“Wait, what?” asked Elijah, crossing his arms. “Say that again?”

“I am sorry. I was under the impression that you had already agreed to permit me to bond with the grove,” Nara said, clearly taken aback. She dropped to her knees and prostrated herself. “I apologize profusely for overstepping.”

She remained there, her body heaving with panicked breaths. Meanwhile, Elijah just stared down at her nearly bare back, wondering what to do. Of course, that was when Sadie approached.

“What’s going on here?” she demanded, quickly covering the intervening ground and grabbing Nara’s arm. She dragged the elf to her feet. She narrowed her eyes at Elijah. “What did you do?”

“Nothing!” he insisted, raising his hands in surrender. “She just asked when we were going to do the bonding ceremony. I asked – or I was trying to ask what that meant. Then she just fell to her knees and started groveling. I have no idea what’s going on.”

Indeed – he had no clue what he’d done to provoke such a reaction. But then again, Nara was still clearly terrified of him. Even more than the people of Ironshore, which was saying something. Likely, it was because she knew enough to recognize just how much stronger he was than her.

“Let’s go back to the beginning then,” Sadie suggested, her arm still protectively enveloping the other Druid. It was a show, Elijah knew. Sadie had made no secret of her distrust. “What is this bonding ceremony?”

Nara blinked. “It is…wait…you truly don’t know, do you?”

“I am so confused,” Elijah admitted.

“The ceremony is necessary. It is a requirement for anyone to truly join the grove. It binds us together and gives us unity of purpose.”

“But what is it?” asked Sadie.

“It requires at least two Druids using Ancestral Circle – or its evolutions – concurrently,” she explained. “On my world, it was also accompanied by a ceremony where the potential member pledged loyalty to the grove. In exchange, the members of the grove also pledged to protect and uphold the newcomer.”

That was when Elijah truly grasped that there was more to joining the grove than simply living there. It was a system-supported bond that would strengthen the grove and serve to codify its members’ support. Being nature-attuned was one safeguard, but it was not foolproof. Plenty of so-attuned people would act against nature. Elijah had learned that when he’d encountered the Tamer in New York. Requiring that someone bind their fate to that of the grove was a good way to curtail those impulses.

“And what about non-Druids?”

“They merely need to be within the grove and possess an appropriately high attunement to nature or its subordinates.”

“I…I did not know that,” Elijah admitted, though it made some degree of sense. However, he hesitated to tie Nara or her people permanently to the grove. They’d only been around for a couple of days, and Elijah felt certain that he’d only seen what they wanted him to see.

It would take weeks – or maybe months – for their true personalities to come through.

Nara saw his hesitation and added, “We needn’t take that step. A true bond to a grove is a sacred thing, and it should not be undertaken lightly. I have yet to earn that right.”

Elijah’s eyes flicked to Sadie, who reacted without expression. She would not intrude in matters of the grove. What’s more, if a nature attunement was necessary, it was clear that she would never truly join.

What did that mean for their relationship? Was it doomed to failure because they were too different? He couldn’t know.

“What about Miggy? He’s bound to the grove. I can feel him.”

“He is a Green Warden,” Nara responded as if that statement explained everything. It did not.

“And?” Elijah asked.

“They are different. Rare. The system codifies their commitment to a grove. No input is needed.”

“So, when I do induct new members of the grove, I’ll be able to feel them the same as I can feel Miguel?” Elijah asked.

She nodded. “That is the case, though to varying degrees based on their power. I apologize if my answers are not more forthcoming. On my world, the grove founders are long since dead. Leadership has been passed along through uncountable generations.”

“I see,” Elijah said, looking away.

The grove and its management was far more complex than he’d thought. It all made perfect sense, but Elijah knew he was only scratching the surface. As Nara had explained, her information was incomplete. Assuredly, he would discover more of the grove’s secrets as his power – and subsequently, that of the grove itself – grew.

But that was an issue for another day. He’d already decided that binding others to the grove would need to wait until they’d proven their sincerity. So, he decided to move on from the subject.

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“You’re aquatic, right?” he asked.

She nodded. “To a degree. We can live in the sea, but we cannot indefinitely survive the depths.”

Then, she went on to explain that they were more like aquatic mammals than fish. They didn’t have gills, but they could hold their breath for incredible durations. In that respect, Elijah likened them to whales or dolphins – which was incredible. Idly, he considered how interesting their anatomy must be.

Given the way Sadie kept glaring at him, Elijah knew better than to ask for the chance to conduct a more thorough investigation of the elf’s body.

Unfortunately, the instincts that kept him alive in the wilderness did not account for his partner’s jealousy, so he didn’t hesitate to describe his cultivation cave to Nara, then invite her to join him.

Sadie didn’t exactly storm off – she was too controlled for that – but the look she gave him was not a pleasant one.

He’d pay for that later, he was certain. But in the meantime, he wanted to show off his cultivation cave. To date, nobody else had seen it. Not even Nerthus, who preferred to avoid salt water altogether.

So, vowing to talk to Sadie later, he led Nara across the island, reveling in her wide-eyed reaction to the sights. She clearly had limited experience with many of the landbound animals, like squirrels and rabbits, so she found them absolutely fascinating. She would doubtless flip out when she met the foxes.

That was a concern for later, though, and it wasn’t long before they reached the beach. Not wanting to get his clothes wet, Elijah used Shape of the Master, adopting the form of cindandir, which got quite a reaction from Nara.

She asked how many beasts he could transform into, and when Elijah told her, she just shook her head. A moment later, she revealed that most shapeshifting classes could only use a couple of forms.

“Guess I’m special, then,” Elijah remarked, looking up at her. “Come on. You’ll enjoy this.”

He waded into the sea, then swam toward the opening to his cave. Nara followed, swimming almost as well in her natural form as he did as the amphibious cindrandir. After only a few moments, he entered the tunnel-like cave, which he followed along until, at last, they arrived in the roughly spherical cave.

The entire time, Elijah noted that the density of both the vitality and ethera was even higher than he’d anticipated. As he swam, it almost felt like he was moving through something semi-sold. That wasn’t truly the case, of course. But it felt like it nonetheless.

And the cave itself was even thicker with ethera.

Dense thickets of kelp stretched from the floor to the surface, with fish, crustaceans, and sea snakes swimming in between. And along the bottom, amidst the silt, grew the leviathan’s bones. They’d grown quite a bit – especially from the last time he’d used the cave for its intended purpose – anchoring deep and spreading across the entire floor. The red coral had even crept a dozen or so feet up the wall, and Elijah suspected that if he left the cave alone, it would spread across every available surface. Likely, it would creep down the tunnel as well.

In short, the cave was even denser in vitality than the center of the grove, though the thickness of the ethera wasn’t quite at that level.

Elijah surfaced, then took a deep breath as he basked in the glow of the green crystals embedded in the rocky surface above. He lay back, floating as he heard Nara breach the surface as well. She gasped.

“What is this place?” she asked breathlessly, her white hair plastered to her skull. It made her tapered ears look even larger than normal.

“This is my cultivation cave,” Elijah answered. “I started it years ago.”

Then, he explained his process, and to his surprise, she looked incredibly concerned when he described how he’d used it. From his perspective, the constant destruction and rebirth of the cave was a strength, and each time it regrew, it did so much stronger than ever before. However, Nara clearly didn’t see things that way, though she refrained from outright chastising him.

“May I stay here? For a while, at least?” she asked.

Elijah answered, “Sure. Just don’t cultivate here. I’m going to need it soon.”

Indeed, he had continued to make progress with the cultivation of his mind, and he would soon reach the point where he would need a huge influx in ethera. The best place to do that was the cultivation cave – unless he got dragged into another Primal Realm. In that case, he’d just use whatever he found, though he hoped to delay that inevitable eventuality a little longer.

He still wasn’t fully recovered – from a psychological standpoint – after his trips into the Chimeric Forge or the Elemental Maelstrom. Piling more trauma on top of what was already there would just send him backsliding.

“I would never,” she revealed.

Elijah shrugged, responding, “I would. Ours is a world of cycles. Life and death. Destruction and rebirth. If we’re meant to be part of an ecosystem, then we can’t let ourselves fall into the trap of protecting it to its own detriment. In the end, strength comes from adversity.”

“What do you know of adversity?” she blurted. Then, her eyes widened, and she stammered an apology. “I did not mean to say that.”

“It’s okay,” Elijah said. “It’s a valid question. You look at the grove, and all you see is good fortune, right? And I’ve had my share of luck. I don’t deny that. But when I washed ashore on this island, I was dying. Maybe as little as a few days away. Healing did very little, other than extending my life by a few more weeks at most.”

He explained his first step on the path of cultivation, recounting how advancing to the Body of Wood stage had cured his cancer.

“But even then, I had nothing. I barely survived the winter,” he stated. “I made it, though. I had help along the way, but I survived. Then, people came to my island and killed my guardian. No – that’s not true. I killed it. Mercy, I told myself. It practically begged me for it. But that didn’t make much of a difference, did it? I still ended its life.”

After that, he went on to recount the rest of his story. He spared her no details, describing everything from being dissolved in a whale’s stomach to being ripped in half – and ending with his recent forays into the Primal Realms.

“And that’s not even considering what I’ve done to myself,” he went on, explaining the extreme measures he’d taken on his path of cultivation. “So, yeah – this place, it’s a paradise. I don’t deny that. But don’t confuse its current state with an assumption that I did not suffer for everything it has become. When I talk about adversity, you should listen, because I am probably more experienced with it than anyone else you’re likely to meet.”

Before she could respond, Elijah let out a sigh, then continued, “Stay here as long as you like. Enjoy it. I might not be here when you resurface, so if you need anything else, just ask Nerthus, Miguel, or Sadie. They’ll do whatever they can to make you comfortable.”

With that, Elijah flipped over and dove among the swaying strands of kelp. He didn’t appreciate them, though. Instead, he just wanted to leave the cave behind and do something to wash the bad taste out of his mouth.