The spruce forest is pretty. The fractal leaved ironbough trees have a certain alien beauty to them. Something impossibly unreal that makes them never quite feel normal, no matter how many times I see them. But these simple spruce? Their plainness has a certain kind of appeal all its own.

  I've had too many anomalies in my life recently. Garrick has told me how most of his life aside from the specific fights against calamities tends to be rote. I've been looking forward to that. Peacefully traveling the roads to where I'm needed under guidance. Garrick is needed anywhere he goes. I've seen it firsthand. Even if it winds up not being a calamity, he'll show up to stop a monster raid, save people on the road.

  The seers are seldom wrong, it's just that identifying the magnitude of a threat from the great distances involved is unreliable. No failing of their own. It's just the nature of their magic.

  But he always helps. I want to help.

  I don't care about being in the keep. In fact I'd rather not stay there any more often than I have to. Garrick interacts with Serafina a lot, too…

  I crouch under some low branches, pausing my thoughts for a moment as I break into a section of woods that are distinctly familiar. I see a fairly clear path that I'm breaking into. It zigs and zags fairly regularly around trees and other obstacles, but overall heading to the north.

  Along the route are regular dustings of null-powder beneath areas with clearly unnaturally severed tree branches.

  It's the route I ran while I was so badly affected, chasing that…

  I try to avoid actually calling it a man or a monster. I'm still not sure how I feel about it, but I know Garrick will be heading this way, so I angle to follow it as best I can. Luckily neither me nor… the anomaly were exactly hiding our tracks, so it's trivial, even though I wasn't really looking at anything other than my target.

  I walk for a few hours, feeling a tightness growing in my chest as I get closer to my destination. The sun is still high, luckily. I don't know if I could really go into this situation in the dark.

  But, I push through, repeating prayers under my breath to try to dispel my rising blood pressure and the clammy feeling of sweat in my helmet. To mixed success. Enough to keep moving forward, not enough to actually salve my tension. It might reach a head, but I'll just try to not think about that for now and keep my eyes forward and focused as best as I can.

  Another half hour passes as I come upon the sound of distant running water echoing. The sound instantly sets me on edge and gets me jogging forward. Breaking my casual walk that I've maintained the entire time to cover the last bit faster.

  I come upon the brush that I had to launch myself through the first time and angle to go around it this time.

  As I round the nearest tree to this thick shrub I’m suddenly snagged around the gorget and lifted my full height off the ground. All of my collected tension and rising panic releases itself at the same time and without really looking I coil my legs and kick off of whatever has me. Purely a trained muscle memory reaction.

  Enhanced, I kick the thing that grabbed me with a mighty bang of metal on metal, launching off into a flip backwards and landing in a coiled crouch to see…

  A very unamused, maybe embarrassed, looking Garrick with a serious dent in the center of the chestplate of his Bulwark armor.

  All of my stress boils over instantly and suddenly my armor feels ten times heavier.

  Behind him I see that he's established a little base camp. A tent, a campfire framed with stones and a cooking surface atop it, and a stump seeming to be acting as a desk that has his oversized codex and several books out. All surrounded by rings of runes that I failed to notice.

  "Nyss." The name falls like a hammer blow against an anvil. "Sometimes you are too soft-footed for your own good." But it follows with a small grin as I rise. "You triggered every single one of my wards and were just sneaky enough that I didn't know it was someone armored, but not so sneaky that I couldn't be sure it wasn't a monster."

  "Ah, yeah, Sorry, Garrick. I've been in my own head." With a snap of a seal breaking, I unhook my helmet and remove it — the winter chill cooling me down quickly.

  "Mm. You don't say?" He looks at me expectantly for a few moments with a very clear and obvious question hanging in the air. My tension returns instantly. My only answer is an embarrassing one.

  "I…I was worried..." My voice comes out small and fragile as I hang my head.

  I hear the deceptively soft steps of Garrick approaching and look up at him. "You say that like you expect me to scold you." He reaches out with the utmost gentleness and puts a gauntleted hand on my head. "Share with me your heart, Nyss. You know I'll gladly hear it." After he tosses my hair with a delicate ease that nobody would ever expect from someone near ten feet tall and proportionally wide he turns to walk back to the lively campfire and I follow suit.

  He sits with a heavy and hollow thud that echoes off the nearby chasm as the fire crackles its warm song. I join him with a much quieter thump and stare at the flames for a little while in companionable silence.

  Garrick and I haven't been able to sit like this in a long time, and there's something comforting about it. The last time we travelled together for any length of time was in the wake of him saving me when I was…seven, I think. Nearly twenty years ago. Despite everything awful happening, he saw fit to make me comfortable and welcome while I babbled at him in broken Eldaran common.

  Remembering those days gives me a small smile and helps me start talking. I recount my dream to him and he watches thoughtfully. "What else has been happening? The dream is worrisome, but I feel like there's more to it to have you feeling so unsettled that you felt the need to seek me across the countryside. Dame Serafina explained to me how your conflict with the calamity went, but I didn't have time to read your entire account of things."

  "I guess I'll start from the beginning, then."

  What follows is me giving Garrick a blow-by-blow of all of the events from when I left with the expedition, to the fight with the ogre, my poisoning myself, finding and fighting the calamity, my issues with May, what happened with the beastmasters, my conversation with Serafina, and then the thing in the barracks with Lan and my breakdown.

  By the end of the nearly punctuationless vent — during which Garrick keeps his focus on me the entire time — I feel a bit better. Night has started to fall with the chill worsening quickly.

  "Drek of a couple weeks, huh?" The simple answer makes me laugh. A deep belly laugh that goes on a long time. Garrick never curses, ever. So atop the irreverent statement itself, it catches me off guard in a big way. My eyes start to water, and eventually it graduates to my lungs and diaphragm hurting. Every chuckle feels like I'm letting free a little weight.

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  "Yeah, I guess so." I respond inbetween the final remnants of giggles that just don't want to quite leave.

  "So, Nyss. You know me. I'm not good with people. I stay out here like this because of that. I don't have a good answer to any of this that isn't exactly how I would handle it, and I think you know what that is. What I'll say is this: You're strong. You always have been. The first time we met you held onto your strength for nearly three weeks before you let yourself be vulnerable in front of me — and even that was in the hidden comfort of a sleeping bag and technically out of sight." He finally looks away from me. Down and away. It's a mannerism I've noticed over the years that he does whenever he gets emotional and doesn't want to show it. Out of respect, I look away and give him his moment. When he speaks again, his voice is a bit harder, more controlled. "You don't need to be strong all the time. I know I've taught you to push through hardship: but that only helps if you can eventually stop and breathe."

  That stops him dead for a few seconds, clearly thinking hard. "Don't…be like me, Nyssa. Don't get wrapped up in armor against the world. I know you look up to me and Lan. We're fine to emulate as fighters, but neither of us are any good at being people. The Watcher and all the Gods Above know I've made a lot of mistakes in that regard."

  When I look away from the fire and at Garrick again, he's just looking down at the fire without speaking further. I know full well what he's thinking about. Seeing it hurts, because I do know a bit of what he's feeling, but from the other side. He lost a daughter long, long, before we met, and our shared trauma has seen us bond a lot over the years. I don't know if he sees me truly as a surrogate daughter, but I have always looked up to him as a sort of father figure.

  I stand and walk over to kneel next to him. I offer a simple, "Hug?"

  He looks over at me with an honest smile for once. Not the hint of a thought of the concept of a smile. Just an actual honest-to-the-Watcher smile. "Hug." He completes the ritual we've shared for the better part of two decades. Neither of us can talk to people, so this will do. With his absurd height, him sitting and me kneeling has long been the best way for us to manage this.

  It lasts for a while, and eventually we separate, and I return to my spot opposite him around the fire. "Can I stay with you for now? I think seeing your process in person will be helpful."

  "Are you actually good to be doing so?" The question would be harsh and carry implications from anyone else, but Garrick is just comfortably straightforward.

  "At this point I think I'm back to one hundred percent. Armor is fully repaired, it's been long enough that my arm shouldn't be in any additional risk."

  "Not what I meant, Nyss."

  I pause for a while. "I think I'm better out here than I would be back at the keep. At least…until I've had some time to think things through."

  "And what about all the people who are surely looking for you after you fled the medical wards?" That comment is an actual criticism, and I feel it, and…really don't have a defense against it, so I choose to ignore it.

  "Where are you heading next?"

  He eyes me through heavily lidded eyes as he starts to set up a cookpot to make food. "If your calamity is still kicking, I have an idea of where it might have headed. There have long been rumors of dragons in the woods near the Fae territory about a days walk from here." When I look at him quizzically, he eyes me, "What?"

  "What, exactly, is a dragon? I don't think I've ever read anything that mentioned them before.” I know of ‘The Dragon', as in the member of the Kaymarian pantheon, but I have the distinct impression that's not what Garrick is referring to. "Some sort of rare monster? How bad would it be if the calamity got ahold of one?"

  "I have to say I'm shocked, Nyssa. Haven't you studied elementals at all?"

  I shake my head. "It never seemed relevant to what we do. I understand the basic idea of kyn who are elementally aligned like the Itarii and some Vulpin, but that's about it. They're rare to the point of barely existing on the continent, so it seemed like wasted trivia and effort. It's not like I'm ever going to be fighting someone like that."

  "And so the branches fall." He says the idiom with a wry expression. It's a common Eldaran saying about the Rootmother of Eldara — the worldtree the capitol is built around — regarding the impossible happening. A branch has never fallen from the tree in all of recorded history, and would be a catastrophe if it did. "Dragons are an old kyn. One you're not likely to even hear about anymore."

  "They're of Kyn?" I ask. Kyn, like 'Beast' and 'Monster' are very specific terms with specific meanings. Being kyn means they were a mortal race in possession of soul — like humans, elves, demonkyn, beastkyn and any number of others. Those descended from the gods and the worldtrees. Each claims a slightly different origin. My people descend from the Demon King, naturally. Humans, Elves and Sidhe are believed to be a single line descended from the fae with ever-thinning blood, and the beastkyn and serpentkyn have creation myths ranging from truly intelligent beasts gaining a mortal spark to being made specifically by the gods to suit their environments.

  All over the world, there's countless kyn in countless varieties. But I'm fairly certain that all known kyn are recorded and documented. Maybe there's something over the distant horizon that I've never heard of…but something so close to home, here? It's borderline unbelievable. But…maybe I'm cutting my own experiences short. I just met someone from a race of kyn I've never seen before.

  The world is boundless, that much is known in scripture and from learned experience. As far as society spreads, there always seems to be more just over the horizon. Even within known and explored areas things are known to change thanks to the tides of essence and the nature of the world.

  The Traveller in particular espouses an open mind when dealing with the unknown, so I'll just fall back on that scripture and do my best to keep that more open perspective.

  "Aye, they were purported to be, at least. My understanding is that they began leaving the eye of society back before I was born, and by the time I was your age, I don't believe any had been seen in decades, maybe centuries.

  "They are true elementals, though. Not an essentia-bonded subspecies like Itarii. Every true elemental possesses a Gate to the essence seas depending on their affinity. Once upon a time they were a common enough sight, but people are… how people are. My understanding is that they fell out of favor with the world and started being pursued and pinned with blame for natural disasters. They were tremendously powerful. "Burn down an entire countryside with breath of flame", "sink a fleet of ships by conjuring a maelstrom" sort of power. But instead of fighting back, they left. An action that has always told the lie to the claims to me."

  "Breath of fire, huh? What do they look like?" I think back to the girl I saved and the strange almost-Ignia she called upon to turn the saving around.

  "Never seen one, myself, obviously. But the common depictions show them as large scaled beasts akin to wyverns or drakes, but with four legs, broad and powerful wings as separate limbs, and scales that loosely associate with the color of their essence affinity. I think the smallest one I've seen in a text was described as being in the realm of forty feet from nose to tail."

  "Mmm. I can see why people would be afraid of them." The girl I saw was nothing remotely in that scale, even if the rest matches up decently well. Maybe a sort of half-breed? Is that a thing that can happen? All Kyn to my knowledge breed true…

  Garrick fixes me with a hard stare. "Which isn't a good reason."

  It appropriately cows me. It's the exact sentiment that sees people be prejudiced against my people. Being tacitly stronger than others goes a long way to making people fearful, or at least uncertain. "I didn't mean it like that. It's just there's not much out there at that scale that isn't a monster. They were fully sentient?"

  "To my knowledge, yes. Fully sapient, sentient, and the older stories paint them in much more favorable terms — itinerant wanderers who deal with threats that other Kyn would struggle with. Living with a Gate from birth would make anything ludicrously capable before even a few years passed, let alone centuries or millenia."

  That gives me further pause, and further separates the girl from these creatures in my mind. She looked about my age, aside from her more exotic features. "I think I'll need to look into this."

  He nods at me, returning to the prior topic. "As I was saying, rumors say there may be or have been dragons in the region near the border of fae territory. Which would pretty clearly explain why they remained rumors. Most people wouldn't be champing at the bit to get involved with legendary serpents or the fae individually, let alone at the same time. I have no such compunctions. If the Calamity is around, and so is even one gate to the essence sea, it cannot be allowed to acquire it under any circumstances."

  I nod. Calamities grow rapidly in strength with exposure to essence. One gaining access to a functionally unlimited supply of it via a complete gate would be a disaster in basically any circumstance. "So we go dragon hunting in the morning, then?"

  "Dragon finding, but yes."

  Finishing cooking, Garrick hands me a bowl of a simple stew enhanced with essence based flavor packs to bolster its nutritional value and taste. It's quite a bit better than my standard fare.

  We sit in silence and eat, while I'm left circling on the thought of that girls jagged toothed smile and bright eyes. Wondering what exactly she might be, and if seeing such an anomaly relates to everything else strange that's going on around me right now…