Li walked with Tia perched atop his shoulder out the Chattering Forest, though, as he made his way through it, each one of his steps infusing the grass below with pulses of green life, he realized that it was no longer apt to call this place that ominous na.
"Listen, papa," said Tia as she cocked her head, and Li followed her.
It was the chirping of crickets. It was faint at first, nervous to spread its song, but soon enough, all the crickets that had been buried decades under the earth when this forest first was flooded by dark beast essence began to unburrow from their long slumber.
Their song filled the air, reverberating around the woods. No more was there the chattering of bloated, mutated insects. Instead, the original nasake of this forest, the Chirpwoods, finally ca to be once more. Soon enough, when day broke, birds would sense that life had returned to these woods and fly back, nesting in the tall treetops and contributing their song too to the symphony.
"Life has returned oncemore to the Chirpwoods," said Li.
"The Chirpwoods?" asked Tia.
"Yes, that is what these forests are called. So nad for the song of crickets and birds that ever resounds through its bounds."
Li did not yet know why he knew these woods were originally called the Chirpwoods.
It must have been a na from long ago, during the age of demons when this forest was first corrupted. There was still a void in his mory from after he was engulfed in darkness, but it was like a faded dream, a foggy recollection that, given ti, would piece itself back together.
"Pretty sound, but nothing to hunt," said Tia with a slight frown. Her stomach growled, and she put a little hand to her belly. "Shadow monsters here have no taste. Only cold. Like hard water."
"Like ice," corrected Li. He sighed. "I should have been there to tell you not to eat them. To protect you and stop you from endangering yourself. For that, I must thank you, Zagan."
The demonic hound paced briskly behind Li and shook his head, his black fur swaying with the motion. "This personage did not do much. He offered to annihilate the enemies standing before the girl, but she wished to fight with strength of her own.
Knowing your protectiveness over her, my personage could not let her fight alone, and so, a compromise was reached. I empowered her, and she fought, and I will say, her might is of no little consequence."
"That's right," said Tia slowly as she furrowed her brows, trying to work out Zagan's complicated wording. "I can fight alone. I'm strong."
"I'm sure you are, but rember what father told you. Being strong ans strong things will be attracted to you, and they might want to hurt you. Always try and fight when I am there with you."
Tia crossed her arms, nodding. "Then I get to fight all the ti!"
"Hm?"
She looked to Li a disapproving glance. "Papa broke his promise, so I will always follow now. No putting at ho. Even if big work, I go. Even if boring work, I go. Never away from papa now."
"But Tia, sotis, I can get into dangerous situations, like just now," countered Li.
"No worry. Tia will protect papa!" She flashed her blade-like teeth, the beginnings of fire breath trickling between their sharp edges.
"That's not what I an-," began Li, but Tia started to look at him with crestfallen eyes, her hands tightening around his shoulder in concern. "Alright, you can follow . But I'll warn you now, a lot of what I do is very, very boring. Paperwork. Talking to people. You'll get so bored you'll be falling asleep all the ti."
"Then I get to fall asleep next to papa," said Tia with a smile, not seeing any downside to spending more ti with Li, no matter whether that ti was boring, exciting, dangerous, or safe.
Tia's stomach growled again, and she looked around, her eyes narrowing as her predatory instincts engaged. Her long, pointed ears twitched, their sensitive hearing tracking any living thing to attack and devour.
"It will take a little while for regular creatures of the wild to settle their way back here, near the heart of the forest, as it has been so long since it has been pure," said Li. "But back ho, if you aren't sleepy, we can go to the Winterwoods and hunt there. It's already very late, but father will make an exception for tonight because he made mistakes."
"Winterwoods a little boring," said Tia. "Hunt too easy. But hunt with papa always fun." She nodded, agreeing to Li's proposal.
He had to admit that she was right. Her strength was growing at an alarming rate, and the relatively peaceful Winterwoods were no match for her. She was nearing level fifty in power, Li estimated, with a few abilities that were far stronger than what her level indicated by virtue of being linked to him.
Maybe in the far western edges of the Winterwoods, there would be more dangerous monsters for her to hunt, but that was a little too far for Li's liking, especially in light of the increasing threat of demons coming from the west.
"For now, the Winterwoods will have to do. That is our ho, after all," said Li.
Outside the depths of the forests, they encountered familiar faces.
==================
In a clearing, sitting around a wide stream flowing through it was Launcelot and his party. The shielder was a little worse for wear, his curly blonde hair frazzled and his complexion pale, deprived of energy. Next to him, his party mbers tended to him, putting a bandage around a cut to his arm and gathering water.
When Launcelot saw Li, his eyes brightened up and he imdiately stood up, though a little shaky.
"Gods, you have returned to us!" said Launcelot. He smiled and waved to Tia, and Tia waved back energetically.
"Rock man!" she said, pointing to Launcelot's bronze shield.
Launcelot laughed as he realized Tia recognized him as the human that always carried what appeared to her as a bronze rock.
"Indeed I have," said Li. "I must apologize for my long absence. Purifying the heart took far longer than I had originally envisioned."
"Certainly, we had thought sothing trendously wrong had occurred," said Launcelot. "When I was shaken awake by Faye, there were hordes of dark beasts sprawling out from the lake, once more darkened, and we fought long and hard to try and force our way to the lake and retrieve you, but alas, our strength was not enough."
"Faye," said Li. The fire-haired hero nodded to Li, her arms crossed. She looked even more tired than Launcelot, her posture a little slouched and a distinct lack of energy in her sluggish movents. When she breathed, steam erged from her mouth, and Li could sense that her bodily temperatures were far higher than normal. Probably a side effect of utilizing her powers extensively.
"You and the others were there the whole ti. Would you mind telling what you saw? As soon as I entered the lake?"
"After retrieving Launcelot, we tried to near the lake to see what had beco of you. The titan had been defeated, much to our grateful relief, but there were yet more enemies. Darkness had welled up from within the lake.
Not the type of darkness that created the dark beasts. No, that darkness, I was familiar with. When heroes stand near each other, we have an idea, so instinctive feeling, that there is another of our kin among us. We feel that sa instinct with the dark beasts.
But we felt no such thing with this darkness, and yet from it, dark beasts erged all the sa."
Ava shuddered. "You know, it was a little odd, how they erged. It was not like before, where the mud built them up piece by piece like dolls. It was like they were already fully ford and rely erging from the dark, running in full motion."
Celeste shifted uncomfortably and said, "I felt comfort in the dark." She looked around bashfully before looking down. "Do not mind . I have said sothing strange. Oh, I am too oftentis strange."
"No, Celeste, I felt the sa," said Faye, and Ava nodded in agreent. "That darkness, we knew it from sowhere, but where exactly, we could not know, no matter how much we searched our mories."
"The gate," said Li, his mory stirred.
"Now that you ntion it," said Faye, her head tilting. "The dark felt like that. When I beheld the red gate that bestowed upon my fire."
"That is all I need to hear," said Li with a slight nod. Like an amnesiac finding long buried mories, he was beginning to find answers to the many questions he had, but he knew to truly find what he needed, he had to do sothing more than just try to rember.
"Once again, I apologize for the inconvenience in keeping you all here far longer than I should have, but for now, let us return to Riviera. There are a few things there I must sort out."
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