Several hours later, we had not only returned to T?r Gronn but to my ship as well. I’d invited everyone who had ventured with us to Taran’s home back to the galley of the Astray to catch up, so to speak. I’d also invited the terse elder Nyxwing who went by the name Umbric with us, as thanks for assisting with Azarus and Sena’s Familiar binding. The overgrown Mystical magpie had rolled his eye at me but politely declined before winging off into the trees to nest with his brethren.

  Taran had taken me up on the offer, though.

  Right now, it was only Azarus, Fade, Sena, and I sitting around the dinner table in the somewhat tight confines of my galley.The Astray wasn’t a tiny ship, but I wouldn’t call her large either. As it was, Sena had shrunk her form to a similar size as Fade, and chosen to laze along one of the far walls while Fade rested underneath the circular table. That just left Azarus and me to entertain the disguised form of Taran at my table. I’d laid Aveline down for a nap in our quarters after we had gotten back to the ship, as she had been a bit tuckered out from the journey and the excitement of the day. The rest of my friends had yet to show their faces since I believe they were all still in town. It was barely midday by this point, as the entire journey to and back after our rituals hadn’t really taken all that long.

  To my surprise, the elder Spirit Wolf had accepted one of the bottles of rice wine Azarus had manifested from seemingly nowhere. At my look, my Dwarven friend had just shrugged and offered me a bottle as well, before popping the cork on his own.

  You asshole. First, you smuggle booze onto my ship, and then you hide it from me until now? You’re lucky I don't through your stunty ass overboard.

  To Azarus’s credit, though…

  It was pretty good stuff.

  The three of us clinked our bottles together and took a swig. Taran let out a pleased breath when he was done with his own. “Ah…quite good. I must admit, it’s been a long time since I’ve tasted Kawamaran rice wine,” He mused thoughtfully. “Centuries, in fact. It isn’t my favorite of the mortal alcohols, but it’s pleasant enough.”

  I snorted over the rim of my own bottle. “A big drinker, are you?”

  “You’d be surprised,” Taran smirked at me. “The Mynyyd Clans are quite fond of their drink, I’m sure you’re unsurprised to hear. The Thunderhearts in particular brew a quite fine mead. Very in demand across the continent, you know. I’ve developed a taste for it over the years.”

  “Yeah?” Azarus smirked back at him, leaning back in his chair. “You sneak into town often fer a pint?”

  “Sneak is a dirty word, Envoy,” Taran scoffed at him, taking another swig. “The only people who can’t recognize this form on sight are foreigners. I’ve never felt the need to hide my presence from the children of my own long-departed Familiar.”

  “Familiar, eh?” Azarus quirked an amused eyebrow. “I’d heard ya had a partner of yer own, but are ya sayin’ the whole familiar thing is a two-way street?”

  Taran tilted his head in mild surprise at the Dwarf. In the meanwhile, I was staring at Taran with mild suspicion. “Of course it is. Just as Sena is now your Familiar, you are now her Familiar. It’s a mutually beneficial partnership, after all. We’re not parasites.”

  “Cool, cool. But back up a second,” I said, pointing the rim of my bottle at Taran accusingly. “You’re not teaching Fade any bad habits, are you? Like I dunno…boozing?”

  I had no desire to deal with underage alcoholic Spirit Wolves. God, I can only imagine the fits of moodiness.

  “Not really,” I heard a young voice echo through my mind, as I heard an amused canine chuff from under the table. “The mead smells nice from the…honey? I think? But I don’t like the taste.”

  In response, I just narrowed my eyes at Taran further. “Doesn’t like the taste, eh?”

  Taran just rolled his eyes at me and changed the subject. “Now, as for what everyone receives from a Familiar bond…it can be quite significant indeed.”

  Azarus and I, almost in sync, lowered our bottles, exchanged a glance, and leaned forward in sudden interest.

  “There’s more?” I asked curiously. “I thought the whole point of it was for the mental connection.”

  “What? No,” Taran scoffed. “There’s more to the bond than that. Elsewise, it never would have been created in the first place. First things first. Azarus, Nathan. The both of you should have received a new General Talent named Familiar Bond. Go ahead and see for yourself. While more benefits will manifest themselves as your bond grows in strength, there is one notable thing that you have received already. You might well notice it, upon examination of your Status.”

  I blinked, while Azarus didn’t and simply pulled out a small, hinged mirror I knew he kept on his person for Status updates. He’d forged the thing himself, and I’d always thought it kind of looked like a makeup compact from Earth. I shrugged and called for Hidden Amidst the Spheres. I doubt my Status had budged an inch since we’d finished our business on Goryuen, but it’s not like it cost me anything to check it.

  Oh. Uh…

  I hadn’t realized I’d gotten a Talent for Navigation. It…made sense, I suppose. The System gave out Talents for all kinds of mundane abilities and everyday skills. In retrospect, it didn’t surprise me at all that I’d picked up one for Navigation on the high seas, after how I’d piloted the Astray across the Kawamaran sea.

  I couldn’t help but wonder if Bella had the Navigation Talent as well.

  Only very briefly, though. I didn’t want my mood to be ruined.

  Hurriedly, I clicked yes, taking a brief glance over my full numerical Status as did so. I’d seen it so many times in the past that I nearly missed one important change. Something that had very interesting implications.

  My Mana was showing at one-hundred and one percent. I had never seen anything like that before. As I watched, my Status window was updated in real-time and ticked up to one hundred and two.

  Well.

  Wasn’t that interesting.

  “The hells?” I heard Azarus ask in a baffled tone. I flicked my eyes up to see my Dwarven friend looking uncharacteristically baffled, scratching his chin as he gazed into his small mirror. “A hundred and three percent Ki? That…ain’t possible. Right?”

  Movement caught my eye, and I saw Taran shaking his head, thankfully antler-free in the tight environs of my galley. “On the contrary, it’s the largest benefit from the bond,” He said with a knowing smile. “The two bonded are capable of sharing their internal energies with each other, even across great distances. The flow is not overly large, to be sure, but the channel can be forcibly widened in an emergency. Furthermore, the nature of our kinds Aetherial refinement inevitably means that there will be a great deal of leftover waste energy. Thus, you’ll likely find yourself with bleed-through in your own pools, Azarus, Nathan.”

  “Hmm…” I heard Sena speak up, raising her head from its resting position on her paws. “And what of us, Taran? What benefit do young Fade and I get from this binding? I…admit I never paid much attention to Mother’s lessons on Familiarity. It never seemed relevant, considering our isolation.”

  Taran nodded patiently at the comparatively younger Mystic Beast. “I do not blame you. However, it should be obvious, should it not? Our nature as partly Spiritual existences means that any Aether inherent to our beings cannot be refined for use. To do so would be to invite injury or even death, as well you know. This means that any Mana or Ki of our own we seek to use must be respirated and refined on the spot, before it is shaped and stored into a viable Chant. Thus, the bond with a mortal bypasses this issue. Any refined energy of your own can be stored in your Familiar across the bond in a similar manner to how we prepare our Chants. Depending on the speed of your Chanting, you shall find that this allows you to rapidly prepare Ki and deploy it into a viable Chant at the same speed a mortal Cultivator would cast an Art.”

  Huh. That’s…interesting, and not at all how Magic works. What I was gathering from what I’d been told about the Eldrydd Path so far presented an interesting picture. For people like Azarus and me, we essentially had an internal reactor that passively processed raw Aether and refined it into Mana or Ki. It was then stored in our soul and could be drawn on at any time to cast a Spell or an Art. The weakness there, such as it was, was that we couldn’t speed up the processing component of our Core. My understanding was that not even Wisdom affected that part, only the size of the pool available to us. It made me wonder just how long it would take someone like Grey or Honoka to fill their Mana pool once it had been emptied.

  And then it hit me. I had the answer to that question.

  Months.

  In the aftermath of Grey’s enslavement, he had been greatly weakened. He hadn’t been capable of utilizing the full breadth of his abilities and Spells until after we had left Caer Drarrow. At the time, I had thought this was just a facet of either his age or just the insidiousness of the Slave Bond. But it hadn’t been, had it? His Mana pool had been completely drained, and it took several months for his Soul to be filled with the power he needed to wield his full strength.

  Wow. That…kinda sucked, didn’t it? As I grew in power, I was going to need to be more careful with how I spent my Mana, instead of the other way around. Huge chunks of it being drained at one time, with progressively more powerful Spells, had the chance of severely weakening you. Thus, you had to be more tactical about the deployment of your might. A single misstep would mean that you might not be able to respond to someone just as capable as you were, if things turned on you in the future.

  I had wondered for a while now why Grey and Honoka and all the other old monsters on Vereden were so reluctant to wield their might. If they were all so strong, why hadn’t they just solved all of the issues facing the planet by essentially flexing on them? But this…this answered the question.

  It was about the caution.

  I was currently at a level where my pool was small enough that it could be refilled in a night’s rest. But I had noticed that the rate seemed to be slowing. On Goryuen, I’d needed to get used to not being at full Mana all the time, noticing it coming back slower than I was used to. I could only expect that to increase over time. I’d need to be more cautious myself in how I spend my Mana.

  That is…

  If I hadn’t just bound a Familiar.

  Sena sat up from her lounging to furrow her brow in astonishment. “That’s…that’s insane. That completely circumvents the primary weakness of the Eldrydd Path, the necessary preparation time of Mystical effects. At any point in time, we can rapidly process Aether for use in our Chants, but we can’t hold onto it. But if we can store it…” She shook her crimson-furred head in bafflement. “Why isn’t this more common?”

  She had a good point, actually. I’m not sure I’d even actually met anyone who had a Familiar up to now. If, through a bond like this, mortal and Spiritkind were able to address one of our primary weaknesses, why didn’t I see Familiars everywhere?

  Taran finally lost the amused smile on his face. “Because it’s been abused in the past,” He said somberly. “My understanding is that upon studying the System, the Great Spirits deliberately designed the Eldrydd Path as something complementary. Something that mortals would see, and upon acknowledging it, choose to work hand in hand with Spiritkind. That this could help to bridge the gap between our peoples now that the hated gods had been banished. It was…an unexpected bout of naivete from such ancient and powerful beings.”

  I heaved a frustrated sigh, already guessing where this was going. I didn’t stop myself from reaching down, picking up my bottle of booze, and shotgunning what was left as Taran continued.

  “Unfortunately, the inherent nature of mortality is that of greed,” The disguised Spirit Wolf said almost distantly, leaning back in his chair and staring off into space. “I was witness to it all, as one of the first Familiars. The bond requires either a Spirit or one of the People to truly function. And the mortals immediately recognized both that need, and the incredible boons that it granted. For centuries as the knowledge of the bond spread, our people were hunted by those hungry for power and-”

  “Essentially enslaved,” I cut in, an ugly scowl cutting across my face. In my sudden rage, I wasn’t able to control the strength of my grip.

  The bottle held in it shattered, shards of glass cutting into my skin. I barely paid any attention to the sudden surge of pain or the blood now dripping onto my table.

  I was too angry to care.

  “Fucking slavery,” I hissed, nearly trembling in my seat. “Why does it always come back to fucking SLAVERY on this FUCKING planet?!”

  I didn’t realize I had stood up from my chair until I felt a broad palm lay itself on my shoulder. Whipping my head around, I found Azarus standing there with a somber, almost ashamed look on his bearded face. “Keep it down, Nate,” He said to me quietly. “Ye’ll wake the kid. She don’t need to see you like this.”

  I took a deep, shuddering breath at his words and nodded. I barely heard Taran’s next words through the pounding of the blood in my ears.

  “As you say, Precursor,” Taran continued in the now silent galley, ancient disappointment in his voice. “There was a period of time where it was quite dangerous to be a Mystic Beast, in mortal lands. And so we retreated to enclaves of our own, under the protection of the Great Spirits. Nowadays, it’s quite rare for our kind to show ourselves to the mortals, and thus even rarer for a Familiar bond to be formed. Still…to my understanding, it’s quite prized in your-their,” He corrected himself. “Society.”

  I just shook my head in helpless fury, as I felt a furry head shove itself under my uninjured hand. Looking down, I met the concerned gaze of Fade as he leaned into me.

  “I’m here, Nate,” I heard him say, for me and me and alone.

  I took a deep breath…

  And let it out.

  “I’d…better go take care of this,” I said shortly, briefly raising my blood palm.

  I didn’t wait for an answer before I stepped out of the room.

  Fade followed close behind me.