Althea stared at the ground in front of her, wondering how she should shape it. There were two things she wanted to accomplish right now, hopefully together. Practicing her control, which was apparently terrible. And try to figure out the power system white she was at it.

The bloody thing had flipped on her head since she had come to this continent. The stages did not matter anymore. The Path, Mastery, and Truth did. At least that was what the burning tree-was it the burning tree?

Althea frowned, her eyebrows crunching as she tried to remember who it was. The burning tree was what she thought, but she wasn’t sure. The memory was…flawed. In the naturally flawed way that memories tended to be.

The mind had concentrated on the thing she had to remember. Not who had told her. A thing that was consisted throughout both of her previous selves’ lifetimes. Just remembering what she considered important. The facts, not who told them to her.

But it still irked her. How was she supposed to keep an eye out for people manipulating her mind if she wasn’t sure what belonged there herself? Then again, this was how it was. Althea wasn’t born with a photographic memory. Or a starling affinity for mana for that matter.

Calling on as little mana she could, she still found herself calling on far too much. Not enough to light a candle, but still enough to destroy Nathan’s entire construct. This was troubling. If she wasn't remembering wrong, her control had actually decreased.

Perhaps it was that this new path she had formed was simply not suited to control. Nathan’s clearly was. But she wasn’t satisfied. If it wasn’t suited, then why was it so? What effect did a path have?

The Mastery was something important to a cultivator, something definitive that could be called the reason they were cultivating. The Truth was simple, it was a truth about the world, about mana. Althea was pretty sure she had the latter in her discoveries about elements. Even with how hurried the ones about air and water had been, they still had power in them.

A magnitude less than the one about fire, and certainly not enough to make them her friend, but they were significant. The Master on the hand, she wasn’t sure about. What was her mastery? Why did she cultivate?

To rule the county?

Althea felt her mana flutter, making her wonder if she was onto something. This wasn’t her mastery, not yet, but it could lead to it. That wasn’t what she wanted anyway. As much as she didn’t trust the Great Mother, she was sure the tree wanted her to be more powerful. That was something she couldn’t be if she had a ‘weak foundation’ the Great Mother talked about.

And she didn’t have any reason to lie to her.

So, no thinking of Mastery until she was sure she wouldn't break through because of it. What she should focus on was something else. The path. The most mysterious of the three as far as she was concerned.

The Mastery and the Truth made sense, the path didn’t. that meant it was either a nonsensical part of the power system, something emotion based, or she did not understand it well enough. At the moment, she had a feeling it was the latter. There was simply too much she did not know about it.

Even about the path she had ‘ founded’. The power was not truly hers. The Great Mother had practically forced her into it. Even though the path was something she had made, she had a feeling the Great Mother had prodded her into it.

Althea sighed as she felt mana flicker against her thoughts. The path stretched itself outward, mana coming to her uncalled for. A fool could figure out what this path was, and she was a genius.

Resistance.

Naming it did not change anything as far as she could see, but it did tell her how to…work it. Or more accurately, gave her an idea. A path is how she interacted with mana, how she called it. No, not entirely, but close enough. A path was what allowed her to step into the Apprentice stage.

That troubled her, the fact sounding incorrect as it clashed with other facts she had. But she had more important things to do. Althea called on mana, asking for as little of it to come as was possible.

Mana came just as before, her control did not magically improve. That was expected. This was what would improve it.

Althea reached out, and resisted the restrictions placed on her. The slow growth was not acceptable. Mana refusing her was not acceptable. Countess of Diery she was, and mana would follow her will.

The memory of when she had formed the path played in her mind, the feeling rearing up as the mana split into parts. A bunch of parts was much, much smaller than anything she had dealt with before. A smile flickered across her face as she figured it out.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

This was where a path drew its strength from. The more in line her actions, her feelings were with her path, the better it would be. The three requisites flashed across her mind. The three things needed to break through to the Grandmaster stage, a stage of power that seemed to be wider than every other stage combined.

Now, she had a lead as to why. The closer the path was to the Mastery, the more strength it would lend her. That was why the ancient clans had been so constrictive with how their children acted, why a manual was so often passed through families.

The parents could shape their children to have personalities close to the manual, that would allow them to use more of its power. The Truth was probably similar. What she had now had certainly helped her when she needed a helping hand.

Althea wasn’t sure if this was important as she thought, she certainly wasn’t the first one to discover this. But she had discovered something.

There was a trick to growing into a powerful Grandmaster, and this was it. Now to watch the Great Mother or someone else push her more so that she grew more frustrated, more tin tune with her path.

sc

The waves of the ocean glowed green as K woke up once more. The pain in his joints spread throughout his entire body, screaming for him to give up. A Grandmaster he might be, but his path did little to curb his pain.

Looking around, he searched for what had woken him up. The glade he had occupied since the burning remained still. That was to be expected. The Path of Loss was strong here. Even the Great Mother would hesitate before extending her power here, lest she be caught in its effect.

Not that he thought his power could affect the ancient thing. Second most powerful path on the planet, he might have, but what did it matter when he could not wield its power?

K looked outward, searching for what had changed, there had to be something. Waking him up was not something that happened naturally to him. Not since his path had changed. Not since that event.

Thankfully, he did not have to look long. The reason was clear enough. Mana had woken him up to tell him to look after his ward. The girl who did not belong in this world. The one who had forsaken by the Druid path. Even as a child, he had felt pity for her, a feeling he felt even now.

What was the point of being rich when she did not even take the time to enjoy it? If he didn’t know better, he would have thought her a puppet, strung along by the Great Mother. The only thing the girl seemed to do was take care of her bloody county.

K crossed the continents, projecting his will through the mana, careful not to let the Warrior know of his presence. The old man wasn’t particularly powerful, but he was still tricky. Another noticed him anyway.

The Witch wasn’t even a Grandmaster, but she saw through him anyway. K would not admit it to anyone else, but he was terrified of her kind. How could he not be, when he might be the only that understood what it took to become one.

Ignoring her for the moment, he looked at what his beloved’s descendant was up to now. The situation was clear to him the second he laid yes on her. Even that crockety old tree wouldn’t have been able to tell what was happening as quickly as him, though she might have seen more.

Althea’s path was mutating, changing in ways that few others had. K’s was one. Vader’s was another. The burning tree, the fae monarchs, even the Elven mad idiot had not experienced it. The Great Mother had practically been born with her path and mastery sticking to her.

This was not good. K lost his power when his path mutated. Vader gave up his empire and went around roaming the entire world, though he honestly wasn’t sure if the mutation had been detrimental.

The outworlder had done a fantastic job of eliminating historical records about himself. The monarchs that came after him had followed his lead, leaving little but vague hints and incomplete records.

So many didn’t even know about the Rise and Fall of Suns, the Great Mother or the Grandmaster Witch. What they called history was but a farce, a war the Great Mother had lost. Now he had little idea what to do.

The Great Mother did not like interfering too directly, she felt that simply giving knowledge would harm a Path. K wasn’t knowledgeable enough to ignore her, his own experiments had destroyed his power.

But he couldn’t in good conscience let the girl bumble around by herself. There was no time for her to make another path, even if she could make one that would hold a candle to this. The tree was manipulative and condescending, but it was good at what it did. The path was one of the more powerful ones she could have gotten her hands on, once she connected it to the Emotion element.

And yet the girl was decidedly headed in a different direction, ignoring the element Vader had mutated his path around. Now, it was up to him to figure out how to guide her without telling her what to do.

K looked around at her surroundings, at the moving parts that made up her life. The burning tree was there, watching, somewhere. The thing was too good for him to be sure if it knew he was there, or what it was even going to do.

The fact that it hadn’t eaten her was good in the first place. As if to mock him, the tree went ahead and snapped at some poor ambassador making a deal with a Northern Empire. K forgot what their names were. The tree tended to keep a grudge, stubborn as it was.

Then again, he’d given up on life at the ripe age of 10. Fifteen thousand took far more will than he could manage. And even he wasn’t foolish enough to think he had it worse than it. At least the Druids had given him enough to live, the poor thing had spent most of her life burning. Burning and yet not giving up. The reason behind that was far too confusing for him to even try to understand.

Sighing, he looked at the things around him. There were no good answers, he didn’t even know what she needed. The only thing he had was an idea, the thing that had made him fail.

But he couldn’t tell that to her, it would harm her, if the Great Mother was to be believed. K sighed again, looking at where she was. This was…fine. The answer was there, if she knew where to look. But she wouldn't, it was hidden under too much, and she did not use her emotion mana enough to see it.

K called on his path, as sadness filled him, just as it had so many times before. There was so much pain here, buried in these lands. A million paths that ended, just like his had, they had no names no more, just like he had not been given one. Disposed of like tools, just like him, lost before they even had a chance to succeed.

The only difference was, he was somehow still alive. Perhaps, he would soon be able to remedy that.