It took us nearly two hours, but eventually, the shop was clean. Agnes seemed to know with uncanny accuracy when we’d missed even the smallest patches of dust.

The old woman, of course, would never do anything so helpful as tell us where it was, just telling us that we’d missed a spot.

It was slow, humiliating work, but when I finished, Kene was still bent over the potion, studying it and giving it the odd swirl, a look of interest on their face.

“Can you check out the mana sources and –”

“No,” Agnes said. “Wait until the alchemist is done, then we’ll see.”

It grated on me, but I took a seat on the floor with Dusk and dozed off. The work had been menial, but tiring, and I was more than ready to nap.

I was finally woken by Kene saying that they were done, and the popping of Agnes’ bones as she rose from her rocking chair. She walked over to the potion, which was currently a shade of lilac.

“It should be lavender colored, not lilac,” the old woman sniffed.

“No it shouldn’t,” Kene said. “It would only be lavender if you were using fresh lungoak leaves, but you used dried ones. That makes it lilac.”

A smile flickered across Agnes’ face for a moment before it was gone.

“Why didn’t you condense it into a pill?” she asked. “People like pills. They’re easier to take than a liquid supplement.”

“It would have lost more than half its potency,” Kene said. “If you want to burn that much power to make things slightly easier, you can. But you want an alchemist to help you, not a mindless construct.”

Agnes squinted at them, then picked up a wooden spoon from the side of the cauldron and smacked it. The liquid within began to boil abruptly, then shot out in a stream, flowing into ten lined up mason jars on the back counter.

“You didn’t bottle it,” she said. “Next time, don’t make that mistake. But fine, one month. One eighty silver a day.”

“Deal,” Kene said, shaking her hand, and she turned to us.

“Fine, let’s see what you’ve got. The items you want me to identify first.”

Dusk leapt onto the counter and pushed out the pearl of clouds that she’d found, while Kene placed down the quartz orb with shifting mists.

Agnes picked up the pearl first, and I felt knowledge mana play between her fingers.

Wait, was that how she’d found dust in her shop? That… Made too much sense, actually. She must be a life and knowledge mage.

“This is an immortal-cloud pearl,” she said. “Don’t get too excited. It won’t make you immortal. But it’s referring to an old myth that immortals were able to ride on clouds. It can modify an existing flight spell to produce a cloud of mana and energy under your feet, sharply reducing the amount of power it takes to hover. Might not be as good as spellbinding a flight spell, but it’ll keep you ahead of most who don’t dedicate multiple support spells to flight.”

Dusk let out a mouselike squeak of excitement and dove for the treasure, swallowing it in a single gulp. The mana surged through her body, and she passed out, so I snatched her out of the air and put her in my pocket. Agnes didn’t even blink, moving onto the orb of shifting mists that Kene had gathered.

“This is a tribulation-stone,” she said. “If you take it after a new ascension, no more than a month or so later, it will increase the thickness of the mists in your new power. Makes them harder to push back, but when you do push them back, the mana the cleared area releases will flow through your whole mana-garden, making it denser. Not quite as much as a full ascension, but still a considerable amount.”

“Take it,” Kene said, pushing it at me. “You’re going to be the main combat mage for the sepulcher, more than likely. You–”

“No,” I cut them off, refusing to pick the sphere up. “You were forced to expend so many of the treasures on your tattoos. I got to invest it all in my foundation. My power’s already much denser than yours. This will improve yours.”

Kene grumbled, but didn’t protest, and I pulled out the bag of assorted mana sources and natural treasures from Dusk’s bag, then poked around inside of them.

Any of the treasures that could be used for life, death, time, space, solar, or that I thought would be suitable for Dusk were left out, as well as the knowledge and mental treasures, since I hadn’t gone through them to check if they were useful for the Runelight Lens. It left me with a couple jars filled with swirling white goop that felt like creation mana, a fat acorn that crackled with lightning, and a handful of assorted mana sources.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Here,” I said, pushing them forward. “What’s this worth?”

She examined it, then picked up the jars of goop, opened one, sniffed it, and put it down.

“I’ll offer you five and a half thousand for the lot,” she said.

“They’re worth at least three times that!” Kene protested. “The amount of pills you can make with those mana sources alone is worth four. With the shift-plasma and the lightning-acorn?”

“There’s been a big influx of just about every kind of mana source and in the cities, so the prices for all of these have dropped,” Agnes said. “And as you so astutely point out, the mana sources need to be processed before they can be made into anything useful. I can’t sell anything but the plasma and acorn as is.”

“Primes,” I cursed under my breath. I hadn’t really been thinking about the fact the Idyll-Flume would impact the market, even though I knew that it would. I’d kind of just assumed that a tiny town like this wouldn’t see the inflation, but of course they would. I’d bet that at least one of the people at the beastgate had been in the Idyll-Flume too.

“Four is my final offer,” Agnes said. “Try and barter, and I’ll throw you out.”

With how curmudgeonly the old woman was, I didn’t doubt she would.

I exchanged a glance with Kene, who pressed their lips together, but nodded. Agnes counted out several shiny gold coins, and then swept the items into a spatial ring.

Kene and I split it three ways, with one third going to Dusk, one third to Kene, and one to me. I then set aside ten percent of it for Orykson, as our contract stipulated, and was left with sixteen hundred and fifty silver.

It was a lot of silver, but it also wasn’t a lot, and I felt a little disappointed at how little cash the Idyll-Flume had generated for us.

Then again, maybe I was being greedy. I’d pulled out several good quality plants, increased my power by a massive amount, gained the alter-truffles and a petrified omnieye egg, and a growth item. Each of those was worth quite a bit of money – especially the runelight lens. I just wasn’t willing to sell them.

With our new riches, we headed back to the general goods store and purchased some clothes. Spending more than six hundred silver on cold weather clothing felt absurdly wasteful, but I was also going to be spending a month or so on a trail in the frigid cold.

Our shopping also revealed how the locals traversed the ice. It wasn’t some magical spell or powerful adaptations to the environment… it was a pair of ice cleats. The firm metal dug into the ice, and while it definitely took a bit of getting used to, once we’d mastered the art of moving around with them, it made things far easier.

I placed a spatial anchor and kissed Kene goodbye when we returned to the inn, then began following the path out of town that led to the trailhead. In the summer months, it was one of their biggest tourist attractions, but in the winter it was closed off for everything but the trial trail.

The hike out had me passing several of the temporal tortoises again, and I wondered if I might be better suited to learn their spell. It seemed to store their mana in the thick crystal of their shells… I didn’t have a shell, though. Would it store it in my bones? My teeth? Nails?

I didn’t know, but I resolved to try and catch one of the tortoises later, so I could examine the magic around its shell and write down the spell array.

“Beautiful creatures, aren’t they?” came a voice from the snow off to the size. The voice was deep and rumbly, with a strength that spoke of crushing mountains and glaciers underfoot. I studied the forest where it came from, and a moment later, an absolutely enormous tortoise stepped into view. It was almost the size of a house, with each of its legs larger than my entire body. Its head was the size of a horse, and its eyes – larger than my spread hand – stared down at me.

“They are,” I agreed. “You would be Edgar, I presume?”

“Indeed,” the tortoise – Edgar – said. “What were you thinking about?”

“I’m a beast mage of sorts,” I said. “I’m sure you can tell. I’m not exactly veiling myself.”

Edgar nodded very slowly.

“I also have temporal mana, though,” I said. “I was thinking about trying to catch one to get a good look at its shell and the array, then letting it go.”

Edgar let out a roar. For a moment, I braced for an attack, but the turtle’s body was trembling in a…

He was laughing at me!

“You’re welcome to try,” the huge tortoise finally said. “You may find them harder to catch than they seem. I am glad that you weren’t trying to poach them for their shells – you would be surprised. About half the beast mages I meet have a deep respect for nature. The other half care only for what they can gain from it. Ah, but here I am, rambling on like an old man. You are here for the trial trail, then?”

“Yes,” I said. “And for what it’s worth, I like to think I respect nature for both. It’s beautiful, and shouldn’t be torn down for resources. But it also produces miracles, and those can help people and save lives. It’s all a balance.”

“Well said, child. Now come,” Edgar responded. “This is not the place for such a discussion, nor for a talk about the rules of the beastgate.”

He started moving then, and despite his bulk, and being, well, a tortoise, and thus not the fastest thing in the world, he was so large that he was actually able to keep pace with me. He might even have been moving faster than me.

When we arrived at the Beastgate, I had to admit that it was aptly named.

The entire gate, which was currently closed, was carved and painted with various animals. I saw a dragon spiraling along one of its planks, battling a hawk. Another plank held a depiction of an arctic fox locked in battle with a fire fox. Yet another showed a massive aura bear defending its territory against a school of freezing bladefish.

Edgar settled down in front of the gate, folding his legs beneath him and resting on his massive shell. This was the first time I’d ever gotten a good look at it, and my eyes widened as I realized that Edgar’s entire shell was a single massive hudau heritage stone.

No wonder his veils were so strong. I’d have strong veils too, if people would want to hunt me down to kill me for my guts.

“Yes,” he said. “This is why I watch over the temporal tortoises. Their shells store temporal mana very well, and fetch a high price. We have a certain degree of kinship. Now, what was your name child?”

“Malachi,” I said.

“Malachi,” Edgar said. “I see. Now, tell me Malachi, what do you think of Dragontooth?”