An excited chirp can be heard, and I look up just in time to see Sen fluttering towards me like leaves in the wind. He circles my body before perching atop my head, his tiny arms wrap themselves around one of my pigtails.

  "You dryads sure are full of life…"

  "Come on, I can't deal with anymore of this!" Seraphine's voice draws my attention.

  Ann is clinging to her back like a tick. With a grunt, Seraphine throws the girl off of her, earning a displeased whine from the child.

  "Seraphine, I have one more request before we send you on your way."

  "I already know what you're gonna ask. I'm not so heartless that I'd make a child go all on their own. I'll take the girl with me."

  Relief floods me as Seraphine finally picks Ann up and rests her on her shoulders. The little girl looks surprised but wraps her arms around Seraphine's head.

  That’s when we feel the ground rumble. Together, we all look up to see a single, giant spirit lumbering towards us. It’s a brute of a man. The likes of which I’d never seen, but something about him feels eerily familiar.

  "Hey, Duriel! Over here, stupid!" Seraphine shouts, jumping up and down as she waves at him. Ann begins to wave too, and the giant spirit slowly begins to lumber over.

  "Duriel? Like Duriel, the Indomitable?" I gasp, and pull out Ethel’s grimoire as I begin flipping through the pages.

  "Yeah, how do you know him, kid?"

  "He was the first person in a hundred-year drought of warriors to reach the Abyssal Requiem! It’s said that he could wrestle a Death Knight to the ground with just his bare-hands. Who doesn’t know him?!"

  "Yep, that’s my husband."

  "What? No, Duriel, the Indomitable never got married! I’m looking at the family-tree right here."

  "We don’t like all those ceremonies so we did it on our own! Just the two of us," Seraphine announces, and holds her hand up to flash a ring around her finger. A moment later, Duriel scoops her up in his arms. Ann lets out an excited squeal as she takes to the sky, and Seraphine leaves a peck right on his cheek.

  "Well, I take it he’ll be going too?"

  "Yeah, the big guy here doesn’t talk much but he usually goes where I go. Not that I really want to go to that afterlife after I saw how Death was treating the girl…"

  "You saw that?"

  "Oh yeah, I…I hid the whole time. Sorry ‘bout that."

  "It’s fine, I would have too if I had a choice."

  "Hey, you did right by your family and this girl. I don’t know what you did back there, but you look out for your own. I got something for you, think of it as a reward," Seraphine shouts, and tosses two orbs down to me.

  I lurch forward, catching both of them. One is red, and the other is blue.

  Fire Elemental’s Soulgem

  Water Elemental’s Soulgem

  "Where did you even get these?..." I begin to ask, and Seraphine merely shrugs.

  "Wanted the kid to get in some real practice, and we ended up running into a couple of monsters. He said you liked collecting those things, and then he shoved them in his pockets." Seraphine nods to Clarence who rests against a nearby tree.

  "Of course he did…"

  "I nabbed them off of em’ when he wasn’t lookin’. They’re yours now!"

  I put the gems in my pocket, and then I call out to Ann.

  "Are you ready to go now?"

  "Will I get to see grandpa?"

  "You’ll get to see everyone you’ve ever known."

  "Everyone?..." Ann asks, as if what I was saying was simply too good to be true.

  "Everyone. If you’ve met them, then they’re certain to be there someday."

  "Even Valor?"

  The question catches me off guard. It was apparent their relationship went deeper than I originally thought. But… Valoria performed the art of Soulburn. It was unlikely that she would be in the Eternal Dream.

  "Of course, even Valor," I lie, and for the first time, Ann smiles at me.

  "I’m ready!" Ann says with that big smile.

  "Release," I whisper, raising my hand to set the spirits free.

  As Seraphine begins to fade, she turns to Clarence one last time who’s just barely awoken from a nap to see them off. "You have potential with fire. Don't be afraid of that flame of yours, and keep practicing. Soon enough you may even be..."

  But her spirit has already vanished, along with Ann's, and Duriel’s. Three small blue lights flutter into the sky like wayward stars.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  The sun dips low in the sky as the four of us stand together. Clarence's voice is low when he finally breaks it.

  "What now?"

  "Now we talk about where that ring took you."

  His eyes seem to hold an otherworldly glint now, and I can only imagine what it is he saw.

  He looks away for a moment before meeting my gaze once more.

  "It brought me to a place I can’t describe because there was no place left. It was like a smear of light across the dark, like someone had tried to paint over reality with fire and they forgot to stop. Above me, the sky wasn’t a sky. It was teeth. Giant, endless teeth, biting into any world they could find. I watched them tear through planets, crack open their crusts, and devour the burning hearts within. And then I saw it. The one thing that stopped them. The death of a world. I saw the death of a world, and it was horrible, and it was amazing. It was over as soon as it began. In one flash, it fought back against those teeth. It was a beginning and an end all at once, and it was beautiful."

  Clarence’s voice trails off as he holds out his hand, a ball of flame springing to life in his palm. It dances wildly, appearing more like plasma than fire now.

  "I can do it too, can't I?... Not this mimicry that everyone likes to do, but I can really recreate it if I try hard enough, right? The core of a planet… I felt the heat from it. I was so far away, and it would have burned me to a crisp if I hadn’t cancelled it out with my own magic…"

  His expression sends a shiver down my spine, but I force myself to respond. "We're heading South, to the Ashenveil Sisterhood. They'll be able to tend to your wounds, and I'm sure that you'll be able to learn more about fire there. They're the ones to go to when it comes to pyromancy."

  A smile flitters across his face, the first I'd seen in far too long.

  "I'd like that a lot."

  We leave the desolation of the Withered Dreads behind us and enter the Veilwood Periphery.

  "Clara," Terra whispers, coming a step closer, "what kind of people are the Ashenveil's?"

  "They're...unique. A nomadic tribe that tends to keep to themselves, although many of them use pyromancy, just like Clarence does."

  "So do they live in the middle of a desert or something?" Clarence asks.

  "No, they used to live in a forest. But with a dungeon outbreak a few decades ago, their forest has all but been burnt to a crisp." Memories of scorched earth and smoke filled skies flicker through my mind, along with the acrid taste of ash on my tongue. "They're normally cool, tempered people. But ever since the dungeon's appearance, they're on edge and aren't very fond of outsiders..."

  As we leave Wraithwood-Hollow, I can’t help but look back. Our time here was short, but these three days felt like a lifetime of its own.

  I pull out the soulgems I’ve collected so far. It was probably time to cash them in. Deciding to start with the Fire Elemental, I pop it into my mouth. At first, it wasn't all that terrible. A smoky flavor lingers on my tongue. Then it grows mildly warm, but soon my eyes begin to water, and my face feels like it’s on fire. Sen tries to fan me with his leaf, but it does little to help. It takes a gust of wind conjured by Sen to finally soothe the heat ever so slightly, and I’m able to swallow it down.

  Next comes the Water Elemental's Soulgem. It’s watery and refreshing; each bite fills my mouth with the sensation of a flowing river, though there is no actual water. It is a strange feeling, but it does help cool me off, and I get it down with ease.

  Finally, all that’s left is the Aquifier's Soulgem. A being associated with luck and keeping wishes safe. I could only guess what flavor it would hold. Biting down on the golden gem, my mouth explodes with the sensation of stars bursting. Each bite encapsulates a wish that had come true somewhere far, far away. It was the perfect dessert. I smile as my eyes begin to slide shut and I feel myself begin to drift away.

  When I open them again, I’m in…

  "A labyrinth?"

  I look around, and although the place does feel familiar to me, I can’t quite place it. It was as if I were in the remnants of a forest?... I see Aetheria up ahead, and there’s two more figures standing beside her.

  "Weird," I whisper, and when I blink, they’re gone. A pair of hands clamp find their way over my eyes, and a voice lulls into my ear.

  "There you are, I’ve been waiting for you!" Aetheria’s voice cheers out, and when she pulls her hands away, we’re in my backyard.

  A plot has already been dug out, like someone had planned this in advance.

  "Go on, you have something to plant, don’t you? I feel this will be a good place for it."

  "Yeah, go on kid! It’s as good a place as any, isn’t it?"

  I turn on my heel, and I see Seraphine sitting on a treestump. Beside her is Duriel, who is far too big for his tree stump, and he simply lets out a grunt.

  "What are you two doing here?”

  "The two of them didn’t want to go to the Eternal Dream, so they came to this dream instead. Go ahead and plant that seed now, Clara."

  I reach into my pocket and pull out the Grand Tree’s seed. I place it in the hole, and dig into the soil with my hands. After it's covered, I pack the soil down, and Aetheria hands me a watering can. I water it, and wash my hands right after.

  Divine Aspect, Fragment of the Slumbering Tree bows before its new master

  I watch as a small sapling sprouts from the ground, and it bends with the coming breeze. It does almost look like a bow.

  Objective Completed: Lay Valoria, the Twisted Guardian to rest

  Reward: Divine Aspect, Fragment of the Slumbering Tree

  Active Effect, Lucid Dreaming: Control a target with the power of the Grand Tree. Their perception fractures for five seconds. Awake, yet asleep. The user can suggest one rule that will be enforced on the target

  It went down in rank from when I saw it last, but that was likely due to the tree being smaller now. Maybe this Divine Aspect would get stronger with time?

  Aetheria taps me on the shoulder, and when I turn to face her, we’re in my room.

  I plop down on my bed, instantly, and let out a sigh. It’s always nice to come back here.

  "Hey, were you talking to someone when I got here?"

  "Me? No, I was just waiting on you. I don’t know why, but I felt like I would see you in that labyrinth. It just felt right?"

  "I swear I saw you with a couple of people though."

  "Oh! You’re right, I was collecting Seraphine and Duriel."

  "No… they looked like-”

  Aetheria plops down right next to me, and in her hands is a tray full of body parts. This causes me to fall silent as i look upon them. They are all miniature, some are those of a doll, while others are fully anatomical, still beating with a life of their own by some strange, unknown magic.

  "We haven't seen each other in a long while, so I thought we could do something fun. Today we're going to be making a body for a lost soul!" Aetheria chimes, her voice more pleasant than usual.

  "Right into it, huh?" I ask, picking up a leg. It looks like one that fits a child's doll.

  "Right into it," Aetheria confirms. "Let us begin."