Once the last tree was felled, what followed was a night of celebration.

  After the Chancellery had done away with meal tokens, alcohol had remained very expensive and inaccessible. That had changed now. Caen was just as impatient to leave Odaton as he was dismayed.

  During the celebration, he went into the Plane to continue training with Flora magic. He felt a strong sense of loss knowing that he wouldn't have easy access to Blood-healing of this caliber for a while yet. But on the bright side, his own Blood-healing affinity had finally grown. And it was sure to grow even more.

  Sound didn't travel through Apertures, so Caen couldn't even hear the festive reveling in the camps. He'd stayed long enough to eat some passable meat. There was music and lots of dancing, and socializing. It was nice. But magic was infinitely more interesting.

  [Where's that White-haired human being?] Guinevere asked.

  Caen chuckled as he cast a chain of Flora spells on the vine in his hands. [You sound drunk.]

  [It's a telepathic link; you can't tell if I'm drunk or not.]

  [You've snuck off to the Plane again, haven't you, Caen?] Zeris sent. [Check in the front zone, Gwen. I bet he's there.]

  [And you! I've been looking all over for you as well, Zeris! I haven't seen you all night!]

  [Check the aides' hall,] Caen sent. [She's probably studying.]

  [You traitor!] Zeris sent.

  [Oh, come on, you two! This isn't the time for being serious. There's really, really above mediocre level alcohol here. You should come try some. My friends are here too. I’m here with your cousin, Tuni. She's such a riot!]

  [I already met your friends earlier; lovely people,] Caen said. [But Zeris hasn't met them yet. You should try getting her to go. If she isn't in the aides' hall, then she'll either be in my mother's room or on the floor above that where the archivists lodge.]

  [Thank you! I'm coming to find you, Zeris!]

  [Caen, you're a dead man. I won't forget this.]

  * * *

  Zeris and Guinevere eventually came into the Plane and dragged him out to participate in the festivities.

  He chatted with the two or so cousins he was friendly with and played some games with Guinevere's friends. He snuck some food away for later, but stayed off the alcohol. Regardless of how cheap Guinevere insisted it was, if it could make people with passive augmentations drunk, then it would absolutely demolish and probably put him out of it for hours. His newly acquired Blood-healing passive augmentations would definitely help, but there was no reason to be reckless.

  More so, Caen had no intention of sleeping. Once he left Odaton, he'd be unable to cast the sleep abeyance spell on himself with any level of reliability. This was his last opportunity to stay up practicing magic, so he took that very seriously.

  He returned to the Plane with the time construct in the field of his vision and studied his soul structure as he slowly moved through magical exercises. He worked until dawn.

  Fleets of airships were already docked outside of the camp, and there was some administrative processing being set up. A notably large number of military personnel had come in these vessels. It seemed that the Chancellery was working fast to occupy the front zone of this Plane.

  A fair portion of the airships were due to take off by noon and would be headed to Piarton, which was the closest city to this camp. Free train tickets would be handed out to transport all the volunteers back to wherever they'd come from in the surrounding Provinces.

  The Chancellery had prepared a much smaller airship to transport Uncle Teiro down to Chrenai, where he would have teleported to Vishnen via hop pad. But Sh'kteiro had decided to make a pilgrimage through the Edict temples in Rialgar instead.

  He invited Caen's entire family to come along with him to Piarton, where they could take their train home much earlier. Vensha wasn't returning to Drenlin yet, as she and her party planned to visit a few Planes in the region. But everyone else took Sh'kteiro up on his offer. Caen invited Guinevere as well, after making sure it was okay. Her friends were terribly hungover from last night, but she was fine thanks to the wonders of having several high affinities.

  Sh'kteiro’s airship left Odaton at 6 in the morning. Caen watched the Odaton Aperture from his seat by the window, feeling complex emotions.

  * * *

  The airship harbored at the Piarton airdock. Caen hugged Uncle Teiro, who wished him good luck in the Patronage trials and more immediately in his endeavors in Parthra. Caen wasn't sure whether his own return from the Plane and Sh'kteiro’s pilgrimage would converge at Drenlin, but he hoped so.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  There was another round of goodbyes at the Piarton train station. He got hugs from his parents and Aunt Grena.

  He'd already exchanged Grat coordinates with Guinevere, and now he promised her that he'd keep in touch, though she'd yet to kick him and Zeris off her telepathic link.

  Zeris told him that she looked forward to seeing the Parthran fragment he got.

  The city was barely awake. Piarton was much more rural than Drenlin, and the city bustle tended to begin later in the day.

  With his newly acquired pomms and criyl, Caen made his way down to a market at the very edge of town. A rickshaw driver had been kind enough to give him incredibly detailed directions. He purchased some food rations and three plant-based ropes, which had been treated to prevent decay, then he headed back down to the station and boarded his first train.

  The Parthran Plane was four days away by train ride. There were no direct trips there, however, so Caen needed to hop trains constantly. Every few train stops, he would locate a Blood-healer or go in search of a house-of-healing, Mimic their affinity, and then cast the sleep abeyance spell on himself.

  This gave him a good many hours of precasting while observing his soul structure. He worked both in abjection and with the occasional boosted affinity from fellow passengers.

  Four days later, Caen got off a train at a stop beside a small village. After making a quick visit to the local healer and casting sleep abeyance on himself, Caen began his trek down to the Parthran Plane.

  He was all geared up, and the weather was a bit cloudier and breezier than it had been in days. Still, it was uncomfortably warm. He'd taken some of his medication earlier to keep himself from having heat stroke.

  The environs were hilly with a light scattering of shrubs on the rolling grasslands, and Caen came across a few grass and stone sprites. He wanted to stop and observe their soul structures, but he forced himself to move on for now.

  The four-hour-long hike up to the Parthran Plane was a steep and fairly strenuous one. The Parthran archway rose high up in the distance and was made almost entirely of thick black vines. It was as large as a four-story building and sat on the edge of a plateau. There were many cottages dotting the area around the archway. Sweating and breathing heavily, Caen made his way over a wooden sky bridge that stretched over the canyon beneath.

  Unlike with Redshadow, there wasn't a team of Valiant Watchers by the entrance to the Plane.

  Caen entered unimpeded and felt none of the painful prickling he often did when walking through an aperture. He paused. Then walked back out. Nothing. Moving through the Aperture once more brought no uncomfortable changes. If anything, the quality of the air here was excellent, and the scorching heat was completely replaced by mild weather.

  Caen marveled at the spectacle taking up most of the horizon in the Plane: a tree larger than anything he'd ever seen in his life.

  Parthra, after which the Plane was named. The tree was entirely black, yet glowed very softly with many strange lights upon its surface. It was a solid trunk many, many miles wide with girthy, densely-leaved branches sprouting along it, and it reached up high into the cloudy sky, disappearing out of sight.

  “Bones of my ancestors,” Caen whispered. So terribly beautiful and magnificent was the sight that he stood there staring for long moments.

  “It always makes quite a strong impression on first timers,” a melodious voice called out to Caen.

  He whipped his head in the voice’s direction and found a dainty, brown skinned woman sitting in a small gazebo set up here in the front zone just a few feet away. She waved excitedly to him.

  As he approached, he noticed her skin was bark-like and grainy. Flowers grew out of her hair, which itself seemed to constitute vines and thin plantlike tendrils. A dryad.

  Caen had never met a dryad before. Treefolk were either awakened plants with a level of sapience or what some tended to refer to as ‘weretrees’, which were functionally humans that could turn into trees, and/or trees that could turn into humans.

  Dryads were a different species entirely. They originated in Planes like Parthra, and strongly resembled weretrees in mixform, bearing plantlike characteristics in an anthropomorphic physique. It wasn't unusual for Saffronans to refer to weretrees as dryads simply because of these similarities.

  Caen connected to her, and her soul structure bore no differences that he could immediately identify.

  “Greetings to you, good visitor,” she said in her melodious voice.

  “And to you as well,” Caen replied with a respectful nod. Mafrolem had advised him to be very polite and civil while in Parthra. “I am here to participate in the climb.”

  She nodded, eyeing his attire and the glaive sticking up from behind him. “That is apparent to me. Violence of all kinds is prohibited in this world. You must not bring harm to anyone. Do you understand?”

  Mafrolem had mentioned this as well. As soon as Caen began nodding his head in confirmation, he felt the connection between them grow so strong, much stronger even than when he was Mimicking the affinity of anyone.

  A thread cluster in his soul structure—the one he'd already identified as representing his Binding magic affinity—grew prominent by an almost unnoticeable degree. Was this a contractual effect of some sort? How? He'd simply nodded his head.

  Caen could also see another cord of connection. Not the one he shared with the dryad. This was a secondary cord that stretched from the dryad's soul structure and vanished a few feet away from her, but it was clearly pointed in the direction of the mountain-sized tree in the distance.

  He hadn't seen something like this before. What did this mean? Was there a highly skilled Binding magic practician enforcing this contract?

  “Very well then,” the dryad said, smiling. “Know now that no harm will come to you. Parthra is always awake. Follow the stone path down to Parthra. You will meet friends there who will tell you what to do.”

  “...friends?”

  “Parthra is a haven, open to all. We are all friends and neighbors here. I wish you well on your climb.”

  He thanked her and walked around the gazebo to take the stone path. The tree was a great distance away. He turned back to the dryad. “How long exactly will it take to get there?”

  “It is meant to be a contemplative trek. Consider your motives. The reason you are here… for a meager six hours.”

  Maybe I should have brought a bicycle.

  So... I have been sick for a few days now. I've been burning through my backlog, hoping to get better soon, but I think I need a few days to rest up so I can recover quickly. You have my sincerest apologies.

  Uploads will resume on Wednesday the 24th of September.