"How do you think we find Tom?" I asked Cal as he landed and took up his flayen form. The squidman straightened out his robes and stretched his limbs before brushing his beard. I sauntered through the woods, and the flayen seemed content to join me on the stroll.

  "I asked first," Cal said.

  "I'm asking now." I didn't think that would work and was surprised to hear Cal offer a solution.

  "Burn down the forest." It just wasn't a very good solution.

  "That worked the first time, right?" Still, I didn't completely toss it out.

  My first encounter with Tom was when I accidentally started a forest fire. It was another one of those .

  The fateful loop started with a failed attempt at creating ice armor and a successful attempt at chopping off my arm. From that point on, the loop spiraled. A chopped arm turned into a chopping arm, and since I had an ax for an arm, I chopped down a bunch of trees and wolfbears.

  The chopping was somewhat of a cathartic and therapeutic session that eased my mind in one area and created a bunch of guilt in another.

  It's like what they said, "Slaying one demon only creates space for more demons to exist." They, in this case, was a drunken marine officer. It was either an alcoholic joke or an expert excuse on why it was terrible to break bad habits. Snags was a ripe bastard, but no one trained new marines better than him.

  The guilt turned out to be quite the demon.

  To lessen the weight of slaughter, I took it upon myself to consume the cores of all the beasts I killed, using the trees I felled to process cores into an elixir. The problem was that I drank too much of the solution, and there were a lot of fallen trees. Red trees happened to be very flammable. As I struggled with the solution burning my insides, the fire I kicked over burned the outsides.

  Like a moth to a flame, Purity, an assassin from the High Elf King's Court of Jesters, arrived to claim the spark created from the flame. From what I gathered from Cal and fragments of the memory, the spark was an elemental fire spirit. It was a somewhat sentient nexus of mana, and if bound, it would allow cultivators to reach higher realms.

  Purity didn't like me and wanted Sparks. She was also trying to kill me because I was friends with Lana, the exiled princess of a fallen elven kingdom. I didn't know Lana was a princess. Nor did I understand why I needed to be killed for Purity and her Jesters to get to Lana. I was the weakest of the party, adding little to no strength. It wasn't like I was a barrier of resistance. At least not to the mages. The unknown details were a bit messy.

  All that mattered was Tom saved me from Purity and a burning forest…

  Which I'd forgotten because Cal, bond, started wiping my memories. Now, all I had from that loop were fragments of memories: A leveled forest. Burnt trees. A tense fight. Dying in a cavern.

  "I don't think Tom will be receptive to us burning down his Trees," I said.

  "He was the first time," Cal said. "He even brought you into his home."

  "I think we can thank Purity for that. Hard not to blame a smoker when the forest is burning."

  "Certainly helped that she was holding onto Sparks," Cal said, ducking below a low branch as he followed me on the unknown path. "So we burn down the forest again, wait for Purity to claim the fire spirit, get into a small fight, and wait for Tom to save us. It is the perfect… trap." The flayen hesitated, searching for the right word.

  "Seems convoluted."

  "I guess you could just dry the forest again and wait for Tom to come kill you. Perhaps we cultivate the perfect apology while you wait?"

  "I…" The plan was simple and made sense. It was probably the best course of action. However, there was a problem. "I don't think I can dry the forest like I did last time. Certainly not on a level that would be noticed."

  When I drained the forest of water, I was deep in meditation, reforging my mind. While upgrading the essence, I was oblivious to what happened in the physical realm. The fact that I withered the forest dry came as a big shock. I didn't know how I did it, nor did I feel connected to the power that allowed such devastation. It seemed that it was more connected to the reforging process than it was to my skills and ability.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  "Then we burn it down," Cal said with a cool callousness, this time choosing to snap the branch in front of him instead of ducking. However, his chosen branch was stronger than he expected and resisted his efforts. Miffed by his failed attempt, Cal hardened his fist along with his resolve. "I have already found the perfect kindling."

  "I'm not going to start a forest fire to find Tom."

  "The trees do not even care." The flayen glanced back at the branch he was forced to duck under. "Where are we going anyway?"

  "I don't know."

  "So, just aimless wandering?" Cal Asked.

  "Until we find Tom."

  "Selene's Beard. It is starting to get cold." Cal faked a shiver. "Can you feel that draft?" There was no breeze.

  "He said we could find him in the dirt."

  "I thought that was just a cool quip implying that you were a dead man."

  "So did I, but then you just reminded me that Tom took me back to his cavern after we first met."

  "When you burned down all the trees. Listen, I talked to the trees… They said they thought it was a good plan." Cal had to pick up his pace to match the steps of me and Icy. Now that I knew what I was looking for, I had increased my pace. "They dream of warmth and glory."

  "Sogg would be more fitting than Selene," I said when Cal got to my side, hoping to change the subject and hide that while I was motivated, I still didn't know where I was going.

  "What?" Cal asked with a perplexed look.

  "You invoked Selene instead of Soggy, but you were implying fire. Why use the Goddess of the Moon when you could use the Harbinger of Fire?"

  "What?" Cal asked again. Judging by Cal's confusion, the change of subject was working.

  I really didn't want to burn the forest again, even if it could be a shortcut. It would certainly reduce the number of steps. As convoluted as the plan was, it was tempting. Besides, I was sort of itching to face Purity again if she showed up. She'd win, but it felt like Tack's efforts were closing the gap.

  My split focus decided to forgo fighting the assassin to fight Tom, who displayed superior skills. Initially, I thought working up to Tom's skills in a fight would serve us better. However, since Tack was using the fights to gain experience more than technique, he wanted the experience to come from the stronger fighter. It… sorta made sense, so I allowed it. Who was I to question the inner workings of the mind anyway.

  "Do your people not worship Sogg or Selene back home?" I asked.

  "We have the All Mind, but that is it," Cal said. "And we'd never profane Alm's name with the blasphemy."

  "Cal, was that your first?"

  "Heavens no. Just not so directly with a god before, whether or not they are real."

  "Oh, they are real."

  "You say that with such surety," Cal said, jogging to catch up once more. "I did not take you for a believer."

  "Belief has nothing to do with it. The gods are real, and every single one is a prick. From AO, who watches our suffering on his high throne, to the Deliverer doing AO's bidding, thinking he's carving out his own path for his empire.

  "Selene might be the exception and possibly the least likely to exist.

  "The Deliverer, the High King, AO, Sogg, and all could burn in the moldy ashes of Selene's foulest pit..."

  "Such animosity," Cal said.

  "More like directed aggression. Someone's gotta take the blame for all the muck we deal with. Might as well be the incompetent leaders at the top. Sure makes me feel better that way."

  "I always believed in the All Mind," Cal said. "But I never figured he was real. I couldn't ever picture his existence. As a child, I thought our moon was the floating mind where all our thoughts and knowledge returned to the source. That soured after watching the moon burn. I thought our god had been slain. It turned out it was another world my people had conquered for the glory of the All Mind.

  "Getting stuck in the loop for so many years led to many questions about the great source of power.

  "Could he even be real, and if so, what was the point of all the power he accumulated, and why was he letting his dedicated servants perish to beings that were so mindless? Had we been replaced? Did we do something wrong to invoke the wrath of our god?"

  "I learned that the gods have one purpose," I said. "No matter the gods or the fundamental beliefs. They are all tied to one thing. Power. In the end, that's all that matters. It is the cause of the problems and the solution. We need it, the Gods demand it."

  "Alm never cared for power. All it cared for was knowledge."

  "Why?" I asked.

  "What do you mean why?"

  "What good is all that knowledge? What is the point?"

  "With enough knowledge, the impossible becomes possible. Son of a…" Cal looked distraught. "Power. What a prick." The flayen fell into a spell of silence after that point.

  I tried to engage a few more times, but he wasn't interested. Granted, my attempts were half-hearted. I felt a bit guilty for steering the conversation in this direction and muttered an apology.

  We wandered around the forest for the rest of the day. The further north we traveled, the less rain we faced. Once we reached the southernmost edge of the Bloodwoods, we turned around and began our travels anew.

  The forest remained consistent on our path. Towering trees, a light layer of undergrowth dispersed lightly, occasional rocks and low hanging branches to avoid, and hard compact ground. For the most part, the wildlife seemed to avoid us. We'd seen tracks and heard the song of birds but never saw animals or monsters. The lack of monsters was a bit peculiar.

  There was plenty of mana within the forest that it should create more spirit beasts, but aside from the wolfbears from the dungeon up north, we didn't find any beasts. Cal's silence eventually broke, and we held an engaging conversation for the rest of our travels until we ended up north, back at the dungeon.

  I had a strong hunch that the dungeon was where Tom dwelled. Only, it didn't seem like a place he would dwell. It probably was the first place I should've checked, but then I would've missed out on the pilgrimage with Cal. Besides, I really didn't want to return to the dungeon. I'd spent enough time there in previous loops.

  Alas, it was time.