They had explained to her about seasons, but Fiyu was still troubled by the changing weather. Tatian might be horrible, but it was consistently horrible all the time. Now, as the air grew warmer and the leaves and grass went dry, she couldn't escape the fear that she had wandered into an unknown region. According to information Companion Nauda had learned from people in the city, the weather would become more unpredictable as well.

To distract herself from the environment, Fiyu spent more time soulcrafting. At the heart of her stealth chamber was a glass sphere of moonmist gas, a substance that obscured part of the Outer Moonscape and only occasionally appeared in sublime form. She had won it in a contest against all the other young soulcrafters in the entire camp, which had been among her proudest achievements as a child. Now that she had seen the obscene numbers of people who gathered in cities on other worlds, it felt less impressive.

She had originally placed that sphere on a pedestal, then hung it from the finest of sublime spidersilk. That created a technique that was exceedingly subtle, but sadly it was too delicate to stand against more powerful cantae, at least at her current tier. Relative Guchiro had told her he could give her another material to support it when she was ready, but their unity had been torn apart before he could.

For the most part, she had struggled to find suitable sublime materials on other worlds, which was why she was so pleased to find the mirrorbark. It was bright and strong, yet it deflected attention away from itself. She had begun carefully fashioning panels of it to place around her moonmist sphere: they would deflect enemy cantae, leaving her core technique free to hide her.

Recently, Companion Nauda had been unable to find her, even as an Archcrafter. Fiyu wasn't certain how much more work she could do with her current limits, but she thought the chamber was very nearly complete.

It had been a pleasant surprise to find the mirrorbark, but she wasn't sure what she could do about some of her other unfinished chambers. She found herself spending long hours polishing the exterior of her tower to perfection and smoothing the transitions between materials, because she didn't know how to proceed in many of the others.

She counted herself fortunate that she had nearly perfected her sensory chamber before leaving Ichil, because she had found nothing remotely appropriate for it. Her blade technique was also sadly unfinished, though she thought that the sharpness of rainhorn antlers might be appropriate enough to intensify it. They were so bright and colorful, however, they didn't seem quite appropriate... maybe they could go in her light chamber instead.

Her meditation chamber had been somewhat improved with carvings inspired by Companion Theo, but she still fundamentally lacked materials. Meanwhile, her warming chamber had long been an unfortunate void, far from its ultimate design. Though she'd placed unpleasantly warm Tatian materials in it, those were nothing but a stopgap measure.

Some of her other chambers might find some other solution, but Fiyu realized that she was only focusing on them to avoid her other thoughts. It was so strange to feel herself changing, without any relatives to guide her. Fiyu opened her eyes in the real world and saw her traveling companions working beside her, which only made it worse, so she retreated into her soulhome.

Yet, standing in the core of her very being, Fiyu could not help but contemplate other matters. For many years, Relative Guchiro had been the only relative in her life and the only person that she trusted. Companion Theo and Companion Nauda had become trusted traveling companions, and she hoped she could one day call them Friend, but she was uncertain if she would ever call them Relative.

When she failed to control such thoughts, her mind inevitably drifted into gloomy territory. After months away from Relative Guchiro, she was beginning to miss him deeply. She had not realized how much she longed for silent Ichili intimacy until she discovered the equivalent on other worlds.

Was she changing, without him? Her relatives had always taught her that she would adapt to new circumstances throughout her life, both as she aged and as she encountered new people. She had experienced it first-hand with Child Senka, who prompted parent-like feelings in her. Yet those were merely whispers, not something that she sought with her whole heart. Perhaps one day she would have a family of her own, but she was still too young.

Yet, traveling together with companions who were her own age began to change something within her. Once she recalled Relative Guchiro saying that groups of a single age were unnatural, that children needed to learn to interact with youths of different ages as well as elders. Apparently that was not true on other worlds, as Deuxans all traveled together in packs of the same age.

Most likely, her relative would have grunted and said that proved his point. Fiyu smiled as she thought of him.

Though she was not sure how she would change, Fiyu thought that she was fortunate to have found two such traveling companions. Companion Nauda was very kind, if strange, and had already ascended to Archcrafter. Companion Theo was always understanding and had an insight into soulcrafting unlike anyone she had ever met before.

Fiyu set herself to her work, hoping that they would not leave her behind.

~ ~ ~

As he walked through his soulhome, Theo just wasn't satisfied. It was a mistake to think that there could be "perfect" sublime materials for a given stage, and in fact that thinking could lead to dead ends or bottlenecks. But there were definitely stages of quality, and he wasn't where he wanted to be.

For a start, his soulhome was entirely too dependent on carvings for many of his essential rooms. It was the easiest method to improve a chamber when he lacked sublime materials, and the carvings would enhance the effects no matter how many sublime materials he gathered, but the method was too simple. Good blueprints required a mix of design, materials, and style.

Yet the technique that he'd hoped would provide a path forward, gravitational torsion, had proved a wall. He didn't think there was anything wrong with his design, it was simply impacting the world too dramatically to pull off with his current soulhome. Since he wasn't likely to find sublime materials embodying such a concept, then his only choice was to eventually obtain more intense cantae to overcome the wall.

As for his non-technique rooms, he lacked enough materials to make them feel properly lived-in. He'd put all the emblems and badges they earned into one of the empty rooms, since weak cantae generation was better than nothing. It might have made him a little more resistant to Deuxan techniques and a bit faster, but the effect wasn't dramatic.

The repelling stone that they'd bought in Nlukoko was efficient but weak: he could generate an effect like anti-mass, but it was so minimal that it had almost no use. On the other hand, the magnetized stone was a bit too strong, threatening to damage his soulhome whenever he tried to use it fully.

Even combined, they just weren't enough. He was still restricted to increasing or reversing the world's gravity, not creating any of his own. Once he was an Archcrafter, he would be able to fuse those aspects together into a new technique, but at the moment... he could have converted one of his middle rooms to another technique, but that would mean doing a lot of work now that would be wasted later. Interim solutions were fine and necessary, but he drew the line at setting back his future soulcrafting.

Now that he thought about it, he didn't like the distribution of his four corner techniques. Though his cantae flowed through all of them without major problems, he thought they could have been better balanced. If the mass and anti-mass chambers were on opposite sides, the soulhome would be more thematically balanced and he might even manage to improve flow between them.

That was a minor distinction, the kind of thing he hadn't even worried about in his past life until he was a Ruler trying to ascend to Authority. That had been the point where some of his simplistic habits started to catch up to him and he'd needed to go back and renovate rooms that had been nothing but big slabs of rare materials. This time, he would have no such problems.

Presuming that he survived long enough. Everything Magnafor had said about them potentially being targeted returned to mind, though he still couldn't solve that problem.

Theo reminded himself that he was being a perfectionist, not that it changed his conclusions. There was no point comparing himself to mediocre soulcrafters, not when he might be pitting himself against demons and entities far more powerful than any others he'd encountered. He needed to do things right, which meant at least keeping up with Fiyu and Nauda.

Having had enough theoretical soulcrafting, Theo returned to the real world and recruited the two of them to do some experiments. He wasn't capable of generating a point of mass outside himself, but he could use either one of his mass-manipulating techniques on himself, so he needed to know how much influence they could have.

Nauda experimented with pushing him while he increased his mass, able to notice a difference that would be negligible in a fight. If he'd been a physical fighter like he'd originally intended, perhaps he could have used that to anchor himself in place, but he'd turned away from that path. Trying to use anti-mass on himself had no effect other than making it even easier for her to push him, so that was another bust.

Testing both with Fiyu, on the other hand, proved interesting. She was capable of launching light bursts less loaded with cantae, so she threw them in his direction to let him test. Unfortunately, no amount of mass or anti-mass, even trying to work together, could so much as budge the path of any of her bolts. Nauda added weaker cantae bolts, to similar effect. When they threw small rocks, the paths did veer slightly, but not enough. At his current strength, the gravity he could control had little effect, which meant he would be vulnerable to cantae, wind, and other forms of energy.

Still, the experiments showed him a few new things about how far he could bend his techniques, so they were worthwhile. They also seemed to provide amusement to Fiyu and Nauda, as he continually ate a faceful of cantae bolts or rocks. It didn't even bother him, since they did their best to help.

In the end, he decided that his blueprint was a good enough first step. He just needed to figure out how to take a second one.

~ ~ ~

Though most soulcrafting instructors would have told Nauda to fashion the walls of her entire second floor before she did anything else, she resolutely followed her own path. Even with four months, there simply wasn't time to waste processing that much stone, especially given how much harder it was than as a first tier soulcrafter. She needed to develop herself before opponents came at her again.

Nauda knew she was technically an Archcrafter like cruel Delarde or arrogant Esaire, but they'd had time and plenty of resources to soulcraft their second tiers. Her cantae might equal theirs, but they had more, along with better techniques and more support from their soulhome.

She'd considered building a second floor on top of the secondary building she'd soulcrafted in Myufuru, but Nauda wasn't sure that it was a strong enough foundation to build upwards. For the moment, she'd added shelves to make it into a larder and storage room, moving her chest and sublime food into it. No doubt instructors would have told her to get rid of it, or attach it to her main soulhome before she built her entire second floor.

Instead, Nauda had built two rooms in her second tier, directly on top of half her first floor. It gave her soulhome a lopsided look, but it was good to establish a basis she could expand once she had the time. She did have some more Deuxan stone bricks, the start of a third room she worked on when she had nothing better to do, but she doubted it would be finished any time soon.

Meanwhile, she focused fully on her two Archcrafter rooms. Whenever he was talking about soulcrafting, Theo always went on about designations that she didn't necessarily agree with, particularly a strong dichotomy between chambers dedicated to enacting techniques and chambers that focused power within the self. In her experience, every chamber was a piece of the soul that did some of both... but in this case, his way of looking at things was useful.

Nauda stood on her roof, looking through the doors to her two upper chambers.

The left was a proper "Tatian" room that anyone in Myufuru would have envied: a plush rug of sublime fibers she'd purchased in the city, a wooden pedestal she'd carved herself, and the nullstone enshrined on top. It was one of her most prized possessions, since the nullstone neutralized cantae around it. Absorbing it earlier in her life had nearly killed her, and she had only now gained the capacity to build it into her soulhome.

On the right... that room would not have been accepted in the same communities. One of her sublime materials had been the blood of a powerful sublime beast, which she had used to paint all the interior walls bright red. Before, the blood had eaten into the stone, but as an Archcrafter, her soulhome could absorb it and grow stronger. At the center, she placed the skull of the same beast, though she needed to find an appropriate altar to make better use of it.

Finishing the blood-painted room made her feel immediately stronger, her cantae flowing with an animal strength. During a simple job clearing land, she'd tested her strength and been surprised that she could pull out a tree by the roots. Whenever it came to a physical fight, she'd be much more capable.

Unfortunately, making full use of the nullstone had proved much more difficult. Within her soulhome, it didn't nullify her own cantae, but drawing that nullifying property into herself was difficult. The nullstone might actually be a bit beyond Archcrafter, so she could utilize it in her soulhome, just struggled to use it in a technique.

When she had time to concentrate, she could eliminate a bit of cantae from around her. When Theo threw exaggeratedly slow bolts in her direction, she was able to cancel them out, though it cost her much more cantae than simply dodging or slapping it aside. Against an assault like Fiyu's lightstorm, the nullification was essentially worthless.

So, despite having finally found a place for almost all her Archcrafter materials, her goal still drifted beyond her reach. Nauda frowned over her soulhome, considering alternate paths or improvements. It looked like both of those would just take a significant amount of work, no clever way around it.

On top of that, she still hadn't been able to replace her old staff, reducing her to working with an ordinary staff and the broken fork of her old weapon. Eventually, she would need to renovate the room that contained the technique, and she had plans to incorporate one of her second floor rooms, it just all required more time and sublime materials.

Abruptly an idea occurred to her: it didn't solve any of her problems, but it was something worth doing. Nauda dropped down to her first floor and picked up her telescope carefully, carrying it up her ladder to the second floor. It didn't fit in either room, but she set it out in an empty corner of the roof, as if it was an intentional balcony.

When she attempted to use her viewing technique, she was surprised at how swiftly and crisply she saw the other's soulhomes. Theo was soulcrafting up a storm, as usual, and Fiyu waved cheerfully at her. Neither were bothered by her observation... so suspicious in some ways, yet trusting in others.

Just setting the telescope on the corner felt a little too simple, though. Nauda went back to retrieve some of her unused bricks of Deuxan stone, placing them together in a little corner that partially shielded the telescope. Once it peeked out from over the simple wall, she felt that her design was far more unified. Yes, this could become the soulhome she needed.

Back when she had acquired those Archcrafter materials, she had expected that she would need to fight her way to ascension alone within communities she couldn't trust. Instead, she was soulcrafting in the wilderness with two people from other worlds. Her life had gone completely off track, and she wasn't sure whether or not that was a good thing.