Explorer of Edregon

"You look oddly smug," Shia said, narrowing her eyes at him as he walked out of the bedroom for breakfast. "…What did you do?"

"What, I'm not allowed to be pleased with myself or anything?" Vin shot back, not answering her question as he grabbed a plate of what looked like regular, non-monster meat sausages and helped himself to a few plump berries. Leave it to the elves to seem to have a near-endless supply of bacon and sausage every morning. Honestly, he didn't even know where they procured all their meat, and at this point, he was a little scared to ask.

Shia continued watching him as he sat down and began eating. Vin managed to remain stoic for a minute or two, but as Shia continued staring at him, he finally gave in.

"Alright, I finally learned my first useful spatial spell!" he admitted, desperate to get Shia's eyes off him. "…and I may or may not have used it to take your master's shimmerwing mattress with me…"

Shia blinked, clearly not having expected that answer. Thankfully, rather than get annoyed at him taking something that belonged to her master, she instead merely smirked and shook her head.

"You better hope he never finds a way to travel over to Edregon for real. If he does, you are going to have a rather bad time."

"Worth the risk," Vin said without hesitation. Sleeping on the shimmerwing mattress last night had been the greatest sleep of his life, and he swore he felt more rejuvenated than he had in years.

"I don't doubt it. I kinda wish I'd had the idea first," Shia grinned, finishing up her breakfast and stretching. "I had a productive night as well. I'm not quite there yet, but I've nearly put the finishing touches on my next spell. Another tier three."

"Another tier three?" Vin repeated, looking aghast. "Come on, you already have your tier four Living Giant! I don't even have a single tier three spell yet!"

"Maybe if you actually focused on a specific affinity instead of trying to collect them all you'd have one by now," she pointed out, raising an eyebrow. "Oh, I think I forgot to mention. I actually hit level 30 a little while ago and got my second Capstone. It's called One With Nature. Not only does it give me a power boost when I'm surrounded by plants, but I can better interact with them and even communicate with them, to a degree. Figured I should let you know before you saw me communing with a tree and got confused."

"You can actually talk to plants now?" Vin tried to picture Shia holding an in-depth conversation with a bush, and thought it was strange how normal the image seemed in his head.

"It's not talking so much as… reading them, I guess," she tried to explain. "It will make more sense when you see it."

"If you say so. Any idea where Alka is? We should probably head out sooner than later."

"Erik sent me a message just a bit ago saying she's waiting for us near the edge of the village. Apparently, after wrapping up her hunt, Alka headed to the Tree of Ancients and the two of them spent the night catching up. I hadn't realized they were so close."

"Alka did spend like three straight days hanging out with him the last time we were here," Vin shrugged. "And she is kinda like a magical beast herself at this point."

"Fair." Shia pruned Blossom for a few minutes while Vin finished eating, but it wasn't long before the two of them bid her master's house goodbye for a second time and headed off in search of Alka. Unsurprisingly, they found the Slayer standing before a group of panting elven warriors, looking at the sweating men and women with her glowing eyes narrowed.

"This is the best the Sacred Forest's Hunters can do? Come on, how do you expect to take down a Trunkback in single combat if you can't even land a scratch on me?!"

"Alka, our warriors train to fight in groups," Shia sighed, offering a quick Renewal to an elven man that had a nasty bruise on his face in what looked like the shape of a fist. "Not a lot of people would attempt taking on a Trunkback on their own."

"Precisely what I'm trying to fix," Alka argued.

"I think it's time we took our leave," Vin offered, ignoring the thankful sighs as he took Alka by the shoulder and steered her away from the village.

"Remember what I told you all to practice!" Alka shouted, causing the elves to jump as her head spun around a full one hundred and eighty degree while they walked away. "You never know when you'll need those skills!"

"These aren't your trainees, Alka. You shouldn't be so harsh on them." Shia frowned, jogging to catch back up to them. "Even the strongest branch will snap if you bend it too far."

"Are you trying to sound like your master, or Erik?" Alka snorted, causing Shia's face to heat up as she glared at the Slayer. "Either way, the 'wise old elder' bit doesn't work all that well until you're an actual elder."

"Alright, I think that's enough of that," Vin said, cutting in before things got out of control. "Come on guys, let's try and focus on the next fragment, okay? Remember, we're supposed to be taking a break from all the drama back at camp."

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"Fine," Alka said, staring ahead as they walked toward their next fragment. "…at what point do we stop calling it a camp and start calling it a town anyway?"

"Oh yeah, I guess I do keep thinking about it as camp still every now and again. Especially when we're away and I can't see all the progress that's been made with my own eyes. I don't know, maybe when the housing is all done it'll finally click?" Vin offered. "Can't say I've ever built a town before. Shia? Think we've hit official town designation?"

"Your people already have the outer wall and a structured leadership," she said after a moment, shrugging. "I'd say you could start calling it a town right now if you wanted. Just one without a lot going on within the walls."

"Edregon's most boring town," Alka muttered, snickering to herself. "We should put that up on a sign somewhere."

"Actually, the town is going to need a name," Vin pointed out, thinking about all the different 'welcome to ___' signs he'd seen over his many years of wandering around back on Earth. "I wonder if we're going to vote on one or if Spur is just going to make something up on the spot."

"It doesn't necessarily need one," Shia argued, gesturing behind them. "Our village doesn't have one after all, and we've done just fine for ourselves."

"Yeah, but you guys were isolated and tried to kill anyone who set foot in the Sacred Forest for thousands of years," Vin said, shaking his head. "We're already trying to build relations with our neighbors. We're going to need a town name."

"Spurtopia!" Alka said, her eyes flaring with mirth.

"For the love of God, never say that where Spur might hear you," Vin muttered. He didn't think the colonel would ever do something quite so idiotic, but it was probably better not to take their chances.

The three of them bounced potential names for the Earthers' new town back and forth as they walked through the Sacred Forest, careful to keep their eyes peeled for any fangers. Vin's personal favorites so far were 'Better Earth' and 'Earthville,' but he was a tad partial to his own suggestion of 'Earthopolis.'

They were so engrossed in their conversation in fact, that the end of the forest came as a surprise to them. One moment they were walking through a world of impossible trees of all shapes and sizes, and the next, the forest stopped.

Right up against a shimmering wall.

The three of them stood there for a moment, staring at the wall that perfectly covered the border to the next fragment. The wall seemed to be made of some slow moving, grey energy that looked surprisingly solid, and as best Vin could tell, it stretched to the right, to the left, and upwards, as far as the eye could see.

After a few seconds of silence, Alka leaned forward, tapping the wall with her warpick before either of them could stop her. Curiously, the motion elicited a loud, high-pitched noise, as if she were tapping against a chunk of glass. Seeing that the wall was solid, she raised her warpick and brought it down on the wall as hard as she could, recoiling back as she failed to make so much as a scratch and the force from striking the wall seemed to spread back through her body.

"Yepp, that's about as weird as Erik mentioned," she said, shaking out her warpick attachment as the two of them glanced at her. "Erik gave me a quick rundown on the strange wall of energy adjacent to this side of the Sacred Forest, but when he mentioned it wasn't inherently dangerous, I told him he should let it be a surprise. Figured you'd have more fun that way."

"There's no way this barrier encompasses the entire fragment," Shia muttered, her tongue flicking out as she investigated the magic. "…I have no idea how they did this, but it just tastes like general magic to me. I'm not picking up any affinities."

"So someone managed to put a shield up around at least a large portion of their fragment," Vin said, casting Sense Dimension. "It doesn't feel like they've messed with the fabric of reality at the very least."

"Should we go grab Lumel and have her teleport us through it then?" Alka asked, pulling out her new sword and attempting to drag it along the wall. Not even the mithral-darthsteel alloy seemed to have any effect on the shimmering wall.

"I'd rather not. She's in the middle of working on her prototype for letting other people access the Underside, and Shia mentioned how dangerous creating artifacts is."

"Dangerous is an understatement," Shia nodded. "We should leave her be for now if possible. I still have the tip of Alka's old sword. It let us cut through the magically reinforced glass of the floating library, so it seems the enchantment that helps it interact with magic is still at least partially there. Maybe we can just cut our way in?"

"Before we try and see if we can, maybe we should stop and think if we really should," Vin said, scratching his head. "These people clearly don't want to interact with the other fragments if they've gone to all the effort of summoning what might very well be a who knows how many miles-long barrier. Maybe we should leave them be."

"On the other hand, there's no telling what they're getting up to in there," Alka pointed out. "What if they're preparing for war, and when they finally drop the barrier, they've got a few thousand highly trained warriors ready to march into the Sacred Forest and raze it to the ground?"

Vin knew what was going to happen the moment Alka suggested what might be on the other side of the barrier, but he was still surprised by how quickly Shia whipped Blossom forward, urging her living staff to shift its branches around and causing the top half of Dancing Leaf to jut out of its tiny canopy.

"Worst case scenario, we apologize for disturbing them and show ourselves out," she said, glancing at the two of them to see if they agreed. Alka eagerly nodded for her to try cutting the barrier, but Vin hesitated. It wasn't like this was their first time breaking into somewhere, not after they'd snuck into the citadel under the cover of night. But they'd done that with the intention of helping Alka find her eternal rest and while looking for a way to contact Shia's master. This time, they were breaking in for more curiosity than anything.

Although…

He had to admit he was very curious as to what lay on the other side of that shimmering grey wall.

"Okay," he said, ignoring Alka's excited fist pump as he nodded toward Shia's staff. "There's always the chance they might be in trouble as well, right? One could argue we're just checking up on them. To make sure they're okay."

"Absolutely," Shia grinned, turning her focus to the wall as she lowered Blossom. "Just a quick peek behind the curtain."

The three of them held their collective breath as the enchanted, petrified elder wood tip scratched against the barrier.

And sliced right on through.