It felt like hours before Esra began to slow us down, hours of endless boredom and repetitive fractal greenery. It was noticeably sparser out here though, the cycle of growth and death seeming slower, more sluggish than it was back in the more fertile area. My eyes were growing almost dumb due to the endless motion around us, and I had to close my eyes at regular intervals just to give them a rest.

Feeling Esra squeeze my hand again, I opened my eyes and looked over to her.

“We’re here,” she told me, her voice bouncing around with the strangest echo I’d ever heard. “How do you like it?”

I looked around, finding a place much the same as the one we’d left a few hours ago, except it was completely devoid of any Groves. I could see clouds of barely visible gasses that were probably different magical energies, resources when converted into the more structured nature of a Grove. I could see the plants here were subtly different too in a way that was hard to pinpoint.

“Choose a place, wherever feels right, then focus your will, like I taught you,” my teacher murmured from next to me, and I nodded, letting go of her hand to float freely on my own.

I wandered for a while, allowing my sense of the arcane to tell me about the lay of the land. It was strange, this sense of magic, wholly impossible to explain to someone who didn’t possess the ability. I found it though, a place that felt good and calming to my mind.

“I like this place,” I said, feeling some of that same warmth I got when I was basking in the sun.

“Then begin,” Esra said simply, waiting patiently nearby.

I was meant to form an image in my mind, that’s what she’d said, but what kind of place did I even want? A mage’s grove could take any form they desired. Esra’s was a simple woodland with low rolling hills and burbling streams.

Slowly the idea came to me, a network of plateaus sitting atop huge stone pillars, their bases lost in fine white mists. I started with one single pillar, soft loamy soil in a layer across its top that was ready for any plants I might want. I created a layer of grass across this soil, a placeholder for things to come. I visualised the sky with the blue colour of Earth’s atmosphere, I gave it the golden sun of sol and the single moon that I strangely missed. My lips quirked in a small contented smile. Home.

With that image in my mind, I pushed outwards around me with my power and my will in equal measure, curling and beating the fabric of the Nameless Garden until the strange energies of the area began to resemble the shape I wanted to give it. I twisted at the protesting status quo until it was mine, submitting to my design like the universe’s slipperiest clay.

There was the moment of creation, when everything finally gave way and a world rushed out into being around us, just the flash of movement and then we were standing in that grass that I had imagined. Magic and potential given form and function, and it was mine. My little slice of mage land.

“Well done Ryn,” Esra said from beside me, looking around at the world I had just willed into being. “The island is a nice touch, the mists are beautiful.”

“Thanks,” I grinned, feeling a blush of all things coming on. I didn’t get compliments from Esra often. “I modelled it after Earth, my home world. This is our sky, our sun, and our moon. There’s an area like this in a place called South America. I’ve never been there, but I’ve seen photos. I always liked how those strange mountains looked.”

“Intriguing,” she said, looking around with interest for a moment before she back turned to me. “Congratulations, you are now truly a mage. A young one, a pitifully weak one, but a full mage nevertheless.”

“It feels nice,” I smiled, then a funny little thought occurred to me. “It’s like I’ve gotten my wand! Now I have to learn all the spells!”

“Yes, yes, continue with your obscure cultural references in your own time, we have work to do,” Esra grumbled, her hands moving with the motions of a spell.

“You’re just jealous that I got to grow up and live in a world where you can order food to be delivered without getting out of bed,” I grinned. She’d all but interrogated me over the concept of delivery drivers and pizza, it had been pretty funny.

Muttering under her breath about cheeky youth, she cast the spell she’d been working on, an area of grass in front of us suddenly withering and turning to ash. I blinked and glanced askance at my teacher. Did she fry the grass for any particular reason?

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“This will be where we plant the first two spells I will teach you to create today. Simple ones, but useful nevertheless,” she explained, walking over to kneel next to the patch of bare dirt.

“Oh! Cool!” I exclaimed, suddenly excited and all ears.

Raising an eyebrow at me, she asked, “You remember the theory for the creation of spell plants do you not? Begin with the siphoning of the magical energies your Grove is built upon.”

I nodded and closed my eyes, grasping around for the formless energy of the Nameless Garden. It was there, feeling strangely like cotton candy as I played with it using my mind. I gathered a portion of it, a small amount, because she’d said this would be a small spell.

“Good, just like that,” Esra murmured encouragingly. “You have learned restraint since the debacle involving that stick.”

“Ha. Ha. Very funny,” I grumbled, still with my eyes closed.

Ignoring my complaint, she continued on with her instructions. “This will be an illusory flower, used to disguise your true nature from mundane humanity. As such, we will be manipulating the elemental energy of light. The flower must be small, with a dicot stem, but the pith must be made of the purest clear crystal. The vascular tissue around the outside must be all the colours of the visible spectrum, this can be achieved however you like, but I suggest assigning a colour to each bundle.”

“Okay, got it,” I said, imagining the stalk with a middle that was made of crystal, while the outer layer was made of several bundles of plant tissue that were arranged in a rainbow.

“Good, next, the epidermis must be of crystal again. Then move on to the roots, which must be as black as the darkest cave. At the center of the roots, construct absorption cores with an affinity for light,” she told me, her words careful and precise.

I made a murmuring noise of affirmation while I did as she asked, setting the roots up to be black on the outside and to channel the magical light element on the inside.

“Well done. We turn our attention to the leaves now, just a few along the stalk. Construct them as you would any other plant, they will need some way to gain sunlight, after all. Once this is complete, it is time for the flower. I want you to imagine an image, how you would wish to look when this spell is active. Channel it through the mind map of the plant you have so far and see how it unfolds,” she said with an element of excited expectation. “Keep the changes as few as possible, I suggest only focusing on altering colour for your first attempt.”

I quickly made the leaves as she’d said, then tried to think, what did I want to look like? I’d basically only be changing the colour of my hair and eyes. Oh, and my eyebrows and uh… pubes too. Well, I already had magenta hair, so why not go with ginger? I knew that I’d get jokes, but hey, gingers were like 20% hotter because of the hair colour by default. My eyes could be blue, to match the stereotype.

Taking that image, I pushed it through the plant as though it already had magic coursing through its various pathways. It was absorbed by the roots, swirling and coalescing at the base before rushing up the stem like it was being funneled out of a hose. When it hit the bud at the top, it burst forth into a flower with petals of vivid orange, the stamen of which were a bright sky blue. I gasped and grinned, feeling a surge of pride. It had worked!

“Yes!” Esra exclaimed, sounding almost as happy as I was. “Quick, now plant it in the ground, no wait, plant two or three for good measure!”

I did as she asked, pushing the image of that fully constructed plant out into the fabric of my Grove. Quickly opening my eyes, I watched with a spreading grin as my creation grew out of the ground like I was watching a timelapse. It was so pretty! Oh my god! The way each plant was slightly different, not an exact replica of the image I’d had in my mind, but still the same species. They were all their own living things!

“Wow,” I laughed gleefully, then my eyes widened when they got to work, drawing in the various magical energies and elements that they needed to function from the base loam of the Nameless Garden.

“And there we have it,” my teacher nodded, a note of satisfaction in her tone. “Your first spell. Well done, my last apprentice botched that one more than once.”

“Thank you!” I smiled, then before my mind could really think on the matter, I hugged her, wrapping my arms around her bony frame and squeezing gently.

“O-oh! A hug. How novel,” she coughed awkwardly.

Giggling a little, I let go and stepped back with a wide smile. “On to the second one?”

The second one was far simpler, but also strange and when I realised what she wanted me to do, I practically glowed with excitement. It was another flower, but this one had a white stem with black spots and black leaves. I questioned the black leaves at first, but she explained that the excess heat that would be left over after the leaves did their thing would be used as part of the spell. It was all super technical and I was a little baffled by some of the choices being made.

It was a small flower in the end, barely larger than a dandelion with little silver petals and a bronze center. The purpose of this flower was made apparent when she asked me to place my ring onto the grown flower. There was the barest spark of energy, and then it was done. If I concentrated, I’d be able to tell in which direction each of the other rings made from the same offcut of pipe were. I could find my family! Well, at least once I was out in the mundane realm. It didn’t work in here.

With my plants all set up and working happily, at least in the short term, I’d need my own tenders and a proper ecosystem at some point, we left my Grove and headed back to Esra’s. Her one had the house after all, and it was getting late in the day.

The trip back was different, because I was watching the ever changing plants around us with a lot more interest now. Were they spells in the making, just ready to be figured out?

My curious inspection of the Nameless Garden was cut abruptly short when Esra’s Grove came into view and she slowed us dramatically. She stared at it intently, her eyes moving quickly, unfocused with the use of her mage sight.

“I am a fool,” she whispered, her voice echoing with the strangeness of the void around us. “I am a fool, I should have realised he would strike if I left. I should have known.”