I was back! Home at last!

Obviously I hadn’t slept in the fairy ring. That would’ve been the height of stupidity, especially after Night’s warning about them. I had [Pristine Memories], and when Night pulled me aside and gave me a stark warning about a threat, I listened.

Poor Auri had missed me so, given how she was practically both crying incoherently and screeching with joy, all as she circled my head.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that, and the notification I got sneaking back into my room proved it.

[*ding!* Your [Hatchling Rearing] skill wants to upgrade to the General Skill [Companion Bond between Elaine and Auri]! Would you like to upgrade this skill?]

I kept my eyes on Auri, my sockets getting a workout as she kept spinning around me.

Of course I’d take it.

Companion Bond between Elaine and Auri: The two of you are birds of a feather, flocking together. A friendship forged in flame and bound with mangos, you are companions. Best of friends, willing to pillage the world of its mangos together. Immunity to fire. Can heal Auri at range with perfect efficiency, regardless of healing skill ability. Increased healing range per level. Faster thinking speed per level. Increased vanity per level.

My eyes practically bugged out at the notification, but I put that all to the side for now.

I had an Auri to look after. If I crossed my eyes, tilted my head, and got a massive concussion she’d almost look like a puppy, delighted that I was finally back home.

“Brrrpt! BRRRRPT!”

“It was only three weeks!” I protested.

“Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrpt!”

I facepalmed. Sometimes there was no winning.

“Come here.” I patted my shoulder, Auri landing a moment later and nuzzling my cheek.

“Brrrrrpt. Brrrrrrrrrrrpt.”

Crossed eyes, tilted head, concussion - a purring cat.

“Let me tell you all about it!”

“Brrrpt!”

I took a seat on the edge of my bed, tilted my head to better see Auri, and gave her the full breakdown of everything that had happened.

“...then I rushed back as fast as I could, to see you! The bestest little bird ever!”

There was no happy ‘brrrpt!’ at that, and I crossed my eyes to see her better. My shoulder wasn’t a great angle to see something small on.

She’d fallen asleep, the poor thing.

Smoothly sliding some small glass-like beads out of the way - where had they all come from, the floor was littered with them - I carefully put the sleeping Auri into her precious little nest.

I then quietly stripped out of my well-traveled clothes, and slipped into a ready bath in the next room.

I leaned back, letting the luxurious heat soak into me - interesting that I still felt heat - and noticed just how filthy my hands were.

Travel really did a number on them, and I started to idly pick the dirt out from under my nails as I did some serious thinking on the companion bond skill I’d just gotten.

I knew Auri was a phoenix. A creature out of myth and legend, an existence that even White Dove acknowledged as ‘cousin’. A being of fire.

She was also my loveable, dorky little friend who always bit off more than she could chew and regularly tried to drown herself in juice. Who was the vainest creature I’d ever met. Who I’d needed to stop from killing herself dozens of times after she hatched, and the way I’d been able to teach her empathy was “other people like to burn things as well.”

The System didn’t seem to care much about that, and more that she was a phoenix. The list of benefits I got from the companion bond started absurd, and only got crazier from there.

Immunity to fire.

Immunity.

Not resistance, or something like [Fire Resistance] – which had been a much-needed staple to stop constant self-immolation when I’d been a Fire mage – but straight up immunity.

The System was sometimes incredibly vague about the skills it gave out, and generally didn’t come with a user manual. Everyone had to figure out the limits of their own skills.

It didn’t lie though. It didn’t say a skill did one thing, and SURPRISE! It did something else. When the System said ‘Immunity to fire’, I could believe it.

I’d want to check the limits. Namely – could I actually get fireproof hair at last?! Auri giving me the hot look was getting old.

Oh! And Inferno mage was back on the menu. Complete immunity to the element would remove the need for [Inferno Resistance]. Granted, most elements didn’t need protection from themselves, but I just knew there had to be silly things I could do with it.

It did make me wonder about corollaries.

Magic was weird. When I had [Fire Resistance], I couldn’t be burned by flames. Stick the fire under a pan, though, and the pan could burn my hand if I touched it. The [Fire Resistance] didn’t translate over.

Similarly, I had to wonder about my air situation. If I was bathed in a gigantic ball of fire – most likely that’d be Auri’s doing – did I still need to breathe air? Did immunity to fire extend so far as to say “Hey! The fire’s eating all the air, but it’s ok, you can still breathe?”

Or would I find myself choking on smoke?

If I was immune to smoke, was it only smoke from a fire, or did smoldering embers count?

Lots of things to try out.

Auri would be thrilled.

‘Hey Auri! We need to spend a day doing nothing but lighting things on fire!’

It was clear that fire immunity didn’t apply to heat. Thank goodness, I liked a nice long soak in hot water.

When looking at it that way, it was a somewhat limited skill. The best thing it was for?

Not getting hit by Auri. Which was the whole point, I supposed.

The next part was both great, and didn’t explain itself nearly well enough.

‘Can heal Auri at range with perfect efficiency, regardless of healing skill ability.’

I had multiple penalties if I wanted to heal Auri at range. First, we both needed to be under the sun or the moons. Second, I needed a strong anatomical image of Auri, along with knowing what the damage was and how to fix it. Third, [Dance with the Heavens] was designed for humans. I had a few points in the skill to handle non-humans at a penalty, but the further away from “human” someone got, the worse my healing would be.

It’s why Lun’Kat took so much mana, and she’d been made out of flesh and blood! The penalty for Auri’s healing would normally be gigantic, if it even took hold!

Fortunately, Auri was tiny and well-protected, while I had literally hundreds of thousands of mana to throw at any healing problem.

‘Perfect efficiency’. That could mean there was no ranged healing penalty. That there was no image penalty. Or there was no cross-species ‘my skills aren’t made for this’ penalty.

Of course, it could be any combination of the three.

My healing knowledge and experience came in handy, along with my relentless pursuit of knowledge. I had no way of testing it – I’d never mutilate Auri for an experiment! – but I’d bet that I had no penalty on my ranged healing, nor would there be any cross-species penalty. However, I’d still need to form good images, and the better the image, the better the heal.

My reasoning was simple. Occasionally, a healer didn’t want to heal something. A tattoo. A scar. A metal prosthetic that some lunatic dwarf shoved into their chest. Ear piercings.

I should probably get those again. The arcanite earrings I’d earned early on in my Ranger tour were sitting on a shelf, gathering dust. They hadn’t been the first thing I’d ever gotten with my money and healing, but they’d been one of the first things I’d earned after striking out for independence.

Focus.

The other part of my reasoning for Auri’s healing working that way was the next part: ‘Increased range per level.’

It implied I could only heal Auri when she was near me, but that ‘tether’ would get longer as the skill leveled up.

Also, I couldn’t think of a single reason not to smack a [Persistent Casting] on Auri. The skill had leveled enough that I could maintain multiple casts of multiple skills at the same time, and making sure my little troublemaker had permanent healing seemed to be a good use of the skill.

‘Faster thinking speed per level’ was both incredibly clear, and vaguely insulting. It was like I was under a permanent weak version of [Bullet Time]. If it got strong enough, it might be worth losing [Bullet Time] and picking up a new general skill to help support whatever direction I took with my third class.

I was currently thinking of taking [Meditate], and seeing if leveling that up a bunch would kick-start whatever mage class I likely ended up taking.

I grabbed a brush and tackled my hair.

So. Much. Dirt. Fingers alone wouldn’t get it done properly.

I’d make the switch now, but [Meditate] had always been a tricky general skill for me to get the System to offer me. Sure, I’d gotten it as a kid, but getting it re-offered wasn’t nearly as easy as some of the other skills were. I had no idea why, I could totally sit peacefully for ages if I wanted to. More importantly, I was concerned that I might be committing myself too early to the path of a mage. I was worried that when it came time to figure out ‘for real’ what class I was going to take, that the sunken cost on [Meditate] would push me in a direction I might not otherwise take.

In happier news, I was feeling moderately comfortable ditching [Bullet Time] because I didn’t think there was much in Remus that could hurt me.

At the same time, that sort of thinking led to hubris and death.

But a frank analysis of my combat and survival capabilities was needed. There was a reason I didn’t have eight general skills dedicated to survivability.

There was also the larger world to consider. In the small pond of Remus, I was one of the bigger fish. In the greater world?

I wouldn’t call myself a minnow – the dwarves had demonstrated that it was entirely possible to have a thriving civilization filled with people that only had two classes – but I was all too aware that there were some forces that could swat me like an insect. Like, I’d met young elves, and every single one of them massively outclassed me. The hydra, a somewhat random monster, could eat me no problem. The Below Levels. In just a few months, I’d encountered dozens of threats that could kill me, and I didn’t even want to think of everything else I hadn’t encountered.

Plus, Augustus had declared war on the shimagu, and there was no telling if or when I’d be called to the frontlines. [Bullet Time] would be a lifesaver then… but so would a powerful third class.

I was basically forging my own path here.

Although, if I waited a bit and made it over to the elves, I’m sure they had good advice. Not necessarily Awarthril and the rest, but they had mentioned an Academy.

Given that the three elves seemed near the bottom of adult elf society, and they were all over 512? I had to assume the teachers and instructors could give me excellent advice.

If nothing else, it might be worth stalling just to hear what they had to say.

Focus.

Auri was clearly smart. My brilliant little bird. She’d picked up language in a month, give or take. She was taking lessons from Plato, who had nothing but good things to say about her work.

Her dedication and desire to burn the world got a different set of commentary.

It was easy to forget that she was only a few months old.

Months. Most human babies were still in the “eat-sleep-poop” cycle at the age where Auri was learning philosophy and mathematics.

It didn’t stop me from feeling vaguely insulted that the System had determined that her bird brain was so many leagues ahead of mine that it’d given me faster thinking for it.

Made me wonder why it didn’t increase my intelligence instead.

The last part of the bond looked like all downside.

Increased vanity per level.

I froze mid-brushstroke.

Was I viciously hating the dirt from the road because I liked being clean? Or was it a symptom of the new skill?

I was having trouble telling, and that scared me.

At the same time, there was no reason to let myself be dirty out of concern for a skill. That was senseless.

I was almost completely sure at this point that there was no such thing as hostile mind magic, thank all the gods and goddesses. Nobody could break into my mind and read my thoughts. Nobody could modify how I thought and felt. No magical brainwashing, no suggestions or compulsions.

There was personalized mind magic though. Heck, I had a few skills for it! [Pristine Memories], [Center of the Universe], and [Bullet Time] were some easy examples that I currently had.

There were a whole host of general skills that could also be looked at. I’d been offered [Adaptable] and [Calm].

I had to imagine that negative aspects were also offered as skills. Now, why someone would take such a skill was beyond me – I ignored the voice saying I’d taken [Pretty], that was different – but they existed. Easy enough to remove, if they weren’t desired.

This was different. A footnote on a few other powerful skills, and a representation of my attachment with Auri to boot.

I couldn’t – wouldn’t – simply remove it.

Bluebeard – Hunting – had warned me. Bonds changed both parties, and not always for the better. He’d told me that he got angrier and that he was more prone towards violence. I’d thought most of the changes I’d seen in him was the loss of his bond, but maybe a small part of that was no longer needing to keep such tight control on his emotions, or his anger drove him less.

He also mentioned that Katastrofi had been changed, and I wondered what the bond had done for Auri.

Something to ask her in the morning.

Back to the vanity thing.

I didn’t feel the need to gaze lovingly into a mirror, and the thought of running naked through the street was utterly unappealing. Clearly, the effect was minor.

However, it was also subtle. I didn’t feel any obvious pulls or tugs from the skill, unlike when I had [Pretty]. [Pretty] could guide me when I wanted it to, and it helped keep my hand steady when I was engaged in activities that I thought made me look pretty. There was a sense of guidance and stability.

Nothing like this with vanity. It was possible that the skill was too low level and too weak to have an impact. It was also possible that it was subtle and insidious.

Oh!

I should go on some Ranger Trainee field exercises! That’d be a safe way to tell if the skill was causing me to do something dumb.

Like, if I needed to coat myself in mud as part of an exercise and I suddenly felt the urge to wipe all the mud off and look spiffy, I’d know it was the skill.

In a similar vein, if I actually did remove the mud in the middle of the exercise, I’d know I had a problem.

I’d need to re-evaluate my tactics and strategy if it turned out my bond with Auri insisted that I always looked great.

I realized another annoying part. It was vanity, which had no implications that the skill would help me like [Pretty] used to. Simply an obligation, a twist in my thinking.

End of the day, I’d almost immediately gone for [Pretty] as a kid and had fiercely held onto the skill until it got merged with [Scintillating Ascent]. I had my own personal [Beautician] on retainer, who I paid way more than market rate just to be able to sit and chat with as she fixed my hair AGAIN. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a vain streak in the first place. I just knew the proper time and place to let myself be vain, to primp and preen and generally make myself feel pretty. It had no place in a warzone or a battlefield, but at home? Yeah, I could indulge in long hair, good makeup, and nice clothing, along with the thousand other little things.

All in all, for slightly amplifying one of my baser natures, the ability to be immune to fire, think faster, heal Auri, and most importantly, show my commitment and bond with my little firebird dramatically trumped any minor issues the skill might cause me.

I was done getting clean. I leaned back and closed my eyes, relaxing as I heated the bath back up with another flash of Radiance.

I felt like I had it all.

Good friends. Loving family. Skills and power, a fulfilling career and goofball coworkers. A best friend forever and an eternity to spend with her. Investments and income.

I was safe.

Secure.

Loved.

Life was pretty good.