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Whispering Woods

Intruder in the forest!

Voices whisper from the trees all around her. Anise twirls around, hearing all the voices whispering at once, like voices in her head. She puts her hands to her ears and tries to block it out, but she can still hear the voices.

"Stop it! Stop talking to me! I can't even hear myself think!" she cries out, believing she's gone crazy for a moment before she realizes that this is a natural ability of the wood elves, being able to hear the whispers of the trees.

Intruder in the forest!

The trees keep whispering, ignoring her calls for them to keep it down. Uncovering her ears, she rushes over to the nearest tree, and starts pounding it with her hand.

"Keep it down, I said! I'm not an intruder!" The elf pleads with the tree, **** to get the forest to stop talking to her.

Not you!

This way!

The forest whispers, the trees whispering 'this way' doing so in audible strobing effect as each set of trees in the direction to her right whisper one after the other, creating a pathway of sound. With little else to do about it, Anise follows the trees leading her to the intruder.

Anise clutches her ears as she follows the whispers, the pathway being created by whispers of 'this way' while the rest of the trees continue to warn of an intruder. As she reaches the end of the sound, she trips and falls over a slope, onto a well worn trail. Hunched over on the ground, she continues holding her ears, trying to block out the sound.

"Goodness? Are you alright!" A woman calls out to her, as a blonde woman dressed in cleric robes starts running to her. However, her armored companion holding a torch stops her, shoving an arm before the blonde.

"Stop! Look at her clothes. She's a thief. This is an act meant to fool travelers into letting their guard down." the armored companion warns. The one in armor is also a woman, with shoulder length brown hair.

"I know pain when I see it, Beth!" The cleric declares, tossing back her long blonde hair. Her generous bosom swells out the blue and gold cross pattern on her robes.

"Make them stop! Make the voices stop!" Anise begs of the two travelers, tears flowing down her cheeks as the dizzying array of trees warning her of intruders becomes too much for her.

"Voices? What voices?" The cleric asks, looking around them at the forest. "I don't hear anything." The blonde responds, looking back at the women with a curious expression, that the girl might have gone mad.

"The trees! The stupid trees won't shut up! Make them stop!" The elf begs the two women she has fallen before, her voice unusually loud to yell over the deafening sounds of the trees.

"Wait a minute! Wood elves listen to the whispers of the forest their whole lives. Why would that bother you?" The armored woman asks, still very much suspicious of the rogue that just happened to fall into their path.

"Well I've only been a wood elf for a little over an hour, so excuse me for not having grown up listening to trees talk!" The rogue yells, tears still streaming down her freckled face.

"Beth, I think she's lost it." The cleric states, turning to her companion with a worried look on her face. The armored woman, however, starts approaching the elven woman. Reaching into her satchel, she plops a clear bottle with an amber colored liquid in it.

"Here. Drink this. It'll quiet the voices." Beth tells her. Anise doesn't hesitate a moment, grabbing the bottle and beginning to gulp down its contents. She nearly chokes at the sensation of it burning her throat, but she doesn't stop chugging, even as some of the fluid drips down her cheek.

"I don't see how bourbon is going to help her." The cleric comments, baffled by her companion's actions. This prompts a chuckle from the armored woman.

"That's because you can just cast Esuna and clear it right up. I've had to deal with the aftereffects of spells without you to heal me before, and the best way to deal with voices is ****." Beth tells her companion.

"Okay, but those are audio hallucinations. She's actually hearing the voices of the trees. How is that supposed to help her?" The cleric counters, obviously not buying that **** can treat something she can't.

"Actually, the voices are starting to quiet down." Anise says, her face flushed as she feels the warmth from the **** fill her.

"It usually doesn't act so quickly. You must have a low **** tolerance." Beth suggests, noticing that the thief is already looking quite drunk.

"I don't know, but this body hasn't eaten in two days." The elven woman says as she shakily climbs to her feet, forcing the cleric to catch her before she falls again.

"That is an awfully weird way to say you haven't eaten anything." The cleric comments, casting a suspicious glare at the woman she's holding up.

"That's because I have eaten. I had my last cup of ramen at around noon. But this body hasn't eaten in two days." Anise explains as if that clears anything up for her. The cleric glares at her companion.

"What exactly did you put in that bourbon?" The cleric asks the armored woman, who raises her hands defensively.

"It was just booze! I swear!" Beth insists, a nervous smile on her face as sweat drips down her brow.

"I'm not crazy! Maybe it would be best if you read her diary." The elf says, unwrapping her arm from around the cleric and climbing up the incline she fell from. Nervous about following a thief into what could be an ambush, the pair ultimately relent and follow her back to the camp.

Beth stares at the diary while the two sit on the bedroll, while Anise sits cross legged on the ground before them. After a moment, she looks up at the elven woman, and gives her a glare.

"You're aware we can't read elvish script, right?" the armored woman rhetorically asks the elf, prompting a sigh from the woman. Reaching out, Anise grabs the diary, and flips it to the last couple of pages.

"Fine. Let me read it to you. Ahem..." Clearing her throat, the elf starts to read the last few entries of the diary while the other two listen with rapt attention.

"Okay. So a necromancer cast a spell on you, you got sick, but then recovered." Beth recaps, not understanding how that answers any of their questions.

"No! The elf, Anise Elmsly, had her soul taken. Then my soul, recently departed from my own body, came to inhabit this body instead." Anise explains to the two women, who stare at her in disbelief.

"Wait wait wait. So you expect me to believe that you died and your ghost came to possess this body that you just so happened to come across?" The cleric asks, not buying her story at all.

"Something like that. I wasn't even an elf before that. I was as human as you are. Well... At least I think you're human. Then again, we didn't have elves or magic where I'm from, so I guess even if you are human we wouldn't shared a common evolutionary line." The elf admits, rubbing the back of her head.

"A common what?" Beth asks, her head tilted in confusion as she tries to make sense over what the elf is saying.

"Okay. Hold on. What do you mean where you're from? Magic stretches from one side of our world to the other. It imbues life with that vital essence necessary to survive. Without it, life isn't possible." The cleric insists.

"Not where I'm from. We don't have magic where I'm from. We do have technology though. Big metal carriages that are propelled by combustion engines instead of horses. Handheld communication devices that can play music and video." Anise explains, as if talking about her world will somehow make it easier to believe.

"Okay. None of what you're saying makes any sense. I'm assuming that whatever spell that necromancer cast on you caused some sort insanity. Unfortunately, the spell seems to have run its course, as I'm not detecting any of the spell lingering. This means I cannot fix what was broken." The cleric states.

"However, this means that I can't simply leave you wandering alone out here. Especially since the trees whispering now bother you. We'll have to take you with us back to town." The cleric continues, causing Beth to look up from the diary.

"Really, Mel? You think this is a good idea? She's a highway bandit. It even says here in her diary that she's murdered people before." Beth asks, holding up the diary. Mel sighs.

"There's not really much choice. It goes against my teachings to just leave her out here like this. Besides, if that necromancer is who I think it is then I need to report back to the church anyway." The cleric states.

"Wait. You don't think it's him, do you? He hasn't been seen in over a decade." The armored woman asks, with a look of worry on her face. Anise looks between the two in confusion.

"I'm sorry, but who are you talking about? Do you know something about the necromancer?" The elf asks, to which both women turn to her, a grim look on both their faces.