Vedas had picked a great spot; it was a small grove that glowed with the distinct blue hue of the Starblight Forest, named after a particularly vicious disease that originated from this very forest.

The tree roots arranged themselves on the path like stairs, leading to what he surmised to be the river from the noise of running water, also named the Starblight River, if you were curious. In fact, any major land mark in this area is named after the Starblight, even if the disease was only prevalent hundreds of years ago, people just stuck with nomenclature and went with it.

“Hey! What’re you looking at? Lead the way man.” Vedas interrupted his musings.

“Ah, yes. We should head to the river, there’s probably some signs there.”

The knight followed the path to the river, making sure not to make any sound; it would be bad for enemy scouts to detect them. But his efforts were in vain, as Vedas didn’t care of such things.

“No need to be so sneaky, Theo, I already put up invisibility and muffling wards. The only people who can hear and see us are you, me and Otis.” The Owl hooted at the sound of his name, comfortable at his perch on top of his master’s head.

‘So that’s why his hair looks so disheveled, it’s like a bird’s nest.’ Thought Theodore.

“Why do I feel like you were thinking something offensive?” Remarked Vedas.

“Uh… I just had a question, what is the use of that ring?” The knight skillfully diverted the subject.

“Ah, that’s a new kind of focus I made, I call it a Halo.” Vedas was clearly going full lecture mode. “As is common knowledge, magic users –especially wizards- make use of foci in order to facilitate our usage of spells; usually it’s made from magically attuned materials that allow quicker, more potent applications of spells in time sensitive moments.”

“Wizards tend to also use them to store runic spells, allowing them to design specialized spells for specific occasion, and deploy them quickly instead of the lengthy process of manually generating runic spells. There are other usages dependent on the user, but that is the general idea.”

“Now usually foci take the shape of staves, wands, grimoires, maybe even rings or necklaces, whatever. But this baby here.” He taps the floating halo. “Is a genuine artifact, and is probably the first single Halo focus in the world. As an Archmage I have many specialties, one of them is called Crystal Craft or the usage of runic spells through crystalline mediums. It makes use of the geometric nature of crystals and jewels in order to replace the geometric shapes of runic matrices, so all you’ll have to do is carve the runes, and then you’ve got a repeatable runic spell in physical shape, no need to recreate the runic circle every time you need to.”

“Before Halo, my focus was basically a big crystal ball on a stick, and while I’ll miss big Bertha with all my heart, she didn’t really offer me the flexibility I needed from my foci.” He playfully wiped an imaginary tear from his face. “Halo here is a continuously light attuning focus anchored to me, or more specifically, my mana pool. It is a focus and ward in one, the runes create a continuous spell effect that gathers ambient mana, which is then fed into another effect that gathers ambient light and converts into mana, which is then fed into the first spell, etc…”

They finally got to the river, and they began to walk alongside it, Theodore making sure to survey the trees for any marks, nodding from time to time to his liege.

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“It practically creates a never ending cycle where the amount of mana may overload the structure before it is attuned enough to be able to withstand it, so I use the anchor to my mana pool to offset any excess mana, it helps really well with mana regeneration, it also makes sure that my capacity grows independently from any of my meditative sessions, so there’s that. I originally planned to make it a staff, but for that mechanism to work it really had to be a circular object, and I ain’t making a disk.”

Theodore only vaguely paid attention to his liege, from his experience Vedas tends to get preachy when he teaches, so it is best to leave him be until he finishes. But even with just the cliff notes he couldn’t help but be shaken to his core, if what Vedas is saying then his Lord basically made a growth artifact, those are usually extremely rare and are often items inhabited by spirits, demons, or ghosts, and the conditions for their growth are much more inconsistent than what he just described.

“Now to the good stuff, I got this baby equipped with a 50x50x50m storage dimension, it’s where I’ve put my luggage and other necessities, since anything that may destroy the Foci may have as well killed me. Aside from that, and the part that I’m proudest about, is that the Halo can conjure extensions to its structure that give it additional abilities, I basically use them instead of manifesting a glyph spell that’s just going to dissipate, so I just feed it the runic matrix, and it grows the necessary structure, then I just feed it mana and bam! That’s a spell.”

“The great thing about that feature is that it makes it so it can regenerate! I have made it to conjure any part of its structure that it loses, and while the new parts may not be as attuned and as powerful as the rest, they’ll quickly catch up since they’ll have their capacity pushed to the limits, do you even understand the implicati-“His rant gets interrupted by a hand, as Theo finally notices a benign scratch on a random tree.

“Found it, Sire. We should head this way.” He leads his lord in a different direction, as Vedas continues to rant about something or the other, the subject having long strayed from the subject of his new focus.

Theodore faintly smiles through the experience, some of his lord’s normal mannerisms finally started resurfacing, he’s obviously still mourning, but it is a good sign that he’s falling into some of his old habits, even if the tirades are getting a bit much.

The knight finally notices a smidge of white fur. ‘That must be one of the Lunari steeds.’ He thinks.

“My Lord, I think it may be better to drop the wards, we may want to give the Order time to detect us.”

With a wave of his hand, Vedas dismisses the ward, and it is a testament to truly how skilled Vedas is that Theodore, even with his experience, was left unaware of neither its activation nor its dismissal.

‘If that was an attack…’ He couldn’t help but wonder.

It wasn’t long before some scouts located them, Theodore was a very recognizable face within the order, so they were approached by one of their many members on their signature Lunari Horses, snow white steeds known for their speed.

“Sir Theodore and Lord Vedas!” The man promptly jumps out of his horse and kneels in front of Vedas. “It is wonderful news to know you’re back!”

The Lord waves him off. “Yeah, yeah, stand up and lead us inside, I want to meet with the current leader.”

The man does so, not at all surprised by the lack of decorum. Not much was known about Vedas here aside from his aptitude with magic, but his easy going nature was definitely one of them.

They fell deeper into the forest, only to find a rudimentary camp, part of the Agis’ pact with the Starblight Forest’s elvish community was to never hurt nature if they were able to, so it was common doctrine to build camps around the surrounding nature.

While other Orders may have cut down trees in order to contribute to the camp, the Order of the Shining Beacon evolved to use the surrounding trees as supports for their temporary structures.

It wasn’t long before they reached the main tent, it was a giant thing of cloth supported by three sturdy trees in close proximity. The guard’s eyes shined in recognition but didn’t make a move as they entered.

As they did so, they found a handsome bearded man with brown hair and ocean colored eyes hunching over a map with an intense gaze.

He was so deep into thought that he hadn’t noticed their arrival until Theo made a visibly fake cough.

The new man’s face lights up in surprise upon seeing them, before he moves at incredible speeds, embracing Vedas with a death grip