Panic fshed through Niphru’s mind as he became conscious and was unable to feel his bond with Dawn. In front of him y an endless expanse of green, making it clear something had happened. He was supposed to be on a bed, not in the air above the forest, after all!

  With most of his focus being on the ck of his link to Dawn, he barely noticed a trail of trees being smashed down, fshes of grey appearing below the canopy. Trying to distract himself from the growing dread for a moment, he looked around, focusing on the movement in the distance.

  As he narrowed his gaze, he found himself hurtling forward, stopping above the trail of destruction. Below, an immense creature slowly shoved its way forward through the trees as though they were mere twigs, its massive muscles rippling under scaled skin.

  Niphru attempted to shake his head, only to find that he couldn’t see his own body anywhere, no matter how he turned. With a sudden thought, he focused again on where his bond with Dawn should be, remaining still for several moments before he finally felt the faintest hint of it. According to what he felt, Dawn was merely a foot or two away.

  Considering his view was high in the sky, obviously something was going on. Perhaps a dream? But it felt too real compared to any of his prior dreams. He was significantly less worried now, however, since he verified Dawn was still okay and nearby.

  Letting himself focus back on the scene before him, he studied the massive beast below. While it had scaled skin, it also had retively small and thin spines growing between the scales. Perhaps an older mutation? He couldn’t imagine anything that size needing such defenses.

  One of the trees it rammed into exploded into a swarm of smaller creatures that immediately rushed over the rger beast, resulting in a pained snort as they cwed and bit at it. Seconds ter, they all fell from its body, either dead or paralyzed, after it emitted a yellow gas from its skin.

  Movement to the side attracted Niphru’s attention, and he was shocked to see foliage regrowing in the trail behind the beast at a speed visible to the eye. It was far from instant, but he could see greenery creeping across the path where, previously, trees had blocked the light from reaching the forest floor.

  Focusing on that area, Niphru found his view racing closer, revealing numerous pnts he’d never seen before. The most interesting, perhaps, was a sort of glowing bush. Each time something brushed against it, a sharp fre of fire magic erupted from the pnt, burning away whichever other foliage had touched it, giving it more and more room to expand.

  Below the fre-bush, a series of vines crept across the ground, squirming this way and that. As he watched, an ant the size of a rabbit brushed against one of its leaves, making the vine twitch, whipping around the insect. As it curled up, the leaves revealed their nature as sharp bdes by tearing the insect into so many tiny pieces, the contents of its body spraying across the ground to serve as fertilizer for the vines.

  A short distance away, half a dozen simir ants struggled with a pin-looking snake. Three ants sprayed acid at it while the others baited it into lunging and then bit into its neck, barely leaving scratches. Those scratches, however, began to smoke as the acid touched them.

  While he watched, a shadow raced across the ground before the snake was snatched by a huge bird and torn in half as it pulled its cws apart. The ants paused for a moment before beginning to wander away. Before they could get far, however, a strange bark-covered creature leapt from a tree and smashed into two of them.

  Seemingly uncaring of the others, it extended vines across the crushed bodies and began dragging them back into the trees. Niphru focused on it and found his vision following the odd thing as it eventually dug a hole beneath an odd-looking tree, shoved the corpses inside, then id down over them and stopped moving.

  Before he could focus on something else, there was a crunching noise as the bark of the tree shifted, another simir creature pulling itself free from the trunk and wandering away. A whistling noise caused Niphru to look up, spotting a vine shing through the air to snare a normal-sized bird, swiftly crushing it before withdrawing into a rge flower. As the body entered the flower and it closed, it dropped from the tree it was attached to and began to float through the air.

  As the bloom rose above the canopy, Niphru followed it until the wind grabbed it and swiftly blew it away. That wasn’t the end, however, as a beast with a head that seemed to be a combination of both a rat and a wolf unched itself from amid the foliage and caught the floating flower, dragging it back down into the canopy.

  Focusing again, Niphru’s vision pulled back into the sky. As everything faded into an indistinct sea of green, he spotted shapes that couldn’t be natural. In the distance, there was an area where some trees stood half again as tall as those nearby, arranged in a curving line. Behind, several square and rectangur areas were also well-defined.

  His view moved toward the aberration and he soon saw that there was a mighty wall overgrown with vines and trees, roots shoving multi-ton blocks aside where they drove down toward the soil. Beyond the crumbling wall, dozens of derelict structures were likewise overrun by nature.

  Within the clear ruins of a city, there were, however, no signs of any kind of roads save the occasional stone amid the soil. The emergence of a massive worm rger than a man and covered in shifting ptes might give the reason why, Niphru thought as he watched it grind part of the foundation of a building away as it brushed against it.

  Pulling his vision back again, Niphru focused on the tallest area nearby, zooming in on it until he made out the remains of a crumbled tower. Even from a distance, he could feel the magic amidst the ruins, and spot tiny wisps of light flickering into existence only to fade away again moments ter.

  His attempt to look inside, however, was met with failure, a sharp pain assaulting his mind as his vision bounced backward and the world faded to bck.

  Niphru shook his head and opened his eyes, finding himself back in bed with Dawn still lying beside him, still asleep. Though his head was pounding, he id back down and attempted to rest further, feeling that sunrise was still some time away.