as a father but as someone well versed in matters of science fiction and fantasy.

The realization was vexing.

So was Tim of course, which was a large part of his reluctance to hand over the reigns. Nevertheless, Tim had a job to do and had expressed his desire to see it done. It was time for John to let him do it.

Once satisfied, he wiped any remnants of grease from his hand onto his pants and stood up.

“Tim,” he called upwards with a wave, motioning the space fairy to come closer, “I want to hear more about these tests.”

“Oh? Have you finished your ‘discussion’? Consider yourselves lucky that there’s no one around to hear the proverbial trees you’ve been felling in this forest. Do you feel better now?”

“I do, actually.” John blinked, realizing it was true as he said it. He couldn’t tell if it was the result of their little heart-to-heart or the food, but it was certainly a combination of both regardless of Tim’s sarcasm-laden accusation.

“Well, fair enough then. You said you’re ready for my quests?” His honesty only gave Tim pause for a moment, before his excitement visibly grew.

“I thought you said they were tests,” John replied as his brow creased slightly.

Tim chuckled, and a question mark made of light coalesced into being above his head.

“What is a quest but a purposeful test?” The rhetorical question was posed in that weird way Tim had of expressing a smile without the mouth to do so normally.

He wasn’t wrong, either. Even if John found his framing annoying.

“Fine, okay. Just give me the quest then,” John acquiesced with a sigh. Annoying or not, he had already come to the conclusion that he needed direction.

“Ahem. Your mission, John, should you choose to accept it—”

“Tim,” he reflexively interrupted before he could stop himself. He knew it was counterproductive and he wanted to want to bite his tongue, but he truthfully didn’t in the slightest.

“Oh, relax John. I have literally been waiting to do this since the day I was born!”

John struggled to choke back a ‘That was yesterday’ retort that would just further extend the conversation. He silently grit his teeth and told himself to bear with it.

“Your mission, should you choose to accept it—” Tim paused, expecting to be cut off again. When he was met with nothing but a silent eye roll, John swore he could feel the expressionless orb smile again. “Is to locate a Tree of Warding, and subsequently base your operations there.”

“And what exactly does a Tree of Warding do?” He asked as he let out a bent up breath.

“It wards things, human. It’s literally in the name,” Tim said as if it were the most obvious thing ever. He then scoffed haughtily and asked, “Have you subsumed the brain of the squirrel by eating its flesh?”

John wanted to respond that the concept of ‘warding’ wasn’t a very specific one, but found himself unable to think beyond the idea of someone out there in the multiverse replacing their brain with another animal’s. If someone did that, wouldn’t they no longer be themselves? How much of his identity was housed in the brain?

“Is that even possible?” He muttered after a few moments of deliberation.

“Hah! No, human. Not in this corner of the multiverse at least,” Tim said, muttering the last part as if it weren’t important. Tim continued, “Anyway, we’re off topic. Locate the Tree of Warding. Ask the Charlie human for direction as he has likely already felt it.”

He was about to ask what that meant before he stopped himself. That sounded like a ‘cultivation secret’ that he wasn’t supposed to be asking about. Why then, one might ask, would Tim speak of it out loud?

John had no idea, but he wasn’t about to start curtailing any information he could glean off of Tim’s words by alerting him to the slip.

“What does it look like?” He asked instead, hoping he could at least gather some hint towards his objective.

“When you find it? According to my records it should look like a normal enough tree, John. That’s also in the name,” Tim answered easily as if that too were entirely obvious.

“A normal tree relative to Earth? Or...” John left the rest of the question unsaid, hoping by now that Tim would recognize the problem.

To his credit, the little ball of iridescence exclaimed lightly, and began floating about their immediate area as if taking in his surroundings for the first time. That, or he was trying to match the trees around him with whatever information on ‘trees’ he had from before the dawn of John’s universe.

Ultimately, Tim seemed to come to a conclusion as he paused his ambling around.

“Maybe?”

✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧

In the end, John only knew the Tree of Warding was another part of the assistance that Archaeus had programmed into their world. Apparently as flora and fauna became more and more dangerous, intelligent life would need access to safe zones where they can at least close their eyes in relative peace.

Thus, Trees of Warding. Flora engineered to keep nasty things away from itself. How it differentiated between intelligent life forms seeking safety and dangerous predators, John had no idea. Tim had said that finding out was part of the quest.

He had to wait for Charlie and the two kids to return before they set out, however. It was particularly frustrating because Tim refused to ‘move forward in the quest line’ until he completed the first quest.

And after a few hours of ambling around the parking lot waiting for their return, John had become frustrated. He had already experimented with water magic to fill up a few of their empty bottles very slowly as to not overextend his energy limits. That was all he was willing to do for now in case another dangerous creature made an appearance, but thankfully they had stayed away.

John thought that maybe the scent of death and the now-solid pit of magma kept away most of the smaller creatures whose old instincts would be telling them to run, but he couldn’t be sure how much longer that would last as new powers told them otherwise.

According to Luna, Charlie’s group had promised to return within three hours. Considering that they left about an hour before dawn, he estimated that they should have returned some time in the last hour.

But they hadn’t.

Thus, John was beginning to grow more worried than frustrated. Even if the squirrel was early to evolve— evolution being what he and Luna had decided to call the transition— chances were that many more animals would start evolving soon. And with those evolutions, their world would become much more dangerous much more quickly.

He remembered with some relief that Charlie had a crossbow with him. Hopefully the device would be of use in defending them against any more evolved creatures.

Hopefully the device wasn’t ruined by the reintegration process, his more cynical sense chided.

Even still, or perhaps because of that, he wasn’t willing to sit around for much longer. For the first time since everything began, John felt well rested and no longer hungry. The only thing that still bothered him was his right hand, which he decided was probably due for a redressing and disinfecting. The white gauze wrappings were close to bleeding through, but that was nothing out of the ordinary.

He broke out the first-aid kit and grabbed a pair of small scissors. Unfortunately the very gauze wrappings that kept his wound hypothetically clean would be a terrible pain to peel off. After sticking to a wound overnight, it could feel like ripping off a very long bandaid.

If at all possible, he hoped to cut off most of it.

He started from his wrist and cut a straight line along the pinky-side edge of his hand, remaining eminently careful to not poke at his skin and make anything worse. Once finished with that side, he did the same on the thumb side of his hand. A hunk of gauze fell away from the back before he turned his palm to face downwards and hope that most of the gauze would fall away on its own.

Much of the gauze wrapped around his fingers fell away, while only a few layers peeled away from his palm. From behind what strips remained blood-glued to his fingers, John could see the pasty pink of mending flesh peaking out. Below them were the few final layers of heavily bled through strips of gauze that clung greedily to his palm. Those he would have to pull away.

He did so gingerly, not at all eager to tear open any of the lacerations that had hopefully clotted enough to no longer bleed. John grimaced as the gauze stuck together in places, pulling at his skin with gentle tugs that were far from pleasurable.

When he finished, he was surprised at how little blood remained. Most of it had apparently been pulled away by the gauze which, while painful, gave him less washing to do. He resolutely splashed the rubbing alcohol on his hand, hissing as the dull ache instantly reignited with full force.

John choked back a curse and forced himself to count to ten. When he finished, he greedily grabbed a nearby bottle of water and rinsed the assaulting chemical off. With it went much of the blood stains, and he finally got a good look at his palm.

The open wounds that obscured from him a day ago were much further along in the healing process than he thought they would be. The flesh had apparently begun to stitch itself together with a speed John never would have expected his body capable of. Most of the lacerations were of course still open, but John knew hand wounds didn’t heal that quickly normally.

When he inspected his hand more closely, he realized that those more healed parts of his palm weren’t actually healed, but that those parts were the very same criss-crossing of burn wounds he noticed the day prior. They looked almost normal though, if not for a faint pale-red discoloration of the swollen skin.

If he didn’t know any better, he would have said the skin looked like it had melted and then reconstituted along those lines. Then again, he really didn’t know any better and admitted it was entirely possible that that was what had happened.

Following the brand-like markings with his eyes caused a growing discomfort in his head that eventually dissuaded him from inspecting them closer. It was yet another mystery regarding his current constitution, he supposed. Though so long as it didn’t hurt him, he would just have to leave it be.

Setting aside the strange burns, John remembered worriedly that he was unable to move his fingers any more than a sad twitch the other day. As someone who had used his right hand for most activities in his life, losing it permanently would be disastrous.

He tried to curl his fingers inwards, only to be met with the same feeble twitch as before. This time, he noted, there was a lot less pain resulting from the movement. Hopefully that meant he was on the road to recovery, but ultimately John couldn’t be sure.

It hurt, which meant that it wasn’t numb, which meant that his nerves were still intact? John wasn’t an expert on the inner workings of the human body, but he thought at least that much was true.

For now, all he could do was sigh disappointedly and make the best of it. He gingerly dabbed away the last of the moisture with a clean towel and began wrapping his hand up again. As much as the stiff mitten would limit his mobility, he wasn’t losing much since his hand was already immobile and it would keep the wounds clean.

The last thing he wanted to do was exacerbate the problem by getting it infected.

He finished quickly and gathered Luna and Tim. Splitting themselves up now would be the paramount of bad ideas. John had seen enough horror movies to know that he who went alone died alone, and had no intention of any of the three being that person.

Not even Tim, he thought, though the distinction did take him a few seconds to make.

“Which direction did you say they went?” He turned to their guide and asked.

“This is your quest, humans,” Tim said with a scoff. “I am just an overseer.”

“Right,” he said slowly. His desire to leave their eminently helpful and entirely forthcoming guide behind began burgeoning with newfound purpose again, but he ultimately suppressed it.

“They went that way,” Luna said helpfully as she pointed to a small opening in the underbrush. It looked to John like some kind of overgrown hiking trail, or maybe even a game trail, but it was better than nothing. He held no misguided beliefs about his ability to track anyone or anything through the woods.

He made a mental note of what direction they were generally going based on the sun, but he was far from an expert at such things. He certainly didn’t trust his sense of direction to get him back to the parking lot without a trail to guide them, and he could only hope that the wayward trio weren’t far from the distinguishable path.

“Okay then, that way it is,” he said with more certainty than he felt. He kicked a few stones into a vaguely arrow-shape pointing in their chosen direction in case they passed each other by accident. “Let’s try to stay on the beaten path.”

It was time to begin their ‘quest’.