Jeremy stared at him, breath ragged, blood leaking from the bites. The fight had taken every one of his spells, and then, at the last possible moment, he stepped in. No urgency. No sweat. Just a flick of the wrist, a flash of light, three spells cast back to back and the threat was gone.

  Jeremy didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. The look he gave said everything: You could’ve helped. You waited. You didn’t have to make it look that easy.

  It wasn’t anger, exactly. It was that quiet, simmering disbelief—the kind that comes when someone lets you drown just long enough to prove they know how to rescue you.

  Jeremy held his hand out and cast his magical looting. Out of the hundred or so bodies, he got twenty-five chitin fragments. Hopefully, he could sell them to someone.

  “You are actually doing very well using your mana, however, you are pulling from a shallow source,” Rovek said. “Mana comes from your soul. You are pulling using the mana available in your hands. If you were to pull direct from the source, your attacks could last longer, have a greater area of effect, and cause more damage.

  “When I pull mana, I pull it from here,” he said as he tapped on his diaphram. “My core is what draws mana in from the world and distributes it to the rest of my body.

  “Think of it as drinking from fountain by dipping your hand in and bringing it to your mouth. You lose some water and only get a handful. However, if you put your entire face in the water, you can drink directly from the source in wide gulps.”

  “How do I do that?” Jeremy asked looking down at his chest.

  “Some say they pull from their soul, I view it more as my soul is pushing the mana to my hand. Or eyes or mouth or feet. I can cast my spell from anywhere if I chose.

  “I acknowledge the spell and push the energy directing the mana from my core outward to my hand pushing the spell outward.

  “You should be able to hold the spell in place and cast exactly when and where you want.

  “Cast your soul flare spell slowly, feel where the mana is coming from.”

  “Honestly, it feels like it is surging from my arm.”

  “Think about your core, and move the mana from there.”

  Jeremy did as instructed. He felt the mana surge from his core and he mentally forced it towards his arm. The soul flare shot out of his arm with significantly more force than before.

  “Wow!” Jeremy exclaimed. “That is amazing! Thank you so much!” He couldn’t wait to try his spells with the improved technique.

  “If you channel through an enchanted staff,” Rovek said, “sometimes the magic is exponentially magnified. Some staffs can channel any spell, while some staffs channel a specific affinity. Since I use fire affinity, it would be beneficial for me to use a fire-basedfire based staff.”

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  “Why don’t you?”

  “I have yet to find a gemstone I can use to enchant into a staff. When I do, I’ll be coming back here to claim a root for myself.”

  “Can’t you just pull a root today. Why make another trip?”

  “The roots of the tree of Nivalár will only live for a short time without a gemstone or magical fragment. Once the root is enchanted with an artifact, it will last for many years. Some have lasted for generations.”

  Jeremy’s team reached the entrance to the cavern. “Do you think we’ll get attacked here?”

  “Magic protects the cavern from hostile intent. If new creatures like those bugs form, the magic forces them out of the cavern. Nothing will attack us once we’re inside.”

  Jeremy downed a health and mana potion anyway, not having a lot of faith in his fate. Thankfully, he didn’t really need the mana potion as the cavern was completely peaceful.

  Jeremy had visited Natural Bridge Cavern in Texas as a kid, wide-eyed and awestruck by the ancient architecture of the earth itself. The stalactites and stalagmites—stone sculptures carved drip by drip over thousands of years—had left a lasting impression. But what he remembered most was the moment the tour guide turned off the lights. Total darkness. The kind that swallowed everything. He’d held his hand inches from his face and seen nothing. Not even a shadow.

  This cave was nothing like that.

  Here, the darkness had texture—softly lit from within. Veins of glowing mineral threaded through the rock like buried lightning, casting a faint, bluish shimmer across the walls. Bioluminescent fungi clustered in crevices, their caps pulsing gently like sleeping hearts. Even the spores drifting lazily through the air glowed faintly, like dust motes caught in moonlight.

  “The tree is not far,” Rovek said. “What do you think of the cavern?”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s beautiful!”

  “This was the third location of the magical awakening some 2000 years ago. The magical energy radiated throughout the area, but the tree seemed to absorb and control the mana from the awakening.

  “As we saw with the bugs, the source creates new life often and sends it out. When I first saw you, I believed you to be a creation of the tree, a new species.”

  The cavern constricted as they moved forward; the walls pressing in just enough to make Jeremy tense. But the squeeze lasted only a few steps. Suddenly, the passage widened—and then gave way entirely to a vast chamber teeming with life.

  Jeremy froze. The room was alive.

  Towering figures moved among the glowing stone—creatures formed entirely of bark and knotted limbs, their bodies woven like the trunks of ancient trees. They reminded him of trees in the bayou covered with peat moss and old black willow trees near his house.

  Jeremy had to shake off the weight of nostalgia.

  Above and around them, motes of bioluminescent fungus drifted like lazy fireflies, casting soft hues of green and violet across the chamber. And darting between them were tiny sprites, no larger than the tip of a pencil, flitting through the air in spirals. They sang in high, playful, melodic voices.

  At the very center of the vast space was a huge and ancient tree beaming with the same blue energy that was spread throughout the entire cavern.

  Rovek walked up beside Jeremy. “We cannot take anything from the tree above the ground, but the roots are available to pull up and use as staffs. If you find a root above ground, we will evaluate it together, and I will tell you if it will work as a staff.”

  They searched the area around the tree for several minutes until Jeremy found it; a twisted, dark, gnarled root shaped by the cave’s mana-rich atmosphere. Clusters of small, bioluminescent mushrooms sprouted along its length, their caps glowing faintly in hues of violet and teal. At the tip of the root jutting from ground, a large mushroom bloomed like a crown, its underside veined with pale green light that pulsed gently, almost like a heartbeat.

  It seemed to respond to Jeremy’s presence, the fungi shifting slightly as if breathing. Spores drifted lazily from the cap, trailing faint trails of light that vanished into the mist.

  Jeremy called out to Rovek, “This is it! This is the root for my staff.”