“So where are we going exactly?” Ranvir asked. The terrain had grown increasingly dense the further away from the roads they got. After only half an hour, the soil seemed to have been swallowed by the roots of the trees, whose canopies hung so low as to brush those self-same anchors.

“What does your compass tell you?” Amalia asked, easily maneuvering the terrain. If not for the fact that he could hardly sense any disturbance on the lines coming from her, he would’ve said she was using an Ability to enhance her physicality. Instead, he knew it was simply the permanent increase granted by a stat from Amanaris.

Sighing, he flexed his will through Amanaris and awakened one of the functions buried within the system. A small circle manifested before him, only visible to him.

“North-east?” Ranvir asked.

“Very good,” Amalia said, applauding him ironically as she leapt a clear ten feet from one root to another with all the effort of a normal step.

“That tells me nothing,” Ranvir said, dismissing the reward for reaching the second Tier.

“That’s not true,” Amalia said. “It tells you a ton of things. I haven’t brought any long-term travel equipment with me. No tent, no bedroll, no nothing. That means we’re not going far. Second, it tells you our heading, which, if you have the right skills, should allow you to figure out what our end goal is.”

Ranvir somehow found a gap in the roots, and his boots slipped down to his knee and squelched in the mud. Grumbling to himself, Ranvir hauled himself out. He couldn’t properly rely on his space powers to detect the landscape for him, since he was still interpreting it through his regular senses. If he heard someone taking a step, Ranvir could gather a lot of information through that.

When maneuvering a static landscape like this, his senses turned out to be far less effective. So he stopped and closed his eyes to delve deeper into the lines. Resting one hand on a nearby tree, its leafy branch resting on his shoulder, Ranvir reached out to the world.

Mana thrived in the forest, thick green mana of life, yellow and brown of stone seating them as blue water ran through everything. Thousands of animals, all emitting their own complex combination of mana, affected the lines. From insects so small they disappeared when not in a hive, to animals bigger than dogs and guardian cats trudging across the mud and roots.

And beyond those dots of stillness. Some of them were small, on the verge of collapsing, barely holding together more than a few square meters of mana. Other were bigger and stronger, but one stood out. It was solidly beyond pre-stage, though not quite on the way to a true first-stage level of power.

“A fold?” Ranvir asked.

Amalia nodded. “The strongest in the area. Today is going to be a little different from how the Sentinels usually run their training, but I’m your sponsor, and no one is here to complain.”

Amalia stopped speaking, and it took Ranvir a moment to realize he was supposed to say something. “I’m not going to complain…”

“Well, you should, but it’s not gonna help,” Amalia said, miffed. “You’re going to get in there and show me your skills. I don’t really care how you handle the fold, so long as I don’t have to step in, we’re going to measure your acclimation rate to katapetra, and we’re going to see if your space talent is good enough to close the fold.

“The fold should at least take you all the way to Tier 3, at which point you’re eligible for proper training, and I don’t have to bother as much anymore. However, I want to note that the standard trainee is going to be between Tier 5 to 10, which means higher stats and most of the Kistios rewards.”

Ranvir nodded, “Okay,” he reached out with his stone mana reaching for the mud still on his sodden leg. Stone mana could barely connect with it. The mud had very fine sediment and a lot of water, lowering the effectiveness of his mana. However, with Level 13, he thought he had enough points in Draw to manage pushing it off.

Amalia frowned as she sensed his work, “How often have you tried really pushing with your power?”

Ranvir paused. “I haven’t, now that I think about it. Not with Amanaris,” Amalia nodded and stepped behind a tree. “It’s just dirt,” Ranvir rolled his eyes at her antics. Then he heaved, throwing the mud off his legs. The mana stripped the mud from his pant leg, as well as most of the moisture, leaving it only slightly wet. His exertion, carried on the weight of 58 Draw, blew outside of his native presence, sustained for only a few moments by the power he’d put into it.

It barely made it half a meter beyond his foot. Mud splashed in all directions as it was trapped between his power and the denser, more solid ground. Dirt torn into clots as big as his hand flew past Ranvir’s head. Ducking his head, Ranvir felt a few droplets of muddy water strike him, though he heard a lot hitting the canopy surrounding him.

“You’re going with a 10 to 1 ratio of Mana: Draw and Perception. With Level 13, that’s nearly 60 points. I realize that doesn’t mean a lot to you, but that puts you around a tier and a half ahead of your contemporaries, except they have the Mana: Control stats to help with the fallout. By the time you hit Tier 3, you’re going to have Level 21 and nearly double what your current Draw is,” she gave him a deadpan look.

“I just wasn’t prepared for my Draw to be that strong. This hasn’t an issue when I’m making Frija’s figurines. I thought I would be lacking power.”

Amalia shrugged. “Up to you.”

They traversed the forest a while longer. Walking was too inefficient at describing the order of effort it took Ranvir to pass the trees.

Ahead of him, Amalia looked as ready and unaffected as if she’d just gotten her day started, instead of hiking through dense roots for an hour and a half as she stood in a clearing.

When he was two dozen meters out, Ranvir noticed the change in the ambient mana. It came to a standstill. The wind slowed down slightly, no longer buoyed by air mana, the trees were slightly smaller and less vibrant, no longer supported by stone and nature mana. Perhaps more importantly, they didn’t grow as tightly clustered around the fold either.

Sighing in relief, Ranvir sent a silent prayer of thanks to whoever made folds react to the environment like that. Walking on mostly flat and even soil, sweaty and slightly out of breath, Ranvir paused in front of the twist in space. He could sense the interaction of mana where the lesser shard had knocked into Korfyi and melted fast.

“We’ll take a break before we go in,” Amalia said. “Go find a place to sit. There won’t be any more rests until we’re done with the fold.”

“Good, good,” Ranvir replied, slumping down in the shade. The air was still chokingly humid, even without the heightening effects of mana. It was a phenomenon that Ranvir’d read about, but he hadn’t understood what it meant until he went with the village to cull the weaker local folds and felt the difference himself. It wasn’t something he was likely to ever feel back on Vednar, as his home plane didn’t appear to have any folds or lesser excess spaces that weren’t created by the inhabitants.

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Ranvir closed his eyes, perfectly happy to let the entire break pass in silence. Apparently, his wishes weren’t to be.

“You know,” Amalia said. “Its been a long time since I last went to a fold this weak,” she furrowed her brow. “Before mom moved to Nysada, so that would have to be more than twelve years ago?”

Ranvir stirred at that notion, “Your mom’s alive?”

Amalia stared at him for a long moment. “Why wouldn’t she be?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Something about the way you and Ione interact?”

Amalia pursed her lips. “No, she’s still very much alive and well off. She’s a veterinarian down in the capital.”

“I don’t think I know that word.”

“A doctor for animals. But uh, yeah, mom and Ione aren’t exactly on speaking terms.”

“How come?” Ranvir asked, a glimmer of white curiosity peaking through cracked and broken gray muck. The light revealed itself behind the clamor of background emotions that had been steadily growing since Ranvir joined the Sentinels.

Amalia gave him a long look before continuing. “Her and dad divorced. Grandmother,” she winced as if the word tasted wrong. “Ione has some deeply ingrained beliefs about relationships and such. I think they come from her own marriage and time with grandfather. She’d set mom and dad up to be perfect together.”

“But they weren’t.”

“Obviously,” Amalia replied, picking at the root she was leaning against. “Ione just stuck with a terrible relationship for too long and now she feels that anyone who doesn’t want to suffer through life with a person who doesn’t like you and you don’t like is weak.”

Ranvir nodded. “Sounds tough to be around.”

“So now she wants me to be her next perfect example,” Amalia said, the root she was fiddling with ripped and tore. “She wants me to be her perfect little wife to whatever husband she’s found, because if she couldn’t live that life, then she’ll do it through me.”

Ranvir nodded along, wondering if he should say something, but Amalia was already moving on.

“So when she found out I like girls, she threw an enormous fit. Even ended up pushing Kasos away! And they’ve been friends since her early twenties. She said some really mean things, really mean. So he left. I didn’t see him again until he came to help you. That was around the time when she drove mom off as well,” she shook her head and threw the ripped wood away and shook her head.

Ranvir tried not to look too shocked at Amalia’s words. Amalia, herself, was breathing heavily and Ranvir could just make out the hint of watery eyes. She let out a long, deflating breath and threw her hands up to cover her face.

“So… you’ve been a Sentinel for like twelve years?” Ranvir asked.

“Oh, right,” she muttered through her fingers. She chuckled, then went into a full laughter. “I’m sorry,” she said after calming down. “I think it’s the stress of telling Ione about me and Elpir that’s getting to me. Didn’t mean to off load on you like that.”

“I have a four-year-old,” Ranvir replied. “That didn’t even qualify as a tantrum,” Amalia chuckled again, so he continued. “Last week, she threw a fit for almost a flare because I didn’t let her eat the leaves that had fallen on the ground.”

Amalia laughed outright.

“It’s only funny when you don’t have to deal with it,” Ranvir replied, doing his best to mimic Grev’s ability to sound aggrieved as Amalia descended into cackling.