Edgar’s lab, as it turned out, was located underneath one of the mountains, through a wall that he used some complex spell to unlock. I glanced around, interested to see what he’d have. Meadow’s small hut in Mossford just had a cauldron over the fire, but Orykson’s… wherever he brought me… seemed to have endless rooms, and I had no doubt there was a lab tucked away in there. The glimpses of the Craftsman’s lab that I’d seen had been a chaotic mess.

Edgar’s lab, as was perhaps to be expected, was incredibly naturalistic.

The room was lit by scattered, glowing crystals – not glimmerstone, but some sort of faint blue-green light that washed over everything and made me feel like I was under the ocean in one of the commercials for a Redsummer Isles cruise. Various bright pink mushrooms sprouted from rocks, with broad, thin caps like oyster mushrooms, and they let off traces of rose colored light, as well as plenty of warmth, to the point my jacket was actually making me feel a touch stifled.

In the center of the lab, a large spring babbled away, drawing up a faintly glowing water that felt strongly of solar mana, tuned towards the purification and cleansing that I’d seen Kene use to burn away infection after a healing, and helped repair my spiritual damage after the War Root fight.

Along the right side of the room there were large, long tables, with neatly organized piles of materials, all sorts of alchemical and enchanting-related instruments I couldn’t put a name to, and what looked like a straight up, normal tattoo gun.

On the left side of the room was a collection of books, trinkets, scrolls, diagrams for all sorts of different spells and enchantments, and other research materials.

Finally, in the back of the room, there was a large vein of ore. It was surrounded by dozens, maybe even a hundred, of layers of wards and enchantments that pulsed with all sorts of power, but with Edgar’s grayish, colorless power most of all. The ore itself seemed to be slowly dripping ink, which the enchantments were siphoning away, storing in spinning, three dimensional circles of spellcraft.

But it was… strange. Not right, somehow. For every blob of ink that the enchantments siphoned into storage, almost all of it seemed to simply… fade out of existence. It left only the smallest amounts, not even enough to be called a drop of ink.

I withdrew the strange stone from my pocket, the one that I’d taken from the Coblynau as a reward for saving their village, and squeezed it. Ink dripped from the stone, and the enchantments in the room caught it, and it began to flow towards one of the containment spells. But, much as with the ink produced by the ore vein, the ink dissipated.

A rumble rolled through the room, and then another, and then another. I glanced at Edgar, who had shrunk down to about the size of a person in order to fit more comfortably in the lab, only to see him laughing so hard that it was causing his shell to quiver.

“What?!” I asked defensively. Why was he laughing at me? What exactly was this stone?

Edgar raised one of his legs and used it to wipe at his eyes.

“Do you remember what exactly a Beastmark is?” Edgar asked.

“I remember you saying something about it being halfway to a growth item and a natural treasure,” I said hesitantly.

“Partially,” Edgar said. “I said that it was an artificial improvement upon a natural treasure. That makes it halfway to a growth item, that is true, in that it is bonded to your spirit, and it is able to increase its mana density, if not grow with you.”

He gestured at my hand.

“What you have there is the original natural treasure upon which I improve to create the beastmarks.”

I turned the stone over in my hand and frowned.

“That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “It feels like your mana, or like a Hudau Heritage Stone.”

“Ah,” Edgar said, pausing to take a sip out of the fountain. “I think you may have a misunderstanding of what a Hudau Heritage Stone is. Or, for that matter, what my mana is.”

“Kene told me that it was all fourteen types of mana in perfect balance,” I said.

“Not untrue, simply… incomplete. It is not a pie with fourteen slices, each slice an aspect of mana.” Edgar lectured. “A fireball can be made with both wholly desolation mana, and wholly solar mana, no? Analyze Space is both completely knowledge, and it is completely spatial.”

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“Sure,” I agreed. “Then… Your mana is completely… everything?”

“Yes,” Edgar agreed. “It is all fourteen flavors made into a single pie, not fourteen slices. Though it does have limits – I would be unable to cast fireball, for example. Its mana is far too simple and pure. Conversely, many beast spells are open for me to use, especially those with more complex mana types, such as dragons. There are other limits too, primarily that the more of a certain type of spell I have in a gate, the closer my mana becomes to that particular flavor. If I were to take only forest dragon spells, it would not take me long before my mana was simply forest dragon mana.”

I took a moment to consider the ramifications for that. No wonder Edgar spoke about beast mage attitudes so intimately – he was, in essence, the perfect beast mage. It also explained some of how the beastmarks worked. If the Hudau Heritage Stones were the power condensed into a mana advancement booster, the inkstone must be one that shifted to the affinity of a beast.

“Wow,” was all I was able to say, and Edgar let out a low chuckle.

“There are many things in this world, Malachi, many of them stranger and stronger than I. One day, you will look back, and realize I was not so impressive. But I thank you for the compliment.”

The tortoise shifted its feet in a way that somehow conveyed the impression of a mad alchemist rubbing his hands together.

“Now. Let’s get to work on your beastmark. As you received a C, the mark that you would have gotten would have been able to store a single spell of each first, second, and third gate, and each one would be able to become mastered. You would have needed to either choose the spell from the selection I have prepared…”

He bobbed his head over to the bookshelves.

“Or else would have needed to be able to flow the mark’s power through a creature casting the spell that you wished to copy.”

“But I have an inkstone,” I said, holding it up again, which… probably wasn’t needed, but oh well.

“Indeed. And there are some interesting possibilities that I can work with there, but less than you may have hoped,” Edgar said.

“Why?” I asked. I knew that the odds that I’d be able to shift from getting a C all the way to an A, or even beyond, was definitely unlikely, but I also didn’t want to let him waste the material for no reason, especially if Kene or Dusk could use it.

“Your spirit-body gestalt,” Edgar responded. “You have burdened it with a powerful link as an anchor and guardian of an astral plane, then increased the strain even further with your growth item. If your soul and body weren’t interconnected more deeply than a normal humans, you would already be at the limit of what you could accept. As is, I am severely curtailed in the power I can add, since I can’t detonate the stone.”

My mind flashed back to the revenant, detonating the magical mineral in the pickaxe. That had produced an absurdly massive explosion, even for a fourth gate mage, more like what I’d expect to see from the fury of an Arcanist.

“Let’s… go over options,” I said, but I felt an idea forming in the back of my mind.

“The simplest thing I can do would be a straightforward upgrade of the mark. I could likely enforce its highest tiers, so that it could copy a fourth gate spell, in addition to the first through third.”

That wasn’t bad, but nor was it so amazing that I immediately wanted to jump on it, so I nodded for him to go on.

“I can also enforce it from the bottom up,” Edgar said. “I could likely allow it to take on two extra first gate spells and an extra second gate spell.”

I made a humming noise. That wasn’t bad at all, but it also wasn’t enough for me to immediately want it.

“Finally, I could use it to reinforce the power of the cores within the mark,” Edgar said. “That would grant no additional spells, but the mark draws on your energy for fuel, and then supplements the casting with the mana component, which it generates. Since you’ve decided to walk a beastmage’s path, you would likely find the mark’s mana component to be more limiting than your body’s reserves in the long run. This would also allow the mastered spells to reach a sort of... pseudo-ingrained state. They wouldn't become truly ingrained, with unique effects, but each could eventually increase their efficiency as your energy adapts them.”

I tapped my chin. It wasn’t exactly scruffy, but I’d gotten far enough along that the month of trail hiking had given me a fair bit of peach fuzz.

“And what if you did decide to detonate the stone, and worked all of the power into the mark?” I asked.

“You die. Likely after a week, perhaps two. A month, if fortune truly favors you,” Edgar said. “Your spirit would start to slowly split and peel open, like water that has become too great for a dam to hold back. At first, it would be thin cracks that leaked mana, but before long, it would have torn you apart entirely.”

“Even with my full-gate spells?” I asked.

“They, as well as the strengthening you attained in the idyll-flume, are the only reason that you would last as long as a week,” Edgar said gravely.

My mind started churning, coming up with ideas.

“I’ve heard that if a person creates a spellbinder bond with a growth item, it removes the spiritual pressure. It makes it weightless, so to speak,” I said. “What if you detonated it, and I immediately advanced and bonded to the mark?”

Edgar was quiet for a moment, then another.

“It should, in theory, work,” he finally said. “But I won’t pretend to be the pinnacle of soul-engineering, with a complete understanding of the mechanics behind a spellbinder bond. If anyone claims that, they’re lying or deluding themselves. It would be risky – if you failed to advance, it would kill you. Even if you did, I would be unable to predict the exact effects, since it would be compounding two dangerous forces. Not only that, but you would certainly need to bond it to your death mana. That is most closely tied to the spirit, and has the Beast Mage’s Soul spell.”

“But it would be strong,” I said. “Right?”

Edgar let out a snort.

“Children, always obsessed with strength, rushing from one power to another. Yes, it would be strong. But before you give your answer – think about it. Is the risk truly worth the potential reward? Bonding the mark normally, if you chose to do so, could still give excellent results, without the risk. Think. Contemplate. Give me your answer only then.”