May 21, 10:03AM

Side paths, slower but stealthy. 76%

Wayfinder led them silently into the Overgrowth.

At first there was nothing to impede their path, or anything to suggest they ventured anywhere more interesting than an abandoned town somewhere. If there was any significant detail about the place, it was how quickly the effects of the place’s namesake took hold.

Grass cracked through even tiny cracks in the pavement, with vines creeping up and covering any surface tall enough to support them. Wildflowers of numberless species filled in the gaps, blooming in blues and pinks and soft yellows.

Yet the change was most dramatic by far in the trees. She guessed that many of them had always been there; near the base of many were ruined planter-boxes, or those little sidewalk plots used to contain the plants. Yet in the small number of months since the pandemic began, every decorative tree and young sapling in Denver had grown to its adult size and beyond.

They walked only a short distance before they crowded so close together that their shade obscured the ground in all directions.

Once past the first few trees, the sound of generators and heavy machinery and pony voices behind them all faded into the background, and was soon completely lost. What replaced it was a total blanket of natural sounds—birdcalls, wind blowing through trees, the shifting of canopies and the occasional cries of larger predators.

“What does the biologist make of this?” Wayfinder asked, after walking only a short distance past the treeline and into the shelter of an old metal bus stop. Vines had grown over it from one side, casting the interior in shadow.

Ruby had healed considerably since her first few days returned from the jail, though she was still far from the level of fitness she’d been before the Pandemic. She wouldn’t be biking to campus anytime soon.

Not that there was any school to go back to. Way couldn’t even guess when their world would be put back together enough for higher education to make sense.

Ruby kept the gun tucked into the edge of her pack, though she hadn’t drawn it. Good thing, since Way wasn’t sure Ruby would have learned enough during their single trip to the range to know how to shoot it.

“My level of training qualifies me to tell you everything you can already tell. All these plants sure are biological. Though… seeing this place does remind me of a documentary I watched about Chernobyl once. After the meltdown, and people let the town grow completely out of control, so nature swallowed everything. Except… way faster.”

She approached one of the metal struts holding up the ceiling. The solar panels on the roof were mostly covered, and only a faint glow radiated from the LED set into the ceiling. “No rust or corrosion. The damage here is physical. Which… really just tells us more we already knew. Time didn’t get weird—so it’s something about the plants. Maybe your magic can tell you. What did that book say?”

There was nothing in the book about strange forests that grew in the wrong climate and expanded a hundred times faster than ordinary growth could explain. Because the book had nothing about magical phenomena, except those that could be created by or were somehow connected to the native magic of unicorns.

“Uh… I’ve got… a magic detecting spell.” It was the only one she’d transcribed that didn’t have a combat application of some kind—her only way of tracking down the pony if he hadn’t left some trace for her to follow.

She levitated that scroll out from her satchel, unrolling it. “I could use it. See what we come up with. It’s one of the safest spells I have—this one is practically guaranteed not to explode when I cast it.”

Ruby took a dramatic step back in the shadowy space, as far as she could go without emerging into the forest beyond.

Even during the day, the Overgrowth was a loud place. Hiding in this little shelter was safer than being out in the open. “Is this far enough?”

Way rolled her eyes, surveying the scroll. A central runic circle occupied the middle, an elaborate glyph with a sun shape outlined on one half and a moon on the other, with exactly six points arranged around it. Copying and practicing these scrolls taught her to know a little more of how they worked now.

There were six primary elements of magic, each of which had dominion over a spell. To track uses of magic, “companionship” was obviously the primary focus. Meanwhile, the sun governed the flow of energy in, and the moon mitigated its use.

Creating the scroll was the hard part—she didn’t have to hold its rune perfectly in mind, or comprehend its purpose. Only to focus a little fresh power into the incomplete section of circle, burning into the page to complete the sun.

Light flashed from the page, radiating briefly from her eyes and her horn in the same moment. The power was spent already—but she felt that power connecting to her now, guiding her thoughts.

The scroll glowed brighter, hovering in the air without Wayfinder to lift it now.

Way saw magic—she saw an avalanche of power flowing through the ground at her hooves. She felt it in every tree, spreading between their roots, spilling upward into a climate-defying storm far overhead.

She dropped to the ground, her body going limp as her mind filled and filled and filled with the vision she conjured. That magic was not random, it gathered in one central place, where the trees grew into redwood-like giants.

And somewhere nearby, a flicker barely even observed, a familiar, structured kind of magic that she had actually been hunting for.

The vision ended abruptly, as gentle as a cord ripped out of the back of her head. Perhaps ripping was the word, since the scroll now lay in two pieces on the ground, and Ruby stood over her, one hoof on her shoulder and the other prodding at her face. “Way? Way, listen to me!”

Wayfinder groaned. She was back in the bus shelter, with Ruby’s face a few inches from hers and real panic in her eyes.

“You shouldn’t be using those things,” Ruby said, reaching towards the satchel with her other hoof. “They obviously don’t work. They’re too dangerous.”

You don’t think I made them correctly. Way shifted, getting her weight on her hooves again, and standing. “It’s not that, Ruby. I looked for magic—and there’s magic here. More than I imagined—as many as thousands of us, maybe more. I got overwhelmed. I won’t use that spell again. And I won’t need to. I saw… there’s at least one pony in here.”

Not exactly what she’d sensed. More like the spell a pony might use, similar to the thing she’d created herself. But just calling it “a pony” was close enough. Where there was a spell, there had to be someone to create it.

“Just like that? Feels like—” Ruby fell abruptly silent, one ear twitching.

Way heard it too, something moving in the forest outside their temporary shelter. She heard it as rustling at first, the occasional snapping and shifting of little branches.

She fell silent, turning to crouch near the entrance.

Something stalked past that doorway, a strikingly familiar shape. Like a wolf, taller than Wayfinder at the shoulder, but made from saplings and vines all twisted together.

It even sounded like a wolf, paws smacking to the floor as it passed, its head down and its nose apparently focused on something.

Ruby’s tail tucked between her legs, and she backed away from the opening, closer to Way.

Like being back at the university rescuing Ruby.

Not just like it. They were headed the exact same direction.

“What… do…we…” Ruby mouthed. She levitated the handgun into the air next to her, pointing it towards the entrance. Whether bullets would do them any good against a creature made of plants, though…

Wayfinder stepped up closer to her, close enough that her side touched against hers. Much more importantly, the view out of their shelter gave her a view up onto a distant ridge, perhaps a hundred meters away. It was probably the roof of a building or something, though the level of growth and the trees in the way made it impossible to tell exactly what.

A low growling echoed in from outside. Several other barking sounds joined it. At least a dozen different creatures moved in the space outside the shelter, all converging on their position. They hadn’t been hidden at all!

Wayfinder screamed, wrenching forward on the intervening distance as though hauling some enormous object towards her.

Light surrounded her and Ruby, a sudden blinding surge that filled her vision and swept away her view of the creatures outside. When that light faded, the bus stop was replaced with a concrete platform, flanked by overgrown steel supports and strangled industrial air conditioners.

Wayfinder dropped to her knees under the strain, breath coming heavy. Ice crystallized on her and Ruby’s coat, then rapidly melted again, leaving them damp.

Shorter jump than last time. Way wobbled, but didn’t collapse—Ruby was there to hold her upright, her eyes going suddenly huge. “Holy shit, Wayfinder. What did you just do?”

“Teleport,” she said, breath heavy. As though she’d just galloped two dozen flights of stairs to reach their current position, carrying Ruby on her back all the way. Maybe her body thought she had. “Less intense than last time. I don’t think I’m gonna go into… a coma this time.” She glanced briefly down at her cutie mark, as though that symbol held some secret it would now communicate with her.

Nothing happened, obviously. She saw nothing there but that same compass shape, outlined in her fur.

Ruby held her a few seconds longer, long enough to be sure she wasn’t going to fall over. Then she paced away, walking over to the edge of the roof. There was railing here, at a height suited for a human being, and Ruby had to hop up onto a nearby metal box just to see over it.

“You took us all the way up here in a second. How’d you learn to do that?”

“Almost… getting shot,” she answered, sitting up straighter. “Didn’t have a ton of options at the time.” She tested her hooves, and found she could stand up without too much difficulty. Though that absence in her head remained, as though her teleport had created a gap just underneath her skull. “Alright. Better than last time. Don’t think I’ll be able to do any magic for a while. But I can walk.”

She looked the other way, backing away from Ruby to get a better look at their surroundings. There was something unmistakably familiar about the view off the other side of the cliff—building. But why?

She discovered the answer only seconds later, peering down over the edge at an overgrown courtyard of clustered buildings, paths, and modern art.

The university, its gardens completely overgrown. Yet for some reason the huge trees hadn’t completely overtaken the place. Vines and weeds crept over the sides of buildings, without completely destroying them. Of course it had to be here.

Ruby approached from her other side, turning to follow her eyes in the same direction. “Looks better than the apartments and shops. Why would the magical growth go easy on this part?”

Wayfinder shrugged. “Dunno how any of it works. Except that… it does look like a good place to find survivors. If people were still living in here—”

She trailed off, eyes darting to a sudden source of light in the air beside them. It was barely bright enough to see against the sun, a little round wisp that bobbed gently up and down as she watched.

Ruby drew the gun again, pointing it towards the light. “Way, look out! That thing is coming right at you!”

Except—it wasn’t, obviously. It just floated there, circling gently in place, before drifting towards the stairs. Ruby lowered the gun.

“I don’t think shooting it would’ve done anything,” Way said, annoyed. “I think it’s just some wild magic, or—” It lingered by an open stairwell, bobbing in place. “Do you think it wants us to follow it?”

“I’m sure the pitcher plant wants its prey to slip off the rim too,” Ruby said. “Doesn’t mean we have to cooperate.”

Way wasn’t so sure. The magic seemed far more structural than what she felt flowing through the trees. Besides, the sky was getting darker, though it wasn’t even noon yet. Judging by those clouds, it would be raining soon, maybe worse.

Way had to decide.

1. Follow the wisp. It feels more like pony magic than random chance. Maybe it’s the spell she sensed nearby?

2. Ruby is probably right, it must be hostile. Search the university on her own, without relying on the strange outside influence.