Caen flung tiny balls of flame at an ant's eye two or so yards away. At the same time, the grizzly man put two crossbow bolts into its face. It fell.

  Caen reoriented himself to face where Lerim was hacking at the legs of another giant ant with his machete. Caen kept the man always within his field of vision.

  Caen charged the ant from the side, cutting partway into one of its leg joints and retreating quickly. Lerim and the woman with spiked gauntlets finished it off.

  Turning around, Caen noticed the rest of his party finishing off ants of their own. They hadn't had any casualties yet, and this was the third wave they'd dealt with. Six ants.

  Several of his party members had splotches of green goo on their armors from when an ant had spat on them. The Earth practician was currently using his sand to wipe down the back of the fur-armored woman. Caen had been especially careful to avoid being hit.

  “Let’s catch our breaths for a little while,” Lerim said, “then we roam some more.” He got nods all round in response.

  Caen switched to a breathing sequence that helped him recover his breath.

  A green-barked tree stood about ten yards away, its gnarly torso-sized branches drooping over a broad trunk. Portions of its sprawling roots breached the soil around it, and he could barely make out a notch carved into the base of the tree.

  This was the closest they'd come to any of these. Holes surrounded it in a loose formation, and he suspected that approaching would draw out the ants within. Even now, he could still see Cutter teams working in the distance, fighting off ants and the flailing branches of awakened trees just like this one.

  His party moved on and soon drew more ants, but didn't get any large waves. Threes, twos and several fours. The Ice practician in their group depleted his reserves and had to leave, dropping the team's number to six.

  Caen wanted to examine the ants' soul structures, but he was already connected to Lerim, and dropping that improved Fire affinity didn't seem worth it just yet. None of the fights had been close calls, but Caen wanted to have a better estimate of how dangerous the ants were. Doing so while having Fire magic to fall back on seemed the smarter choice.

  After a couple more hours, he’d dipped below half his mana reserves, but almost everyone else on his team was wiped out. Even Lerim looked to be on the cusp of mana exhaustion. They slunk back to the Aperture entrance in silence. The group hadn't taken to friendly banter in the three hours of killing ants, which made sense to Caen. Attacker teams were unlikely to constitute the same group of people every time.

  Lerim quietly handed out meal tokens: small, wooden beads with detailed carvings on them. Just like the badges they all wore, these were lacquered white. They were all given three tokens, one for each hour. Lerim had given the Ice practician two of these.

  Some of them peeled off to sit on the benches in the clearing surrounding the Aperture. Even Lerim stopped to share a word with some uniformed people. It was so much cooler in the Plane than out in the camp.

  Outside the Plane, Caen asked for directions to the cafeteria. It was a long, open-air pavilion held by pillars on all four sides. Long tables were fitted with benches on either side, and the place was packed full with people, most of whom were not in armor.

  Several serving counters each held a row of pots behind which attendants in aprons and head wrappings dished food out onto plates.

  The food options were unsurprisingly ungenerous. A small loaf of bread cost one meal token. Half a token for a small bowl of porridge. Meats were weighed in pounds, and a quarter pound of beef or fish cost two meal tokens. A hard boiled egg cost four and a half tokens. Beans, legumes, and lentils were served in fixed, criminally small portions that cost half a token each. Oranges cost one meal token each. A cup of beer cost four meal tokens. Lukewarm water, of course, was plentiful and free.

  Fortunately, lunch was always free at the camp. There was a window of 1 to 4 in the afternoon. Lunch entailed a compact portion of mashed potatoes and oats. He wolfed down the food along with more than his fair share of water.

  * * *

  After visiting the apothecary, Caen made his way down to the healing tents. He'd gotten a basic outline of the camp on his way to the mess hall. The healing tents constituted one very large, round tent and three rectangular-shaped ones attached behind it.

  The inside had the sharp, tangy scent of blood and chymicals. The entrances had been left open, but it was still uncomfortably warm.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Rows of benches to the side were filled with waiting patients, and healers scurried about in green vests made of light and flimsy fabric.

  The inner section of the round tent was separated by a wooden divider. More severe cases and emergencies were being attended to on one side, and on the other, less serious cases.

  An elderly healer stomped over to Caen. “If you're looking to jump the line, I'll have you thrown out. Take a seat and wait your turn.” She glanced at the glaive sticking up from his back. It was sheathed.

  Caen held out his wooden badge to her. “I’m here to help with some Spirit-healing.”

  She brightened. “Oh. Why didn't you say so before? Just go through there.” She pointed at the entrance to one of the adjoining tents.

  Caen thanked her and went through. There were several paired chairs with Spirit-healers and patients on them. Caen’s eyes were quickly drawn to his father, Ergen, speaking with another healer. He seemed to notice Caen at about the same time.

  “Hey, Dad.”

  “Hey!” Ergen grabbed his son by the shoulders, his spirit grazing Caen's. “You don't… look like you just got here, son.”

  “Came in this morning about four hours ago,” Caen told him. “Went into the Plane for a bit.”

  His father nodded. “You should go see your mother sometime. She's at the command tent. So, are you here to help your old man?”

  “I am, but only for a little while. I need to cleanse my spirit first, though.”

  “Oh! You're going to do the…” he dropped his voice, “the thing.”

  Caen smiled. “I am.”

  “Well, you better get to it then.” Ergen patted him on the shoulder, still speaking in a whisper. “I’ll try to stay within view… is that it?”

  “That’ll do, Dad,” Caen said, amused.

  He found a stool to sit on and began Mimicking his father's affinity. This was the second time he'd be doing this. It took him just over a quarter hour.

  With a boosted affinity, Caen had no trouble cleansing his spirit promptly. He was getting better at managing mana consumption when casting spells with a boosted affinity. His mana efficiency in abjection was unfeasible for most people but had never given him an edge. Now, though, with a temporarily eager spirit and nearly double the capacity of the average Attuner's reserves, Caen could train longer and harder than should have been possible.

  It always took him far too long to replenish his reserves, though. Mimicking a Spirit-healing affinity usually halved that time.

  Any time I'm not actively casting a spell, I'll have to be attuning mana.

  Before he'd discovered Mimicry, he used his whorl-gem every chance he got. But improving his mana control wasn't too high a priority right now.

  He finished up with his cleanse and attended to a few patients himself. Spirit-healing was often rote work. A great deal of the time, it came down to slag cleansing.

  Due to the Spirit-healing passive augmentations, practicians absorbed the spirit particles of the dying in their vicinity. This naturally resulted in a fair amount of slag build-up. All the more so for combatants during the second phase of a reclamation venture.

  Caen saw to five patients before he had to leave. His father was in the middle of a session, so Caen left quietly.

  There was a low fence around the command tent. Soldiers in uniform loitered about, while some others stood at the entry gate in a half-hearted show of alertness. Caen flashed them his badge and explained that he was looking for a Priestess Sh'leinu. He was asked to wait a few minutes while someone relayed that information to her.

  She came out smiling, but the bags under her eyes were just as prominent as they'd been when last he'd seen her. “Don't make that face at me,” she said in Olden Vishic, as she pulled him into a hug. “I'm the parent here.”

  Caen laughed. “I was just with Dad at the healing tents. Is Uncle Teiro here yet?”

  “He's on an airship as we speak.” They moved to sit on the low fence. “There’s room in the officers’ quarters where your father and I are staying. Grena is there too with her colleagues. And even Zeris has a bunk in the aides’ hall.”

  Caen opened his mouth to say something, but his mother stopped him with an upraised hand.

  “I'm just letting you know that there's a slightly more comfortable option than sleeping in the assigned tents, alright? I know how stubborn you are.” She shook her head fondly, then rose from the fence. “Well, I have to get back to work, dear.”

  They said their goodbyes, and Caen left for the Planar Aperture once more. Even more uniformed team leads stood within the fence bounding it. He'd heard someone call it the Courtyard. There were tree stumps here, several of them, and these were now being used as temporary seats by armored people.

  Caen walked up to a woman with a shorn head. She wore a thick gambeson, sporting the red and green of the Rialgarian military, over her uniform, and had a large sword strapped to her back. Two bands encircled her arm. One pink and the other blue. Body-enhancement and… what exactly? This was the problem with color-coding: it was vehemently arbitrary. Blue could just as easily represent Ice, Water, or Air.

  Caen nodded politely at her, and she returned his nod. There were five other people here with them. No one from the previous group he'd entered with.

  “We leave when ten numbers,” she said in heavily accented Thermish. The others in the group made sounds of understanding.

  Caen cracked his neck as they waited. He felt confident enough to go into the Plane without boosting any of his affinities. He wanted to get a look at those ants' soul structures.

  follow, a favorite, a rating, and/or a review. Doing these will keep me motivated and help the story grow.