Julius strides through the air within the choking, smothering magic of the Dense Forest. It’s no longer cold, but neither can he feel the warmth spell – his body is just numb, limbs heavy. The safety equipment does as much as it can to filter out the worst of it but humans are not meant to be in here.

After the shortcut, there is no longer any light at all except for his bone stick but he waits until the undergrowth starts to gain a metallic sheen and rattle in the light before he tucks away his light. The world plunges into darkness then slowly starts to glow with parasitic bioluminescence that carved its way into the trees.

The only thing about going deeper is that the entire forest wants to lure him in so it's really quite easy to find one of the many shortcuts, he just needs to make sure he's using the correct one.

According to the cloudy orb above his head, it points him towards several more slipstreams. He steps cautiously into a fairy ring of mushrooms and ends up falling slowly down from the exit ring on a high tree branch. He climbs into a hollowed-out trunk and crawls out from under giant roots. He conjures a boat for a small river stream and lets it carry him as the world blurs past before he gets off.

They cut down the walking time by a huge chunk but he's still doing nothing but walking for hours and hours.

He collects so many items as he passes by. Beautiful scales from swarms of fish that swim through the shadows in the air, shed bark from ghost silk trees, metal leaves that can cut through diamond, ever-burning poison from toxic caterpillars, buds that haven’t flowered and never will in his lifetime, massive abandoned webs, fruit from rain trees that absorb water indefinitely and can be released again.

Even the useless but pretty items are expensive just because they’re rare. He'll put it in fancy boxes and charge everyone an absurd price. He can't wait.

He passes a massive stretch of land that is nothing but metal trees with razor-sharp leaves that fall at the slightest breeze. Julius just walking past makes them shed and flutter gently downwards, carving through anything in their path. The dirt is ground up, bodies have been mulched before the animals can prey on the trees, and any other flora nearby has been shredded so they won’t out-compete.

Despite everything here being able to kill, the creatures are less afraid or perhaps more resistant to his gear.

There’s the occasional howl or whistle-roar off in the distance. Pseudotrees shuffle, roots writhing under the ground like worms that occasionally try to strike out at Julius’ legs but hit the shield. Moths that blend into trees and when he passes they all take off like shedding bark, leaving the very skeleton of a tree after they ate it clean through, a glowing frog skeleton once too which allows Julius to restock on his bone stick light.

He can’t identify most of them, and if he would recognise the names then they look far too different from their client-ready neat packages that Julius would still be lost. Things that swell up to fly when startled, others that breathe noxious gas to bring the swollen ones down, a swarm of what looks to be rain that falls upon the noxious ones to feast.

A conglomerate of bugs that fall off and skitter back to merge again into a greater form that crawls on thousands of long legs far overhead near the canopy. Pill-shaped furry things that roll slowly and so pitifully that Julius almost wants one for his desk.

Sometimes there are no animals Julius can see but he can hear movement; shifting, skittering, slithering. Deeper shadows out of the corner of his eye and the vague certainty that something is watching him. The shield sparks but he can't see what's touching it.

At some point the sea glass in the netted bag starts resonating and doesn't stop for a very long time, Julius' heart in his throat from the anxiety that it might be overloaded and leave him vulnerable, and fear of what could have activated it.

When Julius pauses too long to check the orb’s directions, something massive slams against the shield, hard enough that the bracers hurt as they vibrate through into his arms. Julius kicks a foot up behind him, the giant brass bell tied to his ankle silent as it moves, and the presence immediately disappears.

Julius moves just a bit deeper and finally, horrifyingly, sees a touch of the Deep Forest in the faint distance between the trees.

He takes a few steps back and then turns and retreats. He doesn’t need to be this close – he didn’t realise he’d gone so far.

But then abruptly, there is no noise. There is nothing touching his shield for the first time in hours, the sea glass settles from its quiet but constant hum, and the forest even seems to lighten a bit.

Julius turns and sees a human-sized fox sitting not a metre behind him, a hair away from touching the shield. The fur is a stark black with blazing orange tails and nothing but white for eyes.

“Human,” the fox croons without opening their mouth, voice a deep rumble, ear flicking as their eyes squint in pleasure. “What a surprise.”

Julius’ heart is trying to beat out of his chest and he has no billowing sleeves to hide the way his hands have to form fists to stop the tremor. Julius pastes on his best customer service smile. “An honour to meet you again. I see you’ve been busy.”

“Oh, this old thing?” the fox chitters, tails fanning out to show they’ve finally achieved a 6^th.

Shit, shit, shit.

“It’s beautiful,” Julius gushes. “You must have worked so hard. And so fast too!”

Julius has no idea what sacrifice is required for the 6^th commandment to achieve a tail, but such power can’t be easy. The fox achieved 5^th just before they met almost a decade ago; it should have taken them a century more to gain another. Julius only started this relationship because he thought he was stronger and in control…

“Yes, well, you were quite the motivation.” The fox shows teeth. “Now we match.”

“Oh, you flatter me,” Julius tuts and tries not to get lost in every flashback where he pushed for more items or better quality or merely sent letters because he didn’t want to come this deep...

Julius can’t meet with the fox anymore - he may even have to find a new route through the Dense. For now though, he’ll need to act like normal so the fox doesn’t try to test their magic against each other.

“6th class is hardly anything to brag about and I’ve been one for so long now,” Julius dismisses but it’s also a reminder. He still has experience if the fox tries anything, and creature magic has raw power but it’s far from the breadth of refined human magic.

“How have you been?” the fox asks, ears swivelling as if to catch every word. “How is your little human shop? And your little human kingdom-“

The sea glass resonates into a sudden scream and it takes everything inside Julius to not flinch.

“-oh, excuse me a moment.” The fox turns and opens their maw, forming a tiny ball of fire between their sharp fangs. A piercing shriek and the fireball shoots off so fast it blinks out of existence for Julius. It explodes off in the distance.

“Some creatures are so rude,” the fox muses.

The shockwave hits, slamming into his shield so hard it feels like it’ll break his arms but he keeps a politely interested smile nailed onto his lips. The fox’s fur is thrown sideways but they just lick their lips, unmoveable.

“The resonant, that's new,” the fox says. “Did I scare you last time? I didn't mean to; don’t hold it against me, I quite like you.”

“No, please don’t be offended, none of this is for you,” Julius reassures, navigating with the ease of a merchant. “It’s for the impolite creatures I encounter on my walks.”

“Oh yes, your shop,” the fox remembers. “Tell me.”

“It’s going quite well, thank you. In fact, I’m here to restock. We have quite the client base these days.”

The fox’s tails droop dramatically. “You only come to visit me when you want something.”

“What do you mean? This a lovely surprise for me,” Julius chuckles. “But to be truthful, I had hoped to find you.” Julius reaches into the qiankun pouch and pulls out the gift package he asked from Howie. “A gift, in celebration of our partnership, and now a token of my awe for your magnificent new tail.”

“You shouldn’t have,” the fox gushes, tails whipping through the air back into a fanned pose like a blazing bonfire, clearly showing off. “But I have nothing for you.”

“Just meeting you again is enough,” Julius says sweetly. He floats the box out but as soon as it passes the barrier, his magic fractures and cracks open under the pressure of the forest, the box dropping with a quiet thump and the bottom begins to rot and shrivel where it touches the dirt.

The fox doesn’t take their eyes off Julius. “How ever will I open it? Will you please help me?”

“I’m afraid I can’t get much closer with my shield up,” Julius says apologetically.

“Take off the bracers, I will protect you,” the fox lies.

“Oh my, this is actually quite embarrassing,” Julius admits. “But someone else put them on for me. I don’t know how to take them off. Don’t worry, I have accounted for no opposable thumbs. If you pull on the end of the ribbon, it will unfold for you.”

The fox still does not look at the box. “This is deeper than you've been before, you must be quite intent on finding something.”

“Only adventure,” Julius demurs.

The fox finally looks away and Julius feels the building pressure on his shoulders recede. They bite the end of the ribbon and pull, the box unfolding perfectly into rose petals of wood surrounding the still beating heart of a cloud oxen.

“You bring me such nice things,” the fox murmurs, licking their lips.

“You’ve helped me so much, it’s only right.”

“What was that?” The fox’s ears flip-flop up and down. “I can barely hear you over all the noise. Take off your bells, they hurt my delicate little ears.”

“I’m terribly sorry, I didn’t realise I had rung them,” Julius says in perfect concern. “I’ll stand still from now on. Please excuse me, humans can be quite clumsy.”

“You smell quite strange as well. Is this a human pastime? Let me help you get the foreign scent off.”

“You…you don’t like it?” Julius puts a hand over his mouth, peering at the fox with wide eyes.

“It’s not bad, just different,” the fox sidesteps. “I prefer your scent. Perhaps when you leave this time, I could have a lock of your beautiful white hair? I miss you so.”

“I would love to leave you with something of mine,” Julius says, deliberately vague. “But I’ll be here a while yet. I have quite a lot of angel’s trumpet to pick.”

“Angel’s…trumpet?” The fox cocks their head.

“Of course, I should have asked you first!” Julius pulls out a storage box from the qiankun pouch and opens it to reveal one preserved angel’s trumpet – from root to petal.

The fox gasps, eyes squinted in pleasure. “How brave! I didn’t realise you were going to venture so deep into the next territory.”

“It’s in the Deep Forest?” Julius asks with perfected shock in his voice. “Oh…well I suppose I’ll have to turn back then; I’m not allowed inside.”

“Nonsense, I’ll escort you in!”

“But barriers will keep me out,” Julius says.

Unlike the eastern kingdom barriers around the Dense Forest, the Deep Forest has ancient relics older than any of the kingdoms, in perfectly, inhumanly precise concentric rings. Some people say the creatures of the forest laid down the magic. Others say it's godly or even demonic.

Julius can actually pass through, but he would never make it back out even if the fox was genuinely trying to protect him.

“Humans can’t pass through,” Julius says regretfully when the fox doesn’t say their line fast enough.

The fox’s blank white eyes watch him closely. “Well we can’t have that. I suppose I’ll just duck in and gather them for you.”

“Would you? I’d hate to be a bother. I need as much as possible without depleting the population after all.”

“It’s the least I can do for my partner.” The fox bends down and bites the heart to pick it up, rising onto all fours. “Wait here, human. I shall be back shortly.”

The fox turns and trots off, tails bouncing. The forest once more darkens and creatures return, the sounds of life surrounding Julius. His shield flickers back on and he kicks out a leg before whatever that slithering shadow is comes closer.

Julius quickly retreats further from the edge and then spells one bell to jingle by itself in the air. He sits down on the air for the first time in what feels to be days, legs aching, arm trembling in sharp pain, drenched in a cold sweat and jolting at every movement in his peripheral vision.

The fox returns in an hour with a massive bouquet of angel’s trumpet encircled by their tails. They drop it on the ground and Julius steps closer so the shield covers it before floating them into the qiankun pouch.

Julius offers a single thread from his sleeve for the fox to remember him by and even that is more than he’d like. The fox tangles the thread in one of their tails and rumbles. Julius will have to burn this top before he leaves the Dense so he isn’t tracked.

Julius says quick goodbyes with the excuse of not taking up the fox’s time and then turns and makes his way out as fast as possible.

He is gone for two days.

He arrives back at the warehouse in seven hours.