The natural earthen walls gave way to rough hewn stone, and the tunnel widened over the course of a couple hundred meters before splitting into three–one exit going straight ahead, and the other two perpendicular.

“Someone did this,” Faro mused, saying both of their thoughts out loud.

They’d fought a few more bats on the way here, defeating them easily as Juniper kept them pinned to the ground while she and Faro bashed their heads with rocks. It wasn’t perhaps the most dignified way to kill the monsters, but it was the method that used the least amount of effort. Given that they didn’t know what else awaited them further into the tunnel, conserving their forces seemed prudent.

“A legacy?” Juniper wondered. It wasn’t out of the ordinary, for experts to leave behind hidden caches, trials and dungeons for the next generations. But would Zaldia have just given away the location of one, just like that? She tasted the air with her Soul, eyes widening a bit. “The essence is thicker here.”

The change was subtle, so she hadn’t noticed it as they’d walked, but the air had indeed grown denser with essence.

Aside from treasures, places existed in the world where essence naturally congealed. Meditating in one such place was similar to consuming a treasure–except these confluences could remain in use for centuries before they dried up. The best ones were well-guarded secrets of the rich and powerful.

“A natural confluence, then,” Faro concluded. “Someone probably built the structure around it.”

Access to a confluence alone was a great boon, enough that the trip was worth it even if they didn’t find the lily–as long as they could find the confluence’s core, where the essence was thickest.

Luckily, finding the core tended to be straightforward–just follow the gradient. Juniper walked up to the three exits, inspecting them with her Soul. The difference in essence was minute, but Souls were exceedingly sensitive to such a thing. “I think the left one is thicker.”

Faro went ahead, Juniper following closely. “Do you think Zaldia knew?” Juniper asked.

Faro nodded. “In hindsight, this is just like her. She gives you a seemingly stupid task, but really it’s a reward in disguise.”

“She did say something about the journey being its own reward.”

Faro snorted. “Classic Professor Zaldia.”

They reached another fork in the road, but this time their options were only left and right. This was something of a problem, as the essence gradient dictated that the confluence core was almost dead ahead, and slightly to the right.

Juniper smacked her face as realization dawned on her. “Of course it had to be a maze.”

Whoever had first discovered the confluence had done their best to hide it from other people. It being underground already provided some protection, and a maze in an essence-dense area would ensure powerful monsters made it their home, acting as a second layer of security.

Faro shrugged. “Look at the bright side–at least it means there’s something worth guarding here.”

Juniper unslung her backpack, rummaging in it until she found a pen and a few sheets of scrap paper. “Okay, so we came through here,” she said as she drew the first intersection, “and we walked–I want to say about a hundred meters?”

“That sounds about right,” Faro said as he inspected the walls. There were no columns or regular delineations they could use as a base measure.

“Well, close enough,” Juniper said as she finished her drawing. “Now, left or right?”

“Right seems like the obvious solution,” Faro said. The core was angled slightly to the right. “So it’s probably a misdirection. Left?” he asked, mirroring Juniper’s own thoughts.

“Left,” she said, making another mark on the map.

They ran into a few more bats as they mapped out this section of the maze. The corridor had split twice more, and Juniper and Faro had followed each route until meeting a dead end.

Backtracking, they found the same thing in the right corridor, except this one had led them to a dead end even more quickly–except this particular dead end was home to a ringed panther.

It was seemingly more interested in gnawing on some bat remains, so Juniper and Faro wisely turned tail and fled before it could turn its attention to them.

The next panther they ran into was more than willing to entertain them–defeating it proved tricky, as its power meant it could somewhat shrug off Juniper’s snares. It was moving sluggishly, and Juniper was pretty sure its heart would give out if she could maintain the effect for another few minutes. But she didn’t have those few minutes, and the panther was out for blood.

In the end, Juniper had to resort to her newfangled gravity attack idea to put the panther down.

After some experimentation, Juniper had realized the strain on her Soul when applying selective gravity was proportional with either the mass or the volume of the object she was trying to influence–it wasn’t yet clear which, though Juniper was willing to bet it was mass.

Something small, then, like a rock, was much easier to accelerate than a whole monster.

She’d practiced it a bit on the way, to make sure of its soundness, but putting it in practice with the panther’s maw bearing down on her had been a close thing. It was thanks to Faro’s training that she didn’t immediately lose her composure.

Two jagged rocks had shot out of her hand, cleaving through the panther’s torso with ease. They were drawn to a point behind the panther, the gravity acting on them several times more powerful than what she’d used on the bats. Even with the increased intensity, the effort was negligible compared to a snare.

It didn’t kill the panther in one shot–Juniper had to recall the rocks for a second attack, ducking as they flew past her head. On their third trip, though, they hit the panther dead on, remaining embedded in its chest.

“I’m going to need new rocks,” Juniper mumbled under her breath as she squatted over the panther’s carcass.

Or some heavy metal orbs, Juniper thought. She was pretty sure she could do some devastating damage with a pair of metal balls.

“That was a pretty good attack,” Faro said. Juniper had seen him retreat to a safe distance after his attacks proved ineffective, though he’d remained alert, likely ready to get a shot in if the opportunity availed itself. “Come up with it yourself?”

Juniper shook her head. “I saw something similar in the tournament, though the guy was a kineticist. I thought I might be able to replicate that with gravity.” They were fundamentally different–one pushing, the other pulling–but in the end, the effect was the same.

“Well, congratulations,” Faro said, a slight smile on his face. “Looks like you have your attack now.”

Indeed she had. There were still some variables Juniper wanted to tweak–she especially wanted to make sure she didn’t get hurt by her own magic–but in all, it was a good starting point for her repertoire.

***

Perhaps Juniper’s maze-solving strategy had been subpar, or perhaps it had been simply bad luck, but between fighting monsters, recovering after the fights, and endless backtracking, night fell without Juniper and Faro having found the exit to the maze.

They camped out in one of the maze’s many dead ends, intending to renew their search the next morning with renewed vigor. The plan was foiled some ten minutes after breaking camp, when two right turns led Juniper and Faro to the end of the maze, a colossal cavern opening up before them.

The essence density was several times what she’d sensed at the entrance, which could only mean they were close to the core.

Juniper stared in dumbstruck at the tall cliffs rising from the floor. She couldn’t even tell how far the ceiling was, but she could see rays of light streaming through some seams in the ceiling, casting the whole cavern in a soft light. At first glance, Juniper had thought the seams to be cracks leading to the world above, but at a closer inspection, they were crystals that ran along the ceiling.

“I didn’t realize we’d gone so far down,” Faro said, his voice uncertain.

Neither had Juniper, as a matter of fact. She was pretty sure the maze had been close enough to level to be negligible. “Was there any mountain nearby?”

“I don’t think so,” Faro said, shaking his head. “Compressed space?”

“Maybe,” Juniper said. High essence levels tended to do strange things to the environment surrounding them, and making an area bigger on the inside was one of the tamer ones.

“And that’s our lily,” Faro said, pointing at something in the distance. Juniper needed to squint to see what he was referring to–several hundred meters up, at the end of a winding path through the cliffs, a lone flower leaned slightly over the precipice.

From this distance, the flower could have been anything, but given its location, it looked exactly like something Professor Zaldia would send her to fetch.

“Think you could fly us up there?” Faro asked.

Juniper frowned. She probably could get both of them up there, but… “Safely? I don’t think so.”

So far, her practice had involved getting objects–and sometimes monsters–to move as quickly or violently as possible. She didn’t yet trust herself to manage the accelerations well enough not to splat herself and Faro against the cavern’s dome.

Attempting to fly for the first time here was bound to end badly, especially since there were places much well suited for learning. Since there were almost as many ways to make yourself fly as there were practitioners, the academy provided a specially furnished gym, complete with padded walls and ceiling as well as plenty of protective equipment for students to practice safely.

“The long way up it is, then,” Faro said.

The serpentine path up the cliff was fairly smooth, all things considered. Juniper had been prepared for a session of rock climbing, but the way up proved uneventful. After an hour long trek, they reached the top of the cliff, the lily jutting out from the rocky outcropping to their right.

Juniper walked up to it, reaching out to pluck the flower–but her hand passed cleanly through the lily, which blinked out of existence a fraction of a second later.

“Uh-oh,” Juniper said as she stared at the place where the lily had been.

“Did you break it?” Faro asked. “Abyss, you broke it.”

“I didn’t do anything! I only touched it, and–wait, is this one of those plants that you can only pick in certain ways, or they get ruined? Why didn’t Zaldia say anything?”

If it was, then they were screwed. That had been the only flower on the cliffs–

“Juniper,” Faro said from a distance away. “Turn around.”

She did, coming to face with what Faro was looking at. There had been two features to the top of the cliff that Juniper had spotted–the outcropping on the right, on which she’d found the lily, and on the other side, vast plains that seemed to go on endlessly, revealing that the cliff face was only the side of a grand plateau.

She’d previously single mindedly rushed to the lily, so she hadn’t paid any attention to the rest of the plateau–only now she noticed the plains were covered in splotches of yellow, pink, white, and red. Lilies as far as the eye could see.

She tasted the essence in the air as she took a few steps–the essence was uniform, which meant the entire plateau served as the confluence’s core.

Juniper watched as Faro approached the nearest cluster of flowers, falling into a squat in front of them. He reached out, and as he did, the lily he ‘touched’ disappeared as if it had never been there.

“Illusions?” Juniper asked. She brought forth her magic vision, and her field of view exploded with light, the lilies’ myriad auras blinding Juniper to anything else. She closed her eyes on instinct, swearing under her breath. “Ouch. Yep, they’re highly magical.”

“But are they illusions, or are they phasing out of existence?” Faro mused.

“I’m pretty sure my hand went through it before it disappeared,” Juniper said, recounting the feeling, “so I’m going to go with illusion.”

Dematerialization was advanced magic, and even though the confluence was clearly powerful enough to do it, the simpler explanation was usually the right one.

“Do you think Zaldia wanted me to bring her one of these?” Juniper asked, tilting her head.

“How would you even do that?” Faro asked, bemused.

“Well, an illusion is just light, right? So I guess a photograph might count.” Of course, she didn’t actually have a camera. They were a recent invention, which made them prohibitively expensive, as well as bulky and heavy.

“With what camera? That’s too complicated,” Faro said. He fell silent for a moment, a thoughtful expression on his face. His eyes widened just a bit. “I think I know what this is.”

“A field of imaginary flowers?” Juniper asked.

“Yeah, but think about it–why would you expend so much energy making a field of fake flowers?”

“Well, confluences don’t think, so it doesn’t have to be rational–wait. You don’t think the confluence did this.” Juniper’s eyes went wide. “You think it’s a defense mechanism.”

“I saw something similar in a book, once,” Faro said, nodding slightly. “Though in that case it was a colony of ants, and they weren’t illusory but actual physical decoys.”

“So, there’s a real flower in…” Juniper glanced at her surroundings. The lily field extended until just shy of the horizon. “All of this mess,” she finished, grimacing. “That’s going to take a while to search through.”

She watched Faro as his brows narrowed–then he winced, recoiling as he covered his eyes.

Juniper puffed out a laugh. “Yeah, magic sight is out.”

“Could have warned me,” he grumbled.

“Not sure it would have helped, anyway. Finding a magic object among the mundane, sure,” Juniper said. “But a probably magic plant in the middle of all these illusions? That’s not even a needle in a haystack, that’s just a particular, indistinguishable stalk of hay in a haystack.”

“Any better ideas?” Faro asked. “If not, this is a windfall I’d like to take advantage of. You don’t often find a confluence like this.”

Juniper shrugged. “I don’t know. Actually, I think I’m with you on this. It’s too good of a place to waste time searching. Maybe that’s actually the point–she phrased it as a chore, but really, she was rewarding me for knowing the answer. She just did it in a weird, backhanded way.”

“That sounds like something she’d do,” Faro agreed, “but my guess is the other prize is real, too. And probably better, if it means abandoning a confluence point to search for other items all over the forest. But at the same time, the p”

“That’s true,” Juniper said. Worst case scenario, she could come back to the confluence the next iteration. She just needed to memorize the path through the maze, and she’d be able to get here within hours.

“You could do both,” Faro said, cupping his chin. “It’s good practice. You can do the meditation exercises as you search.”

“That’s not a bad idea at all,” Juniper said. “Let’s do another batch of eggs first, though. Mine just ran out.” It had taken about two days and a half to refine it in its entirety. They’d found thirty eggs in the snake’s nest, of which fifteen had gone to her. With a little over two weeks remaining in the iteration, this meant she could do two eggs at once.

“Mine’s still cooking,” Faro said.

“Perks of advancing,” Juniper said with a shrug. A stronger Soul could absorb more essence, and faster, like a chain reaction that fed into itself.

Juniper left Faro to his own devices, preparing another portion of the eggs for herself as he sat down to meditate. Once she was done, she ripped out a thin branch from a nearby tree.

She entered a meditative trance as she walked the length of the field, swiping left and right with the branch in front of her. The lilies didn’t disappear when struck with the branch as they did when she stepped through them, but if something material showed up, then she’d hopefully be able to feel it through the stick.

Juniper lost track of the time. She was distantly aware the light had gone out–her only visual point of reference was the fire she’d made for the eggs, next to which Faro sat.

Despite the forced tranquility, a sliver of worry wormed its way into Juniper’s thoughts. With how light the lily had to be, could she even be sure she hadn’t missed touching it? She wasn’t sure how much a flower weighed, but it couldn’t have been more than a handful of grams.

Wait, grams?

Juniper stopped abruptly, her trance shattered by this new train of thought. Hadn’t she just recently gained a new sense, one that allowed her to sense the mass of everything in her range?

And weren’t illusions famously made of light, which carried no mass?

Juniper curbed the instinct to hit herself–it was obvious in hindsight, but she had never actually used her new sense as anything but a vector for her magic. She wasn’t even yet sure her mass-sense had enough finesse to pick up something as light as a flower.

Frowning, she broke off a splinter off her stick, and concentrated on her mass-sense. The result was a bit unclear–was she feeling it through her sense, or was she feeling its weight press down on her hand?

She threw the splinter away, while maintaining focus–and even through the oppressive darkness, she saw its trajectory through her mind’s eye as it flitted to the ground.

Juniper grinned. Passively, her range wasn’t that great–maybe ten meters or so. But if she put all of her concentration behind her mass-sense…

Well, it wasn’t enough that she could scan the field in one fell swoop. But it was much better, and much more accurate than a stick.

When her mass-sense finally registered a hit two hours later, Juniper was almost fooled into thinking it was a false positive. But her mass-sense was adamant there was something vaguely flower-shaped in the dry earth in front of her.

Even if her eyes disagreed.

She reached out to where the petals were supposed to be, and the flower’s spell broke. A golden lily appeared before her, out of thin air.

It didn’t just create the illusory field, it made itself invisible too, Juniper marveled. So much effort, just to hide itself.

Not bearing to kill it, Juniper used a dagger as a makeshift spade to pry it out of the ground.

As she gently cradled the plant, a single drop of nectar fell onto Juniper’s hand. Her thumb and part of her palm disappeared, as if someone had carved a semicircle through her hand.

The effect was so complete that she could see the bones and muscle in the unaffected part.

Juniper’s breath caught for a moment, until she realized there was no pain, and that she could still feel the missing thumb. She made a fist, inspecting her hand on both sides. Her thumb was there, but invisible from any direction.

A flower that grants invisibility? Juniper thought. She wasn’t familiar with the species, but she was certain it had to be significantly more valuable than the snake eggs. She couldn’t even begin to think what Zaldia might offer in exchange for this.

And there were two other items on Zaldia’s list.

Perhaps she hadn’t sent them on a wild goose chase after all.