“Primes,” Mallory said, shrugging. “Why not? I was preparing for the third floor when the sky exploded, so I figure there has to be a chance at a growth item.”

“And it’s not like we can’t pick up a few things on the way,” I said, nodding. “My mana senses are pretty good. I’ll spread them out around us.”

Araceli let out a bark-like noise, wagging her tail and leaping forwards, ready to move.

I did as I’d said as the two of us started heading inwards, toward the center of the island, and we snagged a few mana sources on the way there. They were nothing special, but they were all strong – the weakest was third gate.

When we were about halfway there, though, something caught my interest – a plant that sparked with solar, death, and desolation mana. There was more, too, tempest and lunar, but I thought that might be something else. I waved Mallory over, and started wandering through the tall grasses until I realized that the power was coming from a seemingly normal looking tree.

It was a willow, with long, drooping leaves, and as Mallory and I stood under its sweeping branches, I felt like a dryad prince. Mallory glanced around and then raised an eyebrow.

“What?” she asked.

“The tree is weird, can’t you sense it?” I said.

“Sort of?” she responded. “But no, not really. I don’t spend a lot of time sensing trees.”

I was really tempted to make a joke about werewolves sniffing fire hydrants instead, but that was both too mean, and too much of a joke based on a stereotype about a group I wasn’t.

Besides, I did want to keep her working with me. Poking at her probably wasn’t the best idea.

“Let’s take a step back and I’ll test it out,” I said instead.

Once we were a safe distance away, I connected an Enhance Plant Life spell to the trunk, then flooded the willow tree with mana. I was pretty confident it wasn’t going to burst into flames, but you never knew.

I sent power coursing through the tree until it began to bloom, then the death mana and desolation set in. As the flowers began to wither, they popped into small, candle-sized flames, before sending spirals of ash and slightly on-fire helicopter seeds swirling around, through the air.

I stopped sending mana into the plant as I watched the dancing gray and red light of the tree swirling out and around us. Mallory let out a dreamy sigh, and spoke under her breath. I didn’t think she intended for me to hear it, and indeed, if I hadn’t ingrained the Vampiric Senses spell, I don’t think I would have.

“Pretty. I wish I could bring Qwin to see this.”

I smiled at that, wishing Kene and I could do the same.

Then again, why couldn’t we? The tree wasn’t going to be an offensive part of my arsenal, but I could keep it in Dusk’s realm for as long as she’d allow me.

I walked under the tree and put my hand on it, sucking it into Dusk’s realm. With the distance between us, it took minutes, but then with a ripple, the entire tree vanished.

I spread my senses around me, but I could still feel the other sources of mana underneath me.

I reached my hand down onto the earth and poked around until I felt it – there were thin strands of mycelium under the ground. I poured life and death mana into them until mushrooms bloomed above ground. Thin tendrils of mist spun out of its gills, and I grinned.

That would pair perfectly with the mist-larkspur, and with the two together, I’d bet that I could create some powerful mist potions…

I spent a while slipping the mycelial network into Dusk’s realm as well, though Mallory started giving me an annoyed glances, and Aracelli curled up for a quick nap.

“Ready to move on?” she asked, tapping her foot, and I nodded, dusting off my suit pants and heading back towards the center.

A few teams approached us, but when we didn’t stop to fight them over anything, we were allowed to head on without much of a fuss. People were being opportunistic right now, not looking for senseless fights.

Thinking about fights, I wondered how the assassin was doing. I did hope she was alright. She may have been sent to mess with me, but that didn’t mean I wanted her dead.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Facing criminal charges for attempted murder? I could accept that.

But not dead.

“Who sent you after me?” I asked Mallory, curious. She glanced over and made a ‘hm?’ noise, so I repeated my question.

“Agent Dhar of the Nightwatch,” she said.

“Wait, what?” I said. “Really?”

I didn’t think about the Darkwatch much. Why would I? What did the national intelligence and military officers mean to me? Even to Ed, they were just the big shots that got called in when something really crazy happened.

“Yeah, he said your mentor was nuts, and that you were showing early warning signs of going the same way,” she said. “I got asked because of my mom’s job, I was about the same age, and had already met you.”

I jolted. I’d forgotten Mallory’s mom was a Cromwell. It was… strange… to me. I was suddenly making friends in high places.

“Do you think they’d hire an assassin to kill me?” I asked. “I left Orykson behind, I’m working with Meadow now, a lovely older lady.”

“Depends on when the trail was laid,” Mallory said. “But you really have an assassin after you? Orykson… I know the government hates him, but I didn’t think it was that bad.”

“How much do you know about Orykson?” I asked, curious to get the perspective of the daughter of a senator and powerful werewolf clan head.

“I asked my mom and dad about them,” she said. “My dad, head of the Emsley Clan, knew about him, but only sort of. The Emsley’s get drop in’s from the Avatar of Sin from time to time, and the Avatar doesn’t seem to like Orykson very much, but he does respect him.”

“Interesting,” I said. That must have been the connection between her and Riley – both of them were under the Avatar’s nominal banner.

“Mom on the other hand… He apparently holds some sort of really high-up darkwatch position,” Mallory continued.

“Wait, but–”

“That doesn’t make sense?” Mallory said. “I know. Based on what mom could tell, he almost never actually does anything, just sits around to act as a counterweight to other nation’s Occultists. Some of the Darkwatch apparently resent him for that, but he’s too useful to get rid of. I’m guessing it was that resentful faction that sent me after you, and sent the assassin.”

“He’s strong enough to do that?” I asked.

“He’s a true Occultist, not a false one,” Mallory said. “There are, what, a couple thousand occultists on the global scale? Mossford University has three, if I recall correctly. But all of them used keys. He didn’t. You’ve seen the difference it makes between Arcanists, haven’t you? It’s worse with Occultists.”

I slowly nodded my agreement. That did make sense, in a twisty sort of way.

Bah, politics. I didn’t want to deal with them, and this whole conversation just reaffirmed my choice to work with Meadow.

When we got to the crumbling statues, there was a small line queueing up to enter from those who’d flown in and made better time than us. We entered the line, and before long, stepped through the gate and into the trial.

Spatial mana flickered around us, and we appeared in a wide-open space, with an illusion of…

Not the sage.

The image that appeared was a man, holding a wrench in one hand, and a wand in the other. He had bronze goggles on his head that reminded me of the kind that mass production heating and welding spellcasters used, but they weren’t covering his eyes, instead resting in his hair.

His hair was a tangled red bird's nest, not from natural curls, but rather from just being a mess. The red was a strange color, too, looking more like his hair was spun from a ruby or garnet than that he was a natural redhead.

His eyes were multicolored – not in the heterochromia sense, but in the sense that they kept changing color with every second, shifting from yellow to blue to red to green to purple and more besides.

He was short too, about my height, but stockier than I was, and he wore old, tattered work clothes that would have looked at home on the guy who came to the house to fix the mana conductivity lines that kept the lights.

He looked young, but not young-young, maybe twenty-seven or twenty-eight.

Aracelli leaned forwards and gave the illusion a sniff. After determining that it was indeed an illusion, she promptly slumped against my leg and started ignoring it.

“Ah, sorry,” the projection said. “Didn’t mean to ruin your trial like that. Oh! Guess I should introduce myself. I’m a recorded illusion from the Craftsman.”

I blinked.

This was the Craftsman? I’d been imagining…

I wasn’t sure what I’d been imagining, but the Craftsman was apparently capable of dismissing powerful mages like Ikki and Orykson. Shouldn’t he look more imposing?

“If you’re curious what’s going on,” the recording continued. “I reformatted the power of the Idyll-Flume, in order to allow the sage’s familiars, who’d been trapped inside, to escape. That broke the astral plane, but I made some temporary ones with the orb that was used. Anyways! The trials should operate pretty much the same, illusions and all that. The sage was decent with his illusion work. Make sure you leave within five days, though, past that, it’ll be hard to escape. I left portals to the other planes and the outside somewhere – it’s hard to guess, I made the orb about seven years before the next Idyll-Flume is supposed to happen, so… Oh! You should know…”

The recording paused and rubbed at one eye, leaving an oil stain on his skin underneath.

“You should know that I forcibly added a retreat clause. Kind of dumb the sage didn’t have one. To leave the trial, just say ‘corn needs popping’. Anyways, I think that should cover it? Sorry again for the inconvenience. I’ve got food on, bye.”

The illusion wandered away, and after a second, it flickered out.

“What?” Mallory said.

“Yeah…” I said.

A moment later, the illusion of the sage appeared, and told us to prepare for combat, and that group versus group was one of the truest, and so on and so forth. Frankly, I started ignoring him halfway through.

I dropped into a fighting stance, and Mallory did the same. This was going to be my first real test of powers since I’d drank all of the deep mana, and I was excited.

Across the room, a trio of monsters appeared. One of them was kind of cute, resembling a giant eyeball with bat-like, red wings. The second was a spinning vortex of acid, leaking desolation and lunar mana, clearly some form of elemental. The third was a large, bulky glass creature that floated through the air, likely an elemental as well.

I wished I’d had Dusk here, both for her combat power and her spiritual powers. Her company too, but I’d been missing that since I woke up on the beach.

“Begin!” the sage cried, and we let fly with our spells.