Adjaash gasped to her senses.

  She first felt her hair and her clothes clinging to her in a tight and damp embrace, and panic took hold. She kicked her legs and lashed out in a fury – grunting and yelling – when she realized that no vines yet entangled her.

  She was free.

  She was free?

  Eyes snapping left and right, she sat up, dragging her knees close to her chest. She started to catch her breath – but unwelcome unease tickled her throat. The last remnants of her visions – memories she’d intended to leave behind – lingered inside her head, before she whipped them away and forced herself into the present. One name, however, still remained – scratching at her skull. She could not banish it.

  Ashba… Ashba…

  She brushed spidery weaves of wet hair out of her face. She blinked and beckoned the return of her sight, and the light of the sun revealed itself – a bright, piercing light she hadn’t seen in days. Gingerly, she rose – first to one knee, and then to her feet. She felt the sun’s warmth envelop her. Confused, she fully opened her eyes.

  And confusion turned to frozen horror.

  She stood atop a knoll, beside a weeping cherry tree with healthy green leaves. Here, the blotless blue-green sky greeted her with taunting serenity, and so too did the spectacle beyond: An endless swath of marsh and cool jungle, stretching all the way to the northern horizon, where a massive, primeval willow tree towered above the canopy – its gnarled bark and many arms sprawling into an ageless, golden angel strand, which then poured into the shadowy mires below.

  Something was different about this place. The air was still, and yet it tingled with a subtle energy – like soft, barely noticeable prickles on the surface of Adjaash’s skin. It was something she’d never felt before – not even in Torwa.

  A terrorizing, unfathomable thought took over Adjaash’s mind: Was she dead?

  Her vision flashed down to her torso. Everything was the same. Her patterned poncho was damp and covered in muck, but it sat atop a very-alive mortal body. She stared at her hands for any sign of transition or translucence. She saw none. She pressed two fingers against the vein on her left wrist. Her heart was perhaps overworked by stress, but the heartbeat was steady.

  She wasn’t dead. Of that, she was fairly certain.

  But she wasn’t where she’d once been.

  Now Adjaash’s calculating eyes fell to the ground. Behind her, she saw a cluster of serpentine trails dug into the dirt and the sickly rivulet grass, from the vines that had carried her here. In front of her, she saw something just as disconcerting: An entire half-circle of vined fruits and vegetables prepared for her consumption – rich, ripe watermelons, kiwis, pepons, pitayas, and other brighter fruits she did not recognize. A funerary feast.

  The voice echoed in her head again.

  Eat. We’re still playing.

  In her defiance, Adjaash first thought to refuse the old command. A hollow, constricting growl in her stomach swiftly convinced her otherwise.

  She set down her bow and quiver, then hung her damp poncho on a branch of the weeping cherry tree so it could dry. From the twin leather baldrics that wrapped over her shoulders and grimy linen undershirt, she ripped out her last remaining dagger. For a solemn second, she glowered and mourned the loss of her matching blade. Then she knelt, bitterly stabbed into the watermelon, and sliced it open down the middle.

  She sniffed the watermelon before she ate. The juices inside were sweet and red, and smelled as she expected – if not better – but she was slow to trust it. Her mind raced through the natural poisons and hallucinogens that might lurk within. A single jatropha seed would do the job. The neurotoxin of the huakoi would do it slowly, painfully. As she thought, however, a certain truth became clear to her.

  If the nymph wanted to kill or even impair her, it would’ve done so already.

  It didn’t want to kill her – at least not yet.

  Perhaps it had worse things in mind.

  Just as bitterly as she’d stabbed, she bit and chewed.

  She ate until her stomach no longer begged, and until her sore throat could take no more. She coughed and stood, casting a reluctant glance down at her wrist. Still, the wound from the cougar scratch was discolored. Still, she felt the rickety pain and unsteadiness of infection.

  It was just as she stood that she heard the cry of a bird – a resolute, trilling call. Her eyes climbed, and – against the brightness of the cyan sky – she saw a brilliant flare of orange fire soaring down. As it neared, the form of a crowned phoenix took shape – much smaller than the emblem she’d seen over the Midan camp – and it dove toward the knoll, unleashing yet another trill as Adjaash watched – torn between awe and alarm.

  The firebird landed on the weeping cherry tree – digging its talons into the bark, waggling its scarlet-feathered wings to steady itself. Then it forcefully pecked its beak into the bark, freeing a stream of viscous, cream-colored, ambrosia-like sap. Its pearled eyes locked with Adjaash’s amber irises; its gaze unexpectedly calmed her.

  And then suddenly, a foreign, voiceless thought filled Adjaash’s head – gentle but urgent. Ever urgent.

  Drink. Then follow the string. Follow the string. Follow the string…

  And then the phoenix left the tree and flapped away in a burst of air, rising and soaring until the cyan canvas swallowed it again.

  Adjaash fought the urge to curse. She wasn’t about to blindly accept the spirits’ help now – not when they’d been absent for so long – but she quickly realized time was short. The light began to change. As the sky called her attention again, she saw a sliver of moon in front of the sun. The expanse’s cyan began to skew into an ominous viridian. Faint constellations and nebulae began to show through the light-dark. She did not recognize the stars she saw.

  She recognized none of it.

  She didn’t know where she was.

  And she didn’t know what would happen when night fell.

  Accepting the bird’s guidance out of necessity, she ran to the weeping cherry tree and brought her lips close to the bark. She let the seeping sap touch her tongue, and only accepted a trickle before she gagged and crumbled to the roots. The overwhelming saccharine taste stung her tongue, and as she gulped it down, acidic froth nearly induced vomit.

  But after she took a moment to compose herself, she felt the soreness of her muscles and the aches of her joints fading. Her throat opened, and her breaths grew less labored. She brought her eyes to the wound on her wrist. The scarring remained, but the coloration was healthy.

  Adjaash blinked rapidly – pleasantly surprised and deeply unsettled.

  She stared at the unnatural progression of her wound for a moment longer, before her strict conscience brought her back to focus. She’d ruminate on the bird’s charity another time, she decided.

  The moon was moving. Her objective hadn’t changed.

  She slipped her poncho back over her undershirt and baldrics. She grabbed her bow and arrows, and started down the slope forward with heavy steps. And then she proceeded into the wilds of oblivion.

  A tangle of brambles and forked leafy branches stood at the bottom of the hill. In the shade, Adjaash again unsheathed her dagger and began hacking away at the obstructions. As she did, she let out a frustrated sigh.

  “This is all Heror’s fault,” Adjaash grumbled to herself, half-sarcastically. “None of this happened before he came along. Heror comes along… and I get attacked by carnivorous sand carpets…”

  She hacked and heaved, grunting in between slices.

  “… get stuck in a fucking labyrinth with an undead army…”

  She hacked again, vindictively.

  “… get blinded by a giant legendary bird… which then proceeds to invade my mind and feed me special sap in some godforsaken place between Aelya and Shenua…”

  She stopped and let out a chuckle at the absurdity of her situation.

  “When I see him again,” she said, smiling, “I’ll smack him.”

  A tinge of excitement – less at the thought of inflicting pain and more at the thought of seeing Heror again – leveled her smile out of guilt. Another sequential thought yielded a frown.

  It was her fault that she was here. It was only her fault.

  If she had waited until it was safe to travel up the river basin, she wouldn’t have wandered into the nymph’s domain.

  If she hadn’t been reckless, she would’ve reached Pylantheum by now.

  Ashba had already waited this long. Because of Adjaash, she’d have to wait longer.

  If she was even still…

  Adjaash sank her head and shook, brown-silver hair darkening her view. She felt the weight of her shark tooth necklace, heavier than before. Silently, she banished the glisten at the bottom of her eyes. Her nose twitched. She forced an angry breath, and when she looked up again, a fiery glare steered her ahead. She cut the last reaching snare, and the rest of the tangle fell. And then she entered the wilds.

  She stepped into the shadow of the trees, and all at once, she was surrounded by clustered fronds of teal, blue, green, and indigo. Lowering her brow in confusion, she squirmed and slid past the sprawling ferns and low-lying palms, eyes jumping left and right in search of vines or thorns. Her feet dutifully pressed ahead, and soon, she emerged from the thicket.

  When she did, she finally allowed herself a second of awe.

  Already, it had been clear to her that she was no longer on the plane of Aelya. Descending into the wilds only confirmed this.

  She stood at the head of an enchanted idyll wood – a multicolored expanse of forest shimmering with bioluminescence. The trunks of the trees were thick and knotted and a muted, burnt umber – like the ones she remembered from Torwa – but their leaves were like nothing she’d seen before. Each tree, among the hundreds of thousands of trees that lay beyond, painted a spectral beauty. Rich and cool hues swirled and clashed with bright and fiery intrusions, and notched, slanted markings on the leaves emitted light – a symphony of color and ever-glow.

  It was only when Adjaash’s shock at the fauna subsided that she saw the life itself. Up above, in the patched canopy, strange flying creatures roped in and out of the woods – resembling winged snakes more than anything else. Brightly-colored birds darted back and forth in the heights – their dotted wings almost glowing in the shade – with calls more melodic and sophisticated than Adjaash had ever documented.

  Closer to the forest floor, strange jellyfish-like organisms floated along the air currents, glowing in pale pigments of pink and blue and green, as electric keatuu energy coiled at their centers. And on the ground itself, Adjaash could see the skitter of small creatures – white-tailed wild dogs and strange six-legged spider-foxen and golden leopard-spotted deer – all of them casting their frightful, curious eyes at the visitor.

  Adjaash lost track of how long her jaw had idled, agape in awestruck wonder. She brought herself back to her senses and stepped under the phosphorescent light, leaving the tangled entrance behind. Through the gaps in the canopy, she could just make out the sun in the hazy, starry viridian sky. The blackened moon was encroaching over its border.

  It was then that she remembered the phoenix’s instruction.

  Follow the string, follow the string, follow the string…

  Her amber eyes scoured the ground for any trace of the string she sought. In the mottled peat and soil, she saw only forked aqua grasses and dangling antenna plants suspending bulbs of light. She hurried ahead, brushing past bark and bush – when a sudden sound closeby to her right gained her full attention.

  It was a fast, light plucking sound of sorts – a plik-plik-plik that mingled with the rustling of plants and branches. Adjaash’s hand flashed to her bow, and she scanned the painted shade. Her tension quickly dissipated, however, when she saw a tiny rodent on a low branch close to her – a bipedal mouse with soft fur, large circular ears, and strange pulsing gills tucked behind its mouth, beneath its whiskers.

  “Oh…” Adjaash said softly, forcing an equally tiny smile. “Hello…”

  The otherworldly mouse plikked back to the trunk of the tree, latching into the bark with its large clawed feet. It let out a squeak, staring at Adjaash with wide and dark eyes. And then it turned away and fixed its gaze ahead, nodding its nose to an unseen point in the distance.

  Adjaash’s face scrunched with uncertainty. Her eyes followed the plik-plik’s nod into the glowing weald. At first, she saw nothing – the clashing lights playing tricks on her eyes – but as she looked deeper and focused harder, she could just barely distinguish a faint golden string, lying over a bulging tree root around fifty feet out.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Adjaash’s eyes lit up. She looked at the plik-plik and lifted a cautious finger toward it. When the plik-plik didn’t run, she patted it gently on the head with her index.

  “Thank you,” she whispered with fondness.

  She rushed away, as the plik-plik gave her a purring squeak of good luck, oscillating its gills.

  Her moccasins trudged in the foreign dirt. Her loose braid wavered over her shoulder, as tresses fought to come loose. And in moments, she reached the root where the string resided. She rested a hand on the bark and knelt down, and sure enough, a weakly glowing golden string snaked over the tree’s sprawling foundation. As Adjaash’s eyes followed it onward, she saw that it stretched further into the grove.

  Tracking its feeble glow under the melding colors of the shadow-light demanded her unflinching focus. She took a breath to ready herself, then ushered her feet forward once again, in an expeditious rhythm.

  The golden string carved through shallow forked grasses – over swelled ground hollows and under arched rootlets. It hid in clusters of feathered, beaded blades, and re-emerged atop flowering petals that barely flinched at its meager weight. It carried on with a resolution unbefitting its size and delicate thread. Adjaash traced it with eyes and legs just as resolute. The name echoing inside her head kept her going. The floating nettlewisps parted for her.

  For minutes, she followed the string through the luminescent copse – only occasionally glancing up. It was difficult to gauge progress in this place, but by Adjaash’s estimation, any movement was good. She eagerly trailed the string, farther and farther into the wood – until a well-timed glance upward stopped her from careening into a pond.

  She gasped silently and halted to a stop, moccasins sinking ever so lightly in the moist soil. She steadied herself, absorbing her forward momentum with a stalwart stance. Then her eyes lifted, and another sight demanded her reverence.

  The pond sat at the edge of a large glade, awash in the light of its own and the light of the half-eclipse above. At the center of the pond, powder blue lily plants convened in the shimmering waters beneath the sage green sky, carrying their own bulbs of brightness. Far leftward, a small waterfall from a smooth cropping of rocks fed the reservoir. A vibrant meadow of fluorescent flora and fauna stretched from its shores.

  Across from Adjaash, on the lily pond’s opposite edge, a small herd of strange, cervine creatures lingered – their eyes lifting from the drink to observe her. Though they had the lean forms, the faces, and the docile gazes of deer, their ears were tall and straight like those of the jackal, and their strong fetlocks like those of the horse. The males had curved, obsidian-glossed horns, and all of them carried narrow, folded wings along their blackened sides.

  At her approach, one of the horned creatures emitted a whooping cry, and the winged deer scattered with quiet gallops. Adjaash watched them until they disappeared behind a cloak of trees, and then she searched again for the golden string. Looking ahead, she saw that it stretched across the pond – floating solemnly in the clear, muted waters – and then it emerged on the other side, piercing through the glade.

  Now her eyes went back to the sky. The stars were out – pocks of red and yellow and nebulaic blue smattered upon an ethereal green canvas. The sun was a blazing crescent. A tidal wave of shadow sought to extinguish its flame.

  She started to move again.

  She journeyed around the pond and picked up the trail on the other side. She crouched and kept focus on the string through the fluorescent meadow. Soon, she entered the shade of the painted trees once more, and the string’s humble glow stung her eyes in the mellow dark. She followed it. Onward and onward.

  Soon, she had to stop again – simply to catch her breath. This struck her as odd. She’d lost track of the time she’d spent in the forest; it couldn’t have been more than an hour. But already, she felt the toll of her trek. Her lungs simmered, her chest heaved, and her skin was waxy with dried sweat. It felt as though she’d been hiking high in the mountains – as if the air’s very oxygen was siphoned away with each respiration.

  A perturbed glance at the sky coaxed Adjaash to keep going in spite of her exhaustion: The moon was three-quarters full. The sun was but a sliver behind it.

  The farther she went, the brighter the string became. At first, it was a barely noticeable transition – but it soon became clear to Adjaash that its glow was stronger. And as she delved deeper into the grove, she began to see more of them. Left and right, far and near, she saw more angel hair strings of the same gleaming golder, resting lightly on the forest floor, ushering the lone traveler to some unseen source.

  Adjaash remembered the mammoth willow tree she’d seen on the horizon earlier. She remembered its angelic strands of hanging moss. Was this her destination? What would she find when she made it there? Would the phoenix mislead her? She knew not the nature of these Gods. She’d long ago accepted that she’d never know.

  As the golden strings multiplied, they began to cluster and clump and ribbon. And as she went, Adjaash noticed that the life of the forest began to fade. The skittering creatures numbered fewer, and the glowing nettlewisps no longer loomed on the current. The ribboning gold roped around tree trunks and laced between branches, and the trees that it claimed became as husks, and nothing more. Their growth was gaunt and shriveled, their leaves dead and gone – replaced by the stream of glowing, feeding gold.

  It soon became so that there was no question as to the path ahead – but the pooled golden glow forced Adjaash to squint and slow her advance. There was just as much strand as clear ground now, and Adjaash could feel her pulse thrumming in her chest and her head. She stopped to compose herself again, resting her hands on her knees.

  As she caught her breath, a lock of gleaming, lustrous gold called to her, just beside her feet. She knelt down slowly and extended a finger. Rationality and clarity ushered in caution – reluctance – for a short moment, but after a pause, the ribbon’s magnificent shine and delicate, innocent texture became too tantalizing.

  Adjaash pressed her finger against the thread.

  A flash of black commandeered her mind, and she felt the boiling pain of all her memories. All of her muscles spasmed at once – a violent, synchronous constriction that forced out an agonized cry. She retracted her finger in a panic and collapsed to her side, convulsing and gulping in air. She trembled and chattered her teeth as she propped herself up against the dirt, sliding away from the fiendish filament. She desperately sought respite that she knew wouldn’t come.

  And her wide eyes grew no calmer when a new dark set in.

  Her gaze shot up to the sky – through the skeleton limbs of the fossil trees, past the golden glow of consumption. The once-viridian expanse was now an ocean of shadow-sunken jade, dominated by stars and cosmic constructs. The moon was a black circle. The sun’s coronal ring was the only proof of its struggle – a fiery forebear of doom.

  The eclipse. The night. It was here.

  Then Adjaash heard it. In the still air, it carried from somewhere distant. Not distant enough.

  “… aaaaaa…”

  Adjaash scrambled to her feet and sprinted ahead. She rushed past ribbons of gold, past the husken trees, past the shadows of life and death. Her frantic eyes serrated through the sights ahead, for any sign of sanctuary. She saw only dead, black columns of charcoal trees, smothered by the solar strands.

  “… Aaaaaaa…”

  A dagger pain stabbed above her brow. Her ears rang. She kept running. The golden ribbons filled her vision and enclosed her path. Haste and caution clashed in her mind. She couldn’t keep her pace without risking contact.

  “… Aaaaaaaaaa…”

  Her vision blurred. She stumbled to her knees. In her head, she heard an echo of a child’s laugh. Ashba.

  Ashba…

  “Nothing else matters… but love.”

  It was Ashweban’s voice. But it wasn’t.

  “Nothing else matters… but love!”

  Adjaash tried to get back on her feet. She took a few steps and stumbled again.

  “Nothing else matters… but… hehe… hahaha!!”

  Now it was a mocking, maniacal laugh, that inflected up and down, and echoed in the trees and sunk into the ground. Terror hoisted Adjaash to her feet again, and she made one last mad dash for an escape unseen. But then the note came back – closer and stronger – and it took over her body.

  “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA…”

  She slumped to her knees and fell onto her stomach – blood and drool trickling in matching streams. Her muscles went numb and limp at the stabbing sound. She tried to claw forward with a shuddering hand, with the last of her feeling, but a black and gnarled vine emerged from the dirt and clasped around her wrist, encasing her brand. The golden glow leered within her periphery – a false promise of haven.

  “Tell me of this ‘love,’ elesvii,” she heard the nymph say. “I do not know it.”

  Adjaash tried to move. She was paralyzed.

  “I was in love once,” the nymph went on, with Ashweban’s stolen voice; manic anguish took the place of benevolence.

  Adjaash’s heart raced. Nothing else could.

  She heard the slithering of vines and the unearthing of roots around her. The snare on her wrist suddenly began to lift. It pried her prostrate form off the ground, until she was caught, suspended by the base of her hand. And as she hung there from the dead tree’s snarl, the nymph entered her view.

  It leaned it toward her, craning its neck and tilting its head back and forth as a predator might. Adjaash closed her eyes, but the nymph extended a slender, spindly, flowered hand and brushed against her cheek, coaxing her attention back to it. Here, beneath its sprouting antlers, its clear eyes glowed with bristling emotion, and its oaken, mannequin visage dripped with a mixture of despair and hate.

  “I was in love,” the nymph recalled. “He was the first one to enter my grove. The very first. When I saw him… I was taken…”

  The nymph took its spidery fingers off Adjaash’s cheek and overturned its hand. In the base of its crinkled palm, a bloom of beautiful pedals grew – a delicate rose with frills of red and violet.

  “I made a flower,” the nymph reminisced. “I presented it to him…”

  The nymph sneered beneath its featureless face.

  “Do you want to know what he did?”

  The nymph leaned in closer… closer… until Adjaash could feel the energy of its breath… and then its eyes lit up white, as melancholia captured its voice. The flower tore itself to shreds and fluttered down to the God’s demesne.

  “He cried for help!” the nymph lamented loudly. “He tried to run!!”

  It let out a sharp, cynical guffaw – which soon devolved into a chorus of piercing, nightmarish wails. Virulent light poured from its mouth and its eyes as it veered away, circling Adjaash in its outburst, howling and moaning at the stars. When its cries faded, and when it came back into Adjaash’s vision, its expression was a void.

  “But I still loved him,” the nymph said. “And so I kept him… so I could love him forever.”

  The nymph swam around Adjaash again, atop a living tangle of charred roots. It continued. The hatred that Adjaash saw before now seeped into its voice. A song became a hiss.

  “Elesvii, elesvii… you wallow at your hardships. You grieve even the most miniscule misfortune, and you bathe in self-pity. But you… yoouuu… you can experience love and I cannot… and you dare contend that you… deserve… pity!”

  The golden ribbons around her pulsed at the nymph’s sudden anger. And then they dulled. The nymph leaned in close once more. Its eyes were suddenly all too calm. All too tranquil.

  “Fear not, elesvii,” Ashweban’s stolen voice said. “Your struggles are no more. I am here. I am here to listen. I am here to love you as you wish. We can play forever. Please… tell me more of what troubles you… tell me what vines snare your mind…”

  The nymph lifted its hand again. The flower had returned – as bright and as colorful as it had been when it first grew.

  “From all seeds,” the nymph mocked, “a flower can bloom.”

  Its index finger elongated and extended from the blackened matrix of charcoal and haunted alder – like a rogue rhizome seeking sustenance – and it neared Adjaash’s forehead. As the nymph poked at Adjaash’s skin, it sang its note a final time.

  And Adjaash was stolen to sleep.

  ~:{~}:~

  “Adjaash, please help me. I don’t know what to do.”

  “I don’t know what you want from me.”

  “I just want–”

  “You want me to be whaea! But I’m not whaea! I can’t be! Why can’t you figure this out on your own like I did?”

  “Adjaash, I–”

  “You can’t expect other people to do everything for you, Ashba!”

  “I’m not, I just need–”

  “You’re not the only one who lost her!”

  “I’ve never said I was!”

  “One of us walks on her tip-toes, scared of making a single mistake, always unsure, always feeling sorry for herself. The other decided to accept that she was on her own and moved on.”

  “You’re not on your own… you have me…”

  “No. I’m stuck with you.”

  ~:{~}:~

  “Get away from her!!”

  ~:{~}:~

  Thunder roared. Wind and waves raged. Lightning crackled, revealing the guts of the maelstrom.

  She shivered and clung to the raft’s edge with all her strength, as the sideways rain stung her wrists.

  For the first time, she prayed.

  ~:{~}:~

  Blood dripped from the knife. More blood than she’d hoped to ever see again.

  The nobleman was slipping quickly. His eyes were distant. He’d be gone soon.

  And now it was done: She had sold her soul.

  She would return. At any cost.

  Shrouded by hood and cowl, she vanished.

  ~:{~}:~

  He tumbled down the stairs and disappeared in the cloud of dust, and for some inexplicable reason, she felt fear fume in her chest.

  It was because she needed his help. It was only that. Only that…

  She froze halfway to the dome entrance, preparing to charge back down.

  She couldn’t leave him behind. But rushing in blind was a death sentence.

  She had to be smart… and hope he’d survive long enough.

  Beneath the pounding of her pulse, she heard the wind curve as the eaters changed course, both of them fixed on their exposed prey. She heard the scrape of a sword. Twin explosions of sand. A creature rose and then tucked its wings and dove into the dust. The desert cloud began to lift.

  Now was her chance. There was no more time to wait.

  She nocked an arrow and hurried back down the marble steps.

  ~:{~}:~

  She walked alongside the quiet river with bare feet, under the clear night sky. She cried where no one could see. She dared not look back.

  She couldn’t forget. She couldn’t forget why she was here.

  She couldn’t forget.

  ~:{~}:~

  Adjaash gasped to her senses.

  She swung her wrist – grunting and yelling – fighting to break away from the dreadful knot. She kicked and jolted and scrambled to her feet – and it was then that she realized… that no vines yet entangled her.

  She was free.

  Her eyes went wide and snapped ahead. Sitting in front of her – at the top of the path down to the enchanted grove, in the shadow of the golden willow tree far beyond, beneath the renewed sunlight… was a half-circle of vined fruits and vegetables prepared for her consumption – rich, ripe watermelons, kiwis, pepons, and pitayas. A funerary feast.

  Now she felt fear.