Two weeks after I’d awoken in the guest bedroom at the edge of the Beastgate Trial Trail, Kene and I stood back in Puinen, where I was chopping firewood for Agnes, the old alchemist who was using Kene as hired help.

There was still a long way to go before I’d be able to even think about tapping into my spirit or mana-garden – six more weeks, at the very least – but my physical strength had partially recovered. My full-gate spells operated continuously, even with me refusing to touch my spirit, and they, alongside a copious amount of healing magic, and a strict potion regime, had allowed my body to recover to slightly above the strength of a normal person’s.

More importantly for me, the alter-truffles had pushed my transition along nicely. I was a bit stockier, a bit better muscled, and my voice was deeper, alongside other things.

I hadn't recovered fully in my body – I shouldn’t get into a fight anytime soon – but I was strong enough to help out in the village.

And so, I was chopping firewood for Agnes.

Dusk floated up to me on her cloud, staring into my eyes, which shimmered with prismatic color, and had spinning constellations drifting through them, like the eyes of a dragon had been combined with a rainbow.

Dusk let out a warning sound, telling me that I had better not be pushing myself too hard.

“I’m not, Dusk,” I said, unable to stop the smile from spreading across my face. She whistled that was good, because if I was, she would have to crush me like an ant.

I raised an eyebrow in amusement.

“You can try it,” I told her. Dusk had grown a bit, that was true, but she still wasn’t even six inches tall.

In response, Dusk made a river-rushing noise, warning me that she would kick me inside my ear holes. On that horrifying mental image, she spun her cloud around and zoomed away, presumably going to find Kene and bug them about something.

I appreciated the spirit’s worry, in its own way. There was more to it than lay on the surface, and I’d let her ease it however she needed to.

Not that I could say I wasn’t worried either. The damage to my mana channels from when the strain had melted them into my body looked like pulsing veins of ink, visible through the skin of my chest, practically soaking in the light to the point that in a white shirt – which I was delighted to feel comfortable wearing now – the black color was visible.

That was… concerning. The worst part was that I didn’t even know how it would impact my ability to cast – not until I was able to reach into my spirit for power again.

Almost as bad, I couldn’t tell what powers the shimmering tattoo on my left bicep was going to do. It was shaped in a twisting arcane sigil that vaguely resembled the long, thin claws of some sort of ancient dragon, made of an ink that was all at once ink-black, shimmering with an entire rainbow worth of color, and the colorless gray power of Edgar’s mana. I’d thrown my soul and body through a gauntlet for power that this mark would grant me, and I had no idea what it had actually done.

The worried thoughts caused my tail to lash in irritation, and I had a moment of strange cognitive dissonance, because it felt natural, as if it had been there for a long time… which of course, it hadn’t been. That was what caused the dissonance. When I didn’t think, it felt completely normal, but when I thought, I realized how strange it was.

It was shaped vaguely like a fox tail, and not completely substantial, rather being made of a mixture of magical energy and illusions that half reminded me of Lesser Image Recall or Material Echo, and it seemed to create faint ripples in the air when it lashed. That, at the very least, was a blessing – the insubstantial nature of the tail had meant that there wasn’t a need for all of my clothes to be adjusted.

Though I wasn’t sure insubstantial was the right word for it. The tail was partly energy, and while it passed through matter, I did receive some feedback from it, just not as much, or the same sort, that I would receive from my normal senses.

If I could have changed anything about the tail, it would have been the color scheme. The body of the tail was a shimmering mixture of a yellow so deep it was almost orange, the vibrant green of fresh ivy, a rich sapphire blue, and a deep purple that reminded me of the interior of a plum, while the tip of the tail was made of a grayish energy that trailed off into smoke and rippling, half-dreamt images.

Though the tail, heart, and eyes were the most obvious changes, there were others that wouldn’t appear at a casual inspection, and while I wasn’t completely contented with my appearance, it was better than I thought I’d be able to get, especially so soon.

If I’d followed the plan I had so long ago, working in magical beast containment or soothing spirits, I wouldn’t even be halfway through the first rounds of spells and alchemical treatments, with months before even the first surgery could be done. I was already well ahead of that.

I took just a moment to smile to myself, and let myself be grateful for just how fortunate I had been, then returned to chopping.

Once I’d gathered up enough firewood, I tossed it into Dusk’s realm. That, at the very least, I could manage without straining my spirit. Ever since Dusk had incorporated me into her dominion, and I’d bonded to her, it had been easier than ever to connect to her realm, to a frankly absurd degree.

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If anything, the readings that Kene, their grandmother, Agnes, and Edgar had taken suggested that the more I worked with Dusk, the faster my spirit would recover, like a restoration therapist helping to repair the function to a freshly-healed knee.

More importantly to me right now, the connection let me cheat on my chores, and not strain my body.

I walked over to the shed where Agnes kept her firewood, then waved my hand and called the wood back into physical reality. I couldn’t manipulate the physical location it appeared it well, so I still had to order it and stack it in the right orientation, but at least I hadn’t had to lug all the wood across the yard and to the shed.

Once it was stacked, I stepped into Dusk’s realm, then out next to where she was standing. Our deeper connection had removed the need for me to force open a portal whenever I wanted to enter or leave Dusk’s astral plane. We suspected that it would remove some of the distance limitations, too, but we hadn’t tested it yet.

I was bound to the plane, bound to her, taking a guardian role of some sort. I didn’t fully understand the implications of that, but I did still enjoy certain privileges.

Kene jumped as I stepped out of the air next to them, then shook their head.

“That’s spooky, Mal,” they said, while Siobhan, the fox-bird creature – wait, no, Octavian had identified it as an enfield – yipped out a merry greeting to me.

“I’ve been able to teleport for a long time,” I pointed out, bending down to give Siobhan some well-deserved head scritches. “Not exactly fair for it to only be now that you’re spooked.”

“Yeah, but when you teleport it feels…”

They pantomimed something with their hands, as if that would explain it.

It did not, so I stared at them, and they let out a sigh.

“It’s just different,” they said, exasperated. “This is less fair.”

Dusk raven-cawed her disagreement – this was so much more fair and logical than me being able to zip around like a blink fox. At least with this, she was able to follow it.

“Monsters, the both of you,” Kene said, throwing their hands in the air in mock-anger, though they couldn’t hide their grin. “It’s not fair in the slightest if you gang up on me.”

“I don’t like fair fights,” I said. “I tend to lose those.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Kene said. “You still win. You just take horrible damage from overexerting yourself. I mean there was the fight against Mallory, though I wasn’t there for that.”

“No, I–” I started to say, but Kene pushed on, a malicious smirk on their face.

“Then, of course, there was the fight with the war root. Perhaps the single most prominent example of what I’m talking about.”

“Okay, but–”

“Then in the Idyll-Flume, you–”

“Mercy!”

“And with the revenant king–”

“Stoppppppppp,” I pleaded, and Kene relented, laughing. I started to laugh too, but was cut off in a flash of darkness.

“Whom do we mock?” the witch asked, stepping out of Kene’s shadow. “I enjoy mocking. Mockingbirds, much less so. They’re bullies, even if they do sing pretty songs. Like sirens, but human-fish, instead of birds, like sirens are.”

I was… fairly confident she’d gotten that the wrong way around, and also that the average mockingbird wasn’t magical in the slightest.

Then again, she was a witch who had been practicing her art since before my grandfather had been born, so maybe I was the one in the wrong.

No, that was ridiculous. It was just Kene’s grandmother being her strange self.

“Nobody, grandmother,” Kene said, and the witch squinted, staring at them. They turned to stare at me next, then stared at Dusk, who waved happily to the old crone.

“Hmph,” the old woman said. “Well, I’m going to cook dinner. Malachi, you are going to cook with me. Not cook me, nor be cooked. Though if you had to cook a person, marinate them for a…”

“No, you’re not,” Agnes called out, interrupting the witch’s rambling. Agnes was also an old woman, and was one of the strongest people in the town of Puinen, their local healer and alchemist. She stepped out from the back rooms, where she kept the stock of herbs and dried monster parts that she used for alchemy.

“Why not?” the witch whined, sounding like a child more than an old woman.

“You can use your own kitchen,” Agnes said. “The last time you used mine, you caused the soup to explode.”

“It looked at me funny,” the witch sniffed. “It deserved it.”

Agnes thumped her cane on the ground.

“I said no.”

The witch sighed and melted into the shadows of the floor. I glanced at Kene.

“Think she’s going to stick around with us, or return home?”

“I don’t know,” they said. “They are worried about us both. Much like after my accident, they’ll stick around as long as they can, but then leave.”

I nodded – I had more to talk with her about.

But not now.

I glanced at Agnes, who squinted at me.

“Have you been taking your iron and vitamin supplements?” she demanded.

Kene winced, and I took their hand. I knew that they still felt guilty about that.

It was, perhaps, the most surprising thing to come out of my treatment for nearly dying under the weight of too many powerful soul bonds. Since my body shared some of the pressure, the old healer had used her knowledge mana to cast a variety of body scans that were more comprehensive than the Analyze Life spell, including ones to look at aspects outside of life.

What she had found was that I was moderately to severely lacking in iron. My diet had only made it worse – we weren’t poor, but as a part of owning a bakery, I’d had a diet heavy in bread, and I hadn’t really started picking up cooking until I was in my teens. Even then, it had been for flavor, not nutrition.

The month of nutrition potions on the Beastgate Trial Trail was perhaps the first time ever that I’d had remotely close to enough iron in my diet. But it went beyond diet – my blood itself wasn’t producing enough iron.

It was more than just not getting enough in my diet – my nutrition had only exacerbated an underlying problem. I’d likely been lacking in the needed iron in my blood for years. Agnes speculated that it had started when I was twelve or thirteen.

Kene, Meadow, and even Orykson had never caught it because while it was in blood, it didn’t show up under the Analyze Life spell, and none of them had ever used the larger medical ritual spells to look deeper. Why would they? I seemed healthy.

Well, Orykson’s spirit might have caught it, but then again, it wasn’t human, or even humanoid, like Dusk. It might have not realized it was an issue.

With the use of my full-gate spells, the lack of iron would slowly be rectified as I built telluric energy up, but even then, it would be a slow road.

For now, it meant supplements.

In hindsight, it had been obvious. The frequent fainting, the absurd paleness, and my constantly cold hands and feet?

Ah, well. Such was the way of things.

“Well?” Agnes snapped, and I blinked, realizing I’d been lost in thought.

“He has,” Kene said, stepping in for me. “I’ve been making sure of it.”

“Good,” Agness sniffed. “Malachi, you’re welcome to cook dinner, now that the old bat is gone.”

She said that like I could say no, but acting as her private chef was part of how I earned my keep, so I nodded my agreement, kissed Kene on the cheek, patted Dusk on the head, and went to go make something.

Hopefully without blowing something up.