Wyn activates Flickerstep and rockets out of the way just in time. The tent crashes to the ground in a heap, the wooden stakes, and poles bent and broken.

  Wyn laughs awkwardly at the scene. “Well, that didn’t go as I planned.”

  Mirana smirks. “Oh really? I couldn’t tell.”

  Neil sighs. “So what happened?”

  Wyn sighs and explains to Neil how exactly she turned a tent into a magically propelled missile. How she the two spells interacted violently, and how in the spell’s chaotic last moments she made some progress in making the spell move on command.

  “I’m glad you made progress,” Neil says, “but now we’re short a tent.”

  Mirana shrugs. “I’m sure it’ll be fine. It’s not like it’s going to rain.”

  That night it rained.

  Wyn huddled up inside Mirana’s tent, making the space meant for a single person feel cramped. She had a hard time sleeping that night, her mind racing with the last moments of the chaotic spell weave. Wyn had almost gotten it to work, for just a moment. The rock stayed inside the cube, and it moved. She couldn’t control it, but it moved. That had to be progress.

  But as much as Wyn wants to try it again, she’d rather not make them lose a second tent in the middle of a rainstorm. Instead, she pulls out the book Lothran gave her on spellweaving and begins reading through it.

  Only five minutes into reading it, Wyn can already feel a headache brewing at the back of her skull. The book is so dense to the point of absurdity. Each passage contains technical descriptions and magical jargon she can’t begin to understand. It switches languages at random and is filled with elaborate diagrams using some sort of symbolic language she’s never seen. Worst of all, it assumes the reader has a competent understanding of how magic and essentia work. Wyn barely understands magic at all.

  Wyn knows how to use essentia to cast spells, but hasn’t the faintest idea about how it actually works. The book goes into detail about flow rates, runic symbology, the orientation of stellar bodies, and tectonic movements. She cannot hope to understand any of it. If she’s to make any genuine progress, Wyn must first grasp magic fundamentals before delving into this book’s meaning. Until then, her attempts will be little more than guesswork and instinct.

  The next day, they wake up bright and early, courtesy of Neil.

  “Alright, let’s get the day started. Mirana, you see to breakfast while Wyn and I get camp packed away.”

  Mirana groans, her perfect elven hair clumped and frizzy from the night of cramped tent sleep. “What?”

  “Coffee. I need coffee,” Wyn adds.

  Neil chuckles and shakes his head, and steps out of the tent, deciding it’s best to leave the two women alone before spells start flying towards his head.

  The next few days went by without any major hiccups. Mountains gave way to foothills as the extensive, winding road passed through. Their journey was far quieter than Wyn expected. Though that can’t be too much of a surprise. With rumors of goblins about, it’s only natural to have fewer people on the road. Only an occasional merchant caravan passed them by on their way east towards Edelvahn.

  Each night along their journey, Wyn worked at weaving the two spells together. Despite all her best efforts, Wyn can’t seem to make any progress. While there haven’t been any further tent missiles or other strange side effects, Wyn has done little more than watch her spells fizzle in front of her.

  At one point, she could’ve sworn she had it. The two spells wove into one another, their opposing strands of essentia intertwining together into an unstable lattice. The containment cube formed, floated into the air, and moved at her command. However, Wyn failed to notice that her trusty rock had simply fallen out of the cube and stayed planted on the ground.

  To call it frustrating is an understatement. Neil and Mirana are relying on her to make this spell work, and all she has to show for it is a fancy floating cube spell that can’t contain much of anything. While more stable than the tent missile, it’s not even close to the spell she needs.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Neil does his best to keep their spirits high, but there’s only so much he can do. As the days drag into the better part of a week, Mirana’s scowl returns. Even Psai seems upset, though that is mostly due to his inability to help Wyn solve the problem.

  On the sixth day of travel, they find their target.

  “Hold up,” Neil says.

  Mirana groans. “Don’t tell me you’ve found another thing to hunt. We have enough food.”

  Neil shakes his head and points at a collection of rocks beside the road. “I think we’ve found our cairn.”

  Psai bobs his head up and down. “This artificial rock formation is consistent with the dwarven practice of cairn-making.”

  Wyn walks forward, circling the stone structure. It looks like little more than a pile of random stones. It stands out like a sore thumb against the rolling hills of the area.

  “Aren’t we far away from dwarfish territory?” Mirana asks.

  Neil nods. “The Imperial Dwarven Clans live in the western reaches, to the northwest of here. We are hundreds of miles away from dwarven territory.”

  “Incorrect!” Psai says.

  Neil stares at Psai, frustrated by the sudden outburst. “I know my imperial history. The dwarves occupy the mountains in the west. Everyone knows that.”

  Psai bobs up and down, eager to provide new information. “Then your imperial history is incorrect.”

  “Tell us what you know,” Wyn says before Neil can interrupt again.

  “In ancient history, the ancient dwarves of—”

  Psai’s form glitches out before he continues.

  “—occupied a significant portion of the Arazid foothills to the west. This territory was conquered some 500 years ago by the humans that now make up the modern empire you know today.”

  “What happened to old settlements? Wouldn’t we see dwarvish-sized houses dotted around to this day?” Wyn asks.

  “An excellent question! I suspect that the empire has squashed any old dwarvish settlements in the period of imperial conquest known as the—”

  His form glitches out again.

  “Era,” Psai finishes.

  “Does he always do that?” Mirana asks.

  “I am uncertain what it is you are referring to! Please clarify so I may answer your question properly.”

  “You glitched out when you tried to say the name of the ancient dwarvish kingdom. And it happened again when you were about to name the imperial conquest era,” Neil says.

  Psai shakes his orb from side to side. “I did not have any such glitches! My internal monitoring systems indicate I am acting exactly as intended!”

  Neil looks at Wyn. “Has he done this before?”

  Wyn shakes her head no. “He’s always been a bit… quirky, but this is new.”

  Mirana sighs. “Can we argue history another time and find wherever this weird well is?”

  “Mirana’s right,” Neil says. “We can focus on whatever is going on with Psai later. For now, we need to find the well. Mirana, you take the northwest hill. I’ll take the hill to the south, and Wyn, you can take the eastern hill. If you find anything, shoot the others a message.”

  Mirana nods and makes her way towards the northwestern hill, a bit too eager to get away from Neil.

  “Wait, I thought it was a bad idea to split the party. Aren’t there goblins around?” Wyn asks.

  “Not likely. We’re still far from the action. And besides, speed is of the essence here. The sooner we get to Edelvahn, the better.”

  Wyn isn’t happy about having to go on her own, separate from the others, but she can’t help but recognize that Neil is right. Outside of Blintsy, their trio are likely the only people who know everything that happened at Lethisburg. Even if there were other survivors, they don’t know about the Watcher that was involved.

  They must reach Edelvahn quickly, informing them about the grave danger that is coming for them. Wyn shudders to think what might happen if they don’t warn Edelvahn in time; if they can’t convince Virtus of how much danger they are truly in.

  Wyn hikes up the hill to its top and scans the surroundings, finding nothing in particular of interest. The mountains loom in the distance, and if she squints, Wyn can spot a handful of small farming villages and what looks like a large city far to the east. Wyn guesses that will be their destination of Edelvahn.

  She sighs, having found nothing on her hill. Wyn steps down, walking back down the hill when out of the corner of her eye, she spots something. A flash of color at the edge of her vision, where nothing had been a moment before. She turns to face the strange obfuscation, finding nothing there when she looks directly at it. About to dismiss the anomaly as a trick of the light, Wyn turns away again, only to see the same anomaly in the corner of her eye.

  “Psai, are you seeing this?”

  “An excellent question! What is it I am supposed to be seeing?”

  “So that would be a no. Great.”

  Wyn types out a quick message and sends it to Neil and Mirana before tentatively approaching the anomaly. If she looks directly at it, it vanishes, but any time she looks away, it appears again in the corner of her vision. An old myth she heard gives her an idea.

  “Psai, have you ever heard of the myth of Perseus and Medusa?”

  Psai nods. “The mythological Grecian hero Perseus slew Medusa by never looking directly at her, and only seeing her through his reflective shield.”

  Wyn smirks. “Psai. Can you be a mirror for me? Reflect exactly what is in the world around us.”

  Psai goes into a loading sequence, giving enough time for Mirana and Neil to join Wyn.

  “You found something?” Neil says, panting.

  Wyn nods. “I’ve found a theory.”

  Mirana groans as Psai stops his loading and expands to a large rectangular size, becoming highly reflective.

  “What the…” Mirana mutters.

  Wyn instructs Psai to spin, directing their group to turn their backs toward the suspected anomaly.

  And there it was. In the reflection of Psai’s mirrorlike form, an ancient well made of wood and stone, faintly outlined in jagged purple lines.

  Neil smirks. “Well, I’ll be damned.”