With each step Nyssa took, the familiar pilgrims’ road seemed to stray further from her memories of it. Decades of herb-gathering trips across the border had built up a precise catalogue and map of plant life in her mind, but now everywhere she looked she was presented with a parade of disturbing, malformed vegetation.
A patch of meadowsweet caught her eye, its usually delicate flowers swollen to twice their natural size, while its leaves were shrunken and twisted.
She reached out to touch one of the mutated blooms. The petals felt wrong under her fingers; waxy where they should have been silk-soft. “This side of the forest has always been different to the human side,” she said, "But this…”
"How long since you were last here?” Kellam asked. He was leading the mare but kept glancing back at Nyssa, watching her reactions to the changed woodland.
“Three moons? Maybe four. I usually come at least once a season.” She frowned at a stand of fever-hazel. Some of its branches showed spring buds while others drooped with heavy autumn seed pods. "But surely it hasn't been long enough for everything to become so... confused."
Even the sound of the forest had changed since she was last here, and it reinforced the growing feeling of wrongness. The usual woodland chirpings and skitterings had been replaced by a hollow silence. Every snap of a twig under their boots became a shocking burst of noise, and the hoofbeats of the horse seemed to boom around them. Even the air felt strange, bringing odours that didn't belong. Beneath the scents of fallen leaves and damp moss were undertones of sweet decay as well as an acrid, metallic tang.
They passed a fallen log and Nyssa stopped abruptly. All along the back side of the log, spreading across the brown bark, patches of moss grew in perfect, impossible hexagons, their colour a shade of yellow-green that seemed to almost glow in the forest gloom. For some reason the eerie precision of the formation raised the hairs on the back of her neck, giving her skin a creeping sensation.
"That's new," Kellam said quietly.
Nyssa knelt to examine the moss, careful not to touch it. "This isn't just plants growing strangely," she said, her voice tight. "This is something else entirely. When you said the forest had changed, I thought you meant disease or blight, but this..." She gestured at the unnatural patterns. "This is like someone is rewriting the rules that plants are supposed to follow."
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
She stood and drew a notebook from her satchel, then began to make sketches and note down measurements. She had spent a lifetime studying the shapes and properties of plants, learning each herb’s abilities to heal or harm, and their most effective doses. What helped them to thrive and what caused them to sicken and wither. But nothing in her experience could explain what she was seeing now.
"How long?" she asked. "How long has it been like this?"
“At least three moons.” The ranger replied. “The first changes were subtle. Easy to dismiss. But in the last few weeks..." He shook his head. "Every time I go out on patrol, there's something new. Something worse."
The healer slid her notebook and charcoal back into the side pocket of her bag. “I need to check the moonflower glade," she declared suddenly, looking down a barely visible deer track that branched away from the main path. "It's not far from here, and we could—”
"No." Kellam’s response was immediate and firm.
"It's more or less on our way," she protested. “Moonflowers may be useful when we reach Aelinor. And even if they're not, they’re still helpful in nearly everything else I do. If that glade isn’t affected yet I’ll need to collect as many as I can before it’s too late.”
She was already taking a step toward the narrow track, but the elf put a hand on her shoulder. “No.” He repeated. “I want to reach the first waystation before dark.” His expression softened slightly at his friend’s frustrated look, though.
“I know I’m telling you where to go again — but there are some very good, very obvious reasons. There's also something on this main path that I think you’ll want to see. Please, Nyssa.”
She studied his face, then gave a curt nod. “Alright. Let’s go."
They walked without speaking for several minutes, the hoofbeats and footsteps marking out the time. Finally, Kellam brought them to a stop near a massive oak tree. "There," he said, pointing.
At first glance, the oak appeared normal. But then Nyssa saw the dark liquid seeping from a twisted gall in its trunk. She approached slowly, her healer's curiosity warring with an instinctive revulsion. The fluid was thick and red, trailing down the bark in a viscous stream, then pooling in a congealed puddle at the tree’s base.
She stared at it. “Is that oak tree…bleeding?”
“I was hoping you might be able to find out.” Kellam said. “Is it just altered sap, or is it really blood? This was one of the first signs that something was wrong. Another ranger brought us here. He’d seen a boggit sniffing around and when he came in for a better look, he saw the tree was…” He indicated the flow of red oozing down the bark.
Nyssa pulled a glass vial from her satchel and carefully collected a sample of the red secretion. She sniffed at it and blanched at the iron-rich smell, but her hands remained steady as she stoppered the vial. "I wish I'd brought more of these," she said.
