The fog on Dering was worse than it was in Destiny City. It was an entity in and of itself, dense and clinging, and impossibly stagnant.

When Julian arrived on his Wonder, he had his backpack slung across his back and his lute cradled to his front. He wasn’t surprised to find his Wonder like this but the clouds were thinner than usual and faint, distant rays of sunlight filtered through occasionally. He didn’t have to strain too much to see, but it was either dusk or dawn–and he really hoped dawn.

He hadn’t quite mastered the Lysithean day-to-night cycle–foolish of him, really. What a silly oversight, not thinking of it before planning an all-day trip.

Between the dim light and thick fog, the tall trees were little more than silhouettes right now. He arrived in the same clearing he’d become accustomed to, encircled by goliaths whose boughs cradled the sky and whose roots clutched the ground.

Julian had never climbed a tree, not really. He often thought about trying, here on Dering, where there was no one to see him fail. He dreamed about climbing so high that he could see over the wave of fog, to truly survey the expanse of forest he was tasked to guard. His dreams were immediately dampened by visions of him toppling to the ground.

If there was no one here to see him, there was no one here to save him.

He kept his feet planted on solid ground, as much as possible. By accident, he’d already uncovered several underground tunnels and hidden passages by falling into them, and he severely doubted he’d managed to find them all.

If the weather had been better, Julian would have liked to map his Wonder. He’d like to be able to track where he’d been and what he’d seen. It was just so wet that he was worried he’d ruin any electronics, and he could already imagine how soggy the paper would get. He’d watched ink bleed wet on pages he was trying to write on before.

Soleiyu might be able to fix this problem, Julian just hadn’t been able to bring himself to ask–as if having him here might make him witness to all his Knightly failings.

But, he was getting desperate. If nothing happened today–

Well, Julian didn’t know what he was going to do. The pit in his stomach felt so deep, so heavy. The fog moved slowly around him, like a floating river trying to drag him down. Already, his uniform felt cold, and damp.

And the day hadn’t even really begun.

Julian nearly went to the Code–to tell it he was here, to make sure it was okay, to ask how it was doing–but every trip started off like that. And every trip ended in silence, and failure.

And Julian just really wanted to do something right.

So, he told himself, the Code already knew he was here. The Code was probably busy, and dropping in would just be annoying, anyway. The Code probably didn’t even want to see him!

Julian stared into the fog, which was either chest or waist deep, depending on how it rolled over itself.

The forest was silent–like always. No animals, so no birdsong, no crickets even.

No breeze.

Just Julian.

He drew in a deep breath–nearly coughed at the wetness of it–and nodded firmly to himself, like agreeing to a pact he’d made without words. He didn’t dare put the conditions into words–if he did, he’d overthink them. So he just promised to do his best.

He was going to explore Dering today. Or, some version of that. He didn’t know how much it would count if he couldn’t see but he told himself that the effort was worth it, no matter the outcome.

When he started, the grass was soft. It didn’t grow higher than his ankle. He took painstakingly slow steps, testing the ground’s ability to hold his weight–testing that there was ground at all–as he shuffled.

It took two minutes to stub his toe on the first root but he wasn’t mad about it. Too fast. It wasn’t a race.

The silence was too eerie and his heart migrated to his throat, so to ease his nerves, he decided to make use of his hands and began to strum a slow, tentative song on his lute. It wasn’t anything impressive, just sound–sound that echoed off of the trees around him, and made him feel like he had a place between them.

His fingers twitched over the strings more than played, but at some point he drifted into something like Für Elise, only he couldn’t call it that because it was too slow, too haunting, and sometimes he plucked the wrong string. It was a guessing game.

He played. He failed. He corrected. He played again.

By the half hour mark, he’d made it far deeper into the forest, maybe than he’d ever been. The grass was over his knees and the trees were looming nearer, as if closing in on him. The roots were more unscrupulous, twisting wildly and in ways no normal tree should, making nets and hooks of themselves. Julian had stumbled several times, and fallen to his knees once. He’d been so surprised that he hadn’t even thought to catch himself. He’d played through it, and absentmindedly thought that his fingers were more sore than his knees.

He wouldn’t call it pain, and it was promptly forgotten.

Less forgettable was the familiar feeling of being watched, creeping in with the same cold presence as the fog. Unease settled into the corners of his mind. He glanced back once or twice, unable to stop himself, certain he’d see someone–something–through the trees.

But there was only fog.

Only silence.

Just like always.

So, just like always, he ignored it and pressed onward.

To Julian’s delight, the sun was rising. Though the gray morning haze was slow to disperse, the trees slowly grew a bit less dark, and they no longer appeared quite so ominous, clustered like bitter sentries around him. None of the trees looked proud, or happy, to be there.

They were so old, so massive, that many were brought low by their own weight alone. Some had toppled over, exposing dense underbellies–webs of roots twisting like veins, pulsing still with stubborn life. They spilled from the trunk in tangled cords, burrowing into the soil as if by threading itself back into the Earth it might somehow right itself. Julian noted that even the toppled trees were still plentifully dressed in dense foliage, and it was as if the trees hadn’t noticed the fall–or, if they had, simply refused to accept it.

Julian admired them, even if it made traversing the forest a bit more difficult. He was proud of them, but he didn’t think he was important enough to be distributing praise like that. He couldn’t imagine how hard they must have fallen, and without arms to move they hadn’t been able to get up. Branches had snapped beneath them and rotted away long ago, but battered and bruised, the forest survived.

They deserved respect, and Julian had that aplenty. Even if the trees had gradually lost their grandeur, replaced by subtle grotesquerie. Julian would never think of the trees as ugly, but his music came slower as the echoes grew more distorted. It felt wrong to play, like he was disturbing something too sacred for his amateur attempts to fill silence.

The whistling was back, behind him. He heard it–not frequently, but often enough that it usually didn’t bother him. It startled him now, in the half-light of the rising sun.

At first, Julian thought it was a distant echo from the lute but it was too long, too steady. Too controlled. If he listened closely enough, it almost sounded like it was a tune in itself, but it was so far away. It was probably just an echo warbling through the trees–chasing him like the fog stalking him.

Julian hurried, not because he was making bad time, but because there was something ominous about this part of the forest, and he couldn’t bring himself to think poorly of any part of Dering. Better to hurry on and not think of it.

Except, the deeper he went, the worse it got.

Gnarled roots made crude guardrails, but he ignored them. Any sane person should have known not to continue on, and yet–he did. He crawled over the roots–sometimes chest high, with gentle apology. The front of his tunic was darkened with something dusty and sootlike. When he tried to brush it, it smeared. Whether it was sap, or just the moisture in the air, he couldn’t tell.

He just kept going forward.

Strangely, the fog seemed to dim somewhat. Maybe it was because the sun was slowly warming up the forest–though Julian had yet to feel it.

The change brought him no comfort.

With the thinning fog, he could see that the pale white grass he was used to was black and brittle, and instead of swaying with him, it snapped and crumbled instead. The ground sank beneath him, not like he was falling, but like he was entering the start of a bog.

The trees stayed dark, even as the day brightened. The bark was scaly almost, and the trees grew in menacing shapes. Branches were jagged and swooped low, like claws frozen mid-swipe. There were no flowers here, only small mountains of dark rot.

Julian slowed but did not stop. His face settled into a worried frown, and instead of playing his lute, he held it close to his chest.

Suddenly, something rustled behind him–leaves, fast and sharp, like someone had yanked a rope beneath them, or like a snake had shot in a straight line behind him.

That got him to freeze, and he turned to search the direction he’d come from.

There was only fog, thicker than the path before him, and darkness.

And an eerie whistle.