Annabelle’s Bastion

Forests could be pretty quiet, but the Titan Forest seemed far too quiet. The kind that made Anna anxious with every step into the place, like a horrifying monster was waiting to jump from the tall, massive trees.

It wasn’t in the sense that they could only hear nature, animals, and bugs. No, there was nothing. Not a chirp in the grass, a drip in a lake, or the rusting of trees. 

Worse than the silence was the revelation it brought. There appeared to be literally no life in the forest despite how beautiful, clean, and vast it was—not even a bug in the dirt or a bird in the branches.

Whether that was normal for the planet or a product of the nearby core, Anna didn’t know. But it was suspicious either way. 

And creepy.

A core being put down in the middle of an empty forest seemed nonsensical, but they didn’t learn much about them to say that confidently.

Did they willingly choose their location? Did nearby life matter? Furthermore, were they naturally occurring products of mana, or were they far more sinister? 

Unfortunately, the guide didn’t explain; there was a whole class for them they were expected to take. The classes related to cores and expeditions weren’t allowed until the second year. Actually, class restrictions and other things were actively being interchanged.

The academy didn’t seem to think they’d get the opportunity to explore one so soon. Anna’s victory announcement did mention that they were seeking approval, so this was probably a trial run—a test.

Clearly, the expedition was impromptu, and they wanted it to be done with as little outside support as possible.

If they succeeded, they could prove to everyone that Earthling humans weren’t so incompetent!

But thinking of impromptu reminded Anna of Aria, who was actively observing everything around her, from the top of the trees to the dirt at their feet. She’d even stop to check a few things.

If Anna didn’t know any better, she’d say Aria was a seasoned hunter. Not that she could distinguish that.

“Soo~ ... how did you actually get here?” Anna asked, breaking their long silence.

“Alisha.” Aria didn’t halt her focus on scanning the dirt to answer. “She re-activated the gate shortly after you left.”

“I knew it!” Anna exclaimed, clapping once. “But then you spent the night in the forest? How’d Jaxon not sense you?”

“He was distracted.” Aria lightly shook her head. “His senses are split between active and passive, and he has to section that off to closely watch 60 people.”

“Is that his power?” Anna looked back, but she couldn’t see him. “Can he feel precisely where I am right now and every detail about my condition?” she whispered like he was listening.

“That information is private, and Alisha wouldn’t tell me.”

“Hmm~ Makes sense, I guess.” Then, she remembered her own private information! “Oh, right! Speaking of private...” She snickered.

“What?” Aria stood and dusted her hands, staring at Anna.

“Well~!” Anna hummed. After Aria stopped checking other things, Anna widely smiled and patted her chest, saying, “Yours truly got a new Sigil last night! A really, really good one!”

“What?”

There it was!

One of the rare times when Aria did show some expression on her otherwise stone-cold face—shock. Anna loved it when she got those reactions!

“Yep! Some mysterious benefactor wanted to curry favor with me, I guess. And now I have a really cool Sigil.”

“That...” Naturally, she seemed confused.

“Doesn’t make sense,” Anna finished for her. She nodded sagely. “Yet the reality is upon us, right? I have an awesome Sigil, and someone’s probably going to come up to me and say, ‘Hey, remember that Sigil? That was me, and I need a favor!’ You know?”

“And you’re fine with that?”

Anna snorted. “Just because they gave me a Sigil doesn’t mean I’m their puppet. Intent matters.” She shrugged and smirked at Aria. “Regardless, who am I to reject a phenomenal gift? I know we want to earn our Sigils, but this one was too good to pass up.”

“I understand,” Aria said, nodding. “What was it?”

Rather than tell, Anna decided to show it!

Her black ring quietly hummed as it materialized above her open palm. 

Aria’s eyes burned holes into it, making Anna feel like she was about to perform a card trick!

The inside of the ring quickly filled with a void-black color as it rippled before becoming still, and Anna felt her connection to the space within. She immediately felt like she knew precisely what was in it, where they were, and how to pull something out.

Actually, she hadn’t tried pulling anything out, so how it looked would be a sight for her as well.

She pulled on her connection with the sleeping bag.

A black, nail-sized orb popped out from the still lake, sending a single ripple. It quickly expanded into the shape of the sleeping bag before hitting the ground.

The black disappeared, and the bag was laid out exactly as it had been taken in.

“Bam!” Anna said excitedly, clapping once.

“Storage,” Aria mumbled. 

“Jealous?” Anna joked, smiling in satisfaction at her sleeping bag. “It’s pretty dang handy.”

“Yes,” Aria said simply. “To have that ability this early is... absurd.”

“Yep!” 

Anna recalled the bed, allowing Aria to see the black glow and shimmer as the bag disappeared into her ring.

“That Sigil must be rare,” Aria said, her suspicions clear in her tone.

“Not as rare as we’d think.” Anna dismissed her ring and turned back to Aria. “But still not something we’d normally get any time soon. At least, that’s what I got from Jaxon when he handed it to me.”

“Jaxon gave it to you?”

Aria seemed even more surprised by that than the Sigil itself.

“Yeah, as a proxy.”

“Was it Alisha’s gift?” 

“Probably not?” Anna said without confidence, then shook her head. “I think he’d have just told me if that were the case.”

“Then someone higher.” Aria sighed. “Others of Alisha’s rank don’t hold power over Jaxon.”

Alisha might know who it was. Jaxon would surely inform her, and she’d be able to offer Anna some insight… surely.

“Like I said, though—intent matters,” Anna explained. “If it’s dubious?” She shrugged. “Then I just get a free Sigil.”

“We can only hope it’s that simple.”

Anna snickered.

They began moving again, neither forgetting to keep a close eye on their surroundings as they moved forward. Anna didn’t know what to check for, but she figured it’d be obvious.

The matter of the Sigil wasn’t something she cared to worry about yet.

Of course, she was just speaking in ideals—she knew that. 

No way the person who gave her the Sigil would expect her to obey just because of it. However, it did create an excuse for a connection, one that could be explored later. Anna would hear them out. 

Anna had been on the receiving end of a flurry of gifts before, all for a greater goal; this scenario wasn’t anything new.

But gifts didn’t have strings attached—it was that simple. 

If someone wanted the Sigil to mean something more than currying favor, they shouldn’t have given it under the pretense of a gift.

“I don’t think I’ll find out for a while.” Anna sighed, internally dismissing her worry over it. “Especially not during the early days of the academy.”

“Agreed...” Aria suddenly stopped and held out her arm to stop Anna. “Wait.”

Anna’s heart skipped a beat, and she whipped her head around. But she didn’t see anything of note in the vicinity. 

They were surrounded by the usual gargantuan trees, with the sun rays barely peaking through the canopy to grant some visibility. 

Still, there were no sounds other than their own steps.

“What’s up?” Anna whispered cautiously

“Look.” Aria gestured further up one of the nearby trees. 

Then, Anna finally saw it and chuckled in disbelief. “You actually saw that while we were walking and talking?”

It was a perfect oval cut in the tree—definitely not natural. But it blended in perfectly with the tree itself! Whatever was in that hole would be an alien creature, and it would be their first sighting!

The weight of that sank in Anna’s chest; she was about to see her first alien creature.  

“I’ve noticed them on higher points, but this is the first one...” Aria looked at Anna from her toes to her head. She lightly cleared her throat. “The first one within reach.”

Anna’s brow twitched, but more than anything, her eyes widened in surprise as she stared at the stranger who must have replaced her friend. 

“Did... did you just insult my height?” 

“No.”

“How unusually coy of you!” Anna giggled. “You’re lucky I don’t care about it!”

Aria shook her head. “You look fine. I pointed it out because we can investigate this one.”

“I’ll let you off the hook this time. Because, yeah. This place is strange.” She pointed at the hole. “And that hole only makes it stranger.”

“Yes.” Aria stared at the hole but eventually shook her head. “But it’s likely empty, as were all the others.”

Anna deflated. “Are you sure?” 

Her chance to name an alien species!

“I noted it every time.”

“Okay.” Anna sighed. “As if it could get any stranger.”

“Yes,” Aria agreed, nodding. Even her normally emotionless tone sounded a bit heavy as she continued, “Life in this forest appears to have disappeared.”

There it was, the conclusion etched into Anna’s mind as a possibility from the moment they entered.

Yet, it was too unrealistic to believe. The Titan Forest appeared so wide and vast that to make that conclusion after only seeing what was a tiny part of it felt... hasty.

“That’s a heavy conclusion,” Anna mumbled.

Aria nodded, but her eyes didn’t leave the hole. “Let’s check.”

Anna switched her shocked gaze from the hole to Aria. “You wanna climb that?”

A tree thicker than a group of Anna stuck together. The trunks near them were all smooth, with no points they could use to grip or plant their feet on to climb. She didn’t think she was afraid of heights, but seeing that tree...

“I’ll jump,” Aria said as she approached the tree’s base.

“Oh.” Anna followed. “Of course. Yeah, jump… just jump.” She swallowed nervously.

“Stand back.”

“Right.”

Aria’s golden rings shined as they extended from her ankles.

Seeing that otherwise beautiful gold, all Anna could think about was how wasteful it was. It reminded her of their task; getting the ring around their head. 

Even Aria, as talented as she was with mana, couldn’t figure it out. But she didn’t have any connections made by Sigils.

A second after her rings formed, Aria squatted, then launched upward with no hesitation, kicking up dirt and rock as she sprang.

She went even higher than the hole.

While in the air, two more rings extended from Aria’s wrists, and she whipped her arms towards the hole as she fell.

It wasn’t a big thing, yet seeing it happen was breathtaking; the golden flash, the trail, and her careful grip on the tree.

No expression changes, no sweat, no fear—just perfect execution.

Aria was a specimen.

“Anything?” Anna shouted. 

Aria released her hold on the hole and fell. When she gracefully reached land, she dismissed her rings while shaking her head. 

“What did it look like?”

“Odd.” Aria straightened up. “It was hallowed and nearly the width of the tree in size. There was what appeared to be rotted food neatly around the walls. These holes are—” She shook her head and looked at Anna. “Were home to life.”

Aria looked greatly disappointed—as if she was worrying about something as she gazed at the holes scattered in trees throughout the forest. Anna didn’t take her to care so much.

But perhaps it was because one possibility was that the core corrupted all of them.

Anna’s heart felt like a rock as she looked above. She looked at each tree in her range, from all the holes she could barely see near the tree tops to those near the middle. Hundreds. Just in their neck of the woods, there were likely hundreds.

“This is absurd,” Anna muttered. “Do you think the core corrupted all of them and is using them as—” She shook her head, disgusted at the idea. 

As minions. 

However, Aria immediately replied, “No.”

“So confident?”

“There were no signs of struggle in the home, and the forest is clean.” Aria leaned down and touched the dirt. “If part of what lived here was corrupted, we would see an indication of battles.”

“Oh, duh.” Anna felt dumb.

Not only had they not seen even any damaged trees or scars in the environment, but there weren’t any bodies, blood, or bones anywhere in the forest. 

But that only made it more confusing! 

“Let’s continue,” Aria said as she already began moving forward. “We have good information, but I want to find the corruption edge.”

Anna nodded. “Maybe that will shed some light on this whole thing.”

While moving forward, Anna opted to keep her speaking to a minimum for the sake of observation. She wasn’t quite as adept as Aria in multitasking.

As expected, every few trees, there were holes carved somewhere along the trunk.

There were too many to say it was just home to a pack; the forest seemed like it belonged to an alien civilization that lived in the trees. 

To think they were all abandoned and that they were walking through what was effectively a ghost town left Anna feeling dread and melancholy.

No matter how far forward they went, there were still no signs of disruption to indicate what had happened.

Finally, as it neared the start of Anna’s ability decay, they saw something. 

Both noticed it and ceased movement, sharing a nod. It was beyond a thick gathering of trees and roots, a noticeable color change behind a tree.

Anna materialized her black ring, and Aria followed.

Both had rings around their legs and arms, just in case they needed to run or fight.

“It’s barely noticeable from a distance,” Anna said. “Is that what corruption looks like?”

Aria nodded. “It doesn’t feel aligned with what we have been told.”

As they got closer, the outline of the edge was clear as day. They pushed through the trees blocking their sight and saw it.

Everything beyond that line had no color, save for the trees that they could actively see color robbed off. A festering disease threatening to ruin the colorful world.

Beyond the line that moved forward slower than a snail was a world of monotone. Further in, a hue of dark black blanketed the forest like a fog, obscuring anything beyond.

“It’s so... bleak?” Anna said, unsure of her own feelings. 

It felt like looking into a once beautiful location only to see it ruined. 

More than that, it created a deep disgust in Anna’s stomach, an encroaching feeling that got worse every moment she stared.

Everything inside her screamed not to enter that disgusting, colorless world. Leave it. That, if she were to enter, she’d be ruined like the plants and the trees, robbed of her life. It had to be destroyed.

Yet, another feeling quickly arose from within.

She didn’t fear being attacked—she hated the space itself. An odd hatred. One that Anna didn’t understand but one that urged her to crush it.

A contradiction of emotions, disgusted by the thought of entering and an urge to destroy the cause.

Aria only nodded. 

Anna tried to shake the strange emotions away, but the disgust wouldn’t go away so easily. It almost made her feel sick.

She couldn’t make out any details other than the monotonous beyond the line and the fog obscuring what was likely the core within.

Nothing attacked, nothing moved beyond the line, and there weren’t any indicators of life beyond it. 

Anna felt relieved at that; nothing was corrupted, save for the plant life. 

“Let’s return now.” Aria dismissed her rings. “Your spell effects are fading. Annabelle?”

Anna struggled to rip her eyes away from the corruption, but she eventually succeeded. Yet not without feeling like she was betraying… something. Perhaps the urgency of it—that it could grow much worse if given time.

“Right.” 

They still had plenty of daytime to destroy the core.

The thought of entering that monotone world wasn’t a pleasant one.

Once they left, the feelings Anna had at the corruption’s edge all but faded.

The expedition would finish today, and Anna left the zone feeling a mix of apprehension and excitement, the odd feelings gone like a passing wind.