Spectrum: Chapter Two: Agatha, Faience, and Acheron

   The Tellah Forest was a mysterious wood grown in the outlay of a heinous maze to stop people from reaching Agatha's demesnes: the Opal Mountains. The strange trees with their cloudlike foliage and huge, lamplike flowers hid not only the sun above, but also dozens of magical portals placed strategically to deter intruders. Seles accidentally walked into one just inside the wood and disappeared, giving Clara and Pyre quite a fright; however, he soon reappeared, realizing that this area was going to be trickier than he had thought.

   The Ghosts that roamed this area were sometimes corporeal enough to drop White Capes, which provided an extra defensive and evasive boost (as well as being quite a fashion statement). The woods were also swarming with Fanged Caterpillars, Fangflies, and the unusual Jackkoon, which was a raccoon crossed with a jack-o-lantern. Niay proved himself invaluable in this area; having visited here before, he had a mental map of the teleportation portals and their exits, which made the travel much easier. He told the others that the forest had been around for as long he could remember, but when he and Ken had been children, the woods had simply been haunting and labyrinthine, rather than dangerous and monster-filled the way they were now.

   As they traveled, Pyre took the occasional moment to study her texts on acupressure and learned the locations of healing pressure points. She began to use them on her allies to keep their endurance high, a necessary precaution considering the amount of enemies they were beginning to encounter.

   Everything not blocked by enormous fallen trees or magical teleports was overgrown with poisonous brambles. This was probably why Seles wasn’t too surprised when they stepped through a teleport and found themselves facing off against a Brambler like the one Seles had fought alone back in the Lattice Forest.

   What did surprise him was the fact that there were two of them.

   Seles shouted to stick together and tackle the Bramblers one at a time, to take them down faster. Pyre called out that it would be better to split up and tackle both enemies simultaneously to keep them both distracted. What would you do?