“Get lost, momma’s boy.” The venom in the ivy’s voice was unsettling. In life, the plant was only a mess of long, roping vines strangling a beautiful maple tree. On the Verdant Stage, Wesley saw it as a hunched, skinny man, his aura a sick shade of brown. He hovered eerily close to the maple tree’s persona, a stunning woman with a vibrant green bob cut hairdo of maple leaves.

  “Help me,” the woman urged as the ivy snatched her by the wrist.

  “Leave her be,” Wesley commanded. There was an air of frustration in his tone. Since his mother had announced the return of Gideon, Wesley had noticed a sudden and unsettling increase in Overgrowth activity. Even small sins like this were becoming more common.

  “We all gotta grow,” the ivy replied. “You saying her life is more valuable than mine?”

  “I have seen ivy that grows alongside its host. Working hard to not strangle it to death.”

  “Let me go!” the maple shouted as she tried to wrest her arm out of the ivy’s grip.

  “Can’t do that when the wench is hogging all the sunlight!” the ivy snarled, his hand losing the human shape Wesley’s mind had given it. The man’s skinny fingers were vines once more that whipped up the maple’s arm and tightened. She screamed in pain and fear as the vines gripped her. “And what’s she doin’ with all that sun? Letting humans draw her sap? Whore.”

  She twisted and struggled as the arm turned red, then purple, and finally blue. Wesley screamed for the ivy to stop as he began conjuring his own druidic power. There was a snap and the sound of splintering wood from outside of the stage as the ivy tore off one of the maple’s limbs.

  On the stage, the maple screamed as the man tore her arm off and slung it onto the pitch back floor. The green aura around the limb flickered and died.

  “Enough!” At Wesley’s shout, there was an orange blur. The frenzied fox, Lady, tore into the ankle of the ivy. In the real world, the fox was gnawing at the roots of the vines. The ivy screamed as it released the maple and turned its focus to Lady on both the stage and in the forest.

  “You’re stronger than that,” Wesley told Lady. “So much stronger than this thug. Destroy him.” Lady snarled and went into a frenzy, tearing and shredding the vine’s stage persona, while ripping at leaves and stems in the real world as well.

  As the fox tore at the last remnants of the vines, Wesley ran to the maple as she quietly cried.

  “Thank you so much,” she muttered. “He was killing me. Had been for a while.” Her human-like persona looked down at her shoulder where the ivy had torn her arm away. Splintered wood took the place of flesh, and oozing sap replaced blood in the analogue world.

  “Let me fix that for you,” Wesley offered, gently approaching with his hand extended.

  “Can you?”

  “Of course.” Wesley gently rested a hand on the top of her shoulder, and the maple winced out of reflex.

  Outside of the stage, Wesley, his eyes closed in trance, was standing with a hand on the trunk of the large tree.

  “I can only do so much, though,” Wesley remarked. “It is your body, after all. You have to put in the effort. There’s so much sunlight here. You should have more than enough strength.”

  “You’re right,” she said, taking a deep breath. The persona of the maple looked up toward the sun, which was nowhere to be found in the inky darkness of the Verdant Stage. The only sources of light were the auras surrounding Wesley, the maple, and Lady.

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  If Wesley were aware in the waking world, he would have heard the groans and pops of wood straining as the tree regrew its lost branches in a matter of seconds. On the stage, however, it was an instant change. After a moment of skyward reverence, the maple looked back to her shoulder to see her arm returned.

  “Thank you so much for helping me. He was…” Her voice trailed off in discomfort.

  “It’s no problem. I have a question for you, though.”

  “Of course. What can I do?”

  “Can you check the Verdant for me? I need the nearest avatar.”

  “Whose avatar? Talnorel’s?”

  “Anyone’s,” Wesley said. His somber tone was chilling, even to him. The forests had suddenly become deadly for Talnorel’s missionaries. His partner, Duncan, used the Verdant network just two days before, attempting to reach a group of missionaries closer to Talnorel’s Grove. A bear sympathetic to the Overgrowth charged him five minutes later.

  Wesley barely escaped. Duncan was gone.

  Whether or not Gideon was personally ordering these attacks was unknown. But the massive meeting Wesley’s mother, the presiding Mortal Chief of the Verdant, had held over the network in the last days of winter would not have been unnoticed by the Overgrowth. The bloodthirsty group knew the druids were now on edge and were taking advantage of it.

  The maple looked into the distance as flickers of auras appeared around the pair. Wesley hoped the tree had enough sense to keep his presence quiet. But if not, it would not matter. He would be moving south soon enough. His mother urged him to find refuge in the nearest city if he could not find a god to contact.

  The chief hoped to leverage her son to trigger a modern meeting of the Talnorel Alliance, the vaunted organization of culturally torn and conflict weary factions from across the March that finally stood tall against Dorvan and the Wrath Liches. And though these societies had grown in peace after Dorvan’s ascension, they had grown apart.

  “Get to The Throne, or find a god,” his mother had urged him. “We will be going as high as possible as quickly as possible. Overkill is not aggressive enough when it comes to Gideon. Even half of the Alliance surrounding him will put me at ease.”

  Wesley’s thoughts were distracted by a sudden chill. Even Lady, still absent mindedly gnawing on pieces of the ivy looked up at the source of the cold air. Through the darkness of the stage, in the distance, Wesley could see a faint, light blue light.

  “I have found a god. She is southeast of here. Going west, toward The Throne.”

  “Do you know who it is?” Wesley asked the maple.

  “I have never seen her, I am sorry.”

  “No problem.” Wesley said, looking back to the light. He made a mental note of the direction before turning back to the maple. “I appreciate your help. Will you be okay?”

  “I think so. With the vines gone, I should be fine. Thank you, um… What was your name?”

  Wesley grabbed his messenger bag from the ground beside him and pulled his frumpy hat from its main pocket as the Verdant Stage began to give way to the real world again. “It’s best we don’t share names,” he said dryly. “I apologize for my rudeness, but it’s safer for both of us.”

  The tree seemed to tremble in response. “I understand. I’m sorry to trouble you. Good luck.”

  “Lady,” Wesley said, out loud, to his fox companion. “Let’s go, girl.”

  The fox looked up at her master, vines slung around her in various stages of destruction. She spat out what she was still gnawing and ran toward Wesley, leaping over the felled maple branch.

  Where to? Lady asked into Wesley’s mind.

  “We’re going to find out where that god is.”

  Maple never saw her. Will she help?

  “It doesn’t matter,” Wesley muttered. “We just need to be safe right now. We can do our best to convince the goddess. We’ve nothing to lose at this point.”

  More druids? Lady offered.

  Wesley had no answer for that. “Come on, Lady. We can at least try. For dad.”