The flight from home to the Sect took hours—long enough for me to finally accept that Mom and Dad were serious and that I was going to have to join and live in a place where I could be protected. Until I was strong enough to defend myself, Jia thought it would be safer to rely on the Sect's formations and infrastructure.

Jai had established a family mind gestalt that Jai, Geon, our parents, and I were members of. She called it a chat room and believed it would help with homesickness. Jai's expanded control allowed her to establish and anchor a few gestalts with her at the center. So, she had created one for family, Clan, and Nation.

Mom and Dad weren't as good at sending messages across the gestalt, but Jai, Geon, and I could really talk to each other. Our parents thought it was a waste that if we wanted to speak with each other, we could use the communication devices that Jai and her people had developed and sold.

Jai had tried to explain to Mom and Dad the difference. She explained that the three of us could speak to each other fully, while all our parents could manage was a connection that barely allowed them to identify who and where we were. They didn't fit well into the pattern of minds.

They could filter for and distinguish emotions across the gestalt. My begging and crying for them to change their minds and not send me to the Sect had created an emotional feedback loop that might have really hurt them if Jai hadn't intervened and diverted most of my emotional catharsis. Once Jai had gotten past the shield that guarded the emotional feedback loop I had unknowingly created, I finally gained control of my tears.

Jai explained to Geon and me that our ease in assimilating the gestalt was a result of our cultivation. The awakening of our spirit roots tied to our chakras made it easier for us to compartmentalize and deepen our connection. Jai had gained enough control over the gestalt as a Voice of the Hindel to create separate 'chat room' channels.

Storm had helped distract me during the flight. She had agreed to give Geon and me a ride to the Sect, more of a bribe than a reward after I'd gained control of my emotions. She followed Jai in swoops and dives as Jai used the time we spent traveling to point out interesting locations and animals.

I wouldn't remember most of what she had shown us, not the technical names anyway, but there were places that seemed to glow with a beauty that resonated with Sing Sing, my spirit companion.

Geon was mainly focused on the animals and monsters, Jai pointed out. It was no secret that he wanted to become a Beast Tamer. How our unique cultivation method would change the path of Cultivation we would walk was one of the things the Sect was established to figure out.

We only had one Cultivation technique we could use, one that Jai had kept from us. If that technique didn't allow Geon to cultivate as a Beast Tamer, he would have to content himself with the Beast Tamer profession.

A Beast-Tamer Cultivator was able to bond with more than one animal. Those who practiced the profession could only focus on cultivating beasts. They could care for them, breed them, and nurture them so they grew in new ways, but they could never bond with more than one animal.

I liked and admired Storm, but I was scared of the beasts and monsters that roamed the wild. Beast Taming was not for me. I would be happy to find someone familiar enough to bond with. I loved Jai and Storm, and if one familiar was good enough for her, it was good enough for me.

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I took a second to really look at Jai. We hadn't spent much time together over the last ten years, but she hadn't changed much. She was still the same beautiful, talented sister I remembered—the one who had awoken a platinum spirit root and changed our lives.

There were differences. Her skin tone was bronzed now, and the purple highlights a richer, more subtle change. She had allowed her hair to grow longer, braiding a few sections of the hair near the front and side into a turquoise ribbon of order and efficiency. The hair she allowed to flow free was interlaced with ribbons of silk lace- fabric that seemed to move at her command. I had asked Mother time after time if she was sure Jai's elemental affinity wasn't fabric, but she had assured me it wasn't.

Geon and I hadn't figured out what our elemental affinity was yet. He had been worried about that. Every Cultivator story we heard, or the individuals we talked with told us they had discovered their affinity within hours of awakening. That we had not found our affinity had scared Geon and our parents into thinking that something was wrong and that the way we had awakened had crippled us.

Na, Clan Frost's healer, had promised that wasn't the case and that we hadn't discovered what our affinity was, would not impede our development. We were healthy by every metric she could measure, and it was only a matter of place and time until we gained an affinity.

I had always thought Jai was pretty, but she was more than pretty. She was beautiful, and that was not the same thing. Being beautiful could cause problems, which was something new for me to try to figure out. Geon had come home from school one day covered in bruises, a cut eye, and a bloodied nose.

It had taken me sneaking around and pressing my ear against a door to hear the discussion. To find out that Geon had fought with older boys because of the rude remarks they had made about me.

He had ranted the entire time Mother was cleaning his wounds about the disgusting things those boys had said. When he began repeating their vile words, words that suggested those boys wanted to do something with me were enough to send me scurrying away.

I ran to Jai to find out what Geon meant, but she made me wait until Mother arrived. Neither tried to dodge or ignore the question, so I got my first 'birds and the bees' talk that day, and I had to admit I wasn't impressed. Why would anyone want to do something like that? At that moment, I decided that no matter what, I would not be having children. It was beneath my dignity, I decided, ever to consider participating in something so disgusting.

I gasped in surprise when the Sect finally came into view. One moment, there was a lake, some land, and the ocean. The next moment, there was a series of buildings. The primary and largest building took up space near the lake, and the rest were scattered in the same shape and style as Jai's Dojo between the lake and a cliff that bordered the ocean.

There were so many more buildings. Each linked together in a honeycomb pattern that gave the illusion of people and buildings moving across a beehive.

Jai warned us that the Sect was hidden behind illusion arrays and trap formations, but to have something pop into existence where nothing had to be experienced for you to believe.

Jai had seen the Sect before; she knew what to expect and the number of buildings that had been grown from coral, but she was still surprised by something. I couldn't figure out what she was looking at, but I knew her well enough to know she was looking at something she hadn't expected.

As we flew closer to land in a central square where hundreds of people had gathered, I figured out what had surprised her. There were so many different kinds of people. The Hindel came as no surprise, but the others? Fully grown people barely as tall as my waist, short people with long-flowing beards, people who looked like they were part lizards.

Jai was right when she said the world was about to change and that Geon and I would have to adjust to those changes. It looked like Jai had her own changes to figure out and adapt to, and I allowed myself a slight giggle in satisfaction as my sister tried to figure out what was going on. Her eyes darted across the square and identified my new Sect brothers and sisters, Elders and teachers, staff and servants.

Sing Sing spiraled around us as we landed, showering our party in a frenzy of pixie dust as she reacted to my joy. It wasn't often that I saw my sister surprised, and I was glad that the new recording Imagers that Jai had developed allowed me to take a snapshot of this moment.

I would be able to tease Jai with this scene for centuries. Maybe coming to this Sect wasn't such a bad thing after all.