Wraithwood Botanist

Chapter 124 - Brexton's Second Gift

We were about an hour into the illusion by the time I caught it. It felt like the way LSD flashbacks are described—long stretches of clarity followed by a sudden shift into a state of delirium.

We were talking. Aiden was making us laugh about some crazy drunk offering him a million hawks if he would: "Just get that monkey to strip!" he recalled. "And I kept telling this woman, that's a monkey, you loon," he said. "You might as well ask a human to unzip their skin. But this lady wouldn't have it. She kept saying that if she paid anyone a million hawks, they better get nekkid."

Mom scoffed, and Dad laughed and said: "So what'd you do to her?"

"I sicked the dogs on her, obviously," Aiden said. "Kicked her right out of the club. If I was half the gangster I should've been, we would've chopped her up and fed her to the pigs."

"Aiden!" My mom snapped, and Tyler howled with laughter.

The slightly charming thing about the new Aiden was that he wasn't a gangster, but he played up the card as this amusing form of self-deprecation that seemed like a "technique" rather than a personality trait. We could tell it was taught to him somewhere, but no one could seem to care.

But at some point in the story, I noticed the shift, and my face went pale.

"Hey?" Felio said. "What's wrong?"

I broke out of this trance, looking around. I saw nothing. Just heard the branches go whiiiish, whiiiish in the fall-time breeze as freshly turned leaves fell gently to the ground.

"I..." I paused. "It's nothing."

Felio's head guard, Cassain, didn't buy it. She and Malo the Hollow, as he was called, both released heavy divination pulses.

"We cool?" Aiden asked.

"I don't see anything," Cassain said.

Molo agreed.

I wasn't convinced, so I released a blast of raw soul force to blow away any illusion. Nothing changed, but I still wasn't convinced. I learned things in the mist—and those things were playing out. I was certain of it.

Still, I said, "Yeah," and we moved on.

But that feeling of distortion only got worse. A suspicious number of boulders cropped up out of nowhere, but Wood Wide Web struggled to identify if they were real.

This was the problem with boulders—they had no soul force—but weren't black dots, either.

They're just objects that don't show up, but the twisted roots underneath them do, making them indistinguishable from grass or groundcover in places. So when you saw a boulder, you tended to just accept it. Only these boulders had mixed roots under them—groundcover that gnarled with the rest of the twisting, wavy forest. And I sensed, through a sense of deja vu and vertigo, a feeling that the forest was leading us somewhere, giving us neat and easy obstacles that were easy enough to go around—so easy and effortless you wouldn't dare to move off the path.

At first, I thought the Drokai were doing it, but I quickly threw that aside—because you could tell who was creating an illusion.

They have a flavor.

A style.

A personality.

Misty Row had the feeling of a simulation, a dream world that was intentionally perfect and sunny, while there were secondary illusions of terror wrapped within. That way, when you cut through the mist and saw what was lurking within it, you were convinced of its authenticity—even if it wasn't.

This blend of obvious fiction and grim realism made you feel like you were in a lucid dream, so when the bad things happened, like "dead" friends suddenly coming back to life and speaking to you, you didn't believe it was true—

—but you interacted anyway.

That was the danger.

Brindle's illusions—or the Drokai's—those I had walked through on the way to Serenflora or the various hidden gardens in the forest were boring, marked by absolute realism. That's the way that they were designed—to be real, only to hide certain things and lead you astray if you got too close. And to do that, the illusions were mostly created with real life.

I could only imagine Brindle spending centuries shaping Areswood Forest, placing rocks and planting poisons to ensure that people never got near enough to the things he was hiding to break the illusion.

Then there was Reta.

Reta's illusions, the ones she trained me with, were pure stories. To Reta, it didn't matter whether individuals knew you were creating an illusion or not. What mattered was that the story was just believable enough to make the victims second guess themselves, forcing them into a state of cognitive dissonance that made them question whether everything was fact or fiction at a time when calm and clarity were needed most.

The illusions I was experiencing weren't any of those—and I couldn't tell what was wrong.

All I knew was that I was experiencing partial illusions, insanely accurate depictions that were indistinguishable with Soul Sight or Mana Sense. It felt eerie—and almost perfect—till I saw a bush that I recognized.

That's not poisonous... I thought.

"Hold up." I halted the procession and rode Sina near a purple-highlighted bush and asked—

"What color is this?"

—to no one in particular.

Malo's eyes, which looked like a glazed fish most of the trip, suddenly sharpened to a terrifying degree and said: "Light green."

"That's what I thought..." I muttered in horror. Turn off highlighting, I commanded. Your journey continues with empire

"Seriously?" Cassain asked dryly.

"Seriously," I said.

"Well, you're right..." Cassain looked at Molo and then into the woods. "Okay. I'll protect them with my life."

Mom and Felio started crying, but Aiden kept cool and said: "Don't worry. I watched Mira kill a stampede of monsters in the first few months. Then I watched her kill a literal giant. She'll be fine."

I thanked him silently, then leaned against the barrier. They were quite a ways away, so I decided to take that moment to calm everyone down.

"Tyler, remember when..." I started off about some memory to get them talking about stories, keeping them focused during the fifteen minutes it took for the Cackling Kings to enter the clearing. Then they fell silent, and the mercenary leader walked out front.

I'd later know this man as Grask, and he was gruff business and full of bluster.

"Listen, guys," he said to the legacies. "You know who we are, and we know who you are. And you and you and you." He pointed at Molo, Felio, my family, and Aiden. "And 'cause of that, we can assure you that we aren't gonna touch any of you. This isn't about you—we just want the girl."

Kline stepped out in front of me, releasing a guttural growl.

"Who sent you?" Molo asked.

"None'ya," Grask said. "But I can say it's from the tippy top, and if I feel you're gonna go 'round runnin' your mouth, we'll kill you all. 'Cause my employer doesn't want a war."

"So the Melhan?" Molo said.

Grask shrugged. "Could be anyone. But I assure ya—you'll want to take the offer and pretend you never saw nothing. 'Cause if you do cause a war, you're the people they're targeting first."

I circled the area, logging each person's soul and mana force before touching the ground and releasing Wood Wide Web. I found one last person.

"Are you fighting?" I yelled behind Grask.

"Hey, aren't you listenin' to me?" Grask snapped. But I ignored him, waiting for a reply.

I didn't get one.

"Guess it doesn't matter," I said.

"I'll warn you right now, girly," Grask said. "I don't like being ignored."

"Then you should've brought more people," I said.

After half a year of fighting with Kyro and beasts with soul cores that lit up like Christmas trees under soul sight, I didn't even feel like this was a serious challenge. I mean, it might have been with magic—but they made a fatal flaw.

"And you shouldn't have circled us," I said. "Kinda hard to use magic, now init?" I walked forward, and my body multiplied into another.

"Clones?" a mercenary laughed.

Others nudged each other, whispering about how funny it was that they thought I could take almost a hundred well-known mercenaries with clones, but they stopped laughing when the clones didn't stop coming.

Three... four... five....

Suddenly, there were ten as I circled the group. When I finished a half-circle, there were twenty, and they started walking in opposite directions, splitting apart into more clones—multiplying like blood cells.

"Cassain, Aiden," I commanded. "Cloak Felio and my parents in a deprivation barrier. Or just turn 'em around and shut their ears if you don't. Do release them 'till I say."

Mom and Dad protested for less than a second before Cassain cloaked them and Felio in a sensory deprivation barrier, leaving only Tyler, who needed to know the firm realities of hell.

My confidence spooked the mercenary's leader because he snapped into action.

"Stop her," Grask said hesitantly.

Mercenaries moved toward my real body but stopped when all my clones suddenly lit up with aura, creating identical clones that all looked real under soul and mana sight.

"What the hell is this?" one asked.

"Where is she?" another followed.

That question only got harder. Not a moment later, there were fifty clones—sixty—a hundred.

And they weren't just visual.

Each one of them kicked rocks and stomped the groundcover and made shifting sounds.

"W-What the fuck is this?" Grask yelled. "Brexton! You son of a bitch! You said you wouldn't interfere!" But no words met him.

And then, to everyone's hypnotized horror, Kline joined my ranks, multiplying into clones.

Only his were a bit different—and none were the wiser.