[x] A respected but caged Keras
Rock the Cradle: A cultivation story
- Thread starter VagueZ
- Start date
- Fantasy Action
- Location
- parker colorado
[X] A respected but caged Keras
- Location
- A nondescript grave
[X] A learned but untethered Keras
[X] A respected but caged Keras
[X] A respected but caged Keras
[X] A respected but caged Keras
I like the way the two vote options got tied together. Cool scene.
I like the way the two vote options got tied together. Cool scene.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] A learned but untethered Keras
It was a pretty lucky find given the location and esoteric nature of it, but it's coming in handy for Cheng.
Beti needs to learn how to fight properly sure Keras is filling that role but it's still an essential skill, same with techniques.
Food is food.
Natural scripts are interesting and scripts are something I'd like to look into but Keras only has so much time.
Politics are inevitable and the Kingdom is young so it has growing pains.
Cheng is just so skilled and good at this kind of thing he understands what's going on pretty easily.
This feels like one of those moments in House finds out a problem through thinking outside the box.
Looking forward to seeing more of that since it'll come in handy.
I really like this dream self mechanic it shows a lot of insights into Keras and other possibilities.
Might and Lonely keras seems as if it's the path Keras went into becoming like Sesh, peaceful but sad seems like the when where Olerac dies, learned but untethered seems like the one that went all into Dreams, respected but caged is the plant expert.
[X] A mighty but lonely Keras
[X] A peaceful but sad Keras
- Location
- N/A
[X] A respected but caged Keras
This is the only option that I think really describes something I'm not interested in seeing take place in our version of Keras's story. The only one that seems like a real possibility, anyway. Therefore, I think it makes the most sense for them to learn from this version to avoid landing in the same position.
This is the only option that I think really describes something I'm not interested in seeing take place in our version of Keras's story. The only one that seems like a real possibility, anyway. Therefore, I think it makes the most sense for them to learn from this version to avoid landing in the same position.
1337Procrast
Fire Emblem Enjoyer
- Location
- Australia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] A mighty but lonely Keras
DRAGON
DRAGON
Eternal_0bserver
(Unverified Bookworm)
- Location
- Earth, Northern Europe
[X] A learned but untethered Keras.
[X] A mighty but lonely Keras.
[X] A mighty but lonely Keras.
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- Location
- New York
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] A learned but untethered Keras
- Location
- USA
This chapter was fun. Beti got a snack, good for her.
[X] A respected but caged Keras
[X] A respected but caged Keras
Interesting, does she suspect him?
lmao, I wonder if he's actually got a theory or he's just used to Luxe heirs falling short.
- Location
- Somewhere in England
[x] A mighty but lonely Keras
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Ferb_Ancos
The one under the table
- Pronouns
- He
You need to put an "X" in between the "[]" for it to count as a vote.
- Location
- Somewhere in England
thanks, i'm pretty new to actually participating in quests and it slipped my mind
SoixanteZio
Dead man walking
- Location
- anywhere
[X] A respected but caged Keras
[X] A respected but caged Keras
A disorder discovered
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Winning vote:
[] A respected but caged Keras
Equations appear on the page in front of you as you work your way through possibilities. You pause and double-check your work now and then, having to correct errors here and there, though you're mostly getting it right the first time. You're doing something weird, here. you've never before heard of an elixir to do what you're trying to do. The basic framework is not hard and is even somewhat normal, so you're not exactly off the edge of the proverbial map, but it's still new ground.
Mireya's problem is incredibly straightforward once you frame it right. She's felt like a coiled breeze to your spiritual sense, but another way to put words to the impression your spirit finds could be that she is a caged bird.
The Path of the Clear Sky is not built for a caged bird, for a captive wind. It is not for the precise and methodical. It was built by and for a mighty force who travels where she will. The master of the Clear Sky wouldn't be a carefully-trained acolyte maneuvering through the obstacles of the land. That's why it's called Clear Sky to begin with. Its power centers around its ability to rain destruction from on high or to simply leave if the sacred artist does not like how things are going around her.
The reason Mireya's mother's aunt could easily absorb her madra and Mireya cannot is because it's meant to slot into that spirit, the spirit of the freewheeling, unconstrained ruler of clear skies. All you need to do is to make an adapter, an elixir that bridges the difference in their spirit. Mireya's tutors didn't stop to think about this, because it didn't seem to be a meaningful thing. Your family path wouldn't care about this. You don't think most other paths would, either. There's a dozen things that play into a sacred artist's compatibility with a path, and this normally wouldn't be the biggest thing. There's probably other ways to smooth over the issue, too. You may or may not have found the best or easiest solution. That would be hard to be sure about.
But, the more you craft your potential elixir, the more you are sure you've found a good solution. You inherited your path from a line of people happy to stay with their familiar people and place, and grew into someone who is too curious to stay there. This is just doing that backwards, for madra.
Once you've triple-checked the equations that underscore your recipe, you take the stack of scales the Underlady gave you to spend for this purpose, and rush off to market to get the pieces you need.
It's late in the evening before you're ready. In your office in Cheng's place, you carefully write a series of scripts around your cauldron, measure out your ingredients, set a timer so you can do things at the proper time, and set to work.
After an hour or two of effort, your new elixir is ready. You pour a gold-white liquid out of your little cauldron into a small glass container, covering its top with wax paper tied in place to keep it from spilling. Within the glass, it spins and whirls, its motion never slowing.
From there, it's just cleaning up. The scripts have to be carefully disassembled to avoid triggering in a way you don't intend. The cauldron must be carefully sanitized, scrubbed, and dried to prevent build-up. Other materials must be clearly labeled and stored away, and sources of heat or gas are checked for potential danger.
Once you're done, you belatedly realize that it's very late. If it's not midnight, it's pretty close to midnight.
It's not the first time you've slept in your office, but it is the first time that you just sort of collapse asleep in the middle of the floor, energy abandoning you as you find you've wrung everything you can out of the moment of inspiration.
It's not the first time you've met yourself in dreams. The other you seems more confused than you are, which isn't surprising. They look this way and that, hunched in on themself and trying to maintain a polite and restrained exterior.
"It's okay," you tell yourself. "It's me. I'm you, or we're us."
"We're the same person?" the other asks. "Why are we here? Is this a dream?"
"It is a dream. I don't know why this is happening. Sorry! It might be because I took on a dream-reader's Remnant."
"I see." The other you tucks hair behind their ear. Their hair is a little shorter than yours. Woven through their hair is green vines, with a single vibrantly pink flower just above one ear. They lean forward as they grasp the meaning. "So you're what would have happened if I had decided to follow the dream-readers? I almost chose that!"
"No, no, not that!" You wave it away. "I decided to try to bond with Beti, and she accepted it. I just also got the Remnant of one of the Luxe dream-readers. But you... that looks a lot like Meira's Goldsign."
"It is," they say, reaching up to brush at the flower. "The Riyusai family have a group of natural spirits they take into their spirit to reach Gold. The Second Prince demanded I get one."
You tilt your head. "The second one? But it was Meira and the First Prince we met here in Great Crevasse."
"I was entranced by how much power Meira had. I asked to go with them... and Second Prince Seishen Daji latched onto me almost as soon as he realized what was going on." They give you a rueful smile, shoulders sagging. "I overheard him say to one of his noble friends that if his older brother had a plant-using prodigy, he should get one, too."
"So he's trying to make you be another Meira?" You lean forward, fascinated.
"Trying." The flower-Keras chuckles. "I'm not her. Even with... our help... I can't keep up. Her growth is amazing. She just reached Truegold and I'm... not Highgold yet." Spreading their hands, this Keras unveils their spirit fully. A potent Lowgold spirit presses down on you, stronger than your own and entirely of life madra, with an impression of ever-living thorns threaded through it. "Prince Daji has taken my 'training' on himself. He's giving me lots of advancement resources, but he's also trying to fight me two or three times a day. He's vicious, and he isn't happy that I'm not already another Meira." They sigh. "I could hit Highgold in another year or two. I have to hope he'll be happy with me then. But never mind that—Beti? You actually tried to work with her after she tried to eat me? Eat you. ...Us?"
You shrug. "It's not her fault that I was tricked into stumbling in her enclosure the same way her meals are. And everything I'm learning is so..." You lose words, substituting gesticulating generally. "It's good." You quickly sketch out the refining procedures and recipes you've been learning.
"And Beti herself?"
"She's my friend now." The other Keras nods at that. Nothing more needs to be said, there. Friends are not a fair-weather thing to throw away. If she's a friend, then she's a friend, to whatever end.
You push back to your own curiosity. "But you're brushing elbows with the royal family, then?"
"Actually, even the King commented to me a couple weeks ago that he thought I was having a good effect on Prince Daji." Flower-Keras manages a smile with this. "That I was helping to ground him and teach him responsibility. That really feels like it means something when an Overlord says it. Even when he's just walking or having a meal, it feels like an earthquake compressed into human skin. His praise or support is almost empowering itself, and everyone else at court follows his lead carefully. A lot of people try to get an audience with me, with suggestions or requests or even just gifts that they want to send to Prince Daji."
After a moment, they glance over their left shoulder and then their right, as if someone might be listening in even during a dream, and add in a low whisper: "I still don't like Daji, though. He's mean."
This awakening is far less kind. Your heart and breath are both quick, and again you wake with two sets of memories of your dream. You push yourself off of the bare tile floor, shaking your head and glancing this way and that. Where's the Second Prince? He usually attacks you unless he's sleeping in. And you're not in your bed, so maybe he's dragged you off to a new dangerous obstac—
You shake your head, covering your eyes with both Goldsign hands even as your physical ones keep holding you up. You've never met Daji. You aren't trapped in the king's castle. You can leave if you want to. You get to your feet and look around your office, confirming to yourself that everything is where some of your memories say that they should be. The elixir for Meira is here. You shake your head again, harder. The elixir for Mireya is here.
You find something in Cheng's pantry to eat for breakfast and have it in Beti's enclosure, leaning against her bark. She's kind of sleeping or something, not active enough to want meat or to do anything just now, but her presence is still grounding and comforting.
The memories of the royal family and the capital are a crazed jumble, not quite cohering into fully understandable things, but they aren't going away, either.
You're kind of keeping an eye out for Daji as you go back to the Luxe place. Every time you catch yourself doing that, you force yourself to relax, but it doesn't stick. It's hard to break a habit you never actually formed in the first place, and Daji never gave other-you a lot of warning. If he attacked, that Keras just had to be ready to try to block an unexpected sword-swipe or to heal an injury because you failed.
You're still a little out of it when you knock on the door to Mireya's suites, elixir in hand, but you force yourself to concentrate. Mireya answers the door herself, and bows to welcome you in.
You set the elixir on the table. "I think this will help, Miss Mireya," you tell her. "I'll need to see how it works, and it might be possible to improve the recipe a bit, but I think this will solve most of the issue."
Mireya watches the elixir. Even now, it hasn't ceased its endless whirl. The motion of its golden-white contents won't stop moving, not until someone drinks it or it loses its potency. "I do not recognize this," she says. "Will it interfere with any other advancement tools? What is its name?"
"It shouldn't interact with most other pills or elixirs, but your physician can verify that before you take them. I have a couple copies of the recipe for them to look over, but basically it's just trying to teach your spirit to move internally like it would if you were flying... away, I guess is the term. I... haven't named it yet." You give her a sheepish smile. "It's a new thing, and I didn't even think about a name until, uh, now."
"May I try it immediately? The sun is at the optimal position for my cycling."
"Please do. Give it a couple minutes after you drink it for your body and spirit to take it in."
Mireya carefully takes the top off and drinks the elixir, with the sort of precise table manners that really don't matter when you're having something like this, then turns to walk out onto her balcony.
The day has a moderate breeze, which stirs her clothes as Mireya approaches the railing. After waiting for probably precisely two minutes, if you know Mireya, she raises her hands to the sun, and you feel her spirit calling to the aura of wind and light as she cycles. They come to her.
She does not glow. Unwanted wind does not blow away from her. Aura is worked into madra, and it builds up her core. It is only a small piece; she performs only a few of the countless thousands of cycles she will need to do. It is neither a short nor easy road to Highgold, but she is no longer taking nine steps back for every ten steps forward. She can just walk her path.
Her hands grip the railing, tightly. "Keras," Mireya says, facing away from you.
You give her a heartbeat or two, but when she doesn't continue, you say "Yes?"
"How long will this elixir work?"
"I don't know. Probably something between a week and a month per dose. When it loses efficacy, you can take more right away—it shouldn't build up any residue in your body or spirit that would make you need to worry about spacing out. I think there's a good chance that after enough of it, your spirit will be used to what it's trying to artificially create, and you might not need to keep taking it."
"Is it terribly expensive? Are the ingredients rare?"
"...No?" You're not sure why she's asking, or why she's not looking at you.
"It's... going to work?"
"I think so." you study the back of her head carefully. "Are you okay?"
"I... yes." Having said that, Mireya sinks to her knees, hands still on the railing, and begins to weep, softly.
After an awkward minute of watching her, you work out that it's tears of relief. {Get her a towel, kid,} Etaja prompts you.
Once Mireya has cried herself out, you hand her a couple napkins from the tea set, and she cleans herself off to the best of her ability. She then stands again and looks at you. "I will devote myself wholly to cycling over the next few weeks, so we can show my honored mother progress," she says. "You said you have the recipe?"
"I left two copies on your table," you say, pointing at which piece of furniture you mean. "If you need more, I can make more."
"I can requisition more of the elixir from our usual refiners," Mireya says, then adds, "songbird's hope."
"What?"
"The elixir. I think you should call it the Songbird's Hope Elixir."
You give her your best smile. "I'm good with that."
It doesn't take long from when you leave Mireya behind for you to start worrying about Daji-ambushes again. Things keep bubbling over in your mind, mostly about court etiquette or details of the royal family and Meira's family and the life you never actually lived there. Even conversations with Etaja can't ground you. You half-expect random people in the street to start bowing to you, and you're not even sure where that belief is coming from. You don't think that Daji's-punching-bag-Keras was getting that sort of deference.
Why do you know some names and faces of servants and courtiers at the king's castle? Are your names even accurate?
You almost jump out of your skin when Gardenia grabs your wrist suddenly, halfway to trying to strike back at a presumed-Prince-Daji before you realize who it is. She barely notices. "Someone's following me," she hisses. "A weird woman with a big pack and big eyes."
"You scared me!" you say. She came up on you in the street outside of Cheng's place, like before. "Oh, did you gather materials? Wait, someone's following you?"
"I don't know what she wants." It's a low, urgent tone, one ready for fight or flight. "But she's definitely following me."
"Yellow eyes?"
"...Yes?"
You relax. "I guess I've lost track of time! Sorry about that. Her navigational methods work, but I suppose it would be weird if you don't know about them, and I didn't have any idea that she would orient on you."
"What?"
You look past her, and find a familiar hooded face on the street. "Mom!"
For a few moments, everything is good. You run to her, you hug her with all four arms, and she hugs you back. It's been too long, but also it feels like no time at all, the many busy months and two advancements falling away.
When she breaks it off to look at you, you look back at her. She looks shorter, somehow, before you realize that you've grown a bit. You're only a couple inches shy of her, now. Her big eyes consider your Goldsigns, showing no particular surprise. Your spiritual sense doesn't provide any surprises, either: she feels like a perching owl. "I saw from the letters that you were coming," you say, "but I didn't realize we were already there! I've been busy. Oh, you found Gardenia, by the way. She's a friend of mine that I met when we fought in public. Gardenia, this is my mom, Ravess."
"Hi, Keras' mom." Gardenia looks like she's not totally convinced yet.
"Mom is a dream artist," you explain to Gardenia. "She follows things that make sense to her that don't always make sense to us. I think she just sensed you were going to get to me and so following you was efficient." You feel Mom nodding.
Gardenia is still glaring at Mom, but it's only a baseline Gardenia glare.
"Well, come on in." You take both women in past the security and into the book-strewn manor.
The foyer is actually much more crowded than normal. Usually, there's only ever one or two people here, but you're leading two people in and find that there's three more already here: Risshon and two old people you don't know, though the orange designs on their clothes make them look like high-up Brightflares.
They break off their discussion as you all come in. Risshon glances over you all as you take shoes off. "Keras, what's all this? Oh, Gardenia. And...?"
"That's my mom," you explain to him. "She just got into town."
"I hope you weren't thinking of trying to put her up in here," Risshon says, crossing his arms. "The Underlord would not appreciate that."
"No, no," you shake your head. "I hadn't figured out a plan yet, but I know he doesn't like strangers here. Oh, sorry, should I greet your guests?"
"These are Elder Geneil and Elder Keywan, of the Brightflare School." Both are at least fifty years old, and Geneil feels like he's probably Truegold. Keywan's power is more tightly veiled, but your intuition is that she's a Highgold.
Keywan has her greying hair in a tight bun and her hands clasped behind her back. She looks you up and down, not even pretending she's not judging you as she does so. "So this is Forrester Keras." That gets you to stand up straighter. Risshon hadn't given your family name. "It's not every Jade who catches an Underlord's eye, yet Lord Ju Dao asked us to keep an eye on you."
You aren't sure if you should be bowing or standing up straight or saying something, so you kind of hesitate. "Um, Damir did mention that. Heidel Damir."
"I know who Damir is, child. Who do you think he consulted with when he was helping you refine your technique?"
"Oh! Then, thank you, Elder Keywan." Now you do give her a bow.
"Hm." She favors you with a small smile. "A child with manners, at least." She looks to Risshon. "Perhaps we should discuss the rest of the commission details somewhere more private, however?"
"Of course." With a bow of his own, he leads the Brightflare elders one way and you take Gardenia and Mom to your own office.
Gardenia can't help herself. She sidles close to you and hisses: "The Brightflare Underlord is keeping an eye on you?"
"I don't really know why." You shrug as you answer the implicit question. "Something about our fights last year made him want to keep an eye on me. You remember Damir? He's the one who reports on me. Anyway, before Mom found you, why were you looking for me, Gardenia? Did you get the raw materials?"
Nodding, Gardenia opens a pouch at her side and begins pulling out various materials you'd told her to focus on: the binding of a Jade-level sacred beast, a set of mushrooms that thrive in places of rot, assorted general herbs and vegetables with enough accumulated madra that they can strengthen the body, and similar sundries. "We couldn't find everything you asked, not at a good price, but I hope that this is good enough."
"Yeah, this is great." You're already mentally sorting it out. "I can whip up at least two Overcoming Hemlock Pills from this. If you've got an hour or so, I can do it now."
You get right to work. After a little bit, Gardenia interrupts you while you're performing percussive prep on the mushrooms. "Why is your mom just sitting quietly there? She hasn't said anything."
"Oh, don't worry about that," you say, as you finish the precise series of impacts that loosens the mushroom's cap from stalk without harming its madra. "She's probably tired. It's early in the morning, so she probably is about ready to go to bed, and she sometimes has a hard time following conversations."
"Why is she here, anyway?"
"I don't know yet. She told Dad and the rest of the family that she needed to come out here about now, but not why. Helping me somehow was all they could put in the letters we exchanged. We sometimes have to work together to figure out the details, and it's possible she's just trying to prep now for something in the future, or a possible future or some indeterminately far future. It can be hard, sometimes, but we're pretty used to it."
"Your birthday is approaching," Mom says, which is the only thing she's said so far. That can't be the only reason, but it's still nice to discover people remember it. Her accent today has a strange lilt to it, with overly broad vowels.
"You're right! I'm almost eleven." You smile proudly at the reminder as you delicately control the aura in the currently-liquid pill to prevent it from either boiling and concentrating it into a deadly concoction or else failing to cohere and wasting the ingredients.
"I keep forgetting you're younger than me," Gardenia says, shaking her head.
"Not by that much!" you insist.
And so it goes: you get to spend a little time chatting with Gardenia about work and life and advancement as you work. Mom listens for a bit, and curls up in a chair to doze during some of it. The materials she'd brought were a little better than your pessimistic first impulse, so you hand over three pills and instructions on how to take them.
As you're finishing that, the door to the room opens and Cheng darts in, a sheet of papers in one hand. "Keras! It's ready. You and Beti need to get on this immediately! I must have the final, rendered-down emulsion soon. Wait, no, give me your hand." He doesn't wait for you to comply. He shoves his collection of papers into your left hand and seizes your right with both of his. "Follow my lead."
Having said that, Cheng immediately launches into demonstrating a new refining procedure, his madra moving in an impossibly intricate pattern at high speed and with enormous precision. It puts you in mind of the fractal designs you've seen some artists use for their work.
You do your best to follow, but you know it's not coming together quite right—
Cheng breaks off and looks at you hard. "Your spirit is disordered. Why are you so disordered? And who's this?" He only notices Gardenia and Mom after he's already halfway through trying to train you.
You point with the hand not holding a sheaf of papers. "My mom. My friend, Gardenia. She works for Risshon these days."
"Why are they in my house?"
Your mom, still yawning and stretching after her nap, speaks up, which is unusual for her. "A ship on storm-tossed seas. A compass. Long trade routes ahead."
Cheng's spiritual sense washes over the three of you. You're pretty used to it by now, but Mom winces and Gardenia falls to the floor. Then, he grunts and says "Well, listen to your mother." He stops paying any attention to them after that. "Once she's helped you settle your spirit, we'll pick back up. I'd say to hurry up but I know that that's counterproductive if you're dealing with this sort of thing, so just do it as quickly as you can."
And then he's gone, leaving you with just a sheaf of notes and theory.
Gardenia trembles where she is for a few moments. "That... that was an Underlord," Gardenia whispers to you.
"Well, yeah, it's his house." You help pull her to her feet while she clutches her pills in the other hand. "Let's all go. If you need more advancement pills, you know what I need to make them. Mom, c'mon, we can head back to the Luxe place."
Once you've seen Gardenia off, it's time to pay more attention to Mom. "Let me show you to my room," you suggest, though three-quarters of your attention is on the various streets, doors, and windows around you. Daji could be about to pounce from any of them. "There shouldn't be any trouble with you being there. And then we can try to figure out what you're here for after you've had a chance to nap through the day."
"I shared already."
You have to think back through it. "The... ship and seas, you mean?" You forcibly push thoughts of Daji away. "If you're here to help, you're the compass, so I'm the ship. What is the sea?"
"You know not?" Mom seems a little surprised. "Long have I sought the timing, to arrive before crisis. But your mentor recognized it."
It takes you a few seconds to figure out what she means, but a few more seconds for you to admit it. "My dreams of other-me meetings." Mom shrugs: she has no idea what you're talking about. "That has to be what's unbalancing my spirit." You look to her for confirmation.
"I see endings, not beginnings. I come to guide." Gently, she takes hold of one of your Goldsigns and peels it away from trying to braid your hair, holding it instead like she would your physical hand. "You found power and skill. They do not yet sit kindly within you."
"Oh." You ponder this as you take Mom through security and up into your little solo room. You only barely turn on the lighting scripts, so it won't be too much for Mom. Once you're settled in there, where it's quiet, you continue. "So you're here because the dream madra my Goldsign is giving me will cause me problems if I don't address it."
Mom nods, lowering her hood so you can see her face clearly in the low light. This much won't bother her eyes. The two of you sit cross-legged on the floor, facing each other. "Thus I come to you."
You consider that, but you can't help but spring to your feet as you think about it. "Then, Mom, we should do something for you, too! If you can help me handle dream madra, then you can, too. I bet I can find something I can refine that will help you to—"
Mom holds up a hand, and gestures for you to sit again. She waits until you stop squirming and sit patiently to speak. "You can do nothing for me."
"No, I'm sure I can. There's all sorts of—"
She holds up a hand again, and waits. "You cannot." You see her struggling to find the right words. "What must be done before a thing can be fixed? What cannot be otherwise?"
You cycle the Mighty Heart of Oak to center yourself as you work through the riddle. It's not intentionally a riddle, probably, but it's what she's found to communicate. Soon enough, you find the answer. "A thing must be broken. You can't fix something that is not broken."
"Yes." Mom leans back, looking a little relieved. "I am not broken. I struggle here and there, but that is common to all people. I bring news, I guard faithfully, I protect my family. I neither need nor want a change. But you?" She holds out her hands, so you hold out all four for her to take her choice of. She takes one hand of madra and one of flesh. "You do not want to follow all my steps. My eyes see things that can be. Your hands choose what will be. I am here for your..." She hesitates. "Your hands must point. And then I shall see the path to lead."
In the ambient glow of your spiritual sense, you have a momentary vision. An owl and a raven in a deep nighttime forest. The owl can lead the raven through the darkness, but it does not know where to go. Only the raven can know what destination the raven should be at.
Hesitantly, you nod. "You're here for the days it will take to teach me to integrate the dream aura my Remnant gives me, so I won't lose track of who and where I am. You're here because now this is a problem, and to step in before it becomes a crisis." Mom nods through most of that, but you don't think she's actually listening to the words. She's just feeling that you found the right meaning. You press on. "So what are my options?"
She lets go of your native hand to brush your cheek with her hand. "Lower your defenses. Open your mind. Receive."
Like Mom showed you visions before, you let her project her madra into you more directly, and you work as hard as you can to sort them into distinct, separate visions. To see what paths the owl can lead the raven.
Mom is breathing hard as the wash of options passes you by. You have to consider carefully. Whichever you pick, it won't be an instant thing to learn. There will be, at least, days' worth of study and training, burning something new into your spirit.
[] Fold Dream into Field's Strength
What you are doing with life can be more easily achieved with dream. Field's Strength will become a Mastered technique, more able to improve your speed as well as both expanding the time you can experience at subjectively slower speeds while lowering the strain on you to do so.
[] Fold Dream into Dandelion Rain
You will double the amount of seeds you can throw, from two to four, and their blasts try to interject distracting dream madra on hit: small visual illusions and spikes of emotion may affect peer or weaker targets, hampering them slightly. This is worth being called an Advanced technique.
[] Make Dream a part of your overall cycling
Like you previously adapted your path to work both life and death, you will add dream as a third element. Instead of "Beti's bird", your path will need a new overall association and it will need to be reflected across much of what you do. You will not be able to add more elements in future.
[] A respected but caged Keras
Equations appear on the page in front of you as you work your way through possibilities. You pause and double-check your work now and then, having to correct errors here and there, though you're mostly getting it right the first time. You're doing something weird, here. you've never before heard of an elixir to do what you're trying to do. The basic framework is not hard and is even somewhat normal, so you're not exactly off the edge of the proverbial map, but it's still new ground.
Mireya's problem is incredibly straightforward once you frame it right. She's felt like a coiled breeze to your spiritual sense, but another way to put words to the impression your spirit finds could be that she is a caged bird.
The Path of the Clear Sky is not built for a caged bird, for a captive wind. It is not for the precise and methodical. It was built by and for a mighty force who travels where she will. The master of the Clear Sky wouldn't be a carefully-trained acolyte maneuvering through the obstacles of the land. That's why it's called Clear Sky to begin with. Its power centers around its ability to rain destruction from on high or to simply leave if the sacred artist does not like how things are going around her.
The reason Mireya's mother's aunt could easily absorb her madra and Mireya cannot is because it's meant to slot into that spirit, the spirit of the freewheeling, unconstrained ruler of clear skies. All you need to do is to make an adapter, an elixir that bridges the difference in their spirit. Mireya's tutors didn't stop to think about this, because it didn't seem to be a meaningful thing. Your family path wouldn't care about this. You don't think most other paths would, either. There's a dozen things that play into a sacred artist's compatibility with a path, and this normally wouldn't be the biggest thing. There's probably other ways to smooth over the issue, too. You may or may not have found the best or easiest solution. That would be hard to be sure about.
But, the more you craft your potential elixir, the more you are sure you've found a good solution. You inherited your path from a line of people happy to stay with their familiar people and place, and grew into someone who is too curious to stay there. This is just doing that backwards, for madra.
Once you've triple-checked the equations that underscore your recipe, you take the stack of scales the Underlady gave you to spend for this purpose, and rush off to market to get the pieces you need.
It's late in the evening before you're ready. In your office in Cheng's place, you carefully write a series of scripts around your cauldron, measure out your ingredients, set a timer so you can do things at the proper time, and set to work.
After an hour or two of effort, your new elixir is ready. You pour a gold-white liquid out of your little cauldron into a small glass container, covering its top with wax paper tied in place to keep it from spilling. Within the glass, it spins and whirls, its motion never slowing.
From there, it's just cleaning up. The scripts have to be carefully disassembled to avoid triggering in a way you don't intend. The cauldron must be carefully sanitized, scrubbed, and dried to prevent build-up. Other materials must be clearly labeled and stored away, and sources of heat or gas are checked for potential danger.
Once you're done, you belatedly realize that it's very late. If it's not midnight, it's pretty close to midnight.
It's not the first time you've slept in your office, but it is the first time that you just sort of collapse asleep in the middle of the floor, energy abandoning you as you find you've wrung everything you can out of the moment of inspiration.
It's not the first time you've met yourself in dreams. The other you seems more confused than you are, which isn't surprising. They look this way and that, hunched in on themself and trying to maintain a polite and restrained exterior.
"It's okay," you tell yourself. "It's me. I'm you, or we're us."
"We're the same person?" the other asks. "Why are we here? Is this a dream?"
"It is a dream. I don't know why this is happening. Sorry! It might be because I took on a dream-reader's Remnant."
"I see." The other you tucks hair behind their ear. Their hair is a little shorter than yours. Woven through their hair is green vines, with a single vibrantly pink flower just above one ear. They lean forward as they grasp the meaning. "So you're what would have happened if I had decided to follow the dream-readers? I almost chose that!"
"No, no, not that!" You wave it away. "I decided to try to bond with Beti, and she accepted it. I just also got the Remnant of one of the Luxe dream-readers. But you... that looks a lot like Meira's Goldsign."
"It is," they say, reaching up to brush at the flower. "The Riyusai family have a group of natural spirits they take into their spirit to reach Gold. The Second Prince demanded I get one."
You tilt your head. "The second one? But it was Meira and the First Prince we met here in Great Crevasse."
"I was entranced by how much power Meira had. I asked to go with them... and Second Prince Seishen Daji latched onto me almost as soon as he realized what was going on." They give you a rueful smile, shoulders sagging. "I overheard him say to one of his noble friends that if his older brother had a plant-using prodigy, he should get one, too."
"So he's trying to make you be another Meira?" You lean forward, fascinated.
"Trying." The flower-Keras chuckles. "I'm not her. Even with... our help... I can't keep up. Her growth is amazing. She just reached Truegold and I'm... not Highgold yet." Spreading their hands, this Keras unveils their spirit fully. A potent Lowgold spirit presses down on you, stronger than your own and entirely of life madra, with an impression of ever-living thorns threaded through it. "Prince Daji has taken my 'training' on himself. He's giving me lots of advancement resources, but he's also trying to fight me two or three times a day. He's vicious, and he isn't happy that I'm not already another Meira." They sigh. "I could hit Highgold in another year or two. I have to hope he'll be happy with me then. But never mind that—Beti? You actually tried to work with her after she tried to eat me? Eat you. ...Us?"
You shrug. "It's not her fault that I was tricked into stumbling in her enclosure the same way her meals are. And everything I'm learning is so..." You lose words, substituting gesticulating generally. "It's good." You quickly sketch out the refining procedures and recipes you've been learning.
"And Beti herself?"
"She's my friend now." The other Keras nods at that. Nothing more needs to be said, there. Friends are not a fair-weather thing to throw away. If she's a friend, then she's a friend, to whatever end.
You push back to your own curiosity. "But you're brushing elbows with the royal family, then?"
"Actually, even the King commented to me a couple weeks ago that he thought I was having a good effect on Prince Daji." Flower-Keras manages a smile with this. "That I was helping to ground him and teach him responsibility. That really feels like it means something when an Overlord says it. Even when he's just walking or having a meal, it feels like an earthquake compressed into human skin. His praise or support is almost empowering itself, and everyone else at court follows his lead carefully. A lot of people try to get an audience with me, with suggestions or requests or even just gifts that they want to send to Prince Daji."
After a moment, they glance over their left shoulder and then their right, as if someone might be listening in even during a dream, and add in a low whisper: "I still don't like Daji, though. He's mean."
The day Mom arrives
One day before Monarchs clash a continent away
Less than one year before the attempt on the Prince's life
One day before Monarchs clash a continent away
Less than one year before the attempt on the Prince's life
This awakening is far less kind. Your heart and breath are both quick, and again you wake with two sets of memories of your dream. You push yourself off of the bare tile floor, shaking your head and glancing this way and that. Where's the Second Prince? He usually attacks you unless he's sleeping in. And you're not in your bed, so maybe he's dragged you off to a new dangerous obstac—
You shake your head, covering your eyes with both Goldsign hands even as your physical ones keep holding you up. You've never met Daji. You aren't trapped in the king's castle. You can leave if you want to. You get to your feet and look around your office, confirming to yourself that everything is where some of your memories say that they should be. The elixir for Meira is here. You shake your head again, harder. The elixir for Mireya is here.
You find something in Cheng's pantry to eat for breakfast and have it in Beti's enclosure, leaning against her bark. She's kind of sleeping or something, not active enough to want meat or to do anything just now, but her presence is still grounding and comforting.
The memories of the royal family and the capital are a crazed jumble, not quite cohering into fully understandable things, but they aren't going away, either.
You're kind of keeping an eye out for Daji as you go back to the Luxe place. Every time you catch yourself doing that, you force yourself to relax, but it doesn't stick. It's hard to break a habit you never actually formed in the first place, and Daji never gave other-you a lot of warning. If he attacked, that Keras just had to be ready to try to block an unexpected sword-swipe or to heal an injury because you failed.
You're still a little out of it when you knock on the door to Mireya's suites, elixir in hand, but you force yourself to concentrate. Mireya answers the door herself, and bows to welcome you in.
You set the elixir on the table. "I think this will help, Miss Mireya," you tell her. "I'll need to see how it works, and it might be possible to improve the recipe a bit, but I think this will solve most of the issue."
Mireya watches the elixir. Even now, it hasn't ceased its endless whirl. The motion of its golden-white contents won't stop moving, not until someone drinks it or it loses its potency. "I do not recognize this," she says. "Will it interfere with any other advancement tools? What is its name?"
"It shouldn't interact with most other pills or elixirs, but your physician can verify that before you take them. I have a couple copies of the recipe for them to look over, but basically it's just trying to teach your spirit to move internally like it would if you were flying... away, I guess is the term. I... haven't named it yet." You give her a sheepish smile. "It's a new thing, and I didn't even think about a name until, uh, now."
"May I try it immediately? The sun is at the optimal position for my cycling."
"Please do. Give it a couple minutes after you drink it for your body and spirit to take it in."
Mireya carefully takes the top off and drinks the elixir, with the sort of precise table manners that really don't matter when you're having something like this, then turns to walk out onto her balcony.
The day has a moderate breeze, which stirs her clothes as Mireya approaches the railing. After waiting for probably precisely two minutes, if you know Mireya, she raises her hands to the sun, and you feel her spirit calling to the aura of wind and light as she cycles. They come to her.
She does not glow. Unwanted wind does not blow away from her. Aura is worked into madra, and it builds up her core. It is only a small piece; she performs only a few of the countless thousands of cycles she will need to do. It is neither a short nor easy road to Highgold, but she is no longer taking nine steps back for every ten steps forward. She can just walk her path.
Her hands grip the railing, tightly. "Keras," Mireya says, facing away from you.
You give her a heartbeat or two, but when she doesn't continue, you say "Yes?"
"How long will this elixir work?"
"I don't know. Probably something between a week and a month per dose. When it loses efficacy, you can take more right away—it shouldn't build up any residue in your body or spirit that would make you need to worry about spacing out. I think there's a good chance that after enough of it, your spirit will be used to what it's trying to artificially create, and you might not need to keep taking it."
"Is it terribly expensive? Are the ingredients rare?"
"...No?" You're not sure why she's asking, or why she's not looking at you.
"It's... going to work?"
"I think so." you study the back of her head carefully. "Are you okay?"
"I... yes." Having said that, Mireya sinks to her knees, hands still on the railing, and begins to weep, softly.
After an awkward minute of watching her, you work out that it's tears of relief. {Get her a towel, kid,} Etaja prompts you.
Once Mireya has cried herself out, you hand her a couple napkins from the tea set, and she cleans herself off to the best of her ability. She then stands again and looks at you. "I will devote myself wholly to cycling over the next few weeks, so we can show my honored mother progress," she says. "You said you have the recipe?"
"I left two copies on your table," you say, pointing at which piece of furniture you mean. "If you need more, I can make more."
"I can requisition more of the elixir from our usual refiners," Mireya says, then adds, "songbird's hope."
"What?"
"The elixir. I think you should call it the Songbird's Hope Elixir."
You give her your best smile. "I'm good with that."
It doesn't take long from when you leave Mireya behind for you to start worrying about Daji-ambushes again. Things keep bubbling over in your mind, mostly about court etiquette or details of the royal family and Meira's family and the life you never actually lived there. Even conversations with Etaja can't ground you. You half-expect random people in the street to start bowing to you, and you're not even sure where that belief is coming from. You don't think that Daji's-punching-bag-Keras was getting that sort of deference.
Why do you know some names and faces of servants and courtiers at the king's castle? Are your names even accurate?
You almost jump out of your skin when Gardenia grabs your wrist suddenly, halfway to trying to strike back at a presumed-Prince-Daji before you realize who it is. She barely notices. "Someone's following me," she hisses. "A weird woman with a big pack and big eyes."
"You scared me!" you say. She came up on you in the street outside of Cheng's place, like before. "Oh, did you gather materials? Wait, someone's following you?"
"I don't know what she wants." It's a low, urgent tone, one ready for fight or flight. "But she's definitely following me."
"Yellow eyes?"
"...Yes?"
You relax. "I guess I've lost track of time! Sorry about that. Her navigational methods work, but I suppose it would be weird if you don't know about them, and I didn't have any idea that she would orient on you."
"What?"
You look past her, and find a familiar hooded face on the street. "Mom!"
For a few moments, everything is good. You run to her, you hug her with all four arms, and she hugs you back. It's been too long, but also it feels like no time at all, the many busy months and two advancements falling away.
When she breaks it off to look at you, you look back at her. She looks shorter, somehow, before you realize that you've grown a bit. You're only a couple inches shy of her, now. Her big eyes consider your Goldsigns, showing no particular surprise. Your spiritual sense doesn't provide any surprises, either: she feels like a perching owl. "I saw from the letters that you were coming," you say, "but I didn't realize we were already there! I've been busy. Oh, you found Gardenia, by the way. She's a friend of mine that I met when we fought in public. Gardenia, this is my mom, Ravess."
"Hi, Keras' mom." Gardenia looks like she's not totally convinced yet.
"Mom is a dream artist," you explain to Gardenia. "She follows things that make sense to her that don't always make sense to us. I think she just sensed you were going to get to me and so following you was efficient." You feel Mom nodding.
Gardenia is still glaring at Mom, but it's only a baseline Gardenia glare.
"Well, come on in." You take both women in past the security and into the book-strewn manor.
The foyer is actually much more crowded than normal. Usually, there's only ever one or two people here, but you're leading two people in and find that there's three more already here: Risshon and two old people you don't know, though the orange designs on their clothes make them look like high-up Brightflares.
They break off their discussion as you all come in. Risshon glances over you all as you take shoes off. "Keras, what's all this? Oh, Gardenia. And...?"
"That's my mom," you explain to him. "She just got into town."
"I hope you weren't thinking of trying to put her up in here," Risshon says, crossing his arms. "The Underlord would not appreciate that."
"No, no," you shake your head. "I hadn't figured out a plan yet, but I know he doesn't like strangers here. Oh, sorry, should I greet your guests?"
"These are Elder Geneil and Elder Keywan, of the Brightflare School." Both are at least fifty years old, and Geneil feels like he's probably Truegold. Keywan's power is more tightly veiled, but your intuition is that she's a Highgold.
Keywan has her greying hair in a tight bun and her hands clasped behind her back. She looks you up and down, not even pretending she's not judging you as she does so. "So this is Forrester Keras." That gets you to stand up straighter. Risshon hadn't given your family name. "It's not every Jade who catches an Underlord's eye, yet Lord Ju Dao asked us to keep an eye on you."
You aren't sure if you should be bowing or standing up straight or saying something, so you kind of hesitate. "Um, Damir did mention that. Heidel Damir."
"I know who Damir is, child. Who do you think he consulted with when he was helping you refine your technique?"
"Oh! Then, thank you, Elder Keywan." Now you do give her a bow.
"Hm." She favors you with a small smile. "A child with manners, at least." She looks to Risshon. "Perhaps we should discuss the rest of the commission details somewhere more private, however?"
"Of course." With a bow of his own, he leads the Brightflare elders one way and you take Gardenia and Mom to your own office.
Gardenia can't help herself. She sidles close to you and hisses: "The Brightflare Underlord is keeping an eye on you?"
"I don't really know why." You shrug as you answer the implicit question. "Something about our fights last year made him want to keep an eye on me. You remember Damir? He's the one who reports on me. Anyway, before Mom found you, why were you looking for me, Gardenia? Did you get the raw materials?"
Nodding, Gardenia opens a pouch at her side and begins pulling out various materials you'd told her to focus on: the binding of a Jade-level sacred beast, a set of mushrooms that thrive in places of rot, assorted general herbs and vegetables with enough accumulated madra that they can strengthen the body, and similar sundries. "We couldn't find everything you asked, not at a good price, but I hope that this is good enough."
"Yeah, this is great." You're already mentally sorting it out. "I can whip up at least two Overcoming Hemlock Pills from this. If you've got an hour or so, I can do it now."
You get right to work. After a little bit, Gardenia interrupts you while you're performing percussive prep on the mushrooms. "Why is your mom just sitting quietly there? She hasn't said anything."
"Oh, don't worry about that," you say, as you finish the precise series of impacts that loosens the mushroom's cap from stalk without harming its madra. "She's probably tired. It's early in the morning, so she probably is about ready to go to bed, and she sometimes has a hard time following conversations."
"Why is she here, anyway?"
"I don't know yet. She told Dad and the rest of the family that she needed to come out here about now, but not why. Helping me somehow was all they could put in the letters we exchanged. We sometimes have to work together to figure out the details, and it's possible she's just trying to prep now for something in the future, or a possible future or some indeterminately far future. It can be hard, sometimes, but we're pretty used to it."
"Your birthday is approaching," Mom says, which is the only thing she's said so far. That can't be the only reason, but it's still nice to discover people remember it. Her accent today has a strange lilt to it, with overly broad vowels.
"You're right! I'm almost eleven." You smile proudly at the reminder as you delicately control the aura in the currently-liquid pill to prevent it from either boiling and concentrating it into a deadly concoction or else failing to cohere and wasting the ingredients.
"I keep forgetting you're younger than me," Gardenia says, shaking her head.
"Not by that much!" you insist.
And so it goes: you get to spend a little time chatting with Gardenia about work and life and advancement as you work. Mom listens for a bit, and curls up in a chair to doze during some of it. The materials she'd brought were a little better than your pessimistic first impulse, so you hand over three pills and instructions on how to take them.
As you're finishing that, the door to the room opens and Cheng darts in, a sheet of papers in one hand. "Keras! It's ready. You and Beti need to get on this immediately! I must have the final, rendered-down emulsion soon. Wait, no, give me your hand." He doesn't wait for you to comply. He shoves his collection of papers into your left hand and seizes your right with both of his. "Follow my lead."
Having said that, Cheng immediately launches into demonstrating a new refining procedure, his madra moving in an impossibly intricate pattern at high speed and with enormous precision. It puts you in mind of the fractal designs you've seen some artists use for their work.
You do your best to follow, but you know it's not coming together quite right—
Cheng breaks off and looks at you hard. "Your spirit is disordered. Why are you so disordered? And who's this?" He only notices Gardenia and Mom after he's already halfway through trying to train you.
You point with the hand not holding a sheaf of papers. "My mom. My friend, Gardenia. She works for Risshon these days."
"Why are they in my house?"
Your mom, still yawning and stretching after her nap, speaks up, which is unusual for her. "A ship on storm-tossed seas. A compass. Long trade routes ahead."
Cheng's spiritual sense washes over the three of you. You're pretty used to it by now, but Mom winces and Gardenia falls to the floor. Then, he grunts and says "Well, listen to your mother." He stops paying any attention to them after that. "Once she's helped you settle your spirit, we'll pick back up. I'd say to hurry up but I know that that's counterproductive if you're dealing with this sort of thing, so just do it as quickly as you can."
And then he's gone, leaving you with just a sheaf of notes and theory.
Gardenia trembles where she is for a few moments. "That... that was an Underlord," Gardenia whispers to you.
"Well, yeah, it's his house." You help pull her to her feet while she clutches her pills in the other hand. "Let's all go. If you need more advancement pills, you know what I need to make them. Mom, c'mon, we can head back to the Luxe place."
Once you've seen Gardenia off, it's time to pay more attention to Mom. "Let me show you to my room," you suggest, though three-quarters of your attention is on the various streets, doors, and windows around you. Daji could be about to pounce from any of them. "There shouldn't be any trouble with you being there. And then we can try to figure out what you're here for after you've had a chance to nap through the day."
"I shared already."
You have to think back through it. "The... ship and seas, you mean?" You forcibly push thoughts of Daji away. "If you're here to help, you're the compass, so I'm the ship. What is the sea?"
"You know not?" Mom seems a little surprised. "Long have I sought the timing, to arrive before crisis. But your mentor recognized it."
It takes you a few seconds to figure out what she means, but a few more seconds for you to admit it. "My dreams of other-me meetings." Mom shrugs: she has no idea what you're talking about. "That has to be what's unbalancing my spirit." You look to her for confirmation.
"I see endings, not beginnings. I come to guide." Gently, she takes hold of one of your Goldsigns and peels it away from trying to braid your hair, holding it instead like she would your physical hand. "You found power and skill. They do not yet sit kindly within you."
"Oh." You ponder this as you take Mom through security and up into your little solo room. You only barely turn on the lighting scripts, so it won't be too much for Mom. Once you're settled in there, where it's quiet, you continue. "So you're here because the dream madra my Goldsign is giving me will cause me problems if I don't address it."
Mom nods, lowering her hood so you can see her face clearly in the low light. This much won't bother her eyes. The two of you sit cross-legged on the floor, facing each other. "Thus I come to you."
You consider that, but you can't help but spring to your feet as you think about it. "Then, Mom, we should do something for you, too! If you can help me handle dream madra, then you can, too. I bet I can find something I can refine that will help you to—"
Mom holds up a hand, and gestures for you to sit again. She waits until you stop squirming and sit patiently to speak. "You can do nothing for me."
"No, I'm sure I can. There's all sorts of—"
She holds up a hand again, and waits. "You cannot." You see her struggling to find the right words. "What must be done before a thing can be fixed? What cannot be otherwise?"
You cycle the Mighty Heart of Oak to center yourself as you work through the riddle. It's not intentionally a riddle, probably, but it's what she's found to communicate. Soon enough, you find the answer. "A thing must be broken. You can't fix something that is not broken."
"Yes." Mom leans back, looking a little relieved. "I am not broken. I struggle here and there, but that is common to all people. I bring news, I guard faithfully, I protect my family. I neither need nor want a change. But you?" She holds out her hands, so you hold out all four for her to take her choice of. She takes one hand of madra and one of flesh. "You do not want to follow all my steps. My eyes see things that can be. Your hands choose what will be. I am here for your..." She hesitates. "Your hands must point. And then I shall see the path to lead."
In the ambient glow of your spiritual sense, you have a momentary vision. An owl and a raven in a deep nighttime forest. The owl can lead the raven through the darkness, but it does not know where to go. Only the raven can know what destination the raven should be at.
Hesitantly, you nod. "You're here for the days it will take to teach me to integrate the dream aura my Remnant gives me, so I won't lose track of who and where I am. You're here because now this is a problem, and to step in before it becomes a crisis." Mom nods through most of that, but you don't think she's actually listening to the words. She's just feeling that you found the right meaning. You press on. "So what are my options?"
She lets go of your native hand to brush your cheek with her hand. "Lower your defenses. Open your mind. Receive."
Like Mom showed you visions before, you let her project her madra into you more directly, and you work as hard as you can to sort them into distinct, separate visions. To see what paths the owl can lead the raven.
All thinking beings produce and use dream aura: it is the power of the mind. This includes you. The problem you are beginning to suffer is that you are getting more dream power than your natural body uses. So, unfocused, it seeks to obey its nature, a nature that speaks to communication, possibility, and fate. You see yourself, as you may have been. You take in memories and thoughts from them.
In doing so, you risk diluting yourself.
These other selves are not you. They lack your skills. They have their own specialties. They have the slightly different values and opinions that come from their different experiences and from the fact that they did, indeed, take different choices.
Much of the risk is mitigated by understanding, but not all of it. Moreover, it leaves a tool to be seized. Dream madra from Zeyu's Remnant suffuses you. It can be channeled. The simplest answer is to make it a part of you, wholly central to your cycling and power, like death madra already is. This is not the only option, however. Because dream madra is part and parcel of all people, like blood or life, you can partion off this additional power and use it to enhance one specific technique, feeding only that with your excess dream power supplied by the Remnant.
In doing so, you risk diluting yourself.
These other selves are not you. They lack your skills. They have their own specialties. They have the slightly different values and opinions that come from their different experiences and from the fact that they did, indeed, take different choices.
Much of the risk is mitigated by understanding, but not all of it. Moreover, it leaves a tool to be seized. Dream madra from Zeyu's Remnant suffuses you. It can be channeled. The simplest answer is to make it a part of you, wholly central to your cycling and power, like death madra already is. This is not the only option, however. Because dream madra is part and parcel of all people, like blood or life, you can partion off this additional power and use it to enhance one specific technique, feeding only that with your excess dream power supplied by the Remnant.
Mom is breathing hard as the wash of options passes you by. You have to consider carefully. Whichever you pick, it won't be an instant thing to learn. There will be, at least, days' worth of study and training, burning something new into your spirit.
[] Fold Dream into Field's Strength
What you are doing with life can be more easily achieved with dream. Field's Strength will become a Mastered technique, more able to improve your speed as well as both expanding the time you can experience at subjectively slower speeds while lowering the strain on you to do so.
[] Fold Dream into Dandelion Rain
You will double the amount of seeds you can throw, from two to four, and their blasts try to interject distracting dream madra on hit: small visual illusions and spikes of emotion may affect peer or weaker targets, hampering them slightly. This is worth being called an Advanced technique.
[] Make Dream a part of your overall cycling
Like you previously adapted your path to work both life and death, you will add dream as a third element. Instead of "Beti's bird", your path will need a new overall association and it will need to be reflected across much of what you do. You will not be able to add more elements in future.
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
Damn. I wonder, does that exlixr make Mireya feel like her ancestor did? Does it make you feel like you are free and powerful, and how does that feel to a controlled and regimented twelve year old?
Adding a third element sounds... complex. Especially one as foundational as Dream, we're already running both Life and Death. I'd go for Fields Strength personally.
[X] Fold Dream into Field's Strength
Adding a third element sounds... complex. Especially one as foundational as Dream, we're already running both Life and Death. I'd go for Fields Strength personally.
[X] Fold Dream into Field's Strength
- Location
- England
[X] Fold Dream into Field's Strength
[X] Make Dream a part of your overall cycling
I like the effect Dream does for Field's Strength, but the idea of adding a third element is quite interesting, especially something that ties our mother's dream element to us. Although closing off a future third is sad, I don't know what else we might possibly add as a third instead.
[X] Make Dream a part of your overall cycling
I like the effect Dream does for Field's Strength, but the idea of adding a third element is quite interesting, especially something that ties our mother's dream element to us. Although closing off a future third is sad, I don't know what else we might possibly add as a third instead.