LU 134 - Space 26

Well, today was the big day. Edelle, Nat and I got prepared to leave for Slumber and did just that. Once there, I immediately noticed how the tree was surrounded by an abandoned village; the eerie part was I could kinda hear people still in the houses, which freaked me out a bit.

We walked up to the tree, and I saw something so jarring that it actually stunned me for a solid few seconds - Fallen. He began to mock me for not recognizing him, which kind of ticked me off. But something was off. How the hell has Fallen been here the whole time? Why? It made no sense, and I figured out that it was because this was just Slumber playing pretend.

Slumber wouldn't shut up, and he went on a rant about how Nat is just a byproduct of a tree trying to preserve Fallen in any way; I also learned that Nat is a dream with a physical form, which was a bit odd but made sense in hindsight. I asked my fair share of questions, and ironed out what this guy was saying. During all of this, Edelle was frozen like ice and wasn't budging.

When Slumber was done talking, he charged at Edelle with a glint in his eye. I tried to snap Edelle out of her haze, but to no luck. I watched in horror as Slumber damn near killed Edelle, and dragged her into the tree. Then it glowed and I heard a startling scream come from it. Welp, there goes Edelle.

Or so I thought, because the tree spat her out and she seemed to be alive. So what the fuck was all that about? My mind jumped to Zinnia, but that was a scary thought. Nat also came back and was horrified to see Edelle knocked out. I told Nat that we didn't have time to sit here and mourn, so he picked up Edelle and we ran back to town.

Once there, Nat laid Edelle down in her bed and said that he needed some time to think. I agreed, and took a nap in a chair. When I woke up, I walked around and bumped into Mira; she was pissed at me for letting Slumber get to Edelle. I had to explain in great detail what happened before Mira even thought about calming down.

Once things were settled between us, we went back up to Edelle and found Zinnia at the foot of the bed. Turns out Nat went and freed her somehow, which was exciting news considering that:

1. Nat is strong enough to 1v1 a quardian, *and*
2. Zinnia is free and not in Slumber's hands.

While discussing this, Mira passed out and I used this alone time to try and convince Zinnia to join me. She refused even after I explained why it'd benefit her and my plan with Amathis (she thinks Amathis lied about not killing me, which worried me just a bit), which was a bummer but oh well; at least I tried.

Then Mira came back to her sense, and I pushed the two to go see if Illios was ok. Turns out she's not, and Zinnia tried to snap her out of whatever mental spiral she was in. When Illios came to, the three of us had a chat about the situation and what happened at our assigned trees. Turns out all the trees do the same shit, because Illusion pretended to be Ajan to mess with Illios. But that got me thinking. Both trees turned into the one person that Edelle and Illios missed the most, and tried to take advantage of their grief; my only guess is that they both tried to get Zinnia from them, and it *almost* worked.

We also showed Illios to Edelle, and her seeing Edelle like that inspired her to cut the crap and kill the trees. We planned to hold a meeting, so I went out to find the others. I ran into Frezz, who filled me in on what happened at manifest. Turns out jack shit happened, but Chizzy didn't come with him so that's another issue. We got talking about plans for the future and exchanged thoughts. I welcomed Frezz onto my team since Edelle was MIA, and Frezz explained a tree-killing item he got for letting Morphious kill him. We agreed to share this with the group, and went to do that. After dropping Frezz off at Illios', I set off to gather the rest. Space