The moment he stepped out of the moon-petal grove, the forest turned on him. Vines, thick as his wrist and covered in thorns, snaked across his path, forcing him to hack them apart with his sword. The effort left him breathing hard, the humid air feeling thin and useless in his lungs. The very ground seemed to resent his weight, with roots shifting under his boots to trip him.

His ranger training was a lifeline, but a frayed one. He knew the principles of survival, but the rules here were different. He found a stream, but the water flowed with an oily, rainbow sheen. He spent an hour building a fire—a difficult task with the damp, strange wood—and boiling the water until the unnatural colors faded, hoping he’d rendered it safe. It tasted of moss and ozone, and did little to quench the deep-seated thirst that felt more magical than physical.

Foraging was a nightmare. He recognized the shape of a berry bush, similar to the ones that grew on the Sword Coast, but the fruit was a sickly yellow and bled a viscous, milky fluid when he crushed one. He left it alone. After hours of searching, his Survival check finally paid off, but only just. He found a cluster of pale, lumpy tubers. He roasted one over his fire, and it tasted like dirt and regret, but it was sustenance. It was enough to keep him moving.

The sun never moved. The twin moons hung in the sky, their positions shifting with an unnerving speed that made tracking the time impossible. There was no day or night, only an endless, draining twilight. The magic of the plane was a constant, low-grade assault. It wasn't a spell he could resist or a curse he could break; it was in the air he breathed, the ground he walked on. It settled into his bones, a profound weariness that sleep couldn’t cure. Every muscle ached with a fatigue that went beyond exertion. He felt stretched thin, his mortal essence fraying at the edges in this place of overwhelming life.

From the high branches of a weeping willow with silver leaves, Myfanwy watched him. She had followed, silent as a shadow, expecting a quick and satisfying end to the mortal’s arrogance. She’d seen others stumble into her realm. They usually screamed, or cried, or ran blindly until they were ensnared by a hungry plant or lured off a cliff by a pixie’s illusion. They broke.

This one did not.

He moved with a weary purpose, his head on a swivel, his shield never far from his arm. He tested everything, his caution a stark contrast to the usual mortal recklessness. He didn't despair. He didn't rage against the injustice of his fate. He simply worked, his jaw set in a stubborn line. He fought for every foot of ground, for every mouthful of brackish water and bland root. It was tedious. It was graceless. And it was utterly fascinating. He was a creature of iron will and stubborn flesh, and he refused to lie down and die. Her initial contempt was slowly being eroded by a feeling she couldn't name—a grudging curiosity that bordered on respect. He was still an intruder, a stain of iron and mortality in her world, but he was proving to be a remarkably persistent one.

The unnatural silence of the forest was shattered by a sound that didn't belong—the splintering crack of a massive tree trunk, followed by a guttural roar that was part bird-shriek, part bear-bellow. It was a sound of pure, mindless rage.

Myfanwy’s head snapped up, her jade eyes narrowing. From the edge of the woods, a monster crashed into view. She recognized its shape instantly: an owlbear, a creature of primal fury, native to the fringes of the Wilds. But this one was wrong. Its feathers were matted with a black, tar-like substance that seemed to writhe on its own, pulsing with a faint, sickly violet light. One of its eyes was a blind, milky orb, while the other burned with a malevolent red energy. A dark ooze dripped from its chipped beak, sizzling as it hit the mossy ground, killing the vibrant flora on contact. A blight-beast.

Her casual observation of the mortal turned to cold fury. This filth had no place here. It was a cancer spreading from the darker, unclaimed territories. Green light gathered around her hands, the air crackling with the scent of ozone and fresh sap. The ancient moon-petal trees were the heart of her grove, the source of much of her power, and the blighted owlbear was lumbering straight for the eldest of them, its massive claws tearing furrows in the earth.

She was about to unleash a torrent of thorns, to bind it and let the earth swallow it whole, when a figure burst from the undergrowth.

Dawson.

He had heard the roar and seen the destruction. He knew that shape. The hulking body of a bear, the head and razor-sharp beak of a giant owl. An owlbear. He’d fought them before on the Material Plane. They were brutal, territorial, and deadly. But this one was different, twisted. The dark corruption clinging to it was a foul magic he could almost smell.

He didn't hesitate. The exhaustion was a fire in his muscles, but instinct was a whip at his back. He saw the fae woman preparing her magic, saw the monster threatening her glowing trees, and made a decision born from a hundred battles. He pushed off the ground, sprinting not away from the danger, but directly towards it.

“Hey!” he bellowed, a raw, human sound in the alien woods.

The owlbear, its attention fixed on the shimmering trees, turned its massive head. Dawson didn’t slow down. He planted his feet, angling his shield just as the beast’s massive, clawed arm swiped at him. The impact was a thunderclap of sound, steel groaning against chitin. The force shuddered up his arm and into his shoulder, but his stance held.

“Over here, you ugly bastard!” he yelled, using the creature’s momentum to pivot. He drove the pommel of his longsword into the owlbear’s thick thigh. It wasn't a damaging blow, but it was an insult. It was a challenge. The creature’s burning red eye swiveled from the glowing grove to fixate entirely on him. Its shriek tore through the air, its rage now focused completely on the small, defiant man of iron and flesh who had dared to stand in its way. Myfanwy watched from the edge of her grove, her hands still glowing with power, her expression unreadable as the mortal she had cast out now stood as the sole barrier between the blight and her home.

The monster’s shriek was a physical force, and Dawson braced against it, his shield firm. He had its full, undivided attention. Good. The blighted owlbear charged, a chaotic mass of muscle and fury. Dawson set his feet, letting the beast commit to a clumsy, powerful swing. He deflected the claws with his shield, the impact jarring his entire skeleton, and thrust his longsword into the creature’s side. The blade sank into corrupted flesh, but the owlbear seemed not to feel it, its red eye burning with mindless rage.

Just as it reared back to strike again, thick, thorny vines erupted from the ground, wrapping around its legs. The creature stumbled, roaring in frustration as it tore at the grasping plants. Myfanwy. Dawson glanced toward the grove and saw her, one hand outstretched, her face a mask of concentration. The blight on the owlbear fought her magic, the vines blackening and smoking where they touched its hide, but they held just long enough.

Dawson pressed the advantage. He lunged forward, not with his sword, but with his shield. He slammed the flat steel face into the owlbear’s chest, a maneuver designed to unbalance a foe. The beast staggered back, its footing tangled in the dying vines. It gave Myfanwy the opening she needed.

A volley of sharpened branches, hard as iron, shot from the ancient trees at her back. They slammed into the owlbear’s flank and neck, punching through feathers and muscle. The creature shrieked, a sound of both pain and fury, and swatted the projectiles away. It turned its hateful glare back toward the fae, ignoring Dawson for a fatal second.

“No, you don’t!” Dawson bellowed, driving his sword deep into the back of the creature’s knee joint. Tendons snapped. The owlbear’s leg buckled, and it crashed to the ground with a shuddering impact. It tried to rise, to drag itself toward Myfanwy, but its hind leg was useless. As it pushed itself up with its powerful arms, preparing for one last, desperate lunge, Dawson saw his chance. He dropped his shield, gripped his longsword with both hands, and drove the blade down through the nape of its neck, severing the spinal column with a sickening crunch.

The red light in its eye flickered and died. The blighted flesh seemed to dissolve, melting away into black sludge that sizzled and vanished, leaving only the corpse of a normal owlbear behind.

Silence descended, broken only by Dawson’s ragged breathing. The adrenaline fled his body, leaving behind a profound, bone-deep exhaustion. The pain in his shoulder, where a claw had torn through his armor and into the muscle beneath, flared with white-hot intensity. His vision swam. He leaned heavily on his sword for a moment before his legs gave out, and he dropped to one knee in the ruined clearing.

He heard the soft tread of feet on moss and looked up. Myfanwy stood before him, her expression unreadable. She looked from the dead owlbear to the deep furrows its claws had left in the earth, then finally to him. Her jade eyes took in his torn armor, the blood soaking the leather padding of his pauldron, and the tremor of exhaustion in his hands.

“You fought,” she stated, her voice devoid of its earlier mockery. “You did not need to. It was a threat to my grove, not yours.”

Dawson could only manage a grimace. “It was a monster. I fight monsters.”

She was quiet for a long moment, studying him as if he were some strange new specimen of flora. “My bargain stands,” she said, her tone clipped. “My hand will not be the one to harm you.” She paused. “But it would be a poor story if the grove’s defender were left to bleed out on its doorstep.”

She gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod towards the moon-petal grove. “There is a fire. And clean water. Come. You can rest until the moons set. It is a temporary truce, mortal. Nothing more.”