Two weeks later, I sketched out a spell as I ran, my feet hitting the pavement with dull thumps as I passed by the brightly decorated shops. I focused on the pulsing of mana that streamed into me from Harvest Distance spell, converting it into time mana. At the same time, I worked on converting my life mana into time mana at the same rate as my generation spells could provide the mana to me.

Despite all of the fanfare around breaking through to second gate with life mana, picking Meadow as my mentor, and having Ed and Dusk join me as fellow apprentices, not much had actually changed about my routine since then.

Meadow still came every Solsday, and Ikki still came every Telsday – which was actually the purpose behind my sketching, right now. With Capture Moment ingrained, I was now focusing on mastering Lesser Image Recall, so that I could start to integrate time magic into my casting.

Orykson hadn’t been by on a Liday yet, but Meadow said that he’d come around to teach me once he finished sulking. The idea of Orykson sulking had sent me into a fit of laughter.

Meadow had taken up residence in a small home in the suburbs, only about a twenty-minute flight from the bakery, and had made it clear that Ed and I were both welcome to stop by whenever, and if we wanted to bring people along, all the better. I think she also had a job in a garden nearby, but I wasn’t sure.

The biggest change was in Dusk. Meadow had begun to work with her in the manipulation of plants within her astral space, and with a few trips to a home improvement store, we’d made a small herb garden that Dusk was now using her magic to tend to, keeping the conditions inside the box garden just right for each herb.

The small folk, especially the brownies, were delighted by this change, and had taken to helping me in cooking. They complained that they had to enter and leave their homes inside of Dusk to do it, but they still enjoyed it. It did make me think about trying to build a home inside of Dusk though. I just had no idea how much something like building a home would cost. Dusk could manipulate her internal space enough to cut down a lot of the costs, but even still…

Outside of her herbal experiments, Dusk had taken to studying the books the library had provided as an incentive for me leaving Orykson, and seemed to be getting better at manipulating her mana every day. She’d even begun casting a few very basic spells outside of her astral plane. Nothing too exciting yet, just simple spells like Forge Stone.

I still hadn’t gone on a mission for the library since my last failed attempt, hadn’t gotten a magical cauldron for my studies of alchemy, picked up a source of second gate life mana for my staff, nor had I picked up another growth item.

Admittedly, I had much less of an idea as to where I’d be able to get a growth item. I’d gone back to Larry’s ‘Every-Budget Enchanters’, only to be laughed at when I asked if he sold growth items.

He had sold cauldrons intended for creating potions from first gate all the way to fifth gate, but even the cheapest ones meant for beginners were absurdly expensive, in the range of one and a half thousand silver. They also only could handle potions of first gate and ungated mana level mana density, which meant I’d outpace them fairly quickly.

The ones intended for up to third gate materials, which was apparently the standard for crafters, cost nearly five and a half thousand silver.

I still wasn’t exactly even sure what a cauldron did, other than intensify and amplify the applications of mana for alchemy, but it felt like the kind of question that asking would cause whoever I asked to roll their eyes and tell me that I should have known already.

My footsteps faltered and I nearly fell over as I felt the familiar spiritual pain that came with the mastery of a new spell, the Lesser Image Recall breaking through the soil of my mana-garden.

I took a deep breath, but it wasn’t enough to keep the grin off of my face. I cast Briarthreads, then flowed my Capture Moment through it, taking in the exact instance in time when the Briarthreads were where they were.

Then I sent mana into Lesser Image Recall and sent my Briarthreads spinning. It looked as if I had twice as many threads around me, making me an impenetrable fortress.

Then I let bones slide out of my spirit and set them spinning in a hexagonal pattern around my body, capturing the moment they stood at each of their anchors, before calling their image into the space as well.

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

Twice as many threads, and five times as many bone shards were now rotating around me.

Oh sure, the actual instances of the spell hadn’t duplicated. It was all illusion, all trickery.

But even though they were visibly imperfect, in a fight, it would burn someone’s precious attention to try and figure out where the real ones were.

I filled my entire body with Capture Moment, then leapt back, leaving an afterimage in my wake.

That was still draining, so I wasn’t able to keep it up for long, but…

I grinned. I think I was starting to like my temporal magic…

I finished my run, returning home to find Dusk, two brownies, and four pixies working together to cook. I stared at the pot.

“Is that my codfish stew?” I asked.

Dusk made a sound like the rushing of a river, and the brownies and pixies nodded their agreement.

“How did you get the recipe?”

“We didn’t!” a pixie said. I thought I recognized them, the androgynous one with green hair and blue wings who had spoken to me about leaving them cream and eggs.

“Then how are you making the stew?” I asked.

“Pure guesswork!” they announced proudly.

“Isn’t guesswork,” one of the brownies, a tiny mustachioed man with red hair said. “We’ve made a fish stew with fennel before. Just not this exact recipe. It’s… reconstruction.”

“Why, though?” I asked.

Dusk grass-whistled, and rubbed her stomach, saying that she was craving it, and I’d been busy with a run.

“Okay,” I said, picking her up and putting her on my shoulder. I was about to say that she couldn’t cook without adult supervision, but then paused.

The brownies were adults. They matured faster than humans, and had shorter lifespans, sure, but they still were adults. The older ones – like the mustachioed chef – were adults both by both their own and human standards.

“New rule,” I said instead. “You have to make sure that when you cook, it doesn’t conflict with existing plans. We’d planned to have the fish stew tomorrow, and leftovers tonight. This doesn’t throw things off too much, but let’s just try to make sure no food gets wasted.”

Dusk let out a mournful wind-in-trees sound, and nodded. I smiled and gently patted her back with one finger.

“Hey, it’s alright. You didn’t know any better.”

That night, Liz swung by, and she, Ed, and I engaged in a sparring match after dinner to work off some of the food. I tried implementing my newly mastered illusion spell, with… some success. It wasn’t terrible, at the very least.

Both Ed and Liz may have been older than me, but I was starting to be able to hold my own in the spars. When Liz and I worked together, we were able to actually put Ed on the back foot, or even beat him.

One on one, I still wasn’t a match for either one, but against Liz, I was at least able to hold my own for longer. Long enough to not be totally embarrassing, at the very least.

“Do you have any plans for the Carnival of Color?” Liz asked me in between bouts.

I thought about it for a second, then shook my head.

“No, not really. I’m sure there’s going to be a few Wyldwatch jobs to investigate the carnival itself for ethical treatment of its animals and magical creatures, so I might pick up something like that, that way I have something to do.”

“Any idea what color you’re going to wear?” Ed asked curiously. “We’re both going as red, obviously.”

Red was the classic color of lovers, so I wasn’t surprised. It was also a subtle prod to not join them for the celebration – not that I could blame them. They put up with me plenty as it was, and every couple deserved to have some time together.

“Probably orange,” I said. It was the color of laborers – at least for the carnival. I wasn’t exactly a laborer, since I really provided for myself via freelance work with the Watches.

That was another thing that had changed – no more allowance from Orykson to fund my development. I made enough with freelance work that it wasn’t as if I couldn’t make my bills, but it had definitely made me need to be more aware of my spending. Doubly so, since Orykson took a tenth of everything I made.

“Not green, black, or blue?” he asked, surprised.

The colors of the natural world, the dead, and mages. Any of them might work for me, but I also didn’t feel like I was truly a master or member of any of those things, not really.

“I’d think a black outfit with a hint of green and blue would appeal to you,” Liz teased. I stuck my tongue at her.

She was right though… that did sound pretty cool. I had plenty of black clothes, and blue and green would work as accents.

“We’ll see,” was all that I said, though.

Dusk chirped like a bird from the stone where she was watching me, and I paused.

“Well, yeah, I suppose that green and blue would suit you. I’m not sure where I’d get a tiny dress, though.”

That actually raised some more questions in my head than it did answers. I knew that the small folk had to have gotten their clothes from somewhere. It wasn’t like all of them could make their own clothes.

“Can you ask the brownies where they get their clothes?” I asked her. She agreed cheerfully and opened a tiny, Dusk-sized portal to her plane, then hopped inside. It snapped shut behind her.

“She’s cute,” Liz said. “I want a familiar like that now. I don’t think I could get one quite as… Unique. But something small and cute.”

“Not a tiger, or some other fearsome beast?” I teased her.

“Hey, I have two gates. Maybe I can get a monster for one, and something cute for the other.”

“Perfectly balanced between terror and adorable. Just like you,” Ed said, kissing the top of her head. She lightly punched his stomach, and he laughed.

“Speaking of familiars, I’m going to start looking for one of my own soon,” Ed said. “I don’t know what exactly I want, but would you two mind helping me out when I figure it out?”

“Of course I don’t mind,” Liz said. “You don’t even have to ask.”

“Sure,” I said. “Just give me a heads up and I’ll try to clear my schedule for the time.”

We spent a bit more time talking before turning in. Ikki would be here in the morning, and I was excited to finally make some progress on my temporal magic.