Testing and training with the Mantle Dragonfyre revealed several key elements.

First was that I could change the rate that it cycled through my body using some basic mana manipulation techniques. Moving it slower reduced the amount the spell bucked and fought, while moving faster caused the spell’s resistance to quickly grow.

I didn’t think I’d ever have an opportunity in combat to just stand there, charging and cycling a technique at a slow and comfortable rate to build up power, but if I ever needed to destroy a wall, I could see it coming in handy.

Forcibly cycling it faster had a lot of combat use, but at my current skill level with the spell, I was only able to speed up the time fractionally. Still, I was resolved to master this new application. Not only was it good training for my mana manipulation skills, but being able to squeeze out a faster version of the spell could be lifesaving.

By the time I was out of beast mana in my second and third gate, I’d gotten to the point I could reasonably handle a single cycle release of the spell at the default speed or a tiny bit faster, or I could cycle it twice, if I wanted to take the better part of ten seconds.

I also learned that I could project it easiest when I used both hands or my mouth, but I could also release it from a single palm or from the tip of my tail. Using it from the tail was difficult, but it could be good for surprising people.

I was quite happy with it, all things considered. The power it packed was entirely unlike any of my offensive spells, and I could feel Magister’s Body hard at work to produce more solar and desolation energy inside my body with every cast of the spell.

I was satisfied. It was a hard spell to master, but the power it promised was every bit what I needed to keep up with elite combat mages like the assassin. It was also going to be a nasty surprise – she had known me only as a life, death, space, and time mage.

With the second and third beastgates empty, I moved on to practicing Sky Dragon's Senses. The spell was hardly anything revolutionary, but as it rode the winds and light to spread my mana senses further, I was satisfied as well. It might not change much about my sensory powers, but it would serve to spread and amplify them, and that was alright with me.

Then I drew myself into my mana-garden and began prying up tiles in the second beastgate, to prepare myself for the kirin’s spell. If I was honest with myself, I expected this to be easy, maybe take me a few minutes.

I spent the rest of the day removing just four tiles.

Ripping them up from the ground wasn’t painful or damaging to my soul – if it was, I would have stopped. I was a fool, not an idiot.

But it was extremely hard. It was like trimming a spell, forcibly having to apply my will towards bending and breaking away only the tiniest chips of the tile. I wished I had some sort of… spiritual chisel… to speed along the work, but if something like that existed, it was likely well beyond my price range.

Whenever I was worn out from chipping away at the tile, I spent the time practicing shaping my various spells and running a bit of power through them, getting myself acquainted, or helping Dusk form her steps. There wasn’t much actual work to be done there, I was just moral support, but it was nice to see someone else struggling to push through mere millimeters of spiritual dirt.

Between working at the preserve, spending time with Kene, working with Meadow to improve my skills with Mass Harvest and Enhance, training my new sensory spell, forging spell, starfish regeneration, and dragonfyre, the days leading up to my vision of the falling stars went by incredibly quickly.

Orykson didn’t even appear for our normal lesson, instead just teleporting a note to me that said since we were both busy, he’d save the mana on the trip, and would teach me about the basics of third gate spatial magic when I had a grasp on the new spells I was already learning. That annoyed me a little bit, but I understood his reasoning.

Trying to get a grip on six new spells and a full-gate spell on top of that was definitely a lot. I was beginning to see why people with multiple gates tended to hit bottlenecks or find their progress slowing to a halt. There was just only so much time in the day, and everything needed practice.

There was one instance where I took a break, however – at least, outside of the breaks to make dinner and eat with Kene.

I’d asked Thea’s mom to teach me how to listen, and we’d finally found a time to try.

“Fortune, connections, and movement between people,” she said, walking along the edge of the lake, tossing a handful of chopped meat into the pond for the estragon to squabble over. “They create ripples.”

She pointed at the pond, where the ripples from the meat she’d tossed in moved through the lake.

“Create ripples, and you ripple out,” she said. “Fortune is those ripples. They are the constellations, the streaks of light between the stars of the sky.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I nodded slowly.

“I think I understand that. There’s a sort of… cause-and-effect that interactions create, right? If I were to stab you–”

“I’d rather you not,” she said placidly.

“Bah, you know what I meant,” I said. “Pretend. In this hypothetical, I stab you.”

Dusk whistled, asking if she could stab Thea instead, and I resisted the urge to burry my face in my hands.

“Okay, so Dusk stabs you. That’s an action she takes, throwing the food into the pond. But it will ripple out through our connections. You are connected to Olive and Kater and Octavian, they’ll view her negatively. I’m connected to Dusk, and so I’m also going to be viewed negatively by association.”

“That is the surface level, yes,” Thea agreed. “That’s what normal people see. In this analogy, the ripples are fortune, the food is resolve, and the lake is destiny. Everything in the world is made of mana and energy, and underpinning that is the three deep mana.”

She waggled her hand back and forth.

“The term ‘deep mana’ has issues, namely that whatever it is, mana is not correct, but it’s the generally accepted term. But yes. It lays under reality, as far as I can tell.”

Thea looked up and glanced at Meadow, as if expecting the old woman to correct her, but Meadow gestured for Thea to keep talking.

“Are you sure?” Thea asked. “I feel quite under-qualified to give this lecture when I’m standing next to the Springbringer.”

“My dear, you’re an oracle,” Meadow said. “I might be your superior in magical strength, but you’re better at reading the winds than I am.”

“Oracle? Those are real?” I asked. “Like, the ancient sense. Weird old person who can see the future and stuff? I always figured that they were just knowledge mages.”

“Some were,” Meadow said. “But the term was originally meant to describe someone who was incredibly adept at reading the winds. Between you and Dusk, you’ve developed the winds of destiny and fortune, and touched on the wind of resolve.”

“The winds react and change to their wielder,” Thea said. “I can get them to divulge information about my wives or son far easier than I can about you, and I can get more about you than I can about the expiration of eggs in a grocery store in Daocheng.”

“How do you get them to divulge information?” I asked. “Fortune just kind of… blows. It pushes me around when it wants to, and when it doesn’t, it just sort of spins lazily. Sometimes I get flashes of danger or inspiration. That’s why I met your son. I had a good feeling about him, and it turned out that he was from the sanctuary that I needed to deliver eggs to.”

“An unformed connection trying to manifest from the sea of possibilities,” Thea said. “As for how you get them to divulge information, you need to listen.”

She closed her eyes.

“I draw myself into my mana garden and listen to the words of the wind. They’re not words, not really, but they’re… impressions. Half formed impressions carried on the wind to me. Destiny is the easiest one to listen to. It’s the natural course of the world, and it follows nice, predictable patterns. Tyrants rise, so heroes rise to follow them. Those heroes might turn into tyrants and the cycle continues.”

“I thought the ripples and cause and effect were all fortune?” I asked, and Thea sighed, opening her eyes again.

“Reality isn’t as simple as a pond. They’re all ripples, fish, lakes, ponds, frogs, herons, and the sky. They’re all that was, all that is, and all that might be.”

Dusk peeped a question – Thea had said might be, not will be. Was that on purpose?

“Might be,” Meadow agreed firmly.

“The future is constantly changing,” Thea said. “I didn’t even begin picking up hints of you until relatively recently, and then you blazed in many of my visions.”

“Now they’re visions?” I asked, growing increasingly confused. Hadn’t she just said they were barely there at all?

“Yes. No.”

Thea sighed and looked at Meadow, who shrugged.

“Just try to still your mind, your body, and focus,” Thea said.

I was tempted to point out that being still and focusing was something that I was historically bad at, but I did as she said, drawing myself into my mana- garden. I stood in the center, in the midst of the ungated mana and the entry to the beastgate, then closed my eyes inside my spirit.

I reached out, trying to listen to the wind of fortune as it formed its lazy loops.

Nothing.

I shifted, and felt a hand grab me. My eyes fluttered open to see Thea grabbing my arm, stopping me from falling face first into the lake.

“Thanks,” I said, and she nodded.

I tried, I really did, giving it an earnest effort, but the winds of fortune just seemed to spin. There were no flashes of insight or visions or words on the wind.

The only time I’d ever heard anything on the wind was when I’d heard the laughter of resolve. At that memory, I felt a weight in my chest, where resolve had marked me with its inactive roots.

What did that laughter mean?

Who or what had it come from?

Why was fortune silent?

I had ridden fortune to get this far, but it was quiet now, not responding.

Wasn’t it?

Had the prismatic kirin approached me because of my winds of fortune? Because of my beastgate? Neither? Both?

I strained my senses, trying to listen to the wind, to hear or see anything at all, but nothing.

I let out a frustrated sigh and tried to grab onto the wind, to pull on it and get it to react, to speak, to laugh, to give me the faintest impression, to do anything at all.

There was no reaction at all from the wind.

“Fortune is fickle,” Meadow said gently, patting my shoulder. “You’re a beginner at a skill that not everyone ever masters.”

I glanced at her.

“How good is Orykson at reading the winds? Who is the best at reading the winds?”

He had hoped to train me up to be his perfect mage, after all, so I felt it was a good bar to measure against.

“When it comes to reading the winds, Orykson’s skill lies in finding the future where he keeps going,” Meadow said. “I’m excellent at ferreting out where powerful people are trying to make the lives of common people worse, or where disasters might happen, and following them. The Knowledge King sees far – they see very far, more than anyone I know, but they see so far that their predictions often never come to pass. Oracles like Thea tend to have the broadest range.”

She shrugged.

“In theory, nothing stops anyone from mastering the winds to such a point that they can always find a way out like Orykson, see as far as the Knowledge King, find the plans of others like me, and have as much breadth and depth as Thea here.”

“The reality does,” Thea said. “Olive and Kater each only have one wind. Many never develop any. Many never find a way to ply theirs meaningfully.”

She sighed.

“Sometimes I think the fact that I’m weaker than them is the only reason I can see so far at all.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I turned to help feed the estragon.