The next several days passed peacefully enough. I fed mana into Dawn each day, and she was slowly growing stronger. Dusk took a shine to her sister, and often fed the little dragon some of her own power. They weren’t quite bonded in the same way I was to each of them, but a strange sort of occurrence did begin to happen in Dusk’s realm as Dawn grew.

The silver flame that was the sun in Dusk’s world was in a state of near-perpetual setting, though it seemed to glow brighter or softer at times, giving her world a semblance of a day and night cycle.

After my bond to Dawn, stars began to appear in the sky of Dusk’s world whenever the silver sun was brightest, fading away with the fading of the sun. It was an odd thing, the complete opposite of stars coming out at night like I was used to, but I took it to be a good sign.

Dawn’s magic seemed to be strange and incomplete, but with each infusion of mana it grew more stable. She was still weak, and her magic was unstable, but she was definitely improving.

She also took well to the dragon sanctuary. The other estragon, terragon, and other draconic creatures in the sanctuary took to her surprisingly well, and she spent a good bit of time dashing from place to place, learning from the other dragons, playing with the estragon, and trying her best to snack on basically everything she could, including actual rocks.

Over the following week of training, I received two big surprises.

The less surprising came from Octavian, who pulled me aside in the depths of the sanctuary’s warding. For a horrifying moment, I was afraid he was going to confess his love to me, and I was going to have to break his heart and tell him that I wasn’t polyamorous, but instead, he started talking about my legacy.

“Do you remember how I’m able to undergo a sort of… trial period?” Octavian asked. “With my bonds, I mean. I bonded a petalroot salamander, and broke it when we didn’t get along.”

“I do,” I said.

“Keep what I’m about to say next quiet,” Octavain said. “Please.”

I was tempted to make a joke, but I paused when I saw how earnest he looked.

“I promise,” I said.

“It’s not just me,” Octavian said. “I can sever any familiar bond, so long as the bond is less than three months old and at least one of the two parties consents to the severing. It inflicts pretty hefty spiritual damage and a debilitating amount of spiritual pain on me. I never brought it up with Kene because the hag is old, I can’t do anything, but…”

My mind reeled as I caught up with the implications of that. That was absolutely the sort of secondary effect of a legacy that could get Octavian locked up in a box forever. If he could allow someone to make a bond, discover the effects of that bond, and then break the bond, greedy people would want to give themselves the optimal possible bonds for future power. They might not care if it caused him immense pain or spiritual damage, they'd just want to make themselves stronger.

While I was trying to catch up with the ramifications of a person able to sever a spellbond, even within those limitations, Octavian addressed the tiny starsoul dragon on my shoulder.

“You’re strong enough now that you shouldn’t die from having the bond broken. If you want to sever your bond with Malachi and go your own way, speak to me.”

Dawn looked at him, and though she wasn’t sapient as far as I could tell, an understanding seemed to pass between them. She liked me. I had saved her, she believed that it was fate that had brought her to me, and to her sister Dusk, and she trusted me even though she was still getting to know me.

But she liked being here too. She would think about it.

As I’d said, she wasn’t sapient, and the thoughts and understanding didn’t feel like words, but more like emotion, like the communication of one soul to others, deeper and older than language. She didn’t think human thoughts, but she understood she could be free in the same way a dog unclipped from a leash understood.

“You should feel no debt to me,” I told her. “I saved you, but if you want out, I understand. Our bond is new. I don’t regret the drops I spent to save you, even if you went your own way.”

Dawn dipped her head to me.

The even bigger surprise, though it really shouldn’t have been, was Orykson’s appearance on a rainy Liday. He spent some time studying Dawn, and Aerde seemed endlessly fascinated by the starsoul dragon. Dawn, for her part, tried to snack on several of the nodes that made up Aerde’s manifestation.

“That is not food,” Aerde said in their placid voice. “Consuming these nodes will not positively impact your development, nor negatively impact my manifestation.”

Dawn started to chew faster, like a dog that had been caught snacking on something that it wasn’t supposed to.

After finishing his examination of Dawn, Orykson turned to me.

"I suspect that it will take some time before your bond begins to grant any sort of power at all. The form of what power it may grant is uncertain, but given her dominion and well, I suspect that she'll likely confer some sort of spell enhancement ability. Perhaps for every few drops of destiny her well creates, one will appear in your spirit. Perhaps you'll gain a passive bolster to the purity and power of your spellcraft. Perhaps she'll be able to cleanse detritus from your mana-garden and body, leaving a cleaner and more efficient garden in its place. There's no way to tell exactly, but that's the general shape of things."

"That's... A lot," I said. "She has a well? And a dominion? I can't even feel mana from her, though."

"She has a still growing dominion, not entirely unlike a spirit using its legacy and nascent truth to force access to one early," Orykson explained, and he actually seemed quite interested. "She doesn't seem to have either yet, nor has she even developed the spiritual equivalent of a human's ungated mana. She's formed a well, yet has no roots, and only one wind. No mana outside of what makes up her form, but already is growing a dominion. She seems to be quite the little paradox."

We spent a while discussing that before Orykson and Aerde started examining my staff. This took them less time to finish examining, but it still took the better part of twenty minutes.

“Interesting. This bears some striking similarities to symbiote-anima, a rare... It's somewhere in between a living creature like a slime, and a natural treasure like a crystalheart that can be found in the Redsummer Isles. The symbiote-anima are unable to mimic resonance, but it consumes a quarter of the user’s mana, and then produces a variable amount of additional sub-gardens of approximately that size. Incredibly useful, though the spirit bond needed is rather odious.”

He traced his finger up and down the length of the staff.

“I suspect that these three silvers can only hold a nascent truth, but it’s worth testing. Here.”

He waved his hand and a moment later, a pile of mana sources appeared on the ground.

“Create a domain weapon, and we will test to see if it can connect.”

I gave Orykson a bit of a side eye, and he rolled his eyes.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Please,” he said, and didn’t even bother arguing further. I considered for a moment, then just nodded and began setting out the ritual for a domain weapon. As I went to begin it, I felt the strange spirit-bond that I had with the resonance-symbiote slowly start to detach, then it wrapped itself around the domain weapon, as for the second time in my life, it formed a quarterstaff.

This quarterstaff felt slightly more defensively oriented than the last one, which had been a mix of offense and defense, but it was still a domain weapon quarterstaff.

My mage’s staff collapsed into a pile of trimmed mana and mana sources, and then the resonance-symbiote integrated with the domain weapon, cutting away some of its power while maintaining my artificial connection to benevolence.

“Fascinating,” Orykson said, leaning forwards. “I admit I didn’t expect that. The implications it could have for use with a grand array are interesting, to say the least.”

We ran several more experiments, with me swapping back and forth between a mage staff and domain weapon until my spirit and body began to ache from the mild burning needed to create a staff, pushing my Nascent Truth, and more, and found a few things, the most interesting of which was that the Truth and the staff weren't inherently reliant on one another. I could draw on the effects of Benevolence without actually using the staff, and vice versa.

The other thing we learned was less about the staff itself, and more about me. With focus, I could flex the Nascent Truth of Benevolence, and amplify the blowing of the winds of fortune in my spirit. I suspected that if I'd had the full truth, rather than just a quarter of one, I could have used that to 'listen', as Thea had put it. As I was now, it just gave me a strange, tingling sensation, and I suspected it might help guide me to those in need of help.

After we finally finished running through the various tests with Dawn and the staff, Orykson started our actual spatial magic lesson.

“We’re going to focus on spatial anchor,” Orykson told me as I slipped my staff back into my mana-garden and turned to fully focus on him.

“What about it?” I asked.

“There are several functions that were not viable for you to utilize, but now that you’re a spellbinder, they’ve become available.”

I recalled how much mana it took to create a stable anchor that wouldn’t wear out, and nodded. That was only one function, but I could see how having more power would make it easier.

“Could I build a portal network or a teleportation network?” I asked.

“Most spatial mages of your gate couldn’t create a portal network,” Orykson said. “The first major portal spell is a fifth gate one, though there are certain exceptions, like portal ants. The Antqueen may be worth seeking out.”

He waved his hand.

“I digress. You cannot build a portal network, not alone. Dusk?”

Dusk looked up from where she was trying to sneakily feed a handful of peanuts to Dawn and asked him what he wanted. For my part, I just wondered where she’d gotten the peanuts. Dusk’s power worked in mysterious ways.

“The two of you have a unique opportunity,” Orykson said. “It will take a significant investment of mana, far more than what you have right now, but if you measure it out carefully, you could be able to approximate. For now, the lesson…”

I spun a Spatial Anchor into existence over my finger, and Orykson nodded.

“You can already link spells into it, like spatial tripwire. Your next task is going to be linking anchors themselves together. Create another anchor, then identify that function and bind the anchors together. While you do this, Aerde and I will instruct Dusk on the manipulation of her Dominion and legacy needed to assist in your attempted portal network.”

I created another anchor over my other hand then closed my eyes as I dove into the spells.

I could feel the permanency function, and feed mana into it, just to get the spell to activate, then started searching around. The function of the Spatial Anchor that governed the attaching to spells was already active, but could I dive deeper?

I flowed power into it, and felt it blossom out into multiple different interactions, related to spatial pockets, teleportation, integrating with other spells in my mana-garden like a meta spell, and more.

The meta-spell function caught my attention, since I thought I could use it to potentially boost the range of Foxstep some, and I would bet good money that it was how Travis Enigma had managed to have nine-tenths of Seven League Step already cast and anchored on the roof when he’d stolen Kamal’s storage ring.

It also might be what Orykson had been talking about?

I connected one spatial anchor to itself, and felt the two in my hands fuse together into a slightly more efficient and powerful anchor. There was definitely a loss of energy, but the singular fused anchor was stronger than any anchor I’d ever produced, and I opened my eyes to look at Orykson.

“That’s a reasonable attempt, but not the one I was looking for,” he said. “Still, it’s a function you’re going to need to make use of if you want to open a portal network as a third gate mage. Try again.”

Saying that it was still useful was about as close to praise as I thought I’d get from Orykson for anything spatial related, so I formed two new anchors and dove in again, looking for the function.

It wound up not being in the section related to connecting to other spells at all, which seemed… unintuitive. Instead, I found it in an area that reminded me of planar stability, like the inverse of the cracks in the worlds the Craftsman had reformatted.

I ran mana through the function and felt a spool of spatially stabilizing thread connect the two anchors, almost like when I ran a Spatial Tripwire between them.

Unlike my tripwire spell, I couldn’t just run my finger between the anchors to connect them, but rather, I had to use mana manipulation. I was skilled at mana manipulation, but this was different than anything I’d done before, a strange mix of having to use fine control to stop the thread from fraying, needing to use brute force in order to push through the resistant weave of space, and also coaxing the threads to integrate with existing space like when I manipulated the arrays in a potion.

It took me a few tries, but eventually, the two connected, and while they didn’t get any stronger, they did feel more stable, and the weave of space around them fluctuated less.

“Excellent,” Orykson said, turning away from Dusk. “Now we’re going to create your first generalized teleportation platform. Create three more, then link all of them together.”

It took me a while to even manage to get a third connected, and I eventually realized the problem was that I wasn’t able to just string them together one at a time like beads on a string. Instead, I had to braid them all together in a triangular pattern, which only grew more complex when I needed to add a fourth, and then a fifth.

Orykson vanished sometime around while I was grappling with the fourth, but when I managed to get the fifth connected into a starlike pattern of interconnected magic, he reappeared inside the rough pentagon of spatial magic, then strode out.

“Excellent. As you’ve seen, the anchor possesses an innate ability to link to other spells. What you’ve done is create an area of forcibly stabilized space that also stands out as a beacon to a person’s mana senses, serving as an excellent platform for people to teleport to. Try it.”

I teleported into the circle, and it did take a bit less spatial mana than I expected it to, though it was hard to tell. Foxstep was a mix of spatial, temporal, life, solar, and a few other things, after all.

“Now, if you want to try and brute force a portal network early using your bond to Dusk, then the next few steps are going to be mana intensive and trucky,” Orykson said. “The first is the simplest. You learned to fuse together anchors earlier, to produce stronger ones, and you’re going to need to do that roughly…”

His eyes flickered for a half a second as he estimated.

“Thirty-seven times. That should bring this to a level of stability where it can handle opening a portal across large distances. Then, within Dusk’s realm, you’re going to need to create an identical platform – in essence, this will serve as the base for your portal room. Once this is done, open a portal between the two, and fuel the platform with additional power in order to somewhat fray the tethering to local space as Dusk intertwines a section of herself within it, creating a bridge between the platforms.”

He paused, then nodded.

“I believe that should allow you to force open a portal, similarly to how you can open one to Dusk across distance. It may require mana the further you are, with the cost scaling as a rational function with a roughly…”

He sighed impatiently.

“Nevermind, your eyes are glazing over. You can make one. Go far away, you’ll need to burn mana to open the portal. Go really far away, you’ll need more mana to account for the lack of spiritual strength.”

“Works for me, I am very stupid,” I said, grinning. Orykson gave me a flat look.

“You’re not, which is the most frustrating element. When you apply yourself practically, you’re…”

He sighed and rolled his eyes.

“Nevermind. Have you put any thought towards the contract?”

“I have, actually,” I said. “I have one critical question, though. How long does Kene have, and can I actually gather the things you’re telling me to find.”

“Five and a half years,” Orykson said.

I blinked.

“Five and a half years?” I asked. That was… a lot more time than I had expected.

“It won’t be comfortable, but I believe that so long as you follow the first stop within a year, and you continue to strengthen Dawn, Dawn and Dusk’s abilities will be able to prolong Kene’s life, as well as some interesting implications and experiments I want to try. Their tattoos are also reasonably impressive, and the bond has taken well. Between all of these factors, I believe that the hag will not be in a position to entirely consume Kene’s soul for another five or so years, unless Kene stops progressing at their current rate.”

“And it will work?”

“It should,” Orykson said. “I cannot control your competency, nor can I command fate. If you get struck by a horse and die tomorrow, then it won’t. But assuming you follow my plan, it should stand a chance of success.”

I considered that. Five years was a lot longer than I expected, and if Dawn was able to help, it was possible there were new options that could pop up. But it would be gambling with Kene’s life to save myself on a few favors.