Vai watched a projected memory of Herb Mask routing his ambushers. He laughed, slapping his knee.

  Swuswujaswuswuteptep—or Teptep for short—hovered in the air beside him as she watched the combat sequence along with Vai. “He doesn't… fight like an Astral user,” she mused.

  “Eh, he's not quite there yet,” Vai said. “Still rough around the edges and can't quite use offensive attacks. Not quickly enough, anyway.” He leaned back in Throne, his floating rocking chair. “Would you believe that he couldn't even erect a basic mental shield until a few months ago. He's come a long way, I’m telling you.”

  “Well, I'd have to see him perform more Astral feats before deciding whether that's impressive or not.” Teptep brushed her white hair away from her speculon. She resembled Caen impeccably, down to the studious expression he often wore.

  Specters like her habitually adopted the astral forms of creatures from the Material Realm. Teptep was partial to non-humanoid forms, but it hadn't taken a lot of convincing to get her and several of her descendants to play this role whenever Caen was at the trials.

  A distant weight bore down on the edge of his Astral domain. He immediately identified the familiar mental signature. He'd been expecting her.

  “Looks like our guest has arrived,” he said.

  “The boy’s grandmother?”

  “Great-grandmother,” he corrected. “We humans like prefixes.”

  Vai reconstructed their current location into a drawing room in his domain. The walls were an ugly, jarring orange, the sofas were fabricated for maximum discomfort, and the temperature was unpleasantly warm. Teptep dropped to the ground and stood behind him. Vai left the memory projection of the trials on.

  He intentionally disrupted the transit of his guest, making sure she materialized on the sofa across from him forcefully.

  Oludlana Ereshta'al composed herself with the speed and grace of a Percipient. She was a tall and imposing figure. She wore an elaborately designed blue gown with the emblem of her faction embroidered into it.

  She looked around and sniffed with disdain. “Horavai. I see you have not outgrown your pettiness in your time here.”

  “Greetings, Eshtr,” Teptep said smoothly in Caen's voice.

  “Caen, dear. Hmm.” Her frown deepened at the sight of the speculon. “There are procedures that can safely conceal that thing on your forehead. I know a skilled healer here on the island. You don't have to go around wearing the clear marker of a dud bloodline, okay? Now, run along, dear. Your ‘uncle’ and I have a lot to discuss.”

  “He's my primary aide,” Vai said to her as he rocked back and forth. “I've been having him attend every family meeting I host.”

  Primary aides were glorified errand-runners. It was not common practice to have them present during important meetings. But Vai knew this would get under her skin.

  “So, to what do I owe this displeasure?” he asked after she watched him silently for a long moment.

  “Very well then,” she said at such ridiculous speed that no Attuner would be able to follow what she'd just said.

  Vai, however, was no mere Attuner, so he had no trouble keeping up. This was the Astral Realm, after all.

  She nodded at the projection in the air, which Vai had looped to show her two descendants struggling to free themselves from vines. “You've been busy.”

  “I always am.”

  “Lobos has outed you as the one who twisted his arm to endorse this… Herb Mask. And that's not all. You indirectly endorsed nineteen other participants this year, fourteen of whom are masked.”

  Vai shrugged, smiling. “Perhaps I just wanted to help a few young ones fulfill their dreams. The factions do it all the time.”

  “So you are starting a faction.”

  “I don't know what you're talking about, Oludlana.”

  She scoffed. “In the span of five months alone, you've taken far more interest in family affairs than you have in decades. Thirty-seven new businesses under public Ereshta'al ownership. You're funding academic research in Rialgar. Sponsoring Attuners to academic and even magical institutions. Taking on one of my descendants as a primary aide.”

  Vai smiled. All she'd described wasn't even half of it. Once Caen earned enough points, Vai would be funding the research of a few junior staff members in the Imperial Citadel of Pectos, as well as sponsoring some Ereshta'als to much less prestigious institutions of learning. Doing this was the best way he knew to throw these sharks off Caen's scent. With this, they'd reasonably assume that Caen's ties to Herb Mask started and ended with Vai.

  Oludlana took on a pitying expression. “Horavai, Horavai. You're still an Attuner. Playing dangerous games with your betters never ends well. I assumed you'd have learned this by now. You have no covering, no protection.

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  “And let me guess,” Vai goaded. “You've come to my rescue.”

  “You aren't taking this seriously. I'm giving you the option of partnership. Alliances are the lifeblood of family politics. Your pawn is stepping on the toes of giants, annoying powerful factions. Pesky little insects get swatted.”

  She was blowing things out of proportion, hoping to intimidate him into working with her. By ‘partnership’, she meant the Faithful Descent faction taking control of whatever operation she assumed he was orchestrating. He was frankly surprised she didn't know better.

  Vai laughed. “What's this really about? You're angry he fought back?”

  “Self-defence is one thing. But stealing from factions?” She shook her head. “Those participants earned treasures for their factions. He had no business taking them away.”

  Caen had claimed the spatial bags of three high-performing participants from her faction. Vai steepled his hands across his lap. “Well, think of it as compensation. Herb Mask lost precious time dealing with that ambush. Do you know how many treasures he could have located in—what was it? Two minutes? Less?”

  She glared at him. “So you won't ask Herb Mask to return the treasures he stole?”

  “Your participants are welcome to try taking them back. They know where to find him.”

  Her aura suffused the entire room, clamping down on Vai ferociously. Teptep played her role well and crashed to her knees, gasping. In truth, she was fine.

  Vai himself was slightly inconvenienced. He spent enough time around mages and archmages. But more importantly, this was his Astral domain.

  He constricted the space around her, bringing the entire weight of this astral region to bear. She winced and retracted her aura.

  She tsked. “I told you to send the boy away.” She looked to Teptep, who stood slowly to her feet. “I'm sorry, my dear. Your uncle is such an unreasonable man.

  “Horavai, you're making a very big mistake. Don't say I didn't warn you.” She vanished.

  “Excellent performance as usual, Teptep,” Vai said to the specter.

  “This was nothing. Does she always act without care for the well-being of her younglings?”

  “I honestly don't know the answer to that.”

  He felt a new weight on the edge of his Astral domain and sighed.

  “Another visitor?” Teptep asked.

  “Mm. There'll be quite a number of them today.”

  ***

  As soon as he returned from the arena, Caen sat in his room in Vai's mansion, scanning Chasma's soul structure as it finished absorbing some plant matter he'd foraged in the second trial.

  His bed and portions of the floor were covered with gems and precious magical materials. He had tallied all the treasures he'd taken. Seventy-three in total; sixty-one of them were from his assailants. It was a ridiculous haul.

  An orb the size of his head, made of purple ice, pumped sparkling flakes into the air. A large black egg had worrying cracks spreading on it. A patch of pink and yellow flowers buzzed loudly. A block of a transparent gelatinous substance stung his spirit whenever his spirit tendrils got close to the item.

  There was so much more. These were expensive and very likely to earn him a lot of money if he sold them. Quite a number of these treasures were crucial for magical brewing and crafting. A few of them could be ingested or integrated with his spirit, mind, or body to grant him lasting benefits or even push him closer to the substage of late Attuner.

  He'd given this quite some thought, though. Any direct boosts to himself from these treasures would be very beneficial, but wouldn’t grant him enough of an edge in the rest of the trials. Integration and assimilation of these into himself would take time. Weeks, months. Years, in some cases.

  Chasma, however, could grow stronger and larger from a variety of consumed resources. The strange creature that Caen had killed in the village of Achimaso had finally brought Chasma up to the level and durability of the average Parthran fragment. With these, though, his fragment would exceed that.

  He was currently Mimicking the fragment's spirit receptor.

  “Still hungry?” he asked it. Then he reverted his soul and used Kinesis spells to gather all the treasures onto his bed.

  Chasma levitated to the bed by itself and expanded to encompass them all.

  With that handled, he returned his attention to Chasma’s soul structure.

  He spent the rest of the day slowly and carefully imitating and reverting his thread clusters.

  Every time he Mimicked Chasma's abilities, he lost access to all his magical disciplines, bloodlines included.

  The changes he made when Mimicking the fragment's abilities caused ripple effects that spread through his entire soul structure, altering more than he intended.

  This was a problem he'd been working on for months.

  Learning to split his existence had given him new insights, and after his fight today, some ideas had been bouncing around in his head.

  Rather than trying to forcefully halt the ripple effects in his soul, he guided the ripples away from certain portions of his soul.

  As he Mimicked resilience, he focused on diverting the ripples away from his Body-enhancement thread cluster, letting them affect other portions of his soul instead. Without his Dream-guarding passive augmentations, he struggled more than he would have preferred. But this struggle had been his experience for most of his life.

  Failed iterations came and went as the hours wore on. He'd stored sleep before the trial, so he worked through the night.

  His attention was sharpened to a point. This was the closest he had ever come.

  He Mimicked Chasma's resilience, and yet his Body-enhancement passive augmentations remained.

  He could not sense his mind or spirit except when casting Body-enhancement spells. It was the most bizarre and satisfying experience.

  Caen let out a pleased sigh.

  Chasma expressed ‘curiosity’ through their bond.

  Caen reverted his soul structure and Mimicked the fragment's spirit receptor.

  “It worked!” he said, expressing joy to Chasma. He told it what he’d done and how, as day broke on the island.