Nara Eski tel’Amoris sat on the beach, staring out across the waves at the world she had adopted as her own. She could feel everything around her – at least within a few feet – courtesy of One with Nature, and the sensory overload was nearly enough to spill across the partition in her mind and into her thoughts. She maintained the separation, though not without focus.

Such was the plight of a Druid with no grove.

It wasn’t just a loss of power, though it was that. The effect was much deeper. Much more impactful than she could have ever imagined. Of course, she had been told what would happen. Every Druid knew the consequences of losing a grove. Yet, when she had chosen to come to Earth, leading a group of settlers from her home world of Kashii, she had embraced the hubris of youth. It had led her to believe that she would establish a new grove and gain untold power like the Druids from the stories.

That hadn’t happened.

From the very moment they’d arrived, she and the other settlers had struggled to survive. Initially, what had driven her forward was the idea that if they could just find the coast, everything would be fine. They were sea elves, after all. The Ruathan. They only needed water and vitality to survive.

Yet, when they had reached the sea, their hardships hadn’t ended. Nara had, through no small degree of work, dedication, and a significant investment from her great grandmother back home, created a circle and bonded to a grove.

The labor didn’t end there, though.

The power had attracted powerful monsters – unheard of and unnatural creatures that never would have been allowed to live back home – and her followers had spent most of their time defending the nascent grove. For her part, Nara had been wholly occupied by repairing the damage those monster attacks had caused.

For the first two years, they’d barely kept an even keel. Even as they grew in power, so too did the world’s monsters. And they had never stopped coming. It got so bad that they were forced to treat with the natives just to get food enough to survive.

It galled Nara to no end.

A grove should, at its very core, be self-sufficient. That they needed outside help to survive was a blight upon her archetype. Yet, as frustrating as it was, Nara could not see her people starve – not for the sake of her pride, at least.

Eventually, their little settlement turned a corner. The combatants gained enough levels to shoulder the burden of protecting the grove, which gave the others the opportunity to do what they did best.

The grove – which consisted of a powerful coral reef, the polyps from which it had grown were native to the oceans of Kashii – had grown, and Nara had begun to gain levels. For two more years, her people continued to make headway, but in the fifth year on Earth, they’d truly begun to flourish.

And none made more progress than Nara. When she’d arrived, she’d only been level twenty-five, which was the cut-off for system-subsidized travel to a newly touched world. By the beginning of year six, she had reached level seventy-five, which was an unheard-of rate of progress for a young Druid.

Of course, early on, she was the only person bonded to the grove, so she’d gained an incredible boost to her levels just for her efforts in nurturing it. Since then, the constantly rising levels of ethera and the abundant life in the nearby oceans was enough to push her progress faster than she could have ever achieved back home.

That wasn’t to say the environment was the only reason for her success. She’d also worked diligently, managing the flows of ethera to keep the grove perfectly balanced. That effort was constantly necessary due to the frequent monster attacks, though she’d endeavored to keep the grove flourishing through sheer force of will – at least until she could get some help.

And there were a few young ones who seemed promising. Strong attunements. Willing demeanors. A reverence for all things nature-related. They would have been fringe candidates to join the prime grove in Kashii. Failing that, they would have settled into one of the subordinate sites, just like Nara’s parents.

That would have been her fate as well if it hadn’t been for her grandmother’s generosity. The matronly elf had toiled for more than a century as a Tender, and she wanted more for her favorite granddaughter. So, when the opportunity to settle a newly touched world had presented itself, she’d given Nara her life savings and the polyps that would become the seeds of a nascent grove.

In any case, even considering the rough start, things had begun to look up. The grove was flourishing, Nara herself was growing in power, and there were many candidates to officially join the grove when the time came.

That lasted for a little less than a year before disaster struck in the form of a pirate raid. Like the monster attacks, the notion of banditry – either on land or by sea – was entirely alien to Nara and the others who’d come to settle Earth. On Kashii, anyone who tried such a thing would have been utterly destroyed by one of the nobles.

And woe betide anyone who came to a grove uninvited, much less invaded with foul intent. Even the nobles, as mighty as they were, would never have attempted such an audacious maneuver. Yet, Earth was uncivilized, and the pirates were amoral and bloodthirsty. A terrible combination, especially when Nara’s people had only just begun to find their footing.

They hit the grove itself first, taking what they could and destroying everything else. Later, Nara would learn that they’d been hired by a despicable Alchemist who lived far inland. An elf, according to the stories, though his race was different enough from her own that they might as well have been entirely separate species.

Even then, what amounted to a racial cousin targeting a Druid’s grove was unconscionable. If she hadn’t been cut off from Kashii, she might have petitioned the Grove Defenders to investigate the elf’s history and rain consequences down on anyone who’d ever helped him.

That wasn’t possible, though.

Even her own family was forbidden from taking her messages. Such was the price of attempting to forge her own path.

And in the wake of that assault, she truly regretted her choice for the very first time. It only got worse when they reached the village that had been built upon the closest shore. They swept through it, killing the fighters and anyone else who dared to resist. Those who didn’t were allowed to survive, though they were taken captive. Only fifty of the nearly two-hundred residents managed to escape.

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Nara had been among them.

Like the other survivors, she had taken shelter in the sea, diving deep where the pirates could not reach them. They remained there for days, hoping against hope that some of the others would return. Some did, though only a scattered few.

Nara and her people resurfaced to find the grove entirely destroyed, the settlement plundered and set aflame, and only a dozen or so bodies to show for their brief resistance. A couple had been the very children she had hoped would become full members of grove.

And now they were dead.

The survivors wept over the fallen, grieving them as lost. Then, a few set out to find the captives and perhaps take whatever revenge they could against the pirates. However, Nara knew the truth. The wilderness was unsettled. The world was hostile. The pirates’ ships were swift, and their base of operations undoubtedly far away.

Finding them was a fool’s errand.

Nara had argued against going after them, and for the most part, she had succeeded. Not with everyone, though. What’s more, she couldn’t blame mothers and fathers for seeking their captive children.

For her part, Nara knew she couldn’t save them, though. What’s more, she had other responsibilities. When they’d come to Earth, everyone had put their faith in her. She was a real Druid with a better than average attunement to nature. They had come for a better life, trusting that she would protect them.

And she had failed.

Her focus shifted toward survival. She tried to harvest what she could of the coral reef, but the pirates’ assault was nothing if not thorough. They’d destroyed what they could not take with them, leaving too little to rebuild the reef.

Once again, Nara wept at the loss.

Flora and fauna weren’t people. She knew that. However, to a real Druid – and not just a Farmer with a nature attunement – the connection she shared with the grove meant that they weren’t far behind. Small though the grove was – barley more than fifty feet across – it had been hers. Like a sibling, almost.

It was gone now. Never to be recovered.

Her first instinct was to rebuild, and she tried to do so. The problem was that a proper grove required a significant center of power. Without that, it was just a bunch of flora.

Normally, new groves were well-planned and created by using off-shoots and progeny of powerful natural treasures that formed the hearts of much older groves. Sometimes, they could use a true natural treasure as the center, but those sorts of situations were rare on civilized worlds.

That was the only chance Nara would have to rebuild her grove, though she didn’t dare set out to search for an appropriate treasure. The world was too dangerous, especially given that her people had lost most of their martial protectors.

Since the raid, a couple of other survivors had drifted away. And Nara didn’t blame them, either. Without a grove, there was nothing binding them together. It was better to venture off on their own and hopefully find their way to one of the settlements they’d heard about.

Even Nara was tempted, if only to better find her bearings and search for an appropriate way to start over. As a Druid, her power might have been tied to a grove, but she could still do a fair imitation of a Farmer. Surely someone could use those skills.

In the end, she chose to remain on the coast, though she and the others who refused to leave her had traveled a good deal south of their original settlement. No sense staying where the pirates could find them, after all.

And they’d built a new camp, which had slowly become a settlement. Because of their increased levels, they were better able to protect themselves, and for a while, things were better.

Not for Nara, though.

Sure, everyone else was surviving. They had food, shelter, and some modicum of safety. But without the grove, they were adrift. For her part, Nara sank into a deep depression, and to date, she’d yet to climb free of the morose apathy that came in the wake of losing her grove.

“Druid tel’Amoris,” came a gentle voice from behind. Nara didn’t need to look to know who it was. Vesk, her only true friend, had returned from his latest expedition. He was a Merchant, though his class tended more toward a hybrid that let him defend himself while on the road, and he’d used his skills to routinely travel to the closest human town in order to get necessities.

Every time he left, Nara expected him to stay gone. There was no reason for him to stay. Not anymore. Yet, he always returned, and usually with some treat meant to remind her of home and give her some measure of respite from her depression. It never lasted, but Nara appreciated the effort.

“Don’t call me that,” she said. “A true Druid would never have lost her grove. Besides, we’ve been friends since we were children. You can call me by my given name.”

“Very well, Nara,” he said, settling in beside her. He offered her a pouch. She didn’t need to open it to know what it contained. The smell was enough, but the other sea elf’s broad smile was a dead giveaway.

“Dried kelp seasoned with salt,” she said, opening the pouch to see the green chips. “Just like home. Where did you get it?”

“A little town called Itoshima. It is approximately a month’s travel from here. North, on the other side of the great peninsula.”

The landmarks were a mystery to Nara, though she nodded along as she tried one of the seaweed chips. The flavor burst in her mouth, novel but still reminiscent of home. She offered some to Vesk, who eagerly took a handful. Grinning, he happily popped them into his mouth.

Before he’d even swallowed, he said, “But that’s not the reason I’m here.”

“Oh?”

“Guess what I found.”

“I will not play guessing games with you, Vesk. We are no longer children.”

“Not far off, though,” he said with a cheeky grin as he nudged her with his shoulder. That was true enough. Nara was still shy of her twenty-fifth birthday, and back on Kashii, she would have barely been accepted as a novice Druid.

“I suppose that’s true,” she acknowledged. “I still refuse to guess. Tell me or don’t.”

Vesk sighed. “You are no fun,” he said. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Things change.”

“Very well. I found the answers to our problems,” he said. “Two of them, in fact.”

“What do you mean?” she demanded. When Vesk didn’t immediately answer, she resorted to a tried-and-true method from their youth. She pinched him on the arm.

“Ow!”

“Tell me!”

“Fine, fine. A violent Druid,” he mused, shaking his head at the odd notion. “I suppose it’s something in the ethera here.” She glared at him, and he hastily continued, “So, first problem – those pirates. They are no longer an issue.”

“What do you mean?”

“They were killed. Every single one of them. Well, except one human who managed to escape. Or was allowed to so he could tell the tale. And he seems extremely enthusiastic about it, too. He’ll go on and on to anyone who will listen,” Vesk explained. “It seems they provoked the wrong person, and he wiped them out.”

“He? A single person?”

Vesk nodded. “And this wasn’t a small collection of pirates, either. According to Rusty – that’s the survivor’s name, and he’s disgustingly rich, at least for now. The way he’s spending money, that won’t be the case for long. If I was –”

“Vesk. Stay on track,” Nara interrupted. The other sea elf had always been one to ramble. Keeping him focused had been one of Nara’s constant annoyances.

“Right. Well, Rusty said there were thousands of people there. Pirates, mostly, but there were some support personnel too.”

“Our people?” she asked.

Vesk shook his head. “Doubtful,” he answered. “Not impossible, but it doesn’t add up. More likely, they were sold and scattered across the planet. My point is that I can confirm that the pirates who killed our people are now gone. The man who killed them gathered their bodies and threw them on the steps of the man he held responsible.”

“Thousands of corpses? That doesn’t make sense.”

Vesk shrugged. “Just what Rusty said, and for what it’s worth, I believe him. If you’re struggling with that, then you’re definitely going to have difficulty believing the next part,” he said, grabbing another seaweed chip. “It was a Druid.”

“W-what?”

“A Druid. The strongest human on the planet, in fact. Elijah Hart. And you know what that means, right?”

“A Druid killed that many people?” she wondered. It wasn’t impossible for a Druid to take a combat-focused class, and if someone sullied his grove…

“That’s the rumor,” Vesk stated. “But this means –”

“Another grove, and a strong one.”

“This could be the answer to our problems.”

Nara could only nod. It certainly seemed like the sort of thing that could turn their fate around. She didn’t have enough information, though. However, the mere mention of another grove – and the powerful natural treasures it must have been built around – was enough to light the fire in her core. She stared at Vesk with unflinching determination, her former apathy but a memory as she ordered, “Go back to the beginning and tell me everything.”