Caen opened his mouth to say something to Zeris, but Ellu snapped her fingers, drawing their attention.

“Gatherers,” she said without looking at them. “Harvest these fentils over here.” She pointed to a patch of vines with deep purple flowers.

“We told her our names,” Zeris grumbled in Olden Vishic as she undid the ribbon holding the sacks in place.

Caen put on a pair of thick gloves and took out his paring knife. Its curved blade was thoroughly sharpened and bit into the vines with little difficulty. Ellu moved on to inspect another patch, Dari holding up an open tome, which she referenced.

“I'm not sure what it is, but it doesn’t seem like it’s the fourth bloodline doing this,” Caen said to Zeris as they worked. The complete truth was harder to explain right now, but he could give her all the details after they left here. “It gives me these strange… senses.”

“And somehow, your… affinity in Spirit-healing increased?” she asked as she held a sack open for him.

“It was a temporary increase,” he said as he carefully excavated a length of fentil with the soil still intact and placed it in the sack. “I need to experiment more.”

Zeris nodded, seeming halfway torn between excitement and confusion. Her tendrils grazed his spirit as they switched places. She harvested the fentils while he held the sack open.

Caen wasn't sure how to repeat that experience. He thought about it and brought to mind the initial feeling he'd had when Klaver's Variate had worked, sinking into that harmony. He felt a weak but distinct resistance that hadn't been there the first time, but tentatively, he pushed through, focusing on Zeris as well.

Instantly, that fullness and completeness of self unfolded, and he experienced the sensation of a connection clicking into place once more between him and Zeris.

A razor-thin, black line ran from his midsection to hers. And she was coated as before in that Zeris-shaped, multi-colored structure of curving and twisting threads that vibrated. Caen was assaulted by sounds, notes and textures; ghostly sensations, nuances, vague impressions. It was overwhelming.

But this time, there was no tapestry overlaying his own body. He lifted a hand to his face, and it looked normal, bearing none of the features that Zeris did. What was different now? The feeling of fundamental change that he'd felt last time was notably absent as well.

The whole thing felt alien and familiar at the same time. And the fact that he hadn't used any spirit pattern to initiate this new and strange effect reminded him of his Ereshta'al tendrils, which also didn't require spirit patterns.

It was so strange to move from his normal senses to this… existential perception. It felt as though he were looking at… looking at her very soul.

Magnificent and indecipherable at the same time.

What exactly is this, though? Caen wondered.

Was it a more detailed display of her spirit? No, that didn't seem right. Though he'd never seen a spirit with his eyes before, he'd sensed far too many of them. This multisensory tapestry before him felt structurally richer somehow, deeper, and more holistic.

The word ‘soul’ came to mind again, but it was a purely philosophical concept, and many discourses he'd come across considered it to simply be a term for describing the truest part of a person's being. Though he'd only ever seen the concept of Soul magic portrayed in legends about powerful entities able to glean a person's thoughts and desires from a single look or in stories about dark, arcane rituals. One such story detailed how a group of siblings with a strange magical heritage had been hunted down and killed by a powerful Completionist cult that sought to harvest their arcane potential.

If this was anything like any of those, then Caen had just stumbled onto something truly concerning.

He ran through a bunch of spells. Spirit-healing, Gleam, Fire, Body-enhancement. Nothing. His spirit clung to the typical unwillingness of abjection.

He turned his gaze away from Zeris, panning his surroundings. And as he did, the weird depiction of Zeris dimmed in his perception.

The moment she was completely out of sight, the effects—sounds, sensations, and all—vanished with a pronounced lurch. It felt something like an involuntary spasm of his… existence. Dazed, Caen turned back to Zeris, seeing her normally again. “I don't think it worked the same way this time,” he said, already moving his spirit in a familiar pattern.

“Really? I could feel my spirit tense when you started looking at me,” she said, still cutting into a root as she glanced his way. “My tendrils halted for an instant.”

Caen frowned. “But not the first time?”

“I wasn't paying attention then.”

Caen hemmed thoughtfully. He felt a spasm in his existence, in his soul, whenever he unfurled it and whenever he broke the connection. Zeris also felt a sort of hitch in her, well, spirit when he connected to her. Was there a correlation here? “Let's do some more testing,” he said.

He… unfurled his existence and connected with her, feeling that same existential hiccup just as the razor-thin, black line sprang up between them. “How about now?”

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He could… tell that she'd said something, but her voice was lost to the cacophony of sounds and sensations. She slapped his shoulder, though the sensation was a bit muted. Unsure of how to turn off the ability, Caen looked away, and the connection vanished. Again with an involuntary spasm of his soul. There was a distinct resistance whenever he activated or deactivated the ability. This hadn't happened the first time.

“You were yelling,” she said.

“Oh,” Caen said. The sounds and sensations from the ability overwhelmed his perception significantly. He would need to work on that. He noticed now that some members of the party were giving them strange looks.

“Anyway, it happened again,” she said. “My tendrils halted for a second or so, then I could move my tendrils just fine.”

He activated the ability again, and Zeris confirmed that her tendrils had been briefly halted once more.

Caen frowned. “I wonder if this has something to do with Amping and Dampening?” That discipline of magic concerned effects which boosted and restricted magical ability.

“Maybe it does,” Zeris said with a shrug. She was in a good mood.

Caen was in a good mood too. But was this all a cumulative result of having four bloodlines? A… gestalt of some kind? He hadn't ever heard of a person with so many before. Even three had been uncommon enough that he'd only heard or read about very few cases of it.

Worst still, he didn't even know what the fourth bloodline was.

“Shadelings,” Affen announced, the muscle beneath his skin rippling unnaturally.

“We're going deeper anyway,” Ellu said. “And you were paid. You might as well start earning your keep.”

“Paid?” Binam said, smiling thinly. “You haggled us down to a third of our rates and only gave us half upfront.”

“And I'm yet to see you working for the other half,” she said dismissively.

Caen and Zeris exchanged a look.

A large pack of shadelings prowled into view. Caen counted eight of them. They were all one-tailed shadelings.

No one in the party seemed particularly bothered, and he and Zeris had been here far too many times with and without Aunt Vensha. One-tailed shadelings didn't pose too great a risk to experienced parties.

Binam began muttering an incantation, his fingers flitting through gestures. There was a spell focus on his right hand; a structure of metal wrapping around his wrist and fitted about his hand. The air above his outstretched palm crackled. Thin and barely visible streaks of frail blue lightning arced from him towards the shadelings. Several of them got hit, but that only slowed them down.

Hez and Affen darted for the shadelings. Hez had two shortswords on either hand, held in… Caen squinted. She was holding her shortswords in reverse grip, and their blades began glowing a deep orange. That was either an artifact or Hez was a Fire practician.

Affen's body bulged with each step as he transformed into werewolf mixform: a combination of human and beast forms. He was a hairy mass of limbs and claws, swollen to almost two times his previous width as he began running on all fours with an uncanny agility.

Together, the pair tore into the shadelings. Affen with claws and teeth, and Hez spinning through the creatures with her shortswords, as she cleaved them in pieces.

Caen decided to try something. “I’m going to experiment on the shadelings,” he said to Zeris in Olden Vishic. This was the language they'd been speaking all along.

“Go for it. I'll keep you from being killed and eaten alive if that becomes necessary.”

He snorted. “I'm glad you're having fun.”

He engaged the effect he was starting to think of as a sort of soul sense. No spells needed. No discernible patterns of spirit. His existence spasmed, then he felt a connection, a razor-thin, black line stretching between himself and one of the shadelings. Immediately, the creature was overlaid with a canine-shaped structure of flowing lights and twisting lines. Most of the colors were dull, and even the threads of light didn't shine as brightly as Zeris's had. For all he knew, the sounds, sensations, and vague impressions were no different from hers, though.

The shadeling jerked sideways as if stumbling. Then it began to shudder. Threads of light and spinning smoke vibrated chaotically in his Soul-sense.

Then Hez, with her shortswords, tore into the shadeling he'd been observing. At the same time, his Soul-sense deactivated, collapsing back into just physical sight with a spasm. All he could see now was the actual physical body of the decapitated shadeling.

Looking at Hez, who was sprinting after a shadeling, he activated his Soul-sense again. He connected to Hez, a black line stretching between them. Just as Hez's soul structure overlaid her physical body, she stumbled. The orange glow of her shortswords didn't dim, though. She regained her balance, seeming confused as Affen finished off the last two shadelings.

Caen ended the connection by looking away from her. He felt as though he'd gotten little sleep overnight. Some exhaustion in his body, mind, and spirit. He'd barely lost any mana since he'd last checked, but his head was starting to ache. He chewed on some more numb-root, dulling the aches in his ribs and arm as well.

Binam and his companions began piling the shadelings in a heap.

Caen and Zeris exchanged a dark look. Shadelings were drawn to the gaseous emissions of their slain kin—many called these emissions ‘miasma’, though, for all Caen knew, miasma had no negative effects when breathed in, but could cling to surfaces and clothes, acting as a sort of beacon to other shadelings. It was generally bad form to stay too long in a location where several shadelings had been killed.

“My gatherer friends,” Binam said, walking up to Caen and Zeris. He gestured at the heap of shadeling corpses. “Help us put these into sacks, will you?”

“If we touched any of that,” Caen said carefully, “we’d become shadeling magnets.”

Beside him, Zeris folded her arms, nodding.

“Oh, relax!” Binam said, then jabbed a thumb at his companions behind him. “Me and these two can easily handle anything under a three-tails.”

“Do as they tell you, Gatherer,” Ellu said as she perused a page from her tome with Dari. “You were paid to work.”

Dari, beside her, flashed them an apologetic smile.

“I'm bare seconds away from giving these shitwits a piece of my mind,” Zeris said out loud in Olden Vishic, irritation leaking into her voice.

“Hey now, come on,” Binam said, frowning. He looked to Caen. “What did she just say, huh? Is your sister cursing me out?”

“She said we would be willing to drag the monster parts behind us if you fill the sacks yourselves,” Caen said.

Binam scratched his head and glanced back at the heap. “Really? It's just nine corpses. But alright. I guess we could do that.”

“Yeah… I'm still not touching those things,” Zeris said quietly.

Caen snorted. “Fair enough.”