John was hoping he hadn’t jinxed their chances at a normal tree when he was hit with a sudden realization that something was off. He didn’t have anything to go by, as the forest around him still looked the same, but there was some kind of instantaneous change. Goosebumps spread across his skin as the feeling of discomfort grew.

“Stop,” he whispered as he held up his good hand to signal the others.

The discomfort only grew more as he belatedly realized what was off about his situation.

It was the sound.

Or rather, it was the lack thereof. The forests had been quiet since he had awoken in the field a day and a half ago, but they had always been filled by something else. The sounds of the other people in the forest for one, namely himself and his daughter. And therein lied the source of his discomfort.

The sound of feet crunching on leaves and twigs behind him had vanished.

John whipped around as his heart began to race, only to confirm his fears. The other four people, who had been following him mere seconds prior, were gone without a trace. They made no sound of alarm, nor did they leave anything behind that would mark their presence.

They were just gone.

“Luna! Where are you?” He called out into the forest as his anxiousness rose exponentially. But even as he screamed, the empty woods provided no response as the forest consumed even his own echo.

Either something unimaginable had happened to the four people behind him without a single one of them making a sound, or something had happened to him instead. Considering that he was in the front of the party, John tried to calm his raging emotions by rationalizing that he was likely the one caught up in whatever this was. Not his daughter. Not Luna.

He felt marginally better at the thought, even though it was just as likely that she was caught in a similar predicament. At least he wasn’t in any obvious danger yet, John sighed. If that were the case for him, it was likely that the other four were also out of any obvious danger.

He stutteringly reoriented himself in the direction of the Tree of Warding as he fought with his internal fear. Perhaps, he rationalized, this was part of the warding process? Tim hadn’t said they would get caught up in it, but then again he hadn’t said they wouldn’t either.

John figured that his best bet would be to find the damn thing regardless. Luna was smart, and she would likely come to the same conclusion. If so, they would be able to meet again once they got there. That was what he told himself, anyway.

In reality, John’s anxiety was pushing an all-time high. Losing his daughter in the middle of a forest full of dangerous creatures wasn’t his idea of a good time. His body lurched into motion as he forced himself to follow through on his own better judgement and not run around blindly searching for her. That would only put himself at greater risk, and therefore her as well.

He felt his heart skip a beat as his heightened emotional state began to mobilize the energies that filled his body without his direction. It felt like his insides were squirming and wriggling with an intensity he hadn’t known the typically dormant energies capable of. The sensation was unbelievably uncomfortable, and John gasped as he tried his hardest to suppress the strange reaction.

He was minorly successful, though his control over his new magic limb was still horrible. He managed to walk in spite of the gross discomfort, but it took most of his attention just to keep it at bay. After about ten minutes of walking, he had become positive that his discomfort was growing the closer he got to the Tree of Warding.

If this wasn’t part of the warding process, then he didn’t know what to think of his suddenly raging energies. He was barely able to keep his feet from tripping over themselves as he guided himself around fallen objects with rapidly blinking eyes. John was beginning to wonder if he wouldn’t make it to the tree itself when he finally heard something in his quiet environment.

It was a muffled shouting that felt far in the distance. The minor distraction was all his energies needed to flood his system unbidden in a flash. John’s vision began to swim dangerously as he found himself losing balance. The forest in front of him started distorting, as if everything he saw was a thin film on rippling water.

He clamped his eyes shut to hide from the dizzying twist of his world, as the pressure within himself from his energies grew exponentially. He was about to fall over when he felt more than heard a sudden snap. His rampaging innards suddenly calmed themselves, and he felt the world strangely grow more solid beneath his feet.

When he opened his eyes again he was somewhere else entirely. John was now standing amongst a veritable waterfall of spindly tree branches as they cascaded over his shoulders and stuck to his torso with long leaves. It almost felt like they were glued by sap to his body, though he didn’t feel any kind of sticky liquid adhering to his skin or clothes..

When he tried to tear them off, the branches actually dislodged themselves of their own accord. The leafy appendages now formed a bubble of unimpeded space around his body that curved from about twenty feet above him to a height just barely scraping the forest floor. Through the gaps in the bubble, he could see many more such vine-like branches hanging from far above him.

Beyond even those, he saw that the vertical branches opened up to a wider space than his own about twenty feet away from him. The shouting voices continued from that open space beyond the branches, but they remained muffled by the sheer multitude of the cascading leaves.

“Luna!” He called for his daughter, but there was no response other than a light shifting of the dangling branches. With no better option, John moved forwards toward the larger space. He was ready to push his way through layer after layer of the obfuscating branches, but to his surprise they parted in front of him. A quick glance behind told him that they were closing at the same rate that they opened, leaving him in a small unimpeded space within their domain.

“Well, that’s creepy,” he said as he shook his head.

He continued onwards, each of the branches giving him a wide berth as he proceeded onward. About half way there, he recognized that the one doing most of the screaming was, of course, the ever handy and trustworthy guide Tim. John swore to himself that he would be getting answers for this mess one way or another, even if he sardonically recalled swearing the same thing once before.

The final layer of branches peeled apart, and John felt his tightened jaw slacken. He was met with an unbelievably breathtaking sight that seemed to steal his frustration away from him. In the center of the massive clearing before him was an enormous trunk of gnarled wood that rose impressively from the earth. It towered far above the normal trees from the forest, larger both in width and height than even the redwoods he visited in his relative youth.

From it’s incredible trunk, wide branches split off in perfect natural arcs that added themselves, layer after layer, to the cascade behind him. The entire structure formed somewhat of a dome that separated the inside space from the outside. Speckled beams of light shone through that shifted with winds that no doubt buffeted the tree’s upper sections. Surprisingly though, it was far from dark inside the tree’s embrace.

No doubt, there was some kind of magic involved with that. The grandiosity of the tree’s physical structure was only outdone by the massive pool of energy John could feel emanating from its core. It filled everything in the area, from the branches behind him to the roots beneath his feet.

He took a deep breath and, for a moment, he almost felt connected to the tree. He felt the wind buffeting his top, the earth that encapsulated his roots, and the sun that warmed his leaves even as it lowered to set. It was an awe-inspiring sensation that buckled his knees. He had never believed in any of that tree-hugger stuff, but the overload of information was a rapturing experience.

Some part of him felt the tree’s energy enter his own, equal parts gentle and grand. It mingled with his energies for a brief moment, and then recoiled sharply. Suddenly, everything came crashing down around him and he found himself back in his own body. His limbs immediately crumpled in exhaustion as he fell to the ground with a massive headache.

His mouth tasted coppery and his head span far worse than it had previously. He felt like his brain had been shoved back into his own body. John grit his teeth as he felt whatever resonance he had formed with the tree fade away until only the barest of tenuous connections could be felt.

“Woah, John! You wouldn’t be trying to cheat on me already, would you? I had you pegged as more of a family man, but I guess looks can be deceiving.” In the midst of their rapidly fluctuating circumstances, his guide’s jovial attitude had somehow returned.

“Tim,” John groaned in response. His voice, especially in its current tone, was probably the last thing he cared to hear right now.

“What is it, buddy? Care to explain?” Tim asked mockingly.

“Shut up.” He spit a mouthful of bloodied spittle on the ground as his mind reoriented itself. Tim immediately guffawed and began to speak some nonsense that John quickly tuned out.

It didn’t take him more than a few seconds of thought to determine that this absolutely was the Tree of Warding that his now incensed guide had been talking about. And if it held that much power within itself, it was no wonder that even the deer that had been chasing them was willing to let them go to stay away. The feeling John got from the tree was that it was connected to the earth itself.

The deer was only a candidate for the King of this forest, and even though he didn’t experience much of the deer’s power, John was fairly confident it was outclassed here. If not by virtue of energy alone, then certainly by size. After all, what could a relatively tiny deer do to such an unbelievably large block of semi-sentient wood?

“And who are you?” A female voice distinctly different from Tim’s incessant whining pierced his viel of thought. It immediately dragged his mind from visions of a certain movie’s Forest Spirit fighting the impossibly large Tree of Warding. That, and he belatedly noticed there was a knife tied to the end of a long stick in front of him like some kind of makeshift spear.

“John Mermous,” he replied reflexively, years of trained social interactions overriding his desire to run. If he wasn’t currently on the ground, he might have reached out to shake the woman’s hand. “And you are?”

“M-Maria, Maria Wagner.”

“Great,” John said dryly as he stared at the knife in front of him. “Have you seen my daughter?”

“Daughter? No, I-” Maria tried to respond, only for Tim’s grating attitude to return.

“I told you John, she’s still caught in the illusion! Progenitors above, were you even listening?”

“No,” he replied decisively. Without giving Tim time to respond, John continued, “And what illusions are you talking about? Are they dangerous?”

“You mean you didn’t see them?” Both Maria and Tim asked suspiciously. John noted that while the woman was confused, Tim was incredulous.

“Are they dangerous?” He repeated. Maria shrugged, and glanced at Tim.

“Not physically, no. She’ll be fine. Better than fine, in fact. The experience will be good for her. More importantly, you said you didn’t see anything? Tell me, please, what happened? Please,” Tim begged, dragging out the word. Even though John still felt a mixture of frustration and annoyance for his guide, he still divulged the abridged version of what he experienced.

If not to appease him, then to maybe get some free information out of him.

He explained that he was walking along with Luna and Charlie’s merry band of deer antagonizers when everyone vanished. He skipped the parts about him being scared to lose his daughter for reasons, and then described his weird connection to the tree. When he told them about how they parted, Tim began laughing uproariously.

“What’s so funny?” He asked as his brows furrowed in consternation.

“It’s nothing, it’s just…. You were accepted by a world tree sapling and it, it couldn’t make a contract with you because you were already contracted with me. Me! Hilarious!” The ball of light then giggled like a child before laughing loudly again.

He wasn’t sure what being contracted to a world tree sapling would mean, but it sounded like a pretty good thing. As far as he knew, world trees were some of the grandest existences in fiction. Things that grew so large and powerful that they could transcend dimensions.

The multiverse equivalents couldn’t be that similar, right? If they were, John’s face blanched as he realized he may have missed out on an incredible opportunity.

“What did you do?” He demanded.

“Oh no no no. It should be ‘what did we do’, John. Hah!”

“Tim, if I find out you’ve compromised me in any way…” He left his sentence open ended as he glared at the giggling fairy until he stopped with a cough.

“Oh, oh no. It’s nothing so serious. In fact, in the future it would have held you back. Imagine, you’re trying to leave the planet but a large portion of your strength is tied to the planet itself! If anything, I saved the future you. You can go ahead and be grateful now, human.”

“Does that mean what he’s said is true?” The woman- Maria, said despondently. In the midst of his conversation with Tim, he had almost forgotten about the woman and her weapon. Almost. The knife point lowered itself to the ground as he let out a sigh of relief. He wasn’t sure what Tim had told her, but whatever it was had lowered her animosity towards them at least.

Of course, who wouldn’t be feeling helpless if their planet was experiencing a world ending disaster. Or was it a world beginning disaster? He shook his head, then nodded his head when he realized how the motion might be interpreted.

“Tim rarely ever tells the full truth, but at least he doesn’t lie,” John affirmed. Now that the spear point was lowered, he finally had the guts to look past the business end of the weapon. Holding the other side in a white knuckled grip was a young woman, likely college age as far as he could tell, wearing clothes much dirtier than his own. She looked dehydrated though, and her face reminded him of- oh gods was she crying?

Indeed, John’s stomach dropped as the woman removed one hand from the spear, letting its tip bury into the ground as she tried to muffle a sob. Tears were much harder to stop, sadly.

“So then Jacob and Eric are- they’re dead? Just like that? And the others, Emilia and Kyle and, my god, even Lily too, they’re probably…” Maria sputtered of the names of people who assumed had been with her when everything happened.

“Hey, hey, it’s alright. Tim’s an awful bastard, okay? He could be wrong,” John intoned softly.

“That is unlikely,” Tim said with a huff.

“Shut up you useless space fairy,” he growled as he glanced back at the wall of willow branches. It didn’t look like his daughter was coming through any time soon, so he decided he should hear her out. Hell, maybe Tim was wrong. John sighed as he pulled out two empty bottles from his pack and placed them on the ground in front of him.

“Take a seat,” he said as he began to slowly fill one of the bottles with water with his magic. It felt easier than before, but John couldn’t take the time to analyze why just yet. Luckily, in the safety of the tree, time was his most abundant resource.

He was never more glad for the genuine shock that magic tended to elicit from people, as her surprise and confusion slowly stopped the downward spiral whatever bullshit Tim told her put her in. The artificial elemental intelligence that was essentially Tim’s brain made him unreasonably callous. It was effective for many things, but human interaction was the least of them. Perhaps a more humanistic approach to whatever problem she and her friends had would be more productive than just making her upset.

“Go ahead and tell me what happened, when you’re comfortable,” John offered as he handed her a filled water bottle. She stared at it in amazement before her dehydrated state overcame whatever misgivings she might have had about magic water. She took a few large gulps before she slammed it down on the ground with a sigh.

She looked conflicted for a moment, unsure as to whether she should trust the stranger in front of her. One of her hands still gripped the pole of her spear, but John wasn’t going to give her any reason to use it. They could all be reasonable and rational humans here and not resort to something like violence.

“Thanks uh, John?” she asked with a furrowed brow. When he nodded, she took a deep breath. Maria paused for a moment to ready herself to retell whatever tale Tim had made such a brutal judgement on again. For her sake, he hoped Tim was wrong too.

“It all started when my stupid friend Jacob decided it would be a great idea for us all to go backpacking…”