The Journey

The events of the past few years leading up to our contact with the Gloam Tree had been both incredible and painful for me.

Alongside making different devices in collaboration with Danny, and discovering more and more about his own abilities and my potential to manipulate more forms of magic, I pursued my own project. Failure after failure on researching the Mosaic Gates, especially since I had thus far been unable to even visit Boundary City to examine them, had filled me with more guilt as time went on.

I felt guilty because, on some level, I was happy that I was failing.

For as long as I was simply unable to replicate, reliably, the form of magic that allowed the Mosaic Gates to connect the domains, everything else I could possibly do with that information remained an impossible dream. As long as it was an impossible dream, there was little chance I’d have to say goodbye to Danny anytime soon. There was little chance I would be able to give him the option to go home. I could avoid giving him that choice, because it did not exist, and he would remain here.

He would remain in danger, he would remain separated from his family, he would remain in a world he was never supposed to be in.

But he would remain here with me.

If I had success with my project, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I’d present the choice to him. I’d been working so hard for so many years to give him exactly that choice, and I still wanted to remove him from the danger of this place.

I’d watched him heal others, and a few times he only barely avoided being hurt himself in the process. In order to improve his ability to survive, he risked his own safety.

And we spent time together. So much time together, though most of it was spent working with magic, which both of us loved. We shared that love. We’d been continuously sharing our successes and setbacks, exploring new ideas and telling each other all about our different lives.

There was one moon, several years ago, where Danny out of the blue gave me several gifts he’d made himself, calling them late birthmoon gifts. He couldn’t create magic devices with much of any proficiency at the time, but he’d decided to secretly learn to meticulously carve and decorate bones. He’d used that skill to make for me a set of five bracelets, each with different carvings and affinities presented in nullifying boxes. Each of the bones were high quality, and while I knew the sources of a few of them I realized he’d specifically gone out of his way to request the others from someone else, probably using his own earnings to do so. If he’d sold the bracelets as they were people with the same affinities as the bracelets would have paid a good price for their craftsmanship, as it could be difficult to work with organic materials that intricately and maintain their ability to store magic or become magic devices, but he specifically made the first set as a gift for me.

I’d found ways to make devices from all five bracelets now, and each was tucked away until such time that I needed them. One of them was in my vest pocket, a particularly potent time magic device that Fridle had helped me to create.

At another time, Danny and I had spent hour after hour putting together plans for a particular set of devices for the hunters, who’d recently returned from hunt with several wounded. At the time they’d been repeatedly facing a pack of monsters of a species that was intended to live farther away from Boundary City, out in the further darkness, but just as had been happening with monsters since I was a little girl they’d slowly migrated closer to Kogen.

The problem with these particular monsters, vylsen, was that they were entirely, utterly silent and did not at all glow. Their wind magic suppressed any sounds they made the moment they began a hunt, and without any significant visual or auditory warning our hunting party would be swarmed with long-fanged beasts half their weight but double their heights.

After spending several nights going back and forth on ideas, we eventually settled for the simple but expensive solution; outfit several of the hunters each with glasses that allowed them to see different wavelengths of light and allowed them to see things like heat. A particular reason we favored this idea is that the usefulness of the glasses would continue even if they managed to disrupt the population of vylsen, and the hunters continued to use them to help them notice and track prey and dangerous monsters.

Regardless of our conclusion, though, I knew neither Danny nor I were upset or bored by the amount of time we spent working the problem. Fridle and Itelber enjoyed working with magic devices and had their own passion for the craft, but the degree to which Danny and I could focus, and get entirely absorbed in conversation about magic devices- and even other tangentially related subjects- was something I’d never experienced before.

I could talk to Danny for hours, about nearly anything.

He was, at the very least, my best friend. I was happy to have him here with me for every moment of the past few years.

But he doesn’t belong here.

Right?

“This was the right place after all. I’m glad.” A distant voice reached me, imparting me with a growing passivity. I could hardly sense my body, and had no desire to speak, respond, or think. I simply listened to the words as they came. “You value those around you, as they do you. Continue to protect those important to you. Use what you have learned to do so, and keep learning. You are capable of what you desire to do.”

I had heard a voice in the pit of my mind, then I slowly started to realize that I’d been standing still for a while, now leaning against the tree a bit. Beside me, Danny was still entranced and practically unmoving, his skin aglow and a content smile on his face. Biarn and the other hunters wasted no time gently questioning me when my eyes finally turned to meet them.

“Loali, you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“You were both zoned out for a while.” Illose said. “We were concerned and weren’t sure if we should move you. What happened?”

“It was just soothing.” I wasn’t sure what else to say, as I didn’t want to repeat the words the Gloam Tree had said to me, and the moments of reflection I’d had were personal. I felt like I understood the words I’d heard fairly well, but I wanted some time to think them over on my own. I wasn’t sure if Danny also heard the Gloam Tree speak, or if perhaps it might’ve said different things to each of us.

“Danny and the tree are both emitting healing magic.” I recognized the perfusion of magic somehow in the air after Illose’s comment. “It is rather soothing, but I’m concerned.”

“Do you have any idea why they’re doing this, and if Danny’s okay? He still isn’t hearing us.” Biarn asked.

Their concerns seemed fair to me, but as I continued to observe the magic they were sharing in the air I came to a reassuring conclusion.

“I’m not sure why they’re doing this, but given the amount of healing magic around us I think Danny should be fine. He should naturally begin to reabsorb about as much as he’s released, and most of this is from the Gloam Tree anyway.” Danny certainly didn’t have enough magic in his body to saturate the air like this, as it would take many people letting out large amounts of magic to replicate this effect in any other circumstance, so it stood to reason that Danny wasn’t the source of most of this magic.

I finally removed my hand from the Gloam Tree, and for a few moments I watched Danny’s contented face and shining skin. From what I could tell, he wasn’t being harmed in any way, and given the chance that he may be experiencing something similar to what I had I didn’t want to try and force his attention. Instead, the moment I thought about Eir on his head her tiny face poked out from the puff on top of his loosely tied-back hair.

“What do you think about all this?” I didn’t expect an answer from her, but it couldn’t hurt to ask. I was aware that she likely knew things about the Gloam Tree that I didn’t.

Though she didn’t answer my question with the turn of her head she drew me, along with everyone else, to look towards the trees behind us.

“Are those..?”

“Shh,” the question I’d started to ask was cut off by Illose, who like everyone else was suddenly focused on the blinking dots and motion coming towards us. It was easy to tell that not all of the light was coming from the trees themselves or small insects; each of us recognized that larger beasts, likely monsters, were moving around us.

Are they drawing the monsters here? Are they doing it on purpose for some reason?

The questions, which some of the others likely shared, led me to slowly look at Eir again, who appeared calm as she moved down from Danny’s head to the ground.