Watching Adra and Tani, alongside Rai, was incredibly adorable. There was something naive about Tani, making me think she was either young or inexperienced. And yet, despite that naivety, she somehow managed to pester Adra, pushing and prodding her verbally until Adra could do nothing but stutter around, completely off-balance. Rai tried to help Adra out and intervened, only to get the sharp side of Tani’s tongue, and quickly retreated, leaving Adra to face the verbal onslaught alone.

It was great entertainment, and from the exasperated expression on Doris’ face, it might not be the first time something like this happened. It made me curious how much of Tani’s behaviour was an act and how much was genuine, but knowing that type of social predator, there was no way to tell. She might not even know herself, the naive mask already completely fused with her personality.

“What are you munching on?” Jenn quietly asked, trying very hard not to disturb the trio. I was just bringing another chip of Ice, this one flavoured with some Darkness- and Death-Magic to my mouth, having started to experiment with different compositions of Astral Power, curious how it would affect the taste.

“Just some Ice,” I replied, just as quietly, and produced a thin, waver-like chip of clear Ice, this one with quite a bit of Darkness, likely giving it a sharp taste. “Want to try?” I asked, offering the chip to her.

She reached forward, the look on her face rather confused at my ability to conjure up snacks, but she took a bite out of the Ice, an expression of curiosity on her face. At the first moment, there was no reaction, but after a second, her eyes bugged out, an expression of disgust on her face.

Sigmir just gave her a look of distaste and let out a snort, before placing an arm around me, pulling me against her chest.

“Some people just don’t know how to appreciate things,” she muttered, just loud enough for Jenn to hear.

At the same time, the spectacle between Tani and Adra entered a new round, with Tani now changing her target to Rai, trying to convince him to stay, so that Adra would stay with him. It was quite hilarious, especially because Tani started a full-out charm offensive, flirting outrageously with Rai, making his fur ruffle up in embarrassment.

“This might take a little while,” Doris said, after walking over to Sigmir and me. “Why don’t we speak about the potential operations a little more? You said you’ll be travelling further south, didn’t you?” she asked, apparently intent to ignore the spectacle.

“We do, what do you have in mind?” I asked, curious. Sigmir similarly looked at Doris but didn’t comment.

“Honestly, we need to consider. We might just send you to clear out some of the dangerous locations in the area, places we would like to use but can’t, due to dangerous monsters lairing there. There are a few zones of Wild Magic, do you think you might be able to cleanse one? Otherwise, if it becomes too big, it might attract unwanted attention to the area.” she explained, the apparent change in plan confusing me. Before she was all too interested in sending us to cause chaos and disruption, now she was speaking about clean-up of magical hazards? Quite the departure.

She must have noticed my frown, not that it was terribly well-hidden, and explained.

“Problem is, I’m not sure we have the ability to move just yet. If we make a big push and fail, there’s going to be an even bigger counter-push. We can’t deal with the full might of the Empire, not without creating the right situation first. We have thousands of trained fighters, spread around dozens of bases. The Empire has legions of soldiers guarding the borders and countless guards keeping order. We can’t fight them all, not if we want to win.” she explained, sounding a little resigned, before quietly adding, “And even if we could, I don’t think the price would be worth it.”

“I believe i know what you mean,” I nodded understanding. High-level beings had the ability to kill hundreds, if not thousands, but few had the ability to do so without massive damage to the environment. Sure, I might be able to conjure up a frozen, life-devouring mist, sending it against my enemies but it would also destroy everything around them. If a Fire-mage threw a Meteorite, as the largest-scale fire-magic was known as, at an army, the army would perish. And so would everything in a kilometre or two, without considering the potential for later wild magic development.

Quite similar to Nuclear War, an all-out magical war wouldn’t be won by those who were right. But by those who would be left.

By now, the spectacle between Adra and Tani was winding down, or maybe, Tani was getting tired of playing the cat and mouse game with Adra. Either way, I decided it was time to step up and maybe get some information on that most curious concealment magic. Given the subtlety of it all and the way it was anchored within the forest, it was most likely some sort of life magic, or maybe some sub-category, controlled and created by Tani. Biting through my last ice chip, I stepped forward, letting the blend of Darkness, Ice and Death crunch between my teeth.

“Tani, could I have a word or three?” I asked, a grin on my face. If nothing else, she had been incredibly entertaining and as long as she didn’t try to do what she did to Adra to me, I was happy to indulge her a little.

“You can have as many words as you like, I’ve heard they even made some sort of letter-shaped noodles. If you don’t digest them right, …” she began to make an off-colour joke, only for me to raise a hand, stopping her.

“Please, none of that. Serious conversation or I’ll leave,” I warned her, trying to make my stance clear from the beginning. Given how Adra still looked flushed and huffy, I wasn’t about to get into a war of words with Tani.

“Boooring,” Tani complained, but when I raised an eyebrow, she simply blew out a breath and poked her tongue out at me. “But fine,” she added, waving her hand and a seat grew out of her tree.

“What do you want?” she asked her entire demeanour shifting, gone the previous naive facade, replaced by a serious, almost predatory glint in her eyes.

Reciprocating, I waved my hand, coalescing a Throne of Ice, to keep myself on a level with her and sat down.

“I thought we could discuss concealment-magic, mine seems to work with different principles than yours and while the same is true for Adra, she is not much of a scholar. We discussed some of her abilities in the past but sadly…” I explained and now there seemed to be a trace of curiosity in Tani’s eyes.

“Doris said you’re a guest, so I guess we can talk for a bit. I doubt that you’ll learn a lot, but hey, you never know. Maybe I’ll be able to learn something that helps during the winter months, those are hard for me.

“Maybe, though my concealment is mostly working with Darkness and the boundary with the light,” I replied and we were off to the races, discussing how to weave different types of magic into a single whole and how to blend those with the background. Soon after the beginning of our discussion, Doris excused herself, leaving us with Tani and Jenn, who was tasked with taking us to our residence when Tani and I were finished.

Curiously, it wasn’t my actual magic-ability that let me glean the greatest insights, but what I had learned during my delves into the Astral River and how it permeated the land. For that was how Tani managed to hide a village in the forest, by turning the individual houses into something not much different from trees, in a magical sense. She was, quite literally, hiding the trees within a forest, making it incredibly difficult to detect.

It was quite the fascinating idea, though sadly one I wouldn’t be able to truly utilise, as it relied on an intimate knowledge of the environment and careful blending of the individual parts into a greater whole. It was simply not suitable to be used on the fly.

On the other hand, Tani seemed to be fascinated by my understanding of Ice and Snow. My pursuit of the extremes of Ice, trying to Ice that would never melt and be Eternal was completely alien to her. To her, the essence of winter was its temporary nature, that it was a time of rest and endings, but one that would always lead to the renewal of spring.

The idea that there could be a winter that would never end seemed to be shocking to her, almost impossible to comprehend and very uncomfortable.

We didn’t stay long on that topic, instead, we focused on something more applicable and practical, namely the utilisation of mist for concealment, magical and mundane. Talking about it made me realise that I had, instinctively, been applying quite a few of her principles to my own working, concealing effects and magic in a greater whole, only where she was hiding trees within a forest, I had been hiding snow within the mist.

Finally, Tani and I wound down as night started to fall.

“Thank you for the exchange of knowledge,” I gave Tani a light bow, truly grateful. The discussion had been fascinating, and I had learned quite a bit.

“It has been a pleasure, Morgana,” she stood, giving me a bow of her own, “May you always find shade during your travels.”

With those words, she stepped back against her tree, merging back into it, leaving me a tad confused.