15-44. Permission

Sara read the message multiple times before she really started to believe its contents. Even then, it wasn’t until she was back at the academy, in her dormitory and sitting on the bed, that she began to internalize what Elijah had done. Once she managed to get a handle on it, she sprang from her bed, checked her appearance in the bathroom, then immediately headed to the closest cloud terminal.

It wasn’t long before she was banging on Tura’s door.

“What?!” came an annoyed call from inside the hut. Sara had no idea why her auntie chose to live in such a hovel, but if there was one thing she’d discovered over the past couple of decades, it was that Druids were, one and all, weird. That was the only real explanation for why Tura was the way she was.

“Auntie Tura! It’s me!”

The door flung open. “You think I don’t know that, eh?” the short drake spat.

Sara threw herself at her auntie, wrapping the frail-seeming woman in a tight embrace. Because she wasn’t going to visit one of her favorite people in the whole multiverse without giving her a hug, was she? Definitely not. There were far too few hugs in the world, and that was a detriment Sara wanted to remedy.

It might even be her life’s great quest.

The embrace lasted for a few long seconds, during which Tura complained and tried to wriggle free. But Sara’s grip was strong. Not nearly powerful enough to constrain a real deity like Tura, but Sara secretly suspected that the old Druid enjoyed their hugs as much as she did.

Finally, Sara released her.

Tura muttered something under her breath, then straightened her homespun robes. Sara didn’t let the look fool her, though. Just like Tura, those garments were more than they seemed. After all, the old woman was a Druid, and a crafting-focused one at that. Normally, she only made potions, bad stew, and other consumable concoctions, but she could just as easily weave clothing as well.

In any case, as she adjusted her clothes, Tura turned and tottered back inside. Sara followed, taking a long, deep breath so she could enjoy the medicinal scent of all the herbs her auntie had gathered. Some, she’d harvested herself, either from the garden or from the surrounding jungle. Others, she’d imported from faraway places – a luxury that most Alchemists could never afford.

But Tura wasn’t an Alchemist, even if she shared some of their abilities. She was a Wyrmroot Sage, a very rare class that incorporated many different disciplines and traits from three separate archetypes. A true hybrid, and one that should’ve been stretched so thin that it couldn’t function properly. However, Tura somehow made it work, either through talent or by virtue of her circumstances as one of their mother’s favored children.

Probably a bit of both, if Sara was honest.

Either way, Tura was capable of producing some truly magnificent concoctions that people across the Empire of Scale paid exorbitant sums to consume. The only big detriment was that her products tended to expire much more quickly than those of a true Alchemist, which meant that she couldn’t stockpile inventory.

Most of her potions also tasted absolutely vile, though Sara wasn’t certain if that was intentional or simply a byproduct of her class’s lack of focus. Probably the former, if she knew her auntie.

The only exception to that rule was what came out of her cooking cauldron, which almost always had some sort of stew simmering. A second after Sara stepped inside the cabin, the smell of one such stew slammed into her nose.

She once again breathed deep, closing her eyes so she could enjoy it more fully.

“Bah. Sit down, girl. You’re too skinny,” Tura barked.

“No I’m not,” Sara protested, looking down at her flat stomach. If anything, she’d gained a little weight. Mostly muscle from her training at the academy. She never meant to be a combatant, but martial practice was still a very large part of any dragon’s education. And while she couldn’t really hold her own with the real fighters out there, she could at least protect herself.

The price of that was quite a lot of depowered weight-lifting, running, and, of course, sparring.

The thought of that last bit sent a shiver up her spine, but she suppressed the memory that bubbled to the surface of her thoughts. Elijah had dealt with that. Skahan was gone. No more responsive than a root. And he probably would never recover from what Elijah did to him.

Good riddance, too.

Mind mages had always seemed creepy to her, partially because of cultural disdain but mostly due to the fact that you could never trust them. Even if one presented themselves as a good person, how could anyone know that was the truth? If she liked a mind mage, Sara would immediately become suspicious.

The only way to guard against that was to buy protective items or develop one’s mind cultivation to specifically counter those sorts of abilities. From what she understood, Elijah had taken both steps, though he’d not done so intentionally. His item-based mental protection came from a helmet he’d gotten as a reward for a completed Primal Realm, and he’d developed his unique mind structure almost by accident.

Sure, it was intentional. He always was when it came to cultivation, even if he had a tendency to follow his instincts and change course mid-way through. Or at least that was the impression Sara got when he told her all those stories about destroying his body and soul, only to rebuild them better than before.

Either way, he’d not intended to forge a high-quality mental defense with the structure of his mind. It was just a happy side effect.

Sara had no such natural defenses, though she’d used most of her accumulated fortune to purchase the ring around her finger. Her mother would have bought it for her if she’d asked, but Sara didn’t want to build her entire life around Prosperity’s wealth. Borrowed power was not power at all.

And Sara had plans.

Lots and lots of plans.

Tura slammed a heavy, clay bowl down on the scrubbed wood table. “Eat, girl. You’ll blow away if you don’t put some meat on your bones.”

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“Yes, auntie Tura,” Sara said, sliding onto the bench seating.

In truth, she needed no real encouragement. Tura’s soups and stews were all so delicious that Sara had sometimes wondered if the Wyrmroot Sage was actually a Cook in disguise. They also came with a jolt of vitality and ethera that served to rejuvenate her as well as any mid-grade potion.

Sara hefted a wooden spoon and dug in. The second the taste hit her tongue – like life, energy, savory richness, and perfection, all rolled into one – she let out a low moan of pleasure.

“Ohmigawd,” she muttered around her first mouthful.

“What?” asked Tura, cocking her head to the side.

Only then did Sara realize that, in the year she’d spent on Earth, she’d picked up a few new phrases. Mostly from the younger grove members, but she’d also gotten quite a few conversational cues from Selene, Atticus’s wife. When she was around people like Elijah, she tended to play up her matronly role, but when it was just Sara, she became far more casual.

And a bit raunchy.

Sara had told her a thousand times that she did not want to hear about the woman’s sex life, but Selene didn’t see any reason to filter her conversation. When Sara objected, she’d say, “It’s just us girls.”

Eventually, Sara had gotten used to it. She had even participated in those discussions on a few occasions, though her lack of real experience in the field definitely showed.

Either way, the propensity to exclaim about some formless deity, either in moments of anger, shock, or sheer happiness, had come from Selene. It was a senseless phrase, but Sara liked it. It really had a way of setting the tone.

“S’good,” Sara said, gesturing at the stew with her spoon. She swallowed. “What’s in it?”

“Does it matter, girl? You wouldn’t know a bellacrox from a misingail.”

“Those are nonsense words.”

“Bah!” Tura exclaimed, her hand twitching around the head of her cane. She clearly wanted to thump Sara, but she restrained herself. Not that it would do much good. Sara had been on the receiving end of more than one of Tura’s smacks, and she had become inoculated to the effect. “Eat. Don’t worry about what’s in it.”

Sara didn’t need much prompting to follow Tura’s order, and over the next thirty minutes, she eagerly devoured three helpings of the meaty, savory stew. In that time, she managed to weave a few snippets of information between the hearty bites, telling Tura the reason she’d visited in the first place.

For all that she enjoyed spending time with her auntie, and she definitely liked the stew, her trip had come at the end of incredulity. With Elijah. Because of course, he would be the source.

“Seeds, auntie Tura. He chose seeds,” Sara complained. “All that treasure, most of it priceless. He could’ve gotten a world-ending weapon –”

“He has better,” Tura pointed out, referring Elijah’s spear. Thorn.

“Armor, then.”

“Again, he has better. Not individually, but that set of his is perfectly suited to his abilities. You will remember from your studies that –”

“I know,” groaned Sara. Taking on the tone of a lecturer and gesturing with her spoon, she continued, “System rewards often outperform their crafted counterparts because the system tailors each item to the user’s specific circumstances.” She smirked. “Moriar. Second edition.”

“If you know, then you shouldn’t have suggested armor,” Tura reminded her. Then, she pointed to a few drops of stew that had flown from the spoon. “You will clean that before you leave.”

“Ugh.”

“So, what else should Elijah have chosen, then, eh? No armor. No weapons. A natural treasure perhaps?”

“Maybe.”

“Those spores – not seeds, I will remind you – are just that. A nascent natural treasure more powerful than anything else in that treasury,” Tura reminded her.

“But they’re useless!”

“To most. Not to Elijah, I suspect,” Tura countered. “His situation is unique, girl. And his bond with that tree is…interesting. Druids are connected to such things.”

“But he’s not that kind of Druid,” Sara argued, repeating a line Elijah frequently said himself.

“Elijah is more that kind of Druid than just about anyone I’ve ever met. That boy loves nature like he’s half spryggent,” Tura claimed. “I believe he made the right choice.”

“It’s so boring, though.”

“It won’t be when he returns to that excised planet and uses it to help Treebie,” Tura pointed out. “Bah. What kind of a name is that, anyway? Treebie…”

“I like it.”

“You would.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sara demanded.

“It means that you are infatuated with your brother.”

“Ew.”

“Not romantically, girl,” Tura sighed. “Young people. So single-minded. No – you met him at a formative time in your life. Just on the cusp of sapience. So close that you likely believed you’d already gotten there. But then he saves you from the clutches of an evil cult.”

“I think the cult was just working for the –”

This time, she did thump Sara with her cane. Right on the head.

“Ow,” Sara said, massaging her skull. “Brain damage is a leading cause of –”

“One must have a brain to be damaged, girl,” Tura interrupted with an evil smile. “As I was saying, Elijah is very important to you. More now than ever. You give him leeway that you would never give anyone else. That is good. He is family. But do not let it blind you. And do not let it lead you into something you can’t handle. He is special, and he has a knack for survival that I’ve never seen before. You do not.”

“Harsh.”

“It is.”

“But fair,” Sara admitted. She was an Administrator by archetype. Not a fighter. Of course she wouldn’t have Elijah’s talents when it came to endurance. But that led her to the next order of business. “I need you to talk to mom.”

“Do you?”

“About me going back to Earth,” Sara said. “I’m almost done with my studies, and I think I can do a lot of good on that planet. I can help Elijah.”

“In what way?” Tura asked.

Sara grinned, then eagerly launched into an abbreviated explanation of her plans. First, she needed to do something about Ironshore. They weren’t nearly as intertwined with the grove as she would like, and the relationship was more like the one between distant cousins than between siblings. She needed to change that, and the means by which she planned to do so centered on Ramik and the city’s prosperity. The idea was simple enough – make it more successful than ever, then tie that success to the grove.

Most people would come to associate the Hartwood Grove with success, rather than spontaneous beheadings and destroyed cities.

Nara and the others had already made a lot of headway in that endeavor, but they were incapable of pushing it any further. Sara could do that. And she intended to make a lot of money and gain a lot of levels in the process. Maybe even a feat or two.

Next, she wanted to audit the Hartwood Foundation. She knew there was corruption in the organization. Mismanagement, too. At best, the people in charge were there because they liked helping people. Healers, mostly. They didn’t have the capacity to manage an administration of its size. Sara could help with that, and hopefully, by doing so, she could make their efforts more efficient.

Then, they could help more people.

And finally, she had some business with Atticus. Most of it concerned the contract between him and Elijah. The one where Elijah would underwrite transportation of goods, using his status as an Emerald Archon to save an enormous amount of money. Atticus was a good Merchant. Maybe even a great one. But no Merchant ever succeeded on a multiversal scale without the support of an equally talented Administrator. The math alone would set the man’s brain on fire.

Sara intended to get her fingers on as much of the man’s business as possible. Not in a hostile way. More because she knew how much she could help. Plus, it was fun beating him at his own game. The contract had been mostly a draw, but Sara had won a couple of battles in there.

“And finally,” Sara went on. “I don’t think I can grow while working under mother’s wings. She can’t help but assist, and that will stymie my progress.”

Tura looked her up and down.

Then, at last, she said, “That was a well-reasoned argument, girl. Perhaps that academy wasn’t a complete waste of time and money.”

“Will you talk to her, then? I want to ask her for permission to leave soon.”

Tura nodded. “I will, provided you will promise not to take over that little world.”

“What? I don’t –”

“You’re a dragon, girl. Dragons conquer. Restrain that impulse.”

“I…I will,” Sara said.

“Only for now,” Tura said, leaning forward. “You mustn’t let them know you’re conquering them. Instead, you make it so prosperous that they can’t imagine not following your lead. That is how your mother does it, and I think we all prefer that to the other way.”

“Yeah,” Sara acknowledged. “That makes a lot of sense.”

And then, she and Tura talked about conquering Earth. Not through battle, but through sheer prosperity.