Minor changes like the Mint’s Shifting Form upgrade could combine with things like the Shapeshift: Flying Squirrel spell to create powerful results. Taken as singular things, both the evolved spell and the upgrade were good. Combined, they created something that changed the way Rud traversed the forest. This would also impact his ability to travel to Barlgore whenever he wanted without involving Dean. It wouldn’t be as swift as when mounted on the wolf, but it was better than hoofing it.

  The longhouse was buzzing with activity by the time Rud returned. He had spent some time flying around, and even more racing Dean through the grove. He shifted into his true form, before pushing his way through the double doors. A wave of heat hit him, forcing the druid to realize how cold he had been while playing around with his new form. The next thing to hit him was a wave of chatter. Several groups of adventurers were seated around the fire, laughing with Taz. No other members of the grove were there.

  Rud found it awkward to insert himself into the conversation, but edged his way across the room and found a seat on the far side of the group. He got himself a bowl of soup and settled in to eavesdrop on the conversation. The tales they told held true to what Barrow’s group had said. Orcs infested the area west of the grove, and they would only encroach further as time passed. The druid remained in the wings of the conversation, not willing to jump in.

  The sun had set outside of the longhouse. Rud was inspired to return to his mushroom house for the first time in a long time. When Ban wasn’t in her hibernation state, he felt a sense of fullness in his chest. That feeling needed to be sated by hanging out with everyone by the fire, but now all he wanted to do was sit in private. It didn’t help that the crowd was rowdy, likely intending to stay up late into the night. The day had exhausted him further than he realized and he needed to recharge.

  A fire crackled in the wood burning stove in Rud’s house. He reclined in his chair, not wanting to leave the warmth before he was ready. He gazed up at the ceiling, thinking about the things that had come to pass within the grove. “I’m excited for the new workshop.”

  “I bet you are,” Ban said. He knew she would be listening. Since she didn’t need to rest while she generated the new building, she could hear everything he said. No matter where he was. “I’m impressed with your new shapeshifting form.”

  “Really? Doesn’t seem as cool as a wolf form. As long as you ask Mint, that is.”

  “Our guardian wanted a grove filled with nothing but wolves. When I explained the important balance of nature to her, she almost had a fit.”

  Rud felt something tugging at the back of his thoughts. Something he had been concerned about but couldn’t remember. As he let his mind relax, he remembered what it was. “Oh! We need to talk to Bent about the dungeon problem.”

  “I already have. They’re having the same problem near each grove.”

  “Any theories?”

  “Not really. Magical anomalies aren’t uncommon. Mortals might think the world operates in a linear fashion—one event proceeding the other in a predictable pattern—but that isn’t the case for us. We’re here to see the unexpected.”

  Rud pushed back, getting more comfortable in his chair. Maybe that was true, but this was still concerning. His job was to prepare the grove, not make decisions like this. “I’ll make sure we’re ready for whatever it is. I think we have an advantage with our mortals.”

  “Our mortals… Not sure what I think about those two words standing so close together. We don’t own them.”

  “No, but they’re ours. Ours to protect, at least.”

  Ban let those words linger in the air, not wanting to correct Rud. It wasn’t the grove’s job to ensure the safety of the mortals. Both parties took advantage of each other’s company, but neither owned the other. Like nature itself, they existed in balance. The druid thought about the way he had interacted with the grove so far. He recalled a bird that would have died without his intervention. A bear that would have fallen to madness. Sometimes a person should step up, using a firm hand to steer the direction of nature. He would protect the mortals not out of responsibility, but necessity. Like the bear that slept in the cave, a powerful ally could be found.

  “You’re cute when you’re contemplating things,” Ban said.

  “I’m just pondering.” Rud tried not to bluster. “Isn’t it my job to sort these problems out?”

  “You’re right. Some might find it easy to discount a custodian. Those people are the ones with failed groves.”

  Rud didn’t want to think about the failed groves. From the information he gathered, he knew Bent had tried and failed to create new groves starting twenty-five years ago. Hagsrise was the newest grove, and Maria was the newest custodian after him. “What happened to the groves before ours?”

  “Sacred Groves fail more often than they succeed.”

  “I guess we just mesh together so well,” Rud said, smacking his lips as he prepared to sleep. “That or we’re very lucky.”

  “Hmmm. I wonder which it is.”

  ###

  Rud sipped his Squirrel Grey tea, leaning over a length of paper and jotting his notes for the morning. A frigid breeze blew through the tower, finding ways through the glass or using the open doorway out to the balcony. There was something satisfying about watching the adventurers go dungeon-to-dungeon in the south. At least there hadn’t been another random dungeon flashing up somewhere within the grove.

  “You know the worst part?” Maria asked, her sigh joining with the wave of static.

  “What’s that?” Rud asked, pulling his attention away from his Farseeing skill.

  “The dwarves are smellier than me.”

  Rud mocked a gasp. “Surely not. You’re the smelliest Talen Por on the planet.”

  “Hey, don’t get too comfortable. I just wish I could get them to bathe.”

  “Twenty-five years and you haven’t taught the locals hygiene? Isn’t that the first thing you would do if you went back in time?”

  “You’re talking about a fictional scenario where you head back to medieval Earth, right?”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Rud drew more of his attention to the conversation. This one had kept him up at night more than a few times. “Yeah. Think about it. If you’re sent back in time—assuming you speak whatever language they’re speaking back then—you could revolutionize the world.”

  “So, why haven’t you revolutionized this world?”

  Well, that was a good question. Rud might have come from Earth, but nothing he did was Earth-like. It took him a few minutes to think about it, to which Maria mocked. “I guess infrastructure is a problem.”

  “Do you even know how to make soap?”

  “No…”

  “Even if this is a hypothetical where you go back in time with an infinite supply of bar soap, no one would care. You would be the local crazy talking about germs. I’ve tried to sway the locals in my area about good habits, but they rarely listen. I’m guessing you’re no different.”

  From the moment Rud stepped foot in this new world, he had kept his thoughts about Earth to a minimum. He thought about home sometimes, or the way things were, but his mind was now completely focused on the grove. He couldn’t think of much that he would offer this place that would work. Mint had found him soap. They had food and fire thanks to magical means. When magic was involved, barely anything he could think of mattered. The druid realized the medieval period wouldn’t have been much better.

  “I’ll take your silence as defeat. Next, I’ll raise you a more important ‘what if.’”

  “I accept my defeat. What’s this scenario?”

  “What year were you born?”

  “Sixty-five.”

  “Dang. Geezer alert!”

  “Hey!”

  “Just kidding. You were transported a while before I was. Anyway… Let’s say you were put back into your body when you were in high school. Could you get rich?”

  “So, do I have all my memories? All that future knowledge?”

  “Yeah. And we won’t consider the butterfly effect.”

  “Easy. I’d bet it all on the Steelers in eighty. Work some garbage job and put it all into that.”

  “Can you bet at fifteen?”

  “Maybe… It was the eighties.”

  “I’d convince my dad to put every dollar he had into Hyperion.”

  “Into what?”

  “A company. Don’t worry, they didn’t turn into an evil megacorp that ruined the entire planet.”

  “Why do I have a feeling that’s exactly what they did?”

  Maria ignored that. “There were a few weeks where all I did was stay up and think about that. I always came to the same conclusion, though. If I could do it again, I would make sure I didn’t die on that street.”

  Rud felt his heart fall into his stomach. He looked over his grove. The place that he loved more than anything in his previous life. Maria wasn’t enjoying her time in the underground grove. He couldn’t know her struggles in that place, but felt himself wanted to connect the groves more than ever. If custodians could zip between them, feelings like this wouldn’t arise. The druid wasn’t thinking of this only in selfish ways—although a selfish desire to see Maria was intense enough to notice—but in a way to protect these fragile places.

  “You there?”

  “Yeah. Just thinking about how distant everyone is. Wishing we could bring everyone together.”

  “Maybe that’s your destiny in this world. Bringing all the custodians together so we can have a big party.”

  “Wouldn’t that be something?”

  Maria had a few more ‘what if’ scenarios to pitch at Rud. He was happy to entertain the idea of time-travel and went along for as long as she would laugh at his jokes. By the time she was ready to sign off for the day, he had been done with the report for at least an hour. Nulsa had perched on a nearby tree, but was polite enough to wait for him to finish with his conversation. The druid turned his radio off, waving the report in his hand as he approached the balcony.

  “Interesting conversation,” Nulsa said. “If a bit vapid.”

  “Come on. You can’t say you wouldn’t abuse some weird superpower.”

  “Have you abused yours? Anyway, there is a mortal looking for you. She claims you avoided her.”

  “Oh, crap,” Rud said. He stuffed the paper into his backpack and shifted into his flying squirrel form. “I was supposed to strike a deal with Elmera.”

  The druid jumped from the Observatory, gliding through a patch of leaves in the tree and appearing in Ban’s boughs. He did tight circles as he flew down, slipping through the crack in the longhouse’s door while still in his squirrel form. Elmera was waiting patiently by the fire, a leatherbound notebook in her lap. She didn’t see him approach and jumped when he shifted into his true form.

  “Sorry about that,” Rud said.

  “Shapeshifting magic…” Elmera trailed off, writing something else down. “Interesting.”

  “Come on,” Rud said, jerking his head toward the exit. “I’ll show you where I keep the ingots.”

  Elmera packed her things away calmly. She was back to her old self, hiding behind a stoic mask. As she followed close behind, Rud realized that he rarely walked to the mine area. Since he teleported there, it normally took him moments. He couldn’t be sure, but the walk would take about a half-hour. There were no roads going that way.

  “Stay close. I don’t want to scour the forest to find you.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  The elven woman did better than Rud expected, but he could tell she got confused a few times. Even with her resistance to magic, the grove’s power was just too much. She relaxed a bit when they entered the Smelting Workshop, but was curious about the forming blacksmithing building. The druid brushed it off, gesturing to the massive piles of ingots.

  “You’ve been busy,” Elmera said, crouching to examine the bars. “How many are you willing to part with?”

  “About a quarter of what’s there. Although I don’t think I need the enchanted ones as much as the unenchanted ones.”

  As with most mortals, she wanted to haggle. Rud played along, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t surprised to learn that she couldn’t buy a single one, let alone a quarter. But he agreed to let her have ten of the bars for future goods. With such a massive pile of ingots it would be stupid not to trust the elf at her word. It wasn’t just that the elf promised to pay him in crystals when she had the money, it was the other things she had access to. If he wanted to upgrade his buildings beyond Rank 0, he needed Rank 1 Dungeon Core Fragments.

  “Getting the supply shipped will be hard, but I can manage it,” Elmera said, bowing to Rud. “Thank you for the opportunity.”

  “Yeah, no problem. You’re the only one who knows what this stuff is anyway.”

  Like most mortals that visited the grove, the elf wanted to stay within the longhouse for a while. She acted as though the magic didn’t affect her, but it did. Rud led her through the forest and back to the comforting fire. Once she was settled in there with her bag filled with ingots, he returned to the mine to check on the bear. While it was concerning that the creature hadn’t woken, it wasn’t getting worse. The druid cast another instance of Nature’s Cleanse.

  “At least this is looking better,” Rud said, bending low to see the long red mark on the bear’s chest. It had faded significantly. He watched the bear’s chest rise and fall for a few minutes before heading out once again.

  There were plenty of sections of the forest that needed attention. Rud watered his tea plants with double-enchanted water, scooping two more buckets to spread throughout the sparse places in the grove. The woodcutters hadn’t gotten back to work near the clearing, but he couldn’t blame them. He exchanged his mail for a few decent crystal fragments before showering the area with the potent water. The sprouts that had grown yesterday were already pushing further toward the sky. They grew faster than the plants outside of the grove. Rud was appreciative of that, making his job of growing these new areas easier.

  With the amount of area Rud had to cover to grow the expanded sections of the grove, he was unsurprised to see his Plant Care skill level up. What was interesting was that he gained another level in his druid class, sending him to Level 7. Stopping to think about it—bucket still in hand—he was certain he had just leveled up. He was happy to place the point into Affinity, bring it to Level 10 where it would sit for a while, but was confused about how he reached the level.

  “Oh, well!”