Asha leant in to inspect the gashes carved into the tree’s trunk, frowning at the traces of dried blood around the edges.

“It’s at least two days old,” Leien said, shifting to make space for her. “Maybe more? The rain makes it difficult to tell.”

“Think whatever it was ran off with our missing gauge?”

“I doubt it. Anything motivated by mana enough to chomp a metal spike probably already moved on to greener pastures.” He straightened up. “The depletion around here would be damn near unbearable for them.”

Sighing, Asha joined him as he led the way onward through the woods. She could have used the map in her pack, where she’d noted the locations of all her gauges as she placed them a week earlier, but Leien got huffy when she didn’t let him contribute. Besides, however she might feel about his deity there was no denying that it was hard to out-wayfind a [Cleric] of the earth Goddess, and usually she appreciated the chance to let her mind wander.

Right now, however, her mind was just dwelling on the trail of destruction they had found. Well, perhaps that was a bit of an exaggeration. It was more a trail of some destroyed things with mostly not destroyed things between them, but the shredded remains of various animals scattered in this patch of forest had turned her stomach and put her on edge, and also she liked exaggeration so she was sticking with it.

“Asha?” Leien said with that tone that indicated it probably wasn’t the first time.

“Hm?”

“I said we’re here.”

The clearing around them was littered with pine needles and a few cones, but nothing else of note.

Her face darkened as she scuffed her foot over the spot where remembered planting an aetheric gauge. The hole was even still visible, despite the muddy ground .

“What the fuck.”

“One could be anything. Two… two probably means something out here has taken a liking to your little devices.” Leien knelt next to the hole, his face getting low enough Asha genuinely worried he might be about to take a bite of the ground. Not that he had ever done that, but… [Clerics] were weird. 

“This one was here until earlier today. I’m not seeing any tracks, but whatever took it might have left some sign in the area?”

She scanned the trees, looking for bird nests or like… some kind of giant hive or something, but they just looked like trees to her. Boring, if pretty, trees. Okay, as soon as I finish these surveys I’m starting on ecology. She’d probably have more opportunity to develop that field out here than aetherology, and more use for it. Even if she really wasn’t looking forward to it.

“It’s worth looking around at least,” she sighed, managing to keep the sulk out of her voice. Well, mostly at least, but to be fair to herself it was shaping up to be an acutely annoying day.

To my relief, my wolf returned just before dawn. As soon as she entered my sphere, picking her way up the twilit slope, the flow of mana returned. She sported a fresh gash across her muzzle, but seemed otherwise unharmed.

Her pup greeted her eagerly, running out to the cave entrance as soon as he could tell it was her. He licked around her muzzle, and she hacked up some kind of meat for him to devour. I was just glad she’d found a meal for him, even if it was a bit gross.

My concerns over mana depletion had prevented me from expanding my sphere, but I hadn’t been totally idle. Once she was finished standing guard while her pup ate his fill, the two wolves ventured deeper to find a few things had changed.

First, I had sculpted some low walls across the hallways leading deeper into the complex. I really didn’t want the wolves stumbling across the bodies or relieving themselves in unfortunate places. The mama wolf could probably jump them if she wanted, but I didn’t think she was likely to leave the pup behind.

Now, where the entrance tunnel first reached the complex, there was a new room I’d dug out just for them. I’d also learned that I could claim the ruined furniture, and with some creative reshaping I’d managed to turn the tatters of mattress and fabric from some beds and wardrobes into something that I hoped would be a passably comfortable bed. It was a horror to behold, looking as though the myriad different fabrics had somehow run and melted into one another, but I figured the wolves wouldn’t be too hung up on aesthetics.

The most interesting thing about that project had been that I could detect the musty smells of decay leaving the fabric as I reshaped it, as though my desire for them to be gone had been enough to make it happen.

I was glad it had, because the two sniffed around the bed first thing – before settling down on the floor next to it. Ah well.

Now that my mana was increasing again, it was time to get back to work. I figured I could expand until I hit something especially interesting either on the surface or down in the cave.

Another thing I had noticed, though it had gone overlooked in my distraction with the rainstorm and then my subsequent mana crisis, was that the other passage out of the complex – the one leading down – ended abruptly at a solid stone wall. It was similar to the staircase in the center, but there were differences enough that I wasn’t willing to say they shared an origin.

More significant, in my mind, was the similarity between that hallway and the one which opened to the outside. They ended at almost exactly the same time, or rather the same distance from my crystal. When my sphere had passed out of the mountain, it had simultaneously reached the dead end here. I wasn’t sure what that meant yet, but I was beginning to have my suspicions.

With the wolves napping in their room I began to expand again, my attention immediately drawn to the mountainside. As the slope grew less severe, the stony surface quickly gave way to rocky soil littered with fallen needles. Beneath the surface, I felt some far-reaching roots, and then I found the trees.

Trees! Some kind of massive coniferous ones, though I’d never had enough of an inclination toward botany to have a hope of identifying them, but I was quite sure I had never seen them before. That all but confirmed one thing I had been concerned about: Wherever I was now, it wasn’t where I’d lived all my life.

There had been no mountains near Alvíreánn. The forests had been deciduous, and even the tallest trees hadn’t approached the ancient giants I was seeing here.

Another possibility, one I liked even less, was that I had simply been dead for so long that the face of the world itself had changed so drastically that climates and ecosystems had entirely changed. I considered that scenario less likely though.

I pushed my sphere out until I encompassed a few dozen trees. They seemed tall and healthy from what I could tell, so I figured the treeline would probably be higher in elevation than my tunnel, at least in places where the mountain wasn’t a steep cliff face. I hadn’t been able to claim them like I had with the deadwood that made up the items within my rooms, but after my experience with the wolf I really wanted to figure out a way. I didn’t know if trees produced mana, but if they did then this could be the solution to my mana drain problem.

I was growing more and more certain that the rate at which my expansion contributed to the drain on my mana was increasing as I went. It couldn’t be proportional to the volume I covered, or I would never have been able to grow past my initial room with the paltry amounts I was working with.

Or… actually, not never, it just would have taken an unimaginably long time, but with how muddled my mind was and nothing to track time by, would I have been able to know if each of my resting cycles took eons?

No. There’s no way. I could see the water passing through my sphere. I’d have noticed if thousands of years worth had flowed past me.

Right?

Right.

And hey, existential dread could join panic on the list of feelings I’d definitely recovered.

Anyway, I decided to assume that my perception of time hadn’t been that warped. That meant that my mana drain – mana upkeep? Yeah that was better – wasn’t proportional to my volume, or at least not only to my volume. Unfortunately, without the ability to quantify it I didn’t know how far I’d be able to get with pinning down just what was happening or why.

Regardless, my first priority now was finding a way to offset my mana upkeep that didn’t rely on the wolf. I really didn’t want to trap her here, though I had to admit that I would if it came down to it.

To that end: the trees.

Turned out I was getting into botany after all.