Chapter 328: The Branching Model Replicated [bonus]
Regulus stood beneath the tree, palm pressed to the trunk.
After half a day soaking it in Verdant Magic the day before, the willow had filed his magic under harmless environment. Now he wove his own magic in with the willow's, riding it up from the roots, climbing the main channel all the way to the branch tips.
No force was needed to guide it. The willow's loops kept no defense at all against Verdant Magic. He had only to lay his own magic onto its circulation and ride along.
He drew the willow's magic out through a branch tip, the first drop gathering in his palm.
Bigger than the Mandrake's. A Mandrake was a foot-high seedling, a few drops the most you'd get from one. The willow was a twenty-five-foot adult giant, its total magic on another order entirely. A single branch might hold as much as a dozen Mandrakes.
The drop was a yellow-brown, high in clarity, the edge rippling with the faintest tremor.
It didn't sit quiet in his palm the way Mandrake magic did. It moved.
The whole drop shook, the ripples at its edge flickering fast, irregular, chaotic, yet carrying an overall harmony, as though held by some inner logic, holding a stable structure inside the disorder.
His own magic flared on instinct, his sense too keen, any contact magnified.