Wraithwood Botanist

Nethralis’s teachers arrived with Kyro in the mid-spring, when mushrooms were peeking their heads out behind logs. I thought I would hate the influx of people, but I turned out to be wrong about it.

Kyro slunk into one of my homes and spent his mornings and afternoons day drinking, and I got along with the two teachers Nethralis sent just fine.

The first was Trant, the alchemist. He had about six centuries of horticulture experience and a knack for going on tangents about even the smallest little thing. He would flutter through the forest saying things like:

"These are genna. You can identify them by the trileaf pattern and the blue vein on the leaves. They’re pretty common around these parts, and they’re easily confused with reshata once the petals drop. Completely different plants. You can tell by the vein, that’s key."

And then I would say, "Great. So what’s it used for? It’s not marked as an alchemic plant."

And he’d finish by saying, "Oh, that’s because it’s not. It’s completely useless. Utterly useless. Absolutely useless in every way. I’ve dissolved it, ground it, tested it, and even tried to enhance poison with it, but it’s just one of those plants that exists just to exist. Waste of a solid year of my life. Here, now this’s a plant that’s not worthless."

Then, he’d proceed to outline a plant that was technically not useless but was damn close, passionately rattling off factoids about it.

We got along just fine.

Reta was a completely different person. I liked her, I really did, but she was one of those teachers who insisted that I watch long before I got started—if I started.

"Illusion magic isn’t for people who can’t dream," she had said. "And you refuse to sleep."

I was convinced she was lying to justify her habits. Reta had a voluntary case of narcolepsy, and I’d find her sleeping in the morning, afternoon, and evening, only wide awake at midnight when she’d bang around the house without concern for my Mental Shielding practice. It was hectic.

I really wished that she would’ve just let me give her a home, like Kyro and Trant, but she insisted she stay so she could sleep on my chest, an experience she described as "heaven."

I wasn’t a fan, but I got used to it. It was sort of cute.

I just wished she would have been as enthusiastic about teaching.

While I worked with Trant daily, soaking in information on plants and alchemy like a sponge, she would ask me seemingly random questions like, "What do you see right there?" and when I told her, she would say, "Now look closer." Then I’d do it again, and she’d answer, "Oh…" and go back to sleep.

Other times, she would talk like a demented philosopher. "Why do you accept those plants to be real?" she would ask.

"Because they show up in soul sight, mana sight, and smell like plants," I’d say.

"Did you check any of those things recently?" she’d ask.

Then I’d get excited and activate all of them and find that the plant was actually real."

The sun rose and fell many times as she promoted this philosophical, descriptive-heavy questioning that never came with commentary, hints, or teaching.

I kept expecting her to release an illusion, but they never came. She just slept or stared aimlessly into the woods, saying, "That’s enough for today. Go train with Kira. Practice is best done alone."

I wanted to snap, but I really did need time to train with Kira. So, I went into the woods and fused with her body, practicing with my wings, bow, and machete and movements, but it still bothered me that I was losing out on an epic spell training, and one day, I just snapped.

"Are you ever going to teach me anything?" I asked one day. "We’ve come here every day for a month, and you haven’t even shown me a single illusion."

"That’s because you haven’t questioned the nature of reality," she said. "You should really sleep. Your Mental Shielding training is holding you back."

"What’s the point of dreaming?" I asked. "I dreamt my whole life and it obviously didn’t help me."

"That’s because you weren’t trying to learn. The purpose of dreaming isn’t to make you more creative; it’s to teach you how far you can push reality before you realize something is wrong."

I rolled my eyes. "My sleeping brain’ll believe anything. I once had a dream that I was handing out dogs to homeless people in a soup line. Felt totally normal to sleeping me. The second I woke up, I instantly realized how crazy it was."

"Hmmm…" Reta said. "So you’re saying that handing out dogs in a soup line was completely unbelievable."

"Yeah, obviously."

"And you’re saying that your waking mind can accurately ascertain that something is a dream by the absurdity of it?"

I narrowed my eyes, feeling anxiety bubble up in my guts despite Reta retaining her same sleepy expression.

"Yeah… mostly. If it’s absurd enough."

"Hmmm…" She looked into the sky and sighed. "You’re gonna wanna step back."

"Huh?"

"I said move, idiot."

A bird suddenly let out a piercing screech, and when I turned, I saw it diving at us. Reta pushed me back as it hit the ground, kicking up dust as Reta threw up a barrier.

I gasped and pulled out my blade, but things took a turn for the strange. The bird landed and became a goat that charged at a tree, leaving thundering strikes on the ground as it galloped forward. And through Reta’s barrier, I watched it ram into a tree. The wood cracked and splintered, groaning as it hit free fall, hitting dozens of nearby branches as it plummeted to the ground.

It hit with a terrifying boom, but instead of shooting wood shrapnel everywhere, the tree burst into a cloud of pink flower petals that danced around in a cyclone.

I pushed myself up and stared blankly into that tornado of petals, realizing it was an illusion. But as soon as I thought that, a dryad that looked identical to Escala formed out of petals. And right then, noting the wondrous powers of magic, I was convinced that what I was seeing could actually be real. I didn’t believe it, but I would’ve approached the situation as if it were, and I’d later learn that those were one and the same when the topic was battle.

Reta snapped her fingers, and it all disappeared.

I turned my head to the left with choppy motions and saw the grand tree was still there.

"You knew an illusion was coming," Reta said. "And then you watched a bird turn into a ground beast that hit a tree that exploded in a plume of flowers. That was…" she yawned, "absurd right?"

I tried to answer, but words escaped me, leaving me stranded and confused.

"Beast, human, Drokai—it doesn’t matter," Reta said, rubbing her scratchy red eyes. "The brain has an unlimited capacity to view deceptions as reality. The question is why, and dreams are the best teacher on the subject. That’s enough for today."

My eyes were wide open, my ribs were rattling—my heart was leaping out of my chest. The thought of casually leaving before an explanation was out of the question.

"Reta. You can’t just leave after that!"

"I already told you—I can’t teach you this. I can teach you the technical aspects. That you find it believable because everything has cause and effect. You see the hooves hit the ground and you hear each one, with sounds that appear plausible, with lighting that feels natural. And you feel it…"

Reta swooped down and put her hand on a rock. Suddenly, the ground vibrated under my feet, creating thunderous patterns like hooves.

"And when you see, hear, feel, and smell things, it’s hard to deny they’re real," Reta said. "But it’s more than that. Try…" she yawned again, "to think of what wouldn’t have worked with your senses alone, and then figure out why it worked anyway. Until you can tell me that, you’ll never convince people of anything."

Reta fluttered off, leaving me frustrated, confused, and reeling. I didn’t figure out why it worked. Not one bit. It was all too unbelievable yet strangely believable, and it all happened in seconds. It would take a while, and that hit hardest of all.

That night, Reta asked, "How was your hike?" as she crashed her face into my chest.

"Terrible," I said. "Now get up, I still have training, you dirty fairy."

"Just a few minutes."

I grabbed her body like a doll to peel her off, but she clung to my shirt, stretching it until I could see down it.

"Girl, I swear to God I’ll sling you across this room," I warned.

Reta groaned and let go, accepting her fate as she crashed onto the bed. I fixed my shirt and got up as Kline pawed at the poor woman like a ball of yarn, something she strangely accepted despite Kline being the relative equivalent of a colossal tiger to her size-wise.

Then she was out, and I was left brooding. I thought that Mental Shielding training would help, so I gladly suffered through an endless barrage of sounds, tastes, and sensations, but I found that I still couldn’t get the confusion out of my mind. And when the barrage ended, and my meditative trance began, I realized that I didn’t dream and decided to give it a shot.

I ended the spell, peeled Reta off the bed and hugged her to my chest, and went to sleep.

That night, I had violent dreams about war. The things I saw in Real and Salan’s memories; the things I read in the Jacksmore histories. It was vivid to the point I lived it, feeling the sights and trauma and pain. Then I woke up, gasping for breath as I came to in the real world, clutching for bearings as I sat up from my sleeping bag, drenched in cold sweats.

"Maybe you shouldn’t dream after all," Reta said from the other side of the room. She was on my table, using a cloth-covered dinner plate like a futon. "At least until you work that thing out. There’s nothing more cruel and unusual than a grieving imagination."

"First you deny me training, now you tell me to give up…" I seethed. Impassioned by my dream and slightly unstable, I turned to her like a rabid animal. "You should’ve just told me you wouldn’t teach me before wasting my spring on this nonsense. There’s five months till the Melhan attempt retribution, and I need to spend one of them harvesting."

Reta sighed. "I understand your frustration, but it’s meaningless. You’re facing elites, not normal foes. And when you face people with skill, spells without foundations are worse than nothing."

"That’s bullshit!" I yelled. "I was outnumbered five to one against elites, and I won thanks to spells I learned in four months."

Reta made eye contact and said, "Traps and guile are only useful when you have time to implement them, opponents aren’t expecting them, or you have enough skill to make knowledge of them irrelevant. Right now you still can’t explain why my illusion affected you—yet you want to use it? Tell me…"

Reta split her body in two, but one of the illusions was obvious. It wasn’t flying correctly, and its face was slightly off. She might as well have been made from CGI.

"Do you believe this illusion?"

I shook my head.

"What about this illusion?" She created Kyro. He looked and sounded absolutely identical, but when he lay on my bed, it didn’t ruffle my sleeping bag.

"No…" I said.

"What about now?"

Kline jumped through the flap like a golden retriever, bright-eyed and happy, weaving between my feet. His personality was so different; it was obvious he wasn’t real, despite him looking and sounding like Kline.

"No…" I admitted.

"See?" Reta asked. "Technical skills aren’t enough. You must study, research, examine, understand?"

"Then why are we learning this now? I’m going to die this summer if I don’t have training."

"Then train elsewhere."

I stomped out of my home and forced my way into Kyro’s. When I opened the flap, he shielded his eyes and groaned. He looked like a castaway, with a beard and a bottle of spirits, punch drunk on the floor.

"This better be good," he said, rolling over.

"Train me," I demanded.

"No."

"Why not?"

"You have two teachers."

"I have one."

"That sounds like a you problem."

"Kyro. If you want to live here, you need to earn your keep."

Kyro turned to me with malice in his eyes. "Okay. I’ll train you. But if this is how you’re gonna go about this, I won’t hold back. So you best temper up. Otherwise, you’re bound to lose a limb."

I took a hesitant step back when I saw his serious gaze and put my back against the wall, bunching my arms together.

"What’s tempering?" I asked.

"Ask Trant. I think he was already working on it. Until then, I’m going back to sleep. Push the issue, and we’ll start immediately."

Kyro was hungover, and I was pissed. This wasn’t a good combination, so I said bye and met Trant in the forest and asked him to temper my body. He said, "Today’s a great day. There’s no reason to destroy it with tempering. So enjoy it. We’ll temper tomorrow."

I was impatient, so I huffed and sat on a log, watching the little fairy dance around the forest, picking things and rattling off factoids. And before long, I was roaming around with him, discovering, foraging, and loving everything I came across.

I loved Trant.

Until the next day.

It started after threading. I stretched in the brisk morning air, reveling in the smell of fungi and earthy leaves. Then I turned to Kline.

"You going off to train?" I asked.

He sauntered off into the woods without even looking at me.

"Fine, don’t say bye," I grumbled, entering my alchemy station. Trant wasn’t there, so I went to check for activity at his house, and as I moved, I heard sounds from the bathhouse.

I opened the flap and found Trant carving something into my bath’s floor with my knife.