Vayra forced herself to sit still for hours, cycling in a cross-legged position. Without using any combat techniques, the ambient mana in the air was enough to power her cycling, especially the small loop that Nathariel taught her.

She started with small infusions of the Golden Elixir, but the more she used, the more natural the lightning in her veins and gut felt. She took larger and larger sips. The energy surged around, filling up her channels and core. As it integrated, she was able to envision it less as a golden energy, but as the faint blue of pure Arcara.

Though, since she had advanced to Third Lieutenant, she had noticed that her Arcara seemed a lot paler—less pure, and more intertwined with starlight without any extra interference.

She had made it through a quarter of the bucket by the time she felt a small set of teeth nipping at her shin.

Her eyes whipped open. She half expected it to be a poisonous snake or some other kind of demonic, spirit-water-fuelled nightmare plant.

It was the kitten.

Vayra sighed and picked it up. “Just you.”

It meowed loudly at her, then nipped her thumb. Not hard enough to draw blood, though, and she barely felt it.

“Don’t like being picked up?” she asked.

She was about to put it down on the cave floor when Phasoné said, ‘It’s hungry, Vayra. That’s why it’s chewing on you.’

“Oh.”

Vayra put the kitten down anyways, then reached into her haversack. A kitten this little would probably have preferred milk, but she didn’t have any of that to give. Instead, she tore up a salt-pork strip into bits half the size of a fingernail. As it gulped them up out the palm of her hand, she ran a finger down its back.

‘I guess this is the one,’ Phasoné muttered. ‘An exotic animal would have been nice to form a spiritual connection with, but it looks like you’re gonna be bonding with a kitten.’

“I’m just—”

‘Oh, it’s going to happen, and we both know it.’

“Alright. But look at it. It’s pretty cute, right?”

‘You’re looking at it, so I am too.’ Then Phasoné grumbled something inaudible even inside Vayra’s head. After a few more seconds, she added, ‘But yes, it is pretty cute.’

The kitten was so soft, and with each pet, Vayra’s heartbeat slowed. She let out a truly deep breath, then leaned back against the muddy walls of the cave. A root bit into the small of her back, but she ignored it for the time-being while she ate the rest of the salt-pork strip.

Sometime after that, she fell asleep. In the morning, she realized that she hadn’t been cycling at all overnight—not even a basic pattern—and mentally reprimanded herself for a few minutes before turning back to the bucket and drinking more of it.

Over the rest of the day, she integrated the full bucket of golden elixir.

Before they had departed ashore, Nathariel had told her all about the Lieutenant stages and their purposes. The entire set of stages was about developing a core, and an inner world inside it.

Being the Mediator, Vayra already had a head start—Phasoné’s void already existed inside her core. But she needed to turn it into something more, or she’d never advance.

While she cycled, she pulled herself into the white void (which was now more a shade of light gray), and turned in a circle, hands on her hips.

Phasoné was in the center of the void, lying flat on her back with a bored expression on her face. She still wore her tied-up shirt and a long skirt.

Nudging the Goddess with her boot, Vayra said, “Hey, Glitter Princess? We’ve got a bit of a job to do. Or are you just sunbathing? Void-bathing?”

“Hm?” Phasoné sat up. “In my defence, I didn’t know when you’d show up.”

Vayra started by mapping out the entire area of the corespace. She walked until she couldn’t anymore—when she reached an edge of the gray void. Like the floor, she couldn’t see any sort of wall, but there was an invisible force preventing her from moving. The wall curved slightly under the palm of her hand. As best she could tell, the void was spherical, with a flat floor at the bottom. Phasoné stood on the opposite side, three ship-lengths away.

“That’s what we’re working with!” Vayra yelled. She ran back to the center and met Phasoné. “Third Lieutenant is laying the foundations. The ground, right?”

“That memory is a little distant, Vayra…you’re the one who got a lecture from Nathariel.”

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Vayra smiled and shook her head. She couldn’t resist a soft chuckle. Of course Phasoné wouldn’t have been paying attention to the lecture.

“I can feel those...”

“I know—” Vayra cut herself off. She didn’t just know, she knew. Deeply. Intently. She had caught a whiff of intent from the Goddess. “Was that—”

“That’s what it’s like to feel my thoughts,” Phasoné said.

Vayra cleared her throat, then folded her fingers together. She shuffled a few steps away from Phasoné. “Alright, so…we’ve got more important things. What’s the inner world supposed to look like? I know I’m supposed to craft it with my mind, but I can’t picture anything. And if it’s bad, then you’ve gotta live here for the next little while, in a little—”

“What makes you think of stars?”

“—and it has to be attuned to a Path. Right?”

“Seriously, Vayra, what makes you think of stars?”

Vayra shrugged. “I dunno. Sitting on a rooftop, overlooking Tavelle. Bremi and I would lay there for hours, looking up at the stars. Sometimes, their light would pass behind a distant reach of the Stream, and a little patch of watery net would light up across the sky…”

“Rooftop, got it,” Phasoné said. “Then we’ll need a tall hill in the center, cause that’d be the best place to put a house, and the best place to stargaze.”

Vayra continued, “During the springtime, I loved watching the reflections of the night sky in puddles, when the snow was melting and everything was warming up.”

“Springtime, perfect. And a pond? How about a pond along the far edge?”

The conversation continued for a few minutes, all while Vayra continued to integrate the golden elixir. The cycling pattern was becoming automatic, as were the exertions of willpower.

For the afternoon, they spread dirt around the floor of the void, filling it up to the floor level.

Well, it wasn’t exactly dirt. Vayra had been wondering where she would get it from, and if she would have to bring handfuls of outside dirt into the void.

But, thankfully, she didn’t need to do any of that.

The core was malleable at this stage. When she poured Arcara into the core, it was consumed and forged directly by her willpower into her core structure. Truly, it didn’t look like dirt or hills or ponds, but that was the best way to imagine it, aiding the development of the core’s internal structure.

Vayra focussed on the intent of her magic. She was to turn starlight into a weapon capable of crushing gods—of becoming the Godscourge. Or at least, that was how it was supposed to go.

She built a tall mound of dirt in the center of the core (the perfect spot for stargazing) and a pond off to the edge, where eventually, a garden would grow, by reflections of stars.

Then, with a final breath, she coloured the sky of the little sphere-shaped void black. It had to be nighttime to see the stars.

“Is that…it?” she asked. She pulled herself out of the core so she could envision it. From the outside, the black streaks had grown, intertwined with bolts of white and blue energy—a high-contrast white snowglobe.

When she turned the sky to night, she had finished integrating the last sip of elixir from the bucket. She expected something to happen. A shock of sorts, or maybe a cramp, signalling the start of an advancement.

But there was nothing.

When she called all her Arcara back to her core, it barely fit in, but the core wasn’t overflowing yet.

‘You’re at the peak of Third Lieutenant,’ Phasoné said. ‘There wasn’t enough to push us over the top.’

Vayra tried placing stars in the sky of the globe, pulling the white streaks from the outside in, but she couldn’t.

‘That’s the final touch of the environment, isn’t it? It’ll have to wait until the actual advancement.’

Vayra dropped her arms, and a pit formed in her stomach. She was hoping to face the nymphs when she was Second Lieutenant, not…the same. She rubbed her gut where the nymph’s finger-blades had almost impaled her. The scratches had all healed, but that didn’t mean she was in any condition to fight three First Lieutenants.

‘Don’t discount the power of reaching the peak of a stage. You have more Arcara, and your attacks will have a little more weight behind them.’

Vayra drove her mind entirely out of her body once again and stood up. She wanted to be encouraged, but she didn’t know how. “I’ll need a new technique.”

‘Of what sort?’

“Read my mind.”

‘A Bracing technique…for your entire body.’

“And something specialized to me.” Vayra said. “My body is supposed to be fast and agile, and strength can come second to that.” Better to focus on her strengths and build them up, rather than excel in nothing.

It might close the gap between her and the nymphs a little, though, so that had to count for something.

‘I was never able to develop one for myself,’ Phasoné said. ‘The starlight Bracing techniques left too much char in my channels if I used them too much or for too long, and a full-body technique was off the table. But with your cleansing abilities…’

“I might be able to make it work.” Vayra stood up and gathered her equipment. She’d need the bucket again, unless there was another lying in the woods, then picked up the kitten. She was about to tuck it into her haversack, but if she was about to go experimenting with a new technique, that wouldn’t exactly be safe.

‘Bring it into the core with you.’ Phasoné chuckled softly. ‘I guess we can start calling it a corespace now.’

“Can I do that? Bring another being into the void?”

‘Now that the core has stabilized and formed up as much as it has? Yes, we can.’

Vayra hugged the kitten close to her chest, and it snuggled up against her. Then she pulled herself into the void—no, corespace—for what felt like the fiftieth time that day.

She arrived at the center, on the very top mound of grassless mud, and set the kitten down. “You’ll be safe here, alright?”

Almost as soon as she had arrived, she was pulling herself out of the void again. With everything settled, and her passenger safely stowed, Vayra marched towards the cave entrance.

She was ready to make a new technique.