Vayra awoke to the feeling of something crawling up her arm—her real arm. Twigs prodded along her skin in a repetitive pattern, shifting up to her shoulder.

With a shout, she leapt to her feet, shooing whatever it was away with a flail of her arm.

A bee the size of a cat took flight. It leapt off her arm and buzzed away through the flower forest.

“Thousands of other options, and you had to pick me…” she muttered, rubbing her arm with her mechanical hand to make the feeling of the bee crawling along go away. It didn’t work, and she had to let out a good shudder before the sensation finally dimmed. “Insects…”

‘You did cover yourself in pollen,’ Phasoné commented inside Vayra’s head, then added a yawn.

“Well, I’m not doing that again.”

Immediately, she did it again.

She needed to get an idea of where she was and where she needed to go, and the only thing sturdy enough to climb was one of the pollen-covered stamens. The filament was as thick as her leg, and it didn’t bend even when she reached the top.

She peered over the rim of the surrounding petals and stared out across the greenhouse’s internal landscape. It was morning; rays of sunlight penetrated the outer shell of the greenhouse, streaking through the misty air. She was about halfway up the slope of a deep, central valley that ran through the eastern side of the greenhouse.

‘If I understand the process correctly, the Stream water mixture, once purified by the upper shelves, seeps into the ground down here,’ Phasoné said. ‘It feeds these plants, and the spirit-pollen gets spread around by the bees. It soaks back into the soil and feeds the creation of an even stronger elixir.’

“And that’s what goes over to the western side?”

‘I believe so.’

“So we’re on the wrong side, because I guarantee there’s another step of purification there that’ll make it even more potent and get us even more spirit energy, right?”

‘Not necessarily. The western side is more specified. We’re in need of raw power, so we’re in the right place. We just need to find a well where it bubbles up into a concentrate, unless you want to go around eating dirt.’

“Considering all the other things I’ve done these past few months…”

‘No, we’re not eating dirt. Veto. Goddess veto. Go find a well, before I come out there and make you.’

“Where would a well be?”

‘Head to lower ground, as low as you can get. Then listen for the talking flowers.’

Vayra slid down the stamen and brushed the pollen dust off herself. “If you insist,” she said, with a mock-bow. “Wait, talking flowers?”

‘You heard me.’

“Don’t know what you’re onto, but I’ll accept it. Talking flowers. Got it…”

image [https://static.wixstatic.com/media/f3a882_2bcdeab6626a49c1bc2fa21d230a67c6~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_560,h_281,al_c,lg_1,q_85,enc_auto/ship%20better.png]

Vayra was hoping for a river at the bottom of the valley—hopefully, filled with easily accessible spirit elixir just flowing.

The ground just stopped sinking. There was one last rigid, terraformed ledge, then a perfectly flat bottom filled with more tree-sized flowers. She walked along the base of the valley for a few hours, and only stopped at around noon to eat.

When she reached inside her haversack to retrieve a puck of hardtack, though, her fingers brushed against something warm and furry.

And it was moving.

She pulled her hand back immediately, fearing that it was another massive bee that had snuck into her pouch. She pulled the haversack’s flap shut again, eyes wide. “Phas…”

Then the mewling began.

Cautiously, Vayra pulled the pouch open again. She looked closely, until a sunbeam crossed over a tuft of brownish orange fur. Definitely not a bee.

‘Oh, for the Streamfather’s sake…’ Phasoné muttered. ‘It’s a kitten.’

Vayra reached in and plucked it up by the scruff. It was one of Orlas’ kittens, and it had a strip of salt-pork in its mouth. “Hey!” she snapped. “That’s my—” She tried to pull the strip of meat out of the little kitten’s fangs, but it clung on tight. After a few seconds of wrestling, it tugged the chunk off…and quickly began to choke on it.

“No, no, no…” Vayra hissed, dropping down to her knees. She tapped the back of the kitten’s neck until it spat out the hunk of meat. The little creature was barely large enough to fill the palm of her hand, but it still rolled over onto its back and meowed loudly at her.

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“Yeah, you’re welcome,” Vayra said, picking the kitten back up by its scruff. “He must have gotten in when I was loading up on rations.”

‘He’s still so little,’ Phasoné said. ‘He needs his mother.’

“Yeah, well, we can’t get back out, and we can’t just leave him here.” Vayra held him up higher. As the kitten dangled, his head lolled to the side, and he began to purr softly, like he was snoring. “Did he just…fall asleep?”

‘Kittens will do that. Did he have a name?’

“I don’t think the midshipmen decided on names for the kittens.” Vayra sighed, then tucked him back into her haversack—but she made sure he was in the back pocket with her books, separated from her rations. “I guess we’ve got a little friend with us.” Yet another complication to deal with.

She ate the rest of the salt-pork strip the kitten had taken out, then kept walking.

Mid-afternoon, when the sun bore down on the greenhouse and the interior felt hotter than the choking lava fields of Muspellar (though, being a half-phoenix, the difference was hard to tell), she started to hear whispers.

They were unintelligible, but it was definitely a voice of some kind. There was no wind nor flowing water to muffle it.

She tucked her head and tried to concentrate on the direction of the voices. They were coming from the bottom of the valley and if she turned to the right slightly, she would reach them.

But did she want to? What if there were more God-heirs? If Larra had made it here before them, enough to be expecting them, then what was to say there couldn’t be others?

‘If there are other God-heirs, then we’ll want to know how strong they are,’ Phasoné said. ‘Chances are, they’ve gathered around a spirit well, and that’s what we need, too. It’s us or them.’

Vayra bit her lip. “All I’d be able to sense is a tingle. Don’t remember exactly what stage the senses develop far enough at…” At least, though, she couldn’t feel a tingle. If they were God-heirs, they weren’t terribly strong. “I need to see them to scan their spirits.”

‘Not with me in tow,’ Phasoné said. ‘My spiritual senses have been active, just diminished. Hence my ability to sense immediate physical dangers.’

“These aren’t cannonballs screaming at our face, though.”

‘I’ll need more Arcara from you, then.’

“How?”

‘We’re already intertwined. You only have the spirit potential of a God because you’re sharing my Arcara channels. You will eventually be able draw from my stores of power. But I only have faint, faint, trickles of your mana to work with.’ Phasoné paused. ‘The Gods resided in the Upper Realm. Many of them have descended since Karmion’s invasion began, but I was not one of them. My form, my body, is still trapped up there, and it’s only my spirit and soul that have been shoved into yours.’

Vayra crossed her arms. “How do I give you more of my Arcara, though?”

‘It’ll be easier if I do…’ A glimmer of white light blared off to Vayra’s left, and Phasoné’s physical ghost knitted itself out of strands of white starlight. “...this.” She took a few steps back from Vayra. “There are still two separate Arcara systems inside you. One, yours, which has been developing, and mine, which was giving you the kick you needed. Yours is at a state where it’s stable on its own, so we can actually try this.”

The Goddess held out her ghostly hand, and Vayra took it.

“Pass Arcara between the two systems,” Phasoné instructed. “You’re feeding me, and with the mana, I’ll sense for you.”

Vayra fed a slow trickle of mana Arcara out into the palm of her hand, like she was fuelling a rune. Phasoné’s ghost lit up a little brighter, and a few more details filled in—the dimples of her cheeks, individual strands of her hair, and her collarbone. Vayra tried not to stare.

“Oh, it’s been a while since I’ve felt this strong…” said Phasoné. She darted in front of Vayra, moving twice the speed of a normal human, then back the other direction to strike a flower. Her fist cracked through the air, and instead of flopping back like a curtain, she punched a hole in the center of the petal.

“Quiet!” Vayra hissed. “If there are others, they’ll hear us!”

Phasoné raced back in front of Vayra. Then she dimmed again. “Sorry…I got ahead of myself. I’ll need…a top-up of mana to activate my senses.”

“Being a Goddess uses that much mana, huh?”

“Yes, but your stores will eventually get bigger to compensate for me. We used to sleep in beds of…well, it’s hard to describe, but the Upper Realms are very different, and there are different sources of mana than the Stream.”

Vayra placed a hand on Phasoné’s wrist again and transferred a little more mana. For a second, the Goddess stood still. Then, she pointed ahead and said, “I sense a few presences. First-Lieutenant-grade Arcara, but I can’t sense any cores. Just channels.”

“What is it?” Vayra asked. “Those can’t be God-heirs, right? And even if they had weak spirit potential, they’d have a core by the time they reached First Lieutenant.”

“Correct.”

“So…” Vayra rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Oh, talking flowers, then? That’s why you look so smug.”

“You’ll see exactly what these are.”

Vayra drew her pistol out of her belt and conjured her seer-core, ready to blast a hole in something with a beam of starlight-Arcara.

They got closer, and the voices became more than just distant whispers. They were speaking in a foreign language, but with vaguely human words. Between each word, they inserted a click or a clack.

The voices grew to a peak just behind a wall of especially tall wall of petals. Vayra peeled one of the curtain-sized sheets aside just enough that she could see through. A clearing lay beyond, and at the center was a small cobblestone ring. A bucket hung on a chain, reaching all the way down to the bottom of the well.

A trio of humanoid women sat on the edge of the well. They were made up entirely of purple flower petals—one or two of these enormous petals were enough to skin their entire form. They had eyes of pure, glowing blue Arcara, and their hair was formed in the same way. One lay across the lap of the other, chatting lazily with her, and the third hopped to her feet, dancing around the rim of the well while singing a song.

Vayra let the petals fall together slowly. She turned and looked over at Phasoné’s glowing form. “That’s not what I thought you meant.”

“Nymphs,” the Goddess whispered. “They form when a plant absorbs enough mana and purifies it through its root system. Unlike the transport roots, these ones don’t have anywhere to put the Arcara, so they begin to cultivate it and gain intelligence—and a humanoid form.”

Vayra bit her lip, tempted to look back into the clearing. “We need the water from that well.”

“Talock used to disperse the nymphs before they could ever gain more intelligence than an average insect. But you know the rest. They’ve had access to some of the best elixirs in the galaxy for decades.”

“Will they share?”

Phasoné chuckled softly. “On some planets, they’re called demons, and for a reason. So—”

The wall of petals burst apart. A nymph’s head blasted through it, and she bared a set of glowing blue fangs.