Passionfire submerged the entire structure, but Caen withdrew his Impassioning lest he drain his volition. The structure remained on fire, however.

  The monster shrieked again, with more animosity this time, but frailer somehow.

  Caen was already backing away from the building when the monster ran out of it and straight for him. Its fur was burnt in some places, but it wasn't on fire.

  Caen rectified that quickly.

  Six Impassioned fireballs slammed into the creature from different angles. It let out a shrill scream as Passionfire engulfed its body, but it didn't let up in chasing Caen.

  Caen noticed Venefic and Spirit-healing affinity thread clusters suddenly grow prominent in the creature’s soul structure. He crashed his existence against the monster’s, disrupting the working, and flung more Impassioned Fireballs at the creature.

  It shrieked constantly, slowing down with each passing second. Portions of its soul structure grew prominent again. Caen hadn't stopped flickering Soul-sense, but that seemed to be having less of an effect on the monster.

  So he raised Chasma and began zigzagging backwards, body empowered. At the same time, he Mimicked the monster's Venefic magic affinity. It had passive augmentations. Did that mean that this was a Saffronan creature?

  It opened its maw, and several streams of a light green gaseous substance punched towards him. Caen threw an Impassioned fireball into its mouth, causing the monster to thrash. However, the streams of gas were not dispelled.

  He tried weaving out of the way, but couldn't dodge them all.

  Chasma blocked a great deal of the streams, but one grazed Caen's leg. He felt a stinging pain in the portion of his skin that had been hit. But also in his spirit. It was nearly as painful as a mana bolt.

  The monster fell on its side, wriggling on the muddy street as Passionfire burned it from the inside and out. Yellow fur had turned black and deep brown from charring. Its soul structure grew prominent again, and Caen vehemently slapped aside whatever working that was.

  He could tell from its soul structure that it was on the verge of death. Still, he stood a good distance away from it.

  He split off a portion of his focus to extinguish the flaming building off to the side. It was a fairly involved process, as the fire had gone on for too long.

  The pain in Caen's spirit and in his leg worsened, but only slightly. A cursory scan of his spirit revealed the presence of foreign matter, a strange spiritual substance that seemed to weigh down his spirit.

  A hole had been made in his trousers from the graze, and the skin underneath was reddened, with smudges of a sickly green. There were a few green smudges on the muddy ground around him from the monster’s attack, too.

  Caen lifted Chasma and inspected the fragment. No green smudge whatsoever. He was curious about something. Chasma had blocked not just Venefic attacks, but spiritual ones too.

  He Mimicked his fragment's spirit receptor and immediately, Passionfire was replaced by regular fire, which quivered and hissed under the rain, but persisted still.

  “Did you use absorption?” Caen asked his fragment.

  Chasma told him it had.

  The fragment had engaged absorption by itself on several occasions before, but never in a combat situation. More importantly, though, had Chasma used absorption on a spiritual attack? He asked the fragment.

  It told him that it had. Caen was surprised. Pleasantly surprised. It simply hadn't occurred to him that Chasma might be capable of resisting both physical and spiritual damage, as well as absorbing them. Ideas were already churning around in his head.

  He abandoned the spirit receptor and Mimicked Chasma's absorption. First, he concentrated absorption on the area of skin that had been grazed by the monster’s attack. The corrosive substance was quickly converted into vitality, leaving behind a more manageable pain in his leg.

  Caen had the vaguest awareness of his spirit. Over the months, he'd made enough progress to, at the very least, sense his spirit while Mimicking his fragment's abilities. He still couldn't move it at all.

  The pain in his spirit didn't improve his spiritual awareness. He could just feel a general discomfort and was unable to pinpoint the location of the injury.

  He'd only ever used absorption on his body. Applying it to his spirit took a moment of finagling, but he managed it by moving absorption away from his body and onto his spirit.

  Being unable to observe the location of the foreign spiritual substance, he spread absorption all over his spirit, and already, he could feel that sense of heaviness lifting.

  Caen watched the monster die. Flames danced on its side as thick smoke twirled off the corpse, carrying a sickly sweet aroma. In the distance, he could still hear gunshots ringing out.

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  The monster's soul structure lost integrity and broke apart. Caen disconnected from Chasma and checked his spirit; the foreign matter was gone. A slight discomfort persisted, but only from the small injuries he'd already sustained.

  He felt an almost imperceptible tingling sensation as free spirit particles were drawn into his spirit. This was one reason why Valiants went into Planes. When living things died, they released spirit particles that could be slowly integrated by others. Sufficient integration got one to the substage of late Attuner.

  A quick series of spells healed his injuries.

  Caen approached the dead monster, extinguishing the fire and smoke. He placed a hand on its head, which was hot to the touch, and scanned its body with some Blood-healing diagnostic spells. The creature's anatomy wasn’t all that interesting, but—

  Caen felt an impression of ‘food?’ through his bond to Chasma. He smiled.

  “Sure,” he said. He placed Chasma on the corpse; it engaged absorption by itself and then expanded to completely envelop the monster, losing a lot of density in the process.

  He glanced behind him where the remains of his goggles lay.

  Night had well and truly fallen. There was shouting in the distance. It sounded like crying.

  ***

  The villagers were not cheerful. They had lost many loved ones to the cannibals. They erected a pyre to honor their dead.

  People walked up to Caen, weeping and thanking him. Many of them offered him modest gifts, and he didn't have it in him to refuse.

  An elderly couple gave Caen a multicolored stone that their now-deceased son had received from a traveling Earth mage who had helped their village in the past.

  Caen helped a local healer and her sons as they attended to the wounded.

  The villagers cooked a large meal, and everyone shared in it. There would be much rebuilding ahead of them in the future, but the villagers seemed resolute. They'd already elected new chiefs, who were now deliberating in a circle.

  After rummaging through the buildings around the monster’s cage, Caen recovered all his belongings and those of the people on Obir's wagon. He was especially relieved to find his bag. His grimoire was thankfully intact, as were his notes, other documents he’d brought along, and a bunch of keys Hshnol had given him.

  Obir, with his son on his shoulders, rounded up the surviving passengers and told them he would be leaving early the next day. Caen informed the man about his new cargo; Chasma would likely need the better part of a day to completely absorb the corpse. Caen quickly laid the man's unvoiced concerns to rest by showing him that the monster was, in fact, dead.

  At the crack of dawn, they departed the village, or Achimaso, as it was called. Some villagers had come out to bid them farewell.

  There was a quiet but accommodating atmosphere among the passengers. Where earlier they had treated Caen with wariness, now several of them seemed inordinately polite. And surprisingly enough, no one commented about the suspiciously shaped mass of ever-shrinking black wood, though Thimno kept glancing back at it.

  Another two days of travel, and Caen parted with Obir's wagon. They were headed further east, and Caen didn't want them to leave their route to accommodate him.

  “If you have any reason to come by Swintnid, don't be a stranger,” the wereperson said.

  Caen thanked him and waved at the wagon as it retreated.

  Caen shaped Chasma into a platform with handholds. The fragment didn't seem to have increased all that much in size, but it sent Caen impressions of contentedness, and he sent it fondness in turn.

  Their flight to the warp terminal was a breeze. The spatial disturbance had not spread this far out. Caen purchased tickets and sat waiting. His field of vision suddenly expanded, growing sharper at the same time. His speculon tingled.

  His eyes were open and he could see through his speculon. Covering his forehead with his sleeved arm returned his vision to its lesser form. Caen let out a pleased sigh.

  Four hops later, he arrived at the last terminal on his hop route.

  The terminal sat on a large offshore platform, surrounded by the sea. And off in the distance, he could make out the island.

  The fresh smell of seawater, the coastline, its hills and mountain ranges, air traffic, sky-high structures, and far away in the distance, an absolutely enormous crystalline statue of the Spirit Mother. It sparkled with all the colors of the rainbow. The statue towered over the entire island with its hands stretched out benevolently. Translucent tendrils extended from her back and formed an arc around her.

  Even after having seen it so many times, the majesty of it wasn't lost on Caen.

  Ser-gwu.

  ***

  Processing went by quickly, thanks to documentation that marked him as a primary aide. He'd cast spells to inhibit his voice and his gait, thus masking his passive augmentations.

  A small, comfortable boat, powered by scriptwork, transported him to the harbor.

  Ships were docked on either side of it. A set of steps took him up the pier. There was light activity here. Spirit tendrils grazed Caen as he made his way to a row of floating carriages.

  He secured a floating carriage and gave the driver Vai's house address. The carriage had a transparent floor and roof, which was fascinating. He could see some other floating vehicles hurtling below.

  Overhead, a mass of red fur zipped past them. Caen viewed the island from the sky.

  The majority of the island was the lowest layer of land, known as the first stratum. Pretty much everything took place here. He could see the sky-high buildings that housed Ereshta’als and guests alike, a tower built around one of four Planar apertures, the large arena where the Patronage trials always took place, and even the general library, which was forty stories high.

  There were three other strata, which were plateaus of different elevations, hundreds to thousands of feet high.

  Caen was headed to the second stratum, where privileged and highly esteemed members of the family lived. His great-grandmother, Oludlana, lived there.

  There were lots of mansions, manors, and mage towers on the second stratum.

  Caen had never been to Vai's house on Ser-gwu before now; he'd never had any reason to visit. From above, Caen saw a row of shrubs and hedges which had been trimmed and sculpted into the smiling face of Uncle Vai. The green and yellow leaves were darker around his mustache.

  Only as they descended to the pad atop the building did it fully register to Caen that he was here.

  And he had a lot of work to do.