Earthchild

Chapter 98: Preceptor Hiyilit

The tri-clinic closed very early on temple day, which often meant it tended to be quite packed by mid-morning.

Just after the sun had risen, Caen was already at the tri-clinic. He was on dispersal duty today: the dematerialization of sprites.

Sprites formed when there was an imbalance in the ambient mana within a region. Many factors contributed to this: the backwash of spellcasting, expulsion of attuned mana, and slag cleansing, to name a few.

Sprites formed often in the tr...

Chapter 97: A Message From Hshnol

The first portion of Caen's mind was focused on casting a spiritual scan. 

The second portion of his mind watched his own soul structure, specifically his aura, noticing the changes that occurred within it. Both Sh'kteiro and Hshnol had mentioned how spell constructs were primarily formed upon the auras of spellcasters. Caen had begun to map the effects of this in various soul structures weeks ago. Percipients could sense this easily enough using their own auras, and so Caen was tr...

Chapter 96: Klakalk

Sh'kteiro didn't recognize the diagrams, and he couldn't easily get in touch with anyone who might until he returned to Vishnen. 

At the phrontistery, Preceptor Wijin was having a meeting, so Caen had to wait outside his office. 

“Caen,” Preceptor Wijin said when he stepped out of his office. The elderly man wore a dark scarf around his head. “Have you been waiting long?”

“Not at all, sir. I wanted to ask you about something I saw somewhere.” He took ou...

Chapter 95: Consider Other Options

Caen left them and began heading for the Valiant’s lodge. He lifted his backpack to examine the glyphs that had been scrawled on his bag as he walked.

They weren't there.

Caen came to a stop, shocked. He hurriedly retrieved his notebook and was relieved to find that the copied glyphs were still intact. He could reproduce them from memory, but he never could be too sure what he'd failed to notice.

He turned and rushed back into the Plane. The Watchers there glanced at him b...

Chapter 94: Doing Magic, Then

In an instant, he'd reshaped Chasma into a round buckler on his forearm, engaging absorption on its exterior.

With the smaller portion of his mind, Caen channeled light from the Plane of the Speculant Eye through his being. 

He emitted two beams in quick succession into Binam's eyes. The man recoiled with a yelp, placing both hands on his eyes. The shielding medallion didn't deactivate, though.

The greater portion of Caen's mind watched as Hez sprinted at him, helmet...

Chapter 93: Let's Do Magic, Then

“We only do fetches with people we know,” a Valiant in scale armor said. “Sorry, cherche.”         

Caen sighed and walked away.

“The guy moves like he's injured,” someone said in a low voice.

This was the seventh party Caen had approached. 

Gatherers weren't allowed into the Redshadow Plane unless they were in a party of other Valiants or Gatherers. He'd had no luck so far in joining a party.

He had c...

Chapter 92: When You Wake Up

“Five affinities!” Vai exclaimed. “Heh. The runt of the litter’s finally growing up. You should be proud! Tahal's horns and tails, I know I am.”

Caen, Zeris, and their uncle were floating in the morning sky before the great and magnificent form of Parthra. This was an instance of revisitation, and Caen had been externally observing the way his very existence had unraveled. 

“I am proud,” Caen said, looking away from the scene. “I intend to raise sever...

Chapter 91: Core Four

They got their things from Guinevere's room and left the estate. Guinevere escorted them down the cobblestone road till they found a carriage that was headed into town. 

When Caen mentioned how he wasn't really into biking like she and Zeris, Guinevere told him that she'd take him freerunning sometime. She said it was a fun exercise that any Body-enhancer would enjoy. They said their goodbyes and left for the Drenlin train station.

***

After returning to the ...

Chapter 90: Till Dawn

“Wreather and Parity,” Caen repeated under his breath, running those words over in his mind and trying to see how they measured up against the other ones he'd come across.

“I have no idea what those terms represent,” Guinevere said.

“Do they have substages too?” Zeris asked.

Guinevere nodded. “Yeah. But Nimmy says the gulf between each one keeps getting larger and larger the higher up you go.”

The Attuner stage of magic was divided into four substages: ...

Chapter 89: Higher Stages Of Magic

They went through a few more rounds of testing, using the fragment, of course. Zeris and Guinevere kept ramping up the intensity each time with very interesting results. Chasma remained merely curious.

By the sixth round, even Mimicking Guinevere's Lightning affinity, Caen still dropped to a knee from the magnitude of the shock. Lightning magic was terribly effective.

Zeris Impassioned her attacks on the seventh round of testing, but had quickly needed to withdraw her Impassioning...

Chapter 88: Chasma

Farmer Brah'm gave Caen a vase of nutrient-rich soil—he’d retrieved this out of nowhere—and explained that Caen would need to diversify his fragment's ‘diet’ routinely and not casually. Broadening what exactly his fragment could feed on was very important, the man said, as this would determine how strong his fragment would become.

He encouraged Caen to feed it not just plant matter but carcasses, planar materials—whenever he found them—and whatever else. Brah'm al...

Chapter 87: Home Of The Hughes-Richardsons

The next day, dawn met Caen meditating on the roof. 

His mind felt sharper, his thoughts clearer, his focus firmer. It was as though his consciousness had been replaced by something greater. Plans he'd been formulating over the past few days seemed to crystallize now. A time construct hung in the corner of his vision. He'd cast it by his own power. 

Last night, he'd diligently practiced the exercise Sh'kteiro had shown him. And he'd woken up this morning to find that his...

Chapter 86: It Won't Be Long

They cleared the table and did the dishes after dinner. Aunt Grena had retired to bed, and Vensha had gone down to the commune saloon to meet up with friends. Caen sat at the dining table with Zeris and Uncle Teiro.

“Are you sure you won't stay the night?” Sh'leinu asked from the living room where she and Ergen sat, cuddled on the couch, reading a book together. “It's not very safe around these parts, especially if you're walking back to Drenlin.”

Sh'kteiro smiled. “Lein...

Chapter 85: Take The Money

When he stepped out of the Plane, Caen was struck by how unpleasant… everything was. The air was only slightly dusty and had smelled somewhat clean on his way here, but now it seemed lacking. Even the ground beneath his feet seemed… wrong and unbalanced.

The sun was only starting to rise. Caen geared up completely and began the trek down to the nearest train stop, which was only a few miles away. He crossed the skybridge quickly, glancing down the canyon a few times.

Once he r...

Chapter 84: Easy Departure

Authors's Note: Today makes a month since I started posting this story. Thank you so much for your support. It means the world to me. I can't wait to show you all the fun stuff I have in store.

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Absorption—the fragment's ability to feed on matter—worked a little like its resilience. Caen could concentrate the absorption on an area of his body or spread it out thinly. 

He held a hard-shelled Parthran fruit in his hand and focus...

Chapter 83: Amusement

Soul structures involved far too many elements to keep track of; there were sounds, vibrations, visual representations, physical, mental, and even spiritual impressions. Nothing truly stayed the same. All these elements oscillated and alternated between various phases. It was all typically overwhelming, and Caen was still unable to interpret most of what he sensed. 

When the thread clusters that represented magical affinities grew prominent, what was happening, to Caen's senses, wa...

Chapter 82: Fragmental

The spells used to manipulate Parthran fragments were not quite Saffronan. But they did use spirit patterns—though of a different model—and even had visualizations of a sort. Apparently, the dryads used a different system altogether. They were able to send out signals with their spirits that interacted with some sort of receptor within their fragments. 

Lowly human that Caen was, he had to settle for the basic spell analogs. An aged dryad with white skin and connected patches o...

Chapter 81: 609,385th

Caen's entire existence coalesced into a whole. Restored. Terror. Dread.

I just died. I just died. 

AND NOW YOU ARE WHOLE. OF WHAT USE IS POWER IF I CANNOT SAFELY EXAMINE THE THINGS THAT INTRIGUE ME? IT IS WISE FOR YOU TO FEAR, BUT KNOW THAT I SHALL DO YOU NO HARM.

At these words, the terror abated. Caen was floating before a great presence that dwarfed even his wildest imaginations of how powerful Parthra might have been. 

Its soul structure was exc...

Chapter 80: Little Supplicant

The hole was blocked by a web of white strings that did not budge when he pushed at them with his hands. It seemed to be some sort of cotton-like substance, and he could not connect to it, which meant that it wasn't alive. 

He used a spell to carefully pry it apart. There was more of it filling up the hole that led up an incline. Caen got to work, undoing the white strings and gathering them up with him as he went. No point wasting perfectly good planar material. 

His ba...

Chapter 79: Quick Favor

Caen soaked contentedly in a pool of water as he made some plant tendrils on the wall beside him writhe. The water was very pure, and Caen had found that the pools here seemed to clean themselves somehow and had a rejuvenating effect on his skin. Parthra was no doubt behind all this. His clothes lay drying on the floor.

He was now able to tell the time, and in a Plane, for that matter. Caen had found a golden pocket watch with neat filigree patterns in his bag of holding, along with a s...

Chapter 78: Flora Practician

Apparently, they could both enter through the hole in the wall. Steps, like Yildriv had described, led all the way up to the third layer. 

Yildriv dropped to his knees and kissed the black ground, while making quiet promises about a poem he would write in the tree's honor.

“Do you need help with your Flora problem?” Caen asked.

“Yes! Yes, I very much need help! I'll lead the way,” he said, already walking off. “Ha! I'm so happy I saved your life all those nigh...

Chapter 77: Regard, Disregard

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—”

C...

Chapter 76: Sleep Debt

A rush of static energy startled Caen awake. He sat up quickly in a groggy haze, reaching with one hand for a glaive that wasn't there while his other hand wrapped around the dagger by his thigh. Then he realized that it was not in fact his alarm ward system that had woken him up.

Yildriv, the flamboyantly dressed Artificer, stood with his hands on his waist as he looked down on Caen. “Oh, good. You're alive.”

Caen frowned up at him, then looked down at his script circle to se...

Chapter 75: Climber Lore

The dryad barkeep prepared a pie for Caen. He produced a round, fleshy fruit of some kind and gradually transformed it right before Caen's eyes. The dryad's soul structure revealed that this was a working of Flora magic, which intrigued Caen to no end. 

“What spell and modifier combinations did you use to achieve this?” 

“Once you complete your climb, you'll have all the answers to that,” the dryad said simply. “But only once you complete your climb.”

C...

Chapter 74: Welcome to Parthra

Mafrolem, Yildriv, and several other accounts were apparently right about something: Parthra was incredibly impervious. Caen could not even so much as dent the bark with his daggers. He'd chipped off one of the blade's tips while testing this out for himself.

The exterior of the tree was not smooth, however. It had pits and crevices and slight projections. Some were small enough to serve as handholds for a very determined person. Caen secured his bag and the vine he'd picked out and the...

Chapter 73: Yildriv

Caen made his way to the top of the stairs carefully as he gazed around him. Parthra's soul structure was truly dizzying. The second layer was a vast, dark-walled cavern with two main exits. He moved quickly to the side and sat on the ground, trying to make out a prominent thread cluster in the Tree's soul. The feel and configuration here were utterly unfamiliar. 

This was the first truly irregular soul structure Caen had seen. Everything up till now had borne a general familiarity...

Chapter 72: All Things Of Itself

Parthra was the name of the great tree that sat at the center of this Plane. The majesty of its size alone was so 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 m...

Chapter 71: The Parthran Plane

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

After the Chancellery had done away with meal tokens, alcohol had still remained very expensive and inaccessible. That 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...

Chapter 70: One Hundred Trees

Many days passed, and Caen fell into an easy routine. He continued his boosted magical exercises and practiced Flora magic on the awakened trees, but he usually made time to share supper with Zeris and Guinevere at the aides’ hall most evenings. 

The passive augmentations from his Blood-healing affinity were refreshing. He still needed to take his temperature regulation medication, but it worked so much better than before. Caen was still adjusting to having such a clear sense of ...

Chapter 69: Crazy Attracts Crazy

[I'm coming too!] Guinevere called.

[It's just Fire magic,] Caen sent back. [But you're welcome to join us.]

[Sweet!]

Caen and Zeris had made plans to practice with Ardor, but they'd been busy with other pursuits. Ever since she'd learned how to Impassion her fire, Caen's mind had been contemplating what a shared spell with doubled Impassioning might look like.

Caen sat with his back to an awakened tree stump and watched the Aperture as he replenished his reserves.