Growing Lilies

Lily was feeling good. It was that kind of good that came from the relief of getting emotions out, but that was an exhausted kind of good all on its own. Plus, the company was phenomenal.

"So, I've been meaning to ask…"

"Yes, Master?"

They were walking their way back to the thread. Lily still needed to check it out before they left, if only to make sure it wasn't dangerous, and it was slow going on her leg. Although, not as slow as it should have been.

"Where do you actually go all the time?"

"What do you mean?"

She stepped over a particularly large root, and almost slipped on the wet earth on the other side.

"Well, like… When I'm doing magic. You go out a lot. Where do you actually go?"

"It depends. Sometimes I explore. Sometimes I hunt. Sometimes I go to La Mancha."

Lily stopped, and stared at her companion.

"La Mancha?"

"Yes. Someone must check up on things."

"That's a 45 minute drive."

"Yes."

"You're joking."

"I am not. Why would I joke? That's not a funny joke."

She blinked at him a few times, then shrugged and kept walking.

"But like, you can run that far? How long does it take you? That's crazy. Why didn't you ever tell me?"

"I can run that far. It takes about an hour and a half, if I do not get distracted. Should I have told you? There have been no problems to report."

"Huh. Well… Huh."

They walked along in silence for a little. That did make sense. Of course she could have just asked. Although, Star had been secretive about a few things before. She was pretty sure it was never anything particularly important. At the very least, she had no intention of pressing him. He was his own person, even if they were companions.

Suddenly, a clearing came into view. It wasn't a natural clearing. This was where her spell had gone off. She could clearly see where she'd been standing when she'd unleashed it, and leading away from that spot was… nothing. A hole. A perfectly circular clearing that went on a long ways. Not a branch, or a tree, or even dirt had survived being carved away. At least three hundred feet away her spell had lost momentum and finally come to a halt.

Lily stared down the tunnel she'd made through the forest.

"I… did this? I don't remember it being so bad."

Star's tail wagged.

"You are very powerful, Master. With one move you decisively won the fight."

Lily almost had to laugh at that.

"Aren't you mad?"

"Why would I be?"

"I could have done this the whole time you know. If I had just done it sooner… we wouldn't have gotten hurt. You wouldn't have gotten hurt protecting me."

"If you did not have a soft heart, you would not be you, Master."

She rolled her eyes. But, it did make her feel better. Still, this was… A lot. That had been a lot of power she had channeled. How had it gone? She needed mana but didn't have time to charge…

The creature playing distraction backed off to get some distance after what had happened to its packmate. As it retreated it stepped into a circle and disintegrated. Fur and flesh peeled away in a matter of moments and not even bones remained.

Lily gagged, remembering the sight. Right. She had snared one into the matter to mana circle. Then she'd created a big one to condense everything in the area to one spot, and shot straight through it.

It had been… effective.

"Lady Flamewalker? You smell stressed, and you are breathing hard."

Lily sat down, and pet Star as he came over and pushed his huge head into her chest.

"Yeah… I'm fine. I was just remembering the battle."

"It was a good battle. We won."

"Mm. I'm not sure about that.

"About which part?"

"I don't think any battle is good. I don't like fighting. I don't want to hurt anyone, or anything."

"But you will if you must."

"...Yeah."

They stayed like that for a while. Until Lily felt a bit better. Then she stood up, and they kept walking. What else was there to do?

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The thread was still looming, and there were… critters around. Yeah, critters. That was the best way she could put it. A number of small animals. Racoons, squirrels, moles, tons of birds, and more. They were just gathered. Many of them were sleeping. None of them seemed to be fighting at all.

"What… is going on?

"You are the magic user. I will wait for you to tell me."

"Think we know what the coyotes were eating if nothing else…"

Lily gently stepped over a sleeping opossum, getting closer to the circle surrounding the base of the thread. The circle was pretty big, but did only seem to be made of a few nodes. Although, one of them was a complicated circle in and of itself, with more nodes inside it than the main circle.

One stuck out in particular.

"Woah! That's… That's the glyph I learned from eating the cores."

That made sense! The thread was luring all these creatures in, and luring them into a sense of safety! Wait. Is… that why she wanted to visit the thread too? That didn't feel great to think about. But it wasn't the biggest concern right now.

There were a number of other new glyphs as well so Lily started noting them down. At a glance the spell seemed to be condensing mana and… doing something with it. Was the thread made of mana? But it looked solid. Could mana be solid? Was it sturdy? Fragile? What if it collapsed?

A million questions. Well, there was nothing new there. She thought she actually understood some of the new glyphs. She'd have to experiment, but they seemed to use some of the same radicals that she was familiar with from the push glyph and the compass. The arrows. Only here they seemed to be telling whatever this was to… grow? Extrude? That would explain it, if that's what this was.

A large tower of mana that functioned as a lure and continued to grow upward over time. What would happen if she just left it? The animals would be happy. She looked around at them.

… would they? Some of them were looking… hungry. Thin at the least, and a little ragged.

Okay, thread had to come down. But not all at once. Dissipating all this mana was gonna be a nightmare if it had to be all at once. She didn't wanna subject herself to that. No, it was better to set up something for it to do gradually.

The other issue was, if she turned off the lure would all the animals just turn on her at once? Probably not. But she wasn't sure she wanted to find out either.

In that case… deep breath.

"Condition One: The thread has to come down. Ideally slowly."

"Lady Flamewalker?"

"I'm thinking out loud. Condition Two: The lure needs to be turned off before all these animals starve. It's the right thing to do."

"Master… you are not responsible–"

"No. It's the right thing to do. You're right. I'm not powerful enough to always get to choose when to use lethal force, or even when to fight. It's usually a struggle for my life. But if I can do something to help living beings not suffer, it's the right thing to do."

"Hmm. I will not argue."

Lily nodded, happy to have his support if not his direct approval.

"Condition Three: Do something useful with the mana. There's so much of it. If I just vent it into a huge light or something, it'd be a huge waste."

That was really going to be the tricky part. The chaos emeralds were already charged, so that wasn't a good solution. She really needed more of those things. But what else could she do? Gather a lake worth of water? Create a giant fire? Electricity? Single handedly turn back global warming with a giant ice cube?

Wait. Growing glyph. There's… no way, right?

Lily looked around for a small plant. She found a dandelion pretty easily. She bent and started drawing a small circle around it. One glyph: Grow. Extrude. Whatever it was.

Then she poured some of her own mana into it. The spell drank down her mana like almost nothing else she'd seen so far.

There was no visible difference. Lily frowned. Okay, so, it did something, but maybe not what she expected? Or, was it not enough power? She grimaced and poured more into it, and watched closely. Yes! Yes! It definitely did something!

But… she stared down. The plant had changed. It grew! But the new growth on it looked sickly somehow. It didn't have the same color, and was almost wilty. Oh… did it not have the nutrients it needed?

This was fascinating. Okay, what if she changed the spell? She added a second glyph, and a third, and a capacitor. Now the plant would be infused with mana. Star had told her that the magical creatures he found with cores were the healthiest right?

She tried pouring mana into it again. It was taking a lot to have a noticeable change. Although, this time it was a little easier. The added glyphs helped! It grew again, and this time… it looked a lot better! All in all, it'd grown a little over half an inch and sprouted a few more leaves. Nothing too crazy. And she was out of breath with the exertion. But it had worked! Grow, and mana infusion had helped. That was perfect, in that case!

She stood up and looked around. Star was padding around the clearing sniffing at animals. Lily took a second to appreciate that sight. He was so cute sometimes.

But then she returned to looking, until she saw just what she wanted. A tree! A lone tree that was far enough away from the others around it that it wouldn't knock them over if it doubled in size over the next week.

From there, the process was one of rote skills she'd practiced over and over by now. She copied her growth spell around the tree, and then created a buffer circle that did nothing but help regulate mana flow and create light if there was too much excess. Finally, she changed the grow glyphs in the large circle to be blank instead, and then hooked the large circle to her buffer. Right away, mana started to flow into it, but then cycled back to the large circle. All but a slow and steady trickle that fed surely into her new growth spell.

There was only one more bit to write, and this was the more complicated part. It was nothing she hadn't practiced though. When the buffer spell was totally full, she needed it to turn off the part of the larger circle that contained the lure.

That wasn't hard to write really, but she was a little scared that with this much power the whole thing would come down. It'd… probably be fine. She just hadn't tested something like this before.

"Star?"

"Master?"

"I'm going to connect this, and then we should leave."

His tail wagged, and he trotted over to join her. Lily connected the spell. It was honestly a shame she wasn't going to get to stay and see what happened. But she was done making stupid mistakes like that.

They turned, and started the long trek back to the car.

Lily was driving slowly. She knew it would be a much longer trip if she refused to drive over 45 MPH, but she was in a safety mindset today. No more risks.

"So yeah. We'll have to come back when we can't see the thread anymore to see if the tree got much bigger. I think it might double, maybe even triple in size. But it'll probably take a few weeks."

"So, you will use that spell to grow food now right?"

Lily's eyes went wide.

"Master?"

"You're a genius! I love you Star! I knew there was a reason I never let you out of my sight!"

His tail wagged, hitting the car door rhythmically.

The sun would be going down soon. But tonight they would finally be home. Together. Tomorrow there would be time to start working on farming magic. But tonight was about time together, and rest.