She names it Spellworker's Trance and slots it, replacing Quell Flames.

With a moment's thought, she activates it... then does her best to slow her breathing and fall. She knows what hypnosis feels like, and meditation isn't far off from that, is it?

It's not far off at all, especially when the virtual environment helps. A gentle descent, a calming fall away from the world, down she falls, down and down.

Everything is calmer, now. Quieter. Her external senses are muted, muffled, while her internal senses of magic — and of the ability design system — are heightened.

It feels like the CORA is following her flow in her meditation, and trying to match its interface to the state she reaches, avoiding disrupting the trance while still being accessible.

When she feels the system come to her fingertips in the trance, something breaks. She takes a sharp gasp and hyperventilates for a few seconds before she orients herself again. 

"I could feel it," she wonders. "I could feel the magic."

Hyacinth grins from ear to ear. "... I always wanted that. Realms of Dragons didn't... quite interface that closely, wasn't willing to reach in..."

"Hold me," she murmurs. "I'm going back down."

She settles against Sable and closes her eyes. Descend the staircase, one number at a time. Ten steps. Breathe slowly and evenly. Nine steps. Listen as your thoughts still and drift away. Eight steps. Swallowed by a calm dark sea. Seven steps. Deeper and deeper... 

Six steps down... Five steps down... Four steps down... Three... Two... ———

By the time she reaches the bottom, she's reaching with another sense entirely. The chatter of her mental voice is silent, not even instructing her. She is. 

Wordlessly she reaches out to the magic within her, the shard of Chaos lodged in her heart, and feels it unfold...

As she descends, the world goes muffled around her. As she reaches the bottom, she can feel something there to grasp. And then a new interface expands in her awareness. It's much more felt, more intuitive, than the visual graph editor she was working with previously. It still provides the same information about what shapes of node-graphs it will accept, but there's a sense she can follow to feel the other graph shapes that the system can allow, and which ones are unlocked at which levels of of Intricacy. She can access one higher level of structure than she could previously, but also, when she holds a node in this new mental grasp there's a visceral feeling of what it can connect to and what those connections could mean.

Beautiful.

The central node is easy to specify; it reflects herself, in this deep state, so to weave in meditation as the object of her dive is simple. 

Something in her responds to that; the memory of holding the red-hot poker against her unburnt hand swims into focus. Flame. She is flame. So flame can be her, as well. 

The cinders in her heart settle into the new ability, lending their passion. And from there... The weaves of reinforcement, of purpose. What the flame will ignite. The weave of mana that anchors her spells, that stabilizes the shard of Chaos within her... She sees how to weave it still tighter, in threads of flame. 

She shepherds her will. Stay, delicate flame. Here is your fuel. 

It feels like the ability locks tighter somehow than it would've outside of meditation. She feels the click of it locking more clearly, down here, like a satisfying clack of flipping a deliciously chunky switch, or the feeling of sliding home the bolt of a rifle as you chamber a round.

Completion? 

As soon as she thinks it she knows she's wrong. She slips a little, words swimming back into her mind. 

Hyacinth focuses on her breath, and slowly deepens again. 

Rather than meddle, she listens. Feels the weight of her heightened senses. 

It's soothing. 

The trance deepens. Imagery slips in around the edges of her mind, blossoming in her view.

A palpable sense of meaning flows through the mental space, like ink in water, or smoke through the air. 

A delicate flower fills the center of her vision, facing upward. The tips of its petals are pink, the base white. Five sewing needles pierce through the blossom from different angles, emerging below, blood dripping from the tips. Pain, shock, trauma, she feels from the flower.

A thread trails off from the eye of each needle, initially in line with the needle but soon disappearing in a maze of twists and turns, a storm of taut fibers tangling higher and higher. Above, she sees the Imperial Seal of Pagutum, countless threads tied off to its edges, tugging different things within the storm below — including five threads that she instinctively knows are tied to the needles piercing the flower.

The vision pans a bit to the side, and she sees a pair of spools, thread from each twining together into a stronger whole — agreement, symbiosis, compromise — before suddenly the threads snap, the twining broken.

Her view pans further this time, down and across to a different-feeling area of narrative space entirely. She sees a fox-eared seer, divining in a magic mirror (truth, inquiry, reflection), with four ink bottles resting on the table beyond the mirror (manifestation, communication, clarity) — but the mirror is clouded, the ink bottles nearly empty.

Once more her vision sweeps away, now settling on a pair of alchemists, brewing together, bantering warmly as they discuss their brew — partnership, support, reliability.

And then the inky clouds swirl in from the edges and her view clouds altogether.

Crystalline calm washes over her as image after image unfolds in her trance. They wash over her one by one, full of portent yet somehow faraway. Like a dream, and yet not.

A small part of her directs her attention fully towards the tableaux. Listen, it seems to say. This is important. 

The pierced blossom. Snapped threads. Pagutum. Herself, seen from afar. Clarity she lacks. 

Togetherness. 

Then everything is darkness.

She rests in that darkness for a timeless time; then slowly comes back to herself, the trance dissipating away. 

She opens her eyes again. The world is loud and bright, even here in Sable's arms.

"I had a vision," she murmurs, wonder in her voice.

"Oh?" Sable squeezes Sin tighter, pressing a gentle kiss to the top of her head. "Wow. That's... more than I expected. I'd love to hear what you saw."

"I saw..." The memories are slippery, but she pins them down. 

"A needle-pierced flower. The breaking of bonds. Pain. All... trailing back, as if through threads, to the imperial seal of Pagutum." 

She takes a long breath. "I was in the vision too. Seen from far away. In front of a mirror. In my reflection I was stronger. Clearer. More... able to see."

She lays her head against Sable. "And I remember a sense of togetherness. I don't know if it was meant between you and I, or between me and whoever sent the vision, but..." 

She closes her eyes.

"Fascinating," she murmurs. "Well, that sounds like a plot hook if I've ever seen one. Also possibly the gods ship it?"

She giggles and shakes her head, squeezing Hyacinth tighter.

Hyacinth laughs. "Yeah, I guess so."

"Thank you. For... being you." She smiles. 

"Oh, and I was able to lock a better meditation with my meditation." Her smile widens to a grin, then she tilts her head to the side. "Didn't name it though. While I'm under it's very... pre-words. I think the second one will gain power from fire?" She shrugs. "Let me call up the interface again..." 

The locked ability is [Mediation, Fire, Fire Resistance, Capacity, Intricacy], so... the sensible thing to call it would be "Inner Fire", yes? 

She'll have to try it out later. 

"Yeah, it's still locked outside of trance. And it felt like it locked tighter, too, a little more solidly..." She raises her eyebrows. "The natural next thing to do is to try and see if we can get the Inner Fire meditation to lock an even better meditation, or at least a better set of abilities... but there's that pesky problem of having another six skill points to spend. I could plow them all into the Self tree, get even better Meditation abilities and even stronger passives for it to feed from..." 

She shakes her head. "I don't want to overspecialize my build like that, though. Even if I'm really really tempted to see what I can make out with a souped-up meditation. My remaining six points should probably go into the Ranged Casting and Persistent Spell trees - get the first tier of Lingering Spell at least, and start getting points together towards Effect Chain... Lingering Spell unlocks some new targeting modes in Persistent, the beginnings of being able to cast real ritual magic... I'd want to go over that with you seriously. As for the Ranged Spell tree the obvious thing to buy there is Fire II or higher, or maybe Ray... Though I can emulate a persistent ray with Held Spell fairly well." 

Hyacinth nuzzles into Sable. "Sorry, I'm getting into the weeds again..."

Has Hyacinth noticed that getting into the weeds seems to reliably produce the sappy expression Sable's currently wearing? Because Sable's definitely got a sappy expression and she's petting Sin tenderly.

"I think there are massive advantages to be had from such specialization later, but I agree that continuing to focus on some combat capability for now is a very good idea. At the very least it keeps up our ability to gain more levels and pick that up as we go. I'd be glad to go over things with you. I agree that you can probably hold off on Ray for a little longer, judging by how good you are with Held Spell so far."

"Yeah, we've definitely got to pick a primary tactic for this build in the long run, but right now having lots of add-on nodes lets me exploit the high Intricacy. Most effects are better when they last longer, so Lingering Spell is a nice mix-in I can toss into most anything."

She frowns. "Longer-term, though... I want utility. I bet a lot of people build for combat first and forget this is a team game..." She pauses.

"— had another idea. I wonder if I can form an ability that lets me lead people in meditation. I, um." She flushes a little. "I'm actually better at that than focusing myself, I'd say. A... Held Burst of Enhance with Meditation and Intricacy...?" She frowns. "That's five nodes so it might or might not slot, but it's definitely something we should try."

Sable's grin turns eager, and the slightest bit sharp, almost knife-like. "Oh my, that is some dangerously lovely synergy. I'd be game to try it."

"Probably best to try and slot it using the most advanced meditation I can get access to." Hyacinth traces a finger across Sable's thigh. "Since Fire is in my meditation now, and it's my main mode of attack, I don't think it's a bad move to pick up another level of it just on spec." 

She rolls over onto her back on the bed and looks up at the ceiling. "So that's... Fire II, Persistent Spell I, for sure. Let me take a look at the Persistent tree..."

Hyacinth holds her hand up and swipes through menus like she's looking at clouds. 

"Ooh, Ritual I under Persistent. An extended casting time spell that produces an effect lasting approximately one hour, but requires ritual foci and or sacrifices proportional to the level and complexity of the cast spell. Opens a set of subnodes for ritual efficiency, casting time, duration, material substitution or reduction..."

She looks over at Sable. "I think this and its upgrades are key to my build as a crafter and support wizard in the long term, but the material components are troublesome. Might not be worth taking at this low a level, given that we aren't likely to have a lot of access to ritual components this early..."

Sable hums and strokes Sin's hair while she frowns consideringly. Good ritual components will be expensive or come from dangerous creatures, but the CORA devs do try to foster a level of approachability for such things even at low levels...

"The devs have a tendency to build some utility for such things at all levels, so it likely wouldn't be useless, but I think we're likely to have access to better components when our ability to kill things goes up a bit more. My instinct is not to buy the ritual node quite yet, and instead save it for our next round of upgrades or the one after. Not too long, though, because once you have the node you'll probably have an instinctive sense for ritual applications of all sorts of things."

"I feel, just on a gut level, that doing guided meditation on a high level is likely to work best as a ritual. The more pieces of scene setting you use for this kind of thing, the better the effects you get in the real world, so..." 

"Honestly, just for the sense of what to keep and what to throw out, I want Ritual I. It's a safe longterm buy and I don't have anything else in the Persistent tree that's burning a hole in my pocket. I need to invest more points to get to Chained Effects, and this is a reasonable thing to spend those points on."

She flicks through the menus. "Let's look at its competition though. I could take Sustained Spell II, which would be... eh. I could see it being useful for meditation but in general stuff with a duration of "concentration" is bad. I could take Extinguish II, that'd strengthen my crowd control. Might be worth it. There's also the option of Mana Efficiency II, which is just a nice general purpose flat buff..."

She sighs. "I know I should take some simple basic power boosters but they're just so boring. Having seen what CORA can do with meditation, I want everything to have that same kind of tactile clicky really-doing-it feel. That's something I hardly ever got in RoD."

"Adorable and also caring." She kisses the top of Hyacinth's head. "I think you should buy it. Between our ability to butcher our kills and you gaining the ability to recognize usable resources, I think we could build toward useful rituals quicker than expected at this level."

She gives Sin another squeeze. "That and I think it would make you happy, and I think that's valuable in and of itself."

"... Alright," she says. "Thank you." 

She stretches. "So, Fire II, Ritual I, Lingering Spell I, three more. I think I probably have to take Fire Resist three if I'm going to keep standing in my flames. So the other two are... Bolt II, Extinguish II?"

"Those seem reasonable, yeah. I'd also consider something to increase the radius of your zones, as a possibility, or upgrading Force."

"Yeah, I suppose I could upgrade Splash or Force..."

Plumph she goes against Sable with a small sigh. "Upgrading Force potentially gives me a second damage type. Splash upgrade would boost AOEs in general. Extinguish upgrade would boost hampering effects in general... Bolt II upgrades bolts specifically, but in the longer term we might want to take Ray..."

Hyacinth bites her lip. "I guess Force is a reasonable upgrade, yeah. It'd boost my crowd control in general, and it's also a potential second damage type..."

"I think we take Force II instead of Bolt II. So Force II, Fire II, Fire Resistance three, Ritual I, Lingering Spell I, and... One more. Do we invest in Ranged spells or Persistent? Probably we put it in the Persistent tree to reach Effect Chain faster, right? So we'd want to take Extinguish II over Splash II or Bolt II."

Hyacinth shakes her head. "But the thing is, if I get Effect Chain too fast, I might not have the Intricacy for such complicated spell effects. Like, a spell that does two things in order is more than twice as complex as a spell that does one thing, and that complexity takes up space. So maybe we don't rush for Effect Chain..." 

"What am I going for in ranged casting... I guess in the longer term I'm going for Explosion there, right? But that's a ways in. Ranged Burst could be a prerequisite..." 

She frowns. "I dislike having both Splash and Ranged Burst in my build when I could be focusing on just one. Let's just take Splash II for now?"