Wraithwood Botanist

It took two hours for Reta and Trant to clear out the rest of the strangas, and I spent most of the time on the ground, shooting stray birds. Kira’s weakness was that she borrowed an immense amount of soul force when she performed actions; the greater the action, the more aura and neara she took. So I couldn’t watch most of it. I just had to stay on the ground, listening to the dying screams of animals like a child, as the grown-ups did the hard stuff.

But before long, Trant was back.

"They’ll take care of the rest," he said. "Let’s find the plants."

We did.

We roamed through the area, picking up plants and killing charging animals, and it made me feel empowered and overconfident.

Most were second-evolution beasts, but there was a third ev that flew out of nowhere, a freakish cyclops gorilla that flew at me at the speed of a bullet train.

I activated Moxle Dilation, and the beast slowed to a snail’s pace. This was the power of a seventh-tier spell and five months of intensive training with a higher stage of Mental Shielding. I hadn’t truly used it aside from using it on Kyro, who made it feel like it wasn’t working, but now I could see it was.

Kira flew out of my chest, circling it as I aimed Nymbral.

The creature didn’t have a chance. Kira cut its Achilles Heel, and when it turned, I rocked its head with a fully charged hurricane arrow. It all happened so fast that this poor creature felt like it had been sniped.

Time sped up.

I wonder what Kline can do at this point… I thought. My little warrior now had an acceleration spell in addition to his hellish skills. I wanted to see it in action.

"Hey, I found some," Trant said relaxedly as if he wasn’t worried about a third evolution beast. I turned and found him hunched over a pile of pink and white flowers. "Seela. Like I was saying on the boat…"

Trant riddled off this slightly disturbing story about how his friend’s wife got a horrifying infection and how he had Frankenstitched this plant with heavy chemicals to create an on-the-spot body-saving creation. It made me shiver.

I added plenty to a preservation chamber. It was the last plant we needed, so we packed up and headed back.

I expected it to be calm near the boat—I was wrong.

A whole pride of terrifying beasts had attacked, and they were stacked up like sandbags around the boats. Three or four were eaten to the bone and Kline and the lurvine were licking their fur when I arrived.

I touched down and covered my nose from the acrid stench of sulfur and burnt flesh but still smiled at my companions and said, "Great work."

Kline felt like the praise wasn’t genuine enough, and he ended up hopping into the boat, but Kael and the lurvine accepted head pats. As for Sina, she huffed in annoyance and walked over to me, begrudgingly allowing me to pet her. I giggled and rubbed her neck fur with both hands until she jumped into the boat with Kline.

Reta and Kyro finished up and returned, and soon, we were floating down the Cable River on the boat. I felt nervous as the Brute River appeared in the distance, and for the first time, I felt truly insignificant.

The Diktyo River was never supposed to be traveled by humans. It once burrowed underneath the Kana mountains like a train tunnel, blocking further access to the Fifth Domain.

Yakana changed that by blowing a hole through the mountain to let the possessed beasts that I fought in Tranea Crypt get into the Fifth Domain and kill the Jacksmore Troops.

It was a river for souls that had been turned into a weapon.

Nothing more.

But the Brute.

The Brute was like the Mississippi, a body of water so vast that you thought you had entered the ocean. It was truly surreal to see it and wonder how a "river" could span a mile in width—or even ten—and how you ended up there after years of life on dry land, sitting in front of computers between gardening.

It brought back memories of the passage Lithco read about the Brute. It was so biblical and unbelievable that it borders on hyperbole, the fancied accounts of great storytellers that capture the imagination. But it was an apt description.

The soldiers who had never seen the Brute gasped in awe, Lithco had read, and the ones who had shivered. For there was never a sight more majestic or terrifying than the Brute River, a body so vast the soldiers only saw the horizon and small peaks at the other end. The freshman feared it would swallow them whole—the veterans knew that it would.

Kyro saw my face and chuckled. "What’d your book say about this one?"

"Not enough," I said.

"Keep your Soul Sight active," Reta said sleepily, crawling onto my shoulder on all fours like a bug. "The water’s safest, but there’s beasts below."

"Great…" I whispered.

Kyro sat up and screwed his flask lid on. "Just keep focused. We’re not dying today. I have shit to do."

"Like what?" I asked.

"Drink and wallow in my misery," he said. "Obviously."

"Good enough."

Those words cast the boat into silence for the rest of the trip as the Cable River got sucked into the current of the Brute like a car merging into traffic, and despite the bumpy drop-off, it was quite… gentle moving down. Slow, hypnotic, and peaceful, the eye of the storm and period of peace that would lull soldiers into a false state of security—and allowed the ones who experienced horrors to escape upstream.

I knew it was dangerous—but it was still hard to believe.

I saw no soul activity under the surface, and the water was just so… gentle.

Kline snuggled in my lap and slept as I petted him in mesmerized motions, floating so smoothly that I felt like I was riding on a cloud. Or worse—

—that we weren’t moving at all.

Reta spooned Kline, and Trant stared at the plants on shore. Only Kyro sat on the bow of the ship like a 16th-century sailor going off to war, one arm over a knee—eyes trained on the water.

I tried to join him, but I just couldn’t.

Not till I could see the mist.

Or rather, knew it was the mist.

When I looked from the skies, the water stretched so far ahead that I was convinced that I was looking at clouds drifting over still blue waters, like a painting of an ocean. But it wasn’t.

As we approached, the clouds never shifted position—it just got heavier.

What I had originally seen was the runoff—drifting steam from the top of a cooking pan. Below, on the surface of the water, the fog was thick and oppressive, like insolation foam that sprays on thin and then fills whole areas with thick white fluff.

And the way it moved.

It wasn’t like smoke, curling and unraveling and drifting. It moved the way syrup moves: slow, uniform—deliberate.

I checked my guide to see if it was working as we approached. It activated just fine—

—but then it disappeared as I was staring at it.

That’s the moment that my heart thumped and my bluster disappeared and I suddenly wanted to go home.

"At least you’re getting serious," Kyro said. "That witch’s a psychopath. Been awake for hours and played dead."

My eyes widened, and I turned to Reta, who sighed and rolled over. "She’s here to learn," she said with waking clarity that stunned me. "So let her."

Kyro glanced at me sharply and then back at the water, and we floated on.

I suppose that was when the horror truly began. The point my senses lied to me and my sense of reason lost all meaning.

I was waiting.

Waiting for the mist.

Focused on it.

Prepared to be swallowed by that white, murky abyss and lose my sight and senses.

Yet it didn’t come.

The fog was far further out than I had originally believed, and it wore me down and I remember thinking:

So it was an illusion. It’s messing with our sense of distance.

It was, I was certain. It had to be. Because, unlike that thick, swallowing fog around Tranea crypt, we were out in the sunlight, passing by a full forest of ever-changing plants. It didn’t occur to me that we were in the thick of it until asking about it was irrelevant.

"I just… don’t see the point in it," I said. "Is this to make people feel safe again?"

Kyro snorted but said nothing.

Reta stared forward silently, glancing at Trant to keep him mum.

"What? Am I supposed to figure it out?"

They said nothing.

We floated on.

Then it came.

The Kraken.

Translating its appearance as anything else would be pointless. It had tentacles that shot out of the middle of the sun-glittered Brute in massive waves. Even a half mile out, those suction cups were unmistakable, and their morphing color clear. And the waves, I could feel them. They rippled across the water, like throwing a rock face into a still pond.

The ripple started slowly but quickly bubbled into a massive wave.

"Kira!" I cried.

My second half appeared, grabbing the ship and pulling it toward the shore as the water crashed into the boat. And it was real water.

Let there be no mistake. I was soaked to the bone when it hit, and the ship almost rolled, and I choked as my lungs rejected it. Kline whined and jumped onto dead air, trying to pull me up while Sina dragged a lurvine out of the water.

Oh, yes. Real water.

And so this kraken was a real kraken.

Because it created those real waves.

And so when it flew forward, slapping the water with tentacles before a huge head emerged and submerged in our direction, creating another wave, I yelled, "Kira, to the shore!"

Kira acted, pulling us with savage ferocity, shooting the boat straight onto the shore. The wood hit the rocky beach with a scraping jolt, and we fell to the side of the ship, clambering up on the wet and slippery floor. But we made it.

I had never been so grateful to see dry land.

I felt like a castaway, drifting off after a shipwreck for days, only to land on a beach.

My heart fluttered, and I tried to jump onto shore, but Kyro grabbed Kline and me and threw me back into the boat while Trant restrained the lurvine with strange magic.

"Fuck you!" Kyro yelled, jabbing his finger at Reta. "I’m not playing this game."

He whipped his hand, and suddenly, a barrier shot out toward the wave. It was a real wave, alright. It hit the barrier with a crash, but the terrifying part, the part that chilled me to the bone and made me fear Areswood more than anything else I had seen, was the fog.

The fog. That lingering, stretching foam that seemed so distant appeared out of nowhere, curling like smoke after Kyro cut through it. Then, Kyro turned to the shore, which was still vibrant, beautiful, and sunny, and waved his hand. The shore exploded, leaving nothing but fog—

—and water.

The shore I almost jumped on was water, and below that water, within my soul mist, was a plant.

A smaller kraken of a plant that writhed with tentacles and disappeared into the water as soon I directed my Soul Sight onto it as if it knew it was caught and was trying to disappear.

I crashed onto the ground, trying to process what just happened—

—wondering why I hadn’t been prepared for something so obvious.

Why didn’t anyone write about this? I screamed within. People survived it. Dozens of them!

But then I remembered a particular section of what was written. It answered the mystery of why so little was recorded about Misty Row, but the section also, now that I was living it, warned me better than any myth or legend could. It read:

Jacksmore the Little tied the men to the boats on the voyage, and many of them drowned from capsizing. They thought he was mad, but those nearest him praised their captain as the sanest of all. Many Rallans believed he sacrificed his troops so the few could survive, so they kept their distance upon his return, scorning him behind closed doors and banishing him to a life of solitude. His troops were scorned, too, and many were forced onto boasts—screaming—involuntary guides for the trip to Aelium. Yet neither they nor their parties returned, and soon, they were all dead, leaving only Jacksmore the Little with the knowledge of the mist and the dangers from within. That knowledge stayed with him alone, and no one dared to approach. Only a single boy was able to coax knowledge out of him before Jacksmore took his last voyage north.

That boy was no other than Trantam the Great, then only twelve years of age, unaware of what life had in store or how much Jacksmore the Little’s words would have on him. But he did understand later. When asked what Jacksmore the Little told him that allowed him to survive two trips to Aelium, he recounted the words with reverence:

"Link arms and cut the mist," he said. "That’s the only way you’ll survive."

I blinked back to the real world, feeling sick to my stomach. Those words were enough. Right then, lost in the mist, looking into the water that I almost fell into thinking it was dry land, restrained in boats to prevent us from killing ourselves and others, I finally understood that Jacksmore the Little gave us the best advice that I could only begin to fathom.

The shore reappeared along with the glittering sunlight, but it was suddenly ten feet away. But who knows how far it really was.

I pulled out my bow and summoned a thin arrow and shot it toward the shore—cutting the mist.

It shot out like a shining star, shifting the world with it. The atmosphere warped as it punctured a hole through the mist, allowing me to see the real shore. It was in the exact location that the fake one was.

"Cut the mist…" I whispered. It’s what Kyro did—and it was what we would need to do to survive. I turned to Kline and the rest of the party. "Kyro… Reta, Trant. Get on my shoulders. Kael lead the pack. I need you all to touch me at all times. Sina, Kline, and I are riding on you. Do not stop touching for any reason. If we’re attacked, I’m shooting. Kyro’s stabbing with spears. Or Kline’s cutting it with claws. Ranged attacks only."

Reta huffed like a vindicated diva, flicking her hair on my shoulder. Kyro sneered but sat on my other shoulder, and Trant sat on my lap.

Sina and Kael gave me looks of bitterness when I treated them as liabilities rather than warriors.

I bared my teeth at them. "This isn’t a joke, got it?"

Another wave of water hit Kyro’s barrier.

"We’re God knows how many miles into this bullshit, and none of us are ready for it. So, as of this moment, we’re going to hit the shore, I’m going to grab the first plants I can see, and we’re heading back. And since we can’t trust our eyes or ears, we’re going to trust our touch. Because I can guarantee that in five minutes we’re all going to look like monsters or some other bullshit and if you’re not touching, you’ll freak out."

My mind flashed back to the scene I witnessed earlier, the terror that followed when half the stranga shifted into the form of their natural enemies, only to get gored to death from their own. And that was indeed crude compared to the tricks that plant used to lure me into the water.

"So shut up, stick together, and keep focused," I ordered. "If any of you act tough and run off, for any reason, no matter how justified you think it is—I will punish you. And believe me this—it’s gonna be savage."