Wilona reached the end of the treeline, she stared at the camp she'd been living in for a week now. Like, Fuzz's arrival had been weird, but the mushroom was at least hidden, so her presence was barely felt after all this time. But Mossheart?

  The ent was visible even before she had a clear line of sight.

  Mossheart was the perfect contrast to the fire pits, drying racks, and bathtub that was built around the campsite. Compared to the ent, everything seemed rather small, and since Wilona worked and built some of these things, she knew how large the structures were at heart. Seeing Mossheart stand next to them just felt incredibly uncanny. It was creepy to think about, and it made her feel scared of the ent's presence.

  Wilona closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. There was no point in worrying about what Mossheart would do to her when the ent had obviously never hurt her. What were the chances that she'd find herself waking up with branches piercing her heart?

  "Maybe let's not think about that..." Wilona murmured in panic. "Okay," she exhaled and moved towards her camp. "Sorry about that, I was just kind of curious about the swamp now that I have a pretty decent chance at surviving while exploring it."

  "The shovel isn't that good of a weapon," Fuzz's dry reply made Wilona narrow her eyes, "but exploring the swamp is a good idea regardless. Did you get a quest for it? Have you finished it?"

  "No?" Wilona opened her status screen and realized her professions had gotten a lot of skills under them. "I didn't get a quest, it's still empty." Wilona closed the window and looked up. "Mossheart, you finished the thing I asked you to?"

  The ent nodded and raised her hand, pointing at the rows of freshly dug-out pits perpendicular to Wilona's original fire pit.

  "Good job," she smiled. "Sorry about the uhm... freakout earlier." She thought it was pretty valid, but the ent was clearly intelligent, so it was best not to hurt Mossheart's feelings. "I just saw a giant walking tree around my camp and thought that I was going to die," she chuckled. "I'm sorry, really."

  The ent nodded. She didn't seem to mind how Wilona treated her earlier. Wilona sighed in relief, then she paused. Now what?

  "Hey uh, Fuzz?"

  "Yes?"

  "Like, can you take care of the swamp for me for a bit? I want to practice magic." Wilona looked at Mossheart. "No offense, but like, you're scary, and if there are other things like you out there—maybe those weird-ass beavers—then I want to be prepared to fight. You can uhm... rest? Photosynthesize? Do ents sleep?"

  A nod.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  "Oh, okay, good. You can do that. I'll come back later, but!—If you want to do some other thing, then I'm fine with it too!"

  Mossheart nodded, then scurried off to find a spot with a lot of sunlight and... turned into a tree? She could do that?

  Wilona blinked. "Huh." She turned to the ground. "Well, Fuzz, I'm off. Can you close the door of the tree trunk for me after I get in? I feel like the sunlight will only annoy me while I'm practicing magic."

  "Sure," the myceloid agreed. "Good luck."

  Wilona sat down on her bed as darkness loomed over her room. She closed her eyes, appreciating the peace loneliness gave her. She wasn't the type to sit around her room all day, but maybe a change of pace was good.

  Okay... There was a giant tree thing living in her camp now. That was great, but there were bigger problems out there than Mossheart, like the beaver men she found along the wetlands earlier. If there was a dragon around this swamp, then it was even worse. Magic was something she needed to learn, and even though she'd managed to cast spells just fine, until now, she had only used ones that didn't really do damage. Like, her first spell was to make a ball of light.

  Wilona didn't think she was a pacifist... Her actions in school pretty much said no to that, but she was also not a killer. Kind of. She'd used bug spray to kill a bunch of cockroaches in the past—did that count?

  Anyway... Magic. How did she do that?

  Wilona calmed herself down through breathing. Meditating usually worked in TV, right? Like, she'd seen some movies like that before but never really understood it. It was always so full of action and stuff. She preferred romance more than adventure, but like, it wasn't like she'd never seen movies like those before.

  Back to meditation... There was something there. She could feel it. In the air around her, it entered her nose and cooled it down. The feeling was like what? Inhaling mint-flavored cigarettes? Maybe if she added actual mint into it, the feeling would be stronger than what she was usually used to.

  It was everywhere, and she knew this, but how did she turn it into a fireball? Her system usually helped with this kind of thing, but she would never be able to learn how to cast something on her own if she kept relying on it.

  Wilona spent some time thinking about how she could approach this. She didn't even bother to eat when her stomach growled in hunger and her throat ran dry. She knew that she was missing something, but what?

  How did someone start a fire? How did she start a fire, actually? She rubbed two sticks together until she got embers, then blew that into tinder until it burned. Simple enough, but how did she do that?..

  Well, she had to manipulate the strange thing around her first, obviously, so she tried her hand at that, and it took her a while before she managed to successfully get it to move. It took even longer before she was good enough to properly push it around. After that, she managed to move the air without any resistance, probably because the system was starting to help her now.

  Back to her attempting to make a fireball—she rubbed two sticks together and then put the ember, which formed, into tinder. To do the same using the air would be to compress some into a pair of cylinders and then rub them together... Wilona imagined it, and she was shocked to learn that she could feel what the air felt but also not?..

  It was weird, like super weird. Like, the air started to act as her hand or some shit. It felt like her hand. Or maybe an extra arm. But like, it felt like she was rubbing her hands together to warm them up.

  A spark formed after a moment, so Wilona compressed the air into a third shape—a ball—she made sure that this one wasn't as solid as the first two. Her gut told her that it was now fine 'cause a spark, and that's what she did.

  The two cylinders she made first broke apart, their dust flowed into the ball she made, and it began to combust. It burned in her mind, and then Wilona physically felt the heat wash over her skin. She opened her eyes and almost let go of the ball in panic. "Uhm..."

  Fireball? Did she say she wanted to make a fireball? She made a goddamn sun!

  "Fuzz? How do you cancel a spell?" she asked, flinching for a moment when she thought she would let go of the ball and burn everything down, including herself.

  "Imagine yourself crushing it. Not the fireball you made, but the catalyst for it." An answer came from outside the doors. Huh, did Fuzz not infest the inner parts of the tree? That was kinda cute.

  Wilona shook her head and threw away her thoughts. Now was not the time for her to be thinking like this!

  She did what Fuzz told her to do and imagined crushing the ball of air she made and then ignited. That's what Fuzz was implying when he said catalyst, right? The ball of air?

  True enough, the fireball got extinguished, and Wilona's room became dark once more. But now it also had the acrid scent of ash, and she didn't like that, so she got up and ran away. Luckily, Fuzz assisted her by opening the door without being told to.

  "Thank you," Wilona exhaled. "Please open the door for a while. I want the smell of ash to go away."

  "Of course," Fuzz agreed.