It happened within seconds.

The flowers on the meadow enlarged to impossible sizes; the tree shot up into the air like an eternal monument. The moss patches turned into hills, and stalks grew to the sizes of trees. They were sitting in a giant flower forest now, much darker than before. There seemed to be no escape from the thicket.

It was like they’d all been shrunk to the sizes of ants.

“Damn.” As Dema looked around in awe, she giggled. “Trapped us! You’re cheeky.”

It was true; this place would now be harder to leave. The flowers appeared to billow at the dryad’s command, ready to lash out, jerking back and forth in what seemed like wind but communicated a veiled threat. It wasn’t immediately clear if this was an illusion type Skill or straight-out warped reality, but either way, it seemed rather powerful.

Again, Theora wished she could fly like Gonell. That would have made leaving a lot easier.

Treeka cleared her throat. “I just want to communicate that your arrival is not unwelcome. I enjoy company.”

“Figured!” Dema nodded, still smiling wide.

“So that means you will let us leave if we want to?” Theora asked.

“Of course,” Treeka said. “In a year or two.”

Theora’s shoulders slumped. A year wasn’t a lot, but the others were waiting, and time was running out on her side quest of finding the Fragments of Time. She glanced at the notification.

 

Time remaining: 200 years.

 

Fifty years had already passed since she’d received the quest, and she only had a single Fragment to show for it. They really could not afford to waste any of the remaining time, or it would be over in the blink of an eye.

“We need to get back to our companions,” Theora said. “They are waiting for us.”

Meanwhile, Dema was examining the thicket. She patted the large flower stalks, used her blood whips to bend some of them down to touch the petals and made ‘Oh’ and ‘Ah’ sounds whenever she could. She was probably genuinely excited about getting such a close look at things that were normally small; it was just like Dema to find something to get excited about wherever she went, after all.

Treeka tilted her head. “I can be your companion.”

“Still,” Theora went, “I’m unhappy with this. A year is too much.”

Treeka shrugged. “Well. If you help me leave, I could let you out early.”

“You wanna leave?” Dema chimed in from the edge of their small confinement.

Treeka squinted, shook her head, and pulled a grimace. “Yes. I’m a tree. I’m stuck, and alone.” She clicked her tongue in annoyance. “You two seem nice, so I’ll have you stay for a while.”

Dema shrugged. “Guess I can relate.”

Theora examined Treeka’s tree body. It was massive. Too large to carry. It would break under its own weight, and it was too big to squeeze into her travelling cloak. 

“I imagine we couldn’t cut you into pieces to transport you away,” Theora murmured.

Treeka huffed. “Of course you can’t. I’d die. My spirit apparition can only move under the canopy. I tried growing larger and larger to have more space to walk on, but I’m at my limit.”

“Well, we’re here now,” Dema said. “So you’re not alone. What do you wanna do?”

“I don’t know,” Treeka murmured.

“I could read a story to you,” Theora said. Some of Dema’s books were stored away in her travelling attire.

“Please,” Treeka said. She rubbed her arms again, and looked away as Theora procured about half of Dema’s library.

Theora read over the cover descriptions, muttering, “We have a story about a sole mother of two young children who meets a mermaid… and a story about an empty raincoat falling in love with a singer. That one is DespairLit.”

“An empty raincoat?” Treeka let out. “How does that work?”

Theora shrugged. “I don’t know. Just going off what it says here. I haven’t read any of them.”

“It’s like, a raincoat worn by someone who’s invisible!” Dema chimed in. “It keeps moving around like someone was inside, but nobody can see ’em. It’s a big metaphor.”

“A metaphor for what?” Treeka asked.

“No clue. Just know it is one! And the story’s cute. The singer ends up wearing the raincoat so it’s like there really was nobody inside but the coat also helps her move and be stronger in her frail body and it’s like they’re hugging all the time.”

“I don’t get it.”

Dema giggled. “Don’t have to get it, just feel the fluff! It’s a short book too, easy to read.”

“It just sounds sad,” Treeka said. “Even if the singer wears the cloak, won’t they have to split again one day?”

“No!” Dema let out. “No. No splitting!”

“But that’s what always happens, isn’t it,” Treeka murmured. “People come to live with me or visit, but eventually they die or leave forever.”

That draped a sudden silence over the meadow. Dema gave an unhappy expression, and Theora had no idea how to respond. For a few moments, she kept glancing over the book titles and covers, in hopes of finding something that might work, but it turned out that most of Dema’s possessions were love stories of some kind that could be read with that same conflict.

Eventually, she gave up. “So, you’ve not always been alone?” she asked.

Treeka nodded. “That mage planted me, said I’d be the heart of a village, and soon everyone would arrive to keep me company. He and his friends lived here for a while. It was nice. But eventually, more and more people found a reason to leave. Their children left, their children’s children left, and then there was nothing.” She shrugged. “Later on some hero guy came by, told me he’d free me, said he’d use some Unique Skill from the ‘project shop’ or whatever. Except he never did. Just stopped coming after the sixtieth or so summer. I assume time vanished him to dust.”

Dema let out a huff of frustration. “That sounds rough.”

Theora tried to scrape together her vague knowledge of the shop. “What Skill was he going to use?”

The dryad shrugged. “He said he needed to reach a certain Renown Tier to get a Skill that can banish a spirit into an object. One-time use, and costs ‘credits’.”

“Ah, yeah!” Dema said, turning to Theora. “Bun Bun’s got lots of all o’ that, right? You can do that?”

Theora opened her mouth in surprise, jerking her head into a half-shake.

[Renown Shop]… had there been something like that? She pulled up the Hero Project overview, and eventually found some data that seemed to be relating to it.

 

C█̴̺́█rent Renó̸̜w̶͖̓n̷̠̔/  ͎͈̍�̨!x̞͞͡:░░𝜠

Renown Tie̴̝͆r̸͇̈́: 𝜠RROR.

 

Well, that didn’t look promising.

When she tried to pull up the associated shop, it simply said, ‘Insufficient Renown Rank. Increase Renown to unlock various shop items.’

Theora sighed. This was probably what Isobel would call an ‘internal data storage capacity overflow error’ — meaning Theora’s Renown had at some point jumbled into a mess irrecognisable by other components of the Interface. 

“I don’t think I can help you,” she eventually said, after trying to manoeuvre the Interface for a while longer. Apart from the [Renown Shop] there was also a general supply shop available to everyone — not just Hero Project recruits —, but she’d bought hers all out.

“Dang… what a bummer.” From the sound of it, Dema was actually disappointed.

“That said—” Theora stopped for a moment, looking at the ground. “Well, I know some people who might be able to help. I’m sure Bell has access to one of the highest Renown Tiers.” In fact, Theora could check. She pulled up Bell’s sheet from the party screen, and found her Renown Tier to be ‘Unparalleled’ — although that really didn’t give Theora any clue if that was enough for the Skill the Dryad was after. “Our — child — may also be able to help,” she said. “Since she is a plant-affinity mage.”

“Oh, right!” Dema said. “Not sure about Bell ’cause she’s a mage, but Iso might be able to help, yeah!”

“Huh?” Theora looked up. “How does that relate? Isn’t Isobel a mage too?”

Dema scratched her head. “Why, it’s ’cause Hero Project mages typically dump all their credits into mana potions, far as I know,” she said. “Am not a Hero so I can’t, but if I could, that’s what I’d do.”

Ah. She meant that Bell perhaps didn’t have enough credits to buy a Unique Skill, since she’d be using her credits otherwise. That sounded possible; especially if the [Renown Shop] offered a larger supply of potions compared to the general one. Thinking about the System was a bit of a headache; Theora had probably once known these things but forgotten.

“Treeka,” she said, looking back at the dryad who was following the conversation with a frown. “We are on our way to meet back up with those two. If you would like, we could return later to help you.”

These words made Treeka deflate. She turned her head to the side, her shoulders sagging.

Dema took a few steps forward. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Treeka said. She snapped her fingers again, and the world shrunk, returning everything to its original sizes. Theora went back to kneeling on the meadow, and Dema was struggling to retain her balance through the sudden shift.

“I mean it,” Theora said.

“I’m sure you do.” There was a bitter bite in Treeka’s words.

Nonetheless, they were free to leave now. The way out of the meadow looked deceptively inviting, and Theora had many reasons to go. Time was ticking down on her quest. Bell and Iso were waiting. And in fact, it was only by leaving that Theora could find a way to help Treeka too.

Still.

She glanced at Dema. “Stay here for a while?”

Dema replied with a nod and a soft smile. “Yeah!” She glanced at Treeka. “Mind if I take a look around?”

“Of course not. Feel free to inspect me and my home to your heart’s content.”

And as Dema did just that, Treeka just sat there in silence, cross-legged, and she never even got up to shake her legs or anything like that.

Theora felt like she might know that feeling. When Dema was close, Theora didn’t dare to move. When things were going well, Theora made herself still, out of fear of causing a change.

Perhaps it was too much to assume Treeka was feeling similarly, but when Dema strayed a bit too far to the edge of the meadow, Treeka winced and became alert, keeping a firm gaze on her. She relaxed when Dema eventually veered back.

Then, Treeka spoke up. “I apologise. I don’t have anything meaningful to talk about. I spend most of my time cultivating flowers and sleeping.”

“I also like to sleep,” Theora said. “And I like flowers too. On that note — would it be alright if I took a closer look at yours?”

Treeka nodded, and at that moment, Dema clumsily jogged back. “This is such a nice place. Love what you did with the mana streams to make the poppies pop up.”

“Thank you,” Treeka said. “It’s all I ever do, all day.”

Dema then went on to ask some magic-related questions that mostly went over Theora’s head, so she took the time to look around herself. She tapped against her interdimensional attire, and asked the Shade for drawing coal and paper, and then attempted to sketch the flowers, trying her best to ignore the dryad’s tireless gaze.

“What are you doing?” Treeka asked.

“Ah—” Theora let out in surprise. “I’m drawing them.” She turned the very bad sketch around to show it.

“Why are you drawing them?”

Theora’s face flushed. “Well… I tend to lose things as time passes, like memories or material possessions. I’m hoping that the act of drawing will help me retain the image in my mind for just a little longer.”

“Huh,” Treeka hummed out. “I guess they must be important to you?”

At that question, Theora fetched a small batch of dried flowers from her clothes. She bundled them up to arrange for a message. Treeka was watching curiously, and then accepted the little bouquet as Theora offered — and then, after studying it for just a moment, her eyes lit up.

“Oh, I see,” she said. “You can talk through them. Thank you. I like your voice too.”

Theora twitched as she realised what she’d just told Treeka, but managed a smile, and went back to one of the poppy bands. “It’s a Skill. Finding flowers I haven’t seen before feels like learning new words. They are precious.”

By now, her [Flower Language] allowed her to communicate rather complex ideas, and she still couldn’t let opportunities pass to expand her eloquence.

Treeka stretched out her arm and grazed over the petals of a brightly blue blossom right next to her knee. “Does that mean you’d like to— to pick some?”

Theora’s mouth stood open for a moment, then she got out, “W-well. I was planning to, initially, before I knew you grew them.”

“You can pick them.” Treeka’s voice was firm — cold, too, but not unkind.

“I can?”

“Yes,” the dryad said. “New ones will grow. I wonder what kinds of words you will use them to say.”

“I wonder, too,” Theora murmured, and with permission, she gently proceeded to add some to her collection.

“By the way,” Dema added, “Mind if I hop out for a second?”

Treeka’s head swirled almost violently. “I won’t stop you,” she said, looking like she very much wanted to stop her.

“Not for long, promise,” Dema said. “Just have a scheme I wanna work on.”

“A scheme?” 

Dema nodded. “Big time super secret stuff,” she said. “Surprise for Bun Bun. Well, I guess I can tell you, if you keep it a secret.”

Treeka gave Theora a furtive glance, just long enough to show her a little curious frown, but without really acknowledging her. Then, she turned back to Dema, and gave a little nod.

So, they started conspiring with each other. Treeka had an ear turned to Dema, who was shielding her mouth from Theora with a hand as she whispered her scheme. The dryad’s expression was mostly focused, confused, and her eyebrows folded, and it seemed like she was either failing to follow Dema’s explanations, or disapproving of them.

When they were done, Treeka turned to face Dema, and said, “Huh. What you are trying to do is the opposite of what I want for myself.”

Dema giggled. “Yeah, kinda is!”

“Well, I suppose it’s not quite the same, because you will be able to leave.”

Dema shrugged. “You too! We’re gonna help you.”

Treeka looked away again, then fixated on Theora. “You still haven’t undressed.”

“Why would I—”

Treeka tilted her head. “Didn’t the demon ask you to? Before I showed myself. She wanted to say hello to the —” She squinted. “The Shade? For her scheme.”

“Ah.” Right, Theora had forgotten. She pulled off the coat — she was wearing one of Fiantanne’s dresses underneath anyway.

“Nice!” Dema said. “See you later. Take care of each other.” She then threw the clothing up above herself, and proceeded to vanish into a fold as it fell down around her.

“Only one left now,” Treeka murmured.

“No,” Theora said, firmly. “Dema will come back.”