"Oh! Okay, that helps!"

"She says that they live in the trees. Not in the treetops, just in the trees. And then sometimes they come out of the trees."

"Well, I guess that does seem like a druid sort of thing to do."

Okay. How do you talk to people who live in the trees. She wishes she'd brought one of the treants with her, but realistically they would have been very hard to teleport in with. 

Think. She's not trying to trick anyone, here. She has every reason to believe that revitalizing the barren lands inside the Worldwound barrier is something that druids ought to genuinely support. She might have erred in bringing Regill, they're more likely to think it's a trap now that he's here, but she already made that decision and she's not going to unmake it and try again tomorrow before she's actually given this a solid try. 

Okay, you know what plan B is? Plan B is that she's going to sit in the underbrush over there and meditate, for at least, like, five minutes, and see if she can tap into her power and her ill-understood connection to nature, and use it to.... get a sense of where she is? Communicate with the trees somehow? Get the butterflies to fan out and look for druids? Make plants grow faster, or attract a bunch of animals, or otherwise do something that a bunch of druids living here might notice? Something?

If this doesn't work then plan C is going to be a lot less aesthetic. Plan C might be something more like creating phantom steeds for people and then galloping around the forest while yelling.

The trees are wary, hostile. They don't like strangers. These are unusual strangers and that's not necessarily better. 

The wariness doesn't lessen, but eventually a light glows between some treetops up ahead. 

Well. For lack of any better ideas, she's going to follow the light. And - try to keep listening, and - see if she can give off friendly vibes, somehow? She doesn't know how her powers work.

...she's going to sing the song the Desnans taught her, while she walks. That sometimes seems to help with stuff like this.

Some of the trees relent, at her singing, and make the trudge through the thick lush forest slightly more possible.

The aura of hostility doesn't lessen, though.

And when they've gone deep enough, the light goes out abruptly, and vines lash out from a hundred different angles to ensnare them all.

Sigh.

Even as distracted as she is, between the music and the listening to the forest, she almost makes it out. Regill and Lann and Ember all do, and Aivu is flying, which goes a long way in helping her dance out of the way. But she doesn't, not quite.

He gets halfway through casting a controlled fireball -

" - Daeran, for fuck's sake!"

The spell dissipates harmlessly, lost. "You'd rather stand here, and benevolently let the trees eat us?"

(The trees are not eating! Just holding! Tightly!)

- okay. Calm. It's all the plants at once, which she's pretty sure means that it's a spell and not a single carnivorous plant. Camellia did something like this, a couple times. Which means she is, probably, on the cusp of what she came here for.

(She hates diplomacy so much more than killing things. But she's not here to kill things, is she.)

"My name is Korva Tallandria, Knight Commander of the Fifth Crusade," she announces, feigning confidence she in no way feels. "I apologize for trespassing. I have come from the barren lands of the Worldwound to ask for help making them bloom again."

The vines rustle. Suspiciously. For kind of a long time. 

And then a squirrel perched in a treetop nearby says to Ember, with grave import in its squeaky squirrel voice, "you and the destruction you bring are not welcome here."

"The squirrel says that we and the destruction we bring are not welcome here."

"I apologize for any disruption we've caused to the forest. And I won't insist on your help, if you refuse to give it. But I do need the help of a druid, and if you won't give it, then I ask you to at least tell me whether there is anyone else I can ask who will be more willing."

"I have been granted the power to restore lands that have been devastated by demonic corruption. I want to use it to restore the lands of the Worldwound, and I want to prevent the demons from spilling out and wreaking the same havoc everywhere else. I don't - personally know very much of the people who safeguard Golarion's wilderness, and I didn't know where to find any, except by chasing stories I heard as a child. But I need their help, and I'll chase after children's stories if I have to."

The vines relent. Slightly.

The squirrel says gravely, "how do you imagine you will revitalize the lands of the Worldwound? Many who were not foolish children have tried."

"I've done it, in pieces. But those pieces will die again, if I can't prevent the demons from destroying them."

"Demons like destroying things. They're like humans that way."

"I've noticed."

"We have pushed the demons back. We have retaken some of that devastated land, and it is healing. I mean to take more in the summer, and to heal that land, too. But I won't be able to if the demons overrun us."

"A boastful human."

"A human that is trying to protect something. The beasts of the forest fight to survive, and to protect their children, whatever the odds of success. I am no more willing to roll over and abandon the northern lands to their fate than you are to ignore threats to this forest, or than a mother bear is willing to abandon her cub. But I can see that my fight can't be won alone. I think it can be won, with help, and so I ask for help. Because I am human, and that is part of how humans survive, and how we protect the things we care about."

"What help do you ask?"

"I have heard that powerful druids can restore the dead to life without use of a diamond. I understand that there are side effects, that creatures don't return in the forms they once had. I can accept that. If the mind and the skill with a weapon or with magic remain, that's good enough for me, and I'm sure it will be good enough for many of those who fight alongside me."

"We have lost too many people this winter. I think that we can hold the line, and prevent greater losses in the future, if we can recover some of them. But without a viable way to reverse the worst losses, we grow more likely to lose with every passing day."

"Were this within the powers of the forests, it would be a great secret, and a secret for a reason. What do you think that reason would be?"

"Because... humans would use it in ways that would hurt the forests, or try to control the forests to gain access to it?"

The squirrel chitters. "That sounds like the sort of thing humans might do."