“Are you sure you know where you’re going?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” I growled.

“Because you said that a day ago. Weren’t we supposed to have reached the Gate already?”

“Sure, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know where I’m going.”

“Then where is it?” Rosalina questioned, kicking up sand playfully as she followed behind me.

“Close,” I said with certainty. “Yes, I admit, it’s a little odd how it seems to have moved, but then the shifting sands of the desert mean something that was there one day might be gone the next.”

“Sounds like a convenient excuse for being lost.”

“I’m not lost,” I grunted as we crested a sand dune. “In fact, see!” I pointed far below where the sand dune bled into a-

“What is that?” My sister questioned, as I stared in confusion as well.

“Good question,” I muttered. “Looks like an inverse ant hill.”

“Ant hills don’t usually look like they could fit horses inside.”

“That’s because it looks like the nest of Desert Crawlers,” I muttered. “But, the question is, how did a Desert Crawler hive just appear this close to the city? We’re only three days out. And why is the Ring Gate down there?”

I could feel far beneath the earth the pulsing energy of a Gate as if begging us to save it.

“Don’t look at me.” Rosalina shrugged. “This is pretty much the limit of how far Sentries would be sent.”

“And Dion just… never bothered to have any Sentries investigate the closest Ring Gate to the city?”

“Not like many people come or go through those. I doubt even many adventurers try their luck with the Gates.”

“Fair.” I conceded the point; my sister was pretty much spot on. “I guess I just got used to not minding them.”

“Yeah, well, not everyone is a Sage who can stabilize a Gate if need be.”

“Hmm,” I grunted before staring into the cave-like opening to the nest far below.

“Soo… Now what?”

“No choice.” I shrugged. “We go in.”

“In?” My sister raised an eyebrow. “That is a Desert Crawler hive. I get a few, or maybe even dozens may not prove an issue, but thousands could be down there.”

“No.” I shook my head. “If the hive had grown that large, it would have been noticed by now; they would have started moving into city grounds. I figure this hive is new. A wandering drone morphed into a Queen and set up home here. It’s probably no more than a few weeks old.”

“Meaning?”

“Probably only a few hundred workers at best, with a selection of hunters. No big deal.”

“No big deal for you.” Rosalina corrected. “I’m not sure I like the idea of being swarmed by ants the size of a person.”

“You’re a True Dragon. Relax.” I chuckled as I descended the dune’s slope toward the hive’s gaping maw.

“Okay, sure, but that’s only been the case for the last few years. I was a human before that. You know Solarus was over four thousand years old? I’m nineteen. Not exactly a veteran at this whole ‘dragon’ thing yet.”

“Do you trust me?” I finally said.

“Yes.” My sister confirmed immediately.

“Then just stick with me, and it will be fine. We head in, mosey on over to the Queen and kill her, problem solved. Without a leader, the drones and hunters will die out.”

“Unless some evolve into Queens of their own.”

“Sure, but the Guild can handle this mess at that point. I don’t feel like playing exterminator if I’m not getting paid. Statistically speaking, at most, a single drone might become a Queen. Chances are the nest will simply cannibalize themselves after the Queen is dead.”

Half sliding, half shambling, we made it down the side of the dune, standing on the rock lip of the underground nest. It wasn’t actually rock; instead, it was a material created by the ants themselves, a mixture of sticky fluid, sand, and organic matter that was better to not ask about.

“You ready?” I turned around to ask my sister, only willing to enter once she gave me the go-ahead.

“One second.” Rosalina closed her eyes as her skin suddenly began to take a scale-like texture.

“What’s that?” I finally asked as she opened her eyes.

“Oh, this?” She raised her arm, tapping her nails to her skin, now making a sound like tapping rocks. “Call it some of my magic. I can fuse my skin with the scales below.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Like a bitch.” Rosalina laughed. “But only for a moment.”

“Well, I did ask to see your magic,” I said. “Is that all you can do?”

“No, but uhm, that’s better saved for large open spaces.”

“Curious,” I said before beginning my descent into the underground tunnels, a sword appearing in my right hand as I conjured Rainsplitter with a breathless whisper.

“What’s that?” Rosalina asked from behind me.

“Rainsplitter. It’s a conjured sword.”

“Can all Sages do that?”

“Technically,” I said with a shrug. “It’s nothing more than a mana construct, like how one might create rock or ice with magic rather than manipulating existing rock or ice. Formed of Sage Mana, it holds together a physical form that persists far better than ordinary mana could replicate.”

“Uh-huh,” Rosalina mumbled, everything I said passing through one ear and out the other.

Continuing onward, we finally encountered our first group of oversized ants. They were milling about, balling some unfortunate creature’s carcass into flesh spheres they would give to their Queen. Before they could react or raise the alarm, I dashed forward, Rainsplitter removing their heads and limbs as easily as slicing butter.

“Show off.”

“It’s not being a showoff. It’s being tactical.” I rebutted.

“Sure, you’re totally not trying to be cool right now.”

“Would you prefer they raise the alarm and we end up swarmed? Because I’d rather not make this harder than it must be.”

Remaining silent, I took it as her concession to my point. With a smug smile, I began leading us further into the depths, already locked onto the Ring Gate radiating mana.

Seriously, how did it end up all the way down here?

Throughout our journey downward, we ran into several groups of oversized ants. Still, they were dealt with as quickly as the first group. Branching out every few paces were tunnels leading astray but having locked onto the Gate, I stayed firmly to a single path until, at last, the underground tunnel began to level out as we found ourselves in a large cavern.

Don’t appreciate the similarity to the salamander cave.

Opposite where we’d emerged, a giant grub-like ant was pushing out horse-sized sacks of a fleshy white membrane, pupal Desert Crawlers contained within.

“So, that’s the queen?”

“Yep,” I confirmed.

“It’s kind of… large.”

The Queen was the size of a home, its mouth large enough to swallow a horse whole.

“Mhmm, but that’s to be expected. It’s not that threatening. I’ll just go carve it up. After that, we pop through the Gate, and presto, we’re out of here. As long as we don’t -” I heard a sudden squelch as I turned around to see my sister looking at her foot in disgust.

Which had just finished stepping through a green pustule on the ground.

“- don’t step in one of the enzyme sacks.” I sighed.

“What?” She raised her head to look at me, confused. “What did I do?”

“Think of them as nest security. When an enzyme sack is ruptured, it alerts the entire nest to danger, and they rush into the Queen’s hive.”

“How was I supposed to know that?” She threw her hands up in annoyance.

“You weren’t. I should have mentioned that before we entered the hive. Only adventurers who’d dealt with a Desert Crawler nest would have known that.”

“So now what?” She asked nervously.

“Stay close. I’ll make sure they don’t get you.”

“I can help!”

“You’ll understand,” I said empathetically as the ground began to shake, and ants began pouring out from the nearby tunnels.

“Flow,” I uttered, flitting through the mass of chitin like an intangible ghost, my sword a constant bringer of death. Pouring out of the tunnels like water down a drain, more and more of the ants emerged, and as fast as I was, for as many as I killed, for every ant that fell, another two appeared.

I wasn’t worried for myself. Perhaps facing an ancient hive with tens of thousands of drones would have been an issue- if such a hive existed- but a few measly hundred was doable; it would simply take some time to cut through them all.

The issue was my sister. Quick as I was, I could handle the ants, but my sister, even with her scaled skin, would only be able to hold off so many before they tore her to shreds. I could be mid-swing, only to see a group approaching Rosalina. Dropping everything, I was forced to dash to her side, slicing through the packs before they could reach overwhelming numbers.

“Look.” I finally panted after cleaving through another pack for the umpteenth time. “I can keep them off you, but if you want to help, do something about the Queen.”

Had this been during my time as an adventurer and Rosalina a fellow adventurer, I would have never spent as much effort protecting her when she should be fending for herself. Still, she wasn’t an adventurer, and neither was I. I could not, would not, allow anything to harm a single hair on her head if I could help it.

Was it the efficient way to fight? No, the efficient approach to our situation would have been for Rosalina to fend for herself long enough for me to kill the Queen, and then the ants would break. It would take no more than a few seconds, but anything could go wrong in those few seconds.

I would not allow it.

Ant bodies littered the ground by the dozens as I watched Rosalina from the corner of my eye.

Eighty-seven.

She was taking deep breaths, focusing intensely as she raised her palm toward the Queen, which appeared content to let her hive protect her without lifting a finger-

Ants don’t have fingers. Feelers?

-herself. Operating on autopilot, I observed Rosalina, curious about what she would do. Tez was famous for her all-consuming flame, dragon fire that could burn even magma, so I half expected the same from her.

But she made it sound like she’s got something else up her sleeve.

From her direction, I felt a shift in the mana around us. It was warping, bending toward her as if suddenly pulled toward an immense gravity.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

What in the -?

A small sphere of unimaginably bright light was projected from her palm, lazily floating toward the Queen.

What’s that?

I’d never felt nor seen magic like that. Something inextricably different about the scaldingly bright light. Curious by nature, I continued watching the orb.

And that proved a near-fatal mistake.

The small ball of light exploded into a miniature star, exploding with deafening silence, radiating a blistering bright white, the light brighter than anything I’d seen before. Instantly I felt my skin blister and burn; I’d suffered third-degree burns from head to toe in a split second. My sight disappeared in the same breath, as my eyes were quite literally burnt from their sockets.

I dropped to my knees upon the melting ground, reflexively drawing upon null to protect me from the magical heat.

Except, it wasn’t magic causing it; the heat of her white star was all natural.

Bend!

Instantly the heat cut off as I bent space around me, curled up in a tight ball of burnt and mangled flesh. At first, there was no pain; my nerve endings had been fried, but within seconds it began to take hold as my body drew upon the mana with my Sage rings, healing the worst of the burns. Protected within my personal space, cut off from the outside world through my use of bend, my broken groans of pain were kept secret. Half a minute later, I could finally see again as my eyes reformed, and the worst of the pain began to recede.

Sight restored, I took stock of Rosalina above me, shouting something, unable to reach me as bend continued to bend space around me.

“Sorry.” I croaked, my throat beyond parched.

“Rook!” She shouted as I began to stir, grabbing me as I dismissed bend. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize it would be that extreme.”

“Yeah.” I coughed. My skin was no longer a horrid unrecognizable mess, now only reduced to the worst blisters you’d ever seen. “That, that was more than I bargained for.”

“I- I thought I killed you!” She was shaking as I began to stand up. “How are all your burns already-”

“I got a hell of a body.” I sighed, still hurting like hell but no longer a burnt carcass.

Looking down, I noticed my clothes had been incinerated, save for the divine cloth still wrapped around my forearm. More surprising was that Rosalina was untouched, not even a smoky singe on her clothes or pack.

As if noticing I was naked for the first time, Rosalina spun around, averting her eyes.

“Hey, mind doing me a favor. Grab me some clothes from your pack.”

“But this is my clothes.”

“Would you prefer I walk around naked?” I asked.

“No.” She said instantly, pulling through the pack and ruffling around before tossing me a pair of shorts and a plain-looking shirt. Thankful, I pulled them on. They were clearly too small, the shorts only reaching halfway down my thighs, and the shirt left my midriff wholly exposed, but at least I wasn’t naked.

“I’m decent now,” I said after surrendering to the fact that there was no chance of magically extending the clothes.

Turning back around, she looked me up and down before erupting into laughter a moment later.

“Yes, yes. Very funny.” I sighed.

“You look horrendous, and that’s not even referring to how your skin is crawling as it heals.”

“Thanks,” I grunted. “So, what was that?”

“White Star,” Rosalina said. “It was one of Solarus’s attacks. I’ve learned much of my magic from what I could parse through their memories, but I didn’t expect it to be that….”

“Apocalyptic?” I offered. “The spell quite literally has the word ‘star’ in it. What did you expect?”

“I thought maybe it was just, I don’t know, a flavor name.”

“I don’t think Solarus was the type to give spells ‘flavor’ names. I’d suggest any spells you learn from his memories you take quite literally.”

“I’ll remember that.”

I could see that Rosalina was feeling put off by her own magic and what she’d done to me, so trying to comfort her, I gave her a quick pat on her shoulder.

“I can see now why you’ve been hiding the magic from others.”

“Right?” Rosalina sighed, thankful I didn’t seem bothered.

I was. I just wasn’t going to show her that. With a single spell, Rosalina had nearly killed me. I’d only been exposed to White Star for a split second, yet it had scorched me like-

Well, like I was standing on a star.

If she had more practice or power, I’m confident I would have died, not almost.

If Rosalina using a single White Star caused this, I could only imagine the sort of power Solarus himself had in his prime. The underground cavern looked like the epicenter of some massive explosion. Everything had been instantly incinerated; no corpse, whether the drones or the Queen, remained. The only thing remaining was the Ring Gate, scorched and looking worse for wear, but I could sense it was still functional.

And just think. Rosalina, a baby True Dragon could do this. Solarus was powerful even by the likes of True Dragons.

And still, the Sage Above All had managed to strike him down.

“-ook? I, uh, think we should probably leave.”

Snapping out of my thoughts, I noticed what Rosalina suddenly seemed anxious about, the walls and ground below us beginning to tremble.

Oh shit.

“Yeah, you’re exactly right.” I hurried across the Queen’s Den, Rosalina right behind me.

“What exactly is that?”

“I think the nest is about to cave in.”

“It’s what!?”

“Yeah, that spell you set off probably threatened the integrity of this place. Too much heat drying out the surrounding area and vaporizing a good chunk of underground support.”

“so we need to get out, like now?”

“Relax.” I chuckled, only a little anxious. “It’s not my first rodeo.”

“We’re about to be buried alive unless you can activate that gate.”

“Been there, done that.” I snorted. Reaching into my pocket, I frowned as I searched until I stopped a moment after.

Shit.

My plan had been to use the crystal I’d gotten from Dion to reverse the frequency of the Gate, dropping us off at the same place I’d first used the crystal, the Gate outside of Akadia.

Except, that crystal had been incinerated in Rosalina’s attack.

Change of plans. Panic a little.

I’d used Ring Gates enough times before that they weren’t anything new, but often that had been with the assistance of a Gate operator. The times I’d been forced to activate a Gate by myself, I’d been in no rush.

This time, I was sort of in a rush. The last time I’d tried to manipulate a Gate in similar circumstances, we’d been dumped into some random pocket dimension.

You’re better than back then.

I took a deep breath, focusing.

“Rook?” I could hear the concern in Rosalina’s voice. True Dragon she may be, but even for a True Dragon, being buried deep beneath the earth was likely to be less than pleasant.

“Hush.” I silenced her, still focusing.

Gates tended to link back to where they’d last connected, so when I’d been forced to use them alone, it had been a matter of stabilizing them than forcing them to reconnect to another gate, like pushing the track switch of a trolley.

Except in this case, I wasn’t sure I wanted to try something so roundabout, not with the Gate looking like it was on the verge of crumbling. I had to get this right on the first try.

C’mon Rook.

Pressing my palm against the Gate, I pushed some of my Sage mana into the Gate, which began to warble with activity.

“Not yet,” I said before Rosalina could get her hopes up, the trembling worsening.

Without thinking about it, I opened my mana sense, palm still pressed against the Gate as I continued pouring dredges of my mana into it.

Wow.

Inside my mind, it was like a web way of interconnecting connections had been brought to life, an illuminated spider-web of spatial cuts. I could see some web ways lead to dead ends, their respective gates now non-functional, but the rest were shining as if beckoning me forward.

It wasn’t just throughout the country, either. I could sense some network nodes far off in distant lands. They were far too faint to reach with the mana I had currently. Perhaps, one day I’d be able to reach those far-off gates and travel the continents like it was nothing more complicated than walking a block over.

Focus Rook.

Pushing aside my wonder at the discovery I’d made, I locked onto one Gate in specific, Akadia.

There!

Locked on, the Gate’s warbling grew steady.

“Go!” I ushered at the Ring Gate as my eyes snapped open.

Rosalina didn’t need to be told twice, diving through the Gate. Lingering for a moment longer, I saw it wasn’t a second too soon. Massive chunks of hardened stone and glassed sand plunged toward the cavern floor, the final death throes of the hive.

Time to go.

I dove through the Gate, and instantly I fell through space, a now familiar feeling. No longer facing the threat of being buried alive, I let my mind wander.

What was that?

Never had the pathways of the Ring Gates opened so fully for me. In fact, I’d never heard of such a thing happening to anyone before.

Is it my Rings?

If it was, it had to be something that only someone with at least five Sage Rings would experience, given I’d never experienced it before.

Why didn’t it happen before on my way to the dungeon?

“Duh.” I sighed, my voice escaping into the dark void around me. “Because I didn’t try.”

I’d had a Gate Operator send me north; I’d played no part in the process.

As nifty as my new trick of manipulating the Gate so directly was, it wasn’t without a cost. My Sage Rings had been depleted of mana to a shocking degree. I thought of the Gates far away across the oceans I’d sensed. If I attempted to reach those Gates directly and didn’t have the mana for it, would it fail to connect? Or would the link break down during the passage, leaving me stranded in the infinite void of empty space?

Right, not going to try that until I can be confident I can sustain that sort of effort.

Not that I was looking to travel overseas anytime soon anyway.

The tunnel of darkness suddenly flickered out of existence, like I was being forcibly shoved out from the in-between as I appeared stumbling out from a Ring Gate.

“Whoa.” I steadied myself, taken off guard. In most cases, using the Ring Gate didn’t lead to being projected out of the void so forcibly.

Taking bearing of my surroundings, the first thing I noticed was Rosalina faceplanted on the ground, getting to her feat already. Even though less than a second had separated when we’d entered the Gate, she’d been nowhere to be seen.

That’s the void for you, though.

Next was my cat prowling off her back with patches of burnt fur. She’d been lingering outside the immediate Queen’s Den when Rosalina had set off her White Star, meaning she’d escaped the worst, but apparently not enough to escape without smelling like burnt fur.

I’m just happy she is okay.

Aside from the grumbling Rosalina and indignant shadow blossom, there was also the rather surprised-looking Gate Operator.

“Ahh, I’m back.” I waved at the woman, the same operator who’d been working the Gate when I’d left roughly a week back.

“Oh, uh, hello.” She waved back, too surprised to have formed a more coherent reaction such as why are you wearing a crop top?

I went to grab a rost from my pocket until I was once more reminded that these weren’t my clothes.

“Mind, uh, keeping this on the down low?” I asked the woman.

“Y-yes?” She answered as if already trying to bleach the memory from her mind.

“Wonderful.” I gave her the most charming smile I could before waving at Rosalina. “Let’s get a move on.”

Quickly exiting the small Gate Station, I was greeted by the cooler albeit still comfortably warm air of the Akadian coast.

“A little cold, don’t you think?” Rosalina wrapped her arms around her chest, shivering lightly.

“You’re just too used to the central desert. Give it a bit, and you’ll find this much better.”

“If you insist.”

Leading Rosalina down the familiar steps of the hill, we soon found ourselves settling into the gondola, the sun, which had felt like it was rising not long ago, already beginning to settle back into the horizon.

“You can take a nap.” I waved toward the lights of the still far-off city. “It will be a bit until we pull into the docks.”

“Don’t you need sleep?” Rosalina asked, already yawning.

“Less than you’d suspect.” That was all I answered on the matter.

Shrugging, Rosalina pulled off her pack, laying her behind her head before she shut her eyes, dozing off instantly.

I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s more tired than she was showing. That White Star had to take a massive amount of mana to pull off.

I found myself lost in thought, pondering how it had worked.

Whenever Tez used dragon mana, it never was that extreme.

That in itself said much, given even amongst dozens of high-ranked adventurers, she’d already had the most significant attack potency between us.

Why?

Tapping my fingers along my thigh, I mulled it over, the question of magic I didn’t understand too enticing to be ignored.

I wonder…

Taking a step back mentally, I reassessed what I thought I knew, now incorporating some of what I’d learned about mana from Don the Dungeon Will.

I used to think of dragon mana as just extra potent mana, but it’s more than that. Or rather, it’s less than that; it’s a negative inverse.

If that was the case, the way Tez used dragon mana wasn’t just some extra powerful mana fueling her dragon fire. She was quite literally using the forceful inversion of dragon mana against ordinary mana to create excess energy, giving rise to her intense flames.

Which, in essence, was the simplest way to utilize such power. What Rosalina had done was on another level.

A spell as insane as that, how would I even try to recreate that?

It wasn’t just some fireball, its intensity had been exponentially more significant, and its stability was out of the norm of everyday magic. It should have been self-sustaining by all rights, save for Rosalina’s relative lack of experience and reserves of mana in the first place.

But how could magic, born from the self-annihilation of dragon mana when in contact with regular mana, become stable in the first place?

“Equilibrium,” I whispered under my breath.

A spell where the initial explosive power was perfectly balanced by the inward gravity of its own energy density.

Lords above, what would it take to even use a spell like that in the first place?

To perfectly measure a spell like that would take me years and years, decades even, of extensive calculations and thaumaturgical models. As much as I loved my sister, I couldn’t, in good faith, pretend she’d figured that out herself.

But she didn’t need to.

Solarus, thousands of years old, had been the one to learn such magic. Rosalina, connected by her bloodline memories, had inherited it, an inherent knowledge that allowed her to adjust perfectly without ever understanding why or how she did it.

Sure sounds nice.

Meanwhile, I, the literal reincarnation of the apprentice of perhaps the greatest Sage of all time, got nada regarding useful spells or magic.

Probably shouldn’t be feeling envious.

After all, I’m not sure I’d want memories that may regard the Sage Above All. Even now, after she’d been absent for years since the first and single time I’d seen her, I was constantly reminded of her legacy.

Let alone whatever she was up to now.

The thought gave me a shiver. I’d once had the vain hope that perhaps she’d encounter something that would deal with her. The problem would then be solved without any excess worry. Still, after seeing the power behind White Star, a spell created by a True Dragon, I highly doubted that. If a True Dragon with all that power still had fallen in battle against the Sage Above All, there was little point in deluding myself in childish fantasies regarding her fate.

Whatever she’s up to, it’s probably for the best that she hasn’t shown herself.

The thought of what would happen if she ever reappeared wasn’t hard to assess, a force of nature that could sweep aside the world’s nations if she so desired.

But she is still out there. Doings gods know what, causing dungeons of old to undergo resonance and who knows what else.

I’d been able to ignore it in the past, but having achieved my fifth Sage ring, a creeping feeling of dread had settled into my bones. For now, it was nothing more than a whispering chill like a lone breeze that raises the hairs on the end of your neck, but still, it existed, undeniable.

The further I walked my path as a Sage, the more likely I would eventually face the walking catastrophe.

Don’t draw attention to yourself. That’s what I told Pips, but how long until I draw her attention? Will it be my sixth ring that does it? Maybe my eighth?

Or maybe I’d never escaped her gaze to start with.

“Comforting,” I murmured, trying to shake away the thoughts with a cold shiver. Perhaps seeing Rosalina’s White Star had shifted my perspective, a sort of scale to re-contextualize what I knew of the Sage Above All. When I was young, all I’d had to base her strength upon was the disgusting ease with which she murdered a foe who had strength rivaling the mightiest and most legendary of adventurers. Now, I understood that until I could face down the power of a White Star head-on, I may as well try to shake the heavens themselves.

I glanced at Rosalina’s napping expression, my own expression softening.

For now, I’ll just take things one day at a time.

My fears and concerns, I was beginning to understand their source. For the first time in my life, I was content. Some days were good, some were bad, but overall my life had become something I could find satisfaction in. After more than eight years, I’d reconnected with my mother. I found a living doing a job from which I could derive genuine satisfaction, a noble if not flashy work. Even my sister I’d finally managed to free from her captivity.

Well, I hadn’t freed her, it had been her decision to leave, but at least I’d been the one to give her the information she needed to make that choice.

The Sage Above All may have been a fate that loomed far on the horizon, but she was a destiny that felt like it were still far away. It had taken eight years to reach just rings five rings; who knew how long it would take until I neared the end of that journey.

I leaned back, resting uncomfortably against the gondola seats, staring high overhead.

So, one day at a time.