The Southway market square wasn't as crowded as it usually was. Rows of open stalls and kiosks lined the area, selling all sorts of goods and wares.

Caen braced himself and headed deeper into the portion of the market where farm produce and fresh meat were sold. The smells of fruits and vegetables were greatly overpowered by butchered animal parts. It was a hot day, and flies buzzed about, making the ordeal a little unpleasant.

Caen purchased slabs of raw meat and a variety of spices. He got some flour, eggs, a keg of milk, and some sugar. He was hauling two large baskets of these back the way he'd come when he noticed how cool the temperature was despite the glaring sun above.

Caen turned to see a friendly face. A tan man who looked to be in his fifties was sitting in a significantly cleaner stall than the surrounding ones.

“Farmer Brah'm!” Caen called in greeting.

“Ah, if it isn't young Caen, my favorite and most annoying customer,” the man teased. He had a neat salt and pepper beard, kindly eyes with smile lines, and was wearing a straw hat. Lining his display shelves were the largest and ripest-looking fruits around. A sheet of low-grain paper listed them at unreasonably affordable prices.

Caen very carefully did not activate Soul-sense. Caen had always suspected Farmer Brah'm of being at the Percipient stage of magic, which was the stage just above Attuner. If he used Soul-sense on the man, especially while talking with him, it might draw Brah'm's notice to what Caen was doing.

“I came by the other day, but you weren't here,” Caen said. “Old age catching up to you?”

“Ha! I wish. I've been busy handling family matters. My youngest child nigh on gave me a heart attack recently. She just got her Valiant certification—”

“Congratulations!”

“—and went into Redshadow all by herself.”

Caen blinked. “Ah. Is she… okay?”

“Oh, no, no, she’s fine. Back in the very same Plane as we speak, in fact.” He sighed. “Young people! Anyway, what are you looking to get today?”

Caen made his choice of two large oranges, each one almost as large as his head. Ridiculously enough, these weren't even the largest ones the man had ever sold. Farmer Brah'm never allowed anyone to buy more than four fruits. He said he didn't want the traders guild coming for him, but Caen strongly doubted they bothered him.

“Farmer Brah'm, these oranges are very uncommon, wouldn't you say?” He watched the man's face for a reaction.

“What can I say? Man plants the seed, Azana brings forth the result,” Farmer Brah'm answered in the same jovial manner he often did whenever Caen probed. This was their game, and the older man seemed to be enjoying it a little too much.

“It's interesting that the goddess only brings forth this kind of result for you in particular, Farmer Brah'm.”

“I'm just a humble farmer, kid.”

“And I notice there aren't any flies around here either,” Caen said. No flies or insects ever approached a twenty-foot radius around the man's stall, and this only happened whenever Farmer Brah'm was around. The other day when Caen had come here, he'd been assaulted by flies.

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“Maybe it's not their season,” Brah'm laughed.

Caen looked pointedly at the butcher five stalls down, not a single fly buzzed around the woman's stall as she worked on animal entrails. Then Caen looked across from them to the other side of the market where another pair of butchers worked in a cloud of buzzing flies.

“Okay, so flies are back in season, but maybe I use wards, huh? Maybe that's why?”

“What wards? Where are they erected?”

“Ha! How am I supposed to know that? I'm just a humble farmer like I've been telling you.”

“The temperature is much cooler here than it is anywhere else in the market,” Caen added.

“The sun rose this morning, are you going to accuse me of having a hand in that too?”

“Farmer Brah'm, I know you're a Nurturing mage, why won't you admit it?”

“Well, all farmers nurture the ground. In that you are right.”

“You know that's not what I mean,” Caen said.

Brah'm laughed. “Don’t go hurting your head with ridiculous ideas, son.”

Numerous swarms of flies twirled around Caen's head in symmetrical patterns for several seconds, then dispersed. Brah'm was smiling at him smugly. No outward signs of spellcasting engaged whatsoever.

Caen looked around, impressed, then back at the man.

“Everything alright?” Brah'm asked in a faux-innocent voice.

Caen shook his head, smiling. “You're impossible.”

“Yeah yeah yeah. Now, off with you. Stay out of trouble, okay?”

Caen turned to leave. “See you next week, Farmer Brah'm.”

The man waved jovially.

Not a single fly touched Caen till he left the market.

* * *

Back at home, Caen sat across from Zeris at the dining table where she was working on equations.

He'd properly stowed away everything he'd purchased, had taken another bath, and eaten a humongous, juicy orange. Zeris had bullied him for one of them, which was only fair. It was her money after all.

Caen sat down with his grimoire and began running through each discipline of magic listed within, casting the most rudimentary spells he knew in each one. Only a few of them had been recently adapted, and they still took him several long minutes to cast and ended up collapsing. But importantly, this allowed him to determine where his affinities were represented in his soul structure.

He began with the disciplines he had the most practice in, then moved on to the ones he didn't. It took him hours to pinpoint each one and get a feel for all their thread clusters in his soul structure.

He identified fifteen thread clusters in all and spent the rest of the day observing them and drawing diagrams of their shapes in his notes and analogs of their other sensations. Of course, they all felt rigid right now since he wasn't Mimicking anyone.

Boosting his affinity for Spirit-healing, he helped cleanse Zeris's spirit while chatting with her. She helped him cleanse his afterwards.

He rounded out the day by adapting a few more spells in Spirit-healing, Dream-guarding and Fire magic.

Back in his room, he cast a spell that eased him into sleep. It failed several times, and his mood wasn't even ruined in the slightest.

* * *

Caen walked through the looming double doors of Vai's mansion. A woman from the commune was running along the passageway with her son sitting on her shoulders and squealing in laughter.

He held a visualization in his mind and began to contort it into shifting shapes. This was an Astral spell that Uncle Vai had constructed himself to specifically help anyone within his domain locate him. It wasn't a difficult working, but Caen bungled it a few times before it took.

His attention was drawn above, and he looked up to the high ornate ceiling. He knew, with an unsettling degree of certainty, where Vai was. The information had appeared in his mind as though he'd always known it.

That place.

Shuddering, Caen took an elevator to the seventh floor.