The woods responded slowly to Rowan's request to deliver them to Nicasi, as if he'd just roused them from a deep sleep. Yet still they responded, proving that the bond he shared with this part of reality ran deeper than the part of himself that he'd sacrificed.
After a few turns, the path settled into a wide, straight line with the river on one side and a dense thicket of undergrowth on the other.
Rowan remembered coming this way the day he'd almost fallen into the warp, so he knew they must be close to the alcove. Hopefully that meant they were close to Nicasi, too.
Sure enough, his eye snagged on a splash of color on the ground some distance away down one of the side trails, a scarlet beacon in the muted evening light that filtered through the branches.
