Vayra trekked across the rigid landscape of the greenhouse’s interior for a week, constantly looking over her shoulder. Every step, she scanned for a tingle in the back of her neck—just to be safe. But if Larra wanted to, she could veil herself, and Vayra wouldn’t get much warning.

She kept to the high ground as best as she could, walking along the top of valley ridges or climbing the stepped hills. At least if Larra used a flashy technique to approach quickly, Vayra would see it coming.

The flower-trees shrank and faded away into patches. They ended up as just scattered patches of normal-sized flowers. For another half-day, she ran across the open fields, trying to stay out of sight, though there wasn’t much cover.

Besides, trying to run with her own spirit veiled—and while carrying seven barrels of elixir in her corespace—was enough to make her queasy.

It wasn’t a physical weight bearing down, and certainly not as much as she had expected from carrying so much, but it weighed down on her spirit.

‘Support the core with a bed of mana,’ Phasoné suggested. ‘Don’t move the mana once you get it in place—maintain your own veil—but just make a nest for the core to rest in. That might take some strain off you.’

For a few seconds, Vayra broke the veil to put the bed of mana in place. She imagined cupping invisible hands around the core, and she started to feel less queasy.

But, she suspected the only true antidote to the weight was continuing her advancement through the Lieutenant stages. A stronger core meant a stronger corespace.

After that, she kept herself unveiled. If Larra could exert the power of an Admiral and use Admiral-grade Arcara, then Vayra’s veil probably wouldn’t do much against a spiritual scan anyway. She started to use and integrate more of the elixir as they ran.

On the fourth day, a forest of wheat enveloped her. The green stalks were as thick as aspen trunks—though veins of energy criss-crossed beneath the surface of their stalks—and their heads towered twenty feet above. Each individual grain of wheat was as large as a breadroll. Vayra was about to pick one up and try to digest it, but Phasoné reminded her that the spirit grains were inconsequential until they were refined into an elixir. They were better off looking for more wells or some kind of other automatic refining system, so they kept walking.

When night fell on the wheat forest and Vayra prepared to settle down for the night, Phasoné asked, ‘Where are we walking to? We can’t just wander aimlessly forever.’

“I was hoping to find more wells,” Vayra said. “A place we could hide, with all the resources we need to advance all around us.”

‘Staying in one spot for too long will be a bad idea,’ Phasoné said. ‘If you face Larra before you’re a Captain, head to head, you’ll lose. We’ll lose.’

“We have one thing going for us,” Vayra said. “She doesn’t want to kill us.”

‘Yes, and imprisonment for a lifetime, only to have our throats slit at the end of our lives, is so much better?’

“I’m not saying we should try to get caught.”

Phasoné chuckled. ‘At least we can agree on that.’

Vayra put her hands on her hips, then stopped walking. She was about to enter the corespace and draw out another few sips of elixir, when Phasoné commanded, ‘Stop.’

“What?”

‘We should practice drawing something out without you pushing your entire consciousness into the corespace.’

“How do I do that?”

‘You can feel the elixir weighing on you, can’t you? Use the mana, the bits that you’re supporting the core with, to reach inside. Focus on the feeling of the elixir, and draw some of it out to your hand.’

Vayra shut her eyes, but she didn’t pull herself into her core. She imagined her channels and the invisible hands of mana supporting the extra weight in her core, then…

…reached inside.

There was an impression of something, and she tried to draw it out, to push it into her hands.

First, she ended up withdrawing a chunk of the thick flower petal that Phasoné had woven into barrels. “Oh. Whoops. Phas…are the barrels leaking in there?”

‘You took a chunk of one of the half-empty barrels, thankfully…and it was from the upper rim. We’re fine.’

Vayra tossed the chunk of flower over her shoulder and tried again.

This time, Adair materialized in her hand. He mewled in fright and buried his head under his paws, flattening his ears against his head. “Sorry…” Vayra whispered to him, even if he couldn’t understand what she was saying.

‘Put him back in the same way you got him out,’ Phasoné instructed.

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Vayra reversed the mana process she had used to draw Adair out of the corespace and tucked him back inside. “Kitten made it back safely, right?”

‘He’s a little…upset. But otherwise, he’s unharmed.’

Vayra sighed with relief, then concentrated especially on the heaviness of the barrels. She penetrated inside them with her willpower and searched the impression they left in her core. With a cupped scoop of mana, she tugged on the magic-warped reality that stored the elixir.

The golden liquid filled the cup of her left hand, appearing seemingly out of nowhere, and a little extra dribbled over the side.

“Well, that was a lot of effort,” she muttered.

‘You’ll get better at it. Soon, you won’t even need a haversack.’

“Not if the entirety of my carrying ability is occupied by elixirs.”

‘But once we use those up…’

Vayra slurped the elixir out of her hand and took a few more steps, then stopped. “Why did Nathariel even need a voidhorn, then?”

‘Like I said, your corespace is much more advanced than most God-heirs’ is, and I imagine that our type of enhanced body is helping shoulder some of the load—vastly strengthened and malleable channels, and such. Most God-heirs can only store small objects in their corespaces.’

Vayra nodded, then kept walking. Every step, she completed a single cycle, integrating the elixir into her spirit and building up more of an Arcara base.

‘You still don’t have any idea where you’re going, do you?’

Vayra dropped her arms down and let out a soft groan. “No…” She wrapped her arms and legs around one of the tree-sized wheat stalks, then began to pull herself up like she was climbing a gutter in Tavelle. “What exactly do we need, aside from more elixir?”

‘You need to get your Mediator Form working consistently. We do that, and we stand a chance against whatever it is that Larra’s doing. She’s got a trump card, so we’ll meet it with our own.’

“And what do we need for that?” Vayra reached the top of the wheat stalk and pulled away some of the husk around the head, before perching on the still-intact grains. “I’ve got starsteel a starsteel bracer, which should still help our Arcara improve in quality—”

‘Diminishing returns. The jump in quality you got from pushing Mate Arcara through starsteel? Helpful. But now? You might get the equivalent of an eighth-stage higher. Not terribly helpful.’

“Socket some runestones into my arm?”

‘No, unless Talock somehow thought to craft some runestones specially for the Mediator’s purpose—which isn’t even his realm of expertise.’

“Are you going to tell me, or should I keep guessing?”

‘I don’t know exactly what we need to do to get it consistent. You accepted the virtues for a minute, sure, but that’s not exactly how advancement works, the higher we get. That’s why we needed the Order to help us.’

“Wait, what do you mean, ‘that’s not how advancement works’?” Vayra instinctively dropped her voice quieter now that she was out of cover. She peered through swaying heads of the wheat stalks, searching the terrain nearby for Larra.

Still nothing, but staying exposed like this wasn’t a great idea.

And it was even worse when Phasoné’s white ghost manifested physically. The Goddess clung to the side of the wheat husk, slightly lower than Vayra, glowing and bright.

“You had to come out right now?” Vayra asked, tapping her foot inside her boot.

“Unless someone’s looking at us from above, my appearance won’t make any difference,” Phasoné said. “At least this way, I know you aren’t tuning out my mental voice.” She climbed up a little higher. “Vayra, you must understand this: the Stream is a manifestation of universal law. It binds all planets in the galaxy, all life, all magic, all physical phenomena of order and chaos. It is the Great Way, the one true Path. To advance, eventually, you must understand. There will be revelations about yourself that you will have to accept, and revelations about the universe and nature that you will confront.”

“How?”

“It’s not just about accepting the virtues that make you the Mediator, the virtues the Stream requires of you, but about knowing what they mean to the entire galaxy.”

Vayra shut her eyes for a moment. “So, when I used the Mediator Form against Myrrir, I was…accepting them?”

“A touch, yes.”

Vayra tightened her grip on the massive wheat husk. “I was desperate, then. I had a lot more pushing me.”

“You don’t now?”

“It’s different. My brother isn’t dying in front of me.”

“Do you need to see what Karmion has done to know how dire and precarious our situation is? Haven’t you seen it?”

“I’ve seen the aftermath of battles, sure.”

“We’ll need something more potent, then.”

“Something more potent?” Vayra didn’t like the sound of that.

Phasoné explained, “Talock refined the essence of an ancient ‘seeing plant’. The kausisia, it was called, and he used it for his mind elixirs—elixirs that could allow user’s minds and bodies to go without sleep for days, or improve their mental faculties. But the plant itself allowed the user to peer into the Stream a little when fed enough refined Stream water, much like Nathariel’s vision chamber on Muspellar.”

“We’ll use that to…?”

“To help you see, understand, and have a better grasp on your purpose.”

Vayra nodded. She needed the strongest weapon in her arsenal if she was going to walk out of here alive.

“The best patches would have been well above ground level,” Phasoné said. “The pollen-water might be potent in refined spirit energy, but it wouldn’t have been suitable for growing kausisia. There might be weak patches scattered all about, but we’ll find the best specimens elsewhere.” She pointed up at the distant edge of the dome—miles away—where a set of platforms clung to the dome’s outer wall. “There. You see those wood platforms? Like giant planter boxes?”

“I see them,” Vayra answered. As best as she could see, a turquoise, ferny plant covered them. “Is that…what we need?”

“Not sure. But that will be our best shot.”

“You’re sure it’s not going to be on the other side of the dome?” Vayra asked.

“Certain. He would have further refined the groundwater runoff of the kausisia into proper mentally-stimulating elixirs on the other side…”

“You’re trailing off like there’s a catch.”

“High quality kausisia is valuable,” Phasoné said. “No doubt he placed some guardians of some sort around the best patches. We’ll have to approach slowly and carefu—”

“Quiet!” Vayra hissed. A wisp of white steam flashed in the corner of her eye—far in the distance. She whipped her head to the south. A trail of mist rose across the plains, like dust behind a sprinting horse. “Water’s coming from somewhere.”

“It has to be Larra,” Phasoné said.

“She’s coming right at us,” Vayra whispered. She let go of the enormous wheat husk and slid down to the ground. “Get back inside. We’re using the Astral Shroud.”

“What happened to slow and careful?”

“If there’s something deadly protecting your plants, then Larra will have to deal with it too. We’ll lose her there. Come on!”