It took us a while to hash out the details, but I eventually wound up trading away some of my marigolds, feverfew, vigor-camas, and transivy for a cutting of the firecreep and spiritbalm.

Kene and I headed back to our rooms before I opened the portal to Dusk’s realm, and we planted the two cuttings quickly. Dusk came around to help, using some of her innate command over the space to ease the process, then all three of us poured mana into the plants to grow them.

Growing a brief, temporary addition to a plant was easy enough, but permanently enhancing or growing it took a lot more mana, and by the time we were done with both plants, I was glad we didn’t have a training session that day.

“Well done,” I told Dusk, then wandered over to the pixies, to check their thoughts on the new plant, which did indeed glow.

I didn’t check their satisfaction off my mental list – one plant didn’t mean that there was actually much more light in the realm itself.

“Did you want to try and make some alchemy bombs?” Kene asked, and I glanced at them.

“Do you have the saltpeter and all that? I don’t.”

“Oh yeah. I sell loads of the stuff, since it’s great for preserving meat, and can be used to enhance some preservation spells. The alcohol too – I have cleaning alcohol. And the charcoal’s easy enough to make. Honestly, the biggest issue is going to be storage, since I only brought a few dozen vials.”

I squinted at Kene, but Dusk beat me to the punch, saying it sounded like they had way too much experience with making alchemy bombs. Kene just shrugged and looked slightly embarrassed.

“Oh come on, there has to be some sort of story there,” I said.

“It’s nothing, really,” Kene said. When Dusk and I kept staring him down, he let out a sigh and rubbed one of his tattoos, which was currently shaped like a dog with a witches’ hat on. “Fine, fine. When I was fifteen or so, I used to build pipe bombs and stuff. It wasn’t ever anything really dangerous. My grandmother… Well. She thought it was hilarious, and helped me construct stronger, alchemically enhanced ones.”

“You were a little punk,” I cackled, and they shoved their hat firmer on their head, then walked away.

“I’m going to set the cauldron and stuff up,” they said as they walked away. “Pluck four flower buds from the firecreep.”

After doing as they’d said, I followed them into my cottage. Before the Idyll-Flume, they’d brought a lot of their alchemy supplies into my alchemy room. Not their cauldron or anything of that sort, but other supplies, certainly.

“We’re making four, so that each of us can have two,” Kene said, as they poured the alcohol into the larger cauldron. “Go ahead and remove all of the unneeded arrays from the flowers? We just need the ones that make it explode and stuff. Dusk, since your mana is goint to be better at it than the cauldron’s function, will you get rid of some of the excess arrays in the saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal? They’re labeled in my kit.”

Dusk peeped her agreement and I held the flowers up before empowering my analysis spells and studying it.

Stripping it of the arrays that the plant used for growth and flowering was easy, but the harder part was figuring out which parts of the plant were responsible for explosions, and not for the production of nutrients from solar energy.

I erred on the side of caution, since more solar power shouldn’t hurt the explosion, if I understood it correctly.

As Dusk worked through her list of components, Kene would pour it into the cauldron and add some managrass, and I was left standing idly by.

“Crush the flowers into a fine paste,” Kene instructed me. “It should help make the arrays diffuse better.”

I grabbed a mortar and pestle and did as they said. As Kene finished putting the last of the ingredients that Dusk had prepared into the cauldron, there was a slight puff and thick black smoke swirled off the top. Kene leaned out of the way of it and shook his head.

“It’s not toxic, but it smells nasty. Flowers, please?”

I handed him the mortar and pestle, and he slowly dumped the ground flowers into the cauldron.

The liquid, which up to this point, had been a dark gray color, began to smoke again, and then turned obsidian black. Kene tossed in a handful of slowleaf and several sections of bindingroot.

They scooped the sludge off the top, tossing it to Dusk, who absorbed it. I glanced at her oddly, but she didn’t feel the need to elaborate.

Before I could ask, though, Kene took a step back from the cauldron and snapped their fingers. A small fire lit itself, and they tossed it into the cauldron, which suddenly blazed with a bright red fire and enough light that it stung my eyes.

Kene held out their fingers and began to flow ungated mana towards the cauldron.

“You two do the same, cut it off as soon as the fire goes out,” they instructed, and so I did. The fire seemed to eat up my ungated mana hungrily, as if it was oil, rather than mana.

The cauldron burned brightly for a full ten seconds, then the light vanished. Kene took a few steps over to the cauldron, and I did the same.

At the bottom of the thick iron belly, there was a thin layer of an orange-red potion that glowed softly.

“We’ll let it cool, then bottle it up,” Kene said. “It just takes a touch of ungated mana to activate it, and it should have about a three second delay before it goes off.”

I glanced skeptically at the small amount of liquid. There was far less than a healing potion.

“That’s really four doses?”

“Absolutely,” Kene said.

“Well, you are the bomb expert,” I teased, and they just groaned.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

“Shut up, Mal.”

When we left Dusk’s realm, there was a pair of cats fighting on the windowsill, and I was surprised to recognize both of them. One of them was the cat that liked to show up when Ikki was around, the battered gray tomcat. The other one I’d seen earlier on the ship, a sleek black cat that was much younger.

When they saw us, the black cat turned and scampered away, and the gray tomcat looked immensely proud of itself. It lay down on the sunniest spot of the windowsill and closed its eyes.

I walked over and spoke softly to it.

“Hey kitty. Did you follow me here?”

The cat licked its paw and ignored me, and I held out my hand to let it sniff me, but it just ignored me even firmer.

“Did you pick up another familiar?” Kene asked. “Primes, you really are a beast mage.”

“I don’t know,” I said, examining the cat. Apparently, it had enough of my examination, and it stood off and leapt out the window, turning a corner and vanishing from sight. “It’s shown up around Ikki before.”

“That’s your time magic teacher, right?” Kene asked, and I nodded. “Maybe he set it to watch over you in the competition?”

“Maybe,” I said. “It didn’t feel magical, though.”

Kene shrugged, and I put it out of my mind. Then a look of excitement came over Kene’s eyes.

“Dusk!” they said.

She tilted her head and peeped.

“I didn't get sick in your realm!” they said. “Even though my stomach aide should have worn off. Can I stay there?”

Dusk nodded her agreement and opened a portal, and Kene slipped back inside. I scratched my chin.

“I feel dumb,” I told her. “I didn’t even think about that.”

Dusk shrugged and patted my cheek affectionately, saying she didn’t mind having a stupid brother.

“Hey! You didn’t think of it either!”

Dusk just giggled and climbed down into my pocket.

Over the next several days, Kene’s status improved, since he only had to be on the ship for brief periods of times.

Kene wasn’t the only one to improve, though. With Liz, Travis, Kene, and I all working together, our team tactics imrpoved slowly but surely. I didn’t think we’d be up to beating Kamal and his well oiled machine of a team, but we definitely would be able to put up a much better fight than we would have last time.

Kene had a chance to show off the two new supporting spells he’d grabbed in Dragontooth, and while he wasn’t able to master them or anything of that sort, he still got some time practicing with both of them and working out how well they interacted with the group. One of them was an area blessing spell that helped enhance all his allies within the area. It didn’t shine at any one particular boost, but it made everything from thoughts, to movement, to spellcasting a little bit easier. The other one was a circle of light that could surround a target, and would provide them with some degree of resistance to external magic by purging it away.

We spent a bit of time with Octavian as well, trading some of our stories for some of his, and we even let him enter Dusk, though she used a strange sort of veil to make it seem as if she only was about a half-acre, rather than five.

Still, it impressed Octavian, and he even remarked that maybe he should try and find some sort of dimensional toad, rather than the petalroot salamander he was planning to look for during the competition. That caught Kene’s attention, and he later brought it up to me.

“I may try to look for a petalroot salamander too, if they can be found in there.”

“Sure, I’m happy to help you look, but what are they?”

“They’ve got great mana for potion creation, lots of life and creation, but the ability to interact with multiple other materials, like minerals. It could be a good familiar for me to bond to my life gate.”

I could absolutely see that, so I promised to help Kene look for one.

When we finally docked at the island, the staff let us slowly swamp our way off the boat. Kene and I just waited until the crowd was mostly gone. Unfortunately, several others had the same idea, and it we got caught in a second wave of people disembarking. Kene held my hand tightly so we didn’t get caught in the crowd.

The island itself was fairly large, easily large enough to have fit a big sports stadium on it, but not a whole lot else. I wasn’t exactly sure how many acres it was, but it was an order of magnitude bigger than Dusk’s realm, maybe more.

Even still, there were thousands of people, and while it wasn’t crowded by any stretch, there were definitely a lot of people around.

The island was shaped strangely, and looked almost as if it was artifical, at least to me. The island was square, and a quick pulse of my Sense Directionality spell confirmed that each of the corners was aligned perfectly with the cardinal diections. At each of those points, a small mountain – or maybe a large hill – stood, all of then equal in height, creating an interior valley where we stood.

On one of the hills, staff from the boat were using spells and some enchanted items to begin constructing the food resupplying station, as well as a low, squat building that had the crest of the nation of Delitone on it – the auction hall, maybe? I figured that would be inside, but maybe not.

I felt a strong pulse of tempest mana – third gate, but with an absurd amount being poured into the spell – and a voice swept through the valley.

“Attention everyone! Based on previous records, we believe the portal should appear at noon, at the base of the northernmost mountain. Please assemble into an orderly line so we can let you all single file!”