The valley was swarming with people. Some were leaving their own trials, emerging from the portal behind me, while others seemed to have been set up for some time, with tents and even roughly constructed earthwork buildings.

The food resupplying depot that the ship unloaded with was swarming with people, and as I channeled my mana through Surveyor’s Eye, I was eventually able to pick out Octavian, and made my way through the crowds and over to the lanky man.

As I approached, though, I noted that there was something off about the man. He seemed strained, stressed somewhat, and as my mana senses settled on him…

When I’d first met the man, there had been two powerful spiritual bonds on him. Then, he’d found the salamander, there had been a third.

Now there were only two again. The third felt… Frayed. Like a rope that had been cut, and now the fibers were slowly unraveling.

“Oh no,” I said immediately as I approached him. “What happened?”

Before he could respond, Araceli leapt from my side and tackle-hugged her dad in the chest, knocking him to the ground entirely. Octavian let out a yelp as he toppled over, slamming into the ground. She curled up and started licking his face with her long serpentine tongue. Octavian lay there for a second, scratching between her horns, before he looked up at me.

“Hey Mal,” he said, sounding tired. I extended a hand to help him rise to his feet, and he took it, gently shifting Araceli off of his body.

“Are you okay?” I asked, and Octavian made a so-so gesture with his hand.

“We shouldn’t talk here,” was all he said. “Though first, is Dusk safe? And Kene?”

“She is the last I checked on her,” I said. “She’s still in there, working on some sort of project. Kene…”

I hesitated for a moment.

“I think Kene is okay, but I’m not entirely sure,” I said finally.

“Ah,” Octavian said, before pointing to one of the stone buildings that was being used as a combination of offices and healing station. “Let’s talk more in there.”

We headed in, and into a small conference room that was unoccupied. Octavian cast a few spells, and I threw a line of the spatial tripwire temporary wards over the hall to know if anyone was approaching, then turned back to Octavian.

“What happened?” I asked him, and he slumped into a chair.

“Were you attacked when the sky broke?” he asked, and I knit my eyebrows together, nodding.

“I was,” I said. “Why do you ask?”

“So was I,” Octavian said. “As was Veronica and her partners. Her boyfriend actually died in the attack. And Saladin.”

“Veronica?” I asked, my heart aching, but also… A little distant. I had no idea who Veronica was. “And Salidain?”

“Ah, she was another warlock. Different legacy than mine, hers was more human oriented… And Saladin was a warlock with a weapon oriented legacy. The only other warlock on board the crew ship, at least as far as the paperwork showed, was the one who sacrificed themselves to break the idyll-flume. I think they mistook you for a warlock too, and attacked you. I mean, I mistook you for a warlock when we first met.”

“That’s…” I said before trailing off and shaking my head. “Why? This isn’t some backwater wild village who thinks that all warlocks sacrifice babies to fuel their magic.”

“No,” agreed Octavian. “But… I don’t know. I think maybe they knew that Idyll gave us more attention, and needed to ensure we couldn’t warn her? Maybe their artifact could be messed up by a warlock? It was a warlock who had to use it, after all. Or maybe they feared that we held the attention of one of the unseen who would be able to stop them?”

“Then why not attack earlier?” I asked, then paused. Maybe they had attacked earlier…

“Was your assassin not sent by them?” Octavian asked.

“I… I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t at all. This feels like we’re only seeing the surface, but the lake goes deep.”

“It goes too deep,” Octavian agreed. “I don’t know what’s at the bottom. Just… be careful, alright?”

“You too,” I said. “Was your salamander…?”

Octavian froze, and a deep laugh rumbled out of him. He kept laughing, and laughing, before he finally shook his head.

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“Primes, no. Oh, you meant my spirit when you asked what happened?”

“Yeah..?” I asked, confused.

“I thought you’d heard about my injury,” he said, shaking his head.

“You were injured?!” I demanded. He tapped his chest, just below his heart.

“The arcanist who tried to kill me nearly mannaged it. I’ve been healed… Mostly. But I’ll need a few weeks to recover to combat readiness, and months to fully heal, as long as my moms can provide treatment.”

“I’ll ask Kene if they can do anything,” I said, “and I can give you a few leaves of healer’s heart, too. Your mom should be able to do something with that for the healing.”

“Maybe,” Octavian said after several long moments, before he smiled at me and shook his head. “How do you do it?”

“Do what?” I asked, tilting my head.

“You’re so… Benevolent,” Octavian said.

At his words, I felt something stirring within me. It wasn’t like the truth of mercy, which had nearly forcibly manifested on its own, but the winds of fortune still blew.

Benevolence was a bigger concept than mercy. It could encompass mercy, empathy, or kindness. It could encompass protection, like when I’d saved the kids from the asomatous. It could encompass the constant struggle to do what was right, even if you had to fight for it.

At that thought, another wind kicked up in my spirit, blowing slowly and steadily for a long second before it faded.

I couldn’t manifest the Nascent Truth of Benevolence, not yet. I’d only touched on its edges, on the faint outlines of what could be, what I might be able to do.

“I’m serious,” continued Octavian. “You have mercy for people who try to kill you, but past that, you see that they’re not right, and that they… I don’t know. Need help, I suppose. You give away valuable components – you could get thirty silver a leaf for healer’s heart!”

I actually hadn’t known that, but that wasn’t the point. It was hard to grow, and I only had a limited store of leaves. Even if I spent all day every day tending to this one plant, I’d struggle to procure enough to sell and

“Thank you,” I said, even as the brush of the nascent truth passed. Octavian tilted his head slightly, and I quickly brought us back on topic.

“Your salamander?” I asked.

“Alive and well, but the bond is severed,” Octavian said. “I’m going to need to find something else before I advance to fourth gate, or else I might cause some serious problems within my mana-garden.”

“You can break that sort of bond?” I asked, and Octavian gave me a so-so gesture.

“Spellbinder bonds aren’t normally easy to undo, but my legacy… Changes things some. If the beasts I bond turn out to be poorly suited for me, the bond severs. I can’t do it often, since it does a bit of soul damage, which takes a bit of time to get over.”

“What are you going to look for now?” I asked. “Maybe I can help?”

“I was thinking about that, honestly,” Octavian said. “It was clear I had some talent with alchemy – it’s hard not to when one of your moms is an alchemist – but plant magic didn’t work for me. Maybe I’ll try a Kanko, or look for a Nian. Or perhaps I’ll try something related to wardcrafting. I do like wards.”

“Primes, no, please,” I begged in a joking tone. “Wards are the worst. Literally the worst. Maybe enchantments are worse, actually, though. Wards are the second worst!”

“Oh, in that case, I’m definitely finding a pithos-tortise,” Octavian grinned. “They’re amazing at wards. Or maybe an Alebrije, or an Enfield, like your partner has.”

I smiled, glad to have gotten the man’s spirits up after he’d been in the dumps from his injury. Octavian’s face slowly grew more serious as he turned back to me.

“I’m not going to just let this lie,” he said. “I’m going to take them in, and they’re going to the obsidian crypt house.”

“I don’t think murder is a reasonable response,” I said, and Octavian shook his head, grinning.

“No, not like that. I forget you’re not from Delitone sometimes. The obsidian crypt house is our high security prison.”

“That is a terrible name for a prison, it makes it sounds like a murder house!” I objected.

“It’s a cultural thing,” Octavian said, waving his hand. “A crazy foreigner like you wouldn’t get it.”

He grinned at me, his blue eyes sparkling brightly.

“But in all seriousness,” he continued. “They attacked you and Kene. Your help tracking them down and testifying would be good. They’re arcanists, it won’t be easy or short, but we both can punch above our weight. I think we could do it as we near the peak of third gate.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said. “Vengeance doesn’t hold any special place in my heart, but they do need to serve time for what they did. Speaking of which… Does this side of the portal have any sort of prison?”

“These are better prisons, actually,” Octavian said. “If you can find her, we’ll take her in. Actually…”

He glanced down at Araceli, who had curled around his feet, and whistled. She perked up, rising to her feet and stretching her wings. Roh, the blue will-o-wisp spirit, floated out of Octavian’s shirt, emerging from a thin chain locket that I’d never noticed was there before.

“You two go with Malachi, okay?” he asked them.

“You don’t need to do that,” I objected. “There’s no way I can repa–”

“Oh, quiet you,” he said. “You’ve done plenty already. Plus I’d come myself, but…”

He touched his chest, and then head.

“Not doing so great.”

“Fine, but only if Roh and Araceli don’t mind,” I said.

Roh bobbed through the air over to me, and then bonked me on the forehead, while Araceli rose to her feet and leaned on me, like an affectionate dog.

“They don’t mind,” Octavian said dryly.

“Thank you both,” I said, then nodded to Octavian. “And you too.”

I turned and left the room then, and as soon as I stepped outside, I started to channel my Placid Mind spell, followed by Analyze Life, Analyze Space, and Vampiric Senses.

As my mana senses exploded outward in every direction, I felt the power of Placid Mind increase as well, concentrating the membrane that formed around my mind and speeding how quickly I could sort through the information.

Normally, in such a large crowd, with well over a thousand spread across the small valley, and more people slowly trickling in from the portals, I’d struggle to get much that was meaningful. It would just be a chaotic mix of mana and power. I might have had a lot of skill and power with my mana senses, but at the end of the day, I wasn’t a knowledge mage.

Under the influence of my new growth item and its spells, however, I was able to make better use of the data. Sure, I might not be able to tune it to search for one specific person, but I quickly was able to dismiss anyone without tempest mana, and strong tempest mana at that.

As I made my way towards the strongest tempest mage I could sense, someone who was very nearly on the border of fourth gate, when something passed through the border of my senses. A connection within my mind solidified, one that went past my mind shielding ring and thick membrane.

Dusk was back.