Seventeen 2: Electric Boogaloo

Dante had trouble seeing without his ghostly guides, but still he listened for the sounds of their voices and the telltale sounds of feet crunching across the ground littered by sticks, stones, and other undesirables. Finally, he arrived in a forested location. Only able to tell this by Nina’s arrival once again. “You know, it’s rude not to invite your ‘seeing eye ghost’ to a magic forest, Dante.” She exclaimed, upon entering the portal. Her transparent silhouette leaning against a tree, though Dante of course could only see Nina and not the tree itself.

“Where are we?” The blind teenager asked, hoping that the others had arrived. When he heard Takuma’s voice, he knew he was in the right place. “I’m Dante. It’s nice to meet you Takuma, though I admit that I don’t understand what T’wan is.”

Nina smiled at the two. “Wow Dante, making friends. And so soon after the incident. Gotta say, didn’t expect you to be so… trusting. You know you’re gonna kill them in your inevitable rise to power, right?”

Dante did his best to ignore the taunting of his former friend, but it would be clear on his face that something was upsetting him.

Stepping into this ancient, unknowable forest immediately filled him with relief. The only thing keeping him from relaxing completely was the underlying rot, a blight that blemished the energy flowing under the land. Made the hairs on the back of his neck raise, and even putting him more on edge. There was no longer any degree of separation between him as well as the thing that corrupted this land. His mind scoping over the area around him, Rowan was drawn from his thinking by the sound of other voices. Well, he had invited them to follow so that made some sense. The diminutive half fey turned towards them, expression unreadable as a question came about. Well, two asked the same question anyway.

”Think of it as...a tree, many branches reaching out and touching many worlds,” It was the best way he could explain it, especially to humans who understood little to nothing about the world around them. The true world anyhow. Normally, the energy here was raw and unfiltered, but someone like Takuma might feel a sensation of oil running across his skin from the corruption.  ”Some humans called this place Yggdrasil, the ones allowed to tread here,” He offered that small fact off-handily, rattling off something the elders had told him long ago.  How long ago had that been?

His fingers tightened around his bow, eyes scanning the area around them. Some of the animals that existed here were familiar, ones from their world but there were glimpses of the abnormal. Scaled, winged creatures with a head composed mostly of eyes. Chattering, furred beings with many limbs barely recognizable within the shadows and others. He hoped the great tyrant lizards didn’t find them an interesting enough thing to investigate. Beams of light peaked through the thick canopy above, breaking what would have otherwise been darkness. This level of light was like sunlight for him, all shapes clear but something told him the people that came with him weren’t as capable.

So he muttered a few words under his breath, drawing within him the radiant energy around him and actualized the spell. Ten floating spheres of fire materialized around their small group, a ghostly and pale blue flame that cast off illumination and beat away some of the shadows of the forest. It should have been enough to see a good thirty or so feet around them, enough to see even more of the animals and creatures clearly. Some of those pinpoints of light were alien creatures, dripping with the black blight, some of them seeming to fall apart from the sheer corruption damaging and controlling their bodies.

”The Blight has also managed to reach this point, which means if not stopped it could spread even further. It might still be in an immature state but I don’t know how long that will last,” He noted, quickly shooting one of the creatures through and reducing its body to nothing more a splatter against a tree. ”So, are any of you capable of following large sources of corrupted mana?”

Takuma had to recoil his hand from Cyrilla when they got through, something was making it hard to think, his palms slowly rising and pressing against his forehead with gentleness.

Nothing allowed him to simply process all he could.
His stomach was often empty, and the hunger pains would cloud his mind and make him incapable of proper decision-making.
The pains that filled his joints from a rough night of sleep and another day running around well carrying everything he owned on himself made it difficult to get the right idea going.
It was a thick fog in his mind that rarely lifted that gave him the ability to wrestle with what was presented, but it sat heavy.

An enchanted world of thick forests where he barely had room to spread his arms before he touched two strongly set trees, one on either hand. Crowded simplified the absolute almost choking presence of woods and life.

Takuma also started to gather something else, a sudden scrunching of his whole face told many stories regarding what he just felt, but maybe it became more clear once he stuck his tongue out with eyebrows furrowed so slightly to the taste in his mouth.
He felt like he had vegetable oil in his mouth that was left in some fryer for a month, it was a touch of something burnt, with various types of sickening sweet tastes alongside the presence of artificial vegetable taste, like someone tried to make the taste of lettuce from memory and wanted to chop up cold gelatin mushrooms in the mix.
He hated this place's presence, scratching away at his head still with his tongue out as he was acting as if he could simply remove this with the scritching of his scalp, the attempt was of course absolutely empty.
Without any sort of resolution, his arms dropped to his sides in a sagging swing as his fingertips brushed branches by his side, lightly caressing small leaves surrounding him.

Takumas tongue still sagging from his mouth, all the better to prevent him from throwing up, he looked up when it was actually brought up what that giant tree in the distance was from the one most familiar with it all.

Finally, a distraction, when he was notified what it was like he was starting to become twistingly obsessed with it in his own soft way.
Hands both started to grip at nothingness and gave gentle pinches as he stayed staring skyward absolutely oblivious to everyone around him, they became like a gentle breeze to him, if Takuma paid attention to them they were there but it was just as easy to make sure they where not.
His tongue recoiled back into his mouth, he could hardly taste the sickness anymore.

A brilliant explosive dazzle of blue light momentarily stunned Takuma, looking down hurriedly to see what was going on, it was just his energy sensing being overly sensitive towards new forms. Within his visible sight now creatures started to explode in his mind like a radar nearing a school of fish, so many things that he was now capable of seeing exploding into view all in front of him.
Takuma leaned against a tree, groaning a bit as it felt like he was looking into a bright light, but no amount of squinting his eyes saved him.

Rowan, who was asking if anyone could track down mana already would have somebody working on that. Eye’s strained half open Takuma started to look around until he could feel where some massive energy source was.

“It’s a ton of it right? Probably going to be bright as all hell.”

Takuma marched towards what he presumed it was, blue, ethereal, and very present, something like that surely was the source he needed.
But like a chlorine-bromine mix in water, something definitely was trying to twist it into something else.
Trying to squeeze through and around tree's, working his way casually ahead hoping somebody would give him some clarity on anything else he could do. The designated duck with a feather on his back.

"Quack quack quack."
He fell briefly silent after his thoughts manifested into words, only this broken in moments with his next thought-made words.

“Does anyone have sunglasses for like, your brain?” Takuma asked, fully expecting those to understand what he meant. The stress of reading large energy signatures was really just like staring at the sun, especially with how close this was at first, he could barely fathom what standing beside this might be like.