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The groves were God’s first temples. – William Cullen Bryant
Every day, they encroached farther. Every day, more of her friends and children fell. And every day it hurt more, as there were fewer left.
She crept to where she could see them. These humans were so destructive. For two cycles of the smaller moon, they had been coming out here nearly every day and cutting down her trees.
Day 2
Water poured down the south wall of the room, a thin, flat sheet over a wall of stone that had been polished smooth by many years of controlled flow. The water descended through a grate in the floor, and disappeared beneath the flagstones. Rippling slightly in the irregularities of the water was an image of Sezithorum’s ritual room. The old wizard stood with his arms raised. His mouth moved, but there was no sound other than the toneless drone of the water falling.
Day 2
“We want no part of your silly war! What sort of world is this that you have no warriors? Return us to our home, immediately!” Maress was profoundly disturbed, and trying to cover it up with bluster. Despite being unclothed and unarmed, he thought he was doing well enough. The strangers probably couldn’t tell the difference between eartwitches of anger and those of anxiety. They were also nude, including the one who had just disappeared. Perhaps that was the custom here? No matter. He didn’t plan to stick around long enough to find out.
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Day 2
The ritual copied once again, Tiska followed Roji back toward the ritual room. Sezithorum nodded to them and entered. The apprentices removed their robes, dropping them on the floor next to their master’s and filed in behind him. They walked around the outside of the room, careful not to disturb the chalk outline or the paraphernalia distributed along it. Sezithorum stopped at the center of the western wall, opposite the door, next to the open Codex on the floor. He turned and faced the room, Roji just to his right, and Tiska near the southwest corner of the room. With one final glance at the Codex, Sezithorum began intoning the magical syllables.
