Private - Beware The Forest's Mushrooms

Had she not bent her little toe at an awkward angle the first time she tried, Madison would've kicked the wall she stood near.

It was a well enough day in Honeyhome, she supposed. Sun was shining, temperature was comfortable, and nobody mistook her for some kind of villainess. Turns out dark, earthen-shaded clothes, a rat's nest of black hair, piercing blue eyes, and a bad case of resting demon face in the starter village will get you looked at in all sorts of odd and interesting ways.

Madison lamented that she was only here on business, otherwise she'd show these NPCs and newbies how far she'd come in Black and Nature Magic in the relatively short time she'd played Terrasphere.

...only to get stabbed and bludgeoned into thin red paste by the stupidly-overpowered town guard--as you do in these kinds of games.

The witch was nearing the end of her vine. Of all the masteries she could've taken when she unlocked her fifth slot, she had to pick friggin' Tinkering. Spirit Magic would've been a hell of a lot better for her, but noooo-- she just haaaad to grab the one that let her mix potions from all the ingredients she could grow at the shuffle of her deck and a snap of her fingers, rather than call upon a spirit to hand-deliver the desired potion or poison to her from the other side of the ethereal curtain.

You'd also think that inching closer to Expert-level Nature Magic, she'd be able to skip the red tape of summoning forest spirits and commune with them directly by becoming one with the earth. Apparently not--not yet, she kept telling herself.

Her frustration taking over, Maddy kicked the side of the building again anyway. This time she lucked out and didn't jam any toes. Might've cracked a nail, but nothing broken. So, she had that going for her, at least.

"What the hell does a woman have to do to get someone who picked Spirit Magic around here," she grumbled loud enough for those around her to hear (just in case one of them might've picked the mastery).

More time passed without a hit on her world chat message. Madison was getting anxious, she was getting ornery, and time was running short.

Flicking open her UI, she flipped over to the messenger tab and started clacking away at another plea for assistance.

Madison Freebird

Attention anyone in or around Honeyhome:

In need of some assistance. I require someone with at least the most basic understanding of Spirit Magic and the ability to use it in order to commune with some forest spirits. I can provide most of the tools necessary for the incantation, just need someone to channel it through.

Willing to pay for the help, either in GP or alchemy ingredients.

Tapping her fingers a final few times against the translucent screen, she sent her message into the aether and flicked close her menu. Someone better answer, or I'm gonna' have to start kidnapping newbies until I find one who picked Spirit Magic.

-------------

@Conseil

 

He couldn’t help it. He wanted to log in ahead of the rest of the friends that he had given the file to. He was far too excited and it showed. Rarely did his voice sound quite so expressive; his melancholy had given him a bit of a boring monotone when he spoke in recent days. His enthusiasm for a game like this, this seemed like everything he had ever dreamed of getting into. Of course, mind you, he was getting ready for this game to not exceed any of his expectations, but he was also setting the bar incredibly low. He was just more elated to have a game like this in general; a game that you could actually dive into and feel, and experience with your five senses. A remarkable feat of technology that he finally had access to. It would be a good stress release from his job.

He materialized into the game with the avatar he had chosen. Brand spanking new, right off of the presses. He was the tallest that he could be as a Faerin; he in fact had taken the proverbial slider and had wished that he could crank it past maximum height. That was the only drawback to this race that he had chosen. He had obviously pointed ears, a pale complexion, bright blue eyes and light red hair. He was dressed in a brown tunic, pants and boots that could be mistaken for nothing but “newbie clothing”, with not even a weapon to call his own.

Where he had materialized was interesting: he was one of the lucky people to materialize right on the edge of town, right where the borders of Honeyhome Village met the edge of Maithe Woodlands. He opened his eyes and blinked a few times to get adjusted to the new surroundings; his lack of height (not that he had much to boast about to begin with), how the world was slightly brighter, how the world sounded slightly different. The fact that his vision now constantly had a really infuriating menu button in the right hand corner of it. He swiped at the air a couple of times to try to get rid of it, but it just involved the screen getting bigger. And now there was a message in front of it?

If this game was full of ad bots, he was out.

He pressed the message open and read through it quietly. A Spirit Mage, huh? He furrowed his brow ever so slightly and rubbed one of his pointed ears. The player sighed again, cleared his throat, and then tilted his head. Even his voice sounded different. He tested his voice again, and finally clapped his hands together, feeling the numbing tingle of contact.

“Okay, let’s see what this is all about.” The voice came out as higher pitched than his own, but with some of his same mannerisms none the less. That was good, at least. He took a tenative step, walked towards the town nearby, and experimentally hopped the stone fence to get onto the town’s central road. Maybe that message that he had just gotten was some kind of class quest of some sort. Mastery. Right, it was called Mastery in this game. He’d have to remember that.

After wandering and glimpsing some of the sights of town, he wandered around a corner and found what seemed to be a player that was trying incredibly hard to make their avatar intimidating. No other player avatars had stood out yet, but this one was odd. First of all, she wasn’t garbed in the same starter armor as everyone else. Her hair was an absolute mess. She had an expression that just screamed that she was pissed off. The player gave a wry smile to himself. Yep. Someone had seen the creation screen and tried to make a swamp witch or something, he was pretty sure. Ingenious.

He glanced at the name in the identification box nearby her avatar. ‘Madison Freebird’. He then tapped the air in front of him and brought the PM back up. Yep, the name matched up. But just in case he wasn’t correct…

“Hey, you the one who wrote that message?” He approached the woman carefully as he swiped the message off to the side. He leaned on his back foot with his arms crossed, and put on what he hoped to be his biggest smile. “I just logged in for the first time but I took Spirit Magic, if you wanna teach me what you need me to do!” He kept his grin plastered on his face for as long as it wasn’t creepy, and then he chuckled. “I mean, if it’s something a newbie can do, that is.”

-------------

@Madison Freebird

 

Madison's head immediately snapped towards the source of the voice, a smol with pointy ears and reddish hair. The brown clothing he was dressed in immediately screamed I'm new! I'm new! Take advantage of me, for I do not know any better!--which was alright with her, of course.

"Oh thank god," she rasped as she scrambled closer to him. Kneeling down slightly so she could meet the faerin eye to eye, she said, "You have no idea how glad I am that someone answered my message."

The witch fished around in her inventory for a tattered notebook, its paged yellowed and littered with various sketches and formulas. She furiously flipped through the thing until she found the drawing she was looking for.

She continued, "Yes, absolutely, this should be incredibly easy for you. See, I'm trying to contact a particular nature spirit. It guards a grove containing some super-rare, high-tier materials I need to conduct my alchemy experiments. I figured I could've contacted it directly with my Nature Magic, but apparently that's not how it wanted to do business."

Madison opened the notebook and showed the boy a sketch of a ritual circle she had ready to go. Stick figures denoted the witch and the faerin, who would be sitting opposite each other, circled by tarot cards that had briars woven in intricate arches around them.

"Basically what I need you to do is to sit here--" she tapped the lower of the two stick figures-- "and help me channel my Nature shit through your own Spirit Magic. If the two of us work together, we should be able to summon the spirit no problem."

She arched and eyebrow towards the newbie. "Think you can do that for me? If so, then let's get the hell outta' here."

 

Oh God. Was that going to become commonplace? Were players going to actually lean over to speak to him a lot? Right now he was just amused by it, but that was probably going to get really old, really quickly. Oh well. Now that he thought about it, the adjustment period to a Faerin was probably going to be easy; at least he wasn’t going through a dramatic height change and he wouldn’t have to readjust when he had to log out. Hmm. Wait. He was supposed to be focusing on what the girl was saying. Introspection over. Focus.

The minute that ‘high-tier materials’ got thrown into the discussion, the Faerin had to really restrain himself from looking skeptical. A bit of his facial expression slipped, and it wasn’t in a positive way. He tried to quickly recover by putting on a bit of a smile with a confused look as she spoke. The more she talked though, the more it became readily apparent that he shouldn’t have come and offered his assistance. This looked like a high level thing. He really didn’t feel like losing his avatar this soon. He had heard something about adverse psychological and potentially physical effects from death in this game. He didn’t relish having one of those without at least some work put into it.

Oh well. He had been thinking of maybe denying that reward she had advertised about. Depending on how hard this was going to be, maybe he’d take her up on the offer after all.

He unfolded his arms (which he hadn’t even noticed that he had crossed) and tried to shove his hands into his pockets. Upon noticing he didn’t have pockets however, he just put his hands behind his head and interlaced his fingers. “Alright, sure. I’m going to have to be told how to do this if there’s any special mechanics, but I think I can get it done.” He cleared his throat and held out his hand. “May I see that diagram as we go?” Maybe he could study it.

Regardless of whether she gave him the book or not, Conseil would start to walk with her to wherever their destination happened to be. He also started to mull things over. “That does seem odd that you can’t communicate with nature on your own without a Spirit Mage… Magus?... whatever, to act as a catalyst. I assumed from the description of the magic that it was more to do with communication with ghosts and what not. Although, I suppose all spirits does make sense.” He mulled it over for a moment. “Not the mechanical design I would’ve chosen, I suppose.” He chuckled. “And I’ll assume that it won’t be the last time I was wrong on an assumption about this setup either.”

As he walked, he swiped his menu open and started reading through some of his spells, trying to figure out how exactly he was going to do this channeling thing that Freebird needed. He was beginning to think that he was thinking a little too much about the mechanics of a game. He’d probably have to break himself out of that mentality.

-------------

@Madison Freebird

 

The decent weather continued as the pair began their trek into the woods near Honeyhome.

"Yeah, you'd think that I could get an audience with a stupid floating moss ghost," Madison commented bitterly as she stepped over the rotting trunk of a fallen pine tree. "But the powers that be decided that Nature Magi can only listen to the world, not exactly speak with it."

She quickly corrected herself. "Actually, that's a lie. If I took Spirit Magic as a mastery, then I'd be able to do it." Madison shot a glance over her shoulder to make sure the boy was keeping up with her and hadn't dropped her notebook full of ritual diagrams. "Bless the game's mechanics--they're so rigid, yet completely wide open."

Madison recalled her many hours spent practicing and experimenting. "See, I have a core of Nature, Illusion, and Black Magic. When you hear Black Magic, you think of curses and hexes, right? Y'know, the fun stuff?"

The witch paused for a moment, looking around the forest for an old beaten path, muttering a curse underneath her breath. The trail of dirt and trodden weeds was off in the distance, illuminated by the afternoon sun through a break in the bough. She immediately stepped towards it.

"I've been using it to supplement on my Nature Magic to create poisonous plants and deadly spores," she continued, her eyes scanning the brush to make sure she hadn't been fooled by a trick of the light. "I mix Illusion and Black Magic to completely Lovecraft someone's day."

With a wink, she added, "I combine Nature and Illusion to make every party I'm invited to just a little more interesting."

"As you're starting out, it's probably best to just stick with learning individual masteries, their strengths and weaknesses, before you start jamming things together and seeing what works. That's how I learned, anyway."

The plagueslinger's booth landed on the path with a heavy thud, and she turned to walk further into the depths of the forest.

"Shouldn't be much longer," she noted. "Any other questions before we get there?"

 

Conseil took the rotted trunks and the roots on the ground with either a hop or a vault, depending on the equivalent height between him and the subject at hand. He did so with gusto and enthusiasm; clearly he was getting used to the movement controls as they proceeded further into the forest, and he was enjoying them a lot more. He let the girl completely finish with what she was saying, responding only with the occasional hum of confirmation or impressed exclamation, and all the while he was analyzing what she was saying in his head. Was PvP a factor into this game? Hopefully she didn’t let her secrets loose to everyone if PvP was a case. But it did inspire some thoughts about some of the masteries that he had taken and some of the ones that he had seen. Being able to combine masteries into combo attacks or abilities would be heavily beneficial in the future.

All the while, he had studied the diagrams in her book, and about halfway to their destination, he had given it back while listening to her; probably somewhere around the time she started talking about Lovecraftian horror. He didn’t understand what she was going for with the diagrams, but if all he had to be was essentially a translator and a conduit, he would assume that she could do the rest. He didn’t really know why he was being so trusting about all this either; if there was Player vs Player, this would be a good opportunity to get his avatar killed, or worse. Oh well. It was a learning experience, and hopefully he’d be able to get out of whatever situation he was thrust into. Good thing this lady had just told him about Illusion Magic.

But, maybe he was judging her too harshly. Maybe she just had a real passion for Lovecraft… and poison… and death…

… Second thought? He probably wasn’t judging her too harshly.

He landed on the path beside her and looked around; he was definitely thoroughly lost now. He’d figure out his way back one way or the other, he was sure. “Yeah. Just want to get straight what exactly you want me to do. I sit opposite of you in a circle of tarot cards, and… channel. How do I do that? Is it something I just… will myself to do? Do I press an Assist Mode spell? … Do I focus really hard on trying to summon whatever it is you’re trying to summon?” He peered at the witch. “What are you trying to summon, anyway? What is it?”

-------------

@Madison Freebird

 

Madison flipped through the back of her notebook, where she had a sketch of a forest clearing. It was small, maybe a hundred feet in diameter. In the middle, a rotted stump etched with runes she witnessed the first time she tried this ritual.

"We're summoning something kinda' like a dryad," she told her companion. "I had a, uh, agreement of sorts with it. I'd give it a tome filled with some ancient knowledge, and it would give me access to a secret grove filled with rare alchemy ingredients. I could take with me what I could carry. I thought it was a pretty sweet deal at the time, but once I acquired the book, the spirit cut itself off from me. I'm trying to figure out why."

It wasn't long before the two adventurers arrived in the grove. Lined with thick underbrush and towering trees and with the stump in the middle acting as a focal point for the whole thing, it was exactly as Madison remembered it.

The witch looked overhead. The sun was still several hours from setting.

"Alright, let's get to work," Madison said. "I just need you to sit over there, about three feet away from the stump. I'll handle the ritual circle."

And so she did. Shuffling up her deck of cards, she laid them out like the hands of the clock, leaving the twelve and six places open for her and the fae to sit at. Taking her place, Madison closed her eyes and focused. The plagueslinger fell into the recesses of her mind, tapping into the energy stored within. The circle of cards began glowing with a green energy that grew in intensity before thick briars burst from their faces, tangling with one another as they formed a circle around the two magi.

It was a picture-perfect rendering of the drawing in Madison's notebook. Her eyes fluttered open, the circle complete. There was just one more thing that needed to be taken care of.

The witch tossed the notebook over the stump into the boy's lap. "There's an incantation written down on that page," she said with a nod. "Since this might be your first time, go ahead and plug it into your Custom Incantation function under your spell list in your UI. Once you get it programmed in, close your eyes and try and feel for the threads of Nature Magic being cast off by the ritual circle. They should look bright green in your mind's eye. Grab a hold of them, and recite the passage. The system should take care of the rest; just keep it up until the dryad appears on top of this stump here."

 

Dryads? That would be interesting to see. The corner of his lip curled upward ever so slightly, his amusement wryly showing. He had a friend who absolutely despised the fae back in the real world, almost to a comedic level. He couldn't wait to tell him all about meeting a dryad. It was close enough to a fae to push a couple of his buttons. Certainly enough for a laugh.

This woman was starting to intimidate him less and less as they advanced through the forest. Perhaps it was because of how much effort she was putting in to find this grove. It was certainly a lot of effort if she was just thinking of going into the woods to player kill him. Now his concerns lay with this dryad. Why was it avoiding her? Was it the mechanics of the game, or something far more sinister? Just what had Freebird gotten herself into?

When they emerged into the grove, he saw it cast in a light that was probably far brighter than any forest grove had any business of being. The stump glimmered brightly in the sunlight cast upon it, and the trees cast a darker shadow on the forest beyond. Conseil peered quietly. Maybe the developers had coded in an optical adjustment of some sort, when you went from darker to lighter areas. That would be a bugger if they ever went spelunking in caves or something of the sort.

When she spoke, he nodded in reply and followed her directions, but he didn't sit; not yet at any rate. He just kept his arms behind his head and watched the woman work with her tarot cards. When he realized that he was supposed to be positioned at the border of the circle, however, he plopped down to the ground and crossed his legs. He leaned on his knees and his gaze was drawn by one of the tarot cards nearby. He tried to examine it without picking it up or getting any closer, but he had no such luck. It was an incredibly interesting way to channel energy, that much he could say. The light show that Madison put on straight afterwards was amazing as well. He resisted the urge to clap as the briars wove their way betwixt themselves, creating a perimeter of thorns. He couldn't make out any buds; not yet, he assumed. Perhaps there were some within the thorns, or perhaps he just couldn't make any out among the mass of brown and green. He did look excited, like a small child watching a fireworks display for the first time, and that was something he couldn't hide from his face.

"Incredible..." He murmured, right in time to be surprised by the same book being tossed into his lap. He jumped a little and picked up the book as Freebird spoke, examining the page that she had managed to keep open through the toss. An incantation, hmm? The minute that she started talking about custom functions, he had his UI swiped open. A few moments of humming in confusion, followed by a little exclamation of "Ah!", he opened up the proper menu and a keyboard came up. He picked up the book with one hand and started to type with the other, not knowing nor caring if there was another method of input. His fingers typed rather quickly, a talent he had picked up from years of video games, and he nodded to himself after he proof-read the incantation. It wouldn't do to muck it up because he put in a typo. He took a deep breath, then stared at Madison Freebird for a moment and smiled sheepishly.

"Alright, here we go, get ready."

---

His vision was pitch black when he closed his eyes, save for the same tree stump in front of him that had been in front of him before. There was nothing but him and the stump for a few moments, before the darkness around him started to grow slightly brighter. It took on a slight green hue, blurred and nothing but a dim emerald void, but the light emitted from a ring that was starting to form around him and the stump. He took a deep breath and focused his attention on the ring, and the ring started to take a shape; woven, glowing emerald vines that bore thorns and what looked to be the dim outline of flowers. When the vines, that he managed to identify as the briar ring around them, took definite shape, he pressed on the screen where he was pretty sure the button to incant automatically was.

He opened his eyes in the void, and what he didn't know was that he had opened his eyes in front of Madison Freebird as well, and had gripped the briars on either side of him. But all he saw was the vision that he himself had created. The words left his mouth before he had a chance to stop them, and as he incanted, he realized that it would not stop until he was done, whether he wanted it to or not. There was no way to cancel this. They'd gone too far into it now.

"Hear now our words, forest;
We call upon your spirit, your heart,
To summon one of your own to our blessed briar thorns."

Green lights floated off of the briar ring like spores, and started to float gently and gather over the tree stump. They hovered, and in Conseil's vision, a faint green outline appeared over the tree stump. It turned to Conseil, as if questioning its presence, but it didn't seem to have the capacity to speak yet. None the less, Conseil obliged the perceived question with the next part of the incantation.

"Honored Dryad Spirit,
We seek your Guidance;
We ask that you Commune with us, and move among us."

The light spores plunged into the tree stump simultaneously, and vines ripped up through the stump to start forming a humanoid shape. The entity that appeared before Madison Freebird was composed mostly of woody vines, weaving together to form a single entity. These vines created two arms, two legs, a body, fingers and toes, and finally a head with leafy green hair. The 'eyesockets' of the dryad were pupiless, but glowing an eerie forest green, contrasting against the brown vine mask. It had no moving mouth, but it did have a hole in its chin that could be considered a mouth, yet it had no nose. It tilted its head and stared at Madison Freebird, while Payton finished the incantation.

"Spirit, we summon thee hence!"

----

The inky black left Conseil's vision, and when the light cleared from his eyes, he was staring up at the dryad spirit from behind in awe and apprehension. He also was feeling exhausted; he suspected that the ritual had taken a bit of his own energy to do, at least to call the spirit to the location. Even if it was far less than Freebird's efforts, it was still a lot for a newbie. He kept his mouth firmly shut to prevent himself from doing more than breathe through his nose. Uncanny how the system stressed the body like that.

It made Conseil even more excited for the game.

----

@Madison Freebird

 

As the vines burst from the stump and took the shape of a beautiful woman, Madison's gaze hardened. The energy she poured into the ritual was significant, but not enough of a distraction to where she couldn't cast one of her trademark half-sneering glares at the spirit.

The runes decorating the stump glowed brightly cerulean as the ritual continued. The dryad glanced at the witch, but its attention was drawn elsewhere--and why wouldn't it be? She wasn't the one reciting the incantation. As far as the thing was concerned, she may as well not have even existed. Which was fine by her--the last time the two met, things had not gone well.

Conseil uttered the final lines of the spell, and the illuminated runes died out once again as the dryad stretched her limbs, getting accustomed to its physical form once more.

Although it did not have a mouth it could smile with, Madison could hear the polite bemusement in the spirit's voice as it spoke.

To the fae, it said simply. "Ah, hello, my child."

The dryad slowly danced around on the stump for an excruciatingly long moment, clearly stalling for time. Madison's fists clenched around thick clumps of briars, her knuckles turning while while the palms of her hands began to trickle with errant drops of blood. It hadn't been five seconds since the arrogant bitch (or was it bastard?) spun into existence, and Maddy already wanted to set it on fire.

It leaned forward in the air, one leg raised daintily behind it as it got a better look at Conseil. "You call upon the forest, and the forest answers. For what reason do you wish to commune with us?"

"Behind you," Madison snarled.

The spirit hesitated, its soft gyrations and movements freezing for the briefest of moments. Madison's face only twisted with more anger. Casually, she reached for her belt, removing one of the potions that dangled from it. The liquid inside sloshed around as she popped the top off and took a swig.

"Ah," it repeated, its ethereal voice laced with disappointment. "The Plagueslinger."

"Nice to know the nickname's sticking," Madison darkly mused. "Let's cut the shit. Do you have my book?"

The dryad bristled, the leaves in its hair curling, the vines of its arms briefly flashing sharpened thorns. It quickly recomposed itself, putting on the mask of regal aloofness that Madison recognized from every other time she tried to commune with this particular spirit.

"Your book? I do not know which book you speak of." The dryad offered a theatrical and mocking shrug.

"I gave you a week," Madison seethed. "I gave you the goddamn thing so you'd give me access to the grove. As of this morning, I have neither."

The response came quick. "We lost it."

Madison blinked. "You... you lost it?"

"Yes."

"The book?" Madison's face twisted in confusion. "O-or the grove? Which one? How the hell do you lose an entire chunk of the forest--"

"We disposed of the book," the dryad said. "And then, rather than risking the chance of you finding our secret, we disposed of it too."

Madison shook her head. An unquenchable fire began to burn inside her, threatening to consume her. "N-no, that's impossible--"

"We have seen your heart, Plagueslinger. We know what lives inside of you. It does not deserve to use our gifts."

"--all that work--"

"We know the darkness that consumes your mind, clouds your judgment, and corrupts your very soul."

"--for nothing!"

The witch's fist ached as she squeezed the briars tying her to the ritual harder, the thorns digging deeper into her flesh. She wanted to scream. She wanted to leap at the dryad and pound away at it until either the spirit's face broke or her hands did.

Instead, she straightened up, raised the potion to her lips, and downed the rest in a single gulp.

"Mm," she muttered to herself, licking her lips. "That's good OJ."

Tossing the bottle aside, Madison latched onto the briar circle, her body coursing with a rush of fresh mana. For a moment, she cut Conseil off of her Nature Magic, nearly collapsing the ritual. Sensing a familiar yet imminent danger, the dryad tried to dismiss itself from reality. Before it could, Madison reignited the ritual, this time tapping into wrath to channel Black Magic into the faerin.

The dryad immediately felt the effects of the rotting plague that Madison pumped into it. It doubled over, twisting through the air, clawing at its "skin", tearing leaves out of its hair. An unearthly scream filled the air.

Madison simply poured more hatred into her spell.

Writhing around on the stump as the witch's plague took hold, the dryad looked up at @Conseil, manic desperation flickering in the light of its emerald eyes.

"P-please," it shrieked, "y-y-ou m-m-must stop h-h-h-her!"

 

Conseil should have never dropped his guard.

The exhaustion of the ritual and the fact that nothing major had truly happened in their time together so far had caused Conseil to actually enjoy all of this. The dryad seemed like a fun mob to interact with... or an NPC. Either way, the dryad seemed actually fun, and he was really starting to dig the amount of detail the developers had put into this game. The dryad seemed mostly focused on him, and he was about to reply back, when he heard Freebird's voice.

Conseil narrowed his eyes at her tone of voice. Something was wrong. He had tried not to judge her on her physical appearance, had tried to play it off as maybe a person trying to be too grimdark and edgy, but listening to this conversation, he was becoming more and more apprehensive. Should he cut off the link? Let the dryad go and maybe talk to this woman about her methods of getting what she wanted?

It was a thought, and it was definitely well-meaning, but it was a thought that came too late. As the dryad started to talk about the agreement not being upheld, and about her blackened heart, Conseil could see Freebird's expression change to that of utter rage. Conseil stood to his feet, his hands still gripping tightly to the vines. "Hey, wait a minute, we can talk this out--"

And then they definitely could not talk this out. The talking was gone. Out the window. Never to be seen again. Conseil's reputation with the dryads was probably shattered. All because of this crazy woman losing her goddamn mind. She gulped down a potion and proclaiming it to be orange juice. Wasn't there a flask that someone could drink in a game that got nicknamed OJ by the community of the ga-- JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.

Conseil choked and went down to one knee as the effort of the ritual was suddenly tripled by the abrupt cut of the nature magic that sustained it. He tried to keep it up purely with spirit magic alone, but at the point where he thought it would all flicker out, a rush of new magic started to flow within him.

Nerve-wracking pain shredded through his veins and Conseil actually screamed in his agony. He fell completely to both knees and his head slammed forward into the grass as his fingers seized up. The plague spread through him and tears actually welled up in his eyes from the shock. He strained to pull his forehead up from the grass, staring in horror at the dryad as it started to rip apart its body to try to get away.

It screamed for release, and Conseil was more than happy to oblige. "I'm so sorry." He whispered back to the dryad as the last words, before he willed himself to let go of the vines. Instantly upon disconnecting himself from the ritual, he felt a lot better, but sluggish from what he now assumed was the poison running through his system. He stumbled to his feet and watched the dryad disappear into the air. The magic started to dissipate around them, and Conseil immediately started to focus some energy into casting Dispel on himself to clear the poison from his system. He deeply inhaled as he cleansed himself, immediately feeling the relief, and he glanced at his health bar. There wasn't too much damage, but between the ritual and this simple dispel, he didn't have enough energy to heal the damage on himself and still make it back to town if he had to run-- speaking of which.

Before he could stop himself, he started to shout. "What the hell was that?! Was that you? Why the hell would you do that, all that did was give it justification for its actions! I mean, it was a piece of shit for taking your stuff without any payment, but... what the fuck?!" He wiped away the tears that had streamed down his face and now was just glowering angrily at the woman... and probably not doing much to look intimidating either.
----

@Madison Freebird

 

The witch could only sit there, mild annoyance simmering into a cold fury in the pit of her stomach, her features blank. As Conseil had his silly little newbie outburst, Madison only sighed and cut off the plague magic she poured into the dryad. She picked herself up off the ground, brushed her rear off, and thumbed through what was left in her deck of cards.

Madison stood there, stoic in the face of the chaotic little faerin in front of her. "Start the incantation again."

Clearly the little boy did not hear her. Madison took a step closer to him, mindful of the briar ring that surrounded her.

"Start the incantation again," she repeated herself, a little more forcefully.

And yet, Conseil was too busy being concerned with petty shit like neeeeerrrrrrrr why would you do what you needed to do in order to get what was rightfully yours in the first place what justification could you possibly have to poison a backstabbing servant of the woods that you're powerful enough to take as your own anywayyyyy waaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh--

Madison closed the distance between them and whipped a card out of her deck, holding it within inches of the faerin's face. It flickered to life with malevolent violet flames, threatening to engulf him.

"Start. The. Incantation. Again."

Before he could, the brush at the edge of the grove shifted. The fury in the plagueslinger's eyes was immediately extinguished, replaced by momentary panic.

"Fuck. Shit. Goddammit."

Her eyes darted across the treeline, looking for the source of the noise, seeing nothing.

"We pissed off the forest," she hissed at Conseil. "Run. Now."

Madison leaped over the rune-carved stump and snapped her fingers, calling the cards she used to set up the ritual circle back to her. They effortlessly slid back into the deck, even as she burst across the clearing towards the path back to Honeyhome. She quickly shuffled the deck as soon as it was whole, preparing to fire off a random bit of plague magic should she need to.

As her luck would have it, that should quickly turned into a would. A pair of direwolves burst from the treeline, teeth bared, snarls in the air, big furry bodies blocking their exit.

The witch grit her teeth and drew a card. "I don't have time for this!"

In a flash of purple light, a bolt of pure malice ripped through the air, colliding with one of the wolves. As it traveled through the beast's body, it ended up dragging half of its head with it, leaving a trail of shattered bone, pulped brain, and corrupted blood in its wake.

 

Sure, she had threatened him, but Conseil never really had much regard for his own life anyway. Besides, if it meant that he didn't log into the game because he had utterly fucked his character over, so be it. At this point, he was wondering if this woman was the shining example of what the community had to offer. At her third threat, complete with tarot card, he stared stonily up at her with his arms crossed. He didn't say a word, but it was pretty evident what his expression was telling her. He wasn't moving an inch.

That was, until the plants started to move.

He turned towards the rustling brushes and when the other woman said her words, he glared at her. "We?!--" Conseil spat back indignantly, but when he saw the dire wolves start in their pursuit, he started to run. As he ran, he started to swipe through his menu; something in this damned Assist Mode better help with this. He had his Arcanamancy, but that was all high Energy and he didn't necessarily have the reserves for that right now. He scrolled quickly until he found a spell that might potentially be able to help and pressed it.

A ball of light appeared in his fist and he dropped it behind him. "Don't look back, eyes forward!" He barked out as a command, and his illusion went off; a gem had manifested in his hand that exploded outwards in a bright veil of white light, similar to a flashbang. The surviving dire wolf (and any others who had decided to emerge from the trees behind them) would be blinded by the blast for an incredibly short period, but long enough that the pursuers would be confused and distracted at the very least. In those few precious seconds, he and Madison managed to get back to the path that they had taken and while their escape was far from over, they at least had lost some of the monsters on their trail, if not all of them.

But his energy was now dangerously low. He needed some time to recharge, and he had a feeling that this woman was not going to give him that kind of time.

Part of him really hoped that more monsters would emerge from the trees. Time spent running until they could get back to Honeyhome was time that he could use without this woman trying to squish him like a bug. He'd let her do most of the heavy work. She was higher level, after all.

 

As the pair swiftly moved through the forest, Madison could see that Conseil was beginning to wear out. Between the ritual and the flashbang spell he cast to give them time to make a break for it, she supposed that he was running low. Newer characters had a rather pitiful energy pool, made even worse by the fact that both physical and magical activity pulled from the same green bar in the UI.

The witch decided that if he was going to be of any help while the forest threw everything it had at them, he'd need a refresher. Stopping their flight was out of the question, though. Reaching for another ball-shaped vial on her hip, she tore the potion free and tossed it towards him.

"Here, chug this," she ordered. "A little something to keep you goooooh, shit!"

The next thing she knew, Madison found herself face-down in ankle-high grass, the wind knocked out of her. She rattled off curse after curse as she twisted around to see what tripped her up. A vine as thick as her arm was wrapping itself around her leg, squeezing tighter and tighter, pulling her towards the treeline.

An ungodly roar shook the trees around them as someone's nightmare slithered onto the path behind them. Its body was wide and crafted of thick, twisting briars. It had the head of a venus fly trap on meth, and was big enough to swallow one of them home.

All Madison could think of was how badly she wanted to add something like it to her list of summons.

Later, though. First, she had to escape its clutches.

"Hurry up with that potion, goddammit!" The plagueslinger quickly produced a card from her deck and charged with with brilliant purple energy. A quick little spell that would rot away the vine that held her hostage in mere seconds.

"Aim for it's mouth! Blow it's fucking brains out the back of its head!" She wasn't entirely sure if it had a brain in the first place; plant-based monstrosities were usually pretty lacking in that department. But with any luck, a fresh set of holes would frighten it away and allow them to escape.

 

Conseil caught the ball of liquid by fumbling it a couple of times, and before she had a chance to scream at him he had already downed the potion. When she did scream at him, he decided to ignore her, mostly because he was feeling the effects of the potion. It really did feel a bit like ingesting OJ, except it was incredibly warm and the warmth shot through his body from his chest to his extremities. The better he felt, the wider his grin. He flipped into his Arcanamancy menu and slammed his finger through one of the buttons for one of the spells.

His stance became wide to brace himself and he held out his right hand while bracing his wrist with his left hand. Glowing red symbols displayed itself around his fingers, complete with a circle of energy. Out of his palm came a rapid and steady stream of crimson arcane crystals, aimed directly down the venus fly trap's throat. The only difference was that the crystals started lodging themselves into the back of its mouth until they forced their way through the other side, severing the fly trap's top jaw from its bottom jaw.

The vines stopped grappling Freebird, and Conseil (against his better judgment) jogged back and held out a hand to help her up. "Thanks for the boost. C'mon, up you get." After a few seconds, whether she accepted his help or not, he started to prep another spell. This time it was a burst spell, meant to explode on impact and cause an area of effect explosion, and after it completed, he tossed the spell in a ball-shaped form similar to the flashbang he had created before. Except, this time, he chucked it like he would a pebble, straight into the mass of a cluster of vines about twenty metres away that had been attempting to grab one of them again. The vines shrieked upon the explosion and started to recoil away in what seemed to almost be terror.

With their screams, he beckoned to Freebird to follow him and took off into another run. He was still at a reasonable amount of energy, even after belting out those two attacks. Certainly more than he was at the end of that ritual. It was plenty to make it back to Honeyhome quickly.

----

@Madison Freebird

 

Madison graciously accepted the help off the ground and pulled herself upright. The faerin leaned past her and fired off an arcane bolt that hid the dead center of the forest beast, sending it back into the shadows of the trees with an ungodly scream--or gurgle, anyway, with half its head blown to hell.

"Come on. Keep running. Let's go let's go let's go--"

The witch and her tag-along continued running through the forest, their energy reserves holding steady as the rushed towards safety.

"Don't stop for anything. Keep moving. No matter what happens."

Madison kept a playing card pinned by her wrist for whatever might.

As her luck would have it, it was a good thing she did. The two adventurers were a quarter mile from the edge of the forest when it threw the biggest thing they had at it. Nothing out of a monster manual or anything; just literally the biggest thing it would find.

The boar's skull was covered with fungus and moss, its tusks as thick as either of the two and pointed enough at the tip to cleanly pierce their bodies. A thick, mottled pelt covered its body and stunk to high heaven. The moment the boar spotted Madison and Conseil, it charged. Hooves thundered and kicked up dirt as Madison step forward and held up the Ace of Spades.

She had to shield her eyes from the blinding light as the spell exploded forth. Madison felt the card tug at the strings of her very being as she poured as much mana into it as she possibly could have. The results were immediate and effective.

Curses and hexes weren't normally her thing. Madison considered herself more of a plague specialist when it came to Black Magic. Various diseases, conditions, parasites, and the like. This transcended both. It was a flash of pure hate and fury that festered and grew deep inside her the moment the dryad informed her that the book was no more. It was a well she had only tapped into on occasion before, usually to cause minor injury to someone whenever she didn't have the time to get more creative. But this? She unloaded everything she had deep inside on the boar.

The beast's roar turned into a howl and melted away into a bubbling gurgle as it collapsed mid-charge, rolling over itself once and eventually coming to a rest feet away from the witch. Madison caught a glimpse of the wounds she dealt the thing. The front half of its body looked like it had been turned inside out and then clogged up a wood chipper. The tangy, rotten smell of death was beginning to choke the air, causing her to gag as she cautiously stepped by the corpse.

She snatched Conseil by the collar and urged him along. "Come on. Let's keep moving. Not far to go."