It was dusk, only bright enough for Cael and Briar to barely see the environment around them. They crept through the brush of the forest, small bushes with bright, red berries, and dead leaves and sticks made up the undergrowth. A strong smell of dirt and decaying foliage filled the forest with a strange, yet comforting familiarity.
"I think I see some tracks ahead," Cael said, "They look to be boar's tracks."
"Can you tell how fresh they are?" Briar asked.
"Not sure, given the boar's feeding cycle, they should be just leaving the river, so it must be close," Cael replied.
They crept forward, their boots crunching the decaying foliage underneath their feet. A few crickets started chirping in the distance, marking the beginning of the night. Cael raised his hand in a fist, making Briar stop and kneel. He gestured one finger over his lips, telling Briar to stay silent. A rustling noise came from a bush in the distance.
Out of the bush, the head of a boar popped out, sniffing the area to find berries or tubers to eat. The boar's snorts echoed throughout the forest, like wet gravel underfoot. Cael made a bunch of hand signals of explosions and hands waving wildly, but Briar had no idea what he was trying to say.
"What?" Briar whispered.
"Use your magic or something like that to distract it," Cael whispered in return.
Briar, confused, looked down at the foliage beneath their feet, resting their hands on the leaves. They felt the dew clinging to each leaf, now transferring to their hand.
In a surprising state of serenity, they focused on the individual veins on each leaf, spreading from the thick roots to the thin tubes at the end before tapering off into their signature spiky edges.
Briar closed their eyes and imagined the forest as one, breathing organism, each animal, plant, and bug creating a web, chaining together to create an ecosystem, localized to just the small outcrop they stood in.
Briar could feel each strand of the web, following it to its source. Briar traced all of the individual strands to their source, eventually finding a strand that connected to the leaves and sprouts beneath the feet of the boar.
Briar pulled on the strands, and vines grew quickly beneath the feet of the boar, trapping it in place. Briar struggled to hold on to the strings they were pulling, and they started to slip out of Briar's hand, the vines that grew now slowly receding with the return of their strands.
Before Briar fully let go, the boar started squealing, concerned by the vines making their way up its rotund body. Cael knocked an arrow and quickly shot it, piercing the heart of the boar and killing it instantly.
After Briar let go, their entire body felt achy, their hands cramped, and their joints stiffened. They remembered the toll of casting magic, quickly taking out their flask and swallowing down the lukewarm milk inside, soothing their aches and relieving the pain.
"Briar… That was amazing!" Cael shouted triumphantly, "How did you even learn to do something that cool?"
"I don't know, it just felt natural, like I was one with the whole forest," Briar explained.
"Sounds weird, but I'll take your word for it," Cael replied, walking over to the boar and preparing it for dinner later. "We've gotta tell Ash about this, she'll be so excited!"
Briar and Cael returned to the outcrop, a fire was now started, and three sleeping bags were set up, with Ash's being suspiciously far from Cael's. Cael hoisted the large boar over his shoulder and tossed it next to the fire.
"Guess who has magic powers?" He asked Ash.
"I wonder, the boar carcass?" She sarcastically replied.
"Ha ha, very funny," Cael replied, slightly annoyed by her response, "Seriously though, Briar has some insane powers. One second, the boar is standing next to a bush, the next, it's completely trapped by vines that came from Briar's hands!" Cael giddily explained the rest of the hunt and his night to a secretly amused Ash while they prepared dinner for the night.
Briar lay down on their sleeping bag and stared up at the night sky. The stars formed constellations and connected into a giant web across the blank canvas that was the night sky. They held their hand to the sky and traced paths between the stars.
Briar could hear the crackling of the campfire and could smell the smoke radiating from the logs as they slowly burned. Cael and Ash chatted in the background as they all ate the stew Cael and Ash had made. Briar slowly faded off to sleep, the crackling of the fire soothing them.
The party continued on their path, following the small river that wound its way through the fields of dark green grasses and oak trees. Mountains stood imposingly in the distance, as if protecting the Kingdom's west side; they created a shield, going all the way from the southern coast, up to the plateau in the far north.
The cold and wet winter was finally giving way to a beautiful spring. Flowers began budding in the fields, and the trees regained their lost leaves from the year before. The central lands of Aurenmark, where the party had lived in their whole lives, became truly alive with the entrance of spring.
Briar could smell the sweet scent of flowers on the warm breeze that came up from the river's origin further north. When the party stopped to rest by the river, Briar opened up their journal and sketched the scene they found in front of them.
The river split off into multiple branches, the one they currently sat by being one of the smaller ones, now a small brook that gurgled in the center of the oak forest. Large oak trees sprouted from the ground and twisted up, before splitting into dozens of curved branches that themselves eventually tapered off into the many spiky leaves that made up the overhang.
Cael stood by the edge of the river, attempting to skip rocks across the water, reaching into the small brook to grab the best, flattest stones he could find. Ash sat against a fallen tree, her breaker blade resting in her lap. She took a sharpening stone from her small bag and started to sharpen the blade, always making sure to keep it in perfect condition for the next battle.
Briar sat on a tree stump, and with an old quill and a bottle of ink, they sketched out the entire scene, paying close attention to each tree and how they tapered off, all combining to create the forest in which the party currently found themselves.
The party continued down the river for another couple of days before finally catching a glimpse of Sonnhalde. The town lay at the top of a small hill, above the oak forests that made up a substantial amount of the region. A few vineyards were scattered across the edges of the town, while in the center stood a sprawling market with many inns, taverns, and houses making up this well-traveled adventurer's stop.