Bring a friend to work day.

"Sweet! Give me a second to get my stuff." Erica vanished into the set-shop and closed the door behind her. Over the next minute or so, the sounds of metal and a loud thump were audible through the door. Just as John was wondering how long she'd take, the door opened again, and Erica was dressed as she'd been the day before, minus the spiraling tattoos. She looked him up and down and shook her head, "We need to get you some armor, dude. You'll get torn to bits in that... unless invincibility is part of your thing."

John switched armor sets.

Erica whistled softly and looked a bit jealous. "One of those types. I wish I could pull that off, think you could teach me?"

Could he? John hadn't ever considered that. It was theoretically possible; if nothing else he might be able to learn a skill that made him better at teaching. He shrugged and said, "Maybe?"

"Aww." Erica pouted, but her eyes betrayed amusement. "By the way... you know when you do that you're naked for a second, right?"

Wait... what?

She ignored the way John frantically looked down at his pants and started walking towards the woods behind the theater.

"Where are we going?" he asked, as he hurriedly caught up.

Erica looked at her phone before answering, "Looks like... halfway across town, over by the penitentiary. That's probably why Moira got in touch with me actually..."

"Wait." John glanced around. They had just reached the back of the theater, where the grove of trees lay, and all he could see was the forest behind the academy. "How are we going to get there, especially dressed like this!"

His companion gave him a wink and started walking towards the tree line, "Relax. This is kind of my specialty, just stay close and keep walking."

When they stepped across the threshold and into the woods, things changed. Sunlight filtered through the leaves, and a slight wind whispered through the trees, stirring their branches gently. Underneath their feet was a path, laid with water-polished stones and weaving through the woods as far as he could see. He looked back and...

"Stay with me." Erica's hand grabbed his wrist and pulled him forward before he could see much, but the school was gone; there was only more of the infinite trail behind. "If you get lost in the Path I might not be able to find you again."

John swallowed and kept his eyes forward. He hardly noticed it when Erica changed her grip to hold his hand and let her lead him through the winding woods. It was hauntingly beautiful, trees of all kinds towered above and grew around and through one another. Leaves, painted subtle greens and vibrant crimson practically glowed with sunlight. A creek stretched across the path at one point, and John caught his reflection in the burbling water.

Laughter, tinkling like bells reached them from the bend ahead. Erica swore under her breath.

"What's-" John started to ask before she put a hand over his mouth. The laughter stopped.

Erica whispered, "Whatever you do, don't accept anything the Seelie give you. Trust me on this... and sorry, I didn't think we'd run into any."

The bushes rustled ahead, and John prepared himself for whatever 'sealy' creatures lay beyond. His imagination conjured up a mermaid combined with a manatee, which was ugly and hilarious. What he wasn't expecting were three small, butterfly-winged girls peeking out from around and underneath leaves. Each was maybe as large as his hand and dressed in what John assumed were rose-petals. Equally colorful were their hairstyles: one sporting a crimson pixie cut, another's azure hair practically covered her eyes, and the last had a brilliant green ponytail. One by one, they fluttered up from their hiding spots and towards the humans.

Two of them split off and flew around Erica to get a closer look at John, but the red-haired one hovered not far from his guide's face. She was clothed slightly differently, her dress tied with cherry stems and a thorn holstered at her hip like a sword. The fairy put her hands on her hips and raised an eyebrow. Clearly, she had a bit of sass.

"Adorabelle, how fares the season?" Erica asked.

"Better than yours, Snow. Who's the fuckboy?"

Whatever John had expected from the diminutive beauty, it was not a fittingly adorable voice calling him a 'fuckboy'. It was honestly kind of hilarious. He stifled a laugh when Adorabelle glared in his direction, even her angry expressions were cute. Her companions had circled John and settled not far off from his shoulders. The blue-haired one shyly offered him a berry. He reached up to accept it.

Erica nudged him hard and hissed, "No gifts."

Oh, right.

He smiled apologetically at the tiny girl who nodded back.

"He's a friend. Look, I'm on Order business, so can we do this another time? I..." Erica winced and continued awkwardly, "promise I'll introduce you two. Okay?"

Adorabelle's eyes widened, then she nodded in acceptance. "A fair bargain, Snow." Something about the way she said it pulled at John, as though the words themselves had weight. The fairy turned to him and exaggeratedly looked him up and down before whispering so loudly it had to be intentional, "You really could do better."

"Hey! I'm not that bad," John protested.

The other fairies backed away as their leader, or so John took Adorabelle's position to be, flitted up to his face. "Hmm..." she poked his nose, and when he flinched, she surprised him by leaning in to kiss it. "Maybe. For a mortal."

Achievement Unlocked! - "Summer's Warmth"
Receive a kiss from a member of the Seelie.
+3 Charisma.
+1 Libido.

John blinked at the popup that was between him and the puckish fae. Three points of charisma? Just for that?

All three fairies circled the humans one more time and flew off with a chorus of goodbyes. Erica immediately tugged at John's hand to keep them moving. He didn't struggle but was overwhelmed with questions, all of which came spilling out at once, "Who were they? What is this place? Why did you tell me not to take anything from them?"

"I'll tell you anything you want to know as soon as we're out of here; I trust Adorabelle to stick to her word... but we never agreed to keep you a secret. Unless you want to be mobbed by curious faeries we should keep moving."

John's mental image of that wasn't too bad... but he could respect the seriousness of Erica's tone.

After six more turns, two more creeks, and maybe a hundred or so trees, they stopped at a stone archway. The structure sat in the middle of a grove, with the path running up to but not through it and splitting to spiral off into the woods on either side. It was the only architecture that John had seen and an easy guess that it was their way out. Separating from him, Erica stepped forward to run her fingers over the top of the arch. The stones lit up with runes he couldn't recognize, then the space inside the arch seemed to ripple. It reminded John of the invisible walls he'd run into the day before.

This time, it appeared to be passable, because Erica stepped halfway through before reaching back to pull him along. John braced himself as he hit the invisible portal, but there wasn't any pain or sensation as he passed through. Not from the portal at least.

Pulled back into reality, John immediately missed the Path. He hadn't realized just how temperate the climate was or how clean the air tasted. Springfield was considerably colder, and the overcast sky threatened rain at any moment. Shivering slightly, he wished he'd used Forge to make warmer armor, or a cloak.

They stood along the shoreline not far from the Quinland State Penitentiary. The prison was an ugly building of concrete and metal that jutted out of a hill and loomed over the river that separated it from the city. Chain fences surrounded it on all sides, and even from this distance, John could feel the aura of hopelessness the place emitted. As one of the state's few maximum-security facilities, nobody went in or out without authorization, and on this side of the prison, there were only watchtowers. If they walked around to the other side, they might see the main docks or the helipad. John looked at Erica, who eyed the prison as nervously as he did. Nobody in Springfield liked the place.

She checked her phone again and pointed towards the end of the beach, where the sand parted to reveal stone; the beginnings of the cliff face that separated the prison's rocky foundation from the rest of the landscape. As they walked, John took the opportunity to ask the question that was still burning a hole in his mind.

"Why couldn't I take that berry?"

"Hm?" Erica looked up from her phone and waited for him to repeat the question before answering, "You know all the old legends about people making deals with the devil? A lot of them are based on the Fae. If you accepted her gift without anything to give back, you'd owe her, and you do not want to be in debt to one of them."

"So wait, she was trying to put me in debt?" The seeming act of generosity from before felt uncomfortable now.

Erica shook her head, "No, they don't quite see it that way. She was being friendly. It's just part of how their kind works, you know?"

John really didn't.

The cliff wall loomed overhead as they approached, and John looked around for signs of a Barrier. Nothing seemed out of place, at least to the naked eye. Astral Observe revealed something very, very different. Emerging from the cliffside was a box seemingly made of colorful reflections. It didn't pulse or change like the leylines he'd seen before, but stayed one color: a shade of vermillion-aquamarine. The surface exuded an atmosphere of sickly energy, John felt a bit queasy just looking at it.

While he'd found the Barrier immediately, Erica was pacing around and getting increasingly annoyed at her phone, "C'mon you stupid thing... where is it?"

John pointed in the direction of the Barrier, "There."

"How can you tell?" she asked, raising an eyebrow at him and pulling one of the crow-feathers from her hair.

He shrugged, "I've got a spell for it."

"That's a pretty useful trick, dude. Alright, let's crack this baby and get back to school before Danielle goes nuts." Erica began writing glowing runes onto the surface of the stone and was halfway through the last rune when she paused, "Oh uh... I totally forgot to ask," her voice trailed, and she blushed slightly, "You aren't missing lunch because of me, right?"

When John nodded, she winced and said, "It'll be on me when we get back then."

Completing the final rune, the air opened into a swirling portal, and with a quick glance at each other, they stepped through.