I gazed around the stone corner to make sure nobody had followed me, and found only the empty corridor I had just come through. Galir should be busy with getting the caravan ready, and Linery was hopefully with him.

Crazy enchantress, I thought as I remembered how she had found me before and just interrupted my conversation with Galir. It had taken twenty minutes of lying to make her believe that I couldn’t contact Ulderion and that she would have to go there herself. Galir had just taken a single look before grinning and fleeing. Bastard.

Sorry, Ulderion.

When I was sure there wasn’t anybody chasing after me, I put my ax against the wall and sat down, looking around the small room I had fled to. Light poured in through the narrow archery slits that gave a clear view of the road that we would take after the caravan was ready. I hoped Linery would be gone by then. But, for now, this was the first quiet moment I’d had after waking up, and although I wanted to sleep, that would have to wait till the caravan was moving. Now there were more important things to do.

With a sigh, I closed my eyes and entered my mindscape. Right away, a small status alert appeared to the side of my vision.

> Raparion has begun growth of a Mildasir tree

> Mindscape barrier strength increased

> Mindscape barrier permanently active

The area of my mindscape had grown again, but more importantly, it wasn’t empty anymore. A small tree with a crown covered in dense and bright turquoise leaves stood in the center. More a sapling than a tree, it only had a single row of five branches that stuck out slightly up, casting a dim shadow below. The ground that had been flat and white before now looked like mulled white earth.

Curious, I examined the tree, and suddenly something clicked in my mind. It was hard to determine scale in this place, but the presence of the tree suddenly gave me a sense of scale and size. Hovering in front of it, my mind guaranteed me that it was ten feet tall, and although I had no idea if there was even something like dimensions in a mindscape, I was fine with it. Taking a quick look around, I decided that would make my mindscape forty feet long and wide and perhaps twenty feet high.

Something moved between the leaves, and a yawn came from the tree.

“About time you showed up!”

I recognized Par’s voice, but it wasn’t as intensely angry and gritty as before. Instead, it sounded like the grumpy old neighbor two floors up from where Eliandra and I had lived back on earth. There wasn’t any sign of the black and red bleeding heart, and I frowned.

“Did you change into a tree?” I asked, staring at the dark brown bark, which contrasted nicely with the turquoise leaves.

“A tree? Of course not!”

A small shape moved through the dense canopy, and an odd little figure climbed out on a branch. Its translucent chest was massive compared to its arms and legs, and inside I saw a heart that beat steadily. The arms and legs were vaguely human but with six fingers on each hand and foot. Two cool brown eyes sat above a pointy snout with a toothy mouth below. Small patches of turquoise and brown fur clung to the head, most of it across the four pointy ears that sat to the side and top of it.

“Par?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“Don’t give me that look, mortal! My body is still forming, and I’ll be far more impressive eventually!”

The image of a cute turquoise and brown squirrel with four ears roaring at a cat popped into my mind, and I grinned. A second later, I couldn’t hold myself as the hilarity of the situation took hold. A dark, gritty deity of fear and hate was going to turn into a fluffy squirrel? I floated and bobbed around, laughing loudly and perhaps a little hysterically.

“Sure, yeah. You let it all out,” Par grunted as he glared at me.

Something about his face, still slightly gruesome, but with the promise of the cute snout of my imagination, made my cloud shape roll over and over as I laughed. Eventually, I collided against the tree, which felt surprisingly solid, and my hilarity abated.

“So? Ready for important, life-saving things now? Or do you want to laugh a bit more at someone else’s unfortunate circumstances?”

I sighed contentedly as I looked up at Par. I felt much better than before, even knowing I still had to find a solution to my chaos poisoning. After I’d head back out, I needed to enter the forest to absorb lifeforce from the trees and find wood for a new mount. The idea of carving myself another mount got me thinking about what I should make. So far, I’d just gone with the simplest ones, those I had familiarity with, but my Woodcrafting hadn’t increased in a long time. Could that be because I had only created the same things over and over?

“Are you just going to lie there and fall asleep?” Par snapped, staring down at me from the closest branch.

His chest was gradually becoming less transparent, and his arms and legs were growing. At the same time, more patches of fur appeared on random parts of his body. At the rate he was going, he might be finished in a day.

I hovered up until my cloud form was at the same height and sniffed.

“So, how about you tell me what you are going to be doing in my mind?”

The brown eyes blinked, and a surprised look came to Par’s face.

”What do you think?” he finally snapped. “I’m going to make sure you don’t get Chaos Parasites, Mind Heisted, or anything else that might destroy you and your mindscape!”

Mind heisted?

“Alright, and how are you going to do that?” I asked before focusing on the tree. “And what does planting a tree in my mindscape have to do with it?”

Par climbed across the branch, carefully poking one of the leaves. I hadn’t noticed they were shaped like a sharply pointed three-leaf clover, and as Par touched the bright leaf, it gleamed slightly metallic.

“This isn’t just any tree,” Par said as he sniffed cutely. “Besides making sure your barrier stays up without me having to act, even if you are unconscious, I might add, it will grow with your mindscape. For every foot it grows your barrier will become stronger!”

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The squirrel looked at me, all smug, and I barked a laugh.

“So, what? You are going to continue planting trees in my mindscape?” I asked, slightly amused as I wondered how I would feel about having a small forest in my mind. It brought back memories of Ulderion’s realm and his mindscape, and I wondered if the plant deity would try to pull me to his side again if he found out.

“No… well yes, that too,” Par said, as he grit his small teeth. “Damn unknowing mortals, have to explain everything.”

“Well, you could go back out there,” I said as I looked at the barrier. As if to increase the power of my statement, a long tentacled gooey blob passed along it, the tentacles drawing bright lines on the barrier before it disappeared into the chaotic energy clouds.

“Bah. Only if you kick me out,” Par said. “Now that I’m your Keeper, I can only stay here,” he waved his hands around. “Which reminds me. You need to make this place bigger! You still have almost nineteen hours of that bonus growth left! If you manage to succeed in two or three of those training sessions, you might hit the next milestone.”

The idea of having to practice again, let alone more than once within a short period, made me shiver.

“What milestones are we talking about?” I asked.

Par grumbled as he climbed down from the tree and across the ground, his limbs only just long enough to keep his chest and belly from dragging across the ground. A few feet from the shadow of the tree, he swiped his hands across the ground, flattening a small area. Curiously I moved closer towards him as he made a small circle in the soft soil. Then he made small holes all around it, like a cloud of particles.

“Your mind generates Karma, which escapes into the Primal Chaos all around. It draws those things here that feed on them. “

Par drew a larger circle around the dots, confining them. “Beings with a mindscape can harness the Karma they generate to grow their power and mindscape.” Par tapped on the circle. “It can only hold so much, and if you generate more, this Karma will still escape. To stop this, you need to increase the size.”

I was confused, wanting to shake my head, but not able to in my cloud shape.

“But didn’t gaining Karma grow my mindscape?” I asked.

Par looked at me with a disgruntled look. “How about you let me explain this, and you can see if you have any questions after?” he grunted, sounding like some angry school teacher.

“As the Karma pools into your mindscape, it can forcefully enlarge it, but only until a certain point. Your training grows it in another way, one that you already know mortals shouldn’t be able to use. Normally, this growth is slow. Your mindscape is forty feet across, which is barely large enough to hold this single tree, and if you continue training, it might grow one foot for each ten successful training sessions. Or less...”

I blinked, looking around. Didn’t that mean that him joining me had given me months, if not years, of constant training in size?

“Now, at a hundred feet, there is a point where your mindscape needs to take more of the primal chaos around it. This is called the first milestone, and when you reach it, your mindscape will expand to five hundred feet in a single jump. Normally, reaching a hundred feet would cost you years of arduous training, but with me here, you now have the chance to reach it in a single bound!”

As I listened to Raparion, I looked around, wondering what a five hundred feet mindscape would be like. Would it be filled with trees? Then again… why? Why go through all the pain and suffering? Was it going to be strong enough to hold out deities? I highly doubted it. When Rathica had pushed on it slightly, without even trying, I had felt the massive disparity in power between us.

“Why?” I said, focusing on Par. “What use is there to grow my mindscape?”

Par turned and gaped at me, a stunned look on his face. His mouth opened and closed a few times. Then he shook his head in utter wonder. “Why? Why? If you grow your mindscape bigger, at some point, not even a deity can enter it unless you allow it. Beyond that, you could turn into a deity if you make it even larger!”

“And how much bigger would it need to become?” I asked, curious now. I wasn’t as much interested in becoming a deity as in keeping them out.

Par shrugged, an odd thing to see his misshaped squirrel body do.

“To keep out low-rank deities, you need to reach the fourth milestone, the stronger ones, like Rathica… six maybe seven. To become a deity?” Par frowned, his eyes clouding over. “It depends on many factors, but the fastest would be fifteen or sixteen.”

I barked a laugh, looking at my forty-foot, not even first milestone mindscape. “Even if I reach the first milestone, how long would it take me to reach the second?”

“You need to grow it from five hundred feet to a thousand,” Rap said, and I wondered if he didn’t see the problems that I did with his statement. I made a quick calculation, then wondered if I should even bother with the conversation anymore. Then I sighed and continued.

“And how exactly do you suppose I would do that if I can only grow it by a foot for every ten training sessions? Which are very painful, I might add. Even if I could do one training per day, which I’m not, it would take me over fifteen years.”

Par didn’t respond, just gazing at me with his soft brown eyes. “There is one more benefit from reaching the first milestone,” he finally said, sounding annoyed that he had to.

“Which is?”

“You can increase the cap of one of your attributes or skills.”

I laughed, wishing I could shake my head at him. Or my fist.

“Dammit, you mortal! Do you have no long-term perspective? What are a few decades with the prospect of living forever?” Par shouted, pushing himself up and waving his little fist my way.

I was a bit jealous about that, but then again, he could only do it in my mindscape and nowhere else. “Unless there are more interesting benefits to it, I don’t see the use in tormenting myself any more than I already have to,” I said, thinking of how I would have to drain my lifeforce by training my mindscape soon. The thought made my good mood fade again. Then I thought of what Par had said before. Something about increasing the cap of one of my attributes or skills. Was that all… or?

“Par, what exactly do I get from gaining the first milestone?” I asked, suddenly no longer laughing.

Par stopped his still ongoing antics and put his tiny knuckle against his chin. “Well… Let me think. It’s been a while since I last had to tell anyone this.. A few thousand years give or take,” he muttered as his brown eyes glazed over.

“So… an increase of five to one of your attributes, an increase of one to any of your current skills that aren’t granted by a deity. Hmm,” Par frowned, seeming deep in thought.

“Anything about resistances?” I tried carefully.

Par’s tiny hand shot up along his face as he fell flat on his face. He barely managed to catch himself as he grunted. “Of course! How could I forget that! It has to be because of the stifling limits on my mind due to this tiny mindscape of yours!”

“Explain,” I said.

“You can choose to gain one more level in any resistance type, either a first-level or a higher one. Well, up to the maximum of five of-”

I shot forward, knocking with my white cloud shape against his head and interrupting him. “How could you forget that?” I shouted.

“How? Easy! You try having over ninety-nine percent of your knowledge and personality compressed into a teensy tiny ball!” Raparion roared, flailing with his hands in the air for drama.

“How much longer do I have the extra mindscape growth for?” I said.

“Less than nineteen hours ,” Par said.

“Is it enough?”

“I have no idea. You will just need to try!”

I didn’t bother to say goodbye but just popped out of my mindscape to find two ice-cold blue eyes a few inches from mine.

“Ah, you’re back.”