Purple watched the familiar morning camp routine once again. The location was new, though its distance from their previous camp was miniscule compared to what used to be usual, but the people and activities were not. Lorvan wakes up and relieves Ordens of her night watch shift about an hour before dawn. One of the adventurers follows suit, though which one of them stands night watch varies. Amber wakes up when the sky is just beginning to brighten, and she spends some time doing exercises in her tent, then dressing. The rest of the camp rouses one by one, and Sconter cooks a fresh breakfast for everyone. Then Amber pokes Carlos, who is always the last still sleeping, and he hurriedly prepares himself in a matter of minutes to join the consumption of breakfast.

Some elements of what follows breakfast remained the same: Ressara returns to her tent and actively absorbs aether for hours. Kindar practices with his sword and spars with whoever is willing, falling back on whatever Purple can spawn when other sparring partners are unavailable. Carlos endlessly tinkers with spell design work of some kind, often multiple pieces of it at once. Amber does as well, though often her work on spellcraft is focused on understanding what Carlos is doing and giving him feedback on it. He seems to welcome whenever she says she doesn't understand something, and more often than not, he changes the "source code"—or even the language definition—to make it more readily clear, rather than explaining it separately. When he does explain something instead of changing it, he usually focuses on general principles over the specific instance.

Some elements were different, but still similar: Sconter ranges through the nearby areas, scouting for dangers as always, but now focusing in the direction of the wellspring, cautiously searching for signs of something extraordinary. Esmorana likewise focuses her wind senses toward the wellspring; her range is not far enough to reach the wellspring from here, but perhaps the guardian might venture in this direction close enough for her winds to touch it.

And then there were elements that were completely new: Carlos, Amber, and even Trinlen, were all casting an assortment of scrying spells and sending them ranging across the landscape, and Carlos was building a complex combination of spells with many various contingent triggers and effects. All of the code for it was in Purple's repository, and it looked like Carlos was trying to make a suite of automated defenses for every possibility he could think of. When lunchtime came, Ressara joined Sconter at the concealed camp stove and made some kind of soup. There was something strange about the soup, too; it glowed with mana to Purple's senses, almost like the pool of stagnant mana Carlos and Amber had dealt with, but there were hints of essence in it too. He wasn't sure exactly what effect eating it would have, but he got an impression of health and vitality from it. It should definitely be beneficial, at least.

Meanwhile, Purple was doing his best to conceal them all, while still pulling in aether to fuel everyone's advancement. Time passed uneventfully until late evening, when Sconter reported that he'd found a good place to hide and lay an ambush. [Three trees, really big ones, got knocked over long enough ago that the jungle has grown over them since then. They form a large triangle, and their branches formed a framework twice as tall as a person for vines and bushes and other things to grow from. The resulting carpet of life is perfect for heavy concealment.]

Carlos immediately moved one of his scrying spells to take a look, and he frowned while inspecting the area from several angles. [It's certainly thick cover, and full of mana in all the vegetation to obscure us from mana-based senses, but how will we get inside it without leaving obvious signs?]

Sconter responded with a dry deadpan. [I'm sure we could find another way if you really need it, my lord, but I figured your spells can handle that.]

Carlos blinked, then blushed. [Oh, right. Sorry, I'm still getting used to having enough power and spells to actually do things.]

Amber laughed from right beside him in camp and nudged him with her elbow. [What do you mean? You've already done so many things! You learned and cast the Sight Gate to get us out from the Black Blades' captivity, you figured out how to do that in the first place, you helped subdue Captain Granlan, you improved the design of a ton of spells, you fixed the royal guards' armor, you…] She paused for a moment, then shook her head. [Seriously, stop spouting nonsense. You do things all the time!]

Carlos chuckled ruefully. [Okay already, I get it! You're right, I do things. Though you helped with a lot of those! But most of all of that was intellectual projects and craft work. Work, um, "in the field," I guess, just feels different.]

Purple observed the interplay but saw no need to add any comment of his own. He nudged lightly on his bond with Sconter, and the scout readily allowed Purple to look through his senses. The dense region of vegetation put Sconter's description of it to shame. Leaves, flowers, thorns, brambles, and vines were everywhere on the surface. He couldn't spot even a single place where a sight line went more than a foot into the cohesive mass of plants, and the tangled web of mana-filled branches and roots supporting it all spanned the entire volume from the surface down to the ground and below. There was plenty of air inside the whole thing too, of course—it wasn't literally solid—but he was fairly sure that his specialized soul structure for sensing fine details of mana was the only reason he could pick out any of the gaps. Hmm. Actually, I can check that. He disabled that soul structure for a moment, and sure enough, the web of mana he sensed blurred into a thick haze.

He watched with idle interest, his fine details mana sensory structure enabled again, as Esmorana probed the volume with air. She kept her gusts light enough to not be too obvious, but Sconter had long experience at sensing her mana in action, and both he and Purple were good at picking out details. In most places, air could barely move at all before being stopped by something in its path, but there were cavities where it could—within the bounds—flow freely. Hidden vortices of swirling air formed, and Esmorana reported to Carlos. [The largest cavity is big enough for Purple to fit, with a little work to clear a few stray intrusions. I clipped those off just now.]

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Carlos responded instantly. [Can you get the coin I'm holding into the cavity's center for me? I put a one-shot Teleport Beacon spell on it.]

Back in their camp, maybe a mile or two away from the fallen trees and tangled vegetation, Esmorana waved her hand with a dramatic flourish, and Carlos's coin abruptly zipped up into the air. Esmorana snapped her head around to stare at the coin as it came to an equally sudden stop. [What the hell? That moved like a feather, not a coin!]

Carlos shrugged. [I put a minor Levitation spell on it, too. Also, inertia reduction. Effectively, anyway; it's actually force amplification, but for practical purposes it mostly works out the same. Asking air to carry a non-aerodynamic piece of metal without any assistance just felt wrong.]

Esmorana laughed. [I can make air act solid, and you've seen me make a tornado, but sure. Why not?]

The coin zipped off, horizontally this time, and soon arrived at the bramble thicket. Weaving it between leaves and into the right spot took a bit more time, but Esmorana deftly threaded a path through and lined it with little cushions of air. Then it was time for Purple to release his grip on the surrounding mana and aether once again so that Carlos could move him.

It felt strange how familiar and routine that ultimate action of vulnerability had become, and yet… it was familiar and routine now. Purple had lost count of how many times he had done it. Letting go to trust in Carlos no longer felt scary, and in fact was almost comfortable. Most importantly, it no longer felt terribly draining. Even now, at the lowest ebb and ready for Carlos's Teleport, he felt strong. His external resources may be released, but he held plenty of power within himself, and he knew he could—and would—re-establish himself quickly upon arrival.

The mana and essence net of Carlos's Teleport snapped into place around him, and suddenly the camp was replaced with darkness and branches. He immediately seized hold of the nearest aether flows and rapidly expanded his domain to encompass the entire interior of the enormous thicket. He left the outermost foot or so free of his direct influence for now to make it harder to detect his presence, but coated every branch and stick inside those bounds with mana under his control, with tiny tendrils of essence threaded through it all. Then he really got to work, reshaping the tangled web to clear more space.

It took care and finesse to open up a large enough cavity while keeping the outer surface adequately supported, but Purple worked quickly. After only about 10 minutes, he was ready. [Carlos and Amber, come on in. The hidden site is ready for you to set up camp.]

[Thank you, Purple.]

Amber echoed Carlos, [Yes, thank you.]

Then shaped nets of mana formed in the enlarged cavity and delivered everyone. Carlos looked around for a moment, then turned to Purple and nodded. "Looks like you're positioned well off-center. Good."

Purple's floating crystal shimmered, and he sent a burst of satisfaction and curiosity. [Why is off-center good?]

Carlos smiled. "Because if an enemy detects that you're somewhere in here, but can't pin down your precise location, their natural first guess will be the center. Now let's get this camp set up so we can sleep on time."

Purple turned his attention to expanding his domain further. While he was doing his best to be subtle and hard to notice, something would surely notice him eventually, and he wanted that discovery to be as uncertain about his actual location as possible. He kept his web of blended aether and essence close to the ground, only covering the first 10 feet above the dirt. He figured that the greatest dangers were likely to be flying, and staying low would help elude their attention.

He kept his spread gradual, his touch light, but despite holding back his domain still spanned 2 miles across by dawn the next day. Keeping what Carlos had said in mind, he had spread in an intentionally lopsided fashion, covering only half a mile to their west, compared to one and a half miles to their east. The eastward expansion had to tend a bit south to avoid the higher-level zone that he wasn't ready for yet. He also prepared to instantly open holes in the leaf cover of their hiding space if anyone needed to exit quickly. They were all more than capable of opening their own holes in a barrier of mere ordinary leaves, of course, but he wanted to be helpful.

The new morning passed uneventfully, and shortly after midday, Purple felt ready to tackle their next problem: This spot was only useful as long as they stayed in it, and they would soon reach the limit of the aether that was naturally present. The immediately obvious potential solution was the higher-level aether nearby, and he focused his attention on the spot where his domain brushed up against it, one mile to the east. He reached just a little northward and pulled on the Level 49 aether, and it flowed in response, but it decompressed to Level 48 after barely a moment of movement.

He pulled more, and it flowed slightly farther before decompressing, but only slightly, and the greater concentration of Level 48 aether that enabled the increase was dissipating rapidly. Simply pulling more was clearly not enough; he would have to pull huge quantities at high speed, and the resulting disruption in the aether environment would be incredibly obvious. He tried the most obvious correction, simply holding the aether tighter, but the decompression overwhelmed his grip. No matter how strongly he tried to hold it, the aether at the edge of the batch would decompress, and the rest would rapidly erode into decompression as the edge progressed inward.

Purple tried again, and the same rapid erosion happened, seemingly unstoppable. He tried once more, his grip growing sloppy from frustration, and noticed a difference this time. He'd accidentally grabbed a bit of Level 48 aether just outside the Level 49 glob, and that part of the glob eroded last. The lower-level aether was still higher than his own level, and it didn't yield to his will easily, but he could pack it tighter into higher concentration than it naturally had here. It stubbornly refused to compress into its higher-level variant, no matter how hard he pressed on it, but he could force it to match the concentration at the boundary line.

He grabbed another glob of Level 49 aether, and this time wrapped it in a shell of concentrated Level 48 aether. It was packed so tightly that any aether that decompressed would force another bit of aether to re-compress in response, and this time the compression held.

Purple relaxed in happy contentment for a moment, proud of his accomplishment. They would not need to abandon their hiding spot in order to progress, for he could bring the higher-level aether to them instead. Then the moment passed, and he set about preparing to make it happen.

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