Sadie glanced away, unsure what to say after having given Elijah the gift of the Herbalist’s Satchel. After a few moments of silence, she asked, “What do you think?”

  Finally, a grin spread across his face, and he moved on her. Before she could react, he had his arms wrapped around her as he thanked her for the gift. That he’d moved so quickly was a testament to how much above her he now stood, though Sadie endeavored to ignore the power disparity.

  Not because she enjoyed being reminded of her relative weakness. She most assuredly did not. But she also trusted Elijah, and she knew that he would never hurt her.

  Still, it made her uneasy.

  “I love it,” he said, his tone genuine. “What’s it do? I can tell it’s special.”

  “It’s called the Herbalist’s Satchel,” she answered. Then, she explained its purpose, specifying that it could accommodate living things just as easily as inanimate objects. “I thought it would be good for the plants and…you know, other things you might find during your travels.”

  “That’s…that’s awesome,” he said. “You have no idea how many times this would have come in handy. There were these bushes back in the Broken Crown that I definitely would have brought back.”

  Then, he went on to talk about the characteristics of said bushes. HE then moved on to other plants that only he would have found interesting. And trees, though he acknowledged that those wouldn’t have fit inside the Herbalist’s Satchel. However, after examining the bag for a few moments, he said that he believed it to be a better environment for fruit than his Arcane Loop. In short, it was precisely the rambling excitement she’d hoped for, and it told Sadie just how perfectly the gift suited him.

  “But you never answered my original question,” he remarked after his excitement had died down to a low simmer. “What’s this for? It’s not my birthday. Christmas was a couple of months ago. Did I forget an anniversary or something? In my defense, our relationship has always been a little nebulous, so I’m not sure when we became official. Plus, keeping track of dates is kind of difficult these days. Maybe someone’s created a self-updating calendar or something. I’ll have to look into that next time I’m in Argos.”

  “Are you done?”

  “Maybe?”

  She sighed. “There’s no occasion. I just felt like doing something nice for you,” she answered. “I was shopping for my new pack, and I saw that the Herbalist’s Satchel was available. I thought it fit you.”

  “Good call,” he said sagely. “But you know this is a problem, right?”

  “What? Why?”

  “Well, now I have to try to one-up you. And given how awesome the satchel is…well, let’s just say it won’t be easy. It also creates a second problem. Do I retire the Ghoul-Hide Satchel? Or do I just wear them on different hips, with the straps bandolier style?”

  “If you do that, I will not be seen in public with you.”

  “What if I’m shirtless? You know, the He-Man look.”

  “No.”

  “But –”

  “Elijah. I love you, but if you do that, I’m going to have to think long and hard about this whole relationship.”

  “Aww. You said you love me.”

  “It’s not the first time,” she reminded him.

  “But I’m choosing to focus on that part, rather than that second bit. You know, to keep the dream of the He-Man look alive.”

  “Let it die.”

  Elijah sighed dramatically. “Fine. But in exchange, I’m going to have to forbid you from ever traipsing around in a Red Sonja-inspired outfit. And I already know what you’re thinking. Why Red Sonja and not She-Ra?”

  “I was thinking no such thing. I don’t even know who those people are.”

  “Well, Red Sonja was a spin-off character from the Conan series. And I’ll be honest, I don’t think you’d really want to wear her outfit, which is barely better than a chainmail bikini. But I’ll be honest – I’d much rather see you in the She-Ra outfit. Not because it’s more revealing or anything. More that I had a bit of a crush on her when I was little. And I think it’d fit your aesthetic a little better.”

  “That tells me almost nothing about any of that,” she admitted.

  Elijah sighed dramatically. “This is why I need to build the theater, though I’m pretty sure finding a copy of Red Sonja or She-Ra would be pretty much impossible at this point,” he said thoughtfully. “I’ll just have to hire a Tailor to make you the outfits so you can see what I’m talking about. You know, model them a little.”

  “It feels like this entire conversation was so you could find an excuse to broach the subject of roleplay.”

  “I would never,” he said with feigned offense.

  Sadie could only laugh, though she didn’t rule out the possibility. Either way, the release was exactly what she needed to break her free of the melancholy that had gripped her since returning from the Primal Realm.

  She rode that wave for the next day, alternatively focusing on her cultivation exercises and preparations for the coming trip. Their departure was scheduled for the end of the month, which she’d vowed to use to augment her recovery and advance her efforts in cultivation.

  Specifically, she wanted to work on her core. Gabriel, the angel who’d granted her the elder core in the first place, had finally sent her a message through the Branch. It had been very short – probably because communication with a non-integrated planet was extremely expensive – but the angel had directed her toward a guide that offered some insight into the progression of an angel core.

  It had also listed the tiers. The first, as she already knew, was the Watcher. Then came Messenger. Guardian was after that, followed by Virtue. Dominion and Throne came next, with Cherub, Seraph, and Principality rounding out the tiers.

  She had been stuck at the Watcher stage of core progression for years without much in the way of advancement. Largely, that was because she’d had no idea how to prompt its evolution. She wasn’t a unique talent like Elijah who could just figure it out on her own. She needed guidance. She needed a teacher. And failing that, even simple directions would help.

  Gabriel had provided the last. Now, it was up to her to put it all into practice.

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  But the guide began with a simple foreword:

  After that, it went on to explain the tiers, as well as the methods meant to progress from one to the other. The first step was universal – growing the core via absorption and expulsion – and fortunately, Sadie had been practicing that for years. She’d long since reached the limits of the Watcher-tier core, but she had kept going all the same. Now, her efforts were rewarded because she was already prepared to take the next step.

  But before she could do so, she needed to find a location that resonated with her attunement.

  Unfortunately, nowhere on the island satisfied that requirement. As dense as the vitality and ethera were, the atmosphere was too closely tied to Elijah. That wasn’t to say she couldn’t use it. Rather, it only meant that her results would be worse for the unmatched attunements.

  After a while, Sadie realized that the answer was staring her in the face. It wasn’t perfect, but she felt more connected to the Temple of Virtue than anywhere else on Earth. So, after letting Elijah know where she was going, she headed inland and took the Conclave Spires to Argos.

  The city looked much the same as her last trip, so she barely noticed it. Instead, she went directly to the temple itself, which stood atop a lonely hill near the north side of the city. She climbed it, feeling the dense ethera in the atmosphere. It was still tinged with nature, but there was something far more impactful on the local environment. A blend of healing and life and, for lack of a better word, virtue suffused the very air, telling her that she’d found the proper location.

  After meeting with the head attendant, she was directed to a chamber the workers used for cultivation. It was isolated enough that any efforts undertaken within its confines would fail to affect the rest of the temple.

  Once there, she settled into a meditative position, her legs crossed and her hands resting on her knees. On second thought, she decided to make use of one of the cubby holes outside. She undressed, then stuffed her clothes inside her new pack, which she placed in the small hollow.

  Normally, she wouldn’t have been so lax with the security of her possessions, but there were few safer places than the Temple of Virtue. And she definitely want to ruin her clothes with the oft-destructive pursuit of cultivation. Once she was naked, she returned to the chamber and sat.

  She didn’t immediately get started on the process, instead focusing on the last phases of preparation, which required her to continuously absorb and expel even larger amounts of ethera. Pushing herself to the limits of what she could handle was extremely important. If she failed to do so, her results would be subpar.

  As with all things, Sadie devoted herself wholly to the task. She ignored the pain she felt when her core filled beyond its previous bounds, and she similarly refused to acknowledge the relief of its deflation. Over and over, she repeated the action until most of the day had passed.

  Then, she finally moved on to the next step.

  After pushing her core to its largest size yet, she engaged every ounce of her will to compress the ethera inside. It barely responded, but Sadie was nothing if not stubborn. She pushed, and it finally moved. Just a little, but getting started was the most difficult part. The pain of her core being so overfilled came in a close second.

  Another day passed as she continuously subjected the ethera to immense pressure. Some of it was metaphysical in nature, but mostly, it was just a matter of willpower. And the second, she had in spades.

  Before, Sadie had likened it to the size of a basketball, but eventually, she’d managed to compress it into a space no bigger than an apple. Finally, it was ready for the final push.

  That was when the real work began.

  The process was referred to as Etching the Gospel, and its meaning was very literal. To advance to the next stage, she was tasked with carving the most important tenets of the Choir of Angels onto the surface of the core. Without the guide, she never would have figured it out on her own.

  But now, she only needed to indelibly etch the following onto her core:

  The song erupted in her mind to the beat of a Gregorian chant, scorching itself across her core with the power of pure and virtuous light. The words weren’t in English. In fact, they weren’t in any existing language. And yet, she understood them as if she’d been reading it all her life. The first repetition barely etched the Chorus of Angels onto the surface of her core. The second deepened those lines, with the third going even deeper.

  After that, Sadie ceased to count. Instead, she focused entirely on the process. On the words. She understood their meaning on an instinctive level, internalizing every syllable without fail or subjectivity. They represented objective truths far deeper than anything she’d ever witnessed.

  And what’s more, they resonated with her attunement as well as her nature. She felt them on such a basic level that she wondered if they’d come from within rather than the guide granted to her by Gabriel.

  As she sang the chorus in her mind, her voice erupted with music, filling the chamber with both ethera and song. It bounced off the walls, growing ever stronger with each carom. The words on her core responded, vibrating to the same tune until they became one.

  Power arced out, infusing the dragonstone walls and suffusing the entire temple. Even the ancestral tree at the center could not endure it unchanged, and the song etched itself on the bark, into the roots, and onto the very leaves, which turned to the purest silver, while the trunk took on the hue and texture of gold.

  Sadie felt it all.

  She internalized it. She appreciated it. And she embraced both her core and the power of her attunement.

  Time lost meaning as she sang, etching thousands of iterations of the song onto her core. The carvings were so dense that they had long since intruded upon one another. However, instead of ruining them, the overlapping songs served to enhance the entire effect, making her that much stronger.

  Then, after an indeterminate amount of time, the song ended.

  And she received a notification:

  Finally, she sagged in giddy relief. She was successful, and at last, she felt like a true cultivator.

  If you'd like to read more of Path of Dragons, we're almost two full books ahead (book 14 just started) on Patreon. That's 175+ extra chapters, so a ton of extra content for those of you who can't wait to see what Elijah will get up to. Anyway - check it out .

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