Any time she could not clearly decide which direction to go, she simply flung her arms around the trunk of the nearest worldtree and pressed her naked chest against the scaled bark. When her skin touched the tree, the guiding thoughts sharpened inside her and she ran off again, energized. Nira paid no heed to the passing hours or the burbling wilderness.

Finally, the forest grew dark and thick with green shadows like smoky glass. The darkness was comforting, womblike, not ominous. Nira parted branches, tall stalks of grasses and weeds, working her way deeper into a network of vines … until the forest swallowed her up entirely.

She could not move. Her shoulders pressed against firm branches that tangled tighter. Insistent vines wrapped around her legs. Leaves brushed her face, her nose, her lips. Nira closed her eyes and let the forest touch her.

She felt as if she were falling, though her body remained propped up. She could barely twitch her fingers as the jungle clasped her, embraced her… absorbed her.

There, deep in the thickest worldforest, Nira passed uncounted hours in a mystical experience. She saw through eyes in the leaves, looking through a million faceted lenses at all perspectives of the worldforest. Information and impressions roared around her in a rushing torrent.

As if through distorted windows, she glimpsed other planets, other worldtree groves that had been planted and fostered by green priest missionaries. She’d never imagined anything so vast, so complex—yet, even with the assistance and encouragement of the worldtrees around her now, she was seeing only the tiniest glimpse of the forest’s potential.

It was breathtaking.

Then the heart of the worldforest spoke to her more clearly, more terribly. She felt a distant, unformed fear of an ancient enemy. Fire.

Destruction.

The death of worlds.

Groves of treelings withered, whole civilizations died, and only a tiny vestige of a galaxy-spanning worldforest had survived here, isolated on Theroc.

Nira couldn’t cry out, could not decide whether these terrible images and fears were history, or prophecy. Then she saw giant spherical ships, like spiked globes made of ice, a hidden empire engaged in a titanic war. They were coming.

Shaken by the vision, but giddy with her new connection to the worldtrees, Nira finally emerged from the smothering, nurturing hold of the sentient forest. Her heart hammered, and the prophecy weighed heavy in her mind and heart. This wasn’t what she had expected at all.

Nira walked along as if in a daze, stepping through the bog without even looking at the ground. The feline reptiles moved away from her as if they could sense that she now wore the forest’s protection. As the sunlight splashed her arms and thighs, Nira noticed without surprise that her flesh had turned a pale green. Now her epidermis was impregnated with symbiotic algae, a verdant tone that would supplement her body’s strength through photosynthesis. As she aged, the green would darken.