I staggered back into Dusk’s portal and all but collapsed into the ground. I was absolutely exhausted, wrung out like a towel that had been soaked in water and then… Wrung out a bit.

I was too tired to think of any good analogies.

If I hadn't bluffed at the end, and she'd kept attacking...

I didn’t intend to pass out, but when I came too, Kene and Dusk had dragged me into the cabin, and I was clamped against Kene like a barnacle to a ship. Dusk was asleep on their chest, curled up like a cat. The fox-bird was curled up on the small rug at the foot of the bed.

I slowly extracted myself from them and headed into the kitchen, feeling out through my mana, then paused and ststted laughing.

Burn Future had unlocked, the seal that Ikki had placed on it gone entirely. Yesterday, I'd bluffed against the assassin, I hadn’t realized it, but it had been more true than I realized.

I still didn't think I could take her in a proper fight. But I had one tool back, and honestly, I thought I understood Ikki's lesson behind locking it.

That brought a bit of cheer into my step as I opened the cabinet and whispered.

“Hey everyone!” I said to the brownies. “Do you mind helping me make some quick breakfast bread?”

An older brownie stumped out on his cane, and nodded.

“Aye, dear.”

I wrinkled my nose at being called dear, but we got to start. I had plenty of flour, and some of the rations that Liz had packed included dried fruits, which I mixed in.

Eggs were harder, and I wondered if it would be plausible to get some chickens. Could I take care of them? I didn’t know anything about chicken tending.

Well, without eggs, I dug around in the rations until I found a jar of apple sauce, then measured that out to use as the substitute. A couple of spices, though not many – I needed to expand my spice cabinet.

I cast a proofing spell over it, tossing a towel over the bowl. Though I didn’t have the enchanted proofing box that my dad’s bakery did, allowing the basic ungated mana to linger for a long time, I was ten times the mage I’d been then, and my much more strongly reinforced ungated mana was more than enough to let it proof.

“We’ll have to do a hearth bread,” I told the brownies, “I don’t have solar magic, so while I could try and use a temperature control ungated spell to cook it, I’m not sure how well that would work. I don’t think I can get it hot enough.”

“You can’t,” agreed the old brownie. “We’ll start the fire.”

As the brownies started the fire, I pulled out the heavy cast iron oven-pot, and turned the dough out onto a floured countertop. I massaged it a bit, punching it down to get air bubbles out, then rolled it into a ball before plopping it into the pot, with the smooth side up, and the side where I’d gotten everything together on the bottom.

I lidded up the iron pot and plopped it down into the fire, using a pair of tongs to place a couple of the charcoal briquettes on top of the pot, to keep the heat more even throughout the pot.

Around then, Kene wandered in, the fox-bird at his side, and Dusk riding on their shoulder.

“Morning,” they said, blinking before yawning. Once they finished the yawn, they started talking again. “Let me check over your arm and body before we go out today.”

They glared down at the fox.

“You too, Siobhán”

“Siobhán?” I asked, resisting the urge to tease them about their phrasing.

“She’s been following us around, and seems to have taken a shine to me,” they said, shrugging, “I figured it was only fair to name her.”

I hadn’t realized the fox was a her. Oops. I hoped I hadn’t been mentally misgendering the little fox…

“Fair enough,” I said. “The bread should be done in…”

I pulsed Internal Pocketwatch to check how long it had been.

“Twenty minutes, maybe thirty,” I said.

“Thank you,” they said, nodding.

“Least I can do,” I said, touching my arm. “Thank you. I’m guessing you dragged me back last night?”

“I did,” Kene agreed. “With some help from Dusk.”

I glanced at the spirit, who was still half asleep on Kene’s shoulder.

“Speaking of,” I said. “You ascended, Dusk.”

Dusk’s eyes flittered, and she sat up some, yawning and nodding. She peeped out, explaining that she didn’t want to, but wasn’t willing to let me die.

I scooped her off Kene’s shoulder and pulled her in for a close hug, trying my best to ignore the jolt of dysphoria the motion caused me as I felt my chest a bit more than I was happy with.

Why was it always able to creep in during what should, by all measures, be a perfectly happy moment?

“Thank you,” I told her. “I… I genuinely don’t know how we could have survived that if you hadn’t ascended. If we’d just…”

I trailed off and hugged her tighter.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

“Thank you,” I repeated.

She peeped contentedly, saying she was just glad it turned out okay, and I nodded my agreement, then reached down to scratch Siobhan’s head.

“And thank you too,” I said. “You were really disadvantaged to attack her, but you stepped in to help.”

The fox’s tail wagged happily, and Dusk pulled out jerky, then tossed it in the air for the fox to catch and eat.

“And thank you,” I said, stepping over to Kene, slipping my arm around their waist. “Your runes, blessing, and healing kept me going in the fight longer, long after I would have normally folded.”

“It’s nothing,” Kene said.

“Shush,” I said, leaning forwards and kissing them.

A while later, Dusk yelled at us with the rushing of a waterfall, demanding that we come outside and look at her upgrades. I slowly pulled away, and Kene smiled, nodding.

“We should look,” they agreed, and I nodded.

It was obvious from the moment I stepped out of the cabin that things had changed. For one thing, rather than a cleanly split parcel of land for each season, with the cabin surrounded by four rivers, the cabin was now deep in the autumnal lands. Pumpkins and gourds hung from mundane trees all around, their leaves a mixture of brilliant golds, reds, and browns, with bushes that hadn’t quite given up their color yet providing contrast.

There was a sharp caw, and I glanced over to see a crow shade, the magical spirit of a death crow now departed. It spread its wings and flew away a moment later.

A winding footpath of smooth river stones led into the forest, and Kene and I wandered along them until we found ourselves in a familiar glade – the same glade, in fact, we’d just come from. There were even the same ripped up spots of mana-grass, and faint slashes in the stone where our battle had injured the surroundings.

“How?” Kene asked, almost sounding awed.

Dusk let out a sigh that sounded like the sands of the desert, saying that when she’d ascended, she’d needed to take some shortcuts if she wanted to finish in time, so she’d stol–er, borrowed– some mass and energy arrangements from Idyll.

My eyebrows rose, and I hoped that wouldn’t come back to bite us, but Idyll was so strong that if she wanted to smite us, there wasn’t anything we could do about it.

“Does that mean you took the natural treasures too?” I asked, letting my mana senses expand over the space. Sure enough, I could feel them there, the magical worms in the dirt, and the more magical bees in the trees. Kene actually turned to look at the beehive.

“Oh, very nice. I hadn’t picked up on it while I was supposed to be looting, but those look like spell-light bees,” Kene said. “Their honey can be mixed into potions to serve a similar function to mana-grass, or serve as a really good supporting magical component for solar potions. Mead made with… oh, nevermind.”

I gave Kene a curious look, and they flushed, shaking their head.

I debated teasing them for a few moments, then let it go. We had more important things to do for now.

Dusk pushed us towards the cliff, and we climbed up top. From there, we could see that this nexus of magic was the new center point of her realm, and that there had been more changes.

The four seasons section had expanded, but it was less distinct. Rather than being a single forest in four seasons, the autumn seemed to be the standard forest. Summer slowly gave way to shrubs, rocks, and desert – not the sandy kind, the dusty and flat kind. Spring was a forest so thick that it reminded me of rainforest, and winter was clearly full-on taiga.

It was huge, too. The space, which had been about five acres before, was now more than eighty acres now.

Dusk raised her hand, and four natural treasures floated out of the area. One rose from the riverbank, another from the grass beneath our feet, a third from one of the trees, and the fourth and by far the strongest treasure rose from the cave.

It didn’t take long for them to be sorted out. The aquamarine gem that had risen from the water was a bog-standard natural treasure to help grow lunar mana, so we set it to the side to give to Liz.

The one from the grasses wasn’t, to my surprise, a life treasure, but rather a telluric one, a ball of clay that seemed to morph and shift when pressure was applied to it, so that went into the vaults alongside the mineral striation stone, the remaining alter-truffle, and the mental royal jelly.

The one from the trees wasn’t a life treasure either, but instead a treasure that was almost familiar to me – a bug preserved in amber. It wasn’t a scorpion, but rather a large beetle, but it still made me smile fondly.

But rather than the arrays of the power being free to absorb and use as magic, they were bound up in magic, and Kene tossed it to me.

“Here, use it. It’s going to increase your temporal magic’s recovery rate, and I think the beetle should break down to expand your death gates.”

“Really?” I asked, examining the stone. The Temporal Basin drew from my recovery rate to grow itself, so anything that could boost that would be infinitely useful to me.

“Yep,” Kene said. “I’m not as sure on the beetle, but I know the amber will work that way.”

I held off on absorbing it right away, wanting to finish this up first. There was still the strongest treasure left, and though it was hard to tell, it felt like it was at least fourth gate, and maybe leaning into fifth.

The treasure was a long, jagged piece of pear-colored stone that almost resembled a dagger or a tooth, with a complex weave of magic that Kene and I both recognized immediately – dragon magic.

“I don’t know what it does specifically,” Kene admitted as they rotated it. “But I definitely can make out some parts of the arrays that remind me of flamethrower or breath weapon spells.”

“Octavian’s partner would be able to make great use of it,” I said. “It would be a good gift, and might get us a favor with his mom, if she hears about it.”

“Good idea,” Kene agreed. “Still, something so strong is…”

They trailed off, then whistled.

Dusk then led us into the caves, which now held a hidden entrance to her vaults, which had also grown larger, and the wards that protected her treasures had grown stronger.

More notable, however, was her construct. The armored ghost now stood proudly, and slammed a fist over its chest when we entered.

“Vault guardian?” I asked, and Dusk whistled her agreement, though she added that she wasn’t afraid to use it in a fight if she had to – like if the assassin came back.

“Thanks,” I said, gently patting her head.

“What about those destiny plants, though?” Kene asked.

Dusk clapped and opened a portal, waving us through, and I carefully headed out, double checking to make sure the mercenary hadn’t come back for more, but the clearing was empty.

There were five of the destiny plants, just sitting there in the barren soil, and Dusk explained that she hadn’t quite been able to integrate them into herself, so she’d had to leave them here. Kene and I harvested the plants, then returned to the cabin to boil them down. By unanimous agreement, Dusk got two drops, while the fox-bird, Kene, and I got one each.

I invested the power into my full-gate spells, same as I had before, and felt their balance shift slightly, then I drew in the power of the amber. It crackled through my mana-garden, and I felt the thin channels that connected my temporal mana to the world widen slightly, not unlike when I’d drank the witchlight bourbon with Orykson.

The power from the preserved bug was more subtle, sinking into the foundations of my mana-garden’s death gate, then rising up in a slow but steady tide that left my walls far higher – not as high as my life walls, but higher for sure.

As we all finished, I looked at Kene, who looked at me.

“I’ve had a thought,” they said. “The strongest treasure came from the caves, right? And the auction is in two days. We’ll need one day at least to get back. Do you want to try and explore in the caves for the rest of today, then head back? Try and look for another nexus first? Head back now?”

I thought for a moment. The cave would absolutely have more stuff – it was leaking mana even now. But it would also be dangerous, that much was certain, if even the nexus aboveground had been this strong. Then again, I had set up my retreating trail, the one I hadn't gotten a chance to use when fighting the mercenary.

Looking for another mana nexus was a gamble – it could get us something great, like another hudau heritage stone, or we might just find more mana sources.

Heading back now would be the safest, as long as we navigated out of the giant hawk’s territory, but would also offer me the least.