“…To the letter, Saphienne.” Almon tapped lightly on her head with his staff. “Not merely the letter: you must follow every instruction as you genuinely believe it is intended, as completely and utterly as you know how.”

Standing before her teacher at the bottom of the slope, Saphienne tried very hard to smother her smile as she promised her obedience. Taerelle, Rydel, and Peacock had worn him down – mostly Peacock’s needling, in the end – until he finally agreed: she could accompany them into the hidden clearing, so long as she showed them where it was, and how she had uncovered it.

“Stay right beside Taerelle or Rydel. If you stray so much as a pace away,” he threatened, “I’ll have you hold their hand like a toddler. And any further, and I’ll have them drag you back home. Am I understood?”

“Fully.”

“Touch nothing.” He tapped her head again, a little harder. “Nor interrupt. If you have observations to share, politely raise your hand, and wait until invited to do so. And in the event of danger, stay with your chaperone, and do as they tell you. Only I may countermand them.”

Rubbing her forehead, Saphienne gave a small bow. “I’ll behave.”

“For the sake of your apprenticeship,” he told her, sternly, “you had better. And all of this is contingent on the proof of your discovery… which you will now present for review.”

The wizard and his apprentices waited expectantly; Peacock watched from a tree.

Accepting her cue, she slipped her coin back into its pouch within her pocket as she took a sheet of paper from her sleeve with a flourish; Saphienne passed the latter to Taerelle with what she hoped was an elegant bow. “I was inspired by my seniors.”

Both senior apprentices – along with their master – craned to examine the page.

“…A list of landmarks,” Rydel said. “All but one crossed through.” His curiosity was piqued. “Care to explain how this worked?”

“Process of elimination.” Saphienne pointed up to the top of the rise. “I started fifty feet back from where I arrived. Walking in a straight line, I wrote down everything I encountered that was in the way. When I reached the far end–”

Taerelle clicked her tongue as she handed the paper to her master. “You scored out the likely candidates, because we’d told you that the veil makes you discount what it hides.”

“Yes. But that was only my first step.”

Almon had a rare, open smile for her on his lips. “Did you go through the remainder one by one? No, such scrutiny would be too time-consuming without magic.” He folded the list and secreted it in his robes. “How did you narrow the candidates further, Saphienne?”

“Examining the group as a whole, I scored out all the places I was sure it couldn’t be found.”

Taerelle opened her mouth; then she closed it, worrying her lip. “…But the Fascination spell would make you believe it wasn’t there, so surely…”

Almon threw up his arms as he caught Saphienne’s logic. “Magnificent!” He gestured through the trees toward the thicket, reclaiming his reserved poise as he explained. “Yours is a reasonable supposition, Taerelle — but you’re wrong. Saphienne intuited a property of gross perceptual veils that is easily misunderstood: the veil renders what it protects unremarkable in the first instance, and then only urges the observer to dismiss it when directly scrutinised.”

“Fuck,” Rydel breathed, taken aback by Saphienne’s leap. “So you looked at the whole of the remaining list, and asked yourself which ones stuck out to you as impossible. Then you did it again for those that were unlikely, and again…”

“It remained ignored,” Saphienne concluded, “to the point it became conspicuous. And then I noticed how I’d written it down — barely legible. My handwriting is usually quite good… when I’m not distracted.”

“Did you check it?”

In answer, Saphienne walked past the three, leaving them to follow her toward the thicket. Steeling herself, she found where the thorns grew densest, and let her sleeve fall back as she thrust her arm in, wrapping her hand around a thin branch as they scraped her skin. “Once I had it fixed in mind,” she said, buying time as she shifted her hold and better aligned the barbs against her wrist, “I noticed how easily I wrote it off. So…”

Gritting her teeth, she pulled hard, peeling back the greenery as it bit her deeply, drawing her own blood in a long, raking gash as she dragged the branch aside — and made another, larger hole through the thicket.

Rydel backed away in dread at the sight. Taerelle clapped her hands together with glee. Almon just bowed, impressed by her performance.

Peacock was much less reserved. “Fuck! That’s a very big hill!”

* * *

Keeping his word, Almon cast a ward on Saphienne in a flash of orange light, too busy concentrating on the spell to notice that she stood with her arms held behind her back in a much more respectful manner than usual. She didn’t notice any obvious change when he was done, though Rydel read her expression and leant down to lift a small stone from the ground, hurling it at her face–

She watched it bounce harmless off thin air, six inches from her eyes.

“Don’t try to test it,” Taerelle warned her. “I know that look. Heed my experience: never test the limits of a ward that’s protecting you from harm, not unless there’s another ward behind it that you’re sure will save you from whatever you’re doing.”

Saphienne sensed a painful lesson. “What happened?”

“Broke my jaw,” she muttered. “The ward our master has placed on you excludes entry based on the combination of speed and weight. Momentum, if you’re familiar with the definition.”

“I see.” Picking up the stone with her unhurt hand, she gently tossed it up and down, finding that it crossed the unseen barrier unimpeded. “So something heavy enough to cause damage even when it’s slow…”

“Will be repelled by the ward.” Taerelle caught the stone midair, and pointedly dropped it to the ground. “What did I just tell you?”

“I wasn’t–” Saphienne blushed. “Sorry. I was being careful.”

“A famous epitaph,” said Rydel.

“To answer your next question,” Taerelle continued, “there is a limit to the momentum the ward can abjure. The abjuration our master cast on you is of the Second Degree, so it’s strong, but can be exceeded. It also does nothing against energy, pure force, or–”

“Jumping face-first from a tree.” Rydel smirked.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “…Or that. It uses your position as its reference, and it’s unidirectional, so it won’t exclude the momentum of you colliding with something else.”

“Such as your jaw with–”

“Yes, thank you: she understands.”

Saphienne could feel how long they had been studying together; she wondered whether she and Iolas would behave the same way, one day. “How old were you?”

“Seventeen.” Despite her lingering embarrassment, she smiled fondly at the memory. “Our master changed his first lesson on Abjuration because of me. It used to be much more… lively.”

Almon had been scrutinising the thicket as it slowly pulled its snapped branch back into place, and he shook his head. “I left them alone for a little over a minute; Gaelyn was distinctly unimpressed.” He turned to Saphienne with a withering glare. “Thanks to such exemplars of poor judgement, I know exactly how reckless my apprentices can be. Do not treat this as a challenge.”

He would definitely end her apprenticeship, if he found out.

“Is it safe to go in?” Rydel asked.

The wizard returned his attention to the brambles. “Let us see. Peacock: go forth.”

Roosting on an overhead bough, the familiar sized up the opening that Saphienne had made, then stretched his wings and leapt, gliding close to the thicket before he pulled his feathers in close and dove through the gap. Once beyond, his wings beat quickly to lift him, and the twining thorns drew the veil back into place–

Almon winced. “He’s lost; there’s no one within reach on the other side of the veil.” He turned and waved the three of them away. “Give me peace to recall him.”

Taerelle pushed Saphienne ahead of her, leaving their master to kneel down before the thicket as all three apprentices walked some distance away.

* * *

Curious about what the wizard was doing, Saphienne whispered, “What does he mean, Peacock’s lost?”

Her chaperones shared an uneasy glance. Taerelle folded her arms. “Peacock has lost his bearings.” Unthinkingly, she brought her braid forward, looping its end around her fingers — fidgeting. “On an unrelated subject: would you like learn a little about figments?”

Recognising the effort Taerelle was taking to separate her belief in Peacock from the spell he actually was, Saphienne tried to ignore that they were talking about him. “Are you allowed to teach me?”

“Our master didn’t object to the ward being explained,” she said, wording her answers carefully. “You must know by now that figments are Hallucinations, and that they’re sustained by the belief of more than one person? Then it may interest you to know that figments are maintained as all spells are maintained: either by enduring enchantment, or by the concentration of a wizard. The magic that animates them… let’s say that it has to be cast by something, or someone.”

“I see.” Saphienne could tell that a lot was being omitted.

“When a figment is abroad in the world, it has a maximum range from whatever casts it. This range is further limited by the presence of people – minds, really – that can understand and believe in the figment, whether or not they can actually perceive it. If there’s no one around whose belief could sustain the figment, then the figment grinds to a halt, unable to do anything on its own.”

“So, if a figment isn’t observed–”

“Not observation,” Rydel corrected her. “Have you ever seen the magic behind a figment? Did you notice the hint of Fascination at work, alongside Hallucination?”

Saphienne remembered the violet snowflakes she had seen in the blue of Peacock’s spell, that first day in the classroom. “A figment exerts an influence on people within a certain range?”

“Very good,” Taerelle said. “The spells draws latent attention, whether or not the figment itself is consciously observed. So long as someone nearby could believe in the figment, the spell uses their unconscious comprehension to animate and… let’s say, follow the script that defines its actions. The more powerfully a person could believe in the figment, the greater the distance that the figment can sustain itself via them — which means that people to whom the figment is revealed are especially supportive to the spell.”

“Then…” Saphienne paused, trying to answer her own question, and to do so in a way that separated the theory from the reality of Peacock. “…Say there were a powerful Fascination veil, directing attention away from whatever it covered, and it was draped over a figment–”

“Were that to happen,” Taerelle pretended to suppose, “then anyone outside the veil would be of no use to the figment. And if there were no minds behind the veil, the spell would halt in place until a mind approached.”

So, metaphorically: without anyone around to serve as landmarks for his navigation, Peacock had become lost on the other side of the veil. “What about figments that are familiars?”

“Tricky subject.” Taerelle thought very hard before she spoke. “Ordinary familiars are creatures imbued with magic that connects them to their master. The familiar is endowed with sapience — or rather, the familiar magically embodies part of their master’s mind, and achieves greater self-awareness through the bond. A figment serving as a familiar would follow the same process, except the receptacle for the connection would take the form of a carefully crafted spell.”

Rydel closed his eyes. “One might suppose that such a spell would be simpler to concentrate upon because it was a figment, the necessary belief sustained by more than a single person. A sufficiently capable wizard could perhaps maintain it subconsciously, refreshing its sigil through communion with the familiar each day.”

That explained why Almon had winced: he suddenly had to consciously concentrate, like manually breathing, to keep the spell from collapsing. “Then… were a figment familiar to become lost, wouldn’t it be best for its master to–”

“Go directly to it? Yes.” Taerelle shrugged. “Unless there was good reason to be cautious… in which case a skilled wizard might choose to sit, without distraction, and bring the spell entirely into their conscious mind, and very carefully manipulate its sigil to exert direct control over the ongoing manifestation. Then, they could manually recall it to them.”

Saphienne studied their master where he sat, his eyelids fluttering and lips moving, his staff laid horizontally across his lap — gripped tightly in both hands. “What if the spell were to fail?”

“Then,” Rydel observed, “it would be incredibly inconvenient to recast. Familiars take a week to bond with, and the time necessary to cast a figment is directly proportional to its complexity. Peacock wouldn’t be dead, but he’d–”

Too late, Rydel realised his error, and choked; he let out a deep sigh. “Damn. I just disbelieved him.”

“I didn’t quite hear you,” said Taerelle, distractedly, staring up at the sky.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Saphienne thought it strange, how much more difficult they found it to keep both thoughts in parallel at the same time. She hadn’t unintentionally disbelieved Peacock since her one slip, and had subsequently been able to strain her belief just far enough to catch how he really interacted with the abjuration against the rain. She wondered whether the shape of her mind – weird to Hyacinth – had anything to do with that.

Then Peacock came barrelling through the thicket, flopping to the ground as he stared in confusion at the world around him. “What… I was…” He hopped around, head tilting left and right, trying to make sense of his predicament. “…What just happened?”

“You were lost,” Almon said aloud — prompting Rydel to surreptitiously begin casting a divination spell. The wizard stood, the twitching in his eye gradually easing. “There were neither elves nor animals on the other side to point the way out… and finding that out is useful.” Holding out his arm, their master invited Peacock onto his wrist.

“If you say so,” the familiar said, hopping up in a flurry of feathers.

“I do,” Almon insisted. “And now that we know what isn’t waiting for us, bird, let us find out what is.”

Red light flickered along the length of his staff as the wizard levelled it at the enchanted briars, the flashes intensifying as he pressed forward–

A thunderbolt clapped where the staff touched the thicket, and the branches ahead of Almon were scorched from within — steaming, popping, burning, and finally crumbling away in an expanding cone that cut through the veil of fascination.

Vertigo overwhelmed Saphienne as she looked upon the revealed hill, her mind trying to reconcile the path widening ahead with the seemingly small edges of greenery that survived on either side. When Celaena had made a way through, it had been narrower, and so the paradox had been far less obvious. “That’s…”

Taerelle covered and uncovered her eyes as she smiled. “…Fascinating. Literally.”

* * *

The wizard went up the hill first; some time after their master departed, Saphienne and the other apprentices were summoned by Peacock. Rydel took the lead, and Taerelle made Saphienne walk with her a further thirty paces back.

Halfway up, the older girl sniffed, and turned with a frown toward Saphienne. “I’m sure of it now — I smell blood.”

“Me too,” Saphienne lied, fumbling to deflect suspicion. “From up ahead?”

Confused, Taerelle faced uphill and inhaled deeply. “…You may be right.”

As they reached the crest of the hill they found Almon waiting, and he raised his hand to pause them both while Rydel went on. “Saphienne, you may not wish to proceed.”

She feigned indignance. “You promised that–”

“I said you may not wish to.” He waved his staff at the trees ahead. “The scene is… perhaps beyond what you are prepared to endure.”

Taerelle paled. “A death?”

“…Unclear.” He held Saphienne’s gaze. “A significant quantity of blood has been spilled, and there are signs of a struggle. The spectacle is unpleasant. Putting our antagonism aside for a moment, my apprentice,” he continued, voice gentle, “you are very young to have to contemplate such things. I would suggest, in kindness, that you go back down the hill, and accept an account of the scene when we emerge. No one will think less of you for forbearing to witness a horror too soon, as it will not benefit you – nor increase your maturity – for you to force yourself to look.”

The irony made her grit her teeth to keep from darkly laughing. After a moment, she shook her head. “If it’s just blood, I’ll be fine.”

Her choice displeased him, but he bowed. “As you choose, Saphienne.” He led them through the motley woods.

The wooden windchimes remained scattered where they had fallen, and Rydel was examining one closely. He looked to Almon for permission, then lifted it, turning it back and forth before extending it to Taerelle and Saphienne.

“Spirit divination,” Taerelle observed. “Attuned to two different subjects… one a specific manifestation of the other…”

Almon studied it as well, and agreed with her conclusion. “I see the same. Note the other elements: Translocation and Invocation, presumably to alert and call forth its makers when the alarm was raised.”

Taerelle took the enchanted wood in her hand. “The broad divination is attuned to woodland spirits, and the narrow is for a specific spirit.”

“That fits with what is ahead,” Almon said, casting his eye over the many scattered chimes around them, broken and whole. “Note how they erected more than were necessary: there was significant, intentional redundancy to their design.”

Saphienne raised her hand.

The wizard narrowed his eyes. “What is it?”

“May I have the Second Sight, please?”

Taerelle snorted, and Rydel grinned as he looked at her, his voice warm. “Now, that makes me nostalgic…”

“I cannot cast it on you,” Almon admitted. “I didn’t prepare it today.”

“We don’t use the Second Sight,” Taerelle explained. “That’s a spell for teaching unproven and junior apprentices. It’s far too limited for real scrutiny.”

“Then,” Saphienne asked, “may I have whatever formulation you–”

“Oh no,” Taerelle cut her off, “we are not dealing with you staggering around and vomiting while we’re doing this.”

Almon rubbed his temples. “The spell wizards routinely use supersedes ordinary senses, and requires significant preparation to be able to comprehend, followed by extensive use to integrate comfortably into your mind. To the unready, it manifests as a riot of the senses.”

“Cascading synaesthesia,” Rydel added, “if you know what that word means. Triggers the worst headache of your life when you cast it for the first time. And the second. And the third…”

Disappointed, Saphienne let it show. “…I see. I’ll look forward to it.”

Her master turned away. “There is more to contend with, in what was once the clearing.”

* * *

What surprised Saphienne most, when she returned to the scene of her near demise, was how little of it she actually remembered. She supposed, absently, that she had been in very bad condition when she last saw it; or perhaps her mind defended her from the memory by keeping the details repressed. She knew she could do that, blocking off–

“Saphienne?” Taerelle peered at her. “Are you well?”

She swallowed, overcome by the thick scent of stale blood, the grisly sight of rougher, clotted black on dried mud, and the vengeful, painful ghosts they invoked in her. “I will be. That is a lot of blood…”

Taerelle tried to lead her away, but she resisted. She only need to move a few steps closer…

“Look at this,” Rydel called. He was stood next to the shattered remains of the jailing tree, pointing to the fragments strewn about by Saphienne’s blasts. “This was an enchantment. The resonance remains.”

Almon crouched, Peacock alighting on his upper back, and used his staff to push over a lump of desiccated wood. As Saphienne was taken closer by Taerelle, she saw part of the carved visage staring blindly up at them. “This was a place of imprisonment,” the wizard mused. “You are correct about the enchantment — I studied it closely before I called for you. An old and highly sophisticated binding, keeping a spirit held in check for over a thousand years. The abjuration was at least of the Fourth Degree.”

Rydel had been reaching for another piece, but stopped.

Almon smiled as he straightened, Peacock shifting to his shoulder. “Wise. But there is no danger.” He glanced at the blood. “Not now, anyway…”

The apprentice chose to rise instead. “What could have broken it? Taerelle?”

Weaving her hands in an elaborate circle, white, strobing light appeared between Taerelle’s fingers, and she raised it to her face as though donning a mask; the spell settled into her eyes, her pupils shining with shifting patterns. She beckoned Rydel to take her place with Saphienne, then approached the stump, her enhanced gaze revealing its secrets. “No signs of charring, and no sharp cuts. Blunt force knocked it down…”

“A single spell?”

“Perhaps, but repeated blows felled the tree. I can tell it was done through conjurations of pure force: the pattern of the damage is distinctive.” She traced a rough, broken edge with her fingertip. “The growth was dense, and the shear points are evenly distributed throughout. Multiple shockwaves delaminated the wood, before it buckled under its own weight. ”

Saphienne frowned. “Delaminated? I know lamination is building up–” She shut her mouth in embarrassment, remembering that she wasn’t to speak.

Taerelle was unconcerned. “Delaminate — split into constituent layers.”

“Enchanting,” Almon added, “requires precision in defining and describing substances and the processes that act upon them. Rydel could have cast the same divination, but Taerelle’s material knowledge is superior.”

“I’m better with living things,” Rydel shared. “How they were killed? Not so much.”

“This was dead long before it was broken,” Taerelle noted. “The wood was ossified… not quite turned to stone, but partially mineralised. I don’t think it was related to the enchantment?”

“No,” her master confirmed, “but it was the result of magic.”

“To reinforce the tree after it had died,” Taerelle concluded. “Would have made it resistant to fire, lightning, and even axes, but left it unable to bend under the application of pure force. Whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing.”

“Based on the evidence,” the wizard said, “the binding failed when the enchanted tree was demolished. Judging by how it has fallen, and the distance its shards were scattered, together with the earth scraped away at your feet…” He pointed to each in turn with his staff. “…I agree with Taerelle: it was subject to several conjurations of pure force. Likely the work of a sorcerer, perhaps a senior apprentice — though I doubt even an apprentice sorcerer would have been foolish enough to do this.”

Saphienne remembered to lift her hand, then spoke when called upon. “Why an apprentice, and why a sorcerer?”

Taerelle added, “And how do you know it was multiple castings of one spell?”

Educating his senior student took priority, and Almon directed Taerelle back to the stump she had scrutinised. “The shockwaves are preserved in the break pattern, and you can discern their magnitude. Note that they are all the same? Where a spell strikes multiple times, whether at once or over a prolonged period, the complexity imparts subtle variations in potency. A simpler spell–”

“Hits the same every time,” Taerelle nodded, “unless created to do otherwise.”

“From this,” he explained to Saphienne, “we can conclude two things: the Conjuration spell was cast multiple times, and was likely of the First Degree. The number of castings required would be beyond an apprentice wizard, or even a true wizard…” He laughed. “…Unless they devoted all of their energies to preparing only a single spell, which no sane wizard would do. No, the more I think about it, the more I believe this was the work of a sorcerer of the Second Degree, or a wizard of the Third Degree. Only they could hope to do this, and escape.”

“Could it have been an enchantment?” Taerelle drew upon the focus of her studies to propose an alternative. “Perhaps a Rod of Repulsion? At highest intensity, the shockwaves would be a close match.”

“I considered that,” Almon explained, “but why complicate things? A wizard of sufficient aptitude to craft or acquire a Rod of Repulsion would have better, quicker means to fell the tree. The alternative is suicidal: without significant magic at the ready, no one could hope to defend themselves against the wrath of the spirits of the woodlands.”

Rydel put his hands back in his pockets, nodding to the blood as he spoke to his master. “Who says they did? Have you divined the blood?”

Saphienne’s breath caught.

“Not yet,” Almon confessed. “Were there less of it, that would have been my first spell— but the sheer quantity will preserve the sympathy for at least another day.” He bowed to Taerelle. “Your insights have earned you the first attempt, apprentice.”

Panic bloomed in Saphienne’s chest — and she struggled to suppress it, wishing she still held the coin as she covertly exhaled. She raised her unblemished hand once more, politely addressing Taerelle while her stomach knotted. “May I stand beside you and watch? I won’t say or touch anything.”

“Saphienne,” Almon began–

“I don’t mind,” Taerelle answered her, voice mild. “She was right next to me when I divined the clearing’s location. She’s really not as terribly behaved as you expect her to be, Master.”

Saphienne did her best to seem relaxed and innocuous.

Unconvinced, but respecting his apprentice’s agency, he relented. “I’ll allow it.”

Keeping close to Taerelle, Saphienne felt lightheaded as she walked to the edge of the dried pool, clasping her hands prominently in front of herself as she watched the apprentice kneel down and lift out her pendant. As the divination began she squeezed her cut wrist, breaking the thin scab that had formed, urging the blood to roll again, willing it to drip down as a white glare shimmered along the necklace–

The glowing quartz swung toward Saphienne. Taerelle opened her eyes, which were wide with shock.

“You’re in the way,” Rydel called.

Apologising, Saphienne stepped back–

And the glowing crystal followed her.

* * *

She did as she had been instructed: feigned ignorance. “Why is it pointing at me?”

“…The sympathetic connection traces to you,” Taerelle murmured, rising to her feet in confusion. “This is apparently your blood.”

Saphienne made herself blink. “No, it isn’t.”

“It appears so.” Self-doubt contorted her lips. “Or… perhaps someone with very close sympathy to you… bloodline sympathy?”

“A relative?” Almon closed the distance to them slowly, deep in thought, suspicion creeping into his eyes. “I find that very unlikely. Only Saphienne’s mother could possibly qualify — and she is reputedly incapable of accomplishing this.” His eyes narrowed as he contemplated the simplest explanation. “Saphienne… can you explain why your blood is here?”

“I told you: it’s not my blood.” She folded her arms, looking at the ground as though she, too, were fathoming the puzzle. There was no margin left for fear, and so she heaved herself into her role with abandon. “I don’t know why the spell isn’t working. How are these sympathetic connections–”

Taerelle inhaled, sharply, as she noticed Saphienne’s wrist. “Gods… Saphienne, you’re bleeding.”

She had been waiting; Saphienne pretended to flinch, seeming to reflexively cover her wrist. “It’s just a scratch; the thorns–”

Rydel’s voice was mournful. “Contamination. Unbelievable.”

“I didn’t touch–”

Peacock squawked in alarm as the wizard shrugged him away; in three strides Almon was upon Saphienne, and he threw down his staff to seize her by the wrist and yank up her sleeve, exposing the ugly, bleeding cut. His expression reddened with rage. “You imbecile! You wretched, inattentive–”

Startled at first, Taerelle tried to calm him. “Master…”

“–Reckless little fool! I knew bringing you along was a mistake.” His hold tightened as he shook her by the arm. “Deciding to teach you was a mistake–”

Taerelle raised her voice. “Master!”

“–Though that mistake, at least, can be swiftly corrected–”

Saphienne calmly tried to pull free, his grip painful. “You’re hurting me.”

“That is the least of your problems, girl! You are no longer–”

“Master Almon!” Taerelle wedged herself between them, pushing him back.

The wizard bristled as he let go of Saphienne, incandescent with anger at being touched — and that his name had been used by his apprentice.

Yet Taerelle was oddly composed, her voice steady. “She did everything we told her to. She doesn’t know about sympathetic connections, and we never warned her. This isn’t her fault…” She stared him down, her eyes finishing the sentence.

Rydel approached his master, hands no longer in his pockets. He braced himself before he spoke. “There may be another–”

“There is no other way!” Presented with a new target for his frustration, Almon wheeled about. “The blood is too decayed for other methods — which you are supposed to know, apprentice, if your interest in Transmutation is–”

Their master clenched his fists at his sides and stared up at the sky, shaking as he flushed to the tips of his ears. Throwing out his arm, he demanded his staff return with a curt syllable, and it rose as though of its own volition to settle into his palm, immediately snatched from whatever spell had passed it to him as he swept away from his apprentices.

He snapped a command across his shoulder. “Get her out of my sight.”

Taerelle slipped behind Saphienne, placing her hands on her shoulders and leaning in to whisper. “Not a word. Come–”

The senior apprentice paused, sniffing.

“You heard him,” Rydel urged, waving them away as he went after the wizard. His voice lightened. “Master, the trees planted around here — I presume these were discarded by woodland spirits…”

Yet Taerelle stayed where she stood, and when Saphienne looked up at her the senior apprentice was studying the girl with ensorcelled eyes as cool as their colour. Her glowing pupils flicked to the dried blood on the ground, where they lingered, and then back to Saphienne, looking down to her exposed hand.

“…Come on.” She pulled her toward the ragged treeline.

Saphienne went quietly, goosebumps rising.

* * *

They said nothing as they travelled, not until they were halfway down the hill, in sight of the gap their master’s power had made through the veil. Taerelle exhaled, colour coming back to her cheeks. “Don’t worry about him,” she told Saphienne, flashing her a smile. “He has a terrible temper whenever he’s disappointed in himself. Our master knows he should have trusted his judgement.”

Wary, Saphienne forced her shoulders to lower. “He won’t end my apprenticeship?”

“Not for that.” She gave a high, clipped chuckle. “How were you, an unproven apprentice, to know about sympathetic contamination?”

“Well… thank you for intervening,” Saphienne said. “I’m grateful.”

“Think nothing of it,” she shrugged, slowing and facing her as they neared the blasted briars. “Or if you prefer not to feel indebted… you could do me a small favour?”

Saphienne smiled. “Anything.”

“In that case…” Taerelle stepped forward — skewering her with a hard stare. “…Give me one good reason not to walk back up there, and tell our master that it really is your blood all over the ground. And it better be a very good reason, Saphienne.”

End of Chapter 42