Time really flew when you were having fun. Not that Lily would call freezing halfway up a mountain super fun, per say, but the formations part was pretty cool. She didn’t attempt anything quite as dramatic as making the whole heaven and earth qi gathering formation thing again— she didn’t dare, if that alone had been enough to stretch the very limits of her ability— but she did put some work into enhancing it. It wasn’t even that hard— mostly she just worked on setting up formations around the entrance to the earth from where the yang qi emerged, and set up some secondary formations to smooth out the vortex of qi all funneling into the gathering formation— into Avyr.

It was an awe inspiring sight… apparently. According to Avyr at least, there was something very much dramatic at seeing the qi on the mountain around them all swirl together down towards where he was sitting, a fierce energy coalescing— but she couldn’t really see that, what with her still being mortal and all. An unfortunate reality… it also made improving the formation painstakingly difficult at times.

One of the first tools she’d crafted after placing the gathering formation had been a little rectangular stone talisman-tablet thing that would glow depending on the intensity of the qi. Not even a week and a bit after she’d first made it, she’d already replaced the thing three times, adding in extra functionality that felt sometimes like just random things, but in actuality was critical. More than presence it needed to know intensity. Alongside intensity, to optimize qi flow, she needed to know direction. More than direction, even, perhaps, to make sure that she was working as efficiently as she could, she needed to know the aspect…

And so on. It was honestly a small miracle that she’d managed to keep it just a hand-sized rectangle of stone instead of some horribly unwieldy pillar. At least it was reusable… she shivered to imagine how utterly horrible it would be to have to re-carve it every time she used it…

Yet, despite it all— the freezing temperatures, the snow, the harsh environment and the occasional, far-off roars of wolves and stranger things still, it was fun. It was a challenge, but a different sort of challenge entirely than the academic rigors of East Saffron’s 32nd Preparatory Academy. The consequences were very real, and— more importantly, because it wasn’t like the consequences of flubbing a test in the academy weren’t real— immediate.

She glanced up from what she’d been working on at the moment— a set of little coins that she’d been planning on nailing into some of the rather more annoying trees blocking the qi flow of the mountain around them— as Avyr landed with a thump outside the inner formation. His fur was slicked to his body, making it look like the sweatiest cat in history— except for the fact that she knew that he didn’t sweat. She was somewhat jealous about that…

He shook himself out— just like his smaller kin might have— flinging droplets of water away from his as he shivered dramatically at the sudden mountain cold. “I might need to trouble you to install some sort of formation to protect against the steam. If you keep increasing the amount of qi in the enclosure, then it’s going to become hard to breathe.”

She frowned, gently setting her stylus down to the one side, and the coins on the other. “I’ll see what I can do.” He made a good point, and not one that she’d thought up before… except, any sort of wide-scale modification of the core formation she’d set up was utterly out of the question. There was no way she was carving any additional runes into that while it was active, not even with a ten foot pole— she did not want to blow herself up! No matter how much Avyr said so… “it’ll be difficult. Even if I use some sort of other atmospheric function, it would taint the extreme yang environment on the inside of the formation, leading to…”

Avyr rolled his eyes as he lounged out on the cool rocks, almost but not quite touching the snow. “Just use something cold. Normally cold, not with some weird yin qi formation.”

“That’d be…” not difficult, actually. They didn’t have many good conductors, but even just some stone slabs might work. If she used some of the rejected yin qi that her formation naturally outputted…”

A paw tapped her shoulder. “Wake up.” She scowled at Avyr— but it was a good-natured sort of scowl. “No point agonizing over it now… how about we think about it over a meal? I’m feeling hungry.”

“Of course you are,” she snarked back. “You haven’t eaten in almost a day and a half. I don’t know why you keep doing this to yourself.”

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“I get absorbed in the cultivation.”

“I thought that was a myth.”

He shuffle-shrugged. “It is, but at the same time, isn’t. I feel the passage of time completely, but… it is relaxing. Easy to get absorbed in the motions of it. It’s relaxing.”

“I’m glad at least one of us is having a good time, then.” Well, she was too, but it certainly wasn’t relaxing. Stressful would’ve been a better way of putting it… she pulled out her own meal, a mix of rations and some rehydrated grains and stuff, then started preparing Avyr’s meal— only to pause in consternation at how light the bag of meat was. Looking inside, she noticed that there was… not much left. “Has something been eating… ?” She furrowed her brow, looking for any sign of damage that’d indicate something had gotten into their supplies, but no…

“Of course.” Avyr stepped up beside her, looking down into the open mouth of the bag, his expression rendered unreadable. “Me.” Lily gave him a sharp look— but found him serious. “I knew that I was eating more than I usually do, but…” he sighed. “I see we’ve packed less than we needed.”

“So now what?” She frowned as she looked at everything, all of it— “do we just… go hunting? You need the meat in your diet. I can give you my portion, but…” they hadn’t really packed much meat for her, rather just shaving off a little from the side of Avyr’s own supply. Her meals more consisted of dried beans, rations, and various other easily-transportable foods.

“No. Definitely not.” Avyr gave her a look as though she was stupid for even considering it. “We’re in the Dragonspine. Even I would be wary hunting in the deep wilderness like this— what if we stumble across an Opening beast? Or worse, a Foundation Establishment

one?” He shook his head. “We’d be dead before we even knew what was going on.”

“I…” she frowned, then nodded dejectedly. She was just a mortal, after all. “That makes sense. We’ve got to do something. We can’t just— retreat after all the effort we put into coming out here!” To just up and leave— it twisted something deep inside of her, that it might all be rendered worthless not by calamity or catastrophe, but merely insufficient planning. That because she hadn’t managed to bring an extra bag of meat, they’d have to slink back to East Saffron with their tails between their legs.

No, no— she absolutely refused to do that. She wasn’t sure how she was going to refuse, but she did— there was no way under heaven that she would merely give up after coming so far. She hadn’t given up in East Saffron, back when everything seemed so much more impossible, when she’d had so much less— and she wasn’t going to give up now. She was a nascent formations master, and she could use that—

“Oh.” Avyr snickered, the laughter cutting through her sour, determined expression. “I… sorry, Lily, I just thought of an obvious solution, and I’m feeling kind of stupid that I didn’t earlier. Clearly… just go to town and buy some more.”

“Oh. Yeah.” She flushed in embarrassment, mentally pushing her insane plans to hunt the forest beasts to the back of her mind. “Yup. That was definitely what I was thinking, one hundred percent, yup.” Avyr gave her a doubtful look that told her he knew exactly how much of a lie that was, but she just plastered an innocent smile over her face until he huffed out half a laugh and turned away. “It’s what… most of a day’s walk away from here?” And then another equally long walk back…

“Not that far. We came up the mountain from here—” he dragged a paw across the stone between them, a precise gesture describing barely the sort of route they’d taken— “and then came up the side of the mountain here, and are now on the westwards facing slope completely. The town is in the next valley over, and there’s only a small hill between us and them, so… I think you could make the whole trip in a day, if you really pushed yourself.” That small hill was a mountain in and of itself— merely one that didn’t reach up to lofty heights to scrape at the very heavens.

She gave him an incredulous look that he seemed to ignore entirely, then sighed. “Fine. Whatever. I’ll do it— not like there’s any other option, is there?” She half hoped Avyr could come up with some other genius idea in the short moment after she posed her question, but… no, she wasn’t quite that lucky. Alas. “Let’s eat first, though…”

So they did, sharing that one short meal— that one short touch of a whisper of time, before she left to her tasks and Avyr secluded himself in his cultivation once again, again, together.

It was nice.