Watching Lily, Caeden could only grimace. While they were on the dragon continent, Lily discovered that her bonded could and would eat the pseudo-dragon monsters there. Something unprecedented, as monsters had no need to eat. Allowing Snowball and Sky to do so ended up causing both to experience a powerful transformation.
Snowball had originally been an Icecrag Bear, but the draconic meals changed him into a Glacial King Kodiak. And Sky transformed from a Midnight Roc to a Stellar Roc. Both grew massively and gained new abilities, including breath attacks seemingly pulled straight from their dragon-monster prey. Considering their breath was one of the most feared aspects of dragons, it was a major boon.
It also almost spelled disaster for her. Bonding a monster was something normally only done by creature type shrouded, as they could create and change their own bonded. But after Lily’s shroud evolved, she was free to do so as well. Since she always wanted pets, she got them. With no intent for them to ever do more than offer some limited support in a fight. After all, a couple monsters, even powerful ones, wouldn’t normally add much to a shrouded’s combat prowess. Unless one took the absolute pinnacle of monsters into account, which almost always were more trouble than they were worth.
Binding a monster required the shrouded’s domain and the monster’s natural affinity to have some overlap, which had limited Lily’s options, but the two she found were more than good enough. She just wanted some companions.
The whole event with the dragon-monsters was a chance encounter, and Lily had only a passing interest in increasing Snowball and Sky’s fighting abilities. She went through with it more out of concern for what leaving the process half-finished would do. She wanted to protect her pets, not raise fighting machines.
So it was horrifying for her when their transformation nearly killed Sky. The Midnight Roc was a monster closely tied to cloud cover, and Rocs generally held a strong connection to weather of all kinds. This had allowed Sky to bond with Lily through her Cloud domain. But a Stellar Roc was completely different.
With no real connection to clouds strong enough to matter, Sky’s new species did not fall under either of Lily’s domains. This threatened to sever their bond, killing the Roc in the process. But both had held onto the connection, and it had forced Lily to spontaneously form a new splinter. A rare thing in and of itself.
The problem was, she was terrible with it.
Caeden watched as Lily thrust her hand out; a weak white light, more of a hazy glow, tried to form just in front of her open palm. Her entire body quivered in concentration. Then the light vanished, and Lily let out an inarticulate cry of frustration. This had been happening for half an hour.
At this point, Caeden couldn’t bear to watch it anymore, so he stopped his meditation. He had been working through the exercises his Ki teacher, Blaine, had given him that were meant to move a shrouded toward their Incarnation and Embodiment. It turned out they were also great for increasing integration.
But he wasn’t concentrating very well, with Lily struggling so much right in front of him. “Well, I think I’ve left you alone long enough. What’s the problem?”
Lily shot him a look filled to the brim with frustration. “I’m fine. I can figure this out.”
“The last few weeks beg to differ.” Caeden countered. Lily’s stubborn side was showing.
“I just haven’t had enough time to work with! Give me a day or two, and I’ll have this completely down pat. I’ve been too busy with the Forged, so I haven’t had a chance to-”
“Lily.” Caeden stopped her, gently gripping her shoulders and forcing her wandering gaze to lock onto his. “Lil, it's alright. Just because you’ve been so capable with Cloud and Ice doesn’t mean that you’re going to instantly understand this new domain. The same as your current struggle doesn’t invalidate all your accomplishments before. Everyone has trouble with something. Now, let me help you.”
He watched as several emotions crossed her face, some he was sure she didn’t really mean and would never give voice to. Finally, she seemed to settle on a grudging resignation. “Fine, fine. I know you’re right. I got used to Ice and Cloud being so easy for me, and this just blindsided me. I feel like a child, barely able to even manifest the stupid thing. It’s humiliating.”
Caeden couldn’t even imagine how hard it must be for Lily to struggle this much. She took immense pride in her capabilities and how people treated her because of it. Not the fame itself, which she had a lot of, being one of the top-ranked students in the school from essentially the start. Rather, she liked how much the Forged loved her, and the other students feared her.
Lily had a reputation around school that did not reflect the woman Caeden knew, even though he’d seen it in action. She acted differently in public versus how she was when it was just the four, now five, of them. In public, she was calm and aloof, never one to strike up a casual conversation. Even among the Forged. Anyone not in their faction was met with a combination of disdain, suspicion, and open hostility.
Despite that, many in the Forged had approached her for tips on training and other class topics. The first to do so had expected to be rejected outright, only to be surprised when Lily calmly and cooly walked them through every question with a skill and insight that rivaled or exceeded the teachers. After that, Lily was constantly asked for advance on a wide variety of topics, and she answered everything with a casual elegance and accuracy.
Caeden knew that Lily loved all of this. She was generally distrustful of basically everyone, with the Forged being a step above the rest, but still not people she would feel comfortable being open with. But she deeply enjoyed being helpful more than anything else. Though he didn’t know the details, Caeden knew that Lily had felt useless for most of her life. Being seen as competent and having others seek her advice was everything she had ever wanted in life. Caeden was just happy that it got her to be even a little more open with others. He didn’t think her current attitude was healthy and had told her as much. She even agreed, though working through that ingrained defense mechanism wasn’t as simple as just accepting the problem. That was only the forest step.
All of this led Caeden to understand that Lily’s problems with her new splinter were touching on some of her worst insecurities. He knew that right now, she just wanted to be left alone to figure it out where no one could see her struggle. He also knew that was the worst possible thing for her. And he knew she could see it too, once he pointed it out.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“How can I help?”
“I don’t know!” Lily threw her hands in the air. “I just don’t understand what I’m supposed to do. This domain is far too broad and intensely power-consuming to boot.”
Caeden winced. When a domain covered many individual topics, it tended to require a strong focus and understanding to narrow that scope into something useful. Take the Meteoris family’s Weather shroud, for example. Weather covered clouds of all types, heat, cold, humidity, storms, lightning, wind, and even more. Obviously, one could not create every kind of weather at once, as some were contradictory. So the domain had to be focused down, drawing out individual aspects at a time.
The benefits were obvious. Such a broad domain could be used in countless ways, gaining versatility and unpredictability. But that had costs. It was why Lily’s brother, Ander, also had a Lightning splinter, even though lightning already fell under his Weather domain. Using his splinter, Ander could create bolts with less difficulty and greater power for less shroud than Weather could ever do.
Now, Lily had a domain with this exact problem. Additionally, it was already shroud-intensive, which just compounded the issue. The more shroud one manifested at once, the harder it was to control without the assistance of a mnemonic. If Lily’s new domain required a significant amount of shroud to manifest even the small light she had been making earlier, it must be vast and powerful.
“You never told me what your new splinter was. I think now is the time.”
Lily sighed. Instead of answering, a wisp of shroud, no bigger than his pinky, formed above her head before folding in on itself. Her newest sigil formed. It was fortunate that manifesting a domain’s sigil was so easy. It was borderline impossible to have a shroud so unwieldy that you couldn’t create its sigil. Caeden had been able to do so with Physical Enhancement only hours after gaining it.
The space over Lily’s head formed a black void before points of light blossomed into existence, all swirling around a black center with a corona of pure white. It looked exactly like some sections of the Starry Sea. “Galaxy. How ridiculous is that? Such a stupidly broad concept. It covers basically anything. Everything! If I could just nail this down, I could create any physical object in existence.”
She waved her hand, banishing the image. “But I can’t even get it to make some ice.”
“That’s what you've been doing?” Caeden asked.
“Yes. Many comets and asteroids contain large quantities of ice. I figured familiarity would be a useful starting point. But I can’t create a single thing. I can barely make the manifestation happen.” Lily groaned in frustration. “It’s so annoying.”
“I hadn’t realized that there was so much ice floating around.” Caeden mused. He knew very little about galaxies.
Lily nodded. “Though we don’t have them in our universe, I found many records on the Hearthhome from other universes with what they called ‘more standard physical principles.’ Apparently, we’re the weird ones. Most universes look like that.”
She waved her hand over her head, referencing the earlier stellar vista. “I also found some records here at school from accounts taken from Outworlders. So I have a strong idea of what all my new domain covers. I just can’t get it to work!”
“I feel like I’ll need more information to help at all. Could you walk me through everything you found out that seems relevant? Maybe talking about it to someone else will make something click for you.” Caeden suggested.
“That honestly sounds like a great idea. I could use a break from running my head into a wall anyway.” Lily showed a grateful smile before launching into an explanation of everything she had found, which was a lot. Caeden remembered the researcher saying he had brought in many experts from a multitude of galaxies to help him with certain projects, and those same people had been the ones to make the Hearthhome. Considering these were fellow intellectuals, Caeden shouldn’t have been surprised that they wrote a lot down. Lily found massive quantities of research highlighting the difference between their universe and others, much of which went into detailed descriptions of how most universes operated cosmologically.
Caeden shook his head. “I’m amazed how much information there was.”
“Me too,” Lily said. “I had no idea what I was going to find when I started out, and I only managed to read a fraction of what was there. I don’t know if the Hearthhome had access to the database in the CMS facility we took it from, but it held notes covering every aspect of this world. Even some about shrouds themselves, though those were much more limited. I think your benefactor removed much of that before we could get to it. Either way, I know enough to understand my domain, but applying it isn’t that easy.”
“Hmmm,” Caeden rubbed his chin. “Maybe you’re approaching this the wrong way.”
“What are you thinking?”
“Well,” He started slowly, an idea forming, “You’re trying to make ice, right? But you’re used to doing that through your Ice shroud, where it's the simplest thing to do. But your new domain is making that process exponentially harder. Maybe you’re forcing it to conform to your expectations. I can see that making it almost impossible to get anything done.”
“That…That makes sense.” Lily nodded. “If I’m pushing Galaxy to act like Ice because that’s what I’m expecting, it's not going to work out.”
“Exactly! Creating ice with Galaxy should be entirely different. I think your idea to stick to something familiar might have had the opposite effect.”
“So I should try to make something I’ve never made before,” Lily confirmed.
“It’s worth a shot.” Caeden shrugged. “What you’re doing now doesn’t seem to be getting you anywhere.”
“Ok, I’ll go with a tiny star. Should be easier than going for anything terrestrial like dirt or a tree. That might be too specific.” Lily raised a hand, concentrating once more. There was a flicker of the same white light Caeden had first noticed, but it was rapidly accompanied by black, red, blue, and brown. The black expanded, and soon Lily had manifested a dark tapestry with points of all the other colors spotted along it. Her Galaxy domain manifestation seemed to have a silky texture with a subtle sheen playing across it as it flowed and shifted like a silk scarf in a soft wind.
The manifestation swirled around a single point as one of the white spots grew, and the glow intensified before consuming the shroud entirely. In an instant, Lily had formed a tiny white star, no bigger than the tip of Caeden’s finger.
“You got it!” he cheered, happy for her.
“Yup.” She grunted. “Still…Really hard…To…Control!”
The star wavered and expanded to five times its size before compressing back down an instant later.
“Gonna…Lose it!” Lily’s outstretched hand wavered, and sweat dripped from her brow. Her shroud manifested again, eating up the star rapidly. Before it could completely consume the pea-sized creation, Lily’s control slipped. The nigh-nonexistent scrap of star exploded.
Caeden had enough wherewithal to formshift with Physical Enhancement and dive toward Lily before he was ripped across the room. Before he could hit the wall, Silvery chains stopped him dead in the air, and golden light as soft as flower petals healed the rapidly forming burns that had covered Caeden’s side. As well as the internal bleeding and bruises from the physical blast.
“Dang, lily, warn a guy next time!” Erik laughed. Behind him, Caeden could see the semi-exploded star, the remnants also surrounded in chains, though these were black. “Can’t complain, though. I got to test my new mnemonic!”
Caeden just shook his head. Erik was crazy.