The events of the night before didn't save Iris from being awakened for training. Autumn questioned her about the bite marks on her training sword, but was quickly told by Titus to save it for after training. Their lesson today was on where and how to hold the sword between strikes, and how to transition between stances. Iris was extremely thankful that it was a slow and easy lesson as she began to feel the aches and pains of last night's exertion on top of the exhaustion she already felt.

Titus cooked breakfast that morning, simple omelets made from eggs that Autumn had foraged the day before. This freed up Autumn to go with Eli to harvest from the giant snake. Iris caught up with them soon after to dump the slabs of meat wrapped in snakeskin, along with the carefully wrapped fangs of the creature, into her bottomless bag. At breakfast, Victoria, Eli and Iris each explained their parts of the story.

"What do you mean you don't sleep?" Autumn quizzed Victoria almost immediately after she began.

"I said it's not exactly sleep," Victoria corrected, "it's more like a meditation. The point is, I can still sense auras while I'm asleep if they’re strong enough, like a giant snake chasing an extremely scared new girl."

"I wasn't that scared," Iris defended weakly, "it was just intense, that's all."

"She actually did hold it together pretty well," Eli said, "I mean, she was terrified, but she held it together."

Iris was very glad to hear the praise, especially from Eli, who she expected to be the most critical of her performance.

"Do you guys think that was the serpent the turtle mentioned?" Autumn asked.

"No," Victoria said, "he was referring to a great beast, a Titan. Let's hope we don't meet that one."

"Agreed," Eli said.

"So," Victoria continued, "Iris lead the snake just close enough to camp for me to catch a sense of the aura and wake up. Once I recognized her aura, I woke Eli to go after her."

"Why not me and Autumn too?" Titus asked.

"I've worked with Eli long enough to know that he could handle it, and you two take forever to wake up."

That comment sparked a back and forth between Victoria, Autumn and Titus. With Autumn turning on Titus and claiming he was worse than she was, to which he claimed that he's awake before her every morning. Victoria jumped in to point out that he also goes to bed before everyone else, so that doesn't really count. Eventually Eli cut them off to continue the story. Once he got to the part where he arrived at Iris and the snake, they took turns telling the story of the battle in tandem.

Mercifully, Eli saved his lecture until they started traveling for the day. He and Iris lagged behind the others, while he quietly explained what she should have done at various points.

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"For starters, leading the rats away from camp wasn't a bad idea. It's going so far from camp, especially in a place where it's difficult to find your way back, that was your big mistake. Not fighting the snake was another good choice, but you didn't make the best use of the terrain to slow it down like you could have. Snakes are faster than you'd think, but they're slowest when they're climbing. With powers like yours in a forest like this, I'd suggest sticking to the smallest, weakest branches you can find, and focus on crossing large gaps. It would have struggled with the gaps, and if you were lucky a branch might have broken under it."

Iris paid close attention, committing the advice to memory. She was silently thankful that Eli preferred constructive criticism over harsh admonishment.

"The most important thing," he continued, "is that you don't leave camp unguarded. If you have to flee camp while on watch, it should be a priority to wake someone up to cover watch while you're gone. Even if that means screaming and shouting while you run away."

The gang traveled for much of the day, as usual. They set up camp inside of a hollowed stump of a long fallen redwood. It was open at the top for the smoke of their fire to escape, but contained the light to all but the naturally occurring V shaped entrance in the base. The space inside was large enough for all of their bedrolls, while Glimmer found a spot to curl up under a large bush that grew just beside the entrance.

While Autumn cooked dinner, Victoria pulled Iris aside.

"I've been watching you train with Titus," she said, "you seem to be taking it pretty seriously."

"I don't want to be a liability to you guys," Iris replied, "I wanna be able to pull my own weight. Besides, being trained by real adventurers is literally a dream come true."

"Think you could handle even more training, then?"

"Absolutely!" Iris answered in a hurry, "what are you going to teach me? Meditation? How to see auras?"

"Slow down," Victoria laughed, "yes, there will be some meditation. I can't teach you to see auras, you need the right ability for that, but I can teach you to sense them. More importantly, I can teach you to better control your own."

"So people don't know when I'm terrified?"

"Exactly."

"I'm in, when do we start?"

Victoria glanced at Autumn, who was grinding up spices next to the fire where a pot of water had just begun to boil, "we still have a while before dinner's ready, why not now?"

"Okay!" Iris was resisting the urge to jump with excitement.

Victoria looked upwards, then back at Iris, "race you to the top?"

She faded into a foggy mist, which immediately began drifting upwards.

Iris was caught off guard, but immediately began plotting a teleport route up the many branches of the trees. Once she had the first half planned out, she started teleporting. She blipped through the first few stops quickly, appearing next to trunks and kicking off before blipping away and appearing near another to do it again. Once she reached the first layer of large branches she stopped to plan the next portion of her course while her mana recharged.

The slow moving cloud that was Victoria had the luxury of moving in a straight line, and was still ahead of her. With a huff, she launched off the branch and continued the race. Iris arrived at one of the top most branches of one of the tallest trees just seconds after Victoria began rematerializing on it.

"My feet," she huffed as she doubled over to lean on her knees, "they touched first."

Victoria looked down at her legs, still reforming from the cloudy mist as she hovered above the branch.

"Oh, is that how it is?" She asked.

"Yep," Iris said, still regaining her breath.

"Alright, you can have this one. Next time though, I'm actually going to hurry."

Iris looked up at her incredulously.

"This is the perfect chance to start your lesson," Victoria said, "slow breaths, in your nose and out your mouth. One after the other."

Iris got her breathing under control and straightened upright with one particularly large breath.

"Good, now take a seat."