Aliandra The mood upon the glowing, golden barrier disk grew increasingly quieter and more somber as Ali flew them northward, trag the burnished silver ribbon of the Myrin River by the dying embers of the setting sun. Ali shivered and huddled a little closer to Lira, a vain attempt to shield herself from the biting chill of the wind, and cast yet another worried g Malika and Mato. They sat together, as far as they could get from everyone else on the crowded barrier disk, trying to avoid iing ah the blight festering within their bodies.

  How are we going to get in? Will Eliyen even help us? What if the elixir doesn’t work? Will the Town Watch find us?

  Ali’s thoughts ed endlessly, her mind refusing to give her a. She had tried using two barriers to ferry everyone back – a way to separate Mato and Malika from the others – but she had found she didn’t quite have the carrying capacity in that figuration. What should we do? she thought, feeling overwhelmed. The Neancer was ing for Myrin’s Keep – and he was bringing a tsunami of blight and undead with him. Her friends were blighted, and they all were unwele outws in town.

  “Take care of the things right in front of you first.” Her father’s words sprang to mind, a memory from long ago – a different world. She had been struggling with a new project at the time, battling with stress over the deadlines, and feeling overwhelmed by the sheer plexity of the task. He had not uood her research wheried expining it to him – only her mom had that kind of experience – but that hadn’t mattered to him. He had told her to focus on the parts of the problem she could see, to take care of the things she knew how to do first, and theask would get smaller, and the path forward would bee clearer. Then, he had hugged her and told her he roud of her.

  She could almost feel that hug. Almost, after all this time… Small steps to scale a mountain, she thought. Thanks, Dad.

  The first, and most pressing task was to get back to town and find a cure for the blight so that Mato and Malika did not die.

  And then, we must help Lira. She g her sitting quietly beside her on the flying magical barrier clutg her precious as. Their quest had teically been successful, but five tiny as were all that was left of the magnifice of the Lirasian Forest, and Lira’s home. Although she wore a smile, Ali felt sad for her. She’s lost everything. The problems with the Town Watch, what to do about her css, and the fact that they’d all been branded as outws could wait for now.

  When she finally made out the stark gray of the looming battlements proteg Myrin’s Keep by the draic eyes of her minions, it was fully dark, a clear night with a brilliant moon. The stars twinkled down upon the world, oblivious to the worries that swirled endlessly in Ali’s brain.

  “Let’s circle around,” suggested, pointing to the northwest. “There should be fewer sentries away from the Torian border.”

  “Ok,” Ali said, nodding, knowing ’s sharp eyes would pick out the gesture easily even in the darkness. She flew them past the walls, keeping a healthy distao ceal the glow of her magi observant eyes, before looping back around and approag the town from the angle suggested. She put them down in a small mountain pass and banished her glowing barrier.

  “No more light,” whispered. “Follow me.”

  They followed on foot as he led them down the mountain, sneaking into the towhe bcksmith quarters where there were her battlements nor obvious guards. Ali held Lira’s hand, trying to step and breathe quietly as they wound their way through dark and dirty alleyways, relying on ’s eyes to keep them safe from muggers, assassins, and potholes – Ali gri her own thought. Silly. She kept cyg through the eyes of her minions – the Kobolds and tiny dragos, adapted for hunting in the dark – as she maintained her vigince.

  But no thugs sprang from the shadows to attack them, nor did they enter a single soul, reag their destination in good time. Despite the te hour, a light shone from the window at Eliyen’s home, and so they approached and knocked on the door.

  “Oh, hi Aliandra, you’re visiting rather te,” Eliyeed her. “e on in, it’s cold out.”

  “Thank you,” Ali answered, so relieved by her friendly greeting, her knees almost buckled, and she had to catch her bance against the doorpost. Had they not heard? She ehe house with her friends, but as soon as Lira stepped across the threshold, Eliyen’s eyes grew wide as saucers, and she scrambled to bow low to the ground.

  “Great Mother of the Deep Woods,” she whispered in Elvish, her shaky voice filled with awe and reverence. “I… apologize for my humble home. If I had but a little foreknowledge of your visit, I would have made better arras.”

  “Nonsense, child, please raise your eyes,” Lira answered, smiling at the aging Wood Elf. “Yarden is beautiful.”

  “I… oh… thank you,” Eliyen stammered, her cheeks flushed from Lira’s pliment. She lifted her head and smoothed her dress with her palms. “May I ask what I do for you at su hour?” She g each of them, hesitating when she saw Mato and Malika hanging back by the door.

  “They tracted the undead blight,” Ali expined. “Would your elixirs be able to cure them?”

  “Yes, of course,” she answered. “But I’m out of Living Essence. I’m sorry, it’s quite difficult to acquire, and the mert caravan from Southport has been deyed.”

  “Here,” Malika said, retrieving a couple of essences from her ste and pg them oable.

  “I only need a fra for each potion,” Eliyen said. “This is too much.”

  “I think yoing to he rest pretty soon after what we saw today,” Ali said. Certainly, the blight had cut a rge swathe across the entire kingdom from where Lira had said she was captured to the boundary just south of Myrin’s Keep.

  Eliyen’s eyebrows arched in wordless query at Ali’s grim tone.

  “Yes, keep it for now,” Malika answered, and added, “We settle up ter.” She proceeded to expin what they had seen orip to the south while Eliyen summoned Basil, readied her tools, and wielded her magic.

  Basil… Ali gnced over at the ear boy helping Eliyen. She was happy to see he had earned a few more levels and seemed to have unblocked his css growth. But it was her experieh her wildflarden – now ashes – that she recalled. Basil had a unique css, as far as she knew, and he had been able to germihe flowers in her domain, somehow using her domain magic to accelerate the process greatly.

  Eliyen carefully measured out several vials of the glowing green Elixir of Vitality Rejuvenation, and she handed one eaato and Malika, instrug Basil to store the rest for ter.

  “May I see the as?” Eliyen had the air of someo knowing if what she was asking would be terribly offensive, a couldn’t help herself out of sheer burning curiosity.

  Lira tentatively opened her hands, showireasure. Five as led on her palms, each of them with a brilliant green kernel of potent mana inside each.

  “You restore your domain with just these?” Eliyen asked, obviously unwilling to touething so precious to the a Dryad.

  “It will take several hundred years, but yes,” Lira said, looking at her as.

  “Why so long? ’t you just grow them with yic?” Mato asked. He was already lookier, the ugly bots of death magic dissipating from his body as the potent elixir did its work.

  “For a normal tree, yes, and if I were still strong enough,” Lira answered. She had a kind, gentle look on her fad smiled at Mato the way Ali remembered her mother had smiled at her when she was expining things to her as a child. “But these trees will create my domain and grow attached to my domain. If I draw the amount of mana required to grow them, I will starve them. It is best to let them germiurally and wait.”

  “I have a different suggestion,” Ali said. She admired Lira’s patience, but she wasn’t about to let her speuries to recover if there was a more effit solution sitting right here in the room. She paused, suddenly a little unfortable to have everyone’s attention.

  “Basil has a skill that use my domain magic to germis,” Ali tinued. Indeed, his skill had gently woven her domain mana into the wildflowers, linking them to her domain and using its mana to germinate and grow them. “If we germihe as in my domain, you use your mana to accelerate their growth and then cim them afterward like you cimed the oak?”

  “I… well, I never imagined… you truly do this, young man?” Lira asked, staring ily at Basil, making him shift unfortably in his seat.

  “Y… yes, my dy,” he answered, clearly not knowing how to address the a Dryad, but he rallied, colleg his emotions, and tinued. “I bring sur seeds and demonstrate the process for you before you decide to trust me with one of your as.”

  “What is your name, boy?” Lira asked, rexing visibly at Basil’s suggestion. Ali had to admire how perceptive he had been, Lira clearly did not want to take any risks with the only as she had.

  “Basil, my dy,” he answered.

  “You may call me Lira,” she told him, including Eliyen in her gaze. “I do not hold much sto titles uhey are necessary.”

  ***

  Ali watched curiously as Basil k in the dirt beside Lira’s cimed oak. She was not the only one, Eliyen and Lira both stood quietly in the dim light of the wisps in the cavern above the Grand Library staring with rapt attention as the boy gently phe seeds in the ground and began to weave his subtle magic.

  Her Are Insight had grown substantially sihe first time she had watched him pnt flowers in her domain, and this time she could see the tiny ribbons of his nature mana reag out, nudging the powerful magic of the two synergized and interwoven domains – hers and Lira’s – into the ground and the seeds he had pnted. It was a subtle magiflueng, encing, rather than forceful, and slowly she saw the flows open, and small leaves breaking through the ground.

  “Beautiful,” Lira excimed, g her haedly, and then her mana surged, and the pnts Basil had germiretched, elongated, and thrust out from the soil, opening into a beautiful patch of blooming Mystic Bluebells.

  Lira walked up to him and offered him a single a, her hand trembling visibly as he reached for it. The as were clearly worth more than life to her, and Ali couldn’t imagine how hard it must have been for her to let one go. But Basil demonstrated his perceptive nature once more, treating the a with as much resped care as Lira had done.

  Gently, he pced it in a hole he edge of Ali and Lira’s merged domains and summoned his magic, bending the structure subtly to germinate life. Beh the soil, the kernel of nature mana within the a flickered as Basil’s skill ected the domain mana to it, and Lira gasped. But the flicker grew, shining brighter and brighter as it fed on the mana Basil offered and he coaxed it to grow. The mana stretched and swelled upward, and the soil broke as a tiny stem emerged, and a pair of leaves opeoward the cavern roof.

  Ali’s notification chime sounded, and her Grimoire maed by itself, glowing quietly, receptive and waiting.

  Variant pleted, but the imprint is full. Make space or select a neter.

  She wi the sudde led behind her eyes. She had expected this, based on how she had learhe wildflowers from Basil germinating them in her domain, but she hadn’t beeain it would work with the as. Whatever magic was required to grow the Lirasian Oak seedling was vast, and her Grimoire required more space. Fortunately, her destructive jaunt through the jungle had earned her several new skill levels for her Grimoire of Summoning, so she selected an open chapter and watched ily, heart throbbing against the base of her throat as the book rearraself te the neter in.

  Variant: Lirasian Oak added to Imprint: Tree.

  Yes! It worked! A bright surge of mana drew her attention to Lira, and she watched in fasation as the Dryad magic drew heavily from her domain, causing it to dim noticeably as the mana poured into the tiny seedling.

  “Step back just a bit, dear,” Lira instructed, and Basil quickly took two steps away from the oak seedling. For a moment, nothing happened, but suddenly the seedling exploded into rapid growth, leaves appeared, and the stem thied and stretched, reag upward as it grew, oer, then two, and surged beyond. Ali’s Grimoire responded in a sympathetic frenzy of magic, thousands upon thousands of tiny magical runes f and inscribing themselves upon rapidly maing new pages.

  She gasped softly and bit her lip. It had never reacted like this before.

  And still, Lira eled her magic, growing the tree rger and rger, until it towered vastly rger than the white oak Ali had gifted her. When she finally stopped, Lira’s domain was a dimly glowing shadow of its former brilliance, but the tree towered up into the air, matg the enormous trunks that held up the cavern but filled with life instead of bed and dead.

  Lirasian Oak – Tree – level 37 (Nature)

  Ali could feel the giant tree drawing heavily from her domain mana, drawing it up into the trunk in a powerful torrent that fed the brilliantly shining core of green within it. As she watched, the mana grew brighter and brighter, shooting up through the branches and out of the leaves as the tree established itself as part of her domain, pulsing with vitality and life. Within just a few mihe tree begaing an enormous amount of nature affinity mana feeding bato the domains, and reinf them as Lira’s domain recovered its power, now vastly expanded in size by the tree.

  She braced herself against the anticipated dungee as the domain bloomed outward, but the structure of her domain adapted to Lira’s automatically, as if ag out her i without her needing to force it, riding the wave of new nature affinity mana gushing from the oak. So much so, in fact, that her domain began to shift out of bance. Quickly, she paged through her Grimoire and summoned several Spore Spreaders, sending them out to pnt her are Glo mushrooms. She would need so many of them to supplement the vast influx of nature mana and provide the matg are she needed for her domain’s structure.

  “e on, Basil,” Lira cried, taking his hand and leading him out to a new spot like aed child showing a friend a new discovery. She handed him a sed a and suggested a new spot for the sed tree, suffitly far from the first, but close enough to be supported by the expanded domain mana. Suddenly, she raised his right hand to her lips and kissed his knuckles. “These hands! Basil – thank you, thank you, thank you!”

  Ali smiled, deeply moved to see Lira’s joy.

  For his part, Basil turned as pink as a freshly blooming rose, spluttering. “My… p-p-pleasure!”

  ***

  “You must cultivate this boy’s magic,” Lira said, walking beside Eliyen as Ali led them all dowairs into the library. “I see your mana with him, and as his mentor, you should know that his skill is extraordinary.”

  Still somewhat awkward around the Dryad, Eliyen nodded, cautiously attentive, but she seemed to be justifiably proud of her protégé who had just helped Lira secure her domain and forest with five enormous magical oak trees. The st five ience. Basil, for his part, had excitedly shared that he had gaihree css levels for his efforts.

  Ali tinued desding the stairs past the first floor and onward down to the bottom, the kernel of ahat had e to her when her Grimoire first recorded the Lirasian Oak slowly solidifying in her mind. Her friends intuited something when she passed the nding for the first level, but thoughtfully chose not to disturb her ption.

  When she reached the bottom level, she left Lira chatting away with Eliyen and stepped into the ter of the atrium, gng upward at the floating barrier lights she had pced so far above. Lira was expining to the Wood Elf that she inteo wait for the oaks to produew as, and then she would slowly expand the forest oree at a time, provided Ali allowed her the space to do so.

  She’s so siderate, Ali thought, not surprised to hear that Lira would limit herself just so that she was not a burden. But this was the core of Ali’s surprise for her. She wao do something for Lira, to show her that she no longer o suffer the way she had when they nded in the middle of the blighted forest.

  Just abht, she thought, gauging the height, and paring it to the size of the oaks Lira had grown above. The trunks were about six meters in diameter, so she wielded her Domain Mastery, pulverizing the fgstones where the bone spire had oood, making a circle rge enough to aodate the tree, pung through the library foundations and into the rocky grouh.

  Opening her Grimoire, she began to wield her magic. Her mana flowed into the imprint of the oak tree, causing her book to fre with the light of her green and gold mana. Glowing runes floated up off the pages as her book rapidly riffled through them, f a dense cascade of light and magic that poured into the area she had prepared. The rge imprint drew heavily from her mana pool, and she was grateful for the substantial increase to her pool that she had earned for adding the five trees above to her domain.

  As the runes built the structure of the tree, shooting up into the spacious atrium, a hush fell over the library. Ali was aware that everyone was looking at her, but she trated, keeping her focus on her magic as the structure branched out across the different levels of the library, reag upward the full hundred meters to almost reach the roof. With a final rush of mana, her giant summoning pleted, and the oak snapped ience, fully formed.

  Ali stared upward at the huge boughs and distant opy that spread out across the top level of the library in amazement. While it was her magic, the enormous tree dwarfed the scale of anything she had yet aplished.

  Lirasian Oak – Tree – level 38 (Nature)

  Within the oak, she could already see the giant torrent of nature mana surging upward to join with her domain.

  Lira gasped beside her; her eyes fixed on the enormous tree. “You didn’t tell me you could make them,” she said her voice hushed.

  “My Grimoire learn anything Basil grows in my domain. That’s at least part of the reason I asked him to help,” Ali admitted. She didn’t know any other herbalists besides Eliyen and Basil, but what she said was still true. She had hoped his magic would do the same thing it did with the wildflowers. And now she could grow Lira a proper forest.

  “Thank you, Aliandra. And all of you,” Lira said, still captivated by the ree filling the ter of the a library. “You have saved what I feared had been lost forever.” She reached out to y a hand reverently on the bark of the tree and studied Ali with a plex expression filling her eyes.

  “May I?”

  “Go ahead,” Ali answered, knowing that she would just fix the domain structure if they collided again.

  Immediately, a dense kernel of mana ignited in her core, like the as, only vastly more powerful. Her mana shot through her arm and into the tree, and she simply walked forward, her body naturally and seamlessly merging into the bark as her maed into the ter of the trunk.

  Ali braced herself, but once again, her mana seemed to know how to adjust to Lira now, and there was not even the slightest hint of pain or dungee.

  A vast torrent of mana poured down from the trees in the cavern above, merging with Lira’s rising mana within the giant oak, glowing intensely as their two domains once again overpped with synergistiergy. As the pilr of mana filled the tree, it began to grow. Already huge, the trunk widened rapidly as roots buckled ahe fgstones, causing them to crad splinter with loud reports before the tree crushed them and the burgeoning roots forced them aside. The branches spread wider into the spaces between the library floors and the opy pressed up against the rock of the ceiling.

  Ali’s Grimoire exploded with light and runes as it recorded the growth, fring with new magid runes as it filled page after page with inscriptions. She puffed out her cheeks, fighting to remain calm as the tremendous surge of mana raged through her like a silent thuorm. Still, Lira’s mana, her very essence, roared withiree, drawing in all of her domain, and Ali’s domain, darkening the entire surroundings as it trated the magic within the oak.

  Ali stared in reverential awe at the full power of her aunt’s magic, finally unleashed. With a giant crack the roof above the library shattered, and she hastily summoned several rge barriers using the remnants of her avaible domain mana to protect her friends from the falling boulders and a masonry.

  The tree exploded up and out of the top of the library and into the cavern above, its branches broadening and expanding till the opy brushed up against the cavern roof over two hundred meters above. When it finally ceased growing, the base of the tree must have measured more thay meters in diameter, with thick roots crag through the stone floor all around.

  A sudden fsh left Ali blinking as the mana trated withiree exploded outward, establishing a pulsing zone of both domains that easily enpassed the ey of the Grand Library Ara, and surely well beyond the walls and roof in all dires.

  Ali eechless. This was the biggest tree she had ever seen; bigger even than she could have imagined. And even more stunning was seeing the scale and power of Lira’s magic.

  “I think I got a little carried away,” Lira said, grinning with childlike joy as she emerged from the trunk, alighting on the ruione floor.

  As her foot touched the stone, a vast gong-like sound echoed through her mind and through the entire library, she realized betedly, vibrating the very sto was a sound Ali had heard only a handful of times in her life.

  [Zone] Lirasian Oak has advao the sed tier.

  “What was that?” Basil breathed, clearly having heard the notification too.

  “That’s what happens when something reaches their css or species evolution,” Eliyen expined, but the calm in her voice was in stark terpoint to the astonishment on her face.

  Ali let out her held breath, grateful that this time the gong heralded good news.

  Variant pleted, but the imprint is full. Make space or select a neter.

  Again? Without hesitation, Ali selected a sed chapter, and her Grimoire tinued rec the extraordinary tree that stood majestically before her.

  Lirasian Oak – Elder Tree – level ??? (Nature)

  “It’s a three mark!” excimed.

  “When Thovir Emberfe reached his css evolution down in the fe, the ey of Dal’mohra heard the notification. The celebrations sted more than a week,” Ali said, deliberately choosing a happier story. The st time she had heard the gong had been the moment of her mother’s passing.

  “Wow,” Malika and Mato said together.

  Looking for something to do – to take her mind off her mencholy – Ali turned her attention to the broken and shattered stone around the tree and the rubble that had fallen from the roof.

  It’s all in my domain, so…

  She made the rock flow and stretch, creating a , low circur stoainer wall around the base of the mighty trunk, wider tharee, suitable for sitting on. She filled the space around the tree roots with blue mana grass and a few golden mushrooms and then finally dissolved the remaining rubble.

  “That looks nid ,” Mato said, grinning his approval.

  “Thanks, ’t have rubble in a library,” Ali said, even though there were still tons of piles of bone everywhere. As she finished her work and stepped back, the erratic green glow of a tiny nature wisp floated into the library through the doorway from the jungle cavern. It hovered momentarily, appearing almost shy, and then darted forward to circle the enormous tree, spiraling upwards and disappearing into the branches above. As she lost sight of it, another wisp floated into the library. And then another.

  “Look,” Ali whispered, hoping not to spook the skittish wisps.

  “That’s a good omen,” Eliyen smiled.

  “They like your mana,” Lira ughed.

  “Mine? Yours?”

  “Does it matter?”

  As they chuckled together, Mato’s eyes darted bad forth between them as if startled by their sudden synization.

  Ali tio watch the mesmerizing parade for several minutes. While it was never more than one or two at a time, the wisps kept floating by, drawn in by the density of the mana the tree was emitting. And it was still growing stronger. Eventually, she tore her gaze from the beautiful mana creatures.

  “Ok,” Ali said. “Time to finish the cavern.” She created a barrier and stepped on it, and then looked at Lira. “Would you like to e with me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I want to fill the cavern above with these,” she poi the giant tree. “Though perhaps not quite as big. I’m sure you could use more than just one.”

  “You would share that much space with me?”

  “Is that even a question? Of course,” she said with a grin. “Let’s go!”

  After removing the shattered stone roof of the library, Ali spent the few hours filling the cavern with trees. The giant Lirasian Oaks formed the upper opy of her forest, with the regur varieties spread out to form a middle opy. For the ground, she created several of her jungle creatures and released them into the area with orders to grow their pnts. Once fihe entire cavern was lit from above by the soft glow of the magical oak leaves, lending it a mystical green ambiance.

  Appropriate for a Dryad’s home. It was not her familiar Grove, and she missed her shrine, but with this domain, Lira would have a home, and she had restored her mana.

  Ali admired both the look of the forest, created with lots of insight and advice from Lira, and the rapidly accumuting mana that formed her domain. It’s a lot denser now with Lira’s presence. Will it be enough? What if the blight es here?

  She shivered.

  Alexander Gray

  Alexander frowned, studying the impossible notification as the sonorous gong sound slowly faded.

  [Zone] Lirasian Oak has advao the sed tier.

  This must be her doing. “Gah!” he yelled, pung one of his skeletons in frustration. “How is she still alive?” He had beeain that the wretched Dryad had succumbed to his blight. There was no way the adventurers he had seen were strong enough to heal it, and he had been looking forward to seeing the mayhem she would wreak on the miserable hovel of Myrin’s Keep when she reanimated as a three-mark zombie.

  But the notification clearly said ‘Lirasian Oak’. It had to have been her doing, however unlikely, and his pn to walk into a nicely decimated town now y in tatters.

  Oh well, I’ll just have to destroy the whole thing myself. But not until I get my hands on that dungeon, he reminded himself. Taking the town would be for his personal enjoyment, but he must have the dungeon first. Nevyn Eld was not oo tolerate failure.

  He had time, it was still a couple of days’ jouro Myrin’s Keep, and his blight and undead army was sure to be unstoppable.

  Slowly, his hands ched into fists, and he hissed, “Just wait, Myrin’s Keep. The reaper is ing for you all.” With his blight at his back, the city was sure to fall – and with that many new corpses at his disposal, he would put down that Dryad ond for all and take the dungeon as his prize.

  timewalk