Parthra was the name of the great tree that sat at the center of this Plane. The majesty of its size alone was awe-inspiring and made Caen feel very tiny.

  Every resource he'd read in the past about this Plane had done it a huge disservice. Then again, Caen had never had access to a very dependable and robust source of information. Even Vai's library was particularly geared towards the man's own specific tastes. Grat-line had little credibility because of the profuse amount of misinformation in there. And Caen had only ever been to the public library on Ser-gwu Island so few times—all of which he'd spent mostly scouring for answers to his abjection.

  The terrain was a vast flatland of shin-high grass. In the distance, he could see other much more reasonably-sized trees and humans—or perhaps dryads—running around or just lying in the grass. The light from the sun above was soft, so soft in fact that it didn't even hurt to look at. The temperature was comfortably warm and pleasantly cool at the same time.

  Caen returned his attention to the vast tree that loomed ahead. It was a mountain by all rights and was so tall that he couldn't even see the top of it. A cloud cover hid the rest of its form from view.

  He tried, for the second time in the past few hours, to connect to the tree. His existence remained unfurled, but it did not extend towards the tree. It was the equivalent of trying to twitch a body part that wasn't there. Quite similar to how it felt when trying to use Soul-sense on inanimate things.

  He’d connected just fine to stalks of grass and smaller fruit-laden trees off to the side of the stone path. This ancient tree was either so great in size that it didn't even register to his abilities, or it did not have a soul. Perhaps the tree was dead.

  Caen hoped not. He'd planned to Mimic this tree to aid his climb. Obtaining a Parthran fragment required a hopeful to ascend through several layers of the tree while performing feats of Flora magic to ‘please the tree’.

  Mafrolem could barely remember his own climb since it had been nearly two decades ago. But he did say that no one really knew for sure what it took to ‘impress Parthra’. Resources that Caen had consulted in the past had been very unhelpful on this front, and he'd had to contend with far more prejudice and superstition than was useful to him. Still, there would surely be other climbers there with him that he could Mimic or perhaps dryads and other inhabitants of Parthra.

  He observed his soul structure for the majority of his trek. Particularly, the thread cluster that had briefly grown prominent back at the gazebo. Caen knew that it represented his affinity for Binding—or Contract—magic. He hadn't yet adapted any spells in that discipline, and the only one whose schema he'd gotten a hold of required him to consult his grimoire. He was therefore unable to make the thread cluster grow prominent right now. Still, he'd already isolated its elements back in Drenlin and thus busied himself examining it now.

  Whenever he wasn't doing this, he considered his motives, his reason for being here, just as the dryad had urged. Caen needed an advantage.

  Thanks to Mimicry, he could temporarily boost any one of his magical affinities, but there were going to be situations where he would be unable to do this: either as a result of dealing with affinities he couldn’t work with or not even having any to imitate in the first place. Caen fully intended to raise as many of his affinities as he could above abjection. But in the meantime, he needed something that might help keep him alive long enough to do so.

  Also, he'd been thinking a lot about Mimicking the magical abilities of Planar creatures. It would be incredibly useful to have one nearby that he could examine for however long he needed.

  Caen made good time on his trek, attuning mana the whole while. He was shocked by the mana density in this Plane. It was even richer than on Ser-gwu Island. He'd come into this Plane with his mana reserves half full. It should have taken him ten hours to replenish it, but in just over four hours, he was completely topped up. Some Planes were like this, but he had no idea why.

  He drank from his canteen every so often and ate from the rations he'd bought at Piarton. He stopped a few times to do deep stretches and shake off the tension in his muscles from walking so long. It was odd, though. He didn't feel nearly as tired as he thought he should have. In any case, Caen enjoyed walks, and this was proving to be a rather pleasurable one.

  He heard screaming and quickly traced the voice to a flailing person falling from about a hundred feet high. It was a young girl. Caen looked on in shock. Had she been pushed? Was this some sort of acci—that wasn't screaming. It was… laughter. One filled with glee and excitement. There were no active thread clusters in her soul structure. A few seconds later, the girl crashed into the shin-high grass, tumbled, somersaulted, and then hopped onto her feet, laughing even louder.

  "What in the three realms," Caen muttered to himself.

  The girl pointed both hands at the tree and said something Caen couldn't hear from so far away. He looked to where she was pointing. A broad and colossal branch with multicolored leaves. Eight other children slightly younger than the girl were standing on the edge.

  Caen began shouting, "Hey, hey! Don't!" and waving his hands for them to stop as he ran towards the girl.

  Of course, they jumped too, laughing heartily, and landed with enough force to make his heart leap out of his chest. Each time, they bounced to their feet. Seemingly unharmed. Not a single active thread cluster among all nine of them.

  Caen came to a stop, stumped. Even with strong passive augmentations in Body-enhancement and Kinesis, they shouldn't have survived a fall that high. Not as children. Maybe they were all related and shared a strange bloodline? Or perhaps someone had cast a spell on them? What elevation would such a spell even be?

  The children laughed among themselves and ran towards the tree, presumably to climb it again and repeat their jumps.

  Huffing, Caen returned to the stone path. When he finally reached the foot of the tree, he saw that it sat on a tangle of impossibly large surface roots breaching the soil beneath. Steps had been hewn, or perhaps, shaped into the material of the roots, and led up to a nook the size of a cavern in the trunk. There were countless others like these within his range of vision, but he took the one nearest to him.

  The floor of the cavern-like nook was covered in a plush, grassy carpeting. People lay on it, chatting, eating, playing board games. Several of them were humans and dryads. He spotted a couple of werepeople, too. They were all dressed simply and scantily. The atmosphere here was so… kindly and welcoming. The ceiling above was very much high up. Perhaps a few storeys high. The bioluminescent lights of the tree were brighter here. Varying tones of soothing light trailed along surfaces in whorled patterns.

  “Ah, friend,” a dryad said, walking up to Caen. His bark-like hair flowed down the sides of his face with leaves and green plant tendrils. “You seem to me like a supplicant. You are here to climb, yes?”

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  Caen connected to him via Soul-sense before he confirmed vocally. Nothing unusual happened with Caen's Binding magic affinity or the dryad's; no unknown contracts. Good. That had startled him the first time it happened.

  “I will be taking whatever weapons you cannot conceal, my friend,” the dryad told him apologetically. “At least for the rest of your stay here. It is improper in our world to carry tools of war so openly, as I'm sure you must have heard before coming here.”

  Caen had, in fact, heard about this. And not just from Mafrolem.

  “Don’t worry; your things will be kept safe. There is no such thing as theft in this place.”

  Caen took off his glaive and handed it to the man. Then began removing his armor. Erring on the side of caution, he decided to keep whatever parts that could fit into his bag along with his sword and guns. Utility belts, too.

  “The top of the tree seems rather high,” Caen mused as he stripped away his equipment. “How long does it typically take to reach the very top? And how far up does the tree stretch?”

  “Oh my friend,” the dryad said, laughing. “This must be your first time climbing. No, no, you do not need to reach the top of Parthra.

  “You only need to ascend to the fifteenth layer. The layer above this one does not count, of course. You'll have an easy passage to that floor.” He gestured to a nook in the wall with wide steps that wound upwards. “Climbing often takes anywhere from one to twelve months.”

  Twelve months was a great deal longer than Mafrolem himself had taken.

  “Don't let those numbers worry you. There is no time limit to completing your climb, and no shame either in failing to do so. Many spend years trying to earn Parthra's favor. Success is inevitable. Sometimes it just takes a while.”

  Caen closed up his bag, having set away all his equipment. “Nothing I’ve read or heard about explained how I'd get to ‘earn Parthra's favor’.”

  “That's because there's nothing to explain. Parthra is always awake. It will know when you have impressed it. And then you, in turn, will know as well.”

  “Are you usually this mystical and vague?” Caen asked the dryad.

  He laughed again. “Only when I'm speaking to new supplicants. Parthra makes all things of itself available to you on your climb. You'll see. All that Parthra is and has and hosts…” He gestured towards Caen. “All these are now yours to explore, host, and understand. You are here to earn something from Parthra, and Parthra is willing to let you try.”

  Those words evoked a tremor through Caen's soul structure.

  “Climb well, my friend,” the dryad said, patting Caen's shoulder before walking away.

  Something changed in Caen's soul structure immediately, but he couldn't tell what. Then his Binding magic affinity grew prominent all of a sudden, and he could feel the beginnings of a connection between him and… not the dryad.

  Something, someone, else. Without Caen even extending his existence, a razor-thin black line extended from him and stopped a few feet in front of him. As though the connection were incomplete. It pointed in the direction of the stairwell. A cold chill ran down Caen's spine.

  He always had an awareness of the location of whichever soul he was sensing. This awareness was usually hard to detect because Caen always knew where people were when he was Soul-sensing them, since he had to be looking at or be in physical contact with them to see their soul structures in the first place.

  Right now, that awareness told him that he was partially connected to something all around him.

  The tree is alive, Caen realized, heart thudding in his chest.

  Hours ago, Caen had not been able to connect to this tree, and he'd assumed that this was because the tree was dead. But there was an explanation he hadn't even considered: this tree was greater than the magical stage of Percipient. So much so that it hadn't even registered to his abilities.

  An archmage-level tree.

  Caen began to sweat. This strange half-connection had never happened to him before. It felt so strongly to his mind like an… open invitation. He could not presume what an archmage could do.

  Caen very carefully did not extend his existence towards the tree. The half-connection still remained, however.

  His instincts were quiet, still. And the incomplete cord of connection was giving off a clear impression. Usually, Caen needed to glean impressions from it himself through intense concentration. Now, however, a notion of ‘sanctuary’ easily made itself apparent to him. He felt encompassed by safety. Not trapped.

  It was a paradox. He regarded all these with doubt and skepticism, and yet at the same time, there was a firm… knowing in his mind, an irrefutable certainty, that no harm would come to him.

  What was the source of this knowledge? It had to be from the incomplete cord of connection. He could almost sense that. But also, there was a consonance of some sort between these feelings of safety and the Binding magic affinity cluster in his soul.

  A contract, or the feel of one, that promised unqualified safety. It was common sense to expect that he could be influenced or that magical contracts could potentially be broken—though in this case, he hadn't even consciously entered any contracts to begin with.

  He and Vai had spoken about this: drawing the wrong kind of attention from beings much more powerful than himself.

  Proceed or leave. The Aperture was six hours away; maybe just over four hours, if he pushed for speed.

  Through the incomplete cord, Caen felt another impression: ‘easy departure’. Freedom to leave whenever he wanted.

  The distinctness of these impressions was only slightly less disturbing than the possibility that this perhaps-archmage-level tree was communicating with him somehow.

  Then a short, alien memory entered Caen's mind. It was not his own memory, but he saw himself in it, helmet and goggles on, standing across from a group of people in the Odaton-plane Plane with an awakened tree off to the side. As the memory of himself began to approach the viewer, Caen noticed who the people here were. Vensha's party members. Did this memory belong to Mafrolem?

  No, Caen realized. This is… from his fragment's perspective.

  This was the day he'd asked Mafrolem about Parthra. Caen had drawn the ancient tree's attention even then.

  Ancestors. What have I gotten myself into? From the moment I stepped into this—

  Two impressions whispered to him: ‘easy departure’; ‘sanctuary’. He could leave whenever he wanted and would not be harmed for however long he chose to stay here.

  Mafrolem had spoken of the benevolence of this Plane, and Caen had simply taken that to be a metaphor.

  He let out a shaky breath. If the tree meant ill, trying to leave now wouldn't make him any less fucked. But if it meant well, then this was an opportunity.

  Caen extended his partially unfurled existence along the incomplete connection that was already there.

  The world around him turned into a grand tapestry of infinitely complex detail, greatly dulling the bioluminescent lights of the tree. The ground beneath him, the walls, the high ceiling. Everything sang and hummed and vibrated at arcane frequencies. Immensity. Profundity.

  Impressions and sensations overwhelmed his spirit, mind, and body. This soul structure was unlike any other Caen had ever sensed. All the elements and aspects of it were confusing and unfamiliar and utterly beyond him.

  The cord of connection was almost tangible. ‘Safety, ’ it impressed on him.

  Caen had already made his decision. He began climbing.