“Sure?” Kene asked, and I glanced at them. They didn’t seem to be nearly as shaken as I was.

Was their power so much more developed than mine?

Or was something else going on?

“Sure,” I said shakily. “I guess.”

Even as the power faded, the bone deep understanding of what exactly was going on faded.

“If you all want to look around more, feel free,” Ivy said. “I’ve got to drop off my homework anyhow.”

He headed behind the counter and through the curtains, and I let out a breath. Kene pulled me behind one of the shelves and squeezed my hand.

“Are you okay?” they asked.

“Did… Did you not feel that?” I asked.

“No? He felt stronger than normal, like his mana was denser than it should be, and there was a strange depth, but I just assumed that it was draconic mana…”

“It was crushing,” I said. “It shattered my mana meditation completely. The sheer weight of the... Something. I can't put my finger on it, but his mana was far, far deeper than any person I've felt.”

A thoughtful look came across Kene’s face.

“My grandmother’s spoken about that sort of thing before, deep mana. I…” they trailed off and shook their head. “I don’t know much about it.”

A soft green light trailed from their hands and up my arms, followed by a golden light.

“You seem alright,” Kene said. “How do you feel?”

I took a deep breath and steeled myself.

“I’m fine. I was shaken, but I’m fine now.”

Kene kissed me on the cheek, and I smiled at them.

We perused the shelves for a few minutes while we waited for Ivy to come back down, and I actually did find a few interesting items. There were a surprising amount of enchanted gardening tools, which was less surprising when I considered that a forest dragon was the enchanter.

I was particularly interested in a knife that could be used to assist in trimming away the excess and inefficiencies of the spells in the mana-garden, but it was well out of my price range for now – still, it was worth bearing in mind for later. I’d have to double check with Meadow that it didn’t harm my development, but it could be worth saving up for.

Ivy wandered down a while later, and after Kene purchased a few of the gardening tools and Dusk bought herself a small crystal that glowed different colors while in the presence of strong sources of mana, we headed out.

I didn’t know why Dusk wanted the crystal – her mana senses were at least as sharp as mine – or how she’d managed to pay for it, even at its relarively cheap price. There must have been more silver in her hoard than I’d expected.

Ivy led us to the local branch of Mossford University, flying using wings that sprouted from his back while Kene and I followed on brooms, before landing on the campus greens and heading across the campus towards its ecology department.

It was fun to watch. There were people all about, and there were even several nonhumans or demi-humans moving around campus. There were far more brooms here than I was used to as well, and I saw people practicing magic constantly: a small conjured sparrow flew overhead with a letter in its claws, a pair of mages was sparring in a ring, a group of mages seemed to be surrounding plants in spheres of mixed darkness and light, and more things besides.

Not unlike when I’d seen the guilds, I felt a pang in my chest. I could easily see myself here, or another place. Maybe the sitting in a class and listening to a teacher wasn’t for me, but there had to be some courses that were more about practical magic and application that I could take.

Maybe I could even get a combat certification. That would be pretty cool.

As I thought, we moved into the offices where the professors worked, and to a door that had ‘Professor Greenscale, Department Head’ embossed in silver lettering on it. Ivy knocked, and at the call to enter, pushed the door open.

“Hey mom,” he said. “You wanted to see Malachi, right?”

Ivy’s mom was tall, clearly where Ivy had gotten his height, and her wood-like antlers made her look even taller. She had scales running from the back of her hand to her elbow, and they glimmered in the light. I assumed that had to be an delibrate choice, given that she was powerful enough to presumably look however she wanted. She examined the group and frowned.

“I’d hoped to speak to Malachi and Ivy alone.”

“Anything you can say to me, you can say to Kene,” I said. “I trust him with my life. Quite literally, given how many times they’ve healed me.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Ivy’s mother opened her mouth to speak, but then her eyes locked onto Dusk.

A charge spun through the air, a clash of mana, and again, something deeper. This time, though, I wasn’t involved, Dusk was.

Ivy’s mother frowned and she looked at Ivy.

“Please shut the door and lock it.”

He did as she said, and I felt the humming power of strong wards fill the air. I tensed, a bit worried she was going to try to force Dusk away from me, and Dusk drew closer.

“Do you even know what you have there?” Ivy’s mother breathed, her voice tense. “I didn’t even believe it until my arcanist’s power confirmed it.”

“She’s not just a nature spirit?” Ivy asked.

“She’s the spirit of an astral plane,” Kene said.

“You say it so casually,” Ivy’s mother said. “Buried primes… I’ve examined astral planes of all sorts. There are less than a dozen known in Mossford.”

Dusk let out a proud river-burble, and I smiled.

“She’s quite special to me,” I said, while I thought about ways I could try to hide just how special she was. Would her putting up veils help?

Ivy’s mother shook her head.

“She might not be unique in the sense of being the first in history, but a second gate worldspirit… I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

She gazed at Dusk longingly, so I spoke before she could get any ideas.

“What did you want to talk to me about?”

“Hm? Oh. Yes.”

She shook herself like a dog shedding water.

“Yes. Well, I recently stumbled into a bit of a problem… And one night, while I was having dinner with Ivy, you came up as a topic. So I did a bit of digging. Your record with the Wyldwatch was interesting, to say the least. Some parts of it I wasn’t even able to access. But I thought you’d be a decent candidate for the program.”

Her eyes drifted back to Dusk.

“Now… I’m wondering if you can do more than that.”

“Mom,” Ivy said, and her eyes snapped to him. “Explain.”

“What do you know about mantle dragons?” the elder dragon asked.

I glanced at Kene. They knew more about monsters than I did, after all.

“Mantle dragons are a very rare sub-breed of cavern and other earthen-aspected dragons. Close relatives of lyndworms, if I remember right. If I recall, their breath weapon is less like a beam of density and manastone, and more like… magma.”

“A fair assessment, save for one thing. Mantle dragons aren’t just very rare. They’re critically endangered. In fact, no known mantle dragons, hydras, or drakes have been born in close to three centuries. There have been precious few estragons, and only a single known terragon.”

“You found a terragon egg once,” I said. “Did you do it again?”

“Not a terragon egg, no,” she said.

Kene’s eyes widened.

“A clutch of mantle estragons?” Kene asked, and Ivy’s mother pointed at them.

“Yes, exactly. Or rather, a clutch of mantle estragon eggs. Up until this point, I’ve been layering magic over the cavern where I found them, hiding them under my power. I’ve given one away to a student who was able to maintain the conditions for it to hatch, so she would be able to bond the estragon once it hatched. She’s going to be a competent guardian, and given she works in conservation, will travel with it to Delitone once it’s strong enough to make the journey.”

“You can’t do that more than once or twice, though,” Kene realized. “Poachers would go wild for an estragon egg that rare. One is an oddity caused by good fortune. But multiple… They’d put you together as a common factor.”

“Exactly,” Ivy said. I started – he’d been quiet so long that I’d almost forgotten he was here. “We trust the watches, but not… Completely. Same as the terragon egg I was guarding. But unlike that egg, a clutch is an incredible target, and their magic grows slower than a terragon’s.”

“Without a human bond,” Kene said. “Which just loops back around to the problem of having too many people bonded again.”

“Exactly,” Ivy’s mother said. “To be perfectly honest, I just thought you’d be a decent way to get rid of one more egg. Solve a small problem for me, and gain a rare and powerful bond.”

“You mentioned Delitone,” I said. “Why’s that?”

“There’s a dragon sanctuary in Delitone,” Ivy’s mother said. “A contemporary of mine, actually. I’d like your worldspirit to smuggle the nest of eggs to Delitone.”

“Why can’t you?” Kene asked bluntly. “You’ve got more than enough power to defend them.”

“While I’m flattered you think so highly of me, frankly speaking, no, I don’t,” the elder dragon said. “I’ve got a solid grasp on my magic, yes, and if it was a matter of dueling someone for the eggs, I’d win. But the habitat to keep the eggs healthy requires a full mana ecosystem, as well as a very large amount of heat. It’s not as simple as sticking them in a storage ring to move them.”

“What about an aspected demiplane?” I asked.

“Certainly, that could work,” she said. “I don’t have access to one, though. Even simple, unaspected demiplanes cost tens of thousands of silver. One aspected can go for three to five times that, if you can find one on the market. Such things are usually custom jobs. One aspected, with the space to maintain a large heat reserve for the eggs? No.”

“Dimensional stability isn’t the most important factor for most pocket spaces,” I commented, recalling some comments from when Orykson and I had gone through the enchanter’s book. “Size is more important for commercial and daily use. Why would you expend massive amounts of power and resources on increasing the stability to the level of a demiplane when the same investment could yield a pocket space that’s an order of magnitude larger, or maybe even more?”

Ivy’s mother nodded, pointing at Dusk.

“She does not have that problem. She is already a fully aspected astral plane, capable of maintaining life and a mana-energy ecosystem.”

Dusk whistled, asking if she could support the other conditions that the eggs needed – namely, the heat.

“I believe you can,” Kene said. “I’m not an expert on monsters, so please correct me if I’m wrong, but they’d need an abundant amount of heat to draw on, as well as pressure.”

“My dad has a legacy that allows him to rework enchantments into new forms,” Ivy said. “Heat can come from good engineering and draining the magma chamber, as well as a wood fire. Pressure… Well, do you still have your ring?”

I glanced at the cavern dragon ring on my finger and nodded, then my attention was drawn back to Ivy’s mom.

“This isn’t a simple thing I’m asking of you. I’m asking you to illegally smuggle a nest of endangered animals around, without telling anyone, crossing a border into a wild city, and covertly delivering them to a sanctuary. I’m sure that between everything at play, we can find a way to make it worth your time, but this is no small task. The only thing you have on your side is everyone in this room, and the element of surprise. And time in a way, though the longer you wait to deliver them, the more likely you are to be discovered.”

Time was a serious contender. I wouldn’t be able to bring them to Delitone until after the Beastgate Mana-Mark trial, since there were mere days between the end of the Idyll-Flume and the opening of the Beastgate. But, once those things were done, I should be in a spot to advance quickly to third gate, and could take the time to head there.