“So where is this location?” Shiro asked while following behind the dryad.
“It’s deep in the forest. Just follow me and I’ll take you to it. You have my word.” The dryad chuckled.
“Fair enough. If you don’t mind, why don’t you explain to me more about my dormant sigils while we’re walking there?”
Thinking about it for a moment, the dryad nodded.
“Sure. You see, sigils or rather, divinities have two states. The silent state and the active state. There is very rarely a third state which is the dormant state. The dormant state is something you usually see in demigods and gods due to the fact that they are inherently born with a divinity. For you, you seem to have several dormant sigils which is very strange because that means you have several divinities in you despite not completing a single trial.” The dryad explained.
“Are there any ways for me to awaken these sigils then?” Shiro asked.
“Unfortunately no. They awaken in reaction to external factors and are not something you can control. For example, in the Mural of Beginnings, it is stated that one of the demigods awakened his divinity in his most desperate time of need. There were also records of demigods awakening their dormant sigils by just lazing around. The awakening of the sigils isn’t something you can trigger at will.” The dryad shook her head.
“Ah but don’t worry, just because you have dormant sigils doesn’t mean your slots are taken.” She smiled.
“Slots?” Shiro tilted her head at the sudden mention of slots.
“You don’t know about slots? You know how everyone is only allowed three divinities and they have three slots to accommodate those divinities. That’s what slots are.” The dryad explained as Shiro nodded her head.
She remembered that her body contains six of these slots. One slot for a normal divinity and five for the primordial ones.
“If I awaken one of my divinities, would it take one of my slots?” Shiro asked as she didn’t want to fail this quest because of something she couldn’t control.
“I don’t know. Apparently, some of the demigods who had dormant divinities were rather against the idea of taking another god’s divinity since it’ll be akin to working under them as a servant.” The dryad smiled.
“Why? Isn’t it just borrowing their power? Just because you buy some bread from a baker, it doesn’t mean you work under the bakers.” Shiro tilted her head.
“Well sometimes you don’t know how god’s process things.” The dryad chuckled and shrugged her shoulders.
“They’re just petty and annoying in my eyes.” Shiro rolled her eyes and shrugged her shoulders. Remembering how Poseidon and Zeus acted, she signed at the state of ‘gods’.
Hearing no response, Shiro looked up and saw the dryad looking at her with wide eyes that was filled with shock and disbelief.
“What?” Shiro tilted her head.
“. . .You don’t just go around cursing gods like that. They’re watching all the time.” The dryad looked up at the sky with worry.
“But they’re not in this world are they?” Shiro shrugged and looked up at the sky.
“Zeus, this one’s for you.” She called out and flipped her middle finger at the sky.
“Ah what are you doing?????” The dryad panicked and quickly pulled her hand down.
“What? It’s not like he’s going to smite me down now is he?” Shiro shrugged.
Plus, she doubted that Zeus had the rights to affect her trial in such a manner. Not to mention the fact that he probably couldn’t see what was happening since this is under Nyx’s control.
“Young spirits don’t know fear.” The dryad sighed.
“I suppose you can summarise it like that.” Shiro chuckled softly.
Walking for a little longer, Shiro noticed that the plants around them were increasing in size as time passed. It was as if they had been shrunk down. Even a normal flower was now reaching the height of her waist. Sooner or later the flower might even surpass her in height.
“We’re here.” The dryad smiled and stood to one side.
Looking towards the front of them, Shiro couldn’t help but notice that everything looked exactly the same and nothing was out of place.
“This is the place?” Shiro raised her eyebrow.
“Yup.”
“This?” She asked again while pointing in front of them.
“Yup.”
“The place that looks like we’ve already walked by it several times now is the place?” Shiro forced a smile while trying to pick out anything that may or may not catch her eye.
“Yup.”
“. . . Care to show me where the entrance to this area is? Like where the entrance to this bow is.” Shiro gestured towards the forest in front of them.
“You’re looking it at.” The dryad smiled.
“So you’re telling me to go find the bow by myself now?” Shiro asked while pointing at the forest.
“Yup. Good luck~” The dryad waved with a soft giggle. Disappearing from her spot, Shiro was now alone in the forest.
Taking a moment to sigh, she looked around for the tallest tree.
With the flowers measuring to her waist, it was only natural that all the trees looked gigantic and it was rather hard to pick one that seemed like it was the biggest of the bunch. Choosing to find out with easy footholds for her to use while climbing along with vines just in case, Shiro started to scale up the tree with a surprising amount of nimbleness.
Flipping her body onto the first branch, she looked up and saw that she still had quite a few branches to go before she reached the top.
Jumping up from branch to branch, Shiro found herself back into her normal rhythm.
“Damn, girls like me shouldn’t sit around doing nothing all day. Being active is where it’s at.” She grinned, feeling much livelier than she had before.
Swinging on the second to last branch, she landed a backflip on the tallest branch and looked out towards the forest where the dryad said the bow was located.
Narrowing her eyes, she wanted to see if there were any spots that were particularly… out of the ordinary. Finding a tree that was sticking out of the crowd of large trees, Shiro figured that it was probably a good place to start with.
Just as she was about to jump from the tree, she quickly remembered that she was very vulnerable right now and jumping from this height would heavily injure her if not kill her in an instant.
Coughing lightly, she let the adrenaline calm down a little before dashing through the forest.
Parkouring from tree to tree, she swung from the vines that hung from the taller branches and managed to arrive at the base of the tallest tree quickly.
Landing softly on the grass, she raised her eyebrow at the tree and noticed that its width was many times thicker than she was tall.
Circling around the tree a little, Shiro started to look for any clues that might lead her to the bow.
‘Artemis was the goddess of the hunt, wilderness, moon, archery, chastity and childbirth. In this forest, I’ll probably need to find clues for hunt, wilderness, moon and archery in order to locate her bow.’ Shiro thought to herself but it was just a guess for now since she didn’t know the exact details to obtaining her bow.
Spending the next few hours searching around the perimeter, Shiro had a bored expression since she couldn’t find any clues. It was like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
Taking a break and sitting beneath the largest tree, Shiro started to juggle her weapons since she had nothing else to do right now. Juggling several daggers and a short sword, Shiro wondered why there weren’t any hints.
If the bow was in this forest, around this location, surely there should have been a small clue.
Plus, with Artemis’ divinity relating to hunt, wilderness, the moon and archery, she should have found ONE small clue within her time of searching.
“Actually… maybe it’s not in the forest? Maybe it’s above or below?” Shiro muttered while catching all of her weapons.
Sometimes people like to hide their possessions in places which relates to them but not in an obvious manner. So an example would be Artemis hiding her bow in a floating rock forming in the sky.
Thinking about this point, Shiro quickly dashed to the top of the tallest tree and tried to look around for anything that might be a clue.
Looking around the place from the tallest location, she spotted a lake that she had walked past during the few hours she had spent here. She did wonder if the bow was hidden there so she did a quick dive but nothing of interest appeared so she moved on. But there could be some criteria that haven’t been met so she added the location back on her list.
The next thing she spotted was the fallen tree leading to a small underground cavern which led to a dead end. Once again, she added that location back on the list since there could be something she was missing.
Aside from these two spots, the other locations looked the same so Shiro shifted her focus.
‘Since her divinity also included the moon, perhaps things will reveal themselves at night.’ Shiro thought with a smile and decided to investigate the location once more before nightfall.
