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Ashlynn and Heila spent almost half an hour in the tiny wooden shed, sweating, sobbing, drinking cool water, and doing it all over again until they felt lighter than air, as though they would drift away on a gentle breeze the moment someone opened the door.

"Thank you, my lady," Heila said as she scrubbed the tears from her eyes. "I feel better now."

"I do too," Ashlynn said, lightly stroking the diminutive woman’s soft, curly hair. "I don’t think I realized how much, just how many things were weighing on me until I let them go..."

"Dat’s why we have to chase de bad waters out," Aledia said as she entered the room accompanied by a wave of blessedly cool air. In truth, it was still a very warm midsummer day outside, but the humid heat inside the shed made even the unbearably warm summer feel cool by comparison.

"Don’t try to walk now," the reptilian woman cautioned.

"Dis here is Corinne, she’ll be taking care of Lady Heila," she explained as another woman entered the room carrying fresh robes for the two witches. "Now, your skin is still slick wit’ de bad water, so we’re gonna scrub it all away, yeah?

Leave you nice and clean, fresh as de day you were born into dis world. "

As much as Ashlynn wanted to protest that she was capable of walking on her own, the hazy memory of how she’d stumbled and fallen after trying to stand prevented her from making any such claims. Instead, the two women of the Ancient Clan proved that even if they weren’t as strong as Jacques, they were more than capable of carrying a pair of witches to the next treatment.

They weren’t carried far and before they knew it, they were laid out on a pair of cushions on simple tables overlooking the lake.

The cool breeze blowing across the water felt like a welcome balm on their sweat-soaked skin and the sounds of birds overhead blended with the distant sound of wooden windchimes to lull them both to sleep.

"It’s all right if you sleep, yeah?" Aledia said as she helped Ashlynn to remove her robe and began to prepare a thick paste of scented oils and coarse sugar to scrub her body with. "Jus’ let us do our part while you rest. We’ll wake you up when it’s time to move again," she promised.

As much as Ashlynn wanted to protest, to stay awake to learn as much of the Ancient Clan’s healing treatment as she could, once Aledia’s strong hands began to kneed her tender muscles as though she were a ball of bread dough, Ashlynn’s resistance melted like the scented oils seeping into her skin.

Beside her, Heila’s eyes had already drifted closed and a faint trace of drool could be seen on her pert lips before Ashlynn herself succumbed to fatigue that swept over her after the intense experience in the steam room.

When Ashlynn finally woke, she found herself not on the table by the lake but resting on a long padded lounge chair under the shade of a grass umbrella.

When she tried to sit up, however, she was startled to realize that she’d been tightly wrapped in a soft blanket that smelled of grassy herbs and honeysuckle.

The blankets weren’t uncomfortable, but they bound her so tightly that she could only barely move her hands next to her thighs and turn her head enough to see Heila in a similar cocoon next to her.

"Do you feel rested, Lady Ashlynn?" Aledia asked when she saw the Mother of Trees begin to stir.

"Very," Ashlynn said. "I didn’t think it would feel so good to be so warm on a day like this but... I don’t think I’ve ever felt so relaxed.

"Mmmm, me too," Heila said sleepily before letting out a startled cry a moment later when she realized she’d been wrapped in a blanket like an infant and had just about as much freedom of movement as a newborn babe.

"Jus’ relax here a spell," Aledia said with a toothy grin. "Corinne is coming soon with some fresh fruit and shrimp to nibble on before we place you in de mud."

The food, when it came, was much like what Ashlynn had seen at the cafes on their way here.

Small plates covered with sliced fruit drizzled in a sticky, sour sauce came paired with shrimp no larger than her small finger, lined up on skewers, and grilled over an open flame while being basted with melted butter and herbs.

"Now, dis mud, she’s not just de silt from de lake bed," Aledia explained as she led Ashlynn and Heila toward what looked like two shallow pits dug into soft, dark mud. "We’ve mixed dis up special wit’ all of de earth’s bounty to refresh and renew you."

"Do we just, lie in the pit?" Heila asked as she nervously prodded the soft, clinging mud with a cloven hoof.

"Oh no," the reptilian woman said. "First, we’ll paint your faces and your bodies wit’ de mud, and den, cover you in it up to your neck. De earth, she’ll nurture you.

You’re her chosen ones after all," she added with a humble bow.

"Dis is just something dat lets normal folks know the slightest whisper of de earth’s power helping dem to heal. For you, it will be more."

"Have you done this with witches before? With the Mother of Thorns or her coven?" Ashlynn asked.

"Not me, no, but I learned from my mother and she’s served de Mother of Thorns before. Dis is something old, dat goes back to a time before de Briar belonged to de Mother of Thorns, yeah? You can trust dis, or my cousin wouldn’t have brought you here."

"It wasn’t that I didn’t trust," Ashlynn said with a gentle smile. "Only that we wanted to understand, right Heila? It’s fine, you can paint us when you’re ready," she said, taking a seat on a small bench nearby and holding her chin up to make it easier for Aledia to paint her.

Since they were going to be buried up to their necks in mud, Ashlynn expected that ’painting them’ would be a simple application of mud on their skin before they entered the pits to be buried.

Instead, she was surprised to find that the two women produced small clay jars of a much paler mud along with delicate brushes and began to paint intricate symbols over their faces and bodies.

She was even more surprised when the two women began to sing in an older dialect of Eldritch.

"Deep below where roots entwine,

Let healing earth with flesh combine.

Through clay that holds time’s secret art,

Let strength flow back to flesh and heart."

The incantation that the two women used was brief but combined with the ancient glyphs that adorned their skin, Ashlynn felt a tingle ripple across the surface of her skin before it sank deeper, seeming to meld with her flesh and bones.

The feeling slowly intensified as more and more glyphs appeared on their skin and Ashlynn began to feel a pulling sensation from deep within her core, as if her body yearned to find its home within the earth.

"Now, it’s time," Aledia said, leading Ashlynn to one pit while her companion led Heila to the other. "De earth, she’ll welcome you home. Don’t resist her call and let her nurture you de way she nurtures any tree."

Of all the things that Ashlynn expected when she was told that she was the Mother of Trees, she never expected that one day, she would plant herself in the earth like a tree.

When she did, however, rather than feel crushed or suffocated by the increasing weight of earth upon her body, she felt like she’d returned to the most comfortable, safest space of her childhood.

Leaning back into the soft, cool mud, Ashlynn repeated the incantation the women of the Ancient Clan had used, allowing her power to gather within her chest before it flowed out into the earth around her.

Her energy twisted and flowed, sinking deeper and deeper into the earth as it went.

Dimly, she could feel tendrils of her energy brushing up against Heila’s as the other witch followed her example, but neither of them allowed their ’roots’ to become entangled with each other.

It was enough to know that they weren’t alone on this journey and to feel each other’s presence, but both of them were far more absorbed by the feelings that began to flow into them from their mystic ’roots. ’

With her eyes closed, Ashlynn began to feel the stout cypress trees that dotted the shore before her senses extended further, encompassing all the trees within Crystal Lake City and beyond.

If she listened, she could hear the wind rustling through the leaves of trees so far away that she couldn’t possibly see them, and she could feel the warm sun on the leaves of the vast canopy that stretched for leagues in every direction.

As her mind stretched further and further from where she lay, she began to hear a different sort of sound. It was quiet at first, and rhythmic, like the precise beat of a drummer keeping time when soldiers marched or the steady clatter of a carriage rolling across a well paved road.

"Well, young one," a soft, weathered voice said in a tone little louder than a whisper.

"It seems someone has finally inherited my curse," the woman’s ghostly voice said. But what shocked Ashlynn almost as much as the voice itself was the language it spoke. After spending so much time among the Eldritch, she’d become fairly comfortable with the language but this voice, a voice that carried a trace of power that felt hauntingly similar to her own, had spoken in the common tongue of the Kingdom of Gaal!