Exvee the Canopy Elf just could not believe it. He had regained all of his lost memories only three days ago, yet did not understand how it could have happened... He had only shaken the hand of a long lost human friend named Pocamu when the memories just reappeared in his mind. This scholarly elf was quite perplexed.

Pocamu's mind had wandered off as the two had been travelling through Elevere Forest. He recalled Shoal with all of the Mangebill fans. It was a pleasant place... but the people were very obsessive about that duck race... He remembered that Mangebill even had fanguys, but Pocamu's attention had been solely on the female fans... and the lake...

That meteor was suspicious... Pocamu thought. I have to keep my eye out for more of them... they could prove troublesome.

Exvee simply could not hold it in any longer. "What do you think caused my memories to come back? Usually I am excellent at figuring things like this out, but I am clueless!"

Pocamu stopped and crossed his arms as he closed in eyes in deep thought. "Ya know... I'm really not sure... The best guess that I have is that since our hearts are so close, physical touch can manipulate our memories if he ever get amnesia... I hope that when we find Coel, Gryph, and Wormix; that it's that simple to make them remember who they are."

Suddenly, the two travelers heard a rustling in the forest behind them. The rustling had begun in only one direction, but soon came from all around them. Exvee then noticed some nasty patches of stinging nettles and thorny vines all around them.

"Gorselings..." Exvee muttered as he picked up the remnants of a broken wooden sign.

"What?" Pocamu asked in confusion.

"Nasty little buggers... We must have wandered into a nesting area while we were chatting away and not paying attention to where we were going. One of my fellow elves, Imerin, wandered into a nest one time... He ended up plucking thorns from his bum for an entire week..." Exvee replied as he studied the sign.

"So what does the sign say?" asked Pocamu.

"It confirms my hypothesis." Exvee said solemnly as he held up the sign for Pocamu to read.

"Beware the swarm..." Pocamu read aloud. Then his eyes widened. "EXVEE DUCK!"

Exvee dodged the attack from behind by rolling to his right. When he turned around, what he saw froze him in horror. Swarms of gorselings had emerged from the areas surrounding the two travelers and had initiated an attack by shooting thorns at Exvee. Pocamu readied for an attack by surrounding himself with various orbs of light and darkness.
Exvee looked confused as he summoned some vines to bind a group of the gorselings. "I thought you were a soldier, not a witch..."

Pocamu smiled. "We're not so different, you and I... I'm a Dezenta too... a class outside of the normal ones... a group of beings that can control the elements... You have powers over nature, I have light and darkness powers."

Exvee grinned. "So you truly are the 'Twilight Knight,' aren't you?"

"You bet your butt, I am..." the soldier said with pride as he summoned an ornate sword with a seashell handle out of thin air and shuffled off the mortal coil of one of the gorselings. "...and every knight has a good blade... Mine is the Banded Tulip."

Pocamu's grin turned into a frown as he looked at the body of the gorseling he had just sliced in two. The two halves began to grow into two separate creatures.

"That wasn't part of the plan..." Pocamu said as he and Exvee backed into one another in defensive stances.

"When is it ever?" Exvee replied. "If I remember correctly, this was always our luck. Different place, different bad guys, but same luck. If Wormix were here, we would be hearing some comic relief right now..."

Pocamu grabbed a gorseling with a giant hand made of shadow and threw him about a mile away further into the forest. "Well, you never did like his corny jokes, so I guess our luck has improved."

Exvee created a giant stone-toothed mouth out of the ground to swallow up a good chunk of the gorseling swarms. "I suppose, but our numbers would be improved regardless."

"Wow... five against... five hundred... what an improvement..." Pocamu muttered.

Exvee fell to his knees. "This is getting to be too much... They keep healing and multiplying themselves... We are only helping them... by hurting them..."

Pocamu was getting tired as well, but there had to be a way to defeat these gorseling swarms. He then turned to Exvee. "If I faint, catch me and run as fast as you can!"

"Wha...?" Exvee began, but he became speechless as Pocamu began his attack.

The Twilight Knight knew that the gorselings were attacking out of defense of their territory. He focused his energies on one half of the swarms and altered the way the light reflected off the gorselings' skin to make that half red. As soon as the green gorselings saw the red gorselings, all attention on the two travelers was lost. Pocamu's vision began to blur. "Exvee... get us out of here... if I faint... I will... lose focus... and... they... they will change... back to green..."

The Canopy Elf slung Pocamu over his shoulder as the human kept his focus on the gorselings. Exvee summoned a vine from the trees above and the two were now airborne as Exvee swung from vine to vine. As Pocamu fainted, the red gorselings turned back into their natural color and stopped fighting one another. Seeing that the intruders were gone, they returned to their nests.

As Exvee swung, he could still feel Pocamu's heartbeat. His friend was still alive, and had gained some well-deserved rest...