When it came down to it, my only real choices were the monocle – to help us get more stuff – and the natural treasure that had to do with the mana meditations, but I had no idea what the treasure actually did. Sure, it might double the efficacy of my Depths of Starry Night technique, but it also might just assist me in making my third gate version of it more reflexive.

I slipped the rune crusted monocle into my hand. The moment it was touching skin, I felt it suffuse my mana senses, almost as if it were the ingrained effect of an Analysis spell. My mana senses expanded further, and grew deeper.

I tied it onto my necklace, so that it would always be touching my skin, then turned and left. A part of me did wonder if it was a test of courage, and that I was supposed to take two items, but… I thought it best to not risk it.

When I stepped through the exit, I stepped out of the large metal doors, running headfirst into Kene. The pair of us fell down the stairs in a tangle of limbs, and then slowly extracted ourselves from one another. Dusk had been crushed between the two of us, and she let out a complaining burble at us.

“How did it go?” I asked the pair once we’d all gotten our feet under us. Dusk piped up, saying that it was easy – she’d just blown through the worms.

“What now?” I asked.

She tilted her head and asked me what my trial was like, so I explained, and then she shook her head, explaining that she’d just had to fight a bunch of increasingly powerful worms, then find a jewel buried in the sands, and complete a puzzle.

“Both of yours sound very different from mine,” Kene said. “Mine was a classic maze, with a few minotaurs that I had to sneak past under my invisibility spell. The minotaurs guarded these gemstones, one for each color of the rainbow, and once I had them, I slotted them into a dias in the right order.”

“Huh,” I said, noting down the information in my head. After all, there was a slim chance that if we stumbled across one of the other smaller trial sites like this, that I’d get one of their trials – maybe not, of course, but why design an absurd number of combinations? If I were the sage, I would have designed twenty or so, and then had them randomized, without repeating.

Then again, the world spirit of this place was alone most of the time. Maybe all she had to do was come up with new trials?

Thinking about it wasn’t likely to net me much of anything, though, so I dismissed the thought.

“What rewards did you get?” I asked instead.

“This,” Kene said, holding out their hand. Inside of it was a single seed, pitch black, with faint wisps of desolation and lunar mana coming off of it.

“What is it?” I asked, examining it.

“It’s the seed for an acid-drip creosote bush,” they said. “It’s not at all useful to us in the short term, but it’s extremely pungent – and powerful – bush. It can be used to make foundation compacting pills, compressing the soil in your mana-garden, which… Is apparently supposed to help somehow?”

I shook my head to show I had no more details than Kene did.

“But more importantly,” they continued. “It’s also great for making a potent alchemical acid, and a grown bush can even be engineered to produce a variant that will be able to release streams of less powerful acid as an attack, like a sun lotus.”

“That is an impressive seed,” I admitted.

“Well, that’s the problem,” Kene admitted. “It won’t sprout until third gate, and even then, producing more seeds will take an inordinately huge amount of mana. But once we both ascend, if we plan and work together, we should both be able to benefit.”

Dusk waited until we finished talking over logistics, then snapped open a portal to her treasury. I frowned, immediately noticing the difference.

Long ago, when she’d absorbed the time catch, Dusk had fused together the echoes of battle and war into a spirit of sorts, a strange amalgam that was half ghost, half golem that wouldn’t be operable until she hit third gate herself.

Now, the ghost creature had a suit of plate armor, carved with blue lines, runes, and enchantments. Dusk proudly pointed at it, whistling like the wind across a sweeping valley, saying she’d taken a suit of enchanted armor, and had integrated it into her construct.

I swept my mana senses out over the golem, nodding in a suitably impressed manner. With the knowledge, instincts, and training from the ghost, and the body of enchanted plate mail, once she had the construct up and running, it would be impressive, no doubt about that.

Stolen story; please report.

“I feel kind of silly now,” I admitted as I held up the rune-crusted monocle. “This is what I got. It enhances my mana senses, almost like I ingrained another Analysis spell.”

“That’s definitely useful,” Kene said. “If nothing else, it can help us find some more plants and natural treasures during the Idyll-Flume!”

“That was my thought,” I said, and Dusk patted my shoulder as she climbed up me, saying I’d made a good choice.

“I wonder if there’s some way to use that energetic binding-knot and the knowledge and mental energy battery you have to supercharge it?” Kene mused. “Hmm. Something to think on. I’m not a master of enchantment. Maybe that dragon could help?”

“Oh, that’s an interesting idea,” I said, nodding. “Worth looking at for sure.”

With our selections discussed, the three of us took off again, sailing over the vast wilderness, my even stronger mana senses helping sweep over the area. We picked up a few minor mana sources, and even stopped to pick up a large stone the size of a head, with bands of silver and gold running through it. It was some sort of telluric natural treasure, and though Kene didn’t know this one specifically did, it was probably something related to mineral magic.

As the day crept to a close, however, I picked up on something interesting – a strong mana nexus. It was gushing with all sorts of powerful things – even from a few hundred feet away, I could sense no less than four natural treasures, one of which felt absurdly powerful, and many times that in mana sources. I also got the slight tingling sensation that I was beginning to recognize as destiny mana.

But that would also come with danger…

The three of us talked for a while, and then decided that the best thing to do would be to take it on in the morning. I’d go in first, with Dusk’s help. After I drew out whatever was in the clearing, Kene would sneak in under a veil, and then we’d try and retreat, Kene possibly heading into Dusk, or maybe with the pair of us flying out normally, if things went really well.

Tonight, though, I needed to lay out my retreat plan. Drawing upon my transivy and pointer moss for extra mana, I laid out a zig-zagging trail of spatial anchors, each one tuned to act as a relay point for my teleportation. I kept my mana as smooth and still as I could while I cast, trying to not draw any attention to it, and to blend the mana in with the environment.

I did get the attention of a few small estragon who came over to poke at the spatial anchors, clearly able to sense them, but the cute, leaf covered creatures were safe enough, and Dusk even played with them, absorbing a few to live in the pixie village.

Once I had the trail laid out, I returned to where Kene had set up a small clearing, opening a portal and slipping in with them.

The following morning, I set out, flying around to circle and approach the nexus from the other side, then landing and embarking on foot to enter the clearing.

When I did enter, my breath hitched. It was beautiful.

A small cliff face that I hadn’t noticed from the air, not with the towering trees in the way, protruded over a little more than half the clearing, and one of the many small brooks that ran through this realm poured over the middle of the cliff, creating a diminutive yet powerfully rushing waterfall that caught the light and refracted rainbows across the clearing.

Behind the waterfall, the cliff gave way to caves that went shockingly deep, deep enough that even my enhanced senses couldn’t pick out the depths from where I stood.

The grass in the clearing was a green so vibrant that it took me several long seconds to realize that all of it was mana-grass, and that there were several spring and summer flowers scattered around the field, along with wild garlic and chives.

I felt a tickling on my hand, and looked down to see a bee on it. I held my hand up and gently blew the bee off, but it drew my eyes to a nearly transparently white colored hive of bees.

A few beetles also flew around the clearing, some of them even buzzing with magic, especially desolation, though I wasn’t sure why. Beneath my feet, I could sense worms moving through the dirt, laden with enough telluric energy to have developed into mana and mana-gardens, complete with harvesting and decomposition spells.

The entire scene was beautiful; amazing, really. But Dusk spoke up, saying something that I had begun to understand as well in that moment: we had both been neglecting the animal side of her ecosystem.

While the plants, streams, and the more ordinary bugs and mana that Dusk had digested did create an ecosystem, it wasn’t as rich as this, as deep. How much more could Dusk be, if we had these sorts of beings within her? The plant munching and spreading beetles, the soil-refining and growing worms, the bees to pollinate and grow the plants.

For now, I was the one taking care of all of that – I’d fed her compost more than once, magical mulches, and other rewards from the wyldwatch.

But would Dusk always be the size she was now? If her ascension to second gate was anything to go on, I doubted it.

My musing was interrupted by a spray of razor sharp pine needles rushing at me. With a yip, I teleported away, and turned to examine the waterfall.

Standing atop the falls was a giant creature, easily twelve feet tall, with horns made from the branches of a tree, and a heart made of carved oak. Her face was that of a hag, and she had long, rootlike fingers, and when she saw me, she cackled like a maniac.

A pulse of mana erupted out of her. It was fourth gate, but… diffuse. Weaker, and less solid than the dragonblood serpent’s intense power, despite being nominally higher, reminding me more of the war root’s.

Then a long eel, made of coiled mud, rose from the banks of the waterfall, slipping around the spriggan’s arm and glaring down at us. It’s power was third gate, not as potent as the serpents, but certainly more compacted and powerful than the spriggans.

She didn’t use any words, nor did – thankfully – the eel, but I could feel the challenge radiating off of the pair. They weren’t likely to hand over this nexus and its treasures, not without a fight.

And they weren’t going to let me leave, either.

I summoned my staff to one hand, then conjured my briarthreads around me. Up the cliff face, the spriggans own pair of briars appeared.

I teleported into the air above them, catching myself with an Immovable Lock in my legs, and the battle began.