The following week was surprisingly busy for us. Olive completed her checks on Dusk and me, and after allowing our spirits to be scanned and copied into the wards as – still painful for me, but no longer to the point of sending my body into a total collapse – we were finally able to pass through the thick warding into the back rooms of the sanctuary.
It was rather different than the upper, touristy levels. There were endless, long hallways that ran underneath the habitats, and as I passed through, I could see why the sanctuary was so selective about who was allowed back here.
The hallways contained dozens, maybe hundreds, of spellwork nodes, plinths with solidified mana inset into them, swirling cores of spellwork, and boxes of natural treasures and mana sources in circles of script that funneled their power out into the needed environment. In addition to that, the ceiling was covered in trap doors that led upwards into the various habitats.
In short, the entire thing was so complex and expensive that if I’d had ill intent, it would have been easy to steal several thousand silver of various items and book it. If I’d had even more ill intent, it would have been easy for me to slip into the sanctuary above and steal eggs or even live specimens.
“If you’re interested in working with us, we can always use some more people who we can trust to help take care of the animals,” Thea said as she walked down the hall with Dusk and me.
Olive, to her left, grunted.
“I suppose I can allow that,” she said.
“Please, the boy’s fine, Olive. You just don’t like foxes after the–” Kater started to say.
“Don’t you dare!” Olive cut her off.
I raised my eyebrows, but lowered them quickly when Olive turned her head around to glare at me.
Dusk found the whole thing endlessly amusing, and cheered out her laughter.
We stopped in the depths of the cavern habitat, where a clearly newly constructed branch of the tunnel lay. Kater waved her hand, and the trapdoor flipped open. A rush of heat exploded through the tunnel, and Dusk peeped out, thrusting her hands out. There was a sudden burst of cold as she channeled power from one of the winter creatures inside her, and then a moment later, the temperature around us stabilized.
“Up there, inside the magma pool,” Thea said.
Dusk nodded, and I climbed up the ladder and into the cavern. It was… well, it was a cave. The only special thing about it was the extreme pressure beating down on my aura pin, and the heat being staved off by Dusk.
And the magma pool.
In the center of the room was a basin that almost resembled the healing bath that Kene’s grandmother had made Dusk create, or like a crater left by a meteor impact. Running all around the lip was a ring of enchantment, and the basin was filled with brightly glowing magma.
Dusk waved her hand out, and I felt her dominion concentrate as she pulled the eggs out of her and into reality, alongside the massive magma core that she’d stolen from the Idyll-Flume. They settled into the pool, then there was a flare of reddish-white light as energy pulsed off the core and into the enchantments. They seemed to fuse, and the temperature and pressure in the room began to rise rapidly.
Dusk shouted at me, sounding like the burbling of a river, telling us to get out before the core advanced. My eyes widened, and I sprinted for the hatch, jumping down without using the rungs of the ladder. Dusk’s magic swept out and caught us from falling, and then the hatch slammed shut a moment later.
There was a pulse of power through the hallway as the magma core shuddered, then began to shed power like nothing I’d felt before.
Judging the relative strength of the energetic cores of natural phenomena is difficult. A storm might have an absurd amount of power, but it’s diffuse, shifted through a massive area. It’s nothing like measuring against a mage, not really.
But I would have contested that the magma core was putting off enough power to rival an angry arcanist. Maybe even a false occultist, like Edgar, but I wasn’t sure.
“What happened?” Olive shouted at me, green light flaring around her arm, while next to her, Thea cackled like a maniac. I glanced at Thea.
“What happened?” I asked her.
“We’re trying to figure that out,” Kater said. “You put the eggs in, then the enchantments started going crazy!”
Thea’s cackling laughter grew louder as she slapped her hand against the wall.
“It worked!” she said, wiping her eyes a moment later. “Oh, that’s wonderful. Olive, dear, do you remember how the eggs were?”
“There was a ma…” Olive said, then her sentence trailed off. “It connected to the enchantments?”
“I do good work,” Thea said proudly. “Though I think we’re going to need to build some harvesting enchantments in, because it’s shedding power. It might actually be able to help the mana budget some…”
She turned and started walking away, humming a song to herself. I thought I caught the word saucepan, but I wasn’t entirely sure.
Kater relaxed, and the light vanished from Olive’s arm. They both shook their heads as their wife wandered down the hallway.
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“I wish she’d have told us,” Kater muttered.
“I wish I’d thought of it,” Olive said. “Alright kid, we’ve got work to do. If you want to help out with feeding the creatures and keeping the ecosystems balanced, go talk to the desks near the stairs.”
I nodded my agreement, but left the sanctuary, wanting to talk to Kene first about it. They had no problem with it, especially when I mentioned that the sanctuary paid a salary of twenty-seven silver an hour.
We started to settle into a routine after that. I followed around one of the employees who had the authentication to pass through the wards and learned the ropes of manipulating the environments, the schedule on which food was brought out for different areas, and what amount of fighting was considered natural, and when it was needed for us to step in and put a stop to it.
I found that I enjoyed the subtle alterations of the environment. I didn’t have the magic to do it, but Dusk’s worldspirit dominion allowed her to, and we worked together, with her providing the power, while I guided her shaping to make sure energy was flowing smoothly through the environment, and that there weren’t any large gaps that needed to be worked on.
In a way, it reminded me of alchemy, but on a scale that far exceeded anything that could be done in a cauldron. Thea said it had principles similar to enchanting, but it also had some commonality with warding, particularly the techniques that Orykson had taught me to smooth out the ripples in space that spatial magic created.
He’d commented that I picked up on that sort of large scale formation better than I did on classical wardcrafting, and I thought I understood why that was now. Altering the environment to produce the right flows of magic definitely took a lot of focus and concentration, but it was different from standing in one place, etching lines into the earth, or connecting delicate points together. It was more like gardening or cooking. There was a science to it, but it was an art as well.
A few of the animals in the preserve seemed to take a dislike to me – there was one specific bamboo estragon who really didn’t like me, for whatever reason – but most of them seemed quite happy about it.
“It’s a quality of beastmages,” Octavian said one day, as we were putting out large chunks of – in my professional opinion, poorly butchered – meat for the hydra and wyvern to snack on.
“Hm?”
“Our aura,” Octavian said. “People with a lot of beast and plant magic tend to feel natural, like they belong. Some animals see it as a threat or predator, but most don’t.”
I agreed – Orykson had said something similar, after all.
I tried to approach the Kirins at one point, but while neither of them fled from me, I didn’t get that strange sense of connection that I had the first time I’d seen them. They were powerful and majestic, though, and I caught the rainbow one trailing me through the habitats of the sanctuary a few times.
I wasn’t sure what, if anything, was going on with that, but I let it be, not wanting to provoke them.
The draigg-blaidd seemed to get weirdly excited around me whenever I approached, and we played fetch with them a few times, as if they were dogs, rather than the dragon-wolf-creatures that they were. Octavian warned me that the adults could be dangerous, and too always keep my aura pin on.
He was almost proven right when on the one day I realized I'd forgotten the pin, one of the draigg-blaidd bounded up, slamming a headbutt into me with its not-inconsiderable strength, and I got something of a surprise when it didn’t shatter my ribs, despite the flare of pain it sent through me. I staggered, but I with the energy flowing through my bone and muscle, I was left with nothing but a large purple bruise.
I wasn’t strong enough to match something draconic, but after all the spellcasting I’d done, the refinement of the alter-truffles, and breaking into third gate, I was far stronger than I’d expected to be.
I even ventured into the bone fields a few times with Kater, wearing heavy, protective enchanting gear. We were checked thoroughly by a mage each time we came out, as were the plants we brought out. Kene also checked me over when I got home, just in case.
There were some interesting and powerful plants growing there – some I had, like Stonesprout, but others like Mindwarp Dandelions or Stillfield Asters. I was actually allowed to take a sample of third gate Stillfield Asters – they shed pollen that gradually increased the gravity as it accumulated, which could be used in several telluric-heavy potions, as well as in sleeping potions and strength potions.
Between it, the Muddy-Armroot, and the Opalescent Snowdrops, I was excited to see what new potions I could cook up once I was able to cast magic again.
The hatching of the estragon eggs came almost exactly as Thea had predicted, with the first one hatching the night between the eighth and ninth day. Octavian, his moms, his bonds, Kene, and myself all donned heat and pressure resistant enchanted bracelets that Thea had made, then waited in the cave for them to emerge
We watched as the brown-red-white shells of the magma began to crack and splinter, and one slipped out. It was long and thin, like the more serpentine breeds of dragon tended to be, with gray-brown scales and horns of white hot power. When it moved, glowing red magmatic light leaked from between its scales.
It turned and leapt into the air, pouncing onto the shell it had hatched from and crunching into it. It slowly ate its shell, and I was amazed that it could fit the entire thing in its small, slender body.
Midway through the feast, it was joined by a larger, more snail-like estragon, with a thicker, heavy plated shell, and a crusty helmet of rock. It also turned and started devouring its own shell, slurping it up and dissolving it.
When the terragon broke free from its shell, the energy in the room trembled. The terragon had massive, black and red wings, thick plate-like scales that leaked red and blue light, eyes that resembled white-burning fire, and horns of stone that curled to a deadly sharp point.
The four estragon who had already hatched all seemed to grow excited in the presence of the terragon, swarming around it. It reached out, and for a horrified moment, I thought that it was going to bite one of the mantle estragon.
Instead, it gently lifted it, like a cat lifting a kitten, and moved it to the side, then walked over towards us, the other estragon following curiously. It eyed us, staring down Araceli in particular. Araceli leapt to her feet, and the two terragon circled one another for a long second. I held my breath as I watched, unsure what would happen.
On one hand, Araceli was older, and had her bond to Octavian.
On the other hand, we were in a highly advantageous area for the mantle terragon, the breed was renowned for having exceptional power, and both were still in the third gate. Plus, Araceli’s bond might actually not have been the most advantageous thing – she had hatched early, after all, and her development had been stifled because of it.
The two circled each other twice, and then the mantle tarragon started to gather light in the back of its throat.
Araceli unleashed her dragonfear. Power rippled through the cave, striking down on the mantle terragon, who took two staggering steps back. The light in its mouth faded, it dipped its head to her, and then paced back to the basin with the magma core, curling up around it like a cat. The estragon clambered up onto its wings and stomach, but it closed its eyes, content to sleep.
All the estragon but one, that is. The noodley estragon who was the first I’d seen hatch wandered to the egg of the terragon and started to eat it.
Araceli paced back to Octavian and curled up, slumping against his leg. Octavian reached down and patted her gently.
No estragon came over and imprinted on us, all of them seeming to find far more interested in the terragon, but it was still a beautiful sight to watch. For all of their power, they seemed… happy. And watching them emerge from their eggs one by one, I felt happy too.