Meadow and I spent several hours working on potions together, working on a few more flight potions, some body enhancement potions, a couple of emergency healing potions, a potion to align me with space better, a philter of healing mist, and a philter of strengthening mist. When we finished, I looked up at Meadow.

  “Mushrooms,” I said. “Well. Fungus.”

  “Hm?” she asked.

  “I’ve decided,” I said. “I’ve already got the ninelight morels, Fungal Lock, and a strong amount of synergy. I know where I can find a nexus of mushroom powers. It’s also rather non-deadly, which I like. Detritus magic is cool, but I don’t think that it’s perfectly well suited to my style.”

  “I agree, but the choice is always yours,” Meadow said. “Even if you’d chosen blood magic, I would have supported you.”

  “I know, and I appreciate that, but I still weigh what you have to say seriously,” I said. “It was pointed out by Alvaro, it was pointed out by you. Even Orykson didn’t protest. It was all but settled. I just wanted to spend some time thinking about it.”

  Meadow nodded seriously, then pulled out a sticky note and dew out a spell.

  “Here’s Fungal Entwinement,” she said. “It’s ingrained effect will strengthen all fungal spells. Thanks to the mycorrhizal effect, this should liekly also strengthen your plant spells."

  “How about Fungal Armor?” I asked. “I really like the idea, but my life gate is…”

  I winced. More than half of my spells used at least some amount of life mana, and the gate was really crowded.

  “Fungal Armor is an interesting spell,” Meadow said. “Its ingrained effect makes it adaptive, so it continually improves as it is exposed to spells. This means it can take up a good bit of room, as it forcibly expands in your spirit. If you want my advice, treat it as halfway to a full-gate spell. Dedicate either your middle or peak third gate to Fungal Armor, with only very minor other spells as well.”

  “That makes sense,” I said, then my eyes narrowed. “Octavian. He needed a spiritual tool to clear out tons of room in his gates. An adaptive spell that’s overgrown, and is now eating up his entire gate?”

  “Not my place to say,” Meadow said. “But that would be one such use of a tool like that.”

  “But to get back on track,” I said. “The adaptive Fungal Armor is powerful, so long as I keep it pruned and not eating up so much mana that I can’t even cast the spell. I like your idea of dedicating my mid-third gate to it. Then I can use my peak third gate to pick up some more life and death spells. What about time and space?”

  “Time and space likely won’t have those issues,” Meadow said. “You can fill them normally. Some of the spells may run into your life or death a little, but not as much.”

  “Then there’s my beastgate,” I said thoughtfully. “I’m nearly done chipping away my tiles, and I can get a start on the full-gate spell soon. I’ve also nearly mastered Mantle Dragonfyre. But I need another beast spell for my early third gate.”

  “I have a few suggestions,” Meadow said. “But for now, I’d wait until you’re in Crysite, where you can collect them more easily. Tomorrow, though, you should go visit Kene, and the blink foxes. They’ve got spells you might like to study, and now that Dusk has expanded, you may even try to integrate some. Foxes need a surprisingly large amount of land, though, so if you do that, you should be prepared for your food bill to skyrocket, so they don’t disrupt the ecosystems.”

  I made a face, and my tail lashed.

  “I just want some fox friends,” I said. “Is that so bad?”

  Meadow chuckled.

  “You’ve already got deer, bees, an ermine, toad, and lots of telluric-aligned worms.”

  “Not enough,” I said.

  “And a spirit dragon,” Meadow said.

  “That’s her choice,” I said.

  “And a giant suit of ghost-possessed armor,” Meadow continued.

  “That’s Dusk’s,” I pointed out. “It’s also pretty much just a guardian of her vault. Which, by the way, how does being her guardian work? Both the armor and I are guardians.”

  “Being a guardian… It’s similar to a spirit bond, but it’s more of unique feature that some beings have as an aspect of their legacy. Siobhan, for example, is a guardian beast. She chooses a person or place and defends it, and her power spikes dramatically when she’s defending that person or place. For worldspirits, it’s a bit different. They serve as gatekeepers to the realm.”

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  Meadow gestured at me.

  “You are Dusk’s creator, maintained a spirit bond, strengthened that bond, and turned it into a spellbond. You’ve become her reality guardian, a general guardian who is deeply linked to her on a fundamental level. To put it in another term, you’re the district manager, who has to keep an eye on everything, while each of the other guardians are more localized guardians. The armor is her vault guardian. Its power is largely limited to defending her hidden treasures, but in that role, it’s become a fierce protector. I believe that when Dawn assisted you two in forming the anchor in Delitone, Dawn became the guardian of that gate. It will be her role to stop anyone from abusing the potential connection to Dusk.”

  “She’s not strong enough to guard it,” I objected. “She’s still a baby, and she only just reached first gate.”

  “Then it’s a good thing that you’re the district manager, and can keep an eye on it until Dawn is strong enough to do so,” Meadow said, and I reluctantly agreed.

  “True,” I said. “So does this role confer any power?”

  “It’s not a true spirit bond, as I said, more of a loose connection and job designated by a legacy,” Meadow said. “But it will give a faint sense for Dusk, a connection she can feel, change, sever, expand. They can use it to ask her to open a gate for them, but I’m not sure how effective that will be until she’s an Arcanist. It’s much…”

  Meadow snapped.

  “An anchor. That’s a good description. Think of it like you putting a Spatial Anchor in someone. It doesn’t offer many advantages to them, but it helps you teleport them easier, and you can use your Sense Directionality to get a better sense of where they are. You can remove it easily enough.”

  “Oh!” I said, brightening. “That makes sense. Elio is currently the reality guardian of Idyll, isn’t he? Also, I should probably at least make the offer to put a spatial anchor in my dad, Kene, and Ed, shouldn’t I? A bit less private, but also would let me track them down if anything horrible happened.”

  “Elio is,” Meadow agreed, “And the Craftsman is linked as well. And you could. As long as they agree, and you don’t use it for anything creepy, which I don’t think you will, it could be helpful. Especially if they plan to move through portals to and from Dusk frequently.”

  “Who’s going to be guardian of this platform?” I asked curiously.

  “Well, you do have a powerful hex-ermine and aurora toad,” Meadow said. “They could make suitable guardians. Kerbos, Ed, or even your dad could all be good picks.”

  “Can two people guard one place?” I asked.

  “Twin guardians are a tale as old as time,” Meadow said. “But truthfully, I suspect that the hex-ermine and aurora toad will be better as guardians on Crysite. They’re both used to the wilds, and I imagine that wild-adjacent is where you’ll locate the anchor. Plus, the environment is going to be better suited for them.”

  “Oh no,” I said, letting out a groan. “Don’t tell me.”

  “Crysite is midway between Delitone and Mossford, but it’s also several hundred miles north, putting it more on the latitude of Dragontooth, and thus, quite chilly.”

  “I’m doomed,” I said. “Completely doomed.”

  Meadow laughed and shook her head.

  “You’ll be fine. It’s getting late, you should go get dinner and some sleep.”

  “Bah humbug,” I said, lifting one of the bottles that was neatly lined up on the shelf. “I need to test out the flight potion. You can’t have me concoct a flying spell and then expect me to not try it out.”

  “Fair enough,” Meadow said with a small smile, “I’ll take a seat on the porch and watch.”

  “I don’t have a porch,” I said as we headed outside. Dusk and Dawn seemed to be playing some sort of game, one that was completely nonsensical to me, but they seemed to be having fun. The hex-ermine was playing as well, grabbing the small ball and scampering up trees on occasion.

  When I came out, Dawn turned, thrashing her noodly body in a way that I thought was an excited greeting. Dusk poked her head out from behind a bush and waved. I waved to them, popped the cork, and drained the potion in a gulp.

  I immediately felt as gravity began to lighten its hold on me, and I kicked off the ground. I floated up for a second, and then felt as tempest energy began to infuse into me. The energy formed into the array that the potion had created, and formed a core of power that began slowly draining into the array. As the array activated, it changed something about me that I didn’t understand, maybe something with buoyancy or air pressure, and then I felt smooth winds kick up around me, ones I could push by manipulating the energy running through the array.

  I pushed, and the wind caused me to practically explode forwards. I slammed into a tree face first, and when I untangled myself, I saw Dusk on her cloud, pointing and laughing at me. Dawn, on the other hand, drifted over and poked at the blood coming from the scrapes on my skin in a concerned fashion.

  “I’ll be okay,” I reassured her, then cast Starfish Regeneration quickly. Its minty cool feeling quickly caused the blood to burn up and the scratches to scab over, then heal away to nothing. Dawn let out a sigh and floated back. I smiled at her then glared at Dusk.

  “That was not funny,” I said. She chirped like a squirrel to tell me that it was actually very funny.

  I put a bit less pressure on the array and pushed off in her direction. Dusk streaked upwards, and I followed, pushing harder. The two of us soared through the skies of her realm as I chased her. She seemed to be increasingly amused by the entire thing as she flowed more power into her cloud, staying out of reach as we wove between the birds and clouds. I chased her over the autumnal forest and to the waterfall, lake, and cliff face at the center of her realm, where she dove down in a sharp turn towards her set of three trees, taunting me to follow.

  If I’d actually been in a fight, it would have been inordinately stupid to follow her in such a steep dive and obvious taunt.

  But this wasn’t a fight, it was fun, and learning to fly under what was – relatively speaking – my own power.

  Primes. Why not?

  I shot downwards, barely managing to pull up in time to avoid smashing into the ground. Dusk laughed, calling out that I was an uncoordinated flier, probably because I was too tall. I’d never been called too tall in my life before, but in this case, I wondered if she might be right.

  I poured on speed, straining the array within me as I rushed across the grass surrounding the lake, then Foxstepped behind Dusk, catching her out of the air.

  “Hah! Got you!”

  She rebutted that I had cheated by teleporting, but I felt incredibly strange as my spirit bucked wildly against my control, fighting to slip out of me. The potion, which was a foreign power directed by my spirit, went slack as I was no longer able to direct it for a few moments, leaving me floating in the air but unable to move.

  Dusk used the time it took me to wrestle my spirit back under my control to wiggle out of my hands and fly off again. The moment I was able to move on my own again, I soared after her.

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