He jumps, and for one shining and brilliant weightless second he flies—
—until he doesn't.
The water of the Drop races up to meet him at a terrifying pace. The laughter does not follow him down, his mischievous passenger has departed and their melody of cackles turns dissonant high above.
Has he been tricked? There isn't enough time to contemplate for it, for the water is coming. The sharpened stones there, readying themselves to accept his yielding flesh. There is a monster far below, with eyes and teeth and a mind made for malice, and it is all coming, racing towards him and—
—with a gasp Caiside awakens. He is not the glade where he prayed, but somewhere else. Somewhere in the Greatwood. In one of his hands is the mushroom he picked up earlier, it's hallucinogenic effects having seeped through his skin, have finally run their course.
But was it a dream then? A drug-addled nightmare?
On the ground next to time is a broken circlet of branches, perhaps once a crown.
