The following morning, I awoke in the bed, with Kene’s arm draped across my chest and Dusk curled up on my stomach, and let myself just bask in the mundanity for a while.

Eventually, though, we got up and moving, drank another nutrition potion, and checked through a tiny portal.

To my relief, the giant falcon seemed to have given up its hunt in search of less annoying prey, and Dusk was able to float us down to the forest floor. We veiled ourselves and moved quickly until we were a mile or so out – which should have been outside of the hawk’s territory – before we dropped our veils, spread our mana senses, and picked up the pace.

As we traveled, I picked up on something at the very edge of my mana senses, and we made our way there.

Inside a clearing of withered, dead grass, there was a sharp crystal, jutting out of the earth. It felt strange to my mana senses. It radiated death mana in an incredibly complex array that I couldn’t make heads or tails of.

It was absurdly powerful, at least fifth or sixth gate, and I wasn’t entirely unwilling to say that it wasn’t higher, though I couldn’t quite tell. It wasn’t as strong as Orykson’s seventh gate mana had been, but it felt… similar.

But the grass around here was completely dead, and I couldn’t pick out anything nearby. I should have felt something – even death is full of blooming life, carrion crows, fungi, ants, something.

But… nothing.

I looked at Kene for an explanation.

“It’s an ascending-death crystal,” they said, sounding… I wasn’t sure. “You know things like death-keys, that let you unlock your next gate instantly and without effort, but then block your future ascensions and weaken the next gate?”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ve run into false ascensions a few times.”

“Yeah… well this isn’t that. If you use it, you’ll ascend all the way up to the strength of the crystal. And you’ll have all of the density and power of a real one too.”

“You wouldn’t sound so complicated about it if it was just good,” I said.

“That’s because it does it by pressuring your body and soul,” they said. “The power will last until it’s all spent. Once it’s gone, your mana will burn itself out, collapsing and failing, and your body will fail. It’s a near-certain death sentence, and even if you don’t die, you’ll have destroyed and corrupted the entire portion of your soul that generates magic.”

“Can anything save you?” I asked.

“Maybe if you got a bunch of occultists working together,” Kene said. “But… If you have a bunch of occultists helping you, do you need one more? There’s a reason animals here haven’t taken it and stay far away.”

I studied the crystal for a long moment, then Dusk spoke up, her wind-in-trees words suggesting that she take the crystal and bury it deep in her realm, in an empty space, far away from anyone or anything that could use it.

A greedy part of me wanted to say no, that we could sell it in the auction.

But could we?

If I sold it, I’d be handing them the tools to an elaborate suicide.

Maybe they’d use it well, and die a hero. Maybe they’d use it for a petty reason, like killing a powerful ex that had gotten back at them?

Could I judge?

Could I not?

If I left it here, would I be culpable for whoever found it and what they did with it?

Kene shifted uncomfortably, then looked at Dusk.

“I can’t ask you to do that,” they said, and she slapped their arm gently, rebutting that she’d offered.

“I think…” I said slowly. “It’s for the best.”

Dusk agreed, and she carefully absorbed the crystal into her realm.

The process took several long minutes, and she walked over to me and climbed up my leg and up onto my shoulder, then sat down.

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We turned and left, flying for a bit, since the crystal had likely taken a lot of the power in the local area, and if we were going to find something good, we needed to be out of its range.

As the sun began to burn brighter overhead, Kene’s divination spells picked up on pureleaf, a rare material that could help his solar healing spells, so we detoured to pick it.

“I’m going to throw an invisibility spell over myself and try and pick it,” Kene told me. “Can you veil yourself and watch, then play distraction if anything objects?”

“Of course,” I agreed, spinning my mana in a cyclone to hide my presence. Dusk did the same, and I watched as Kene closed their eyes and faded.

First they started as translucent, then a warped shimmer, then they finally were gone entirely.

I watched anxiously as they slipped through the trees, headed towards a small shrub that had a single, extremely large leaf, easily the size of my entire arm.

His invisibility spell flickered as he cut away at the leaf, and then dropped when he picked the plant up.

As if drawn to it, a huge boar roared out of the underbrush, and I teleported right in front of it, three overcharged layers of Fungal Lock exploding out of one hand, my staff appearing in the other. Dusk thrust her hand out in the same instant, unleashing her hand spell, and between the pair of binding spells and my aura, the boar was sucked down.

It was third gate, but weak, nowhere near the level that the serpent or even the fox-creature was.

Kene cursed and walked over, watching the trapped boar, and handed Dusk the leaf to put into storage, then the two of us flew off.

We paused to gather a few more materials, but I called us to a halt when I felt something else strange.

Not something that triggered my mana-senses.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

Something that didn’t trigger my senses, not at all. An absolute dead spot, with no decomposing matter for my deathsense to pick up, roots for my lifesense to trace, and even nullifying my normally perfect spatialsense.

We made our way in that direction, and paused when it came into view.

Sitting in the middle of the forest was a large archway, with a pair of metal doors set into it. The doors were black, with bright white flecks scattered throughout, unlike any metal I’d ever seen.

Now that I was this close, I was able to sense a tiny leak of spatial mana flowing from the space between the doors, but Kene had found something far more pertinent – a stone engraved with instructions.

“Congratulations, intrepid explorers! You have ventured deeper into the wilderness than most of those who explore the Idyll-Flume, and have stumbled across one of my trials. For you see, while my tower is meant to test the power and skill of mages within, in order to find my true successor, blindly rushing towards a goal will most often result in failure,” Kene read, then walked around to the other side of the rock where more words were engraved.

“As such, I have scattered seven trials in the deep wilderness of the Idyll-Flume. Each one completed bears its own considerable reward, as well as a marker which serves as a seventh of the key that will allow you to unlock the eighth level of the tower. Good luck! Sincerely, the Sevenfold Celestial Sage.”

“Didn’t Liz say that the highest she’d ever heard of anyone climbing was the fourth floor?” I asked dryly. It was a rhetorical question – I knew she had.

“I think the sage may have made his trial way too hard,” Kene agreed. “But even if we don’t get any use out of the key fragment, we could use whatever reward it has.”

“True enough,” I said, glancing around, then placed one hand on the door. Kene put their hand on the other, and we pushed it open together, stepping into the hidden trial.

I appeared in a stone room, with an old man standing across from me. He had a long, white beard, blue eyes that could stare into my soul, and traditional robes and a hat not unlike the one that Kene wore.

“Sage?” I asked, and the man’s eyes twinkled mischeviously.

“You could say something like that, though it would be more accurate to say I’m a recording of the Sevenfold Celestial Sage.”

“I assume that this is the first part of the trial,” I said. “So what do I have to do?”

“Anyone with true skill should be able to complete the three great disciplines,” the sage said, stepping aside and sweeping his hand out. “Why don’t you begin?”

Four doors appeared in the wall, one marked with a potion, one with a wand, and one with a castle.

The fourth door was blank, with three chains barring access.

I groaned. This had to be about alchemy, enchanting, and wards.

Well, there was no sense in complaining. May as well get the hardest one knocked out of the way.

I opened the wand door and strode inside.

The room was decorated with a low desk, heaps of solidified mana, carving tools, and a long wooden wand that was unadorned. Opposite of the desk was a training dummy.

The door thumped shut behind me, and I heard the sage’s voice echoing out from everywhere.

“You have half an hour to construct a wand that will strike the training dummy and activate it. Begin.”

I started sweating. This reminded me far too much of school, of needing to do things on an arbitrary time limit.

I was very glad that I had my medication, because without it…

I walked over to the dummy and poked my mana senses around in it. There was a lot of ungated mana doing… something… but I could also feel physical mana.

Hmm… It might be time for some creative thinking.

I grabbed a chunk of physical mana and smashed it into the dummy, hoping that would be enough to get it to work.

Nope.

I took a few steps back and threw it, but that still didn’t activate it.

I bit my lip and thought of what I could reasonably do. Much like wardcrafting and alchemy, a substantial portion of enchanting was carried on ungated mana, so…

I picked up the wand, pointed it at the target, then expelled ungated mana at the target while I threw the physical mana with my other hand.

I was, essentially, trying to trick the enchantments that made up the trial. After all, there was no way every single trial could have the worldspirit watching over it. So if I could find a gap where the spells thought I had enchanted something, because it was giving the right mana composition, I should, in theory, be able to pass.

It took me a few tries to get it lined up, but eventually, the ungated and physical mana hit the target at the same time.

It lit up, and the door swung open.

I let out a sigh of relief and headed to the ward trial.