A young man with short blonde hair and dark grey robes with purple trim crept away from the privacy of his own home to try something new. He’d never been friends with a Demon before, but he had no idea they were so… friendly.

Locke found the Demon’s home easily and only paused for a moment before walking down the path. When he emerged into the small clearing, he paused again, but for a different reason.

“Hello?” he called out.

Gust poked his head out his front door. “Hey! You should have told me you were coming; I would have saved some rice.”

Locke shook his head awkwardly and checked out the area, noting a pile of debris at the edge of the grass. It was very clean, if a bit plain, he thought.

When he stepped into his new friend’s home, that thought intensified. “You know, Augustus, you are allowed to decorate. Also, here,” Locke began reorganizing the room without even asking permission. It was an urge he couldn’t resist. Whenever he saw someone doing something wrong, he wanted to step in and fix it.

As long as he cared enough, that is.

“Uh, thanks,” Gust replied. “Also, you can just call me Gust.” Locke nodded at that and began turning Gust’s cot. It had been flat against the wall, beneath a window. “I, uh, don’t mind or anything, but what are you doing?” the Demon asked.

“Your room is out of sync with nature. The bed should never be next to a window, or door, and your head should point south.” Locke paused and glanced at the layout, then grimaced, “Not east. Mana is always flowing through the world. Geomancy helps us direct that flow and use it to our advantage.”

While saying this, the young man placed Gust’s table on one side of the bed, and his chest on the other. Then he nodded and looked at Gust. “You should get a couple plants, but this is good for now. What do you think?”

“Uh, looks… good? To be honest, it doesn’t really matter to me,” he shrugged.

Locke rolled his eyes. “Well, it should. Where’s your cultivation area?” Gust pointed to the center of the room, which was now beneath his cot. The short blonde mage tilted his head. “Really? Ugh, Gust you shouldn’t work and rest in the same place. By the time you go to bed, there won’t be any mana around, and your soul will leak faster than ever. We can’t cycle while we sleep, so we need to produce an environment that helps contains the energy. When you get a chance, go to the library and check out a book on geomancy. Then memorize it. Come on,” he waved a hand over his shoulder and walked outside.

There, Locke surveyed the area with his mana sense and found where the mana was thickest, then pointed to it. “You should get a cushion from the treasury’s shop and cultivate here.”

Gust squinted at the spot and glanced around awkwardly. “Why?” As far as he could tell, it was just a random spot on the ground.

Locke held out his arms and waved them at the forest. “Do you think cultivating is the same, no matter where you do it? Haven’t you noticed how your cultivation progresses slower when you’re in class?”

“I figured I was distracted by everyone else,” Gust shrugged.

“That’s a part of it, but there’s more. The entire school is designed in such a way that mana flows toward the class greens, but with a few dozen people cultivating at once, we don’t notice the benefits. The mana here, gathers here,” he pointed again at the ground. “You’ll be able to sense it when you’re a mage.”

“Alright,” Gust nodded, taking a seat where Locke pointed. “Is there anything else I should know?”

Locke chuckled. “Oh yeah. Millions of small details. But that’s what the geomancy book is for. Realistically, just get a cushion and gather every mana-infused item you have. You want to find the spot where mana gathers naturally, then take advantage of anything else you can do to further stuff it full of mana.”

“Easy enough, there’s only one.” Gust pulled the Subtle Coin out of his pocket.

As the other young man sat down a dozen feet away from Gust, he pointed toward the house. “There’s something in your chest emitting, too.”

Gust froze and his eyes leapt up to Locke’s. “How’d you know about that?” he asked quickly. His father’s journal was as precious as the coin, except the journal wouldn’t magically find its way into Gust’s pocket any time he lost it. That book held the last vestige of his father’s memories, and Gust would protect it with his life.

“I already told you,” Locke spoke slowly and poked one of his temples. “Mana senses.”

“Right. Sorry.”

After a few seconds, Locke added, “Sooo, do you want to go grab it or…”

Gust gritted his teeth and debated showing his new friend the journal, but it was simply too personal. No one knew, yet, that Saith was his father. They all assumed Gust was the man’s disciple, and Gust decided to let them.

If these people knew the truth, they might start asking questions Gust didn’t know the answer to, questions that would remind him that he never truly knew his father at all.

And one in particular that he just didn’t want to answer.

“Not yet,” Gust replied curtly, then changed the subject. “Why are you all the way over there?”

Locke moved on easily. People were entitled to their secrets. “This is the second-best spot. Ideally, you should cultivate where you are for a few hours, then walk over here, and keep switching. The mana dries up eventually. If you don’t move once in a while, your cultivation will keep going slower and slower. This mana here isn’t rich enough to replenish that fast.”

Gust’s eyebrows climbed and he shook his head. “Fuck, man. There’s just too much to learn! You’re telling me I’ve been wasting my time these last few weeks, cultivating in there?” He pointed toward his home.

Locke smiled and shook his head. “Not wasting your time, exactly, just not using it as well as you could. I’ll show you my place sometime, that should give you an idea for how to design your cultivation area. Check out that book, first, though.” Gust nodded and with that, the two went quiet.

While Gust settled into his basic cultivation technique, he watched Locke take up an unfamiliar position. The mage’s legs were crossed, and his arms stretched out to either side so that his knuckles were pressed against the ground, fingers splayed. Then, he began muttering something too low to sound like anything but a buzz in Gust’s ears.

He couldn’t see it, but Gust imagined a deluge of mana flowing toward those hands, then into his body. Locke apparently sensed something and opened his eyes. “Something wrong?”

“What is that?” Gust asked.

“My path? It’s under Pestilence: the Thousand Insect Mastery Path,” his voice swelled with pride. “I, uh, only have ants mastered so far, but it’s better than nothing. See?” He held out one hand and Gust’s recently improved vision could easily pick out hundreds, if not thousands, of black dots racing around the boy’s fingers, palm, and wrist.

Gust’s jaw dropped. “Oh, that’s disgusting.”

Locke cradled the hand closer to his chest. “Don’t say that! Ants are probably the smartest insects alive. They communicate through pheromones, they have feelings and thoughts, and they outnumber us at least ten thousand to one!” Locke’s eyes narrowed as he reached up to his collar and said, “Don’t tell anyone about this, but…”

As Gust nodded, an ant half the size of his palm crawled out of Locke’s robes and onto his hand. Gust felt a shudder run down his spine, along with the urge to put a lot more distance between himself and that thing.

Suffice it to say, Gust didn’t like bugs and he had trouble understanding anyone who did. Wasn’t the whole point of humanity moving inside to get away from insects? It was at least part of the reason.

“This here’s my queen,” Locke said in the voice of a proud father. The long, black ant had two large wings on its back which were folded up, and a large pair of mandibles. “I’ve been feeding her bits of my meals. She only has a few bites, but the protein helps her grow. I’ve been looking for something venomous to cross with her. Does your house have spiders?”

Locke moved as if he was about to get up, and all Gust could think about was keeping those ants out of his home. “Did all those ants crawl out of his robes, or did he just attract them that quickly?” Gust didn’t want to know the answer to that.

“No, no! No spiders! None at all,” he chuckled awkwardly. “But if I find one, I’ll let you know.”

Locke couldn’t help but laugh. Most people hated bugs, he knew that. It was part of the reasoning behind his Path. The Thousand Insect Mastery Path was one of the rarest within the school, and Locke always had a fascination with ants anyway, so he thought choosing this unique path would get him some attention from a Master who’d made the same choice.

When he learned that the Matriarch was the only Master with the same Path, he thought he’d chosen correctly. As the months passed, and the woman stayed in closed door cultivation, Locke became an outcast as other students with shared Paths helped each other, and he remained alone.

Except now, he wasn’t alone. He found himself opening up quite easily now that he’d spent a little more time with this new friend. “What Path do you think you’ll pick? The Swordsman’s, I assume?” When Gust froze up again, he added, “Fine, fine, you don’t have to tell me.”

Gust sighed. He felt terrible keeping secrets from a new friend. “It’s just… I don’t know what his Path was, Locke. Or anything about it. The old man barely taught me anything, he wanted me to figure it all out for myself!”

“Huh,” Locke nodded. “Well, he probably knew what he was doing. Shame he couldn’t pass his Path on before he… you know. He didn’t leave a manual behind?”

Gust’s eyes flicked toward his home. The journal could be a cultivation manual, a spell book, or fucking cookbook for all he knew. Gust shook his head. “All I know is that he would have wanted me to find my own Path. If only he’d helped me find that Path, maybe I’d be a little further down it by now,” he added bitterly.

“Well, when you start thinking about it, let me know. We’ll find you something good.”

As the two sunk back into their cultivation, Gust found himself unable to focus. If he was going to defeat the Patrons, something felt very wrong about following one of their Paths.

At the same time, though, Paths existed for a reason. They were known, established, powerful forms of cultivation. Anyone who started their own Path from scratch either had to be an idiot or a genius!

Gust assumed his father had been a genius.

But every time he thought of the grand quest he had already accepted, he felt like an idiot.