“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: early, mid, late, and peak. More advanced potency gauges could determine this from the quality of one's mana.

  “Do you know what it takes to get to Percipient?” Caen asked.

  She gestured at the tomes and study materials on her table with a flat face. “If I knew, I'd be trying for that instead of this.”

  “Your bloodline allows you to store information, you said. Why do you even study then?” Zeris asked.

  “They have measures in place to prevent any form of malpractice. Albi tried extensively. He warned me not to bother.” She let out a regretful sigh. “Would have been nice, though.”

  They spent the next few hours working in companionable silence. Caen practiced more with Spirit-healing and Flora spells, stopped to replenish his mana a few times, and helped himself to the snacks Guinevere had brought them. Chasma continued to feed in the vase of soil Farmer Brah'm had given Caen.

  “GUIN-GUIN, IT'S TIME FOR DINNER,” Guinevere's mother called. “BRING YOUR FRIENDS.”

  Joan and Brah'm were already cooking when they got to the kitchen. Guinevere had explained that dinner would probably take a few hours to prepare. Her parents enjoyed making meals from scratch, which meant that it was usually a very involved process.

  Joan showed them how to fold leaves that had been filled with fruit puree. It seemed needlessly complex and took nearly ten minutes to properly fold one leaf. Then they stuffed carefully measured pieces of meat and vegetables into lumps of dough and set them in the oven.

  Brah'm had them shuck some corn to be boiled and help him strip some meat to be dried later.

  It all smelled really good, and both Joan and Brah'm insisted that there be ‘no pinching of food while cooking’, yet whenever Brah'm wasn't looking, Joan would sneak them some meat from his pans. And Brah'm would steal some pie to share with them.

  Caen could tell that Guinevere's parents were enjoying themselves pretending, so he just played along. Guinevere looked miserable and a little embarrassed.

  It took nearly five hours to make dinner. Caen actually had a pleasant time, and Joan knew quite a number of interesting stir-fry recipes.

  The dining room was next to the living room. It had a large round table with thirty chairs, though they all sat at one segment of it. As they ate, Brah'm and Joan recounted stories from ‘their days adventuring’.

  Eating took about thirty minutes, and Guinevere strongly encouraged her parents to leave them to clean up.

  It was near witching hour by the time they were done with cleanup. They walked out onto the farm, chatting about all sorts of things. Zeris's elder sister, who lived continents away and made music for a living. Her estranged father. Caen's childhood with a magical sickness.

  They walked over to a lake amidst a grove of trees and sat on the wooden pier there. A small canoe floated some feet away.

  Guinevere took off her boots and dipped her leg up to the shin in the water as she told them about all the places she'd grown up. What it was like moving around with her parents and siblings. Apparently, they even went into some Planes together.

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  [Your parents seem very nice,] Zeris sent. [Why didn't you tell them about Odaton?]

  Guinevere had repeatedly urged Caen and Zeris not to make any references to the Odaton tunnels or to having met her siblings.

  She sighed. [I'm so sorry I made you guys do that. Mom and Dad are old. They… they wouldn't have taken well to finding out what happened in Odaton. At all. You remember them talking about their younger days in the Planes, right? They used to have a very big um Valiant party.

  [Nearly fifty of them. Visiting adjunct worlds, exploring Planes, going on all sorts of honestly unbelievable adventures. There are only about thirteen of them left now. Many of them either died fighting in a Plane or as a result of being trapped in one. You met Antoine. The Space mage that came with Albi and Nimmy. His mom and older brother died in a Plane.]

  Zeris scratched the side of her face. [Ancestors.]

  [Yeah. Albi got stuck in a Plane, too. He'd gone in with some friends to gather parts from a fairly dangerous Plane. His friends were honestly idiots. Against Albi's advice, they went much deeper and farther than they had any business going, which wasn't the real problem. Party got split up. Again, against his advice. They encountered Planar creatures that they couldn't handle easily. A few of them got killed. The rest of them were stuck there for hours till Mom and Dad came to rescue them.

  [I was seven when this happened. Albi was twenty-seven and in his final year at the Citadel. Nimmy was seventeen. My parents didn't let him out of their sight for eight years.]

  [‘Didn’t let him out of their sight’? You mean they kept tabs on him?] Caen asked.

  [Ten feet,] she clarified. [He was never more than ten feet away from them. For eight years. He had to follow them wherever they went. Couldn't visit friends, couldn't go to Grat, couldn't leave their… uh presence. Mom locked his bloodline too.]

  Caen had not known that progenitors of a bloodline could do that. He felt cold terror. “Wait,” he whispered. “Is it safe to be talking about all this through the telepathic link? Can't your mother listen in while we—”

  “She'd never do that. I mean, I think it's possible, but I've asked before, and she told me she'd never do that. My mom never lies to us. Like ever.”

  Caen did not feel convinced by this in the slightest. He'd avoid saying anything disrespectful or important over the telepathic link for now.

  [Nimmy was preparing to leave for her studies at the Citadel at the time, but she delayed her admission in solidarity, staying back with Albi. For up to two years, even. I tried to beg on his behalf, too, but Mom and Dad didn't budge. They said that carelessness had consequences. And that the only reason he hadn't died was because his parents were powerful enough to save him. Mom wanted to instill this lesson about consequences into him. And dad believed that Albion's decision to stay back and help his friends was the wrong call.]

  Caen shuddered and pulled his coat more closely around him. The night air here was a tad chilly, but this had nothing to do with the weather.

  Hearing what an archmage had done to their own child made him wonder what a non-benevolent archmage that knew all the details of Mimicry would do to him if they were interested in finding out more.

  “Eight years… that's… three realms,” Zeris whispered.

  “It was meant to be fifteen, but they felt he'd learnt his lesson by the eighth year. Nimmy almost never gets into any trouble. And I've mostly followed in her footsteps, but when we got trapped in the tunnels, I…” She looked away and put her hands in the pockets of her jacket. “I hesitated. But Mom and Dad were offworld—uh, in a Plane—and out of range. I tried to contact them using the bloodline over and over. I'm ashamed to admit that a small part of me was actually relieved.” She took a deep and slow inhale.

  “Well, you did end up calling for help in the end,” Zeris said.

  Caen nodded. “Albion and Nimue were instrumental to us being found and rescued.”

  “My parents aren't entirely rational when it comes to their children's safety. They might have killed Hulte and everyone with a uniform in the command tent. It's why I never use my last name out in public. Tillin and my other friends in Drenlin haven't even been here before. I know they'd start behaving differently.”

  “That makes a lot of sense,” Zeris said. “First time I saw Mister Black Eyes, I briefly reconsidered this friendship.”

  Caen nodded seriously. “Me too. He has an impactful personality. Very fierce.”

  “He has a knife,” Zeris said.

  Guinevere laughed.

  They climbed into the canoe, and Guinevere paddled them down the lake as they bantered some more.

  At some point, they spotted Evestia, the winged horse, flying high up in the starry sky.

  They swapped stories and talked till dawn.