Chapter 57

“Ben I know you’re excited but can we take a bit of a break?” Thera couldn’t help but ask. They had decided to look around the city for a couple hours before getting to the guild, but Ben had been rushing around like he wouldn’t get the chance to see the city again once they were done. He had to go into any shop that caught his interest and got more food than he would ever possibly need from any cart that smelled tempting enough to him. It was getting ridiculous. “We can go out again tomorrow so let's take things a little slower for a bit.”“My bad, sorry. It’s just all so exciting, you know?”

And why wouldn’t it be? Anailia was basically a fully modern city, skyscrapers and all, situated within a giant forest. It wasn’t like anything he’d ever seen before. The people dressed in brightly coloured togas, going about their daily lives, and there was street art to pass, and monuments to see. He couldn’t help but go full tourist from it all. Still, he eased up for Thera.

“Thank you. Come on, let’s take a seat for a bit and eat some of your pile of food while it’s fresh. I know a good place to sit ahead.”

She led him for about five minutes before they arrived at a small stone fence, at just the right height to act as a seat at the edge of the city. He was sure the view beyond was beautiful, but it was the fence that took his breath away.

“Holy crap. Thera what the hell is this?” He had run ahead and was peering down at it, running his hand along the stone. To an ordinary person it probably looked like plain rock, well put together but nothing special. To Ben though it looked divine. His mana sense had improved with his level, and while that would normally mean being able to feel the way mana was woven through something he was touching still, whatever enchantment was on the wall made it positively glow to him. He could see the enchantments contained within what he thought was ordinary stone, but with a complexity and density that he was sure it should have shattered long before it reached its current state. Delicate weaves of mana he didn’t know if he would ever be able to pull off himself were strung together as if in a tapestry, and he knew there was significantly more he couldn’t make out, his sight was still too weak. He couldn’t help but curse himself for not having a higher level of enchanting to properly examine what was before him and swore that he would come back here again. There were things he could learn in this wall.

“I’m honestly a little jealous your sense is so good at your enchanting level, I’d love to know what the magic of a god looked like with my own two eyes,” She said, dropping a bombshell on him.

“I’m sorry, a god?”

She nodded. “Mhm, This is the entrance to the trial of Anailia and Tolona. When the succubi homeworld was conquered, survivors were taken into the trial for safety as Anailia used all of her strength to escape. This fence is the boundary to keep people out that aren’t facing the challenge.”

“Wow,” Ben let out, wonder overtaking him for a moment before he needed to ask a question. “But isn’t this a little short to be keeping people out?”

In response she grabbed his hand and tried to pass it over the far edge of the fence, only to have something stop it.

“I don’t know all of the magics within it, but one of them acts as a boundary. It doesn’t hurt so it’s fine to sit and lean against, but you won’t be getting through.”

“Awe, but I wanted to see what the enchantments looked like on the other side.”

“The only way to do that would be to take the trail, and I personally wouldn’t recommend it. A lot of people die facing trials unprepared,” She warned, removing the thought of trying to sneak in from his mind.

“Noted. That’s alright, I could probably spend weeks looking at a small portion of it. How big is the place anyway?” When he looked down the length of the fence he could tell that it was large, it looked like it had a slight curve in it but it went on for a while.

“From the outside it’s a circle about two kilometers across, inside though I’ve heard it’s bigger. Not sure if that’s true though, it can be a bit hard to learn anything about what it’s actually like in there. The entire nation was built around it once it was brought to this world though.”

Ben felt like he had a million more questions but the food was calling to him so he put it on hold. They took a seat and leaned against the invisible barrier that kept them from the trial and chatted for a while as they ate, Ben talking about what he was enjoying and recipes he wanted to learn, while Thera carefully slid food under her hood to keep it from getting dirty and adding her own opinions on what he should learn.

They carried on like that for a while before he asked a question in idle curiosity. “Hey Thera, what’s your mana sense like anyway?”

Mana sense wasn’t an independent skill as far as he understood it, but instead allowed people to see or feel magics related to their particular magic skills. Since Ben's only magic skill was enchanting it allowed him to see the magic that went into enchantments, and he was surprisingly good at it it seemed, but he had no clue what Thera’s was like. Could she see other earth mages prepare their spells or maybe feel the charm leaking from other succubi? Maybe she could see her own mana but it would block out anyone else's so she wouldn’t see their effects. The actual answer ended up being completely unexpected.

“My magics are both too low to really see anything about them currently, I can see spirits though.”

“Can’t everyone?” He asked. “I thought I could see your father well enough yesterday.”

She thought for a moment before answering. “Ben, what do you know about spirits?”

“Not too much,” He admitted. “There are spirits for every element of mana right? And they’re all incredibly powerful. Seeing your dad materialize mana was awesome.”

“Well you’re sort of correct. My dad isn’t a spirit, he’s a great spirit. When the last great earth spirit died on his homeworld, a bunch of regular spirits you can’t normally see merged to form a higher being. These regular spirits are… not really everywhere. Dad says in his original world the planet was dense with them, but not many were saved. Since their lifespan is infinite they don’t really reproduce much but I’ll typically see one or two floating around a day.”

“Okay that's actually really cool, I can’t believe there's an entire race hidden on the planet. So what are spirits like? Can you talk to them?” Ben's eyes were shining with curiosity so Thera was happy enough to tell him a bit, as long as the topic didn’t focus on the other great spirits. While she got along with a couple of them like her father and aunt, some of them were a bit harder to deal with.

“It’s a bit hard to interact with them cause the way they think is pretty different from most hominid types, or really most other races in general, since they don’t strictly have brains, but water, earth, air, and fire spirits all like talking about their own elements and anything they find interesting going on with them, while light and dark, and life and death spirits tend to be a bit more interesting, talking about different events or trends they see, though they can be a little hard to understand, occasionally trying to discuss topics I don’t think actually have proper ways to define as far as our language goes. They’re all nice enough, but not really people I can interact with regularly, you know?”

“And what about space and time spirits then?” He asked, eager to learn more. “They must have something interesting to say when they interact with those elements.”

“I wouldn’t know, there aren’t any,” She said with a shrug, but seeing the question on his lips he immediately elaborated. “Long before the world was taken over, all the space spirits decided to leave to explore the universe, and all the time spirits went to see the end of it.”

“And they never came back?”

“The time spirits couldn’t. There's a world of difference between going forward or stopping time to travelling back it. As for the space spirits, nobody knows. Dad says it’s one of the greatest mysteries the great spirits talk about,” As the words left her mouth she cursed herself, she had sent it up perfectly for Ben to ask something she didn’t feel much like talking about, so she quickly moved them along. “Anyway, why don’t we finish up here and get to the guild. I’m pretty sure I’m not going to see you for a week after you see it.”

“Come on, I’m not that bad.”