The Third Step: Chapter Forty-Three

“You reneged on our deal,” Meadow said calmly, taking a long sip from her gourd. “Why?” 

It had taken a while for her to be able to have this conversation. The power level of the simulacra that she could send through most of the world was sharply limited, in order to avoid drawing the ire of more powerful mages. The woman across from her had taken advantage of that fact, and managed to slip away from her simulacra for the entire boat ride. 

Now, though, they were on Fitiavana. Managing to get an avatar with enough power to track down and corner the elusive woman had been comparatively easy. The Ring of Fitiavana had agreed to her request easily enough – some of the oldest members still remembered her fighting during the revolutions and unifications, and even the younger members were cognizant of the fact that she was a large benefactor for the united Kijani. 

The woman across from her had eventually realized that she couldn’t keep running, and had graciously accepted Meadow’s offer to meet at a rooibos shop in the city.

“Malachi didn’t ask me to leave the ship with him,” Jinwei said defensively. “I thought he didn’t want me to go. Considering that I also have a deal with Orykson to train Ivy, I figured that would be the better choice.” 

“I know for a fact that in the past several weeks, you’ve trained with the man,” Meadow frowned. “Do you think it ever occurred to him that you would go back on your deal?” 

“Well, no, but he didn’t seem angry about it.” 

“He’s a good man,” Meadow said. “Also a forgetful one. He’s willing to see the best in everyone, even when they probably don’t deserve it. That quality was important to preserve.” 

“You would have executed the Flock, then,” Jinwei asked, and Meadow shrugged. 

“I may have. I try very hard to minimize my killing. I can say with certainty that out of all the world’s magi, I have the lowest number of deaths lying at my feet. But I can also say that I do have a few, and that I have options that Malachi does not. I could have more easily bound the Flock to its agreements, through the use of willtying coleus, if nothing else. But if I had been a third gate mage? I might have. I don’t know. It wouldn’t have fixed the problem, and might even have worsened it. But I’m not sure I would have seen that when I was twenty.”  

“Then you should be glad that I wasn’t there. If I had been, then I would have killed the Flock. Malachi might have lost some of his willingness to see the best in people. If he agreed that the Flock needed to die, then he would have lost it. If he didn’t, then he would have kept thinking worse of me.” 

“I’m not certain it’s quite as simple as you’re making it out to be,” Meadow said, shaking her head. “If you had been there, the Flock wouldn’t have attacked them in the first place.” 

“And thus, Malachi wouldn’t have developed the ghostgift to freely cast the hunting spell.” 

“Perhaps, perhaps not,” Meadow said. “There are more than one pack of cwn anwnn in the forest.” 

“And he might have encountered the same ones and we may have wound up fighting the Flock and potentially losing that spark anyways.” 

“That’s true, and I could launch a half-dozen rebuttals to that. But we’re ultimately beginning to go into circular logic. The ultimate fact of the matter, however, is that you should have been there for him. You weren’t. He lost something valuable in that fight.” 

“I don’t know, he seems fine. In our spars, he doesn’t seem to have suddenly developed a focus on killing, or anything like that. I get that you’re concerned, you’re basically his mother, but he really doesn’t seem corrupted.” 

“I agree, he hasn’t been corrupted by it. If anything, he’s come out with an increased ability to blend his resolve with the weave of constellations connecting people. But I was speaking much more literally than that. He had spent his entire time on Crysite charging up his Combat Echo. Given that he has to produce five mana cores and enhance the body to his level, it takes a lot of time, energy, and effort for him to form echoes. Now, he won’t have one for the tournament. And I can say with near certainty that, regardless of if you’d wound up fighting the Flock or not, he would not have needed to burn his Combat Echo if you had been there.” 

Jinwei visibly winced at that as her brain spun, trying to come up with a counterargument to that. She knew the kid had been using brief, flickering Combat Echoes, but she had assumed he was just saving the real one for the tournament. That’s what most time mages did. If he 

Meadow studied her. Unlike Jinwei, she knew that Malachi had actually spent an Ephemeral Rebirth, which cost even more. The Combat Echo was fundamentally temporary, while the Ephemeral Rebirth was a permanent creation of an energetic body out of his mana. 

But she also knew that the Huli Jing across from her wasn’t all that trustworthy. Like many people who managed to form imprints from destiny and resolve, the fox put herself above anyone else. It was an unfortunate reality that most people who advanced were self-absorbed. It might even be something of a requirement. It wasn’t that Meadow thought Jinwei was the worst of them, far from it. She doubted that anything bad would happen even if the fox did learn about the Ephemeral Rebirth. 

But doubted and impossible were very different things. There was a chance that Jinwei would sell the information to the Storm King’s agents, to Nightflock’s ambassadors, and to the Space King. Some information about Malachi’s oddities, like Dawn’s existence, was bound to leak out. But others, like his access to soul mana or his Ephemeral Rebirth, there was simply no reason to advertise to people who might want to hurt him as a way to strike at her, Ikki, and Orykson. 

As strange as it was to think of the three of them working together, she did genuinely believe that she’d managed to stop the rise of the Myriad King and convince the two old monsters to have something resembling affection for the boy. Neither one would be willing to lay down their life for him, sure, but they might offer him some amount of protection from other Magi and Occultists when her age finally caught up with her. 

“What do you want?” Jinwei finally asked, breaking them out of their silent stalemate. Meadow smiled as she took another sip from her gourd, then placed it on the ground. 

“I want to help you advance,” Meadow said. That brought a frown to Jinwei’s face, as well it might, but Meadow wasn’t done. She removed a pill from her sleeve and placed it in Jinwei’s hand. It was a beautiful thing, made of swirling layers of white and red that almost seemed to resemble spellforms. 

Crafting the jade and cinnabar striations beast core soul synergy pill had taken Meadow’s real body. Her real body rarely left the garden anymore, too tired to wander far from the source of her alchemical elixirs and life-supporting plants, but luckily, alchemy and gardening was still within her wheelhouse. 

Meadow didn’t tend to make many advancement resources anymore, and most of those she did make were given as gifts to the Kijani council, in order to ensure they would be able to raise new council members and to sell as a small subsidy for places in need. But the ultimate reason why was simple waste: the resources she had to spend to create powerful advancement pills could be better put to use subtly helping Aergarde’s rebellions, growing food shipments that Vivian’s soldiers could ‘steal’ from her, over-filling the Tower-City’s minimal welfare programs, and otherwise helping in places she couldn’t physically go.

But when she did decide that the best thing she could do was make a pill, it was a good one. Meadow wasn’t on the level of the Elohian Occultist known as the Alchemist, nor the dead master of alchemy known as the Refiner. In truth, she wasn’t even sure she could stack up to the Craftsman, and he was an enchanter first. She was too much of a general plant mage, and didn’t dive as much into the other aspects of alchemy, like beast core use. 

Even with all the disclaimers, the pill Jinwei was holding was a princely gift, especially for Jinwei. Her destiny imprint condensed the power of her beastcore, effectively concentrating her energy and mana, putting her a half-step into sixth gate, while her resolve imprint had given her access to the full effects of a human’s Arcanist Tower alongside a weaker beast tide ability. It was a potent combination, and one that the pill would make even more dangerous. 

The pill had, in essence, three effects. The first was that it served as an absolutely massive reserve of mana, and would help provide Jinwei with all the power she needed to break into sixth gate, assuming the fox could manage the ascension. 

The second was that it worked somewhat like a golden soul potion, increasing the density of mana. But unlike the golden soul potions, these were designed to work by compressing the natural exchange between a beast core and their soul, making the core denser, and in turn, the mana. That should have a multiplicative effect with Jinwei’s destiny imprint. 

Finally, the third effect should help Jinwei tap into her identity and form roots easier, so long as those roots were somewhat linked to the beast core, which all of Jinwei’s magic was. The fox already had what felt like two of her major roots crafted, and three minor, but this should help a good bit. 

Ultimately, the pill played to the same reason that Meadow didn’t want to reveal the fact Malachi could return from the dead to Jinwei: a desire to advance above all else. This pill should massively frogleap Jinwei’s potential ranking in the Elysian Mastery Tournament. 

“With a bribe like this… what exactly are you asking for repayment?” Jinwei asked, her eyes locked greedily onto the pill. 

“About five thousand miles northeast of here is one of the surviving prototype amulets created by Silver Tide,” Meadow said, removing a small map from Orykson. He’d given Malachi the complete, more accurate memory packet, but she’d needed a map to plot their course. “They’re capable of severing soulbonds and spellbonds alike, though their ability to do the latter is somewhat more limited, to my understanding. But Malachi needs one of them.” 

There was a sudden flicker and warp in space as a spatial mage with ruddy skin, dark eyes, and bright yellow feathers instead of hair stepped out of nowhere next to them. Jinwei vaguely recognized her as the one who had brought them to the Crystal Cove and back for the Amethyst Mask’s ascension. 

“Erin here is willing to bring you to Silver Tide’s laboratory, and then teleport you to Zhuanzhe,” Meadow said calmly. “All you need to do is fetch any soul-related artifacts, as well as the amulet. Your debt to Malachi will be forgiven, and you’ll gain the jade and cinnabar striations beast core soul synergy pill. What do you say?” 

A wolfish grin passed over Jinwei’s face as she stuck out a hand. 

“Deal!”