Chương 110: The Wisp in the Woods

Miriam awoke with a start. She hadn't realized she'd fallen asleep - her confrontation with the Fetch had drained her completely. She must have slept through the night - as dense as the forest was, tiny rays of sunlight were breaking through here and there, stronger than before. She stretched and felt lighter than she had in sixty years. It was almost euphoric. Your friend wanders near. She sat up and turned to look at the old oak.

"My friend? Sol?" I do not know. He is two people. More? Miriam leapt to her feet.

"Where?" Follow roots. Miriam looked at the roots of the oak, burly and thick as a grown man's leg, digging into the earth. To her surprise, even when the roots continued underground, she could still feel where they were. And in this case, a surge of life inside them that was beckoning her onward. She looked back at the tree.

"Thank you. You've helped me so much." Return favor one day! The idea of laughter. Miriam followed the roots as they led her on, and soon she could tell that this wasn't just the root system of one tree. These were dozens of trees intermingling, each passing on the sign to lead her forward. Being a Dryad had never meant that much to her - it was just the species Sailleach made her when it helped her transition through the well. All the little tricks and gifts that had come with it were just a nice added bonus.

But now she was beginning to feel something different - a connection to the nature of the Tír she hadn't expected. Soon, as she wandered through the forest she began to see Fetch again. She'd thought they had disappeared into nothingness again, but it seemed instead that they were just avoiding her. When they hadn't noticed her they were formless clouds of gray mist. As soon as one saw her it instantly became one of her doppelgangers, teeth bared and dead in some ghastly way.

All she had to do was reignite the black flame on her hand and they would run away in a panic. The Fetch got thicker and thicker, and soon it became clear they were all huddled around one point, packed together like sailors in their bunks. As soon as they noticed her they all backed away, whimpering, finally to reveal Sol, curled up into a ball at the foot of another old tree. Miriam spun to glare at the Fetch.

"Go!" she yelled, flaring her flames higher. They all scattered into nothing and in only a few seconds she was alone with her friend in the woods. Or her enemy, she supposed.

"Who's in there?" Miriam asked. With a gesture, vines entangled him again, hoisting him to his feet. His face was slack, as if unconscious, but that same lifebeat she had followed in the roots was telling her something different.

"You're awake," she said, grimacing.

"If you're faking it, you must be Solas." The eyes opened, but it was not the gleeful, horrible expression Miriam had grown to expect. Fear shone bright through his face.

"You caught me right, my dear. A fool I was, to drag us into these woods." Miriam shrugged.

"It's not so bad. The trees are very friendly." Solas drooped.

"Then my escape is foiled. And still, we're lost in this hellish place. Perhaps we both die here, huh?"

"What did they show you, huh?" Miriam peered at him.

"You've already died too. What fate could frighten you worse than that?"

"Easy to say I'm dead," Solas grumbled.

"I don't remember it. We struggled, you and I. Things got dark, and I woke up as a fractured stone on an island beach inside an artificial man. If I experienced death, the memory of it is lost to me. What fool would beg for it again, when it seems I've so deftly cheated it?" She shrugged.

"It seems your journey has outpaced your ambitions then. What do you think of the Second Ring you sought for so long to reach?"

"My ambitions never stopped with the Second Ring!" he snarled.

"Hmm. Fair enough. At any rate, we should make our way to the village Eoin was taking us to. He might be waiting for us there." Miriam gestured to her vines and they began to walk, like a giant daddy-longlegs spider, carrying Solas tightly bound. The control she was feeling over her Blight and Life Natures was astounding - she wondered what had changed within her to empower this. Perhaps her path to meeting Róise and Cormac in Shirren would not be so long after all.

"How do you know where it is?" Solas asked. She shrugged.

"Again, the trees around here are very friendly. By the way, I'm surprised you're not struggling more. Trying to lure me into a false sense of security?"

"You're the only thing keeping those… things away," he said simply.

"Escape can wait."

"Well, I appreciate your compliance." He scoffed.

"You and I are no different. Both forced to trust in the hands that only seek to kill us when our time is done." Miriam had no answer to that. ✧✧✧ The forest ended uneventfully, as if Miriam were walking into any other village nestled in the middle of an old forest. What was most surprising was that the village was dominated by a huge lake. The far end seemed to be nearly half a mile away. The water was a lovely turquoise by the shore, deepening into darker blues the further out she looked.

Small cabins that achingly reminded her of Lathair Maol lined the edges of the water. In the cleared areas around the lake she saw small fields with crops growing, and another with livestock. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. To the eye, a perfectly normal town, inexplicably nestled in a cursed forest.

"Miriam!" Eoin glided towards her with incredible speed. She turned to deliver one of the quips she'd intended to be both teasing and recriminating she'd workshopped on her walk out of the forest as an alternative to chatting with Solas, but he swept her up in an embrace.

"My Gods! I thought you were dead? How did you survive the Fetch?" Miriam just allowed herself to be hugged for a moment in stunned silence before extricating herself gently.

"Well. We just had to have a conversation about death, and they then started to see things my way." Eoin looked over at the vine spider holding Solas.

"What? When did you learn to do that?"

"Oh. I'm not sure, really. It just kind of made sense at the time." Miriam was beginning to get a little self conscious.

"Things happened out there that made me realize a few things about the world and my place in it, I suppose." His gaze shifted to her head.

"Also… your horns."

"My horns?"

"They're blackened, or… maybe charred is the better phrase," Eoin's brow was well and truly furrowed now.

"I saw no fire, nor smelled smoke."

"Ah, well," Miriam said, rubbing one horn. He was right, ash flaked off in her hand.

"Ugh. How badly burned are they?"

"If you'll permit me?" Eoin asked. When Miriam nodded, he rubbed some of the ash off himself.

"Incredible. Your horns have always had a wood texture to them, as is typical for a Dryad, but now, under the ash, it's like… new growth. The way plants regrow from the soot of a forest fire stronger than before."

"So once I clear the ash off they should be good as new," Miriam said, relieved.

"I know I haven't had horns for too long, but if I have to have them I'd like them to look nice."

"Miriam, it's clear something happened," Eoin said, his voice serious.

"How did your horns get burned?"

"I think… my Blight changed somehow," Miriam said. She raised her hand and it became surrounded by black flame.

"It's not rotting anymore. Well… I think it could rot something if I wanted it to, but this feels like I've learned how to skip a step. This flame is just… death. Pure death." She huffed.

"And Cian said Fórsa Natures couldn't change." Five mist lenses appeared in front of Eoin's eye and he peered at her, making her feel like an ant on the wrong end of a magnifying glass.

"Miriam… Miriam! How… how have you done this?"

"Eoin, I don't know what it is I've done," she said.

"I do feel pretty great though. Did I cross Second with my Life Nature? It kind of feels like it."

"Well, yes, you did do that," Eoin said, dismissing his lenses.

"You became a Growth Adept, just as I predicted."

"Great! That clears the way for me to work up to Third!" Miriam said, enthusiastically.

"Congratulations," Solas sneered.

"But no, Miriam… you've, gods, how do I even explain this?" Eoin conjured a chair out of mist and sank down into it.

"I didn't expect to have to get into this. No one outside of the Fifth Ring even needs to bother with it."

"Get on with what?" Miriam said in frustration.

"Please just tell me what it is that has you so flustered. I've had enough of the cryptic hints." Eoin sighed.

"Have you ever wondered why I am still a Fifth after two thousand years? I was born in that Ring, yet I have not progressed beyond it."

"It did occur to me to wonder, but it seemed rude to ask."

"When you get into the Fifth Ring, most people with the Inner Rings on their mind begin cultivating more than one Adept class." Miriam's jaw dropped.

"I didn't know you could have more than one!"

"Most people can't - not outside the Fifth Ring. The fórsa is so dense there that you are able to take on more specializations. The rules are byzantine and honestly not well understood by even those who were born there. They have to be related closely. For example, my main Adept Class is Mist, which you have already guessed. However, my secondary Adept class is Crystal, which is related to Mist through the crystalline structures of ice."

"That makes so much sense!" Miriam exclaimed.

"I wondered how it was that you were so focused on gemcraft when your Adept class seemed unrelated."

"Indeed," Eoin said dryly.

"But the problem comes when you want to enter the Sixth Ring. After that point, increasing your body's tolerance for higher fórsa pressure by rebuilding it out of higher density material is not enough by itself anymore. You need to Ascend."

"Wait. Cianán said something to Cormac about this. He said he might be a Fate Ascendant."

"He did?" Eoin's ears perked up in alarm.

"That… no, we can get into that later. But that would be incredible. But this is what he was referring to. In order to cross into the Sixth Ring, you must have three adept classes. And you must unite them under a common ideal." Miriam frowned. This was getting more complicated than she thought. Strangely, Solas seemed to be listening with rapt attention as well.

"What common ideal?"

"The thing that defines you and how your adept classes connect different parts of your identity. I will give you an example. I once had a mentor when I was younger. He was Fire Nature, the most helpful and friendly man you could ever meet. Beyond his desire to reach the inner Rings, he took joy from being a teacher - leading others to greatness. His Adept classes were Ignition, Illumination and Obsidian - volcanic rock. When he combined those, he became a Beacon Ascendant. His ideal was 'to lead the way.'

His specializations all combined to form one whole that represented his entire identity." Eoin looked sad for a moment.

"He died in the battlefields of the Sixth Ring." Miriam shook her head.

"So… this new Blight flame is another Adept class?" Eoin looked angry for a moment, but then he shook his head as if to clear it.

"No, Miriam. What you have done is what you always do. Something all but impossible. You have Ascended. In the gods-damned Second Ring. But you've done it not with your Adept Classes, but your very Natures themselves!"

"What does that mean, Eoin?"

"The hell if I know, Miriam." Eoin held his head in his hands.

"We're off the edge of the map here. You no longer have discrete Natures. Your Water, Life and Blight have combined into your new Ascended form. You're a Rebirth Ascendant."

"But… I still have access to Life, and Water…" Miriam summoned forth vines and a burst of Raging Current.

"Yes, of course. They are a part of your ascendancy. It doesn't remove anything from you. It distills you down into your most pure components. Your Blight, for example, has become a flame of pure death. I imagine you'll find similarly pure forms for Water and Life." Eoin stood wearily.

"The good news is that as we train here you will likely become a force that no one in the Tír has ever seen before. The bad news is that we are going to be winging a lot of it, because for the first time in a thousand years I am well and truly out of my depth."

"Does this mean I can join Róise and Cormac in Shirren now?"

"What? No! This has always been your flaw. Incredible strength - weak body. You're still a Second. Just an Ascended one. Which makes no sense whatsoever." Eoin pointed to the village.

"I need to go tell the Elder that you're here. I had just finished telling them how you'd died tragically. Wait here and I'll be back when she has cleared you to enter the village." As Eoin wandered away, much slower than he'd arrived, Solas snorted.

"You know what really has him bothered, don't you?" Miriam glared at the Wisp in Sol's body.

"No, what?"

"He's no longer so certain that when he faces you after the Third Ring that he'll win."