Oseely jumped and stumbled back, his eyes wide and reflective of the bright veins of light that crackled past him. He'd expected her to add her own, different attack or protection sigil to the staff -- but this! This was certainly the Witch's spell that raged in response to Artemis' touch.

He barked with laughter, clutching his sides. "Amplified the Witch's intention! Made it yer own, even! HA! Never have I seen such a cheeky move. I'd say with practice you could turn her own sigils against her, doubled or tripled. [i]Oh[/i], she'll be livid! And she'll do nothing about it! HA!" He laughed for awhile, just thinking of the Witch's face; after all these years of summoning gods and making demands, she'd finally get her comeuppance.

He drummed on his chest with a fist and calmed himself down. "But now -- there's a certain thing you should know, a thing that sets you apart from all the Pirates and Kith, a thing that makes you especially interesting." He laid a finger against the side of his nose and his eyes gleamed.

"That mask you've got there -- all those masks that belong to the Kith -- Pirates don't wear them. Even the Witch doesn't touch them. And the Kith, you know, iron hurts them and they can't draw or use those runes. But you, ya've figured out by now, you can use both freely. At once, even. That's a strange and powerful thing."

A movement of shadow in the corner of his eye distracted his attention for a moment; he stared keenly off to the side, toward a place where the dead white trees were thick and darkened -- a deeper dark than should have been. He slowly returned his attention back to Artemis.

"The masks aren't carved, they're grown out of the trees. They [i]are[/i] the trees. They're the forest. They're the Lord of the Wood." He laughed at himself and his cryptic descriptions. "How 'bout this: all the trees on this island are one organism." He gestured his hands wide to encompass the plantlife around them. "Especially the Pirates think the Lord of the Wood doesn't exist, or died or ran off -- but he's all around, all the time, just doesn't show himself properly. You could say he's a collective consciousness, ta use a fancy term. The beasts are a part of it: the fireflies and the monkeybats and the blood rats. And the Kith, they're a part of it too. Ya could say they become a part of the forest when they wear that mask, kinda literally. But iron, that stuff can cut off a Kith from the collective, in a hurtful way. It negates that connection, they're terrified of it. And runes, well -- ya need a personal will, a singular intention to use them. The Kith share those energies with the forest and each other, so they're so diluted in each Kith that those runes usually don't react at all to them."

He grinned and sat up on a rock, his legs folded. "But any Kith that goes through life without wearin' a mask could, of course, use iron and runes -- and any Pirate that drops their iron and decides to wear a mask can be one with the forest. They're all human in the end. Quite a few Kith were born Pirates, and some Pirates were born Kith. But they don't talk about that, do they? Now, you. You're a sun-child. That energy from the sun negates the iron limits and can't be shared with the Wood, so you can tap into the collective and use runes and wear iron all at once. You're a force to be respected, if ya use it properly," he added with a wink.

[hr]

Peck stared at the runed stone in his hand. Protection, by the will of the Lady of Light, for him. It was nothing like what he had expected her to craft as a first rune, and he was honored. He closed his fingers around it, gave her a firm and determined nod of acceptance, and he dropped it safely into a pocket.

"The Lady of the Pond," he breathed, wearily -- and he looked back into the darkness from which they'd come. It would be faster to backtrack now that the Lady of Light could walk on her own, but he'd just spent so much energy getting them as far from the lake as possible. He cleared his throat, took a breath, and straightened himself; no, they would do what needed to be done.

"C'mon, then." He walked past her, trudging through the brush. "I don't know how much help I can be to you -- I'm just a rider without his gryphon -- but I won't let you down."

He led her through the dark of the forest by the light of the moon and the fireflies; the plantlife grew thick and shadowed, and at times pairs of eyes peeked through at them, or old stone statues glimmered between the shivering leaves. Everything was outlined in the pale blue light of the moon. White flowers glowed brightly at the base of a gnarled tree.

It took much less time to get back to the lake than it had taken to get away from it, now that they'd left the sledge behind. The ruins of the old ship rested silent and dark against the bright shimmer of moonlight and gold flecks in the softly shifting water.

There was movement in the branches of the great tree that grew out of the center of the ruined ship; a pair of Kith clambered about the dead boughs, shouting and laughing to one another. They stuck their thin arms through new holes in the bark, and drew out shiny gears and springs that they chucked into the lake with glee. They were a boy with the mask of a cat, and a girl with that of a mouse.

Peck stepped up to the shoreline, visibly annoyed with the presence of the Kith, but he resolutely ignored them. "We can summon the Lady by drawing circles in the water and calling to her," he told Anise.