"The leaves turn red like sol at dusk, the grasses fade into winter husks, berries long gone and nuts have come, it's time to rest until winter's done." Walter sang at the volume of a casual conversation. He and Copper moved at a relaxed pace as if they were planning on waiting until spring began to get to their destination. Isaac and Lenna slowly walked behind them in total silence save for Lenna's armor's occasional creaks and the soft thuds of her boots on the packed ground.

Shadows covered Isaac's face in its entirety as well as Lenna's mouth and ear closest to him. "His singing is… not terrible." Isaac commented.

"For someone who only does it to pass the time, it is decent." Lenna agreed. "He probably shouldn't quit adventuring though."

Isaac chuckled. "I feel like the same can be said for me."

"I don't remember the last time you sang." Lenna replied.

"I think it should stay that way." Isaac shut her down.

They continued along the gently used forest trail to the sounds of Walter singing as they continued to silently talk to each other. It had been over two hours by the time they all noticed that something had changed. The area around them seemed energized somehow. It was not magic or mana but something was practically vibrating in the air. The area felt as if it was trying to sing and dance, hop and twirl, to an unheard jig on the first night after the last harvest of the year. To make it even stranger, the entire forest had gone silent. The leaves rustled in a faint breeze but gave off no sound that the mortals could hear. The faint sounds of birds chirping were gone and there wasn't a single bug to be seen. There were exactly four non-plant living things in the entire area.

Isaac and Lenna both glanced at Walter who had stopped singing but hadn't stopped their slow walk forwards. The sounds of Copper's hooves on the ground were gone but the sound of her breathing was not. Copper's quiet breaths, and Lenna's armor, were the only things that made sure everyone knew that they were not in some kind of field of total silence. They continued on for another few minutes, it could have been one but it felt like twenty, until something new happened.

Copper stopped before a grouping of five oak trees. They dominated the area around them but didn't seem to interfere with each other at all. Sunlight shone down through a small gap in the canopies right on top of Walter and Copper. Walter looked up to the sky and closed his eyes as he let the sun's rays bathe his face in their warmth much like the trees all around them did everyday.

"Free-walker." A voice so melodic and smooth that it couldn't have come from a mortal sang out from the oaks in front of them.

"Feh'lay'weh." Walter greeted the voice and lowered his head to look at the centermost oak tree. "These are friends, they won't hurt you, if you leave them be." He told the tree with a gesture towards Isaac and Lenna.

Leaves fluttered down from the canopy, bark peeled away, wood bent like flowing water. All of it came together to form an elvish woman with skin made of oak wood, hair made of long leaf fibers, eyes made of amber, and small bits of bark in place of fingernails. The woman was entirely bare beneath the sun and gazes of the mortals. Her movements were slow and deliberate as she made eye contact with Walter, Copper, then Isaac and Lenna, before her gaze returned to Walter. "Free-walker, why come visit Feh'lay'weh?" Her voice radiated not from her body but from the tree itself as she walked a few steps closer to Walter.

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"The forest is unbalanced." Walter told her.

"We know this." The dryad replied without taking her eyes off of Walter's.

"I'm passing through at the moment." Walter told the tree woman. "When I return, I'll see what I can do to fix it." He explained. "I need to know what is doing this."

The tree woman shifted away from him slightly, so slightly in fact that it looked like an unconscious action. "Free-walker, leave, and do not return." She instructed him and the area around them seemed to almost usher them away.

"Is it a lindwyrm?" Walter asked her directly.

The dryad's eyes widened. "Hush. Silence." She ordered him. "Else Feh'lay'weh be used as weapon or kindling."

"I can hunt a demi-dragon." Walter assured her. "How old is it?"

"Begone." The dryad tried again to make him leave with just her words. She took a deliberate step back towards her main body.

"It has forelegs then?" Walter wondered aloud.

Feh'lay'weh was about to leap back into her main body before she froze solid as if she had seen something that terrified her even more than a woodsman's ax. "False-vixen." She whispered and all of the trees around her shuddered. Her gaze snapped back to Walter. "Why false-vixen come?" She demanded.

"You haven't answered a single one of my questions yet." Walter reminded her. "Where is the home of the lindwyrm?"

If a tree could've paled or swallowed involuntarily, then Feh'lay'weh would have. "We fight false-vixen, free-walker, and strangers." She warned Walter. Trees could not run after all, so when they were cornered, their only option was to fight to the death. Dryads were more than happy to have their seeds use their own and their enemies corpses as fertilizer. The other four trees all went through the same process as the first and spawned forth their own elf-adjacent bodies. All five dryads had one hand against the bark of their main bodies as they eyed Walter.

Isaac's eyes turned into pure death flames as he sized up the dryads. With his soul sight he could get a decent reading on how strong creatures were and what he saw surprised him. The dryads were absolutely huge and decently dense. If he had to guess, they all seemed to be around levels eleven through seventeen in mana density but at a scale dozens of times larger than any mortal. He had no doubt that they had incredibly huge reserves of power to draw on if they needed it, probably more than he did but with far less regeneration.

All five dryads reacted slightly differently when they felt the presence of Isaac's death flames. One leapt into her canopy, one crouched low and grabbed a rock on the ground near her, one turned her arm into a spear and got into a combat stance, one was frozen in terror, and Feh'lay'weh grew a shield made of bark on her left arm as power slowly started to move inside of her main body.

Walter glanced at Isaac. "They won't try anything." He assured Isaac and Lenna. "It's all posturing until the first attack is thrown." He then turned back to Feh'lay'weh. "I didn't mean to scare you." He assured the trees. "But remember, the false-vixen and I will return and hunt for the Lindwyrm. Gather any information you can on it until then. When I return, I will come looking for the whereabouts of its nest."

The dryads all stared daggers at Walter but Isaac could feel their attention still locked onto him. "Forget about us." One of the other dryads told Walter who just shook his head.

"Get out of my head, Leh'way'feh." Walter scolded her like she was a young wizard practicing spells that they shouldn't have known. "Or the false-vixen will make her home under your trunk." The dryad in question recoiled but seemed to get the message. "And Feh'lay'weh, if you try to order my mind around again, I'll make my next weapon out of your heart-knot." He promised the oldest and strongest of the five dryads. "Com'on Copper, it's time to leave." He told his horse and patted her on the side of the neck. He looked back over his shoulder as Copper started walking to make sure that Isaac and Lenna were following him.

Walter maintained total silence until the sounds of chirping birds and rustling leaves returned. He let out a long weary sigh. "I hate dealing with them." He instantly complained.

"They weren't as strong as you made them sound." Isaac commented. "Sure, they had a lot of power in reserve but what were they going to do with it?"

"Order every branch, leaf, root, and discarded piece of bark to smother you." Walter replied. "They can even order other trees to move as they wish at nearly the same speed that they themselves can move. The issue is that they use Primeval Witchcraft so it's hard to tell what they are even doing. If you mortally injure one of them, they might curse you to turn into an ash tree in exchange for the time that they have left."

"Still, it sounds doable." Isaac said.

"It is." Walter agreed. "But they're helpful, if you know how to deal with them correctly, so they're left alone. Dryads can't go far from their main body so they aren't an issue to the normal travelers."

"Do you think that they are going to help you?" Isaac wondered.

Walter nodded. "They will when I come back. For now, they're more afraid of the apex predator living nearby than the one that will return later."

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