The small town of Rubelden dotted the treeless valley flanked by mountains carved by ancient elven artists into a giant crow and a colossal mushroom sitting atop the mycelial maze once imagined to serve as a water reservoir.

The valley was drunkenly bisected by a meandering river.

Rubelden was a town longer than it was wide as it stretched to hug the sides of the river.

Countless wooden bridges – a few private in the sense that they were owned by people but not necessarily policed – attempted to stitch the gap between the two sides of the community.

The rounded wet stones that reinforced the banks were home to mosses, mushrooms, and even the odd freshwater sponge.

Clover left her parents’ home with a suitcase of belongings and a red alchemist robe leftover from her internship last year.

It was still purple in the places where spilled copper salts depressed the incoming light.

It was only when the building around her started to disappear – replaced by increasingly pecked plots of crops – that Clover truly felt the weight of the moment.

She was going to become an alchemist and live at an alchemists’ guild like she’s always wanted to.

She knew the odds of getting her own private laboratory on day one were slim, but she could manage a roommate or two, at least for the first few years until she invented something that would earn her the recognition she yearned for.

As the last trace of even the farmland faded to a distant patchwork of browns and greens, Clover felt alone. Alone and very – damn near uncomfortably – conscious.

Conscious in the way that felt like whatever you were – behind the semantic juggling and spiralling pattern-seeking addiction – is leaning right up to the monitor whilst also holding its metaphorical breath.

“I hope I don’t get lost,” Clover remarked out loud, mostly to amuse herself and only slightly to distract herself from the alternative.

To her left the river outpaced her in the same direction, the stone banks of the town forgotten and replaced with gravel beaches cushioned by carpets of moss.

To her right towered the treeline; it crept all the way up to the base of the mushroom mountain whose cap was always white from accumulated snowfall.

Occasionally some of the snow was sloughed off by a strong wind, surprising unfortunate crops and locals with a localised dusting of slush.

“I think I’ll play it safe and make potions and finally save up some money,” she nodded to herself.

“Then…” she drawled, and when nothing came, she shook her head. “Then I’ll just have to get inventing!” she shrugged dismissively, “That’s the fun part.”

The beach thought itself a desert at times and stretched uncomfortably close to the road. Thankfully a rickety wooden fence ensured her fall and subsequent death would be discovered when somebody eventually came around to repair it.

For a while she walked in silence; the sun seemed set on racing up the sky like nobody was relying on it for light.

Suddenly Clover heard a scream coming from the woods.

She immediately turned to face the forest; her heart hammered in her chest.

“Okay… Okay… What would a plague-seeker tell me to do...?” she asked herself while trying to remain calm.

“Hurry back to town and tell the others…” she imagined a response worthy of a plague-seeker and nodded approvingly.

She took one step back before stopping and furrowing her brows in concern. “But what would an alchemist tell me to do?”

“Figure it out…” she figured and turned back to the woods again.

She took a slow, steadying breath before calling out into the trees, “Hello?!”

“Is somebody hurt out there?!” her voice echoed over the forest.

She took her first cautious steps into the forest; the cold, soggy detritus cracked and splintered under her boots.

“Hello?!” she repeated.

Clover caught the faintest chirp of pain from behind a tangled fortress of briars.

For a while she looked for a way to circumvent the obstacle, but her options were a flooded ditch or a climb that – given one wrong step – would send her tumbling down to the aforementioned ditch.

With a quiet sigh, Clover drew a sharp outdoorsy knife from her pocket and began to hack through the briars.

For once, she wished the alchemists wore gloves.

As she cut deeper into the amorphous mass of thorns and pungent sap, the weak cries of pain grew more audible.

“Hold on, I’m on my way!” Clover announced and with one final slash she cleared a way for herself to enter the dimly lit chamber of wilted stems and limp thorns suffocated by their own canopy.

At the centre of the node a small bird laying despondently in the only virile vine sustained by a stream of light seeping in through the same crack used previously by the bird.

“Are you here?!”

Her repeated calls were meekly answered by the bird. “Over here…” rasped the corvid.

Clover blinked in surprise; she knew birds were smart, some smarter than others however only a few could talk – and none this naturally.

“The bird…?” Clover asked through a haze of confusion, “Are you talking to me…?” she asked tentatively.

“Charitably,” croaked the bird.

“How are you talking?”

The bird’s patchy wing fluttered restlessly. “I’m more concerned about the bleeding…” it chirped.

Clover didn’t realize birds were this rude – especially to their saviours.

She gently supported the bird from underneath with one hand and used the other to delicately slice through all the thorny tendrils.

“Bout’ time…” cooed the bird as Clover picked up a new source of rustling from somewhere in the surrounding sea of sharpened branches.

A new entrance bloomed from a previously impenetrable hedge.

Out from the fissure lumbered an elf wrapped in light green robes. His long platinum hair was unharmed from the trip, very much unlike Clover’s ravaged locks.

The elf’s long limbs quickly closed the distance between them.

“A druid,” Clover thought relaxing just a little. Druids disliked the alchemists but certainly they wouldn’t attack her for nothing – even in such a quiet, secluded spot.

“H-Hello…” Clover managed, instinctively holding the injured bird out for the stranger.

At no point did the elf stop or even slow his purposeful steps.

Without a word of warning, the elf drew – or rather manifested – a sickle made of golden light.

The tool’s amber glow dominated the otherwise dim surroundings.

Clover instinctively pulled the bird back and retreated slowly. “Wait, I thought you were going to heal it…!” she explained impotently.

“He’s due to be culled,” the elf answered dryly.

“Can’t you just heal it?” she pleaded, carefully backing away at a sustainable pace.

“No,” maintained the druid.

She swallowed hard and spared a quick glance for the bird before turning around and legging it back into the briars.

Clover cradled the bird in one arm as she bolted through the bloodthirsty branches and trichophilic twigs.

“This is an excellent start to being an alchemist…!” Clover thought - ever the optimist.

Her positive attitude did little to attenuate the adrenaline coursing through her system – mercifully numbing some of her numerous cuts and scratches.

The way seemed vastly longer than her way in.

Eventually, after a couple dozen more turns than Clover recalled carving and any number of intersections which – needless to say – she had nothing to do with, she stumbled back into the forest still cradling the corvid.

She glanced over her shoulder and saw the elf emerge from the same hole right behind her.

Clover didn’t make it far before a clew of roots wriggled up and strapped her down to the ground.

Seeing that she really upset the druid, Clover was at the very least not going to make butchering the bird easy – at least until the druid decided to kill her first.

She tried to shield as much of the bird as her bound arms allowed her to.

The elf approached her placidly, sickle still drawn.

“Please! Just leave us alone!” she begged.

The druid was unfazed by her pleas as he slipped the sickle’s point between the cracks of her fingers and gently ran it through the creature.

There was no wound, no blood, no reaction from the bird – only a sudden chill to the carcass.

The bird fell from her hands as she looked at the elf with a mix of fear and anger.

“W-Well…?” she asked, puzzling the elf, “Are you going to kill me with that thing as well?” she demanded.

“That wasn’t a killing. It was a culling,” the elf remarked patiently. The roots holding Clover immediately went limp and slipped back down beneath the earth without leaving a trace.

“How did you find him?” the druid asked bluntly.

“I-It was calling for help…”

“And you heard it?”

“Yes – I could have brought it back to the town…” Clover sulked miserably.

“It was due to be culled,” the elf repeated. “Everything is in order.”

Clover grimaced at the sentiment and began patting herself as clean as she could manage.

“What now…?” She asked – trying to finger-comb her hair but only managing to remove the larger pieces of forest litter.

“Now you must come with me to the henge,” explained the elf.

Clover blinked in surprise; she really only anticipated one of two responses.

“What’s that…?” she questioned in her confusion before furrowing her brows, “Wait a minute, how come?!”

“Because you heard him - the crow,” he explained.

“Only a druid can heed nature’s call,” he explained. “We must begin your training.”

“W-w-wait! I’m going to become an alchemist!” she protested.

“Druids don’t have things happening by accident,” he said calmly. “This very conversation is proof in and of itself.”

Clover squinted in growing suspicion. “That doesn’t sound like it means anything…”

The elf sighed. “You were quick to defend the crow,” he remarked. “The superficial requirements are there.”

“I want to make explosions – not flower gardens!” Clover argued.

“This is not up for debate; you felt the call – you heeded it, even if you failed to grasp the importance of culling the chronically wounded.”

Clover frowned, “You could have healed it with druid magic!”

“At whose expense?” counted the elf, “Another bird? Or a field of flowers feeding the animals you so adore?”

Clover rolled her eyes defiantly. “Just carry some bandages on you!”

The elf plucked a grub already staking early claim to the feathered carcass below. “So she should starve?”

Clover recoiled from the insect but grudgingly relented, “Alright… You win… I was wrong…”

“Obviously, I’m a druid,” he said matter-of-factly. “And you’re going to have to remember all this too,” he added and returned the grub to the body.

“I’m not a druid!” she protested.

“You’re not doing too terribly so far, I suppose,” the elf relented.

“I told you I’m not…-!” she gritted her teeth and for a while remained quiet, gently shaking with seething rage.

She breathed a staggered sigh, “I’ll have to go back and tell my parents…” she muttered under her breath.

The elf nodded indifferently. “Let’s go.”