As it turned out, the earth sovereign knew a great deal about Spirit King Vaelthoros and the inside of his castle.
That, more than anything else, was what Kai had wanted from the eting.
Once the plan began, everything would be running against ti. There would be no room to wander through the castle blindly, no space to stop and think through every corridor once they were already inside. If Kai did not know the layout well enough beforehand, then the whole thing would fall apart. It was that simple.
So the knowledge mattered.
Without it, he would be walking into the spirit king’s ho half-blind, and in a place like that, blindness was just another way of dying.
Getting the information, however, took longer than he had expected.
The earth sovereign did not simply hand it over because Kai had co back with bold words and dangerous promises. It took ti. More than that, it took patience—sothing Kai had already spent far too much of over the last few days. Even so, he had to admit that the outco could have been worse. Much worse. By the end of it, he found himself almost grateful that the giant spirit had not simply crushed them before listening.
Because when the stone spikes had erupted from the ground earlier, Kai had already begun shaping a spell in his mind.
He had been that close to a fight.
But once the earth sovereign heard what Kai intended, its anger had shifted. It did not vanish, not completely, but it changed enough for Kai to notice. Every ti he spoke of tearing Vaelthoros’s plans apart, of stealing from him, of stripping away what the spirit king valued, there had been a glint in the sovereign’s eyes that had not been there before.
There was history there.
That much was obvious.
Whatever stood between those two spirits had roots deeper than Kai cared to untangle, but he had no interest in stepping into the middle of it. That was not why he had co. Their grudge was their own. What mattered to him was the castle.
And in the end, after enough back-and-forth, after forcing the earth sovereign to accept that he was serious and after persuading it, bit by bit, that he might actually be capable of doing what he claid, the giant spirit began to speak more freely.
What it gave him was more than Kai had hoped for.
The earth sovereign seed to know the castle almost intimately, as though every hall, chamber, and hidden turn had long been fixed in its mory. It described passages, inner sections, defensive spaces, and the arrangent of important areas with a certainty that made Kai wonder more than once how it knew so much. But he never asked. So questions were unnecessary, and this did not feel like the ti to press in case it might sour the spirit’s mood.
He listened carefully, fixed each detail in his mind, and left with far more than he had arrived with.
Though not without one final reminder.
Before they were allowed to go, the earth sovereign gave a low growl and told Kai plainly that if three days passed and it did not see the beginning of what Kai had promised, then it would co for him itself.
Threats were nothing new to Kai, not even when they ca from a giant spirit.
He had only told the earth sovereign to keep its eyes and ears open, and after that the three of them made their way back toward the area where the camp had been set. They did not head there directly, though. Along the way, Kai led them on a detour for one reason alone.
He needed a potent unaspected mana essence.
No matter how the plan unfolded, he intended to have their path ho ready. If things went well, they would still need to flee quickly after taking the Elder Tree seed. If things went badly, they would need the sa route even more. Either way, the ritual circle had to be powered properly, and for that, the essence was necessary.
That was one of the reasons he had brought Elias along for his firepower.
Fortunately, the earth sovereign had known where one such essence could be found. It lay a few hours to the east of its nest, though the spirit had warned Kai that the place was guarded by an ashskin serpent.
Kai had not been especially troubled by that.
The serpent, while dangerous, was nowhere near the earth sovereign’s level of strength, and with Elias beside him, Kai had been fairly confident they could deal with it if they had to.
What he had not expected was the place itself.
When they finally arrived, they found not so barren stretch of guarded land, but a flower garden spread in a clearing, with a massive tree rising at the center of it. The tree’s trunk was broad enough to take several n standing shoulder to shoulder to encircle, and around its roots, flowers had blood thickly in wide clusters. Their colors stood out against the rest of the forest, and even from a short distance Kai could feel the density of mana hanging over the place.
Then he saw what he was looking for.
One of the flowers near the base of the tree was glowing with a bright, steady light unlike the others, its petals holding mana so purely that Kai knew at once it was the essence they had co for.
He started forward—
And the serpent announced itself.
It dropped from the tree above with almost no warning, its body uncoiling from the branches in a blur before lunging straight at Kai. He t it with force and batted it aside before it could sink its fangs into him, but the creature had already opened its mouth.
A thick cloud of poison burst outward.
The vapor rolled toward them fast, dense enough that it did not simply drift apart in the air, and foul enough that Kai knew imdiately this would not be easy to handle. Poison was always troubleso, but it beca far worse when you did not know exactly what kind you were dealing with or how quickly it would act.
That was what made the ashskin serpent such a nuisance.
Killing it had not been simple.
Not because it was overwhelmingly strong, but because every movent around it had to be asured against the poison it kept flooding into the clearing.
Kai could not just rush in.
So poisons ate through skin and flesh alike, and without knowing exactly what kind the ashskin serpent carried, charging it head-on would have been stupidity. He had no antidote prepared, and the serpent seed more than willing to keep testing how close they were willing to get. It lunged again and again, its body snapping forward with unnerving speed whenever it saw an opening.
That alone would have been troubleso enough, but the creature was irritating in other ways too.
Rocky armor had ford over parts of its body, making clean strikes difficult, and the rest of it moved with a slick, unpleasant quickness that made it hard to pin down properly. It slid through attacks when it could not avoid them outright, and more than once Kai found himself understanding exactly why it had managed to guard the mana essence for so long.
Still, in the end, it was alone. And Kai had no patience to spare on it.
They had a heist to prepare for, a ritual to fuel, and more problems waiting ahead than he cared to count. So instead of dragging the fight out, he started using fifth-circle spells almost imdiately. With Elias and Claire supporting him, the battle never had much chance of lasting long.
In the end, it took less than ten minutes.
Kai summoned a flaming golem and used it to seize the serpent by the tail, then slamd the creature again and again against the massive tree until the rocky armor began to crack apart. Once that shell broke, Elias finished the rest. Jagged stone spikes tore through the exposed flesh, and the serpent’s body finally burst open under the force of it.
After that, they dragged the corpse aside and turned to the flower.
Up close, the mana essence looked even stranger.
For a mont, Kai found himself wondering how it had managed to grow there at all. The earth plane did hold ambient unaspected mana, but so much of the world was saturated with earth-aspected power that sothing this pure should have been rare almost to the point of impossibility. Perhaps the serpent had done sothing to preserve or cultivate it. Perhaps the place itself had simply favored the right conditions. Kai did not care enough to chase the answer.
What mattered was that they had the essence.
And with it, they finally had the fuel needed for the ritual that would open their path ho.
When Kai inspected the flower more carefully, he could tell the mana inside it was slightly less dense than he would have preferred. That would have been a problem under worse circumstances, but not a serious one. Whatever gap remained, he could fill himself when the ti ca.
So he did not complain.
After that, the three of them started back toward the camp through the forest. This ti, though, the mood had changed.
The way back carried a tension that had not been there before.
Kai could understand why the tension had settled over them.
With the earth sovereign finally giving them the information they needed, and with the mana essence now in their possession, there was very little left to gather. Once they returned, Kai only needed to check through everything one final ti.
After that, the plan would begin.
Elias and Claire were almost certainly thinking the sa thing as they moved, but Kai did not try to fill the silence. There was no point. They did not need comforting words, and even if he offered them, he doubted they would ease much once the plan was actually in motion. At best, all he could do was trust that neither of them would freeze when it mattered.
Elias, at least, he did not worry about. Claire was different. With her, he simply had to trust.
So they kept moving, deeper through the forest, until after a few more hours the camp finally ca into view. Though, it was empty.
He imdiately knew why and glanced at Elias and Claire. “The two of you should rest. I’ll go see how the others are doing.”
Then, without waiting, he pushed himself into the air.
He flew above the lower growth and threaded through the spaces between the huge trunks, angling left through the forest until he finally found what he was looking for.
A small clearing had been made by shifting so of the younger trees aside. In the center of it, Veridia and Elder Caelith were bent over the ground, marking out different symbols and lines as they worked. Killian was off to one side, leaning against a thick vine while he watched them.
He was the first to notice Kai.
At once, the Knight straightened and said, “Lord Arzan, how did it go with the earth sovereign?”
At his voice, Veridia and Elder Caelith both turned as well.
Kai landed lightly and looked between them. “Well,” he said, “if it hadn’t gone well, I don’t think I’d be standing here right now.”
Veridia nodded once. “So what did you get?”
“A few things,” Kai said. “Everything we needed.”
The news did not brighten her expression. If anything, her face seed to sink a little more. “I suppose that ans we’re really doing this, then.”
Kai gave a small nod. “We are.” Then he added, “But like I told you before, you can still back out. You can hide in the forest while the rest of us carry it through, and co with us once it’s ti to leave.”
He had already offered her that sa choice once before, right after he first explained the plan.
The truth was, Kai did need her strength. A great deal, in fact. But if she did not truly want to be part of this, then he would rather lose the help than drag along soone unwilling. A person moving half-heartedly through a plan like this would only make everything worse, mana oath or not.
Veridia only snorted. “Considering what might happen,” she said, “I think I have a better chance of dying alone in the forest than by staying with you.”
After that she turned and looked back down at the symbols and lines drawn across the clearing. “Check them,” she said. “Make sure none of them are wrong. I don’t even want to imagine what happens if they are.”
Kai nodded as the conversation ended there.
He stepped into the clearing and began going over the lines carefully, tracing the entire structure with his eyes and senses. It did not take him long to find the mistakes. There were several places where Veridia and Elder Caelith had gone slightly off in the shaping, though none of the errors were large enough to ruin the whole thing outright.
Kai could not bla them. The structure was far too complex for that.
Most of the mistakes were small. A curve that bent a little too sharply. A line that thinned more than he wanted. A channel that was just slightly weaker than it should have been. To anyone else, they might have looked insignificant. But in sothing like this, every line mattered. Each one was ant to act as a conduit for mana, and if the shape was even a little wrong, the flow through it would beco less efficient.
That ant more mana wasted.
And that, more than anything, was sothing Kai could not afford. So he got to work.
He moved through the structure line by line, correcting what needed correcting and reshaping the parts that had drifted too far from what he wanted. Once he settled into it, ti began slipping by without much notice. Before long, several hours had already passed.
What they were building now was far more complicated than the array they had put together before.
That earlier one had taken only a few hours. This, however, was going to take much longer—easily more than a full day if they were not careful. Not because it was larger, but because it was denser in design. The whole thing was filled with smaller patterns nested between the larger ones, and every one of those had to be laid out carefully, then checked, then adjusted again if even the slightest part of it felt off. So of those smaller patterns alone took over an hour to finish properly.
While Kai worked through the central symbols, Elder Caelith and Veridia focused on the outer edges, using the designs he had drawn for them earlier on a leaf as reference. He knew neither of them would reproduce those parts perfectly, but that was not the point. It was still better to let them shape sothing he could refine afterward than to have to start every section from nothing himself.
It saved ti.
Even so, while working, Kai kept extending threads of mana outward into the surrounding forest every so often.
It was only caution at first. But midway through another symbol, that caution proved justified.
His mana brushed against sothing beyond the clearing.
He did not react openly. He kept his expression still, kept his hands moving over the pattern, and gave no sign that anything had changed. Quietly, he shifted a little closer toward Veridia and Elder Caelith and shaped a wind barrier between them and the direction where he had sensed movent.
Both of them noticed.
They looked at him with quick, questioning glances, but Kai did not stop working.
“We’re being watched by spirits,” he said.
That was enough to make both of them stiffen slightly, though neither broke the rhythm of their hands for long. After only a mont, they went back to work as well, keeping their faces down as if nothing had happened.
Veridia was the one who spoke first. “How long?”
“Not long,” Kai said. “About an hour.” He paused, his attention still fixed on the symbol in front of him. “And I think they may have followed us from the ti we t the earth sovereign. There were too many spirits around that area for to notice anything unusual before we reached the nest. But now it’s obvious. The sa bird spirits have been sitting around these trees for too long, just watching us. That’s not a coincidence.”
Elder Caelith frowned, though his eyes stayed on the symbols beneath his hands. “What should we do?”
Kai did not answer right away.
He thought it through while keeping his mana moving, because in truth there was no clean way to deal with it. Not one he liked.
“I think we keep working,” he said in the end, earning a sharp look from Veridia.
She lowered her head again and drew another line of mana into place, but her voice hardened as she said, “What are you talking about? What if the spirit king had sent them?”
Elder Caelith spoke more quietly. “I’m fairly certain it did. There’s no reason for spirits to linger around here like this otherwise, especially if they aren’t attacking.”
Kai nodded once. “Yes,” he said. “Which is exactly why I think we let them watch.”
Veridia looked at him again.
“If we kill them,” Kai continued, “then we may just invite more spies. Stronger ones, perhaps. Or worse—spirits that decide to attack us outright. It’s better to let them think they’re learning sothing useful.”
Veridia’s hand stilled for half a second. “But they will report back to the spirit king,” she said. “The whole plan depends on surprise.”
“It does,” Kai said. “But I don’t think it’ll understand what we’re actually doing.”
Neither of them looked convinced, so he went on.
“You need to rember what spirits are,” Kai said. “Vaelthoros is powerful, yes, but that doesn’t an it’s well-versed in magic or the disciplines built around it. Spirits were never a race that cared much for that sort of thing.”
Elder Caelith was quiet for a mont before saying, “What if it grows impatient anyway? Even if it doesn’t understand the details, it may still realize we’re preparing sothing unpleasant and decide to move against us before we start.”
Kai did not answer imdiately, knowing that was true.
He looked down at the symbol he was still carving, watched the line of mana settle into place, and then said, “Then we do this fast. We finish this as quickly as we can,” he said. “And once it’s ready, we start the plan within the next few hours.”
He let out a slow breath.
“That’s the only way.”
***
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