Caen jolly ol' chap sat at a round table with so of the fragntal dryads of Parthra. They dined on the fifteenth layer of the ancient tree, celebrating Rlarlarla's acquisition of a fragnt of incomparable quality. They were all in treeform, except for Rlarlarla, who preferred mixform at such occasions.
“I had a conversation with Parthra the other day,” Rlarlarla was saying. “It wanted to give several more fragnts for all my hard work, but alas, I'm too—”
Caen blinked. He was awake.
“Excuse ,” he said, rising and stepping away from the table. The thick, roiling fog of the Seam consud the scenery around him even now.
Caen held Vai's Astral locus in one portion of his mind and, with the other portion, projected his mind into Vai's domain in the Deep Astral.
There was a very delayed reciprocation from beyond, and Caen was wrenched through the void and onto the front porch of Vai's mansion.
He staggered towards the double doors and braced himself against them. He pushed inwards into the building without resistance, and Hshnol was there to greet him.
“Ar’Caen Ereshta’al,” Hshnol greeted politely. “Are you well?”
“I am well. How do you do, Hshnol?”
The man nodded politely.
“Uncle Vai is still caught in his etings?” Caen asked.
“He is. I can pass along a ssage if you wish to tell him sothing.”
“I just need to use the library quickly. I hope it's no bother.”
“It is not. Many features of this domain are inaccessible at the mont, but I can make the library available to you.”
Caen thanked the man profusely and stepped into Vai's library. The floating platforms were nowhere to be seen. Caen had kept a copy of his main grimoire here. It had taken him long months to copy everything from the Material Realm to the Astral. The copy of his grimoire sat sowhere in the middle row of the five-floor-high shelves.
Caen found a wheeled ladder that went up to the top. As he ascended its rungs, he could feel the pressure from the glass do above more strongly than when Vai was around.
He looked up a few tis to see the not-quite-sea-life floating in there. He shivered and continued his climb. After retrieving his grimoire, he spent the rest of his ti morizing the spell schemas of a few Flora spells that might serve him well here: calculations, diagrams, Interactance charts, and key components.
Once he was done, Hshnol was kind enough to send him back to the Seam. And without a flick to the forehead, at that.
Caen woke up a short while later and began hurriedly transferring everything he'd morized into the smaller grimoire he'd brought with him from Drenlin. He connected to his vine and began adapting one of the new Flora spells. A small portion of his mind focused on his soul structure as he did this.
Yildriv was sleeping on a wooden cot with a velvet canopy stretched over its posts. It too was foldable. A sleeping mask covered his eyes. He'd packed his hair into a very tight black scarf that hugged his head. He seed like the sort of person who was always prepared for anything. It was perhaps his least annoying quality.
Sothing vibrated softly by the head of Yildriv's bed. Without pausing his practice, Caen watched as the man sat up, took off his elaborately tied scarf, and began brushing his long hair. Caen almost fumbled a segnt of his spell.
“Do you do that every night?” he asked, genuinely curious.
“Beauty has a price,” Yildriv said, still brushing his hair. “I apologize. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?”
Caen snorted. He probably deserved that for not minding his own business.
Yildriv rewrapped his hair and went back to sleep as Caen continued with his practice.
Caen alternated between abjection and a boosted affinity, as he'd taken to doing. As always, adapting spells this way was insightful.
Years of abjection had instilled in Caen a familiarity with the struggles of spellcasting. Now, however, he struggled even more. The work was not moving his spirit forcefully enough to injure it. This ant incredibly slow and heavy movents of his spirit that bled into his mind and into his body. This caused him to sweat profusely and breathe heavily.
So of the new spells were diagnostic tools and could be used to scan plants for various reasons. These were more specialized than the Bloodhealing diagnostic spells he'd used on the Odaton awakened trees.
He switched over to trying to cast spells he'd already adapted. It was more of the sa laboring, but Caen sank into the comfort of practice, doing these every day.
He stopped for quick als and deep stretches regularly. He went over his combat forms whenever Yildriv left. Sotis, he went looking for Body-enhancers. He'd seen a few of them working out on the first layer, and he joined them, Mimicking their affinity for his boosted physical training.
If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
He also spent quite so ti thinking about what it might take for a simple Flora practician to impress an ancient, apparently archmage-level tree.
Nothing seed as compelling to him as just practicing Flora magic, but he also made ti to practice spells he'd adapted in other disciplines, especially Blood-healing.
Attempting to cast already-adapted second elevation spells provided him with challenges that couldn't be easily overco. Which was good affinity training. He practiced channeling light from the Plane of the Speculant Eye—though of course, he did this in private. Caen was pleasantly busy.
He went a step further in his attempts to impress Parthra and imrsed himself in the customs of those around him.
He discussed theory and practiced with so Flora practicians, and one positively age-stricken man with a stooped back showed Caen a few tricks and explained how best to use diagnostic spells in Flora magic. He spoke with other climbers, engaged in a few peculiar rituals with so denizens, talked with dryads, and observed the soul structures of those of them with fragnts, as they shaped and reshaped portions of the great tree. Doing all these helped him feel more at ho in Parthra.
He went down to the first layer not just to work out but to play board gas and even learn the songs so of the children sang there.
He jumped from the second layer a few tis and landed heavily without hurting himself. It was utterly bizarre, and one of the most exciting things he'd ever done in his life.
He picked through tall stalks of grass outside the tree in search of certain flowers that could be ground into aromatic fragrances. He fed and petted animals, of which there were several—so that were clearly predatorial in nature acted like lambs here. The insects never stung or bothered anyone, and they, in turn, could not be hard.
He joined Yildriv and so other denizens in filling pots with sand and then transplanting small flowers into them. He helped shape so dead plant matter into pots and bowls for these purposes. So used fascinating Earth magic to achieve this with stone, but Caen didn't know any useful spells in that discipline.
He went about offering free Spirit-healing to anyone in need of it, of which there were terribly few people. No one needed Blood-healing either, but he t a werefolk couple, both of whom were particularly skilled in hair decoration techniques.
None of these took precedence over actually practicing Flora magic and observing his soul structure, as well as that of the ancient tree’s. All the sa, Caen found his initial worries and concerns fading away.
He did still wonder why the tree had seed so eager to have him start the climb, only to have him loitering on the second layer. A small part of Caen had assud that he would be ascending the layers at breakneck speed. So much for that.
At so point, he sat ditating on the cord of connection between himself and Parthra. When he reached for his canteen to drink so water, he noticed that Yildriv was sitting in his foldable chair, watching Caen. He'd been too engrossed to notice when the man had co in. They had fallen into an easy acquaintanceship over the weeks.
Caen opened his eyes. It was easy to forget that talking to people with your eyes closed was odd behavior.
“So days, you just sit there for hours smiling to yourself,” Yildriv said. “Why?”
Caen had simply been enjoying himself. He shrugged at Yildriv.
“Hmph. Just give it a few more weeks, when you've tried everything you know to try, and Parthra still isn't impressed by you. Argh! I should have never left the third layer.”
Caen's brows rose. Yildriv hadn't ntioned this before. “You reached the third layer. With the help of the Flora practician you paid?”
“What? No, this was after he left. I was sitting in so other alcove writing so pri quality poetry. A hole opened up in the wall for with a flight of stairs that led to the next layer.”
Caen sat straighter. “What did you do to—”
“I have no bloody clue!” Yildriv said. “It just,” he gestured limply at the ceiling, “happened. Then I was stuck trying to retrieve the materials I ca here for. It's covered by a thick section of woody vines and brambles. Stupid things won't co off unless Flora magic is involved.”
“Why didn't you get a dryad to help?”
“They don't involve themselves in ‘climber business’. But it probably didn't help my reputation that I went around offering money to whoever could assist .”
Yildriv sank into his chair, smoothening the side of his hair. “After weeks of not getting anyone who would help , I decided to co down to the second layer to see if I could pay for the assistance of any fresh climbers. No such luck. They shrank away from like a plague. And horror of horrors! I couldn't even go back to the third layer.”
Caen chuckled. “People warned about you. They said Parthra's disregard for you was contagious.”
Yildriv sighed lodramatically. “It might as well be true. Before I ca here, I was thinking, ‘How hard can it be to impress a tree?’ Very hard, it turns out.”
Caen closed his eyes and returned to his observation.
* * *
The next few days passed with little change in Caen's routine. He'd long since adapted all of his newly acquired Flora spells. He alternated between practicing with a boosted affinity and without, leaving his spirit tendrils out for an extra layer of difficulty.
The vines he practiced with could be manipulated to wrap around him firmly, as well as wrap around other objects. His control had improved since Odaton, and this was while using a much lower affinity.
He also realized that when he used a boosted affinity from his vine to try to affect the other surrounding plant matter, he experienced more difficulty than he thought he should have. This had not been the case in the tunnels of the Odaton Plane, where connecting to one tree had allowed the easy influence of others. Caen made extensive notes on this and took to training with this slight handicap: he would Mimic his vine’s Flora affinity and use that to try manipulating other plant matter.
At one ti, while Caen was ditating on the connection between himself and Parthra, Yildriv was weaving a basket from thin plant tendrils by hand. He'd taken to doing all sorts of strange things to earn Parthra's approval.
Caen had been focusing intently on the vague impressions seeping from his connection with Parthra, especially the razor-thin black line. A notion of ‘needing’ stuck out to him. One of ‘making a request’. Of ‘supplication’.
Caen didn't get anything further out of it, so he went back to casting Flora spells.
A few hours later, as the sky outside was starting to darken, a hole opened up in the wall of the chamber.
Yildriv bolted upright, eting Caen's gaze.
“Are my eyes deceiving ?” Yildriv asked.
“Looks like one of us has done sothing right,” Caen said, picking up his bag from the floor beside him.
Reviews
All reviews (0)