They spent an hour in the log storage building, going over details. By the end of it, they were all more or less on the same page.

"You need wood. I can handle that." Zia held up his hand as the other big man started to raise some sort of objection. "I'll make sure the village gets paid now. This is my private stock. That big tree, from a few years back."

The other man whistled. "You folks have no idea what you are getting there. Well, fine. I'll make sure they get some metal for nails and things. Least I can do if you are giving up your grandfather's tree."

"Wait. Grandfather's tree?" Marco asked.

"It's another long story," Zia said. "Not one you have to hear except to know I've been sitting on those planks a long time. I'll keep enough to make myself a nice table, so don't worry about it."

"But…" Riv looked alarmed. "Don't you think…"

"I said don't worry about it." Zia waved the issue off. "Now, from what you said, there's something out there, but nothing anyone found but Quill in a generation. You have a plan to find it?"

"Just him." Elisa pointed to Marco. "His skill might tell him something. Otherwise, he has a way of getting into trouble. We'll figure it out one way or another."

"Good, then." Zia nodded. "Go get me that ship, then. Get your supplies together. I have a feeling we don't have as much time as we want before this gets complicated."

They took the outboat back to the ship, the ship back to the dock, and the supplies out of the ship. After getting promises from the villagers that they'd make sure the chickens were taken care of, Riv jumped aboard to scatter their feed one more time before they left. There, he made an enormous discovery.

"Guys," he said, shaking from excitement. "Vicount Pecknscratch. She laid an egg!"

He held it out in his outstretched palm like a great treasure. He wasn't crying with joy, but Marco sensed it was a close thing.

"Well, that's exciting," Zia said. "We'll make sure to put those to use after you go. If the… viscount, you said?"

"Right," Aethe said, deadpan. "He did."

"If the vicount laid an egg, the others probably aren't far behind. Happy day for a sailor, I'd say," Zia said with the same solemn air.

"Me too," Marco said. "Now, Riv, you have to put that down. We have adventures to go on. Zia, you have control of the ship."

"It's in good hands," Zia said. "Fair warning, I'm going to feed it everything it can take. It will look mighty odd when you come back, until the system gets on top of it."

"Fine with me," Marco said. "Everyone, let's go."

For all its bustle, the village wasn't large. A few minutes later, they were walking through the woods, shaded by a heavy canopy provided by a variety of different trees. An hour or so later, they had stopped seeing stumps where logging had taken the best lumber, or holes in the ground or sides of hills indicating the beginnings of mines.

"Do you think we'll find it?" Elisa asked. "I told them more than I was confident about. Can we make good?"

"We'll make good," Marco said. "I don't know how, but we will. We have to. Whatever Quill is, it started here. So will ending him."

They pressed on. Thick branches arched overhead, blotting out most of the sunlight. Every step carried them deeper into the muffling silence of the woods. It wasn't a magical silence, at least, judging by the birds and animals they could hear in the brush and branches that surrounded them. It was still intimidating in its way. This was an old forest with big trees. These were trees that had lived before their parents’ parents had seen light. Even Riv carried himself quietly. His club rested across his shoulder, ready, although he seemed to be trying not to make it look that way.

Aethe walked close at Marco’s side, bow in hand.

“This forest is natural. But that doesn't mean it's safe. We know of at least one unusual thing out here. There could be others,” she whispered.

"If Quill drew his strength from here, then there's something system-heavy going on," Elisa said. "Figuring out what could be hard."

They let the conversation trail off, focusing on finding the easiest paths through the forest. There were trails wide enough in places to suggest hunters or villagers still used them, though they narrowed to make passage difficult where saplings and brush pressed in. The crew managed to keep moving at a more or less easy pace, letting their eyes wander across patches of ferns and moss. Birds flitted from branch to branch above them, and squirrels scolded from the high canopy.

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

Riv stopped once to point out a tree hollow where some animal had nested, leaning in with curiosity before Elisa tugged him along and possibly disturbing some current tenants.

Marco ran a hand along the bark of one trunk as they passed. It was rough and left sap on his hand even with just light contact. It reminded him of the few camping trips Tatric had taken him on, all those years ago, or of trips he had taken with woodcutters and hunters where he had accepted work as a porter and helper. They were trips from before his life had been overtaken by ships and system battles. They hadn't seemed important then, but he was starting to understand how much memories of good times helped him stay steady through the bad times. Marco let those memories play on in his mind, giving them room to do their work.

Every so often Riv would poke the ground with his club, like he would find something worth knowing about with a random stab at the soil. He never found anything, but he kept on poking the ground, thumping various trees, and even sometimes taking several steps into the darker forest to look around.

Elisa paused near a fallen log, brushing her fingers across some mushrooms growing in its shade. “Some of these are edible. I know the species. We might as well take some along for dinner.”

"You are sure? We won't get poisoned?"

"We shouldn't," Elisa said. "The system doesn't mess around with non-system plants very much. Even if they were poisonous, we'll just have Riv go first. He's tougher than any non-system plant could be."

Riv made a face but let his silence accept the position of unofficial crew food taster.

“Not bad walking,” he finally said. “It's better than Quill's island was. I could walk this all day.”

“You might have to,” Marco said. “We’re not rushing. Just seeing what’s here.”

"It will get harder," Aethe said. "If any of this was easy to find, someone would have found it already. Today, we are walking using paths. Tomorrow, we'll be avoiding them. That won't be nearly so fun."

When they came across a clear, spring-fed stream, they broke for water. The crew sprawled out, sitting on a fallen trunk while Riv passed around newly filled canteens. A breeze blew through the forest, sending shafts of light down as it shifted the canopy above.

"It's so nice," Elisa said. "It makes it all hard to believe."

"Makes what hard to believe? That there's a temple here?" Marco asked.

"That anyone managed to become evil growing up here. Everyone is so nice. Life here seems rewarding. Why wouldn't he just lean into that?" she said.

"I get why," Marco said. "I really do."

"You spent all your time on Gulf Isle thinking about being evil? I don't think so."

"No, but I did think about leaving. The usual person on Gulf Isle was a butcher or a baker, not a pirate or explorer. If I had wanted to, I could have probably steered the system in that direction. I could have probably just done nothing and ended up with something like that. But I didn't. I spent every waking moment trying to find a way to go explore."

"I can't really imagine you as a baker," Elisa said. "But I can't imagine you being evil either. You think Quill was really born wanting to use big energy fields to destroy people's minds?"

"I don't know about that. But I also don't know if I was born wanting to be a captain. I got there pretty early, at least. I wanted it really bad. But born? Who knows."

Before they made camp that night, Aethe managed to bring down a few pheasants with her bow. Under her direction, Marco and Riv plucked them, cleaned them, and rinsed them in another stream before they tied them up over the water to roast.

The next morning they rose early and pressed deeper into the forest. The paths wound steadily eastward, each tree looking an awful lot like the last. The team struck camp and bantered as they walked for a while, but eventually the sheer boredom of the setting won out as the talk waned, the crew pressed on, and silence reigned.

By midday, they got some welcome respite. Through the trees, they saw the shimmer of light reflected off the waters of the far shore of the island. It was unremarkable, in a lot of ways. The crew stopped on a low bluff to survey the sea stretching away and saw nothing but endless sand. By the time they got to the sand, there was no doubt that whatever interesting things these woods seemed to hold, they had been missed. They had cut a straight line through the island, and Marco knew they’d have to double back somehow to get the lay of the land.

“Left or right?” Riv asked, pointing back down the way they had come. "If we are doubling back, we have to choose a side."

There was no clear trail, only tall trees that were the same on one side as they had been on the other. It was an arbitrary choice, but one of the sides had to be right and nobody seemed all that eager to chance picking the wrong one. As such things usually went, Marco decided for the group and took that risk on himself.

After weighing the decision, Marco's choice ended up being random. “Left. We’ll circle back that way. But this time, no paths. We’ve seen what’s easy to find. Let’s see what isn’t.”

The difference was immediate. Without paths, each step became a negotiation with brush, protruding roots, and the occasional fallen trunk. Every foot forward had to be fought for, and every bit of footing had to be chosen with care.

Progress slowed to a crawl, but there was a kind of satisfaction in it for Marco. He got to watch Aethe make the same journey at double the speed, for one, zig-zagging and using her superior eyesight to greatly increase the effective ground they were searching. Even beyond that, there was something about it. This was virgin territory. Each yard of ground was theirs alone, untrodden and unrecorded until Elisa wrote the little special things about it down in her notebook. It was exploration, he realized, even if there weren't treasure chests and massive monsters every step of the way.

Aethe continued on in the lead, slipping between obstacles with the grace of her scout skills, and sometimes pointing out better routes to ease their way. Marco swatted vines and brush out of the way with his sword when they grew too thick, and Riv continued thumping things with his club, still unable to find anything that broke open to reveal the exact thing they needed.

By afternoon the novelty had worn thin. Sweat stuck Marco’s shirt to his chest under his armor and stung his eyes. As the forest grew deeper, the air grew heavier, then wetter. With the moisture came the mosquitos.