They are in... a forest.

Well, it's like a forest. It has forest-like attributes. It's more like a forest than it's like any other normal kind of place. It contains trees, and grass, and moss, and... that appears to be it, apart from the group and what they brought with them. There's no sound except the sound they make, no visible motion except their own and the occasional sway of a branch in a gentle breeze.

The ground is flat. Unnaturally flat.

The trees are unnaturally uniform in size and style, and vary only within the strict bounds of their format, like they were created by a sculptor who was beautifully talented at detail work but had only a brief verbal description of how tree trunks work and a few good samples of bark. They stand in columns as straight as fenceposts, precisely two feet wide along their whole length, and their leaves and branches look more or less like normal leaves and branches but are placed with an odd carefully-varied regularity. And, speaking of carefully-varied regularity, they're laid out in a grid. Placed at random within that grid, but if you take a moment to see the pattern, there is no tree anywhere in sight that's so much as an inch out of alignment; each trunk precisely fills its two-foot square of ground.

There's a hollow in the otherwise flat ground, a short distance away. It is aligned with the grid. The ground dips by exactly two feet, into a four-foot-by-six-foot indentation, and the borders of that indentation occupy all and only the grid squares bordering the lower part. Within those borders, the slope is irregular enough to fool a superficial glance, but like the trees, the areas of sloping ground don't stray an inch outside their invisible boundaries.

Yttren is the first one to notice this--it's not difficult to notice, but everyone is pretty distracted by the corpse and the Toll. He rises to his feet, slowly, looking around. 

He frowns and reaches out to touch one of the "trees."

The "tree" is made of "wood", which resembles wood in the same sort of way that their surroundings resemble a forest. It is not actually alive and is not receptive to suggestions that it try acting like it.

That is one of the more disturbing things Yttren has experienced which, given some of the things he's experienced in the past few years, is really saying something. 

"Guys?" he says. 

"Yeah?" Kaleith asks, looking up, then blinks. "Uh..." 

"Yeah, exactly." 

This prompts the rest of the group to look up and make vaguely concerned noises about their surroundings. 

"So, uh, what's up with the trees...?" 

"I don't--they don't behave like trees and I can't make them." 

"Con...cerning..." 

"Better than more soldiers," Proust mutters. 

"And better than a desert, probably, and better than an active volcano, but while I endorse not being ungrateful this place's oddness may come with its own dangers and if so I do not wish to neglect them." 

"Fair," Proust allows grudgingly. 

"I don't see anything dangerous...we'll need to find food soon, though," she says, looking around. 

It is not immediately clear which direction they should go if they want to find food.

In the distance, a translucent green blob hops between the trees, sailing in improbably high arcs with every mighty leap; its body is an approximate sphere only a foot or so across, but at the apex of a hop it's easily six feet off the ground. On its current heading, it looks likely to pass close by the group without intersecting them.

"What is that," Delsmiar whispers. 

"You're the only way I can think of for any of us to find out. How bizarre...if we ever want to leave, and I think we do, we're going to need a strider, or at least someone with significant strider blood. And there's only one way to get one of those, so. Why don't the rest of you investigate while the three of us do something about that." 

"Your logic is sound," Leuska says, steering Delsmiar in the vague general direction of the hopping thing. 

Yttren starts poking at more trees, the halflings sticking close to him. Luvei attaches himself to the siren and the oracle. 

The green hopping blob is green, and translucent, and hopping. It takes no notice of its observers. It seems to be made of some sort of jelly-like substance, and has no discernible organs or other internal structures.

Some distance away, in the direction the blob was coming from, the trees seem to thin out. Perhaps there's food in that direction?

Seems worth investigating. 

The trees thin out, and there's a strangely regular border between the short grass of the forest and some much taller grass, and a little apple-sized miniature blob hopping out of said grass in arcs just as high as the green one's and even more ridiculously disproportionate to its body size. This one is on a collision course with Leuska.

She bats it away from her with her wing. 

It lands in the grass several feet away, spends a second vigorously wiggling, and then launches itself directly at her much faster and more aggressively than it was previously moving.

The heck? She slaps it much harder this time. 

It hits her with all the force of... an aggressively launched blob of goo. Goo splatters across her wing.

Some small round objects which definitely were not previously contained within the blob fall to the ground.

Euch. She kneels and picks up the objects. 

They're little translucent spheres, slightly rubbery to the touch. When her hand closes around them and brings them into contact with each other, they conglomerate into a single instance, and now she is holding {3 gel}.

...the label is... somehow metaphysically attached to the object, not visible the way ordinary writing is visible, more like the abstraction of remembering seeing something written down without remembering when or where or exactly what it looked like. There is some other information attached the same way, but it's mostly blurred out, a long list of similarly formatted blocks of abstracted text each with a line reading {3/? gel}.

"Um, what." 

"What?" Delsmiar asks. 

Leuska passes her the weird round things. 

Delsmiar blinks. "...One wood and one gel make a torch," she reports. "I'm not sure...what that means...but it's the case." 

"What?" Luvei asks. 

Delsmiar passes him the gel. 

"This is so fuckin' weird," he says. 

"It sure isn't not weird." 

One of the green blobs comes hopping along the border between forest and grassland.

Apart from being grassy, the grassland also has hills, specifically one big hill a medium-short distance away right in front of them. In theory they could climb it for a better view of their surroundings. (Its silhouette is, of course, precisely grid-aligned.)

Instead, Leuska cleans as much goo off her wing as she can with her fingers and takes advantage of the absence of trees to leap into the air, wings beating, to get a better vantage point that way. 

The big hill turns out to be long and slightly curved, with a small pond or lake nestled in the top end and a river running rather improbably lengthwise down its gradual slope.

Also, they're on an island.

In the direction we will arbitrarily designate as north, stretching from the very top of the hill west along the edge of the forest and north almost to the edge of the island, there's an area of snowy ground sparsely populated by trees of a different kind than the trees in the forest.

The grassland area occupies approximately the east half of the slightly-north-of-middle third of the island, and its trees are enormous—no, wait, there's a couple of smaller ones too. The forest area occupies approximately the west half of the same place, but is a little smaller, ending slightly north of the southern border of the grassland.

South of the grassland is a jungle, and then some sort of hazy purple place. South of the forest is a sandy desert. The desert appears to contain trees of yet another kind, and cacti. Whatever's in the hazy purple place is lost in the haze.

All around the edges of the island, there's a sandy area dotted with palm trees, different in character from the desert.

There's a cloud nearby, low enough that she could fly to it although high enough that its strangeness isn't obvious from the ground. It's not moving, and its edges are grid-aligned.

...She will fly higher to get a better look at the cloud but not actually approach it yet.

It has the same sort of nature as the hill or the hollow, where it has grid-aligned parts bordered by grid-aligned borders that vary in a natural-seeming way within their grid-cubes but never ever stray outside them.

There's a tree growing out of the top of it. A birch, if she's familiar with birches.

She is not. But she is familiar with "trees don't grow on clouds, what the fuck." 

She flies closer and pokes the cloud. 

It's solid enough to stand on, although there's significant give to it. She could probably tear it apart with her bare hands, if that was a thing she wanted to do.

...She lands on it and tries to tear a chunk off; she's primarily interested in comparing it to actual clouds made of water vapor, which she has also flown through once. 

It sort of vaguely resembles actual clouds, visually and texurally; there's the same cool misty feel to it when she touches it. But somehow the cool mist maintains enough solidity for her to tear pieces off of it and hold them in her hands.

—although, when she tears a second piece off the edge of the cloud, that piece and the entire rest of the border-cube it was part of turn into actual water vapour, which rapidly begins to dissipate, and a little cube of much more solid-looking cloud-stuff falls out of it to land on the next layer down with the softest of thumps.

She picks up the cube. 

She is now holding {1 cloud}. Its list of recipes, or whatever those are, is much shorter than the gel's.

Also, if she looks around while holding it, she can see a sort of ghostly preview of what it might look like if it were reattached to the rest of its brethren as a full-sized cube.

She...puts it back...?

And now there's a full cube of cloud there, its edges geometrically perfect, sticking out from the partial cubes to either side. Its top lines up exactly with the flat top surface of the rest of the cloud.

This is so fuckin' weird. 

...Can she just...get infinite mist by tearing this thing off and putting it back on repeatedly? 

Well, she can get repeated mist. It's sort of unclear how much of it is actually persisting for how long.

Is it wet enough for long enough that she can use it to help get the last of the goo off her wing. 

Goo? What goo? The goo is gone. There is no goo.

...Huh. So there isn't. That's...weird...flying doesn't usually fling stuff off her wings that effectively but she can't rule out that it just ceased to exist or some other local bullshit. 

She plucks a leaf off the tree experimentally. 

Now she has a leaf.

Is it behaving unleaflike in any obvious way? 

Nope! It's just leafing about.

She tucks it into her belt to have Yttren look at later. Unless it stops existing or something.  

Anything else noteworthy up here, before she heads back down?

N—

—yep!

A small fluffy creature, almost the same colour as the clouds and seeming to give off tiny trails of vapour as it moves, steps out from behind the tree. It is not at all clear whether it was behind the tree a minute ago.

{hello} it... says, for lack of a better word, in an abstraction-of-a-voice like the abstraction-of-text that happens when she picks up the small items. The actual sounds that it makes are the soft noises of a gentle breeze brushing past one's ears.

...She kneels to get closer to the creature's level. 

"Hello. Who are you?"

{i am cloud spirit—who are you—?}

"I'm Leuska! I'm a siren, sirens can fly--" she flutters her wings "--and me and my friends landed in the forest a ways off from here by accident and we're trying to figure out what's up with this place." 

{look for forest spirit} it advises. {—in forest—and water spirit in water—and stone spirit underground—we help}

"Help how?"

{we know things}

"Do you know why everything is in a grid?"

{no—forest spirit might}

"Okay. What do you know?"

{i know about magic}

"Oh, useful, tell me about magic."

{magic has eight elements—fire/infernal water/blood air/celestial earth/shadow—fire water air earth are natural elements—infernal blood celestial shadow are monstrous elements—}

It scampers to the edge of a cloud and points with its little three-fingered paw at the hazy purple area.

{that place is shadow place—other places on this island are natural places—places aligned with monstrous elements have stronger monsters}

"Unpack 'monsters'?"

{monsters are dangerous—they try to hurt you—if you kill them they leave things behind and some of the things are magic}

"Like that goo thing that jumped at me? --A goo thing jumped at me and went splat and left behind something called gel."

{that's a monster—a slime}

"How threatening are most monsters compared to slime?"

{slimes are the least threatening ones}

"Fuck. Okay, everyone else needs informed pronto, I'm heading back down, want to come along?"

The spirit nods, and hops off the edge of the cloud, drifting softly down through the air as though it's as light as mist.

Cute. Leuska glides down. 

And then when she reaches Delsmiar and Luvei, she says, "We have a problem. This isn't a war zone but there are, apparently, hostiles." 

Delsmiar looks worriedly at the air spirit.

"Not them." 

{there are monsters—they try to hurt you—forest spirit will know more}

"How do we find the forest spirit?" Delsmiar asks. 

{look in forest}

She chews her lip. "Is there anything you can tell us that would ordinarily be useless but, since I'm currently receiving a stream of contextually-useless data about our surroundings, would be useful?"

It cocks its head inquisitively. {—?}

"I'm--an oracle, it's my species, I could currently tell you how many, uh, skystone blocks there are in a weirdly defined area, or that creatures--monsters I guess--in places that have blood all over them drop heart pieces, or that fruit here doesn't rot, but I don't know what a skystone block is or what the meaning is of the weird area definition or what dropping is in context or what a heart piece is or why fruit doesn't rot or anything like that." 

{dropping is like when the slime gave gel}

"Oh. That makes sense, thank you." 

{heart pieces are useful} it adds. {—you can make candy hearts with them—and spun shadows with shadow scraps—and other things too}

"What are candy hearts and spun shadows?"

{magic candy—candy hearts make you healthier—spun shadows make you faster}

"Faster?"

It nods.

"Like--running faster, thinking faster, having better reflexes...?"

It nods again.

"Wow." 

"We can probably send you, Luvei, and maybe the twins, into the shadow place. And the blood place I guess but I didn't see any on this island." 

{other island—every island has only one—shadow or blood}

"Probably safer that way," Luvei muses. "What kinds of things are there in the shadows?"

{spectral wraiths—creeping nightmares}

"There are wraiths here?" 

"I think they mean some kind of monster," Delsmiar demurrs. 

"...Oh." 

The spirit nods.

"So what are spectral wraiths and creeping nightmares? Besides monsters." 

Shrug. {i don't know—i've never seen one}

Sigh. "Alright." 

"We should head back to the others. I think they'll probably avoid the shadows, it looks creepy, but they need to know about monsters. --What monsters are there not in the shadows? Or blood." 

{slimes—and zombies—zombies only at night}

It pauses consideringly, then adds, {and other things in the sky and underground and on other islands}

"And the slimes aren't too dangerous. What are zombies like?"

It shrugs again.

"Do you know how dangerous they are compared to slimes?"

{forest spirit might know}

"Okay. Let's get back to the others and find the forest spirit, then." 

Elsewhere and earlier:

Yttren doesn't really expect to find any sensible trees that act like trees or for that matter can be coaxed into acting any way at all, but that isn't stopping him from checking, in between poking at the grass and the soil. The halflings don't seem to expect it either, particularly, but one of the weird not-trees had apples on it, so for the moment they're good.

The grass is reasonably grasslike, although it has barely enough roots to hold it in the ground and doesn't seem to be natively capable of reproducing. The soil would be excellent for growing real plants in if there were any real plants to be had.

A small round woodenish creature steps out from behind a tree and waves a tiny pointy arm.

{hello friends!}

Fortunately Yttren has a small pouch of seeds on his belt. 

The roundish creature is a surprise, though. 

"Hello?"

The halflings pause and look down from their perches in the apple tree. 

It bounces happily on its tiny pointy feet. {am forest spirit!} Bounce bounce. {so many friend! hello!!}

Yttren goes down on one knee to talk to the spirit better. "Hello, forest spirit. Do you know where we are?"

{in forest!}

"...This is a very unusual forest." 

A tiny shrug. {forest is forest. you have different forest? only know this kind.}

"I have magic for plants, and the trees here don't behave like trees back home and I can't make them do anything." 

{tree here is tree here,} the forest spirit agrees. {is not other tree.}

"There's more than one kind of tree here," he says, pointing to the apple tree. Proust waves. 

{is!} it agrees. {is oak and apple in forest! is bamboo and redwood in grassland! is spruce and maple in snow place! many tree. but all tree here is here tree.}

"Do you know what it is that's different about here, that the trees are so different and the grass is so shallow and there are no soil microbiomes and the ground is shaped oddly?"

It shrugs. {only know this world, not other ones.}

"I suppose I've only been on the one planet too, before we came here, but I would have heard if different planets were so different in this way..."

{what is planet?}

"...Uh, a planet is a round contiguous body so large it looks flat from the surface. It's where things are, when the things aren't just stars and suns and so on."

{oh. this world not round. has things anyway.}

"How do you know it isn't round?"

{i know things! is how spirit.}

"It's your magic? Like--I guess you wouldn't know what oracles are."

{what is oracle?}

"Oracles are a kind of person, where I'm from. Their magic is that they have a constant stream of information going through their heads that they can sift through to pick out useful or interesting things." 

{is four spirit. forest, water, stone, cloud. spirit know things. each spirit different things.}

"How does that work? Why are there only four of you?"

Shrug. {is how spirit.}

"Where did you come from?"

Quizzical forest noises.

"When...did you start...existing?"

{after world is, before friend come.}

"So you don't remember?"

It seems stumped by this question.

"Where were you when it happened?"

{was in world,} it tries.

"Where in the world?"

{in forest.}

"Here?"

It makes a nod-like gesture that is really more of a full-body bounce.

"Has it been a long time? Have you been lonely?"

It shakes its... self, since it doesn't have much of a head to speak of.

"That's good.

"So...what are things like, here?"

{things... are?} it tries, after a few seconds of puzzled silence.

"Is there anything to eat besides apples?"

Nod-bob. {lots other fruit! and fish! maybe can eat slimes? not sure.}

"...Slimes?"

{slime is monster! is not very dangerous. small, round, squishy.}

"Can you elaborate on 'monster.'"

Tiny pointy shrug. {monster is monster, do monster things.}

"What are monster things? What qualifies as a monster?"

{slime is monster, zombie is monster, other monster is monster. monster try to hurt spirit. monster try to hurt friend. slime is reactive monster, only try to hurt you when you touch it.}

"Are there other monsters like that? Why do monsters want to hurt people?"

"Hey," Leuska says, strolling into view, followed by the rest of the people in her group plus air spirit.

"Hi. --Oh, hi," he adds when he sees the air spirit. 

The forest spirit waves to the cloud spirit.

The cloud spirit waves back.

"So I heard something about you being made aware that monsters are a thing that exist." 

"Uh, a little." 

"Slimes are annoying and, well, slimy, but not too dangerous, and as long as we don't go into the creepy purple area--there's a creepy purple area--we shouldn't have to deal with anything else, except at night." 

"Good thing we're already in the habit of keeping watch," he says wryly. 

{can build house,} the forest spirit contributes. {get wood from tree, build house, be safe from zombie.}

"So the zombies aren't smart enough to bash in doors or anything?"

{zombie can't open door,} it agrees.

"Okay. Cool. Let's build a house. We could go to that river, or...any advice on cutting down trees when you're not a frost giant?"

{have sharp thing?} it suggests, after a moment's consideration.

"Yeah that's pretty much the frost giant way. Luvei can make axes and stuff out of ice." 

It nods its small round self.

"Are all spirits as adorable as you two?"

{don't know! not met them yet!}

"Okay. Do you know how long it is until night?"

{until sun go down,} it suggests.

"...Do you know when that will happen? We were just not-here, we're not familiar with this place's day/night cycle yet."

Tiny pointy shrug.

The cloud spirit cocks its head thoughtfully.

{the sun is always moving—always the same speed—watch it for a while—look how far it has to go}

...She looks up in the general direction of the sun. Not at the sun, she likes her retinas not extra crispy, but basically sunwards. 

"...How is there a sun if this isn't a planet," Luvei wonders slowly. 

The sun is about halfway up that side of the sky over there, and, if they wait to watch it move, traveling upward.

{sun is part of sky} says the cloud spirit.

"What...is...the sky here?"

{the earth is under the ocean and the sky is above it—above the sky there is heaven and below the earth there is hell—the sun and moon are lights in the sky—the sun shines in the day and the moon shines at night}

"Can you elaborate on the heaven and hell bits." 

{heaven has celestial magic and angels and a queen—hell has infernal magic and demons and a prince—they are opposites}

"What are celestial and infernal magic?"

{celestial is the monstrous inverse of air—infernal is the monstrous inverse of fire}

"Monstrous inverse?"

{the natural and monstrous elements are connected—inversions of each other—water to blood—earth to shadow—infernal to fire—celestial to air}

"That...sort of makes sense...what makes those four things 'elements,' though?"

{they are what magic is made of}

"Okay, cool. So, uh, if there are night monsters, is there something to be done about that besides just sleeping in watch shifts." 

{can get wood, build house!}

Forehead-smack. "Right, we went over this already. Okay, time to head to the river for water for axes, I guess." 

"There's supposed to be other fruit," Yttren interjects. "What other kinds of fruit, where?"

{is lots! apple in forest and plum in desert and mango in jungle and cherry in blood forest and black cherry in shadow forest! and date and coconut on shore! lots fruit!}

"Okay...is there a way to cause new trees to come into existence? They won't cooperate with the normal ways." 

{cut down tree, tree give seed. sometimes one sometimes two sometimes three sometimes none. mostly two. and when kill night monster, sometimes give seed for same place tree.}

"Okay. Leuska, you fly around and gather as much fruit as you can. Luvei and I will go to the river for axe purposes, then come back and start building a shelter. You four," he added, pointing at the halflings still up the apple tree, "can stay here and keep track of where everyone is for when anyone comes back to check and look after the fruit Leuska brings and so on. At some point one of you can go fetch the Elves." 

"Yeah, okay," Mirrin says agreeably. Fondai rolls over on her branch and shrugs, staring up at the sky. 

"Then when we've got a basic shelter and a good pile of fruit, Leuska, can you guide us around to fruit trees so we can cut them down for seeds so we can get an orchard around here?" 

"Yeah, sounds legit." 

"How long do trees take from planting to bearing fruit? How often do they bear fruit after that?" he asks the spirits. "It'll matter for how many trees it makes sense to cut down for seeds versus taking the long trek to repeatedly."

{tree grow up in few days,} says the forest spirit. {is small and then small and then small and then small and then big. fruit come every day usually.}

"...Okay. Well, uh, that's extremely convenient and I already knew the trees don't work like trees, so, you know, I'll keep any whining internal. Thanks."

The forest spirit gives Yttren a comforting pat on the leg with its tiny pointy arm. {sorry about trees.}

"It's okay," he says, leaning down to pat the little spirit back. 

"Spirits are adorable." 

The forest spirit does a happy little bounce.

{could look for more spirits too if you want!} it suggests. {water spirit knows about crafting and stone spirit knows about weapons and monsters.}

"Where do you think they are?"

{water spirit in ocean! stone spirit in cave!}

"That makes sense...I don't think I saw any caves when I was flying, though."

The forest spirit nods its round little self. {cave is underground. have to dig to find.}

"Huh. That'll be a job for when we're better-equipped, I think. Are there monsters underground?"

Little round nod.

"Definitely waiting until we're better equipped. Anything else I should know before I leave to collect fruit?"

Little round shrug!

"Okay!"

She takes off fruit-wards. Luvei and Yttren take off for the river. Mirrin climbs down from the tree and takes off elf-wards.

The elves have finished doing elf things and are discussing where everyone else went and what their next moves should be when Mirrin arrives.

"Hey guys," Mirrin says.

"Hi. What's going on?" Aduva asks. 

"Well, uh, it turns out this place is way weirder than previously expected," Mirrin says a little awkwardly.

"...Weirder how.

"Well, you see, it turns out this place runs on weird bullshit rules where the trees don't act like trees and you get seeds by cutting down trees instead of out of fruit and the trees grow from the seeds in a matter of days and monsters spontaneously generate and also there are these adorable spirit things."

One of the adorable spirit things waves cheerfully. {hello friends!}

Aduva gasps.

"You are adorable! Can I hug you?"

There is an affirmative bounce and a lifting of tiny pointy arms.

She swoops over and scoops up the little spirit and hugs them delightedly.

Tiny pointy hug: achieved!

"You are indeed extremely adorable. --How old are you?"

Confused forest noises.

"--Did you start out smaller and are you going to get bigger."

{oh! no. spirit is only one size.}

"Apparently they're magic an've been around forever," Mirrin comments.

"Everyone's magic, Mirrin," Aduva points out.

"Magic works differently here," Mirrin says.

"Different like how?"

{different things are magic—and they are magic in different ways—} says the cloud spirit.

"What things are magic, here?"

{that depends what you mean by magic}

"What things could I mean by magic?"

{there is the magic of the elements—and the magic of the way the world works—and the magic of spirits—the elements are what I know best}

"Can you tell me about the magic of the elements?"