It wasn't really a surprise that Haresz had been angry, given the givens. Unpleasant and unreasonable, yes, but not a surprise. That he had found out that there was anything to be angry over, well. Different matter, but not important right now. What was important was finding out what he had done to them.
The forest is quiet and peaceful. Early afternoon sunlight filters through the canopy and forms warm golden pools between the roots of the towering trees.
The path here looks... not exactly well-kept, because that would imply some sign of a keeper. It looks like it just naturally happened to turn out very convenient and aesthetically pleasing. There are no holes in the ground or stray roots or fallen branches lurking in the leaf litter to catch an unwary ankle. The trees are adorned with climbing vines that dangle brilliant golden flowers like lanterns alongside the gently curving trail. Up ahead, the path opens out into a large clearing, half-shaded by the surrounding trees and populated by a selection of round mossy stones that one might sit on if one were so inclined.
"Clearing looks well-kept. Might find some people without having to walk who-knows-how long. I have no idea how long this path is in either direction--and it has water, not to be discounted in this kind of situation. It would probably make sense to stick around a bit."
The water has a subtle, pleasant taste, and seems clean and fresh.
A creature steps between the trees into the clearing. It's definitely some sort of ungulate, resembling a horse in its hooves, mane, and tail, but with a body structured more like a deer's. A single straight horn grows from its forehead. Its fur is deep black; hooves, horn, mane, and tail are all a pale gold just this side of white, and all glowing faintly in the same colour.
It greets them hesitantly in an unfamiliar language.
It's gorgeous.
Do they have a different Basic on other continents? Maybe it's speaking a more specific local language. It's not totally implausible that if someone had randomly ended up in a Forteri garden they would be addressed in High Court.
"Hello, we're very lost," she tries in Basic.
Which is really ignoring the more important question of why is there a talking ungulate. Some kind of shapeshifting magic? She can't recall anything relevant but that needn't mean anything. Well, they'll just have to learn this language, and maybe initiate some kind of linguistic merger--no point in Basic if everyone can't speak it, after all. ...It's not speaking its personal language, is it, that would be awkward.
The talking ungulate seems slightly nervous at first, but after a few iterations his nervousness abates and he's happily naming objects for Korafen.
Here's a word for 'sun', and one for a beam of sunlight, and one for the illuminated spots the sunbeams make on the ground, and when the talking ungulate says that word he stops and swishes his tail and rears up slightly and says it again, arching his neck in the way you might if you wanted to point at yourself but your best pointing apparatus was inconveniently sticking out of your forehead.
"In Faessaya they speak Faessayan. In the Dragonlands they speak Flametongue. In Manafall they speak Continental. In Heaven they speak Angelic, and in the Blessed Lands they speak Angelic and Continental and I don't remember what-all else. I don't speak most of those; I only know Sylvan and a little Continental."
"When something's--obscure or overlooked or whatever--so there's no words for it in the common language--how do you talk about it if you don't have your own language that focuses on the things you care about? How do you talk about your feelings if you have to use words meant for everyone's feelings? How--how do you tell what someone's like, without a vocabulary?"
"Sometimes demons do a thing that's sort of like an angel investing power in a priest, only backwards, and more horrible," says Sunpatch. "I don't know much about it but I know how to tell if someone's had it done to them, it's a really simple lifeforce trick if you're a unicorn."
"Angels are a kind of person! They look like winged elf-kin - um, elf-kin are elves and dwarves and humans, they're all sort of the same shape but with different details - and they have a special kind of magic that only ever comes from angels, but sometimes an angel puts some of their magic in a person and makes them a priest, and then that person can do that angel's magic but much less powerfully."
"Lifeforce is... something that living things have. Plants and animals and people all have lifeforce, but people's lifeforce is different. You can do magic to it, and the simplest lifeforce magic is just looking at lifeforce, and since I'm a unicorn I see lifeforce in a unicorn way and that makes it very easy to tell if there's anything angelic about someone and pretty easy to tell if there's anything demonic. So I know you aren't an angel or a priest or a demon or soulbound to a demon."
"Um, I don't know what any of that means," says Sunpatch. "Unicorns can do unicorn magic because we're unicorns. And angels can do angel magic because they're angels. And fae can do fae magic because they're fae, and dragons can do dragon magic because they're dragons. Elf-kin can only do the kinds of magic that everyone can do, or borrow from angels. Well, I guess Dragonborn are sort of both elf-kin and dragons."
"I put unicorn magic in the stream. Now that stream has unicorn magic in it. Even if it didn't need it, it still has some. So if that water mixes with some water that did need unicorn magic, the unicorn magic will still be there. And if it never needs any, then when someone drinks the water with the extra unicorn magic, there'll be a little tiny bit of healing in it."
The path they're walking along joins onto another, broader path, and maybe fifteen minutes after that, there's a green-gold glow visible up ahead.
"That's the road," says Sunpatch.
As they approach, it becomes clearer what they're looking at. It's another path, not all that different from the ones they've been travelling so far, but the trees that line it are especially tall, and in the shade of their spreading branches the floor of the path glows a warm and pleasant green. Sunpatch stops a few feet short of the glow.
"If you've never used a road before, you should probably be careful," he says. "You won't get hurt if you fall down, but it's embarrassing."
"Well... okay, when you're on the road, you can run really fast. And it makes you go along the road, so you won't go flying off if there's a curve or anything, but if the road bends and you're not paying attention and you keep running in the wrong direction, you'll lose all your speed really fast. There's kind of a trick to it. Try it walking first, walking's easier and we'll still reach the Tree pretty soon that way. And if you get confused or lost somehow you can just stop and sit down and I'll come find you even if I'm out of sight by then."
And Sunpatch steps in too, and starts slowly walking in a direction. His steps carry him farther than they look like they should; he sort of... slides along the glow, smoothly and steadily. If Ikrifiss and Korafen try it, they'll find themselves doing something similar, with the effect falling off sharply as they turn away from exactly parallel with the road. The footing is very stable, but there's definitely a learning curve involved and it's easy to get disoriented.
The road joins up to other roads twice, becoming broader and brighter each time. They pass and are passed by a few other travellers going in either direction, all of them better at roads than Korafen and Ikrifiss.
Then, as the sun is starting to dip low enough that its beams don't reach through the canopy, they come to the end of the road. Its glow dims gradually over the last stretch, until it's just a normal - well, locally normal - forest path again. Just past the point where the glow fades completely, an archway spans the path, made of one tree on each side that lean gracefully together to join into a single trunk twenty feet in the air over the middle of the ex-road. Beyond that is an open space floored with springy green moss.
"Welcome to the Tree!" says Sunpatch, swishing his tail happily. "D'you want to find somewhere to stay? Something to eat or drink?"
"Okay!"
He leads them along the street. All the buildings seem to be made of living plants, with bark-covered wooden walls hosting climbing vines whose brightly coloured flowers unfurl and begin to glow as the light dims. The moss underfoot glows faintly in the dark too. Through the leafy canopy of this section of the city, they catch occasional glimpses of a vast towering trunk, its curve so broad you could almost mistake it for a flat wall. It, too, is adorned with glowing flowers; they twine along the railings of walkways formed from living wood. People are out and about on the streets and walkways - primarily pointy-eared humanoids, but also some glowing humanoids with insectlike wings.
After a few minutes, they turn onto the latest of several mossy streets and find the trunk of the Tree looming at the far end: huge and craggy and brown, with roots each as thick as a small building. Where it intersects the street, there is a living wooden gate, currently standing open, and a pair of walkways that climb away from the street and up around the trunk to either side.
Sunpatch thinks to ask, "...How do you feel about heights?"
"Okay, good. The place I'm thinking of is a few levels up, and I'd have to find somewhere else if you didn't want to go up," Sunpatch explains. "Let's go up the outside, it's always less crowded."
Indeed, there's only a handful of people going up and down the walkways. Sunpatch traipses up the one on the right; it's nearly as wide as the street, and carpeted in the same faintly glowing moss. Anyone who was nervous of heights could just stick close to the trunk and hardly think about it.
When they have been going up for a while, the walkway flattens out for a stretch and there is another gate in the middle. This one is closed when they get there, but opens creakily when Sunpatch prods it with the tip of his horn, and he proceeds inside.
From this vantage, it is finally evident just how big around the Tree is. They can stand just inside the gate and look down on the lowest section of the city, living wooden buildings spreading their eager leaves under a vaulted wooden 'sky' that glows with green-gold light. Here and there, gaps in that ceiling show glimpses of the levels above. The whole thing is easily the size of a medium-sized town or small city, but if it's proportioned anything like a normal tree, it's got to be much, much taller.
"Welcome to the Tree!" says Sunpatch happily, and he leads them a short distance around the inside of the trunk to a building that seems to be rooted in the walkway itself. When he steps inside, the proprietor waves: it's some kind of bar or restaurant or combination thereof.
"Hi! I brought hungry elf-kin!" says Sunpatch.
"My favourite!" says the blue-haired leaf-winged child-sized humanoid behind the counter. "What would you like to eat, friends?"
"Well, then, try a few things," she says.
"This is Lastlight, she's a fae," explains Sunpatch belatedly. "These are Korafen and Ikrifiss and I'm pretty sure they're humans!"
Lastlight smiles welcomingly and hands Korafen and Ikrifiss each a little round baked good of some kind.
"Good! Then maybe you'll like this - "
Lastlight has many foods, and she's a remarkably good guesser about which of these foods will be pleasant to eat. There are also beverages, which mostly seem to be various mixes and dilutions of fruit or vegetable juice, and of course plain water is an option. (Sunpatch taps a faucet with his horn.)