Fugitives

Fugitives

Two weeks after arriving in Amaryn, Alster was sitting in the herb garden drawing linkseed flowers when his past found him.

The flowers opened at almost precisely the same time each morning, which made them excellent subjects. They did not move unexpectedly, complain about the angle or ask whether he intended to make their petals look that large. Alster had filled half a page with careful studies when a familiar voice spoke behind him.

“Alster.”

He turned so quickly that the charcoal dragged a black line through his drawing.

Plant Master Felib Skan stood on the path with soil on both knees of his robes and a narrow pruning knife tucked behind one ear. Age had silvered his beard since Alster had last seen him, but it had done nothing to reduce the alert curiosity in his eyes.

“Felib.” Alster rose. “It is an honour to see you again.”

“Yes, yes. Welcome back. It has been a few years.” Felib embraced him briefly and then held him at arm’s length. “How is your father? Your mother? I still think about her sourfruit pies when recalling happy times with your family.”

“They are well. She does not bake as often now. My younger siblings are in their senior classes and will be leaving for academies soon, so she has taken work as a cook at the Juren estate.”

Felib’s smile softened. “Such hard workers, your parents.”

Alster closed his sketchbook. “How did you know I was here?”

“I did not. I was checking the Boritam. Magnificent specimens arrive all year, and somebody must ensure the younger researchers do not name everything after themselves.” Felib leaned closer. “Did you know that last week we received a plant that grows almost entirely upside down? Completely ignores negative gravitropism. Remarkable. The cellulose world never ceases to amaze me. A plant like that could have potential for understanding how to grow crops in previously incompatible places. Imagine a greenhouse with plants below and above.”

Alster grinned. He had forgotten how quickly Felib could turn one question into three unrelated lectures.

“Anyway,” Felib continued, “while I was pottering about, I found your label beside a magnificent purple-leafed vine winding around a tree in the Stone Haven garden.”

Alster’s smile disappeared.

“My label?”

“Unusual vine that responds to light. Not your finest botanical description, but unmistakably your handwriting.”

“I brought seeds,” Alster said. “I placed them in a research tray. There should not be a vine yet, and certainly not one climbing a tree.”

“Your label did say it grows quickly.”

“Not that quickly.”

Almost a month earlier, Kaelen had sent Alster ahead to the Vireilian Bloomlands. The others would follow by separate routes. Kaelen, Tajan and Blena were to take a small Solaryn vessel towards Signal Island, an unoccupied rocky outcrop off the Vireilian coast, then transfer to a local boat. To anyone watching, the first vessel would appear to be carrying a few friends on an unremarkable fishing trip rather than conducting inter-Crestrealm subterfuge.

 Drue would be flying Anderix to Virelia on a series of short flights as Dasher could not carry the weight of two for so long. Their route would avoid all major towns and cities and although it would take longer at least they would make it to Amaryn and be able to continue the investigation once they were all reunited. Drue had suggested calling for a team of Griffon Riders to bring them all at once but Kaelen erred on the side of caution thinking that six griffons, one of whom carried a Mechanum citizen might be noticed. Alster conceded that he was right and did not mind the quiet time alone in Amaryn and at the Medic Gardens while he waited. 

The gardens were part conservatory, part academy and part living archive. Healers and botanists worked side by side among specimens gathered from across Aethoria, studying how plants might mend and heal bodies and how some might cause great harm. Alster had spent long hours there as a student, sometimes studying plants and sometimes merely borrowing the quiet. Even the air encouraged concentration. It smelled of moist soil, leaf oil like the barle and olinar and unfortunately the faint tang of manure brought in from the farms to enhance growth.

Before Alster could ask Felib anything more, a groundskeeper hurried along the path.

“There you are,” she said. “Some young people have arrived asking for you. I left them at the main gate.”

“Why?”

“They arrived on a griffon.”

Alster smiled. “That will be Drue.”

“One of them is odd.”

“That will be Anderix.”

The groundskeeper considered him. “You have very distinctive friends.”

“You have no idea.”

He turned to Felib. “I will examine the vine tomorrow. And I’ll ask my mother to send you a pie.”

“Two pies,” Felib called after him. “One for research.”

Alster hurried towards the gate.

He had arranged for Drue to stable Dasher at a private farm west of the city, where wealthy hunters kept huts for expeditions they did not wish recorded in the public ledgers. The owner owed Alster’s father a favour involving a missing moonstalker and had agreed not to ask questions. Unfortunately, Drue had reached the Gardens before Alster’s message reached the farm.

Dasher stood outside the main gate snapping irritably at flies while two groundskeepers tried not to look impressed. Drue held the reins. Anderix stood beside him in his brown Mechanum coat, examining the mechanism for the irrigation system which relied entirely on water power and gears.  

“You were meant to go directly to the western farm,” Alster said.

“Wonderful to see you too,” Drue replied. “We did go there. The owner refused to admit us without you.”

“He said he would be discreet.”

“He was extremely discreet. He whispered his refusal and shut the gate.”

Anderix glanced back towards the road. “We have attracted attention.”

A pair of city Guardians had stopped at the next intersection. One pointed towards Dasher. The other was looking directly at Anderix.

“This way,” Alster said.

They led the griffon along the garden wall, but the lane narrowed between a drainage channel and a hedge of broad-leafed merra shrubs. The Guardians turned into the lane behind them.

“There is no other exit,” Drue murmured.

Alster removed a small crystal from a pouch at his waist side beneath his coat.

Anderix asked, “What does that do?”

“Accelerates stored growth.”

“How much?”

“Enough.”

He held the crystal tightly and pressed his hand against the base of the nearest shrub.

The merra leaves shuddered. Their stems thickened with a series of soft cracks, and soon wide green leaves expanded to cover them and the wall they were learning on. Leaves broadened until each was the size of a shield. Within a short time the hedge leaves had swallowed Dasher’s folded wings and hidden all three men beneath a dense green canopy.

The Guardians passed on the other side of the wall and its healthy foliage. “Are you sure you saw a griffon?” One asked then he complained about the smell of griffons. The other suggested that everything in Amaryn smelled of plants, which did not answer the complaint but carried them beyond the lane.

Anderix released the crystal. The merra shrub sagged.

Its swollen leaves darkened at the edges. One by one, they folded towards the earth.

Drue knelt and touched a stem. “You killed it.”

“I consumed several years of stored energy in seconds,” Alster said quietly. “Its a horrible thing to do to an innocent plant but it was necessary and the result was unavoidable.”

They delivered Dasher to the private farm and hid Anderix in a former gardener’s hut that Alster had rented beyond the western edge of the Gardens. Calling it a house required generosity. It contained one narrow room, a smaller room apparently designed for storing disappointment, and a stove whose chimney leaned away from the roof as if attempting escape.

Drue inspected the floor.

“Where are the beds?”

“There aren’t any.”

“Furniture?”

“You are looking at it.”

Anderix placed his pack against the wall. “It is defensible.”

Drue stared at him. “Against comfort?”

That night, long after the garden paths had emptied, someone knocked three times, paused, and knocked twice more.

Alster opened the door to find Kaelen, Blena and Tajan crowded behind a Vireilian guide. Their cloaks were damp with sea mist, their boots were muddy, and Kaelen looked as though he had not slept since leaving Helion.

The guide accepted the remainder of his payment and disappeared without giving Anderix more than one suspicious glance.

When the door closed, the six companions stood in the tiny room looking at one another.

Blena dropped her pack. “This is charming.”

“You may have to move outside to say that,” Drue told her. “There is not enough room for sarcasm in here.”

Tajan embraced Alster, then Drue. She stopped in front of Anderix.

“You survived a griffon.”

“The griffon survived me.”

Drue took offence on Dasher’s behalf. “He survived because Dasher is the finest-trained griffon in The Emberwild Dominion.”

“He attempted to bite me during every landing.”

“That was an assessment of character.”

Tajan smiled at both of them. “And what did he decide?”

“He wants another flight,” Drue said.

“He wants to eat my coat,” Anderix replied.

Kaelen lowered himself onto an overturned crate. “Before this becomes an evening devoted to griffon psychology, we should make plans.”

The room quieted.

First you tell us why we had to split up and travel like we are luffy birds in a field of griffons. 

He told them what had happened on the southwestern road from Helion. When they had camped outside the market town while waiting for word that their vessel to Virielia was ready. Kaelen explained he had gone to purchase vegetables and tea. Near the market square, he overheard raised voices behind a public house.

“There were six Guardians from Kefar,” he said. “One of them is a thug I know Greyn Bilt. They were arguing with a Solaryn patrol over who had the authority to execute an arrest warrant.”

Anderix’s face became still. “For whom?”

“A Mechanum citizen travelling unlawfully through Solaryn lands.”

“Me?”

“Yes you. Do you know any other recent defectors from the Mechanum Ascendancy?”

The dispute had become physical. Greyn insisted that the High Council’s warrant carried authority across allied Crestrealms. A Solaryn Guardian informed him, with increasing creativity, where the High Council could store that opinion and his interpretation of allied. By the time Kaelen had reached the square, one man had a split lip and both groups had agreed to take the matter to Helion.

Kaelen questioned several merchants after the Guardians left. The Kefarian party had been asking about a foreign engineer, three young mages, a healer, a griffon rider and a guardian from Ironroot Bastion.

“They knew enough,” Kaelen said. “That’s when I sent you into surreptitious  escape routes.”

Drue leaned against the stove. “Why would Kefar send Guardians after us? Thrankal ordered the investigation.”

“Perhaps he has changed his mind,” Blena said.

“Or perhaps the order did not come from him,” Alster suggested.

Anderix’s eyes remained on Kaelen. “The Ascendancy demanded my return.”

It was not a question.

Kaelen nodded. “That is my best guess.”

“Then you should send me back.”

Tajan answered before anyone else. “No.”

Anderix looked at her.

“That was very decisive,” he said.

“I practised while you were flying.”

Kaelen rubbed his eyes. “We do not know why the towers are waking, what is happening to the Heartwell Crystal or what the star map connects. You are the only person among us who can understand half the machinery we find. More importantly, you chose to remain.”

“My choice may now endanger all of you.”

“That makes you a proper member of the team,” Blena said.”

Alster sat beside Kaelen. “If we are being hunted, what about the money? We cannot continue travelling without it.”

“That is the strange part,” Kaelen said. “The funds are still coming.”

He had received another payment at their final Solaryn stop, delivered through the same concealed accounts Thrankal had arranged. Enough for passage, supplies and several weeks in Amaryn.

“Someone in Kefar is financing us while someone in Kefar is trying to arrest us,” Drue said.

“Possibly the same person,” Blena replied.

“That would be absurd.”

Everyone looked at her.

Blena shrugged. “Which is why I think it is probably true.”

Kaelen explained the new arrangement. He would no longer report their exact location. Messages would pass through a trusted contact in Kefar and then through a series of drops selected only after they had moved on.

“From now on,” he said, “we assume every official road, harbour and message station is being watched.”

“So we are fugitives,” Alster said.

“Investigators,” Kaelen replied.

“Investigators with arrest warrants.”

“The distinction is important.”

Blena unrolled her blanket on the floor. “It will be important to whoever writes the charges.”

There was not enough space for six people to sleep comfortably, so they abandoned comfort and arranged themselves like poorly packed cargo. Kaelen and Alster settled nearest the door. Blena claimed the strip beneath the window. Tajan lay between Drue and Anderix, a placement she accepted with suspicious cheerfulness.

For several minutes, the hut was quiet.

Then Drue whispered, “Did Anderix tell you how he screamed during the first descent?”

“I did not scream,” Anderix said across Tajan.

“Dasher heard it.”

“Dasher was screaming.”

Tajan turned towards Anderix. “Did you enjoy any part of the journey?”

“The sections when we were on the ground.”

Drue raised his head. “He asked twelve questions about the saddle.”

“Its weight distribution is inefficient.”

“It has carried riders safely for twenty years.”

“That does not make it efficient. It makes the griffon tolerant.”

Tajan rolled onto her back, smiling into the darkness. “I am learning a great deal from both of you.”

“You are encouraging them,” Blena said.

“Only a little.”

“Go to sleep,” Kaelen ordered.

Silence returned.

“For the record,” Drue whispered, “she asked me about the flight first.”

Blena threw a rolled stocking across the room. It struck him in the face.

“Thank you,” Alster said. “I was considering violence, but it would have required standing.”

By morning, upon return to the Gardens the purple vine had overrun The Veylborn Shrine in the rivers edge of the Medic Gardens. Alster saw it from the end of the garden path and stopped so suddenly that Kaelen walked into him.

What had once been a quiet grove surrounding a ring of ancient standing stones had become a tangled purple jungle. Vines as thick as Alster’s wrists looped between trees. Broad dark leaves covered the paths, climbed the shrine stones and pressed against the glass walls of the neighbouring conservatory. The original specimen had become dozens, perhaps hundreds, though Alster could no longer tell where one plant ended and another began.

“Did you do that crystal thing again Alster?” asked Drue.

“No not me this time and besides. I don’t have any more of those ones.”

Workers hacked at the outer growth with pruning blades. Wherever a vine was cut, black-purple fluid seeped from it and hardened into glossy clumps.

Alster stared in horror. “This is a research garden.”

“I had gathered that,” Blena said gently.

“There are specimens here that no longer grow anywhere else. Years of study. Seed lines we cannot replace.”

A healer hurried towards them through ankle-deep water.

“We cannot supply enough,” she told Alster. “Everything is growing too quickly. The plants are competing with one another, and some are already dying. We have opened every channel and asked the groundskeepers to increase the flow, but the Gardens cannot deliver more water than it receives.”

Tajan looked from the dry upper beds to the canals below. “Could we draw more from underground?”

Tajan jumped in. “Or we could stop the growth with the assistance of Blena’s Ironroot steel. It worked well at the observatory.”

Alster caught Blena’s arm. “Some of these plants are irreplaceable.”

“Uh, don’t look now but definitely look now ... up there... You are not going to believe this.” Tajan pointed.

“Is that Gertina?” Blena asked. “This seems precisely the sort of disaster an intermittently helpful being of light would show up for.”

They perceived her floating and appearing in and out of view among the upper branches.

Gertina moved from plant to plant in rapid, distracted bursts. Threads of light reached towards her from the leaves, and every new pulse of growth pulled her attention elsewhere. She appeared both fascinated and overwhelmed.

“Gertina,” Alster called. “We need your help.”

She turned towards him. Light rippled through her translucent form.

“Growing,” she said. “All reaching. All taking.”

“Yes. How do we stop it?”

“At the source.”

“Where is the source?”

But a flowering vine opened behind him, releasing a cloud of silver pollen. Gertina vanished into it with a delighted flicker.

Blena lowered her sword. “Invaluable. If she were a person I might have to resort to violence.”

“If we had a water mage, this would be simple,” Tajan said. “I can manage some interesting charms but only around the conditions of my speciality, fire.”

Alster looked at her. “Do not summon anything associated with fire. It will make everything hotter, demand more water or burn the Gardens down.”

“What about summoning a Veylborn. One that doesn’t get distracted by seaweed and stamen?” Asked Drue?

Tajan put a hand over her heart. “You make one unusual summoning in Helion and suddenly no one trusts you.”

“You summoned a being none of us understood beside a herd of terrified animals.”

“And it worked.”

“That is why I am only half joking.”

Kaelen knelt beside one of the empty channels and pressed his palm against the soil.

“Alster that lake is not far from here, no?”

“Yes. Lake Vera is fed by several aquifers beneath the western city,” he said. “One passes near here.”

“Can you reach it?” Alster asked Kaelen.

“Not elegantly.”

“Today appears to have moved beyond elegance.”

Kaelen selected an open patch between the overgrown beds. He placed an earth crystal upon the ground and began an invocation. At first, only dust moved. It spun in a narrow circle, gathering speed until grit and small stones lifted with it. The circle tightened. Soil tore upward in a whirling column as the energy drilled down.

The earth groaned beneath them.

“Is it meant to do that?” Drue asked.

“Not helping,” Kaelen said through clenched teeth.

The ground gave a deep, hollow crack.

Water exploded from the opening.

The first surge struck Kaelen in the chest and knocked him backwards. Then a fountain rose above the nearby trees, glittering in the morning light before crashing across the beds. Groundskeepers shouted and threw open the channel gates. Water rushed into the garden’s carved canals, spilled over terraces and soaked every root it could reach.

Tajan helped Kaelen sit up. Mud covered one side of his face.

“Not elegantly,” she agreed.

The emergency water kept the rare plants alive, but the purple vines continued to grow.

At that moment Gertina descended from the canopy. She hovered above the flowing canals, watching the workers guide the water towards the failing beds. For once, her attention did not leap to the nearest blossom. She looked at Alster, at the dying specimens and finally at the dark vines strangling the shrine.

Light spread from her hands.

The entire garden seemed to inhale.

Leaves turned towards her. Branches bent. The ordinary plants eased away from the canals as if released from an invisible pull. Beneath the purple growth, roots writhed against the surface and began to shrivel. The vines slackened. Their leaves folded inward, and black-purple residue gathered along the dying stems.

Within moments, water that had vanished instantly into the soil began running again through the channels.

Alster stared at Gertina. Until then, she had moved through their world like a voice caught between thoughts, visible but unable to take hold. Now the plants had obeyed her.

“She affected them,” he whispered.

Anderix crouched beside the nearest vine and touched the hardened residue with a metal probe.

“Crystals accelerate growth,” he said. “The observatory energy changed these seeds. They are not merely consuming water. They are drawing power from the entire garden.”

Gertina shot towards him.

Anderix recoiled as she stopped a hand’s breadth from his face.

“These seeds,” she said.

Points of light gathered in her palms and formed the shapes of several unfamiliar seeds. They were not physical, but Anderix immediately adjusted the lens over one eye and studied them.

“Use power.....out,” Gertina continued. “These seeds. They sequester power ......in.”

The others crowded around.

“What are they for?” Tajan asked. “Alster, have you seen anything like them?”

“No.” Alster examined the floating shapes. “Not in the Gardens or anywhere else.”

“I have,” Felib said behind them.

Plant Master Skan picked his way through the wet beds with his robes gathered above his knees.

“Or something very close,” he corrected. “We received a small collection at the conservatory several days ago. Almost certainly a form of crystallum arbor etherialis, but not a variety I recognise.”

“Where did they come from?” Kaelen asked.

“No record accompanied them. They were left inside a sealed specimen case.” Felib looked towards the retreating vines. “Whatever they are, I have the uncomfortable feeling they are important.”

“Can you bring them?” Anderix asked.

Felib gave him a long look. “You are the odd one from the gate.”

“Yes.”

“Good. I dislike uncertainty.” He turned back towards the conservatory. “I will fetch them.”

As the vines withdrew, The Veylborn Shrine emerged.

The ancient shrine consisted of tall stones arranged in a broad circle, weathered long before Amaryn’s oldest histories had been written. Some plants around it returned to their proper size. Others collapsed into clumps of the same black-purple material they had found in the Ruodoon observatory.

But within the ring itself, the earth was bare.

Alster stepped between the stones. “These ruins have always been surrounded by mystery. Every Vireilian scholar has a different explanation for them, chiefly because no one knows enough to prove the others wrong. They predate Amaryn.”

Gertina drifted after Anderix.

“They have always been associated with the Velyborn,” Alster continued. “Some believe this is a spiritual crossing point between our world and theirs.”

“And today there actually is one here,” Drue said reverently.

Blena watched Gertina circle Anderix. “She has taken quite a liking to him.”

“I do not want a pet Velyborn,” Anderix said.

“That sounded unnecessarily harsh,” Tajan told him. “She may understand you.”

“Then I do not want an independently minded Velyborn companion.”

Drue walked towards the centre of the ring. For once, he had no ancient tale ready. He looked up at the monoliths with open wonder.

“This is sacred ground,” he said. “Whatever else it may be, that is what it means.”

He crouched and ran his fingers over the soil.

“But it is fertile. Why is there no moss? No grass? Not even weeds?”

“There has never been growth within the stones,” Felib said, returning with a leather seed pouch. “Some believe the metallic content of the rock poisoned the ground.”

Kaelen moved from pillar to pillar, studying the carved symbols. They resembled markings he had copied from the Ruodoon map chamber.

“This one is Solaryn,” he said.

Tajan brushed dirt from another carving. “And these are the old elemental signs. Fire. Water. Earth. Air.”

Kaelen looked at the barren soil, then at the pouch in Felib’s hand.

“May I see the seeds?”

Felib passed it to him with obvious reluctance. “They may be unique.”

“That is increasingly common with everything we touch.”

Kaelen selected one seed and walked to the pillar marked with the symbol for earth. He knelt, pressed it into the soil and murmured an old growing invocation.

Nothing happened.

Everyone waited.

Still nothing happened.

Kaelen stood and wiped his fingers on his trousers.

“Well. Now I feel stupid. I saw an earth symbol, barren ground and mysterious seeds provided by a Velyborn. I thought I might plant one dramatically and reveal the answer to everything.” He shrugged and stepped away. “Worth trying.”

A small crack sounded beneath the soil.

Blena pointed.

A tiny white flower pushed through the earth at the base of the pillar.

Kaelen stared at it. “I withdraw my embarrassment.”

He opened the pouch again.

“Tajan, take this one. Alster, this one is yours.” He kissed a seed and placed it in Alster’s palm. “I do not know whether this is right, but it feels right. Plant the rest.”

They exchanged uncertain looks, then moved to the remaining pillars. Tajan buried a seed beneath the sign of fire. Alster planted his beside the water marking. Drue knelt at air. Blena and Anderix placed the remaining seeds between the stones.

Gertina appeared in the centre of the ring.

Light streamed from her and sank into the soil.

Lines of pale energy awakened beneath their feet, tracing paths between the pillars. More light rose from the surrounding Gardens and gathered around Gertina until her form blazed too brightly to watch.

The ground split.

A sapling emerged from the centre of the shrine. Its first leaves unfolded before their eyes. The trunk thickened, forcing everyone backwards as roots spread through the bare earth. Branches rose past the standing stones, dividing and dividing again until a vast crown stretched above them.

“Oh, my Veyl,” Tajan breathed.

“That would be extremely useful in a vegetable garden,” Alster said.

No one laughed. They were too busy staring.

The tree’s trunk broadened until it was wider than the gardener’s hut. Threads of light flitted between its branches like living sparks. A crystal grew within the wood itself, half mineral and half living tissue, while luminous roots travelled through the earth beneath the shrine.

It was the same kind of aethoria tree they had found inside the mountain tower.

Alster approached the nearest root but did not touch it. “They are among the oldest living things in Aethoria. They were even perhaps the most prolific.”

Drue remained unusually silent. “I never expected to see one this new  in my lifetime. Then after a moment he whispered, “And I never imagined I would see this twice.”

Evening settled over the Gardens. The air cooled, and the tree’s leaves caught the moonlight in a faint silver-green shimmer. The turmoil of the day seemed distant beneath its branches.

Gertina emerged from the glow around the trunk.

She moved differently now. Slowly. Deliberately. The confusion that usually fractured her words had faded.

“You have done well,” she said.

Her voice was clearer than they had ever heard it.

Then she turned to Anderix.

“Look for anomalies.”

Blena smiled. “See? I told you she likes you.”

“This is serious,” Anderix said.

“Anderix has a girlfriend,” Blena added.

“Stop.”

He lowered several filters across the lens over his eye. One clicked into place, followed by another. Finally, he connected a power crystal to the side of the device. Blue lines illuminated across its frame.

Tajan leaned towards Drue. “I did not know his eye augmentation could do that.”

“Neither did I.”

“Quiet,” Anderix said. “I am trying to see.”

He scanned the pillars, the roots and the ground beyond the earth stone. Most of the shrine appeared dark through the filters, but one patch reflected a thin, irregular line.

“The soil there has been disturbed,” he said. “Its metallic content is higher than the surrounding ground.”

They dug with Felib’s garden tools. Beneath a shallow layer of earth, Blena’s spade struck metal.

Together they uncovered a corroded iron ring. Drue and Kaelen pulled. At first it did not move. Then roots slid away from the buried seam, and a broad stone hatch lifted from the earth in a cloud of ancient dust.

Steps descended beneath the shrine.

Cold air rose from below, carrying the dry mineral smell of a place sealed for centuries.

Gertina hovered above the opening.

“Follow,” she said. “Find the answers you seek.”

Alster peered into the darkness. “She is becoming remarkably useful.”

Blena looked at Anderix. “Is it possible to marry a Velyborn?”

“Will you stop?” Anderix snapped.

Tajan drew a crystal light from her pack and held it above the first step.

“My mother told me never to enter underground stairwells revealed by foreign exiles,” she said. “So you go first, Blena.”

“I am not an exile,” Anderix replied. “I am a defector.”

He did not smile, but came dangerously close.

Their amusement faded as they gathered around the opening. Somewhere beyond the Gardens, Guardians were searching for them. Behind them stood a tree that should not have been able to grow. Beneath them waited a passage no Vireilian scholar knew existed.

Kaelen lifted his light.

“Stay close,” he said.

One by one, the fugitives descended.

Thy Quest: Different Ways of Seeing
The heroes witness the same impossible tree, but their reactions reflect their different training and beliefs. Choose two characters and explain how each responds to the tree or shrine. What does each reaction reveal about how that character understands the unknown?