Only a few hours. Not Really.

You wade through the soft and rich but root filled earth of the jungle, and as it does for an hour or two after each 3-5 hour rainstorm the sky clears and the sun shines again. ~Must be in the rainy season.~ You think, as you gain a tiny trickle of mana and HP, far less than the rain gives you, from the occasional beam of sun that breaks through the dense canopy of the forest under which you travel, actually losing mana and HP at a fast rate since you are not putting more in to take you over your caps nearly as fast.

Since your blessing by Vienna you have stood 12 yards tall and twice that across at the maximum extent of your tentacles, dwarfing anyone and everything you have encountered save the titanic monsters of the AEther and 'scenery' objects and plants. Unfortunately however you now are an immense TARGET. You somewhat mourn your former comparatively dwarfish size: though you appreciated your growth up to this point for how much more potent it made you, you understand that at a certain point size becomes a liability rather than an asset, and feel you have well exceeded that threshold.

You also benefit from having 'eye-spots' at the end of each of your fronds, giving you a 360° field of vision, the only part of yourself that you can't see being the submerged part of your roots, but burrowing monsters are fortunately rare and mostly very weak, you think you could easily crush one with a well placed stomp against the roots of one of the stationary 'scenery' plants.

As you've been walking you have been shooting out seeds periodically, planting the jungle with Weed-Fiends, not unlike you were only a week or two, or from another perspective years and years, ago. Your not sure if they even stay spawned once you leave the immediate area, or more to the point if, when the zone reloads later, they will appear with it, but it gives you something to do while you plod along displacing the underbrush and heading ever northward. You figure you will turn around at a 45° angle if you get to the grassland without encountering a village, and criss cross the jungle in this way till you find one.

Fortunately for you and Dana, you dont have to wait that long, you run into another zone barrier, but this time instead of blocking your progress it ripples like the sea did when you crashed into it, and you pass harmlessly through. On the other side you soon find yourself coming upon a village, built into the canopy above you, and Dana says "Head back to the edge of the zone, this might get ugly if they see me with you." And she heads off while you follow her advice and head back to wait for her. You are pleased to have discovered you are now a 'roaming' boss, but that was one of Dana's conditions wasn't it? 'Freed instead of Bound'...

Some hours pass while Dana is in the village, but you wait, patent as a spider, (The harmless '0th level critter' kind which spin webs for tiny insects and don't even have HP, dying from any violent contact, and giving out no XP to their killers.), and are rewarded when she returns, dressed in a tattered leather loincloth and breast band, and looking a touch annoyed.

What happened in there? Why don't you have clothes, er skins?

"Because: SOMEONE", she fixes you with a brief glare, but it softens quickly, "left my gear, pack, coin pouch, and weapons behind in another server."

Dammit, I knew I forgot something. You mutter as you look at the tiny human that you love with every fiber of your being, and regret inconveniencing her so.

How do we fix this? You ask a second or two later.

"Already working on it." Dana says, pulling out of the back of her loincloth a six inch long knife of napped obsidian secured to plane wood handle. "Got this from the chief after I knocked out their best warrior with a submission hold." She says smiling. "Got some nice XP for that too, seems this is a 'non-fatality' server, you don't normally have to KILL things to get XP, just 'defeat' them."

Interesting. You state with a sly grin, thinking ahead. I didn't know you could DO submission holds, thought that was a 'monk' thing, and aren't you not really a combat build? You continue after a second.

"Not any more. When those bolts slammed into me just before we wound up in the AEther it seems they rewrote parts of my history and character sheet, this time I was a model student in the combat training classes, but a bad, bad, worshiper of Anari, doing everything I could to 'get around' her prohibition against sex. This included sucking several tutors cocks just for the fun of it and the taste of their cum, and trying anal a few times. I don't consciously remember any of this, but my BODY does and it allowed me to select the 'Zen Cleric' specialization when we got back into stable reality, thus the submission holds and other Martial Arts powers I have now." Dana explains.

Fit's your current persona better. You say with a smile, which actually elicits a slight blush from Dana, then get back to business. What did you mean 'already working on it'? Surely not that tattered breast band and loincloth?

"No, this was just all I could get from the armor/clothes shop for an IOU." Dana begins. "What I -actually meant was we have a Quest!"