Magic was a curious thing. A curious, random, strange thing. Althea had to admit she hadn’t been ready for it to change so much, in so short a time. Oh, she should have been, but she wasn’t. The quiet that had taken over the desert had made her mistakenly think it was actually peaceful.

In her idiocy she had forgotten that this was somewhere Gramma had warned her about. That it had nearly killed her just hours before. That there was still much she did not understand about the paths that it was made of.

Like why they were rearing up right now. Althea wasn’t even sure what they were doing. But they were clearly doing something. Just five minutes ago, her mana senses had started tingling, mana rushing towards the ground as the paths suddenly activated. A sudden influx of beasts told her that she wasn’t the only one seeing this.

The fact that she hadn’t sensed those beasts at all worried her. Not enough to actually make her scared, but they might harm her a bit if they sneak attacked her. The paths had to be shielding them from her somehow.

The why was a mystery she would solve another day. What she needed to do now was figure out why exactly the paths were acting up, and what it was that they were doing. This was a valuable lesson. There were a lot of paths here, and it would allow her to confirm what she had speculated about.

The paths resonated with each other, calling on increasing amounts of mana as they just…sat around. Althea frowned, extending her mana senses some more in an attempt to get more information. There did not appear to be anything special happening other than the call to mana.

And yet there must be. Why would the paths rise only to call on the mana? This made very little sense, and that meant there was something going on that she did not know. Even as she searched within the ground, she wouldn’t find anything different. This wasn’t a problem of concentration. And if it wasn’t that, then it had to be type.

With her mana sense, she would have noticed hints of anything she could notice by concentrating more. That meant she had to use something more. Althea called on her path, trying to see if that prompted a reaction. In a way it did.

The feeler of mana she sent out was assimilated into the paths that surrounded it, separated from her with a flash of strong emotion. For the split second it took for the paths to overthrow her path, she felt something, something he hadn’t gotten from the path before.

Emotion then. Shoving her path in there got a reaction, but she didn’t want to risk losing her entire cultivation just to get some scraps from the thing. The mana she had sent out was lost, and she doubted it would return to her. In theory she could recultivate her entire cultivation base in mere days, but she did not want to risk that. Not with so many powerful beasts surrounding her.

The beasts weren’t acting now, but she felt them try to interact with the rising paths, at least a few of them using their paths to do so. Althea took note of them. A beast that could use its path purposely was a sapient beast, and sapient beasts were Adepts. Even weakened, they would make quick work of her.

Emotion mana surged as she sent out feelers to the paths, and found herself getting a much better response. The paths were unable to take over her mana this time, though they did assimilate the mana. The Emotion mana just started resonating with them, as if it were a part of them.

That…was genius. Althea couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of that. The paths were little but a disparate collection, it was unlikely they could detect another adding to their number. The paths probably weren’t even sapient enough to detect that. Heck, beasts were already in there.

The few foreign paths already there jostled throughout the land, resonating with the paths while secretly trying to usurp each other. Althea had only the faintest idea of what they were doing. A smaller version of what the Great Mother had tried on her, targeting only the mana that was resonating with the paths.

Frowning, as one of the other paths tried to take over her mana, she resisted it. The framework of her path made that easy. But this was difficult. For one, the flashes of emotions she was getting from the other paths were as disparate as the paths themselves, and the others were getting in the way.

If a beast sabotaged her every time she got close, then she would not be able to sense properly. Why were they even-she watched two paths get close to each other and then immediately tackle each other. The bloody things were territorial. Of course. Even if they weren’t, they would react to something they regarded as a threat getting close to them.

Althea closed her eyes, taking a risk to try to get more from her connection. A burst of emotion flowed from her connection with the paths, letting her feel something. A lot of something. A message? Was this what they were doing? Why could she suddenly resonate with them? Were the paths broadcasting a message?

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Concentrating some more, she tried to resonate more, to get more out of this. But she couldn’t. To resonate more, she needed more information about the paths, and understand what she was resonating with. To get that information, she needed to resonate more.

In an attempt to sidestep it, she tried to sense what her Emotion mana was doing. The mana had clearly caught something that let it enter the connection. But she found only a lack. A burst of pain, but lack of any reason it was there.

Althea frowned as she tried to find the reason behind the pain. The pain itself was strange, more like longing. But longing was for something. What was that something? Perhaps she could use this to find out.

Taking control, she thought of something she longed for, and forced her path to focus on it. To be free from the Great mother’s influence, to be free of anyone trying to tell her what to do. Of anyone controlling her. The emotion was real enough, and should resonate with her path.

As she had predicted, there was a reaction from the paths. The resonance grew stronger, and she began to feel the broadcast become clearer. Like someone was clearing the static on a radio, she started to see the barest hints of what lay beyond the overwhelming longing.

But of course, it did not work. Not for long. The increased resonance must have looked like a threat to the other beasts because they jumped on her faster than she could stop them. Althea struggled, resisting the takeover, but it was too late. The second she stopped focusing the path on the longing and switched to the resistance, the resonance was lost.

A fool could make out that this wasn’t going to work. The beasts were too territorial, too trigger-happy, jumping on any threat. To make things worse, she was afraid that they would attack her physically if she continued. The beasts had to be nearby if they were competing against her for paths, and their intelligence told her that she probably wasn’t their match.

The decision to not make too big a splash suddenly seemed much wiser. Now she had to choose between taking a risk she probably couldn’t handle, or just giving up. At this point, she was leaning towards the latter. The paths might not even tell her anything important, perhaps they were simply broadcasting their last wishes. In that case, she would be proven foolish.

On the other hand, what if it wasn’t? What if it was something significant, something a path must have? There were a lot of paths here, and they all seemed to have this longing in them. The timing was suspect too. The opportunity had come just as she wanted to know more about paths. Like a certain tree was back in business and helping her along.

Even with her pride, she had to admit she was in no position to refuse the tree’s help. There was an Adept waiting just outside the territory with orders to kill her, with a couple of half-step Grandmasters following him. Not to mention the Adepts surrounding her right now. Rejecting a possible method to advance her path would be foolish, too.

The question was, could she do it safely? The beasts would jump on her way too quickly, and the reaction from the paths was too slow. So she needed to either slow the beasts or quicken the path's reaction. The latter would be difficult, the former…perhaps possible.

How could she reduce her path’s presence? The beast's paths were more solid than hers, not necessarily more powerful but definitely more mature. Althea had no idea why, but that was what she was here to find out.

Perhaps she could make a disguise? A decoy they could target and destroy? If it took a while for the beasts to destroy it, she might glimpse more. But how? How did she make a decoy path? Fool their senses? Emotion could do that, maybe.

Althea controlled her mana and sent it to the other side, making it longing to. The beasts jumped on it, faster this time, before she could even get her actual probe to start resonating. The fuckers were ready for her? Had they marked her as the main threat? That-made sense.

The beasts probably thought her an Adept herself, she had both the mana and the path for it. For all she knew, they could sense that she had some Truth figured out too. A stronger path could easily lead to her making a crucial breakthrough and killing them.

To them, she might as well be another beast out to eat them and consume their mana. The reality of the situation weighed down on her as she realized what they had presumed. There was no way they would allow her to see what the paths were doing if they thought she would kill them right after.

And she couldn’t even tell them she wouldn’t do that, she wasn’t a mind mage-oh shit. Althea facepalmed as she remembered someone she had a connection to and knew much more than her when it came to fooling people’s senses and pulling off tricks like this.

Nathan, her resident mind mage.

Not wasting any more time, she slipped through the connection to Nathan's mind. A strong mental presence greeted her, swimming around in his mind. A second of panic later, she realized it was just Pulsie. How had he grown so much? No, she didn't have time to think about that.

“I need your help. Can you come with me?” she asked,

“I- sure.” Nathan replied as she went through the connection, feeling slightly dizzy from the repeated journeys.

“What do you wish for, your grace?” he asked. Althea quickly explained what was going on, suddenly aware that the phenomenon could end any minute.

“Can you delay these beasts? Get them to back off?” she asked.

“Get them to- your grace, you are aware that these are Adept stage beasts, yes? Pushing them around is not something that can be accomplished easily.”

So he could do it with time.

“No, I might be able to delay them-fooling them won’t work, they're already on guard. A mental attack will be seen coming miles away, even a virus. A beast is much more sensitive to mental attacks than humans, their minds don’t wander half as much as ours. A suggestion like the one you are speaking off would have them attacking instead.” he said.

Well, fuck. That wasn’t good news.

“Can you do anything?” she asked, forcing a smile on her face. Then she realized Nathan couldn’t see her.

“I- perhaps.” Nathan called on the mind mana around her, the amount so tiny that she wondered if he was even going to do anything. This was less than he had even used on the construct! Then he did something she could only call foolish.

Nathan took the mana, somehow resonated it with the paths, and then shoved it towards the beasts’ paths.

Was he trying to get them killed?