No Need for a Core?

Fuyuko was excited about her haul of treasure from their delve with Dersuta, most especially the array of throwing weapons that she now had packed away into the expanded capacity of her bracers. There were darts, axes, stars, chakrams, and others that were at least a little similar to throwing daggers, but also some that were going to take a lot of practice, like bolas.

She had also picked up a couple of long spears; while Fuyuko was more likely to use her ice guns at the range where a spear would make a good weapon, she had seen and experienced how useful it was to have something long to poke an enemy with. A spear was a bit simpler than one of the bladed polearms, so it seemed best to start there.

The scaled armor was also fantastic, and not just because the upgrade made her armor tougher than it was before. She could focus on the scaled appearance and make it a little bulkier while still having an overall sleek look, so it wouldn't make her feel as self-conscious if she had to do with just her armor. Which had been most of the delve, really — things had just been too crazy to keep wrecking her clothes. At least she hadn't worn anything special like the jinbei that Mama M had made for her.

Not that Fuyuko had a lot of time to practice with anything. During the trip back to Artgoi, she had mostly eaten and slept. Then she'd spent the two days there exploring more of the city while visiting with Gemeti, who showed her some little out-of-the-way places like this one stall at the edge of a creepy-looking alley that had this really tasty and spicy stew served over rice. Thankfully, her mothers had made sure she knew how to eat with chopsticks; they weren't really a thing in Trionea. Not that she'd seen them used in Artgoi before either, but her other option was using some flat bread to scoop it up, and she hadn't done that before. Though, she did use the flatbread to get the last of that thick sauce from the stew; it was good.

Most of the rest of the way home was spent relaxing, though everyone also did some quick unarmed spars to get a good measure of how much their speed and strength had grown. What surprised her the most here was how Grandpa Ricardo didn't seem quite as overwhelmingly fast as before. She still couldn't follow him when he went full speed, but it didn't seem as out of reach as before. And Fuyuko knew that he and Akahana had trained too, but it made sense once she thought about it. The stronger you got, the more work it took to get even stronger. So the two of them, along with Zara and Tiros, had gotten only a little stronger overall.

Which meant Fuyuko was a lot stronger and faster than she'd been before. She'd started the delve able to shoot an arrow through a boar's skull. That was, um, kind of scary.

Their trip home did have one additional stop on the way: Riverbridge. They were dropping Galen off, along with Allania and Rika, and getting to visit Moriko's family, including her new youngest brother, Damien. Who was also technically Fuyuko's uncle, but she didn't let Galen get away with bossing her around with that title, so she sure wasn't going to let Damien do it if he tried that when he was older!

Mama K and Grandma Kaoru spent some time talking while Fuyuko fussed over the baby, though she felt self conscious about how strong she was now and was very careful handling the little boy.

Fuyuko knew the conversation with Grandma Kaoru had something to do with Mama K's medicine, but she never seemed to like talking about it more than she needed to. From Fuyuko's point of view, it mostly made her go from chaotic to less-chaotic, which seemed like it would be a good thing when Mama K needed to focus. Though chaotic could be fun too.

And Fuyuko would never occasionally think of her as Mama Chaos instead of Mama K. Absolutely not. Thankfully, it was also not going to be something anyone would ever ask her. She hoped.

Crossing over the river had made Fuyuko sharply aware of something new; she could feel Kuiccihan's border. It was just barely noticeable, and she probably only noticed it because she knew it was already there, so she was paying attention to that tiny change.

It probably didn't hurt that she was contractor to a nexus, so she was a little more sensitive to nexus energy, according to Papa.

As they already had to land on the road in order to get into Riverbridge, they decided to stay on the ground for the last leg of the trip, which was also easier on Zara and Tiros. This was also where Fuyuko finally got to practice with some of her new throwing weapons — she'd run ahead of the wagon and then start practicing until the wagon caught up. She wasn't the only one experimenting with new weapons, either, though they all had to be careful about picking out practice targets. Dead trees were the ideal targets, though not terribly plentiful.

This only occupied so much time, or rather, it grew boring after a little bit. It wasn't as satisfying as having proper targets and stuff; it was closer to just playing around. Which was still good, but combined with having to find a new place whenever the wagon caught up, and having to make sure they didn't get in the way of other travelers, it was just kind of a pain to deal with. So she and her friends eventually got back on board the wagon to relax and find other ways to pass the time until they got home.

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And Fuyuko had not missed that the dragon hatchlings had always been playing nearby when she and the others had run ahead to practice with their new toys. Weapons. She meant weapons.

Crossing the border into Azeria was a much different experience than crossing into Kuiccihan. The sensation was sharp and definite, and she could immediately feel her connection to the cores reestablish itself.

Also, for some reason, it felt extra noisy. Normally, the inhabitants weren't talking to each other so much over the connection. After a moment of confusion, she went outside and got on top of the wagon. There, she gaped at the sight overhead.

There were entire formations of pixies wheeling about and charging with little silvery lances. Most of them were just charging on their own, but some smaller formations were riding bookwyrms or rabbats. It was beautiful and amazing, often rather funny because they weren't very good, and also vaguely scary.

While she was watching the spectacle, her parents came up and sat down next to her. It was fun to watch, but there was also something that felt a bit... off. There were hints of it in all the noise, but since none of the voices were directed at her, she couldn't really make anything specific out other than a general sense of competitiveness.

"Um, is something wrong?" Fuyuko asked nervously. "This all seems really weird."

"No," Papa said with a smile, "nothing is wrong. Well, it would be a problem if it was happening against our will, but our cores just updated us. A little less than an hour ago, Deidre asked if she could 'steal' any pixies that wanted to come with her. We said yes, and expanded on the idea to include any other small enough inhabitants who wanted to help out our friend. This does come at a cost to us, but the pixies at least renew themselves quickly. And we think it will be good for Deidre to have a very different sort of beginning by refreshing her inhabitants this way."

That sort of made sense, but Fuyuko had a lot of questions about it. "Wait, why does Deidre need new inhabitants? Doesn't she have lots of her own? Why do so many of them want to go with her and leave us? And what do you mean, the pixies renew themselves quickly?"

"Well," Mama K said, "um, Deidre's inhabitants are sort of not well. Deidre was forced to do bad things and to make them do bad things, and even though every one was forced, this means things can't be healthy between them again. We're going to sort out the details of that when we free her core, but she'll have few, if any, inhabitants of her own when everything is dealt with. And it's not so much that they want to leave us as they want to help her; without them, Deidre would be starting off all alone, and after everything that's happened, that wouldn't be great. We've been thinking about how to have at least a couple of people with her for a while, but this is even better. Well, I still think we'll want to give her some more, um, mature company for a bit, too, but this will make getting started again a lot easier for her."

"As for the pixies," Mama M said, "well, the three of us took turns observing and taking notes to figure it out. So, you know how on the Other Side, there's often little glowing dots floating around, that sort of look like fireflies at a distance, but there's nothing actually there other than the glow?" At Fuyuko's nod, she continued. "Well, those are sprite sparks. They are potential fey, but only rarely does one get to become anything. They have to gather enough energy to reach the threshold of potential, and then be at the right time and place for something to tug at that potential and convert them from a bundle of fey energy into an actual fey of some sort."

Fuyuko hesitated for a moment as she thought about it, and then said, "Um, I think I understand that part."

"Well, when Kazue made her pixies for her puzzles, they weren't real creatures. They were sort of alive, but only as part of the nexus. This made them sort of a bridge — a sprite spark could inhabit one of these pixies and make them real pixies, with the nexus's magic making up the difference in needed power." Mama M paused again to make sure Fuyuko understood so far.

"Alright, but, how does that make them renew themselves so fast?"

Papa grinned as Mama K glanced away with an embarrassed look, and answered instead of Mama M. "Well, because of the designs of the flower puzzles, there always needs to be a certain number of pixies in each room. And we have multiple versions of that path. But pixies aren't very good at staying in one place, and they go wandering off. So every once in a while, a room doesn't have enough pixies when a delver arrives, so it generates another pixie body."

Oh, she got it now. "So the new pixie body gets immediately occupied by a sprite spark, and becomes a real pixie?" Which meant that Azeria would always be getting new pixie inhabitants, because the pixies would keep spreading out as the nexus became larger.

Huh. She loved the pixies, but if there were always going to be more of them coming across from the other side, um, "Maybe we should occasionally convince some that Dersuta needs to be taught how to smile or something."

That got laughs from all three of them. "Not a bad idea," Papa said, "Maybe if he comes visiting, we can send him home with a swarm." When he rubbed her head, Fuyuko leaned into it happily.

Mama K looked thoughtful for a moment. "It just occurred to me. If we are always going to be having new pixies coming to life from unawakened sparks, is that going to change any sort of special balances or anything? That is a lot more faerie magic entering our side of things."

Papa considered the idea for a bit before shaking his head. "No, I don't think so. At least, not to any significant degree. The pace is slow enough that it shouldn't matter, and if needed, we can always channel some extra energy from the nexus side into the realm side. But nothing so active should be needed; energy flows back and forth all the time throughout the world."

Now that was wandering off into conversations that Fuyuko didn't care about, so she turned her attention back to the clouds of pixies training in how to become real aerial combatants. Oh, if they were being competitive, that meant some of them were going to be staying here, and be actual combat inhabitants at the same time. That was just going to be mean.

She was looking forward to the next time her friends delved Azeria.