Fallen Mage Regressor

Mal stepped forward. A bush scratched against him, the trees in the background stretching into the sky.

"Hi."

Philo jumped into the air and Rolam squared into a combat stance. "You're a vision, aren't you?! You're not the real Mal!"

Mal squinted at him. "Right. I'm just a figment of your imagination."

Rolam dropped his hands. "Wait... none of the visions ever spoke before."

Rolam's eyes watered. "Mal? Is that you?"

"Unfortunately."

Rolam dashed forward and Mal got ready for combat—

And then he realized that Rolam had hugged him.

He slowly turned down and glared at Rolam with every ounce of intimidation he'd picked up from his years as a dark lord. Rolam squeaked and jumped back.

"I—you have to understand, we'd been lost for more than a day, and there was this never-ending fog and we—"

He froze up, then glanced to his side. Lusia was staring at him. And she kept staring. Rolam looked down at his feet.

"Fog?" Mal muttered. "What fog?"

Mal hadn't seen anything like that. It had been almost unusually clear.

[Mischief!]

"Shut up," he said.

"What? Why—?"

"Wasn't talking to you."

Rolam's jaw dropped and he fell to his knees. "He's been touched by the forest, he's lost his mind!"

"No I haven't." He walked past Rolam and did a quick once-over on the rest of the group. "How are all of you holding up?"

Philo grimaced. "Better, now that you're here, ape."

Lusia nodded. "It's a relief to see that you're well, Master."

There'd been a funny hitch to her tone at the start. She must have been more annoyed at him than he thought.

Aston stepped forward. "It's lucky that you managed to find us," he said. "Everyone else who got too far away from the main group ended up disappearing. This place is a death trap."

Mal was getting more and more confused. The experience they'd had seemed exceptionally different from his own. It was a little bit creepy, sure, but they looked like they'd just been through a war zone.

"What do you know about this place?" Mal asked.

"This is the Elder Oak Forest. The only one of its kind. It occupies nearly a quarter of the Kingdom of Farren."

"That's quite a bit of room. They haven't tried to chop it all down?" Mal asked.

Rolam gasped. "Cut down the sacred Elder Oak trees? The people would riot!"

Aston shook his head.

"Nature—and Elder Oak trees in particular—are sacred to the elves. They wouldn't cut it down even if it were possible."

"Possible?"

"Although the bulk of the forest is contained in Farren, it borders one of the human principalities. A particularly bright duke attempted to clear some of the forest, both for timber and farmland."

"What happened?"

"All of the farmers and lumberjacks disappeared overnight."

A giggle.

[Mischief!]

So…

The forest was alive, and it routinely killed people just for the hell of it. Mal suddenly felt extremely happy about the fact that he'd conquered the northern provinces first and avoided the forest in the first timeline. It had been total coincidence. Had he gone through there—

Oh yeah, he would have been fine. It would have just figured out a way to burn the entire place to ashes.

A pout.

[Mean.]

"It's not like I'm going to do that this time around."

"Really, who are you talking to?" Philo said.

"No one." Mal scratched his chin—well, he tried to scratch it, then realized he couldn't move his arm. He used his other hand to do so, but the motion was obvious enough that it brought attention to his damaged limb.

"The hell happened to your wrist?" Aston said.

"Turns out the forest isn't the only thing terrifying around these parts," Mal said. "There was a withering-type magical beast that had set up shop here."

Aston paled. Which was quite impressive given that he was already pale before.

"And you're still alive? How did you get away?"

"Get away? I killed it."

Aston frowned. "Seeking glory through deception is an unwise move."

Philo glared at Aston while Rolam flat-out snarled.

Mal shrugged. "Believe what you want. I don't know about you, but I'd like to get out of here as soon as possible."

"That's a great idea, but in case you haven't noticed, nobody can see more than one length, maybe two."

"No, I figured out a trick for navigation. Just follow me."

Aston stared at Mal. "What do you mean? How?"

"Call it a gut instinct."

Mal shut his eyes and whispered under his breath. "You owe me a favor, now get us out of here."

A beat of silence.

He opened his eyes and caught the faintest glimpse of that same golden light that had led them to the others.

"Follow me."

He set off. For a split second, everyone remained still, then they followed after him.

It was barely ten minutes of walking before they'd finally stepped out of the forest.

The light blinded him. Mal hadn't realized just how much light was being blocked by the branches and leaves and trees up above.

It was a grassy open field, and there was a clear road up ahead along with a signpost.

He stepped forward and there was a sound like tinkling bells.

[Come soon... ]

"Yeah, not in this lifetime."

Rolam ran around in the field and spread his arms wide. "I am never taking the sun for granted again!"

Philo snorted, a puff of steam escaping him with the breath. "Stop embarrassing yourself, half-elf."

Lusia took up a position a few steps behind him wordlessly.

Aston stepped out, eyes blinking. He looked from left to right, then blinked hard.

"We actually got out," Aston said. "How did we get out?"

Mal shrugged. "Must have been dumb luck." He pointed up ahead. "There's a signpost over there. We should probably go check that out."

He walked ahead before Aston or anybody else could ask any questions.

The signpost was damaged. Chunks of wood had been taken out of the base, and the sign itself was crooked, one of the nails having fallen off long ago.

One arrow pointed to the left in a script Mal could just barely make out. The same, another arrow pointed to the right, also with a handful of letters.

“E... N... Tree? Entree?”

“You speak Elvish, honored leader?”

Rolam had jogged up over to the signpost at some point while Mal wasn't looking

“I can read the alphabet, but I'm hopeless in a conversation.”

He'd picked it up during the Western campaign, and had been at least conversational. Honestly, even that was an exaggeration, the most he could do was request food and the location of the nearest place to relieve himself.

He read the other arrow pointing to the right. Mal struggled a little bit, but eventually figured out what it said.

Humans.

“Awful creative,” Mal said.

“So we just follow the road until we get to this Entree place?” Philo said.

Rolam tilted his nose up and looked down at Philo—despite the fact that Philo dwarfed him by several feet.

“It appears that there's something that you don't know,” Rolam said. “Entree is the capital city of the Kingdom of Foren.”

“The only reason you know that is because you were born there. Philo doesn't want to hear any bragging from you.”

“H—how did you know where I was born?!”

“Because that is the only way I could possibly conceive of you knowing this information.”

Mal glanced over at Aston.

“You have any idea where we are?”

Aston nodded. “I think I do, yes.”

“How long is it going to take before we get to the city?”

“...a couple hours.”

Joy.

After several hours of walking, they'd arrived at the front gates exhausted, sweaty, and in the middle of the night.

Mal was vaguely able to make out the city lights and what it looked like, but it wasn't a particularly stunning view given how his eyes were blurring from sheer exhaustion. The elves had tried to hold them at the gate until Rolam marched up, showed off some sort of insignia, and shouted at them to give his friends medical treatment and for him to see his brother.

Apparently recognizing the insignia, or perhaps just wanting Rolam to stop shouting, they agreed.

And that brought him to now, where Mal was being treated by an elf doctor. He had a curt frown on his face and spectacles, dressed in a long white dress-like robe.

“We've managed to stop the spread, but it'll be several weeks before your arm is back to full functionality,” the doctor said. “And besides that, you're going to have some side effects.”

The wooden architecture of the room was unbearably cozy. There were no straight walls, only twisting and turning grooves with bark along the outside.

“Did you hear me?”

Mal leaned back into his pillow. “Lasting side effects, sure. Mind telling me exactly what that is instead of just vaguely alluding to it?”

The doctor scowled.

“Well, no—”

“The withering aspect isn't going to be purged from your body. It's embedded too deep into you. It won't cause you any harm, so—”

“Withering aspect? What are you talking about?”

The doctor stared at him like he was an idiot. “You know, mana-types? I saw your robes, you're a wizard, aren't you?”

“I know what mana-types are, but what does that have to do with my body?”

The elf rubbed the bridge of his nose. “They really don't teach you anything in the East, do they?” He shook his head. “Everybody is born with internal mana. It's highly unique and individualized, but they can all broadly be classified under the traditional mana-types—Fire, Air, and the more mystical ones, of course. Plant, death. In your case, you have Blood and Withering.”

Surprisingly, Mal hadn't ever heard of this before, and he strongly suspected as to why.

“Will this actually make any difference on my spellcasting?”

The doctor froze.

“Well, no—”

“And that's why we don't teach it. So if you could kindly shove your superiority complex up your own ass?”

The doctor scowled. “Damned Eastern hillbillies.”

If this is how they treat humans, Philo must be having a terrible time right about now.

The doctor clenched his teeth.

“Can you at least tell me how you got an injury like that?”

“We touched down in the Elder Oak forest, and—”

“Stop wasting my time.” The doctor scoffed. “If you weren't going to take this seriously, why didn't you just say so?”

Mal tilted his head. “That's what happened. You can talk to the captain if you want or anybody else if you want someone to confirm.”

A flicker of doubt.

“The captain already left. He likely needed to do something business-related, I believe he mentioned that he needed to see the company branch. As for the others... I suppose they'll be a better source of information than you.”

He turned around and walked out, shutting the curved door behind him.

At the very least, Mal had his own room. It was a nicer room than his own dormitory, which was sort of sad. He tilted his head back over toward the window.

It was daytime now and he could clearly see the outline of the city. There was a tall building rising above all the others mounted on and crafted out of a group of six interlocked trees.

There were windows and pathways going between various towers that had been twisted and grown from branches of the five massive tree trunks. There was a vine path leading from the largest building directly to the clinic where Mal was at.

There were other buildings along other tree trunks, interspersed in between and in the wood. Some were on higher levels, some were on lower levels, and Mal couldn't help but think to himself that the local postman must have been in a perpetual state of crisis.

With nothing left to do, Mal leaned back in his bed and relaxed.

“Rise and shine, Mal!” The sound of splintering wood. “Oops.”

Mal cracked open his eyes. He wanted nothing more than to fall back asleep, but he knew the universe wasn't so kind as to allow that.

“Why do you do this to me, Eternus?” he said.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Mal pushed himself out of bed and faced his intruder. Rolam had shattered the door into fine pieces in his excitement.

He grinned, hands cocked on his hips and nodded. “You're looking good, Mal. I told that silly doctor that you didn't need more time to rest.”

They wanted to give me more rest. They wanted to do that, but Rolam wouldn't let them.

Mal let out a frustrated sigh. “Why exactly do we need to be in such a hurry?”

“We only have a week, Mal.” Rolam dropped his arms. “We need to get going and make the most of it.”

Philo glanced over at him from behind Rolam. He mouthed out, Philo tried.

Mal glared at both of them.

“Can you at least give me some privacy while I change into something decent?” He looked down and stared at himself. He was in one of those dress-like white robes that elves seem to favor. “Or I could go in a hospital gown. That seems like a great idea.”

Rolam's shoulders dropped. “Fine.”

“What, you wanted to watch me change?”

“Ew, no!”

Eventually, Rolam finally left and they put up a screen for his privacy over the broken door. Mal was pleased to note that his gray robes had been washed and dried to perfection.

He slipped them on and pulled aside the screen. "Ready."

Rolam glanced down at him from the hallway and grinned. "Time to finally see my family!"

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