Jack, the ripper of farts, cantered into the aspen grove. Not only did the white trunks wink black eyes at them, but a few might have been fuzzy. Jack, the new tracking expert, had his head up and whiffling his horsey nostrils mightily.

  The fuzzy trees, not of Cottonwood variety, woke. Thing about fuzzy trees, they don’t know how to tree properly. Cursed by the skin of an off worlder who only cared about skins, they’d grown fur, fuzz, and tufts of personality. All these trapped into never moving never talking tree trunks. It made them a quaking monstrosity once they got big enough to reach and grab you.

  One has only a single acceptable recourse, which is don’t go by those trees. If you’re out of range, you’re safe. Now they were all in range the one rule they’d not thought to follow.

  Kriti ditched Par. Laural on Apple’s back dismounted more smoothly. Jack, the ugly horse with his nose in the ground doing his best impression of ultimate tracker mode, tossed his tail and then noticed the trees.

  At the sound of crackling and swaying, Par and Apple tossed their heads, got free of the hold on their reins, and bolted. Both of them away from the aspen grove and back towards the relative safety of the Ripple. Jack. Pinned back his ears and ran into the grove deeper.

  “Jack, shit!”

  Laural followed him while Kriti purse her lips. Nah that would be a nature issue.

  She walked after Apple calling after the animals.

  Laural knew her way around natural nature, naturally. This unnatural nature of a reskinned aspen grove with semi-sentient trees threw her for a loopdy-doop. She could hear them naturally, since they were sort of plants animals, but all the sounds they made were filtered like hearing truth from a conspiracy theorist. In fits in starts, bits and barks, she could make out burbling tree discussion.

  It might have been a discussion about horses or Fae or perhaps a particular interest in rain. Deep in the whispers, she heard a certain suggestion that they kill a few of the smaller trees on the South side of the grove but those got hushed the quickest. They talked the smallest.

  “Jack!” She said it out loud and it was far too loud of the grove.

  One of the trees muttered, “Jack be nimble Jack be quick. Jack’s going to die in a ditch.”

  She looked and saw a many eyed tree, blinking the large black whorls at her. The aspen leaned down to whisper to her, and green fur along it’s back standing up into hackles.

  “Dang.” It whispered. “Her.”

  She twisted her head trying to hear past the tree to “see” what it was trying to tell her.

  “Dannnnnggggg.”

  They were lucky to only have her and Jack in here. The trees sort of recognized her as a sort of like them. Not an off worlder they hated or any of the other things they hated. This was a communicator, a rarity they’d not immediately kill. Or she hoped that talking to her meant that. Maybe they intended to scare then kill her.

  Laural knew she lacked the protection of the laws of predictive assault for Chosen Ones, Protagonists, and Main Characters.

  The Laws of Predictive Assault are stated by World Bleeder cultists to be as follows:

  You never actually fight anything that’s outside your possible skillset. Not until you’re ready to have a massive power jump. Chosen Ones often need mentors sword fighting skills, hidden royalty powers, specialty items like scrolls, love triangles or love interests, dead parents, armies that will listen to children quickly, rogue groups that accept you into the coo coup (never forget the dove Chosen One fall), transformation sequences, the list of needs goes on and on of possible Predictive Assault fixers. Any passing deus ex machina will be there if the plot armored induvial gets in over their heads.

  Put more succinctly or pithily, if you prefer, by which I mean not bloating words counts for obvious reason to keep rambling on. Uh, succinctly: A Chosen One cannot encounter any element of antagonism that outweighs their ability to survive.

  Those laws don’t apply to an elf NPC trying to get back her new tracking horse. Unless she was secretly a protagonist, then plenty of plot armor would apply. But she didn’t have any weird special skills. Most elves communicated well with animals. And her parents, much to her regret, were both alive and the world a slightly worse place for it.

  She put out her hand, and ever so carefully the furred, fuzzy green aspen tree leaned down. She could see the other trees leaning in. All the aspen silenced for a moment in their eternal whispering to see what would happen between the two.

  The branches poked her back and the many eyes blinked. “Dang-her. Danger, eff. F. Elf.”

  In the distance, she heard the sound of a rampage unlike anything she could imagine. Trees being ripped up. Trunks shattering. Another bigger, badder (not the alternative batter, or perhaps defiantly the batterer) thing that struck fear in the place that held metaphorical hearts of semi-alive and trapped in an aspen grove beings.

  Because even the trees need tree laws these days. The Amazon is losing to AMZN.

  She didn’t need to see whatever was out there to hear the trees whispering and silencing. The sound outside of their grove gradually sweeping in and taking over any of the places she could hear. She didn’t want to alert whatever might be out there to her and Jack.

  “Where is the horse?” She asked the tree.

  It pointed her to a new way. She glanced back only once and saw in the great distance an enemy that swallowed trees and creatures alike. A great silence from the creature itself, but the shattering and breaking all around it. All she saw was bristling from its back, stripped aspen trees, their eyes returned to knots, the green and yellow fur falling off in hunks.

  A Niehs? She couldn’t be sure from this far away. But she knew if they saw it again, she’d not be so lucky to avoid notice a second time.

  Jack whinnied at her tossing his head and prodded a fallen body with his head. She didn’t bother thinking, chucked the body on the horse and walked away quietly leading Jack. They needed to get out of here now. Who knew where the boys went?

  She’d been lucky the trees had to deal with a bigger problem than her and that that bigger problem was heading in a new direction. No reason to piss of something that much larger than her.

  She found Kirit with both caught horses none the wiser about the massive enemy they had dodged. She could tell them. Or it could cause a panic and they’d stop looking for the others and flee to avoid the Niehs. Laural didn’t think they’d keep most of the horses alive and didn’t have the writs of cash all the Fae had on hand. Besides, she’d chosen to try and be more of a good person. She couldn’t tell either of those two about the risk. In fact, she couldn’t tell any of them. It was safer not to mention it.

  She didn’t know for sure it had been a Niehs. Maybe the trees would be ok.

  Kriti had both halters, the two horses and guarded the road zealously. She nodded towards the lump of silk.

  “What did the Jackass find?”

  “Not sure. Day might be able to help us with it so let’s go back to Ripple.”

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  They found Day with a bored expression sounded by the horses. “I’ve just been sitting here doing literally nothing and it’s really, really boring. Why did we think horse scent tracking was a great idea? Bet you didn’t find anything but sugar lumps.”

  Laural yoinked the dead body off Jack onto the ground. “This is totally a dead Fae.”

  “Is it Nettle?” Kriti kept back from the body. She liked killing but did not want to get told to clean up the mess. Such a waste not to have the kill on her list though.

  “Nope. She’s a woman.” Day tested her skin. “Not that long of dead. Fresh. The best for my more traditional necromancer associates.”

  “Did Jack follow the scent trail of a random Fae woman this whole time?” Kriti scowled.

  Laural checked with the horse. “He really thought it smelled like Nettle.”

  “I told you we needed a dog.” Kriti crossed her arms. “Who ever heard of a horse that smell tracked a person?”

  Laural ignored her tone. “Well, what now?”

  “We should go back and restart our search from the campsite,” Day suggested, “and never tell the guys about this. You know they’ll talk too much shit. As if they are always unerringly going in the right direction.”

  “By the hand of fate,” mocked the Kriti, raising her hands like the World Bleeder Cultists. Even as she said it, she noticed something in the corner of her eye. “What’s that?”

  All three of them went about the ground carefully on hands and knees, trying to discover whatever tracks might be around. But none of them were trackers so they had no idea what they were looking at. Just marking in dirt. Essentially it told them nothing. Because tracking is actually not that easy in a location you know nothing about.

  “Laural, this feels like a nature skillset.” Kriti inspected the dirt. She needed a training arc on tracking outside cities. Surely it wouldn’t’ be that bad of a crossover skill for her killing abilities.

  “I’m a city elf, not a druid. Day, you’re super traveler. Don’t you have a spell for this?”

  “Another brilliant none mage out there with their ‘practical magic ideas.’” Day made quotation finger marks around it. “Tracking a person using blood magic is nearly impossible for a necromancer. Don’t you know about the brain blood barrier?”

  “Are you about to dialogue info dump?” Laural glanced at the sun, but she’d already started Day talking and couldn’t take it back.

  “The brain blood barrier,” Day opened her treaties, “Nealy all sentients and some bipedal species have it. You can cast what you want around them, but inside or even on them is usually much more complicated. It’s one of magic’s few usually quite consistent precepts. Like anything though, there is exceptions. The blood brain barrier keeps magical parasites, dangers, and spells out of a sentient body. Most animals get these benefits also, but not as strongly as a human although still it’s trickier to do spells on them.”

  Kriti pointedly glanced at Sleepnir.

  “Not all spells though and people are always trying to get more milk or wool and killing their own animals during experimentation often. It’s an accepted part of magic and animal handling.

  “Not accepted to anyone who isn’t a necromancer,” Laural rolled her eyes. “But more common than most people believe despite how often it fails. To be clear what I do is communicate with, not perform spells on nature. I work cooperatively.”

  Kriti had gone back to the dead body of the Fae. Time to loot. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to have Day try to take anything from this body. But she had an easy distraction. “How does the blood brain barrier work with healers?”

  “Healers often have to give up entirely on traditional magics for this very reason. They can heal and do little else because they can only focus on breaking through the blood brain barriers and that takes its own specialty skillset.

  “It’s part of why people are afraid of me and consider me a necromancer. I can get around the blood brain barrier more effectively than any other type of magic. This is considered the “black” magic that is so terrifying because it I can simply enter then they are relatively limited on their protection spells in the first place.”

  “This seems overly complicated.” Kriti was talking to the corset strings as she pulled at them to get the inner pockets of the dress on the dead Fae woman. The woman’s face, oddly perfect and not quite Fae even with cosmetic surgery, clearly noted her as an off worlder. What had she been doing near Mooning Castle? It’s generally considered a dead quest area.

  “Don’t vampires and bards have mind magics?”

  “Yes, but that’s basic hypnosis and therefore about effect outside the brain. There is also a tiny hole in-between your eyes, some people think it’s the third eye, but it’s just an empty socket. If you focus illusions can get in through there.”

  Things Kriti found on the body: A pocket journal, not a diary clearly, because it didn’t have the floral cover but was bound in leather. Weapons that consisted of a few normal and useless daggers. The yellow green robes had a magical enhancement, but she needed Nettle’s skills to know what kind. A dragonfly hairpin that made her uncomfortable, so she left it. Then finally the kicker, a Summoner’s Guide to Getting Toppled. That ole scroll had been getting passed around by off worlders all the time.

  Kriti knew you could summon only the wrong thing with it. How bad depended on how much energy went onto the summoning. But without other power sources out here, it couldn’t have summoned anything massive. Not without more juice.

  “Day, I think you might want this dress. It’s got some sort of enhancement feature for magic.”

  This mercifully ended the lecture. Day clapped her hands. “We need Nettle to find out what it does. Can you help me get off this robe or is it a dress?”

  Kriti shrugged. The two of them scavenged the body while Laural pretended not to see it.

  Once they got it all done, Kriti, making sure they left the hairpin, finally recalled their exact same problem. Although a little dirtier, for having buried the body at Laural’s insistence.

  “So, how are we going to find the boys?”

  “Should we stay there and wait for them?”

  The sun sank and finally illuminated their problem. In the middle of the night, they could see the light and smell the smoke for miles. Carefully, and with lanterns ahead of them, the women traveled the path towards the lights moving in every direction.

  Eventually they heard it, the massive celebration. A huge party of satyrs, animals, women, men, trolls, and octopi-parasite mixes, even a blobby slime, all marching to the music. They were naked and dancing around with skipping steps. Lots of naked women and men all celebrating in explicably on their midnight route.

  All three women sighed. One of those events. An in-game special event. They could be based in Fae past events or just because an off worlder needed a party. Alternatively, a particular type of feast might be taking place. Those tended to be dangerous to none immortals and sometime to immortals too.

  Immunity to such things wasn’t so hard for three women together with responsibilities. And who knew the counterspell of communicating to one another.

  “Do we have to get them out of that?” Day squinted. “I don’t like interrupting magic like this. But we must and keep talking none stop for it to work.”

  Laural though insisted, but it wasn’t terribly hard to find the only clothed people in a cohort of mostly naked or disrobing figures. They were forced to continue speaking to avoid sliding into the mess of a spell, but luckily Laural could go alone by talking to herself and the horses or animals the whole time.

  Taking out the unnamed buckskin and the only cutting horse of the lot, Laural easily rounded up the star eyed men and heard them back to camp with promises that yes they’d be at the great pretty bonfire soon.

  Spoon spoke in a stupor manner. “I saw the most beautiful women I had ever seen. And the fire, the fire will be fun.”

  Kriti shook her head. “Can’t believe honeypots work so well still.”

  A horn sounded out and all three men eerily turned towards the sound, there eyes getting wider and more glazed over.

  They’d managed to cluster them near the Ripple and the mumbling had only just begun ot sound like normal words again.

  “The girls are calling us,” Bodi swayed back and forth. “They’re so nice.”

  Both men were staring at Bodi like he said something brilliant. Their heads nodded with shinning, lolling eyes.

  “Nope.” Laural brought the buckskin blocking them like herding cattle away from a cliff.

  “Naked women dancing around a fire in the middle of nowhere is an automatic nope. Don’t you know anything about blood sacrifices? Pied pipers? Fae deals in the satyrs gambling and gabbling about?”

  Day appealed to nothing much. The three men weaved around still under the spell intended only for males.

  “Nettle, you’re a Fae. Come back with us.”

  Spoon dragged himself over to join Bodi his eyes slowly blanking further, “We can make a deal then. Visit and have-“

  “Nope!” Laural shouted it so loudly that even the men flinched. “Enough talk! Stuff them in the caravan!”

  Both women leaped at her command. The Kriti neatly pushing Spoon into Bodi. They both collapsed over one another while Nettle stood in dismay, his eyes blinking frantically.

  Laural used her greater range to start on a scrambling Bodi with the horse cutting towards him, as Kriti threw herself onto Spoon. Before Bodi could even respond, Kriti touched him with a shallow cut.

  Leaving her bobbling foe, Laural trotted back and pulled open the caravan door, she yelled like a heaving chant, “Nope. Nope. Nope!”

  Kriti and Day tossed Bodi in on his head. Kriti’s poison slowed him temporarily. Day all to eager to help get the heaviest weight taken care of. She stuffed him in trying to get his feet to fit better.

  Kriti went back and started dragging the body of Spoon over. Laural dismounted and helped her. Together they “Noped!” him in.

  Nettle waveringly got to his feet shuffling along with only the guiding hand of the chiropractor. They locked him in after the other two.

  What great idiots.

  The women broke down camp and went off never looking back. The women kept up chattering to themselves merrily as the horses walked so they never heard a sound above their own voices. And if ever you wondered why those alone started talking to themselves so much, they need only listen for deep in the woods. Listen for the sounds of their death early and soon. Humanoids have always been talking together, living longer, and never going into the woods all alone with no voice to carry them back home.