Caen jolly ol' chap sat at a round table with some of the fragmental dryads of Parthra. They dined on the fifteenth layer of the ancient tree, celebrating Rlarlarla's acquisition of a fragment 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 me several more fragments for all my hard work, but alas, I'm too—”

  Caen blinked. He was awake.

  “Excuse me,” he said, rising and stepping away from the table. The thick, roiling fog of the Seam consumed 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 meetings?” Caen asked.

  “He is. I can pass along a message if you wish to tell him something.”

  “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 moment, 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 somewhere 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 dome above more strongly than when Vai was around.

  He looked up a few times 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 time memorizing 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 memorized 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 seemed like the sort of person who was always prepared for anything. It was perhaps his least annoying quality.

  Something 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 segment 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 meant incredibly slow and heavy movements of his spirit that bled into his mind and into his body. This caused him to sweat profusely and breathe heavily.

  Some 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 same laboring, but Caen sank into the comfort of practice, doing these every day.

  He stopped for quick meals and deep stretches regularly. He went over his combat forms whenever Yildriv left. Sometimes, 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.

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  He also spent quite some time thinking about what it might take for a simple Flora practician to impress an ancient, apparently archmage-level tree.

  Nothing seemed as compelling to him as just practicing Flora magic, but he also made time 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 overcome. 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 immersed himself in the customs of those around him.

  He discussed theory and practiced with some 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 some denizens, talked with dryads, and observed the soul structures of those of them with fragments, as they shaped and reshaped portions of the great tree. Doing all these helped him feel more at home in Parthra.

  He went down to the first layer not just to work out but to play board games and even learn the songs some of the children sang there.

  He jumped from the second layer a few times 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—some that were clearly predatorial in nature acted like lambs here. The insects never stung or bothered anyone, and they, in turn, could not be harmed.

  He joined Yildriv and some other denizens in filling pots with sand and then transplanting small flowers into them. He helped shape some dead plant matter into pots and bowls for these purposes. Some 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 met 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 same, Caen found his initial worries and concerns fading away.

  He did still wonder why the tree had seemed so eager to have him start the climb, only to have him loitering on the second layer. A small part of Caen had assumed that he would be ascending the layers at breakneck speed. So much for that.

  At some point, he sat meditating on the cord of connection between himself and Parthra. When he reached for his canteen to drink some water, he noticed that Yildriv was sitting in his foldable chair, watching Caen. He'd been too engrossed to notice when the man had come 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.

  “Some 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 mentioned 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 some other alcove writing some prime quality poetry. A hole opened up in the wall for me 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 came here for. It's covered by a thick section of woody vines and brambles. Stupid things won't come 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 me.”

  Yildriv sank into his chair, smoothening the side of his hair. “After weeks of not getting anyone who would help me, I decided to come 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 me like a plague. And horror of horrors! I couldn't even go back to the third layer.”

  Caen chuckled. “People warned me about you. They said Parthra's disregard for you was contagious.”

  Yildriv sighed melodramatically. “It might as well be true. Before I came 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 time, while Caen was meditating 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, meeting Caen's gaze.

  “Are my eyes deceiving me?” Yildriv asked.

  “Looks like one of us has done something right,” Caen said, picking up his bag from the floor beside him.