Felix stood and brushed the dirt off his hands before sweeping his gaze across the greenhouse.

  ”It’s been a couple of months, huh? Guess I might as well check on it.”

  He slowly started walking to the centre of the greenhouse, his eyes taking in the fruits of his labour before he chuckled to himself.

  “I don’t know how I ever thought I’d finish this in a couple of months. What’s it been? Nearly three years now? If they didn’t grow so fast, I think I’d have stripped the forest.”

  Nearing the centre, sat a patch of forest that looked like someone scooped it up and dumped it into the middle of his greenhouse. The cobblestone path that divided the rest of the greenhouse into its various sections ended abruptly at a waist-high wooden fence that circled the patch of forest.

  Stepping through a little gate, it felt like he was suddenly deep in an untouched forest. Felix was instantly assaulted by the subtle shift in humidity. The temperature dropped just enough that you could wear a jacket without being uncomfortable. Sounds of insects filled the silence, and the earthy smell of the forest hit his nose.

  Felix carefully floated just above the forest floor, not wanting to disturb the forest in even the most minute way. He carefully made his way to the centre, to a tree like any other.

  Near the base of the tree, nestled among its roots, a little sprout peeked out of the ground. If anyone else walked through this forest, the sprout would go unnoticed, just another sprout amongst the countless thousands that filled the forest and the greenhouse around it.

  To Felix, however, this sprout was special. For this one sprout, he built the greenhouse. For the single sprout, he spent years studying one of the simplest plants you could find in the Feywild.

  Carefully, he allowed a wisp of life mana to flow into the little plant, shaping it to flow as he’d observed in similar sprouts. As soon as the mana entered it, he froze. He turned his entire attention to watching the mana, watching it slowly dissipate. It only took a few seconds for the mana to dissipate completely.

  With a sigh, he stood up, still floating just above the forest floor. He quickly formed a memory of his interaction with the sprout before leaving the forest and finding a place to plant it. It was one of hundreds of identical sprouts, all memories of his previous attempts.

  “It still won’t hold, huh? I’m not sure how much more realistic I can make it.”

  Felix pulled a wisp of life and mind mana from his body, holding one in each hand. In his left hand, the life mana fought to escape his control. The little wisp flowed in an orb, constantly battering the edges of his control, trying to find an outlet. In his right hand, the mind mana wisp sat, collapsing in on itself and blooming into a simple fractal pattern.

  Both grew dimmer with every passing moment. The more they moved, the more they broke down.

  Felix brought his hands together and allowed the life mana to flow towards the mind mana. The wisp happily dove into the centre of the fractal, allowing the mind mana to bloom with even greater radiance as it consumed the life mana. The speed of the fractal’s collapsing and blooming sped up, even forming a few smaller fractals that bloomed around the first one.

  As soon as the life mana ran out, the mind mana faded at an accelerated rate as it tried to sustain its new size. It held on for a few seconds before it started collapsing in on itself and fading into nothingness.

  Dropping his hands to his side, Felix shifted his position in his Inner World. One moment, he stood in the greenhouse, and the next, he was in a small village he’d visited with Menium a few years ago. The village was inhabited by a peculiar group of fey who’d made their homes at the tail end of a canyon.

  The strange creatures would shift form, looking almost like elven children with beautiful coloured scales when they walked on the ground. But when they’d take flight, they’d shift, turning into serpentine dragons. In both forms, they had four translucent wings that shimmered when they caught the light.

  Felix and Menium had visited in the middle of a festival. The small, ornate wooden houses they’d built on the side of the cliff had been decorated. Each house stood on circular wooden platforms, supported by branches that seemed to grow out of the cliff face. On top of the platforms, small wooden houses were built with sharp triangular roofs that swooped upward. For roof tiles, they used coloured stone slate that mirrored the colour of its inhabitants’ scales.

  For the festival, rows of lights and flags were strung between the platforms and on the edges of the houses. Groups of adult fey would perform intricate aerial dances to the music. While children raced each through floating hoops that moved in time with the music.

  In Felix’s Inner World, the village was deserted. He grabbed a bouquet of edible flowers from one of the food stalls and made his way to a bench deeper in the canyon.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  When they’d visited the little park at the end of the canyon, it was the centre of the event.

  Visitors and residents alike found places on the lawn to sit that wouldn’t disturb the yellow wildflowers that bloomed in patches across the lawn. They filled the canyon with a fragrance that reminded Felix of the elder jasmine tea he used to share with Agrona.

  Sitting on the bench, Felix allowed his head to fall back so he could stare up at the cliffs and the decorated houses. As he remembered the dancing fey they’d come into existence above his head, only to disappear when he looked away.

  Shaking his head, he cleared the sky, the village falling quiet once again. He returned his focus to his experiment.

  “Something is missing. The sprout is made of my mind mana, so why won’t it hold my life mana? Unshaped the two meld just fine, so why won’t it work when I shape the mind mana into something?

  “Does it have to be plant mana? But my path insists I’m on the right track…”

  Picking up his bouquet, he ate a yellow flower that tasted like a floral custard.

  “Maybe it’s time to change direction. If I save up my stipend for a while and sell my current stock, it might be enough to hire some guards to take me into the Feywild… or maybe I can find a team to join as a herbalist.”

  Felix scratched his chin in thought.

  “Maybe I could visit Alvara. I wonder if she’s back yet.”

  He shook his head.

  “I’ll know once I get my mail. If Alvara isn’t an option, I’ll talk to Uncle Valenther. Maybe he has an idea.”

  Plucking another flower and popping it into his mouth, he left his Inner World, swapping places with the fragment of awareness he sent outside when he entered.

  Opening his eyes, he saw the golden grove off in the distance. Judging by the distance and Menium’s frantic pace, they’d reach Ilmaréth in a few hours. He could just make out the mana kites that help direct the mana of the town’s protective formation peeking out over the trees.

  Seeing the familiar sight brought a smile to his face. Ilmaréth was the first town he lived in after coming to the Feywild. Alvara spent a considerable amount of time there in her youth. She’d asked her friends to take care of him when he arrived.

  While adjusting had been difficult, with the help of Alvara’s friends and all the lessons he took on the Ways, he barely managed to scrape by. Fortunately, he managed to get recognised as a Traveller. Felix wasn’t arrogant enough to think that he could have made it without the stipend the alliance paid him to cover the basic living expenses.

  Afterall, in spite of his experiences at the crossroad, it isn’t easy surviving as a one-armed thirteen-year-old that can’t cast any useful magic or fight at a Traveller’s level.

  For the first few months, Felix made hardly any progress on his path. He managed to join the Explorer's guild only to realise he couldn’t complete any of the available jobs. He spent some time at the public library but quickly memorised every book they had.

  It was only by saving up his stipend that he managed to start paying for lessons in herbalism, hunting, and magic. Eventually, he became proficient enough to get a tutoring job through Alvara’s contacts.

  He even managed to grab a few jobs as a gardener, despite his lack of plant magic. Plant magic might help elves spot problems in their gardens, but it doesn’t mean they have the knowledge to fix the issues that crop up. That’s where Felix came in. It took a long time to build up enough of a reputation that people would accept him for jobs, but after he’d memorised a few libraries, he’d gotten knowledgeable enough to take care of all but the most obscure issues.

  Most elves still struggled to accept him. The elves are, after all, Fey. Felix hadn’t realised just what that meant until he spent time living amongst them. He’d read about the differences, but it wasn't until he'd lived with them that he truly understood they didn't think like humans. Fey are by their very nature closer to mana than any human.

  While you could put humans on a homeworld and they would grow up just fine, elves find it deeply uncomfortable to have their connection with mana cut. Even living outside the Feywild is unpleasant. Since elves are all so deeply connected to mana, and they all have the same affinities, they’re deeply connected to each other in a way humans simply aren’t.

  The effect is subtle. It’s only through years of observation that Felix finally began to understand it. Just like you could influence mana, mana influences you. The effect isn’t nearly as pronounced, since there’s no conscious mind behind the influence. But it was enough to make things difficult for Felix.

  His deep connection with life mana would make him feel like an elf, while his lack of plant mana and nature as a human would make him feel just different enough to make his presence uncannily disturbing to the elves. It was like he was an out-of-tune instrument in an orchestra, just wrong enough to be annoying, but unnoticeable unless you went looking for it.

  Most elves would ignore the effect if they realised what was happening, but most didn’t notice. It meant he’d long grown used to interactions like he had with the librarian. That didn’t mean there weren't those who went out of their way to make things difficult for him. If it weren’t for Alvara’s friends helping him out when he first arrived, he might have been driven out of the Feywild before he had the chance to settle down.

  That was all in the past now. He’d grown his plant-selling cart to the point where he could afford to Travel. He only occasionally had to pick up gardening or tutoring jobs through the guild. Most of the time, he exchanged his services for lessons or access to private libraries instead of coin.

  It had taken him over six years of constant effort, but through his persistence, he’d managed to visit every library within a month’s travel of Ilmaréth. He rarely struggled for coin, his recent troubles only coming about because he spent all his savings to visit the great library in Starfarer Willow’s grove.

  It hadn’t been cheap, but her collection was so vast that since he’d returned, the only new books she found by visiting town libraries were written by locals. Even then, they rarely had any insights that he didn’t already know about.

  Without any new books to find, he had to find a new way to progress along his path. His experiments had slowed to a crawl, and so did his learning. After saying hello to his friends in Ilmaréth, it would be time to move on to something new.

  If you like the story, please support it by rating and following! ?(^?^*)

  You can read ahead on or support the story by checking out the e-book on