A Jaded Life

Subtle wards were something truly great. Even without a great deal of power, they could create an incredibly potent effect, simply because they worked with the world around them, allowing them to leverage what was already there. It might be nothing more than a few roots sticking out of the ground, making somebody walk around a tree on the other side, it might be a shrub being extra spiky on one side, making one avoid it, or similar effects. Nothing overtly powerful, nothing intensive that would arouse suspicion but multiple layers of these subtly misdirecting effects were enough to keep people away from whatever the ward was protecting.

That is until the ward was discovered, once that happened, the subtle effects didn’t remain effective any longer. They were still there but given that they only caused minor nuisances or small problems, they could easily be ignored and overcome with a bit of stubbornness. Sure, one needed to be aware that there was something to overcome in order to do so, but once that happened, it was easy.

In this case, once Luna and I had noticed the ward, we had multiple ways to deal with it. We both had enough magical ability to simply shred the magic woven into the many layers of plants, Luna by saturating the plants with her own Life Magic, effectively taking control of them. In contrast, I would have to destroy the plants to unravel the effect. Alternatively, I could use my Darkness Magic, channelled through a combination of Devour and Magic runes, to rip away the magic holding the ward together. Either way would work but doing so wouldn’t just allow us to enter the area, it would render whoever lived here vulnerable. Plus, it would be incredibly rude, akin to kicking down the door when one wanted to meet the new neighbours.

Luckily, the force needed to overwhelm the subtle effects of the ward wasn’t limited to magical might. Instead, physical force worked just as well, or in this case, nothing but sheer, overwhelming stubbornness.

The, annoyingly simple, way to overcome the ward was by taking the hard road - literally.

So, instead of ripping through the layers upon layers of subtle magical misdirection, we barrelled right through. Across the large, annoyingly uneven roots, past the sharp-thorned bushes and over the few, deep crevices in the land. Luckily, those crevices were quite narrow, but enough to make one want to move around them instead of across, just in case one stumbled.

Less pleasant than these fairly generic attempts to misdirect us were those where the ward had incorporated the less-than-friendly flora of the area. There, we had to employ a bit of magical force to rip through a patch of Haemorhaging Grass and a little later I had to conjure a shield of Ice to block the impact of the thorns from a Razorshrub. Nothing we hadn’t faced in this forest before but now, they happened to be right in our path, by sheer coincidence. Not.

Finally, after a surprisingly long hour of ignoring the easy path and consistently taking the harder and more annoying way, we came upon something different. Instead of the constant layers of subtle misdirection, this was a hard layer, a magically connected wall of thorny vines. I had no easy way to get through it, at least not without destroying what was blocking our path but luckily, I wasn’t the only one capable of impressive magical feats.

My dear munchkin let one of the vines she had cultivated for just this purpose stretch across a few metres, making sure to remain hidden behind a tree as she did, and made contact with the thorny vines of the barrier.

For a moment, I could see her close her eyes in contemplation and feel the magic within her surge and travel through the vine and into the barrier. Then, after a little under a minute, the barrier unravelled in a surprisingly easy and peaceful manner, making me think that it was supposed to work that way.

Luna immediately took the lead with Silva by her side and moved into the newly opened gap. Lia, carrying Alex around her neck like a tired, furry scarf, and I followed after, feeling just a little bit amused by Luna’s take-no-prisoners attitude. She truly was my daughter, if something caught her interest, there just was no stopping her, even if things might be dangerous.

It was a good thing they weren’t in this case. After stepping through the barrier, I needed a moment to allow my mind to accept the fairytale-like environment before us as real and even after that moment, I could only gawp like an idiot at the natural beauty before us.

While the plants everywhere in the area had grown wildly out of size, to the point that there had to be magic involved to keep things working, both from a physical and a biological perspective, this was something more. Houses were growing inside trees, with small chimneys growing out of the bark and happily spewing forth smoke in a way that I could only call magical, vines grown to look just like fences, even including white leaves to give them that distinct white-picket-fence aesthetic, this place had everything. Water was flowing through leaves likely consciously shaped for just this purpose, creating small public fountains and reservoirs while I could see other of these leaf pipes supply small vegetable gardens.

Nearby, there were a few people, two of whom greatly reminded me of Adra and the other dryads I had met, at least physically. The others appeared to be somewhere between human and elf, the similarity to those who had taken my Sigmir from me strong enough to raise my hackles.

“Calm yourself, Mother,” Lia quietly reminded me, making me realise that my agitation was leaking out, causing the air around me to chill and the light to dampen. Closing my eyes, I managed to get my emotions under control, at least to the point that I wasn’t looking like I was about to start a massacre.

“Thank you, dear,” I replied, speaking just as softly, while the people who had originally noticed our arrival had notified the others and now, everyone was watching us, clearly uncertain how to react to us.

“Luna, can you do the talking?” I asked after thinking about it for a moment. These were people aligned with Nature and Life, meaning that Lia wasn’t a good match if they were perceptive enough to notice her magical nature. She was, at the end of the night, a creature of Death, Darkness and Blood, not quite what a group like this would likely be comfortable with. Similarly, I wasn’t suited, not so much because of my magical bias, by now I had a strong enough alignment to all types of magic to fake it till I made it, but because of my reaction to them. Hating somebody on sight, simply because of their innate physical and magical nature, wasn’t a good thing, nor one I was proud of, but the way they reminded me of my loss was too painful.

“Greetings,” Luna called out quietly, pitching her voice carefully to carry the distance but not loud enough to wake people if they were sleeping. No need to annoy people by disturbing their rest, just because we had to travel at night. Not that it was a real requirement in the dense forest but habit had taken hold, so we stuck to our nocturnal lifestyle even while under the cover of the dense foliage.

I could see the two dryads exchange looks before one of them, alongside one of the not-quite-elves, joined that one, the others hanging back. Once they were in casual conversation distance, they started to talk with Luna, though their eyes glanced at Luna all of us in turn, obviously uncertain who was actually in charge.

Amusingly, Luna didn’t go into too many details, her answers incredibly vague and open-ended in a way that wasn’t evasive but also not terribly helpful. Granted, I could tell that a lot of that evasiveness was because Luna didn’t know the actual answer, like where we came from, or because there wasn’t a definitive answer. We simply didn’t have one overarching goal, I had one, sure, but Luna had her own goals and desires, just like Lia, Silva and Alex. Only that we were a family and thus helped one another to reach those goals but that didn’t make the goals of the individual into the goals of the whole.

On the other hand, listening to these people made me wonder what had happened. I was fairly certain that they hadn’t been beta-testers and gained a legacy that way, not with this many of them in the same place and all following the same template. No, there was something else going on but so far, they hadn’t shed light on that ‘something’.

Finding out would be quite interesting and possibly very important for the future.