We exited the house of our client. They lived in a cottage just outside Worth Woodsea. Our client was a middle aged man who would trade these magical herbs in market. But recently, his son had fallen extremely ill and needed round the clock care. Therefore, he was unable to go out to the forest to collect the herbs and make a living. Today - that was going to be our job. He had described the herbs as fern green with small pale silver and pale gold flowers. Additionally, he had said that they radiated a light magical power - one that soothed - since they were often used in healing and medicine.
We walked around the forest for a long time with no luck on finding the herbs. "Why are we looking in the center of the forest?" Altair sighed. We all looked towards him. It was unusual for him to speak. "They flyer said the herbs were found at the border of the forest - not in the center." Melody nodded.
"You're right," she said, "Also 'border' is rather vague so the herbs could be at the edge of the forest or just outside it."
"Why couldn't the client have told us exactly where they were?" Xavier complained.
"This is boring..." Viper moaned.
"Tough." I muttered as we walked towards the border of the forest.
Making it to the border didn't make the search easier. The herbs were still just as hard to find. I decided that I would crouch down to check among the other plants. I gently brushed away the shrubbery. "Ow!" I exclaimed as a sharp thorn cut open my palm. I looked as hard as I could. There was nothing there. This made me think back to when we were travelling and we had no idea where we were going. Then we spotted the golden tree. We spent the day searching though 400 years worth of shrubbery for Miriza's knife. Looking back on those times, we were all so much more happier then. We didn't have a clue about the world, and that's what made everything a new fun experience. Even though I enjoyed every day we lived now, it wasn't the same as it was back then. We had all changed so much and found ourselves. But had we really found ourselves? Or just a small fragment of our being? Who were we? What was our purpose here? What were we going to do? Just then I heard a voice call out my name. "Faya! Come quick!" I would know the sound of that voice wherever I was.
"I'm coming Bluebell!" I called back as I ran forwards. I couldn't help but worry that she may have found some kind of trouble. I found her in a clearing. She was staring right at me. "Is this what we need?" I looked down. In her hand was a plant. She handed it to me. As I grasped the plant in my palm I felt my the stinging from the cut begin to fade. I felt calm and almost... Cleansed... Cleansed in many ways... As if all my sins (like our first ever job) were being washed away... Every ache and pain was washed away to be replaced by... This strange warm feeling... It was hard to describe - but it felt good... I could feel the magic power radiating from these plants. "These are the right ones," I said, "Go find the others - I'll go collect some more." Once I had been able to hold the plant - it was a lot easier to find more of them. Now I knew what sort of magic power I was looking for. It was almost like a unique finger print. Even though the magic power was rather small and hard to pick up - I could now easily find it. As soon as Bluebell had brought the others, I let them hold the herbs so they could find them as well. Before long, we had found piles upon piles of herbs. Luckily, Our client had supplied us with magical baskets to take them all back to him.
"This is a lot of herbs!" He stared in awe at the baskets upon baskets of freshly picked herbs. "Now my son will be healed and we'll earn a profit from the market!" It felt good being able to help people like this man an his son. "You kids should stay the night here. But you can explore the forest for the rest of the day. Just be back by 8." We nodded and went out. I suspected we'd get our reward tomorrow. We went back to the forest again. It was easy to spot the herbs now. Though as we went deeper into the forest, I noticed there were less and less of them around. "Does anyone know anything about the Worth Woodsea?" I asked. There was no reply. All knew was the it was a large forest in Fiore. Soon I saw the sun begin to set. That's when we started to head back. Unusually, As we neared the border, I didn't notice the unique light magic coming from the herbs. I walked over to where I knew one would be from our journey into the forest. It looked nothing like it had looked before. It was completely black, but still looked healthy. I could sense the life radiating from it... As well as a strange dark magic power - almost like an opposite of the warm light one from before... I reached my hand out to touch it...
"Stop Faya!" Lilias exclaimed. Before I could process what she had said my fingers brushed the leaved of the plant. Immediately, I recoiled away from the herb. The pain in my fingers was... I looked down at my hand. Where my skin had come into contact with the plant there were what looked like poison. It looked like black glowing veins. I gritted my teeth. "We need to get back to the cottage NOW!" I muttered through the pain. I could almost feel it spreading up through my hand. I didn't dare look in case I was right about it moving through me... A few minutes later as we were walking Miriza turned and stopped. "What is that!?" I turned my head to see what looked like... A GIANT OCTOPUS THING? What was that doing in the Worth Woodsea? I could only imagine that it had something to do with Oración Seis.
When we got back to the cottage our client was able to heal me with the herbs we had found. "Why haven't the herbs here gone dark?" I asked him. He shrugged. "Maybe it's because they've already been picked so a technically now dead? I have no idea... It depends on what caused them to go like this." For the rest of the day (well evening) I was able to borrow a few books from our client. Sadly, he didn't have anything on rune magic - but he did have a book on the Worth Woodsea. In that book I was able to find out quite a bit of information about an ancient tribe from about 400 years ago called the Nirvits. Apparently, they once controlled the Worth Woodsea or something like that... Also, there was an ancient city located there or something like that... I didn't really spend too much time reading about it. Instead I decided to get an early nights sleep... Ready for whatever was in store for tomorrow...
