Dusk peeped up, jokingly saying that she should get both of them, since she was the one who actually had to hold onto the Blademoss.

That actually helped solidify the choice in my mind.

“I’ll take the regeneration necklace,” I said. A part of me didn’t like that it was a necklace, but it was just too useful to ignore – especially since I could flow my mana to Dusk, and let her regain power faster as well.

On top of that, I had two full-gate spells. Those absorbed all of the mana that would normally flow through the gate, after all, so boosting the flow rate for all of my second gate mana would help them grow faster.

Kene nodded, then held out the bracelet.

“Do you mind throwing one of your teleportation spells in here, once you recover?”

“Not at all! Any other spells that you’d want?”

We talked about some possible combinations of my magic with Kene’s as we finished clearing out the treasury.

We looted a few more vials of gold flakes, and found a few more strange items: A twisting binding knot, that resembled the one that I’d eaten to reinforce my connection to Dusk, but built for energetic arrays like a beast used. I kept that, just in case it could be used with my Magister’s Body and Beast Mage’s Soul. A large, twisting wrap of fix-iron, which was a useful tool in alchemy to create potions that helped affix air into the earth. Kene took that one. And last, but not least, a wooden box. It was painted with elaborate spell formulae in gold and green, with a red stain on the wood. Despite the many years, the spells locking the box were still in place, and they felt like fourth gate magic to me. It blocked my mana senses entirely, so I handed it over to Kene.

“What’s this?” I asked them. They glanced over it, frowning and tracking the spell runes.

“I’m not sure,” Kene said after a moment, so I brought it over to Meadow to ask her what she could make of the box.

“It’s a powerful seal,” she responded. “I’m not sure what the box contains, but I can sense very unbalanced mana within. Frankly, it feels like a fourth gate spell bomb, but I’m not sure why they wouldn’t have used it against their attacker. It’s not likely to go off anytime soon, unless the seals on the box are cracked.”

I warred with myself over keeping the bomb for a few moments. On one hand, it did seem useful to be able to blow things up, if I ever came across another war root or powerful enemy that I couldn’t fight.

On the other hand, it was a bomb. Even if Dusk was able to store it safely – which her doubtful wind-noises made me unwilling to risk – I’d risk blowing myself apart with it as well.

Eventually, I just moved it back into the treasury and decided that it was best left as just a report to the Lightwatch. We were far enough underground now that I hoped it wouldn’t actually hurt anyone, but I wasn’t capable of setting it off safely.

After that, it was time to look over the war root. I’d broken it up pretty badly, and there wasn’t enough of it left to take a proper clipping that could be regrown.

“Even if you could, you wouldn’t want to,” Meadow advised. “It would run rampage over Dusk. When you’re nearing the peak of third gate, or into fourth gate, you may want to seek one out to keep in a pocket prison, but… They’re more danger than they’re worth.”

“Any way I can use it as staff rebuilding material?” I asked.

“Not really,” she said. “Most of the energy is dissipating, and even if it wasn’t, you couldn’t use it as a material until you were fourth gate yourself.”

That was annoying, but not entirely unexpected. A part of me had hoped that I’d be able to ride around on a war root loyal to me during the Idyll-Flume and sweep through all eight floors of the tower.

Alas.

Once we finished up, we all made our way to the surface. It took us quite a while – we’d descended through two linked caverns, after all, and I couldn’t cheat by teleporting my way over obstacles.

“Do you have any plans for the Spirits Feast?” Kene asked me as we used the rocks to make our way out of the sunken castle.

“Not really,” I said, huffing. Even with Dusk helping to repay some of the energy debt from Burn Future, I was still basically at my physical minimum. “My Dad always puts out some offerings on my mom’s grave, and my brother and I do occasionally join him, but not every year.”

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The offering to her had never really connected much to me, but I felt guilty thinking about that.

It should mean something, shouldn’t it? I mean, she’d given life to me. But at the same time, she’d died in childbirth, so I’d never known her in the slightest. I hadn’t even had a lot of stories about her growing up, since my dad had basically just retreated in on himself and ignored it.

We had a few pictures, but it was hard for me to mourn for someone I’d never had a connection with. I wished that I had, but there was only so far that one feeling could go.

“Want to join me?” Kene asked. “I’ll… Probably go visit my family.”

Dusk frowned and peeped that he sounded hesitant, and Kene just shrugged.

“I’ll be honest, for a while, I kept distant to try and make things easier on them when I died and became a hag. My relationship with my parents wasn't ever great. Not that they were awful to me or anything, but they weren’t amazing. My siblings…”

They shrugged.

“Anyways, we’re a bit disjointed, as far as family units go. But I do care about them. And I got to meet your dad, brother, and Meadow.”

Meadow just let out a dry chuckle from behind us, and I couldn’t help but give her an envious look. Despite her age, she was moving far more adroitly on the climb than I was.

“If you want me to go, then I will,” I said. “But if you’d rather me not be there, I won’t blame you. I don’t need to meet your parents to care about you.”

They smiled at that, but shook their head.

“No, I want you to come with me, if you’re okay with that.”

“I am,” I reassured them.

When we escaped the underground chamber, and then the underground cavern, Meadow turned and began to walk away from the town and through the forest, whistling to herself.

“Where are you going?” I asked her.

“Oh, nowhere in particular,” she said. “But you should be safe enough from here. I’ll meet back up with you in my home, if you need me.”

“Well… Be safe,” I said, a bit thrown off by her abrupt departure. She waved and told me to be safe as well, before blurring away through the trees.

I turned to glance at Kene, who didn’t seem in the least bit disturbed.

“She’s an old witch,” was all he said. “Why wouldn’t she be a bit strange?”

I shrugged, honestly having no answer to that.

I spent the night at Kene’s place, and the following morning, we headed out to the town metalworker – the woman with huge biceps who’d built the cauldrons I now had, in order to sell the gold.

We might have been able to sell it for a bit more if I’d taken it to the capital or to Teffordshire to sell, but ultimately it wouldn’t have been much, and I’d rather help stimulate a local business than sell to a large corporation.

We got a decent amount for it, even at a lower price – close to six hundred silver apiece – and then we met up with Alice.

“A war root?” she responded, eyebrows raised. “Well, I never… And in our little town? Well, I’m just glad you two are safe as houses. Speaking of houses…”

She looked at Dusk.

“Are you wanting some help in upgrading yourself?”

Dusk threw her arms into the air and cheered. She actually wound up staying behind in the village, living with Kene and his tiny colony of small folk that had – to his delight – recently set up in his kitchen.

The carriage ridge home was lonely without her. It was the first instance in what felt like a long, long time that I’d been without her.

After I reported the entire incident, as well as the potential bomb to the Lightwatch, and with the gold dust money and the unexpected free time on my hands, I wound up taking Riley’s advice and visiting the woman I’d bought my broom from and asking about repairs.

She directed me to an enchanting shop that focused on broom modification and repair, and they had a look.

As it turned out, some of the more delicate parts of the flight spell array – the parts that were responsible for steering – had started to wear thin. I sent a mental thanks to Riley when they told me that it was good I’d brought it in before it broke.

As was, I spent most of the money I’d made on repairs, but if the spell array had actually broken, it would have been nearly four times as much.

While they took a few days repairing that, I spent a lot of time in Dusk’s realm. With her so far away, it was harder to pull open a portal, taking me nearly ten whole minutes of concentration, but I could still open them.

It was an odd sort of thing, really. With all of the help I got from Alice’s fellow villagers, the secondhand appliances and patched up amenities, the local enchanters who helped run ungated enchantments throughout the cottage, and craftsman who helped upholster and pad the furniture and add doors, I probably received far more in the that week than I had from any official mission I’d ever taken.

I stopped in to help whenever I could, but since I was a terrible enchanter, and I didn’t have anything particularly useful to add. Even Dusk was able to contribute more to the project than I was, since she could manipulate the matter around her.

By the time the end of the week rolled around, I had to take one last stroll through my cottage, taking in the changes.

Where the empty spaces in the kitchen had once been, there were now appliances, hooked into lines that could connect to an ungated mana battery. A fridge, dented and a bit worn, but… Mine. Working.

A stove with three working burners out of four. Mine.

A sink, with enchantments that could pull water from Dusk’s small river and purify it, to allow me to wash dishes. Mine.

The furniture, once simply wood, now had some thick cushions on it. Mine.

I even had added my bed and the villagers had donated some furniture. Mine too.

The only thing I needed was a house sized mana battery, and some sort of power source – maybe some solar mana connectors I can run to a battery, or a mana generator, though those had huge overheads to set up.

I wanted to laugh. I wasn’t even nineteen yet, and… Yet here I was. I had a house.

Was it perfect? No. It wasn’t even done yet.

But… It was mine. And it was cozy and rustic.

Dusk climbed up my leg and swept her gaze over the cottage. She made a happy noise, and I nodded my agreement.

Then I went to get dressed, putting on my suit, grabbed my broom, and left through Dusk’s portal to go to meet Kene. It was time for me to meet Kene’s family.