"I..." Ryan looked at the woman in front of him, but she wasn't looking back at him at all. He could feel her anger and the hatred that was coursing through her body. But that wasn't all; Ryan could feel the fear that she was feeling at the idea of things going out of control coursing through her. This fear was the foundation for her anger and hatred. But how did Ryan even know that? Sure, when it came to people, he was a bit more apt at figuring out what they were feeling, but it was never something this strong. It was almost like...

  "You're a-" Ryan started, but the woman's glare interrupted him just a moment later. She turned around and went on her way.

  "I can't stop you. I can't get rid of you to make things go right again. I can't do anything but ask that you do the right thing," she said, turning and walking away. Ryan was left standing there, staring at her back. He wanted to run after her, and ask her to explain, but his feet were practically glued to the ground. Heavy as lead, too heavy for him to lift. The woman left, dragging her fear-filled fury behind her.

  Once she was out of sight, disappearing in the crowd, Ryan could feel the weight lift from his body as Runar's hand was placed onto his shoulder, "Ryan, are you okay?"

  "Yeah, I'm fine, just... she said that I'm messing up fate," he replied, staring at his uncle, "Runar, why is a spirit telling me that I'm messing up fate?"

  Taken aback by the question, Runar looked into the direction the woman had left to, "A spirit? What do you mean?"

  "She's a spirit, some kind of nature spirit I guess, but that's not important right now."

  "Not important? Yes, that's absolutely important. You were speaking with her, right?"

  "Yeah, so?"

  "Spirits can't 'speak', they communicate through magic and mystic means- Even the seven greats can't speak," Runar pointed out, "So really, are you absolutely sure that she's a spirit?"

  "... She felt like one. Or at least something like a spirit, I don't know. Seriously, I think you're focusing on the wrong thing here... It's like you... you knew," the realization slowly came to Ryan, "You knew that I was messing up fate with every single step."

  Runar let out a long sigh, "You're not 'messing up' fate, you're just... altering it. Fate is a fickle thing anyway, it's not that deep. But to a being that can see fate like her, changes like that are catastrophic."

  The heat that he felt in his face earlier only got stronger, "You knew who she was beforehand. Just not that she was a spirit, I guess. That's why you're so surprised."

  "Well... maybe, but-"

  "No 'but', dude, what the actual fuck? You promised me that there would be no more lies, that you wouldn't keep things that directly relate to me hidden from me anymore. So what, you decide that this whole 'fate' business wasn't important enough? And you just hide that you knew who the person assaulting my best friend is?"

  "I just thought-"

  "Don't you fucking dare," Ryan barked back, stepping closer to his uncle, "I swear, if you don't stop hiding shit from me, I'm seriously going to fucking scream."

  Seeing his mother approach concerned, Ryan pushed past Runar, bumping into his shoulder on purpose as he passed. Mary looked at her son, trying to reach out to his arm, but Ryan shook his head and silently walked past her.

  When Ryan got this mad, he often struggled to find the right words, lashing out at those around him. So, rather than do something he would regret afterward, he decided to just stay silent around his loved ones. His mother knew that, quickly recognizing Ryan's expression. So instead, she approached Runar.

  "What happened?" Mary asked with a concerned frown, but Runar just scratched the back of his head, unsure what to say.

  "It's complicated. I'm sorry. Just... since he moved here, he learned a lot of things that sort of changed his view of the world."

  Mary turned around, looking at her son's back as he stood by his friends' side, silently tapping his foot on the ground. He was clearly trying not to show how mad he was feeling, particularly because Liam stood right in front of him, but you could still see that he wasn't okay right now.

  Ryan stood there with his eyes closed, trying to take deep breaths and calm himself down. He could feel Tiar squeezing his arm, trying to calm him down. Of course, the symbiote could feel that Ryan was upset. And that was when Ryan remembered what that woman said. That Ryan was bringing ruin to the future by having bonded with them.

  "Don't listen to her. She was just speaking complete nonsense," Ryan whispered into his hand. He didn't know what that woman meant, but there was no way that bonding with Tiar was a bad choice. Was Tiar supposed to bond with someone else? Or were they supposed to never bond with anyone in the first place?

  Either way, none of that mattered right now. Fuck fate, and fuck the idea that Ryan was messing up the world just by existing. It wasn't as though he was trying to do any of this.

  "You alright? Where did you go just now?" Silvia looked at Ryan. It didn't seem like she had seen that woman earlier, which Ryan was rather glad about. She was pretty messed up after what happened at the restaurant.

  "I'll tell you later, alright?" Ryan suggested. Even though he was glad Silvia hadn't seen her, her and Modak should still know about this. He promised to keep them up to date, and he always kept his promises.

  "If you're sure," Silvia replied, briefly patting Ryan's back. As she did, Ryan looked over at Fae. Judging from her expression, though, she did see that antlered woman. All the colour had been drained from her face, quite literally. Usually, she had some patterns of colour on her cheeks, but right now, that wasn't the case. Clearly, she felt that something was going on, but she didn't want to mention it. Maybe she knew something else about this too, but Ryan didn't care about that right now.

  He just wanted to move on for a bit, and have fun with his friends. He wanted to forget about the fact that he apparently made a mess of everything. But things didn't always go as you wanted them to.

  Around when Runar and Mary came back to the group after speaking for a few moments, a loud applause and cheers sounded out from the direction of the botanical garden's entrance, where Maribelle and the employees were putting on a show for the visitors. But together with that came a wave of... discomfort.

  A deep headache came over Ryan as his gut feeling told him that something was wrong. That something was going on. He was about to run back there and check it out when it simply faded away again. It was an instant of discomfort and 'wrongness' that disappeared before he knew it. Maybe Ryan was just a bit too sensitive right now because of his continuously heightened intuition stat, and his bad mood certainly wasn't making that any better. Ryan took a deep breath and tried to calm himself down again. It was fine. He would be okay.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Ryan carried a crate down the stairs to the basement ruins. Maximus, Gregor, and Gaia were also helping out, as were the sub-golems. Inside of those crates were flowers, garlands, decoration, and some music players, that would be put up downstairs. This was the compromise that Runar and Ryan decided on.

  While most of the people down here couldn't exactly leave and join the celebrations outside, making sure that they had an opportunity to celebrate a bit more was still something important to Ryan. So, over the weekend, they had started some preparations. With the help of the dryads, as it was much easier to convince them than Runar had implied it would be, they decorated the cave with bright flowers and plants of all sorts.

  There was a tradition amongst some of the people living down there, who came here for refugee after fleeing the country they hid in in the past, to wear flower crowns during the day of Regir. And those were what Ryan was currently bringing downstairs, as he had finally finished putting it all together. Together with those, Ryan was bringing some flowers that were bought from local shops and stands, other Regir-themed trinkets, and even some flowers from Gaia's garden downstairs. That actually included the copper wildflowers. Since they still hadn't found another use for them, using them as decoration for the time being seemed like a good enough idea. Now that they blossomed, they were made of practically normal copper and wouldn't wilt anyway, so they might as well.

  Ryan pushed his way through the stone door at the bottom of the stairs, quickly encountering some of the dryads that were waiting for him.

  "Hey there, sorry if I'm a little late. Traffic was pretty bad," Ryan apologized, but the dryads didn't seem to mind. Rather, they were just very curiously looking into the boxes that Ryan and the spirits were carrying, "Come on, I'll show you in a bit, let's just get out of the thicket for a bit and call the others over, alright?"

  Quickly agreeing, the dryads pushed aside the vines and leaves growing over the path. As Runar had said before, they liked playing pranks, but after Ryan spoke to them a bit they ended up listening to his requests pretty well and stopped blocking the door intentionally. Since they all lived here, the plants naturally grew a good bit faster, so it was unavoidable to some degree, but the dryads actually started helping out a bit more around this small hidden village.

  As Ryan put down the crates, plenty of people quickly approached him, practically lining up in front of him.

  "Alright, everyone go ahead and grab a flower crown if you want to, there should be plenty of those here. For those that can't wear one, like the sprites, we had another idea so just come to me in a second. After that, feel free to just, you know, grab some of these flowers, put them in your home. We have some vases in the warehouse over there if you want them," Ryan said with a smile, quickly watching particularly the younger people excitedly grab the flower crowns. Then, he turned over toward the small group of Ghouls standing at the side, eagerly waiting for their turn.

  Ryan reached down and opened up one of the boxes that he prepared especially for them. It held flower crowns with small purple and cyan flowers on them, which he quickly grabbed and brought toward the Ghouls.

  Ghouls were a species that wasn't very common even amongst all the other magical species that existed. They were, after all, artificially created by a necromancer in the long past. Nonetheless, they were a genuine species of people that lived and breathed and reproduced. Their biological functions were slowed, and they had a completely carnivorous diet. They were also the ones who spoke about the tradition of wearing flower crowns.

  Since Ghouls gave off a slight scent that was akin to rot in some ways, they tried whatever they could to stop that from happening. In their old home, they would often use perfume made from a particular rare flower that was hard to get everywhere. This flower had small petals that were purple at the base and cyan at the tips. It was what these flower crowns were made of. Noticing these flowers that they hadn't seen in so long, the ghouls looked back at Ryan with surprise.

  "How... did... you... get... these..?" one of them asked, in that almost whispered and struggling speech that many ghouls had.

  "We special-ordered them. It was pretty hard to find them, even then, though, so you'll have to wait for a bit until we can get more," Ryan explained, looking over at Gaia, "We also bought some seeds so we can plant some ourselves, but obviously it will take a while for them to blossom. But once we get Gaia a bigger garden with a larger greenhouse, we should be able to-"

  "Thank... you..." another said, milky white tears in her eyes.

  "Of course."

  Ryan smiled at them, watching as they put on the flower crowns that he specifically made for them. He then turned around, seeing the tiny sprites crowded around his feet. It was like a canister of motor oil was spilled around his feet.

  "Okay, you guys. Since you like to jump around and combine and split off, I figured actual flowers might not be the best for you, so I have these little things," Ryan explained, pulling out a small box. They were filled with small individual flowers that were made into the shape of crowns for the sprites to 'wear', "If you want, you can just copy these."

  While the sprites were good at copying the appearance of things, they weren't good at altering or making things on their own, so this was the best idea that Ryan could come up with. And after just a moment, black flowers seemed to sprout on the sprites' heads, before they excitedly ran away.

  And with that, there were just three more things that Ryan had to hand out. First, he made his way to Runar's office down here. Runar himself was upstairs keeping Ryan's mom busy, but there was someone else in the office.

  He pushed the door open and stepped inside. Trying to be quiet, even if the one he was trying to surprise was effectively deaf, Ryan approached the nest next to the desk. With a smile, he held a small flower hat specifically made for the small pixie Penny in front of the nest.

  Startled, she held her head out of the nest, noticing Ryan. With a broad smile on her face, she jumped out of the nest and gave Ryan's cheek a hug. And after seeing the small hat that Ryan made for her, she was even more excited, and quickly put it on, and broadly grinned at the man in front of her.

  "You're looking very, very pretty," he said, and though Penny most certainly didn't understand him, she seemed to know she was being complimented. Since pixies communicated through magic, Ryan's sociability stat seemed to help out a bit here.

  "Want to come outside with me? You'll have to wait for me a little later, but it would be great to see you join everyone else," Ryan said, pointing toward the door. Penny seemed hesitant, but in the end nodded her head. He stepped outside, and Penny sat down on his shoulder, nervously looking around.

  Whenever Ryan passed someone, she tried to hide herself a bit by pulling Ryan's hair in front of her, but after a while she got used to it a little more. And then, they got to the next stop, where Ryan would give out two of the metal flower crowns he made. Figuring it would be a good use for the copper wildflowers for now, Ryan made some for the two beings that couldn't use regular flowers.

  One of those was the Forge elemental. Regular flowers would just get burnt up, sitting on top of the stone dragon's head. Though the elemental wanted to eat the flowers at first, once Ryan explained it, pointing to the crown he himself was wearing, the elemental happily left it on top of its head, curling up in its dragon form to keep sleeping so that it could keep wearing it a little longer.

  And then, it was time for Ryan to meet the next one. Kindly the corrupted mimic, sitting all alone at the outskirts of the cave.

  "Wait down here, alright? I'll be right back," Ryan said, and Penny nervously nodded her head, sitting down on the steps that were far, far too big for her. He made his way upstairs with the second pair of the metal crowns.

  Frankly, Ryan hadn't told his uncle about this, since he wouldn't have agreed anyway, but he wanted to do something for Kindly. Ryan came here every once in a while and just spoke to him, though there obviously was no back and forth.

  He pushed open the door and Kindly seemed to practically flinch, as he always did.

  "Hey, bud. I brought you something," he explained, carefully placing the flower crown onto the ground in the mimic's reach. It was specially made to fit into the grooves at the top of the wardrobe that Kindly lived in, "I'm not sure if you know about Spirit Week, but we're celebrating Regir, the great spirit of nature, today. Everyone else is wearing these, so I figured you might as well do too."

  Kindly's dozens of eyes blinked as the room was silent, and Ryan smiled awkwardly, "You don't need to worry about breaking the flowers or anything. They're made of metal. Even if they have mana, they should hold out for a couple days. Others would rot, but these are fine. I think."

  Carefully, Kindly started reaching out to the flower crown. Even if he wouldn't wear it, Ryan wanted to at least give this a shot. The mimic's tentacles curled around the flowers, the black sludge of the corruption quickly covering them.

  But then, Kindly pulled back, hissing in pain.

  "What? Kindly, are you okay?" he asked nervously. What was going on?

  Ryan looked at the copper wildflowers. They should be overtaken by the corruption by now, but... they were fine. Rather, the sludge was dried out and crumbled away, and the same was the case for the parts of Kindly's tentacle that touched them. The corruption that covered him there was falling off like dried mud.

  The copper wildflowers could fight off corruption.

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