Fiddling around with her rituals for a while, Zalia found that by forcibly extending how long it took to activate and pushing more material into it, she could actually make ritual effects last longer. Usually she only used the rituals in combat but with this she could use them in the way they are traditionally used. She found the rituals that she pushed a lot of manifest into seemed to last a much more significant amount of time as well, some even reaching the point where she didn't need to maintain her concentration on the magical structure anymore.

Wishing once again that she had played around with it more earlier, she tried something a little more complicated. Digging a tiny room big enough for only a few plants off from the main nursery, she dug out a pit in the floor and began performing a long ritual. The main component was Snow-leaf with a Bitterbalm minor to convert the element to lava. She also began funneling Manifest into the ritual for as long as she could manage. Once a small pool of lava filled the pit she stopped funneling the two main components in and continued with Manifest for as long as she could concentrate.

She was there for maybe an hour before her mind finally wandered off, her concentration breaking and the ritual circle fading. In front of her sat a pool of lava that radiated heat into the small offshoot room. The temperature of the liquid hadn’t seemed to cool since she had started the ritual but the moment of truth was whether it would maintain that without her constant attention and magical input. Concentrating for that long had funneled almost all of the mana out of her.

She watched happily as the lava bubbled away quietly, never cooling and not dissipating yet. Now it was just a matter of how long the lava would stick around for. Deciding to hedge her bets, she still planted one of her few Flame-roots and started pushing healing into it. Much as she expected, it started growing only significantly slower than the Bitterbalm. What it didn’t do however was stagnate in its growth, continuing the slow growth as long as she pushed energy into it.

She repeated the process only using ice and snow for the Frozen Heart and Snow-leaf, creating a tiny icy biome in one corner of the main room. It was far enough away from the lava room to hopefully not interact too much and cancel out the temperature in between. With both her Bronze rank herbs now planted she left the nursery and came out to find Boreal and Ro playing a game of chasey while Delphi watched intently from his perch near the pool.

“This is a new memory. Boreal would normally be a predator of such a creature as Ro would she not?” Delphi asked in Zalia’s mind.

“Yes, though I don’t think Boreal ever would attack Ro for real. They’re friends,” Zalia explained.

“Hmm, like a strange dysfunctional collective. Interesting,” Delphi hummed.

“Which you’re somewhat a part of now, aren’t ya little guy,” Zalia said.

She laughed as Delphi turned to her and managed to convey a put upon emotion in his stance. Zalia realised she had been thinking of Delphi as male but had never asked. She wasn’t a frog professional.

“Are you a male of your species?” She asked mentally.

“Our gender changes based on the needs of the collective. I am both and neither,” Delphi replied.

Oh, interesting.

“Would you describe yourself as a typical female of your species? The collective has deduced this as your gender and believe you are stuck with one throughout life. The reason we have made this deduction i-” Delphi asked before being cut off by Zalia.

“I wouldn't say there is really any typical example of a female and we aren’t necessarily stuck with one gender. There are ways for people to change their body if it doesn’t fit their mind. I don't really know much about my own people I’ll admit. I am kind of a… solo type of person. Not really a fan of being in a collective, with my own race at least” Zalia explained, interrupting before the frog explained its assumptions about her biology.

“Hmm, understood. What are these methods you speak of? We don’t believe you have any biological method of doing so but we may be wrong,” Delphi asked.

“Not an expert, couldn't tell you. I just know it’s possible,” Zalia replied.

Boreal stopped chasing Ro and Ro turned right back around to start chasing Boreal. She quickly took off with a slight scramble on the ice, running around the room and taking the chase to the air as she began running up the walls.

“She’s still a child,” Zalia pointed out to Delphi.

“Yes, our young are much the same,” Delphi replied.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“Boundless energy right? It’s exhausting sometimes. I don’t even need to sleep much anymore and yet it still makes me tired,” Zalia said.

“You need not sleep?” Delphi asked curiously.

“Nah, a passive drastically reduces it. Still need some every now and then though,” Zalia explained.

She mentally dismissed the slowly increasing notification that declared her Low light vision had increased by four to Iron five and sat down on a stool she fashioned quickly from the stone floor. She watched as Boreal ran upside down across the ceiling as icy holds appeared in front of her.

“I don't really know what I’m doing,” Zalia admitted.

“What do you mean?” Delphi asked.

“Well, neither Boreal nor I are from this world. Hell, I’m not even from the same world as Boreal. I’ve just been kind of swept from place to place trying to survive but otherwise I don’t really have any.. goals,” Zalia explained.

“What do you need goals for? There is not much more to life than collecting memories and passing them on to the next generation,” Delphi said.

“For you that may be true. I have no plans of having a future generation and many of my people do live for such lofty goals. Most of the time I’m alright just living, surviving off the land and my own hard work but sometimes… sometimes I feel lost. Lost in the hell of an unknown world,” Zalia replied.

“I understand, I guess. You are unable to pass on the memories within your mind much as we do. When you die the memories die with you, something our species considers one of the greatest tragedies,” Delphi said mournfully.

“That kind of covers it. I’m also quite lost on how to get out of Cormaine. Your people don’t know anything about rituals do you?” Zalia asked.

“Rituals are not one of the subjects we have many memories about. We would not be able to help in this most likely,” Delphi replied.

Delphi perked up, standing from their sitting position.

“The collective believes it has found the translation for this language. Our memories of it are old, very old, yet remain intact. The few pieces of paper you have collected here are messages directed towards various people. Many talk of evacuation plans to a place called Endaria which resides within the sister lands. We cannot figure out what that means from the context though reading more may provide further details,” Delphi said.

Evacuation to Endaria?

“Endaria is where we came from before arriving here. It’s on another world as far as I’m aware,” Zalia said.

It felt like she had been handed a piece of the puzzle but it was a middle piece that she didn't have any of the connecting parts to. She knew there was some significant information there she just didn't know what it was yet. At the very least, it disproved Ember's idea that the kingdom of Endaria had stolen the land the Bathar lived on. Zalia had just found it.

“Thank you for the help. Think you’ll be able to read the rest of it now without the collective?” Zalia asked.

“Certainly, the right memories have been sent to me,” Delphi said.

There was a deep rumbling sound, the ground beneath vibrating as a crack resounded from far away. Zalia dashed to the surface as she heard another crack and the sound of stone falling. It took her a moment of searching around but she saw off in the distance a mass of shades around an island in a frenzy as a tumbling pillar slowly fell, knocking over another and within moments, the entire island began to fall from the sky.

It tumbled end over end as debris and the remains of pillars fell through the sky with it, eventually hitting the floor with an ear splitting boom, a cloud of dust exploding into the air. Glad it wasn't the island with the ruins on it that had fallen, Zalia quickly retreated back into the cave as the cries of torment from the shades above turned to angry whispering.

“What was that?” Delphi’s question came to her mind.

“An island fell,” Zalia replied, sending her memory of it to Delphi.

“A precious memory to be certain. We have no memories of this occurring before,” Delphi said.

That was a little concerning. Now that she thought about it, that had been the direction she had seen the monster flying. She was torn between waiting for her cooldowns and going off to search another of the islands, though that one having fallen from the sky made her a little less keen to be outside at that moment. She’d have to wait until the shades settled once more.

So Zalia did what she did best and started practicing. She used the ritual for her wings and began trying to float as stably in place as she could, going so far as to sit cross legged in the air as her wings flapped. It was hard work on her back but with her increased strength and apparently unchanged weight, Zalia managed to hold the position with her body just fine. The trouble was with the wings but that was what she was here to practice.

After that she went through the motions of her sword practice, keeping form and focus as Boreal fell from the ceiling, bowling into her legs. Despite the annoyance at Boreal’s shenanigans, Zalia knew it was good training to keep her focus so let it go. She wished she had some moving targets to train her archery with because she realistically couldn't accomplish anything without.

Despite that, she dropped into her focused yet absent mindset she often took when training. She spent the next remaining hours training as she waited for the abilities to come off cooldown.

Eventually, two levels in sword proficiency and five in flight later, Zalia felt her abilities come off cooldown. She put Delphi on Boreal’s back and together they exited the caves. Outside, under the power of Zalia’s rituals they flew up, across and back down to the island holding the ruins of the Bathar city. They re-entered the keep and made their way to the bottom floor, ready to fight.