"The key to a staff is the creation of a sympathetic resonance between your spirit and the outside world," Meadow said. "All progression eventually needs that."
"I understand how a staff and a grand array accomplish that. They're physical representations of your mana-garden," I said, "but not domain weapons or nascent truths, let alone weirder things like a mask."
"Oh? A Nascent Truth doesn't connect you to the world?" Meadow challenged. "What is it, then, if not a profound connection to a fundamental facet of reality?"
I… hadn't thought about it that way.
"And domain weapons? Or other unique things like a mask?"
"Those are a little harder," Meadow admitted. "You can think of a domain weapon as the reverse of a staff. It isn't a copy of your mana-garden drawing power into you, but rather a copy of your mana garden to express power outwards. But it is still a connection to the world. You should ask Ikki how he feels about fighting with a normal sword over his own."
I opened my mouth to ask about other methods, but Meadow kept talking.
"Before you ask, other methods vary. To use the Amethyst Mask's as an example, he destroyed half of his mana-garden in order to overcome a mental stymie, and expelled the remnants of what he destroyed into reality in order to form his mask. It comes with its power, but also severe limits. Regardless, it still formed the connection between what had once been his mana and the world.”
“I see,” I said, nodding. “For now, let’s say I’m going to use a staff. I think that all of the other methods could work for me if I could find the right way to work with them.”
“I agree,” Meadow said, nodding. “If you want to pursue another, I encourage you to do so. Ed has actually already touched on a nascent truth a few times, so I suspect that path will yield more fruit for him. For you, I suspect the staff will work well, but you should go with what your heart and mind say.”
I just nodded, and Meadow withdrew a pair of potions from her pocket. The first was the one that would allow her to enter my mana-garden, but I didn’t recognize the second. It was a swirling cerulean color, with flecks of gold throughout.
“Drink half the first potion, and all of the second,” Meadow instructed.
The first potion was tasteless, as always, but the second was actually rather pleasant. It had a crisp, almost apple-like flavor to it, and the specks of gold had no unpleasant texture, which I was glad for.
We appeared in my mana-garden, and Meadow strode towards the pile of trimmings that I’d made from my various spells.
“This is what is going to form the core of your staff,” Meadow said. “Or at least in part. You’ll learn this technique with time, but the modern world has many conveniences. One of which is the second potion – excess solidified mana extraction potion. Take a branch and will it into reality.”
I picked up some of the trimmings from my Briarthreads spell and closed my eyes, trying to force it out into reality in the same way I did when I called the bones from my Pinpoint Boneshard spell.
The potion inside me churned, and it slid out easily. I opened my eyes, a touch surprised.
“That wasn’t too bad,” I said.
“It’s harder without a potion assisting,” Meadow said. “But yes, the potion makes it easy. One down, only a few hundred to go.”
I looked over the pile. With trimmings from seventeen different spells, two of which had been rived, I had a lot of… wood? Mana? Branches?
It took me a long time to go through it all, and Meadow had faded from sight as the first potion wore off before I finished. Towards the end, the second potion was beginning to wear off as well as I had to put increasing effort into extracting each of the mana sources.
Once I was done, however, I let my mind snap back into reality to find Meadow dozing in a lawn chair, Kerbos sitting on her stomach, and Dusk using Kerbos’ stomach as a pillow.
I didn’t know where she’d gotten a lawn chair, since we didn’t have any. She must have brought it in a spatial ring, but that seemed strange to me. If you were going to bring a chair, at least bring a comfortable one.
Meadow cracked an eye open as I rose and shook out my joints, then nodded and gently removed Kerbos and Dusk, then put them down in the Lawn chair.
“Excellent,” she said. “Now, please open a portal to Dusk's realm.”
I did as she said, and we took a sample from each of the mana sources that I was going to be using for this: leaves from the Red Star Tree and Emperor’s Tree, a chunk of moss from the Pointer Moss, and a petal from the Blood Carnations.
I took out the natural spatial lodestone, death papyrus, and two chunks of amber as well, and we began setting up the ritual.
Ritual magic wasn’t something that I was too familiar with, but Meadow moved through it with practiced ease.
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The mana sources were the simplest part of the ritual. They simply were laid out in seven circles in order to account for my four first gates and two second gates, with an empty circle in the center to represent my ungated mana. All of the plant parts went into the life section, despite their mixed mana, and I realized that must be why Meadow said I needed other treasures to counterbalance them.
“Why not just spread it out?” I asked. “Put the leaf from the Emperor's Tree in the time area.”
“They’re not quite strong enough, and they’d still skew the balance,” Meadow said. “If you’d like, you could think of each of the plant parts as half a life source, and half a time, death, or space source. That gives you one and a half parts of life, but only half a part of each of your other mana types. We could still put them in their other areas, and redirect their life into that section of the garden, but it’s simpler to just let like attract like.”
“Like an inverse magnet,” I said, nodding.
“If that’s what makes sense to you,” she said with a smile.
Once we finished laying out the mana sources, we began to gather up the solidified mana that I’d expelled, but Meadow frowned.
“Where’s the ungated mana?” she asked.
“I… Didn’t gather any?” I said.
“You’re going to need to gather some,” Meadow said, shaking her head. “You don’t need to mimic the spellwork, since they’re far more flexible than gated spellcasting, but you should get some samples.”
I retreated back into my mana garden and trimmed from the heat and moisture spell that I used to either help proof dough or stay cool respectively. Extruding them into reality was a lot harder without the help of the potion, and it took me nearly ten minutes, but I did manage to do it.
We placed it in the center circle, and then went to work on the gated mana. Each of the branches of solidified mana had to be carved and fashioned into the shape of the spell array that had helped create it.
That part was understandable, but then we had to create trails of shavings that connected each array to the mana sources in the center of their circle, as well as to the edge of the circle, where the ungated and first gate mana touched as well as the second and first.
“Isn’t all of this work going to go to waste once I open my death and spatial gates?” I asked as I bent a branch into the curve that made up part of the Analyze Space spell. “Not to mention, once I start actually casting with my second gates, I’m going to need to do part of this again.”
“You will, and won’t,” Meadow said. “As it is now, once we’re finished, it will reinforce your first and ungated parts of your mana-garden. The second gate parts will need to be filled back in once we finish with them, but we won’t need to introduce a new mana source for life or time. It won’t do much for you with those gates until we do reform your staff, true, but the ritual won’t work if you’re not mirroring yourself, so just trying to do the first gate section would fail. Luckily, once the staff is formed, it will be stable enough, so long as you don’t jump more than one gate – which is to say, advance your remaining two gates to second gate.”
I just nodded and went back to work.
Once we finished, I glanced at the pile of leftovers.
“What do I do with those?” I asked curiously.
“Sell them. They’re useful to enchanters, but not to you anymore. Unless you want to get into enchanting, in which case… Keep them.”
That was fair enough, so I dismissed them from my mind, rose, and took my place in the center circle, alongside the ungated mana.
“Are there any words I need to say?”
“Would they help you focus on spreading your mana throughout the ritual?” Meadow asked.
“Not really,” I said.
“Then no.”
I closed my eyes and tapped into my ungated mana, then sent it scouring downwards into the earth around me. It connected to the solidified mana I’d put inside it, and began to resonate, trembling like a leaf in a windstorm.
I spread my power outwards, tapping into my four first gates and sending each one into its respective representation. They began to resonate as well, and I felt my body, mind, soul, and the entire planet shake with it.
I couldn’t have been actually shaking the planet, of course. I knew that with my conscious brain.
But it still felt like I was. Like all of the power I’d gathered was a plucked string, with me holding one end, and the entire world holding the other.
I sent the next wave, second gate, into the next pair of circles, and the vibrations reached a crescendo, an impossible shaking of everything that is, was, or would be.
I just held on. That was what Meadow had said I needed to do, after all. The longer I held on, the better the staff would be.
I held on for what felt like forever until I felt something akin to sunburn on the soul.
It hurt, but I held on until…
Something moved in front of the sun. A powerful presence, huge in a way that dwarfed my planet and sun, something that could have swallowed everything I was.
My eyes snapped open, and I saw Meadow putting her hand on my shoulder.
“Are you with me?” she asked. I nodded mutely, and she let out a sigh of relief. “Good. I didn’t think you’d hold on until your soul began to burn.”
I didn’t know what to say in response, so I held out my hand.
My staff appeared in it.
The staff was beautiful. It was made of dark wood that edged between black and purple in color, polished to a shine. Green swirls of spell diagrams swam throughout the wood, giving off a soft light. At the head of the staff was a blue lotus-like flower, its roots in a pool of golden amber, but its flower extending past it. The pool of amber dripped down the top part of the staff like wax, and I could see faintly moving spell formulae in them.
It seemed to hum with power, not in the sense of something that was too strong, but in the sense of something that was just right.
Something that had been made for me specifically.
Meadow took a few steps back and nodded to me.
I channeled power into the staff, and Briarthreads erupted around me.
It was smoother, faster, and more flexible than any spell I’d ever cast, but at the same time stronger, tougher, and more dense.
It seemed to respond to my will faster too, and I couldn’t help myself from laughing.
Six shards of bone burst from my spirit and swirled around me in a pattern that was complex, and would have been impossible for me to manage before. It was still a strain, but it was so much easier for me to set each spot in space.
Even outside of that, the effects of my ingrained spells were stronger too. The enhancements to my mana senses were cleaner and easier to interpret than ever before, and I could sense the door opening as a form entered the yard.
“Congrats,” Ed said as he picked up Kerbos.
“Indeed,” Meadow said, nodding. “It’s a beautiful staff.”
I twirled it and pointed it at Ed, who was frozen in place by a Fungal Lock. He tore through it a few moments later, but it took him longer than it ever had before, and he’d actually needed to empower his Skin of Stone to do so. Just for a second… But he had.
I laughed again. I could get used to this, there was no doubt about that.
“Are you ready to finish your ascension to second gate?” Meadow asked.
I let the staff slip back into my spirit and nodded. It was about time.