Keiran

I set Querit up in a set of rooms near the outer edges of my demesne, a place where there was enough ambient mana that he wouldn’t drain himself dry just existing, but where he wouldn’t be anywhere near my own workshops or the mysteel pillars I’d pilfered from his homeland and hadn’t gotten around to telling him about. We had a brief discussion about his accommodations; he looked human, but golems didn’t generally need things like beds or toilets. Once he was happy with the workshop, I furnished him with a set of books covering what had happened in the last thousand years since he was gone.

Next to those were the many books I’d put together myself, the start of a series designed to take someone from core ignition through novice-tier spells and all the way up into intermediate in every discipline. I’d included field guides for identifying useful alchemical reagents and understanding the composition of various forms of inorganic matter common to the area. There was even a slim volume on how to advance a core to stage two, though that had admittedly been written specifically for Senica. A broader version covering different ways to approach the problem would be needed for wide distribution later.

I left the golem with a scrying mirror to reach out to me if he needed something, then teleported back to Derro’s underground. I’d explored it thoroughly and located the mysteel pillars, but Querit had been hidden behind a panel that had only opened when I’d gotten too close, presumably because it would allow him to jump out and ambush me. It was surprising that it had even had enough mana left in it to do that much, and there was no telling how many other hidden panels I’d missed.

If possible, I’d like to find his research frame to speed up his work, but the golem’s instructions on where he’d left it were based on a city that had been half-destroyed a thousand years ago, then buried in the sand and left to crumble. Where I’d been told to go hunting wasn’t a place I’d found in my first pass, which almost certainly meant I’d be digging again to find what I was looking for.

Those damn worms were going to be all over me the entire time.

Before I even got that far, the divination tied into my own scrying mirror started tugging at my mind. I pulled the mirror out of my phantom space, expecting to see Querit on the other end. Instead, I found my sister staring at me. “Senica?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” she said. “I just… When are you coming back home again?”

“Probably not for a few more weeks at least, unless there’s some reason I need to?”

“Well. It’s just that I kind of need your help with a thing. But it’s not important. I can wait.”

I’d never seen her act this nervous about anything. If I wasn’t seeing it now, I would have said it just wasn’t part of Senica’s personality. She was brash, overconfident, overeager, and very much still immature, not that I blamed a teenager for any of that, but never nervous or hesitant.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“You know how you paid me in mana to take care of your greenhouses?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Well, I used it to finish making my lattice.”

I froze in place. Senica had been working on the project for a few years now, but it was slow going and required a lot of experimentation. I hadn’t really encouraged her to sink a lot of resources into it because the size of the mana core expanded as people grew. Until she was an adult, any lattice she built would need to be modified later on. I hadn’t followed that route, of course, but I also hadn’t needed to do any experimentation. I’d long since perfected a modular design prior to my reincarnation.

“You’re sure? It’s ready?”

“I think so,” she said hesitantly. “Probably. I was kind of hoping to get you to look at it first and maybe help me set it up.”

“Of course I’ll come help with that,” I said. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“It’s just, you’re busy saving the world now and it’s really not a big deal.”

“Senica, it’s a big deal. You’re my sister. Are you ready now?”

“Uh… Yes?”

“I’ll be there in a minute,” I told her.

I cut the flow of mana going into the mirror and shoved it back into my storage space while I scrambled to the teleportation platform I’d set up down here. I’d had no idea she’d been spending so much time and energy working on her lattice, but I supposed it made sense. After experiencing the mana saturation outside of Ammun’s tower back when it was still the Sanctum of Light, she’d wanted to increase her mana generation. Advancing her core was the only way to do that.

I skipped the town’s platform and teleported directly to the beacon in my room, then found my sister sitting in the garden with our baby brother. He was crawling between the plants, sticking things in his mouth that weren’t especially edible, mostly leaves. I raised an eyebrow when I saw it, but Senica just shrugged and said, “Mom said you used to do the same thing and you turned out fine.”

“That’s… a bit of a different situation,” I said. “I don’t think Nailu’s going to awaken the memories from his past life.”

“Spirts save us if he does. One of you is enough.”

I squinted at her and said, “Didn’t you ask me to come do you a favor?”

Senica was saved from answering by Nailu picking up a rock and throwing it at us. I casually caught it with some telekinesis, then grabbed a few more and set them to spinning in the air to his delighted giggles.

“He’ll be walking any day now,” she said fondly.

“So soon?”

“He’s over a year old already.”

“I suppose so. I don’t have a lot of experience with babies.”

“Something you don’t know?” Senica gasped. “Impossible.”

“You don’t need to snark so hard. I am well aware of my shortcomings.” I turned my attention from Nailu to my sister and peered into her mana core. She’d shrouded it as thoroughly as she could, which was significantly better than most mages, but a shroud wasn’t as good as actually shielding a core from detection. It was just easier by a wide margin.

It meant I could see into her core without much issue, and it didn’t take me long to scan all of the individual lattice pieces she had floating around. Each one was a form of hardened mana, one that would adhere to the inner wall of her core in a specific pattern designed to help increase her core’s contact with the Astral Realm. If she did it right, she could expect her mana to generate at up to three times her previous speeds.

“You’re aware that you’re going to need to maintain this for the next half a decade or so, aren’t you?” I asked.

“I know,” she said, following the shift in our conversation easily. “I’ve got plans for that.”

“Did you map out how it’s all going to fit together?”

“Right here.” Senica pulled out a thick sheet of paper from her pocket and handed it to me. I unfolded it and skimmed the contents. Each piece fit together like an elaborate puzzle, a sort of pseudo-rune construct inside her core. One by one, I matched them against the pieces hovering inside her, waiting for her to will them all into place.

“This… looks good,” I said finally.

Tension drained out of her as I said that. “That’s a relief. I was afraid I was going to have to dissolve parts of it and rebuild them. I’m low on mana now.”

“No, I think you’re ready to assemble the lattice. Did you want to start now?”

“Do you have time to watch and make sure I do it right?” she asked.

“For a few hours, yes. This isn’t really the best environment to work in, though, especially not with a baby needing your supervision.”

She followed my eyes back to Nailu, who’d grabbed hold of the spinning pebbles and was now being lifted several inches in the air before he lost his grip and fell onto his butt, only to unsteadily rise back to his feet to try again a few seconds later. He was determined, I’d give him that much.

“Mom and Dad won’t be home until dinner,” she said.

“Oh, what are they doing?”

“I didn’t ask too many questions. Hopefully not making another baby.”

I snorted. “Just get to work. I’ll keep Nailu out of trouble.”

“Are you sure?”

“I think I can handle it, Senica.”

Although, truth be told, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d taken care of a child. I’d been an only child in my past life and far too focused on survival to worry about anyone else. This time around, I’d been the younger sibling until Nailu had come along, and I’d been too busy with my own life to spend much time with him.

There was also the fact that most of my fondness for my family came from the Gravin part of me. I’d been almost three years old before awakening my former memories, and his love for our parents and our sister had strongly influenced my own feelings for them. That wasn’t the case with Nailu. If I was going to love my little brother, that would come entirely from me.

I wasn’t sure I was capable of it. It was hard to relate to people, to empathize with their petty problems, to not feel superior in every way to them. I was in a world surrounded by strangers, even the strongest of whom were essentially children to me. There was literally only one person from my past life still walking around, and he was doing his best to kill me. Although, in his defense, I’d tried to kill him first.

As far as Nailu was concerned, I didn’t feel the connection to him that I did to the rest of my family. I frowned down at him as he caught me looking his way and started laughing. Maybe today would be a good opportunity to spend some time with this baby and see if I could encourage those feelings to grow, or if I really was nothing but a black-hearted bastard incapable of doing more than assessing every person around me for what they were worth and treating every interaction with cold calculations.

Maybe it was only the Gravin part of me buried deep down that allowed me to care even for my own family. If I’d awakened immediately like I was supposed to instead of taking years to gather the mana needed to trigger my soul invocations, I probably wouldn’t even have that.

“Alright,” I said, cutting that line of thought short. “Go ahead and start putting the pieces together. I’ll keep an eye on you and let you know if I see anything go wrong.”

At my side, my sister closed her eyes and started manipulating the mana inside her core.