It took three days to reach the Ever Forest.

The ride across the straight planes was even easier than the ride down the mountain, giving Nerluce ample time to mess around with Lyana. Though, if one listened to how Corbett whined about it, they would think that the party had spent the three days galloping on bad terrain in the middle of fog so thick one could barely see past the tip of their nose.

The fog bit did, actually, hold some truth to it. Last night, a dense fog had rolled in. It hadn't stopped Taayir from rousing them even earlier than usual. By the time the sun rose, the fog had dispersed a bit but not as much as Nerluce would have liked before departing.

By midmorning, Nerluce realized why they hadn't waited. The fog wasn't wasn't getting any lighter. It had an unnatural thickness to it, stirred up and swirling by the horses' hooves. The closer they came to the Ever Forest, the thicker it grew. Nerluce felt a chill go down his spine. In this dense fog, he felt as though anything could be watching him. He pulled his arms in, trying to rid his chest of the feeling.

"Definitely a rogue spirit," Jurine said, speaking to no one in particular.

"Most likely several," Eko agreed.

Rogue spirits? Could rogue spirits really be capable of causing such a thick fog? Spirits were just clumps of magic that gathered in a certain place so they weren't exactly known as powerful beings. Nerluce was certainly no expert on spirits and in fact, if Jurine and Eko were saying it was a spirit it was probably a spirit-

"No," Aristide said, seeming to appear out of thin air, which should have been impossible considering the sheer size of his horse but since when did Angel care about those sorts of things. "Spirits alone couldn't maintain this much fog."

"So... they're being helped?" Nerluce mumbled.

To his surprise, Aristide hummed in agreement before disappearing back into the fog.

Nerluce chewed on the inside of his cheek, feeling rather pleased with himself. Sure, he was awful at magic, but he knew animals. Not that spirits were animals - they were something between plants, animals, and... rock he supposed - but he had always liked them. Tormented them when he was a little kid.

A memory came back to him.

___

Nerluce blinked and he was in a garden. His... mother's garden. He was young. He had to have been young since when his mother looked at him, tucked a strand of his hair behind his ear, she knew him. She smiled at him. This was before she was completely lost.

He was chasing something. He couldn't remember what. A ball? And then... there it had been. A spirit. Nerluce could remember coming up to it, giggling. He picked a flower and placed it on the spirit's head. They weren't solid, but the flower stayed, regardless. The spirit had blown a gust of air at Nerluce, messing up his hair and causing a burst of giggles.

Mother had scooped him up in her arms. She tapped his nose and called him, "Spirit-kissed." Nerluce could remember she told him that it was a good omen. Spirits had a big mouth, she'd teased. The one who kissed him would tell the rest about him. She said that the spirits would watch after him now and forever. He had stared at her in wonder.

___

Nerluce turned his head up to the sky. Spirit-kissed? That was just a silly story that mothers told children to get them to behave. A small laugh rose from his throat. He'd learned about spirits because of that. He'd read every book he could get his small hands on. Spirits weren't conscious, they didn't speak, and they didn't look after anyone.

"Nerluce," Lyana said. "You okay?"

"Sorry, sorry," Nerluce said, shaking his head. Focus. He needed to focus. "I guess I never really woke up this morning." He offered a smile.

Lyana smiled back. "Look there," she said, pointing straight ahead of them. "Do you see it?"

Nerluce squinted into the fog, trying to find what exactly he was looking at. It seemed like there was a dip, no... a rise... no... those were trees. They were a dark mass of giants staring down at them with an emotionless gaze. Nerluce's eyes widened in awe. He felt like all the heroes of legend had when meeting gods or angels.

They stopped just before the jaws of the forest, Taayir raining in her gelding with a sharp whiny. For a time, they were all silent, taken in by the great power they could all feel radiating from the trees. This was a domain outside the world of the gods and humanity. It was one of the few untamed lands left. And it was most certainly deserving of its name: the Ever Forest seemed endless.

"This," Taayir said, her voice sharp, "is your hunting grounds."

Hunting... hunting grounds?

"As I'm sure you've all already realized," Taayir said, "the Ever Forest has become a bit... infested recently. There is a small group of magicians who have made it their den and they've been overloading the local spirits." She grinned, all teeth. "We've been called in to deal with them on behalf of Ethera and the Seraphs."

Oh. Oh! This was... this was a mission. Nerluce hadn't realized... well he probably should have. It was kind of obvious. His first mission as a disciple...

"This will also serve as a test," Taayir said, letting the ball drop. "You will be dealing with the overloaded spirits while Aristide and I take care of the magicians. Do not engage them. They have been studying magic for much longer than you have and they will not hesitate to kill you." Her eyes hardened. "Having said that, I will be evaluating all of you on what you've learned and if you don't meet my standards, you'll be leaving."

And it was definitely Nerluce's last mission.

"Aristide, pass out the matches," Taayir said. "You get one pack. And try not to burn down the forest. The spirits will kill you if you hurt the trees."

Great.

And that was where the challenging part of this test came in. As if trying to find spirits in a massive forest wasn't enough of a challenge. Bringing those with a fire affinity into a highly flammable forest that would kill them if they set even one leaf on fire was certainly a unique testing environment. Nerluce sighed but he hadn't been expecting anything less from Taayir.

Aristide came around and handed each of them a pack of matches. Nerluce opened his and counted. Six matches each. One was probably a dud. Actually, five of them could be duds. Nerluce narrowed his eyes at Taayir, but her face was unreadable. When Aristide finished he returned to the front with Taayir.

"We'll be going in first," Taayir said. "The spirits will run from us and-"

She continued to speak but Nerluce's eye was drawn to the subtle flexing of Aristide's fingers. He watched as the fog became water and then the icy blade that Nerluce had gotten so used to seeing Aristide wield. A blade he had pointed at Nerluce's throat once, under the moonlight. Nerluce understood why the spirits would flee, overloaded or otherwise.

Taayir gave them a curt goodbye and Aristide said nothing at all as they headed into the forest. No one moved for a period of time before, all at once they all entered and went their separate ways. It wasn't technically a competition but... there were only so many spirits and they all needed to prove themselves.

Nerluce gave Eden the reins. Some of the others - Corbett and Jurine - had gone off in a full gallop. There had to be some strategy in that. Get to the spirits first and you'll have the best chance of killing them. Was it killing when spirits weren't technically alive? They weren't dead either. Nerluce shook his head. He preferred to go slow. Besides, he didn't think he would be continuing past today no matter how hard he tried.

So why not just go on a leisurely ride while he had the chance?

Following that line of logic, Nerluce looked around the Ever Forest. He didn't think he'd ever be coming back to it so he figured he might as well soak up as much of it as possible. The trees were massive. Bigger than anything that Nerluce had ever seen before. He didn't think he'd be able to wrap his arms around the trunks.

They cast dark but dancing shadows on the forest floor. Nerluce watched the shadows move, as the limbs of the trees swayed in the wind. Soft leaves muffled Eden's hooves, and the scent of pine needles was made all the stronger by rain that must've fallen sometime in the night. Nerluce liked the smell of pine. There were a couple of pine trees back in Itoroh but they were nothing like these.

A part of Nerluce wanted to climb one of these trees and take a nap in its branches. Actually... why couldn't he? He would never get the chance again. Heart pounding, Nerluce slid off of Eden, trusting the stallion to not runoff. Eden had never run off on Coam before. He was a terrifyingly well-trained horse.

The tree that Nerluce picked to climb was one with plenty of low branches and natural handholds. Nerluce climbed the tree as high as he could get, but it wasn't even a fourth of the way up the tree. Nerluce looked up, trying to make out even the smallest sliver of a blue sky from the thick branches of the tree but he saw nothing. If Nerluce could build up his stamina... he'd like to climb to the top of one of these trees one day.

He let out a breathless laugh. He was currently laying on this branch because he'd gotten too tired to continue up. "What a joke," he said.

And then, whispered back to him, "What a joke."

He snapped his neck, looking at the branch across from his where a spirit was peering at him with small black eyes. The two of them stared at one another for a long period of time before Nerluce fumbled for his matches.

"What a joke," the spirit said again before puffing out a breath of fog. This was definitely one of the overloaded spirits. Nerluce had stumbled upon it by the favor of some god.

And even though he might've been useless and completely prepared to fail, he wasn't so stupid as it ignore a spirit when it was right next to him. Perhaps this was his ticket to staying at Ethera. He could keep studying magic! His heart pounded in his ears as he struggled to light a match. The first one was a dud. Shit. This was his one and only chance. To stay here, to stay safe, to see the world, to make Lord Father proud-

The second match lit. Nerluce stared down at the flame, letting himself breathe with it. He had to move his opposite hand to get the flame to grow and struggled to snap a branch of the tree to light. The spirit stared at the fire before saying what everyone thought when they watched Nerluce perform magic. "What a joke."

"I'm trying alright," Nerluce said, through gritted teeth.

A sudden wind came, rattling the tree and Nerluce had to clutch his fire to his chest. He couldn't let it go out nor could he let it fall. The spirit just kept staring at him. It didn't seem afraid. That shouldn't have been right. The fire would kill it - if it could be killed. Why didn't it run? Nerluce stared at it, desperate for answers. Did it not think he was a capable enough magician? Did it want to die? Did it-

"What a joke," the spirit said before puffing another breath of fog, this time against Nerluce's forehead, just like the spirit had when he was a child.

Spirit-kissed.

Shit.

Nerluce looked at the spirit and then the flame in his hand. This... this wasn't how one was supposed to deal with spirits. He held the flaming stick up to the spirit, who blew it out in two big puffs. Nerluce dropped the charred stick to the forest floor, running his hand through his hair. He really was hopeless, wasn't he?

And then, he turned to look at the spirit again. What had his mother told him about spirits again? What was that old story? He couldn't seem to remember it. However, as he stared at the spirit, he shook his head.

"Bad people make you do bad things," he said to it. "You aren't to blame."

The spirit just stared back before echoing his words again. Different ones this time. "I'm trying alright?"

Nerluce smiled at it. He had no idea if it understood him or if it just liked saying those words. All spirits were capable of echoing human voices. Nerluce had heard from a traveling merchant once that he'd gone through a valley and heard hundreds of them saying things back and forth to one another like a chorus of humanity long forgotten.

Slowly, Nerluce climbed down the tree. He would just take Eden and leave. He'd just ride back to Itoroh. He didn't need to be put through the humiliation of Taayir telling him that he needed to leave.

However, as Nerluce's feet hit the floor, he frowned, spinning around. Eden was... Eden was gone. His eyes widened in panic as he spun around. That horse was worth more than his life. Eden shouldn't have run off! And it wasn't like there was a person alive or dead who could ride Eden! He'd kill them without a second thought! It wouldn't matter if it was the First King himself, Eden wouldn't care!

Nerluce kept spinning before his eye caught something. Light. Fire. One of his classmates! Nerluce felt the panic in his chest ease slightly. Perhaps someone had seen Eden and just taken his reigns. Eden had let people lead him before. Especially if he was somewhat familiar with them. It was probably Lyana!

Pushing his way through the undergrowth, Nerluce made his way towards the light. However, the closer he got, he began to realize that this wasn't one of his classmates. Instead, he stumbled into a small clearing, almost completely hidden by the surrounding trees. In the center, there was a fire, crackling and grinning at Nerluce, almost in mockery.

But that wasn't all the clearing boasted of. As Nerluce's eyes adjusted to the light of the fire he noticed a pitched tent in one corner and several barrels of rations. Furs were thrown haphazardly around and a clothing line was tied between two trees. Nerluce had accidentally stumbled into someone's home.

He flushed and turned to make his retreat. He hadn't realized that people lived in this forest. However, in doing so he nearly ran right into the resident of the clearing.

"Oh!" she squeaked, jumping backward and dropping some of the sticks she'd been carrying.

"Sorry! Sorry, I didn't mean to," Nerluce said.

And then he saw the woman and... well he couldn't help but be a little struck. Nerluce prided himself on seeing many beautiful people but... she was by far the most. She wasn't beautiful like Aristide - cold and holy - but beautiful in the way of earth and mortality. Her skin and hair were dark but she wore white, an arrogant challenge to the forest.

She smiled at him. It was a smile that would have made stronger men than Nerluce lose themselves.

"No... don't worry about it." She pushed her hair back. "I... I so rarely get visitors out here... um, would you like to sit down? I think I have some tea?"

Nerluce nodded, mouth dry.

Honestly, if this woman had asked for his heart, he would have ripped it out and given it to her on a silver plate. Yes, Nerluce had most certainly lost himself in her.