"Sheilaktar is going to be very confused and highly irate," Nythra speculated wryly. "I believe the amount of times anyone has ever 'dropped in' on her amounts to a grand total of zero, and with good reason."
Yhelbruna laughed. "Just the way we need her, then: off balance. She's been trying to get us to overlook this for far too long."
"She is not so amenable when she is irate!" Nythra laughed.
"Well I suppose this plan does hinge on Nadezdha's magical ability to curb that aforementioned 'ire' a bit," Yhelbruna winked.
"Ah, she is our magical, anti-inflammatory, necromancer-assuaging, ex-Thayvian pixie."
It was late spring in the Eastern Orchards, and pink blossoms drifted by the million-fold through the forest's dark and foreboding passages. They glinted in slanted yellow sunbeams, and gathered in piles about the roots of gnarled and enormous trees. Toadstools sat fat and cheery in every alcove, grasshoppers fiddled, and birds sang. High above, in the branches but below the shelter of the canopy, yellow will-o-wisps of neutral temperament ghosted playfully about in long lines, like decorative candles.
As the old saying went: The Eastern Orchards were named for their fruit, not their temperament. It was not a place for stargazing children or lonely woodsmen to be caught out come dusk, when the shadows started to grow long and the hungry things all began to stir.
Nythra of Seven Rivers was a full-fledged Hathran, and one of only two hundred equally capable women-mages, druids, and clerics-who governed Rasheman and saw to the needs of its people and spirit beasts. But here, in the Orchards, she knew well to be cowed. This forest did not care about a person's outside skills, or how cleverly one might invoke elemental water. This forest cared only for more primal wisdoms than that, and a person either had a... a knack for that, or they didn't. Nythra didn't.
She stuck close to Yhelbruna's side, trusting in the Orthlor-her mentor and master-to know the way.
"Is it the trees you fear?" the older woman teased her. "Or the dire rats and giant centipedes which nest in the fallen logs?"
"This forest wishes to swallow its visitors and keep them," Nythra strongly suspected. "Stray one tree to the left or one tree to the right, and backtracking will suddenly yield no exit..."
"She is the least forgiving forest of Rasheman," the Orthlor agreed, "but you musn't fear her so. Couple humility with patience, and breathe until you find a calm head. There is a playfulness to her riddles that clever and lighthearted children learn from each day; and rangers rely on her for fox pelts and venison."
"Aye, but many a story ends up with a hapless innocent following a wisp off a cliff and into a swamp and a hagspawn's belly," Nythra argued. "No, I've no head for her mysteries. I shall leave acquiring such expertise to Nadezdha; only so many people have what it takes to go frolicking amid carnivorous horses and mushroom circles. She's braver than I, and somehow makes it all work despite having none of Sheilaktar's grimness. "
"Nadezdha's affinity for the faewild, if it is genuine, is something you and I should like to see firsthand. You still scheme to ask her for a little tour of the forest?"
Nythra sighed. "And she shall show off something exciting for me, I am sure of it, which is making my stomach churn in terror and anticipation." She stared off into the horrible unknown for a moment and then suddenly winked at her mentor. "But yes. Absolutely. I shall not miss it for the world. So I can only blame myself if I end up enscorcelled and eaten by something some evening."
"Well then, should this come to pass, I shall make every effort to extract you from the belly of whatever has dined on you," Yhelbruna drawled. "Though if you have a say in the matter I must recommend you be swallowed whole, as if you end up in too many pieces I may need to enlist Sheilaktar's help on the matter..."
Nythra groaned.