_I_ Can't, But With A Little Help From An Unexpected Ally...

I start to grow too weary to fight, my limbs like lead and my mind wrapped in a flowery fog. In desperation I clench the crystal in my hand and try to use whatever power it had to summon "Blossom" to send her back to wherever she came from. I feel some kind of energy pass from me into the stone...

Just as I am about to black out and be consumed by the unnatural vines there is an imense gust of fresh air that fills my nostrils with the scent of summer rain and ozone. Blossom freezes in shock, staring at something behind and above me. I crane my neck to see what it is. Hovering above me is a miniature black thunderstorm, but you know how clouds sometimes look like ships or elephants or babies? This one looks like a mighty warrior ready to storm the walls of Troy for the honor of his king. Though I can hardly understand why I feel this: I sense that this, "cloud giant", is speaking with Blossom. I also sense she is starkly displeased with what she is 'hearing'...

After a hand's count of seconds the vines retract, and then where Blossom stood is suddenly nothing but a small, young, and frail birch sapling. However I notice that a trail of sudden shoots of grass and blooms of lichen is snaking its way into the ruins...

Swift as an arrow, shot from a string, I set my pace in pursuit of my treacherous associate. I hear rain spattering the ground behind me and the sounds of tiny cracks of thunder ocaisonaly echo out from above and aft of my path. The ruins are treacherous, several times I lose my footing, in one case almost stumbling into a gaping hole in the street where some cover has been removed from atop an access to a sewer or other tunnel. However, I sense that I am gaining on the erstwhile sinner Miss Jane Doe, who has betrayed a Life Debt, and must surely then be counted among the lost and the damned.

For all Jane's protestations of skill at evading pursuit and her enchanted footwear, she does not know ruins such as these the way I do. As I scramble over a pile of broken masonry, following the trail of lichen left by Jane's equaly turncoat dryad, a flash of memory reaches me. It is only a few seconds of images but it affords me a grim smile. In my minds eye I watch as, in lighter gear and younger but still in deathly earnest, so it would seem, I scrambled up a similar pile of debris, intent on attacking the position of a rival group of boys from what they think is their protected rear...