I considered it for several long moments, then I opened my eyes and drew out the quarterstaff.

It had been worth trying, but my mage’s staff had smoothly integrated into my power far easier, and had mitigated my weakness in a way that I felt fit my style better.

Maybe I could have worked with the staff, learning speed and enhancement spells, and become a fearsome up-close combatant, but… I wasn’t that, and I wasn’t sure that interested me. Magic was most fun when it was, well, magical. Not punchy.

I cleared out some space, then drew out the staff ritual that I’d used once before, this time placing the quarterstaff in the center.

A moment later, the quarterstaff collapsed, and the materials I’d used to create it spun out through the ritual of their own accord. I’d need to update it once I got the Beast Mage’s Soul ingrained, but for now, it was alright.

I took a deep breath and spread my mana through the staff. Once again, I felt the tremendous vibrations, as if I was shaking the word itself, shaking it to its very foundations.

I held on until I felt the slight tingling of the edges of my soul, then released the power.

My eyes snapped open, and I beheld my new staff.

Like meadow had said, the staff would likely have changed, and indeed it had. It was now made of a wood that had been stained a navy blue, with runes carved throughout. The runes glowed in a rainbow of colors, evershifting.

The staff was shorter, though, easier to move and carry, and slightly denser, more durable, likely influenced by the snapping experience I’d had.

The most prominent change was at the staff’s tip, though.

Instead of a delicate flower sitting in a pool of amber, the tip of the staff was a swirl of a silver metal and gold metal that blended into a beautiful electrum color. There, on top, sat the temporal basin that Ed and I had created with Meadow’s help.

The threads of gold were shaped like long trails of roots and briars, while the silver was shaped like raven feathers and skulls.

The very bottom of the staff had a firm, yellow band where the bottom part of a cane would be, and there was a faint engraving of a ring of hourglasses in it.

As I removed the staff from the circle, I immediately felt the humming as my mana began to swirl in a more rapid pattern, the sharp motions of the Depths of Starry Night technique enhanced, the staff generating a steady trickle of mana that flowed into my spirit.

Curiously, the winds of fortune reacted as well. They were always there now, a steady, constant part of my spirit, circling my ungated mana, but they picked up their pace ever so slightly.

I drew the staff into me and felt it click neatly into place in my spirit.

All was right with the world once more.

Of course, that feeling of peace and tranquility didn’t last forever, but the feeling of… rightness… in my spirit remained, even as I got back to work.

By the time I’d finished working on trimming away excess power from my trees, it was getting later in the day, so Kene and I stopped for the night. I used some of my freshly expelled trimmings and transivy to weave together a spatial tripwire around Dusk’s portal.

Unlikely though I thought it was, I wanted to be prepared for if the serpent came back, and there was also the more likely threat of whatever happened to live in this area.

Kene and I made an easy dinner from our rations, and fell into a fitful rest. The ward triggered a few times throughout the night, though each time Dusk checked, it was an animal just moving through the area.

The following morning, Kene and I broke into our stash of nutrition potions. We’d moved through our stock of food at an alarming rate, and wanted to mitigate the damage, since it would be several days more before the first resupply and the auction.

I debated draining the trees and blood carnations for mana to run through the Beast Mage’s Soul. I had sprouted new red star saplings and blood carnations in the spring section, after all, and though they were growing, I could nip off a bit of extra just fine.

In the end, I decided against it. The fight against the serpent had shown me just how powerful some of the creatures in the Idyll-Flume were, after all. I’d had to drain them for mana in the fight against the serpent. What if I needed to drain them again?

No, the couple of hours that it would shave off a weeklong timeline wouldn’t be enough for it to be worth it.

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Once Kene and Dusk were ready, we set off.

“What’s wrong?” Kene asked, watching me.

“Nothing,” I replied. “Just… Contemplative. Thinking about the future.”

Kene took my hand and squeezed, then we took out our brooms and started flying deeper into the plane of the Idyll-Flume.

We spent half the day just flying over the tree line, our mana senses spread out over the area, stopping every once in a while to pick up anything that felt particularly interesting, but we only had one major setback.

There was a sharp cae, and I looked up to see a bird swooping down on me. It was a massive hawk, easily the size of a horse, with fourth gate mana that felt like wind and swords rolling off of it, and too much intelligence hiding in its eyes.

I didn’t hesitate. I’d fought a war root, which was a plant that was about fourth gate in power, but that had snapped my staff, strained my spirit to the point of leaving me powerless for weeks, and relied on me making a risky play with Burn Future.

Instead, Dusk and I moved in unison. I opened a portal to her realm right in front of me and flew in, while she used a leaping spell to land on Kene’s broom and do the same.

A giant talon punched against one of the portals, and I could see visible cracks spreading across the air. A sharp claw punched through the defenses, and I heard Dusk cry out in pain as she tried to slam the portals shut.

The fox-bird came running at that, leaping into the air and biting its Bluelight Fangs into the legs of the bird, but the bird’s wind armor was strong, and they didn’t pierce deeply.

There was a sharp spike of pain from Dusk, intruding into my mind, and then the portal snapped closed. I caught Dusk as she fell out of the air in her own realm, and tried to pass mana to her, but nothing happened – her mana was full. It wasn’t mana that she’d burnt, it was just raw effort and mental strain that caused her to pass out.

I looked at Kene, whose hands were already glowing with golden solar mana. They placed their hand on her, and closed their eyes.

“No physical or spiritual damage,” they said. “She’s just exhausted.”

“Is there anything you can do?” I asked anxiously.

“I can make a relaxant,” they said. “It’s not some magical cure all… Say, do you still have the draw-roses? Those could help.”

“I do,” I said, nodding, and he went off to brew, while I held Dusk.

A while passed, though I didn’t know how long, and Kene came back with the potion, slowly dripping it onto her.

She let out a small peep of thanks, and Kene smiled. I brought her into the cabin and put her down in my bed, then glanced at Kene.

“How good are you at veils?” I asked.

“I’m okay,” they said, shrugging.

“Can you cast with a veil up?” I asked.

“No.”

I nodded, biting my lip. A part of me was regretting having worked so much on my mana senses, instead of veils, especially with Meadow’s training, but that wasn’t logical – my mana senses had led us to several useful powers and treasures so far, and I likely wouldn’t have found them without working on my senses.

Still, a part of me couldn’t help but regret it. If I had good enough veils, I could Foxstep down, then flee, all without alerting the hawk.

As it was, I was forced to wait. Since pacing wasn’t productive, Kene and I started sketching practice.

I threw myself into practicing my immovable lock spell, while peeking out of a small portal every couple of minutes.

Annoyingly, the hawk was quite determined, and even after repeated checking, the bird was still there.

The one upside was that I finally felt the familiar cracking sensation in my spirit as the tree that was Immovable Lock bloomed in my spatial and temporal gates.

I snorted. It was about time. I’d done a ton of work on the spell with Ikki, working out a pattern of movement, and work with Orykson figuring out the spell.

Then another sensation struck me as the spell spread roots deep into my mana, and I sucked in a deep breath as it ingrained, empowering all of my spells that blended spatial and temporal mana.

I barely noticed the effect, because I felt like slapping myself.

Orykson had drilled it into me – mastery was just getting your spirit used to shaping mana in that pattern to the point of it becoming completely reflexive. Understanding and use was what moved the spell from mastered to ingrained.

Meadow’s training style was much more freeform and self-guided, and as such, I’d fallen way behind on sketching practice. I’d used my spells plenty, even while having to sketch them, but I hadn’t actually put in a ton of time sketching.

Orykson’s method had rushed me to master the spells, and then I’d tried to cram understanding in after the fact.

Meadow’s method had been the opposite – I’d come to understand many of my spells, long before I’d come to cast them.

In fact, I wondered if riving Burn Future had actually worked against me in some regards – If I’d sketched it out the long, normal way, I suspected I would have been able to quickly pass it into its ingrained state.

Of course, if I hadn’t rived it, I would have quite possibly died, or at least suffered horrific injuries before Meadow arrived, on top of the already awful injuries I’d sustained to my spirit.

But as I thought over the two teaching methods, I found myself resolving to meet them in the middle. I wanted – needed – to sketch my spells more, to not lag so much on that aspect of my practice. But I didn’t think cramming it into my spirit as quick as I could was the best solution.

A happy medium was best for me, and there was a flicker in my spirit at that, but it was gone before I could even interpret it.

Maybe the bird attack had been something of a blessing in disguise.

I heard Kene let out a suppressed squeal of excitement, and I turned to look at him. He flashed me a shamed smile.

“Heard that, did you?”

“You being excited like a kid?” I teased. “Yep.”

They rolled their eyes and a wave of golden light swept out of them – their blessing spell.

I started laughing at that, and Kene looked slightly offended.

“Come on,” they said.

“No, not you,” I said between gasps of air. “You were adorable. I’m laughing because I was just thinking about this being a blessing in disguise, and you immediately ingrained a blessing spell.”

Kene rolled their eyes, but I saw them chuckle slightly.

It took almost another full hour before Dusk joined us, and we spent the night practicing our spells. Dusk mastered her spell that conjured a bunch of hands of earth, and I worked on Vampiric Senses, since I’d worked with that one so long it was getting close to being ingrained. The stronger night vision and smell that it gave me was definitely nice.

Kene and I then cuddled around the fire while I passed the rest of my mana through Beast Mage’s Soul, and I wound up falling asleep on them.