To Bernt’s relief, the storm clouds did not prove to be an example of the Phoenix Reaches’ infamous burning rain. He'd guessed as much – they were the wrong color – but he'd still worried. Bernt had read something once about how mountains were supposed to make clouds and cause rainfall somehow, but he hadn’t expected to find an example of it here. Nothing he’d read about this place had concerned itself with natural weather.

  The rumble of thunder accompanied him on his descent through the dense mist, and he soon found himself soaked through as the mist transitioned to rain. The terrain changed, too. Soil covered the slope here and with it came first grasses, then scraggly bushes and finally trees.

  When he finally emerged from beneath the clouds, Bernt was greeted by a view of a different world. From here, he could see far over the green mountainous landscape that he currently stood in to smaller ridges and foothills below, where the true Phoenix Reaches began. It was partly obscured by the rain, but he could see sunlight shining down in the distance.

  The green landscape below transformed at the foot of the mountains in an uneven line, as if a border had been scrawled there by a bored god. Bernt had known what to expect, in general terms, but seeing it was something entirely different. The Phoenix Reaches were technically inhospitable to normal life, but that didn’t mean they were dead. The ecosystem there just operated under different rules. He just hadn’t expected it to look quite so familiar. In the distance, he could make out grasslands and forests of bone-white trees. As he watched, a dark cloud that must have been a massive flock of birds erupted from a distant copse in the far distance, startled by an unknown threat.

  If everything that grew down there was an elemental creature or a magical material of some kind, the specific materials he’d read about would only scratch the surface of what actually existed here. Who knew what he might find if he actually had the time to explore properly?

  Suddenly eager again, Bernt began to pick his way down.

  ***

  Hours later, Bernt sat huddled naked under the blanket from his bedroll as his sodden robes dried next to his improvised campfire spell. It was warmer here than it had been on the dry side of the mountains, but that didn’t mean much when he was soaked to the bone and exhausted.

  The rain beat down on the mountain endlessly, making every surface either slick, muddy, or muddy and slick. But he’d still had a long way to go, and it wasn’t all downhill.

  It wasn't quite night yet, but he'd been too tired to continue. So, he’d cast a tunneling spell at the base of a short cliff to create a small shelter, placing the fire between himself and the entrance. It would warm the stone walls and keep out any uninvited visitors. That was the idea, anyway.

  Trying to keep his hand from shaking, he slowly chalked runes down on the smooth stone next to him in a circle. He hadn’t had time to contact Jori before or, more accurately, he hadn’t even thought of it, what with demons trying to chase him down.

  Finishing the circle, Bernt extended a strand of his spirit into it. His mind lurched uncomfortably, then he felt Jori’s relief flood through their bond.

  “Agh! Why are you so cold?” she asked, shivering at the vicarious sensation coming to her from their bond. She was crouched on a rock, watching as three other imps subdued a strange humanoid dressed in a loose black rag. It looked like a small, skeletally thin, blue-skinned human, except it had no eyes and unnaturally long, sharp teeth that prevented it from closing its mouth properly. It swiped at one of the imps and screamed, freakishly unhinging its jaws as it did so.

  Unimpressed, one of the imps – slightly larger than the other two – flung a gobbet of sticky hellfire into its face. The monster writhed and shrieked before collapsing in a heap, its head quickly collapsing into a smoking ruin.

  Not a very powerful demon, then, despite its fearsome appearance.

  “I… ah… I had to hike through a storm.” Bernt explained, deciding not to ask. It looked like Jori had her end handled, and he needed to get word to her and the archmages. “We were attacked and I got separated. All three of the priests are dead, but I think Torvald, Nirlig and Elyn got away with some of the others. I didn’t see their bodies, at least. There were too many demons, and I couldn’t catch up. I went into the mountains to get around them. I’m on the other side, near the Phoenix Reaches – or maybe in them, technically.”

  Jori got to her feet and flapped her wings in agitation. “What happened!?”

  Bernt related the events of the past few days to her, stopping to backtrack and explain the details as he went. There hadn’t been time to begin to process what had happened, and it was hard to line everything up right into a coherent story. Still, it felt good to get it all out to a sympathetic ear. He’d missed having Jori around.

  “So, when I stopped here,” he finished, “I realized that I forgot to tell you that the hag was dead. You need to be ready to take her out when she reforms in the hells. Are you sure you’re in the right place?”

  Jori snorted. “Roaznis is dead! We got her probably a day ago, not long after we got here. Ed was supposed to come and help us watch the place, but he missed it! He looked disappointed when he found out – I don’t think he’s having a good time in Halfbridge right now.”

  Bernt leaned back and let out a weak chuckle. “He hates paperwork. If it’s anything like when I left – with all the refugees and the shortages – I’m kind of surprised he didn’t permanently abdicate his position in favor of Fiora. Maybe the magistrate wouldn’t let him.”

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  The imp jumped down from her perch and reached into a small belt pouch strapped over her now-tattered robes, producing a bit of spicy rat jerky. She tore a mouthful off with her teeth and reclined against the rock.

  “So, what are you going to do now? Do you still need to get to the Sacral Peaks if all the priests are dead?”

  “Torvald’s fine, I think,” Bernt replied. “So yeah, I need to get there – I'm his legitimator. It shouldn't be a problem, as long as I can get through the Phoenix Reaches okay. It’s probably even a shortcut, distance-wise. Of course, with all the mountains and whatever’s waiting for me out here, they might still get there first. Just make sure to tell Iriala what I’m doing, so she can get a message to Goldwater before the others get there. Then at least they’ll know I made it out. They probably think I’m dead.”

  Bernt sighed and dug around in his bag for something to eat. The heat from the fire had finally warmed the walls of the small space, and it was starting to feel almost cozy. Bernt was alone in an unknown place, with a limited amount of food and without his wand, but he felt… almost normal.

  He had Jori for company, at least. For the first time in over a week, Bernt felt like he could relax.

  ***

  When Bernt woke up, it was dark and he was starving. His legs, feet and lower back were beyond sore, but he forced himself to get up and move around, gingerly trying to warm up and loosen his cramped muscles.

  Then, after wolfing down some cold beans left over from last night’s dinner, Bernt activated his belt to help him see and continued on. It was uncomfortable at first, but soon his overtaxed muscles warmed up, and the pain receded. It took hours to get over the next ridge and around another before he found a narrow valley with a small stream leading south – around the foothills and out onto slightly less mountainous terrain. Several more hours later, he found that he'd made it. The steep slopes fell away on his left side, revealing a wide open plain. He stood at the dividing line, mundane bushes behind him, and the burning world of the Phoenix Reaches in front of him.

  The white trees, as it turned out, were actually on fire. He hadn’t been able to see it from so far away and in daylight the day before, but in the darkness of early evening, the flames flickering in the branches became obvious. Fire was everywhere, in fact. It flickered out of the ground in places, and a general fiery red glow seemed to emanate from beyond the southern horizon.

  Between here and the trees ahead, scraggly patches of coal-black grass dotted the ground, getting thicker and joining into a contiguous carpet a few hundred strides in. It would have looked burnt if not for the clusters of delicate red and orange florets that poked out here and there. Curious, Bernt stepped over the invisible line where both kinds of plants mixed and tore out a small handful of the black grass.

  It had been described in his books as “coal grass”, both in Halfbridge and in Gobford. It had magical properties, though it wasn’t anything relevant to Bernt – just some way for it to draw moisture from the warm air. But that didn’t matter right now. He’d been wanting to try this ever since they’d left Gobford.

  Unceremoniously, he bit the delicate floret off the top of the small bushel and chewed. The grass itself was cool to the touch, and small droplets of water had gathered at the stem.

  Nothing happened.

  That was a little disappointing, but it was only one datapoint. Digging a charcoal pencil and the stack of papers that he was currently using to take notes out of his bag, Bernt flipped to a blank page and recorded his results. He’d be sampling everything he could get his hands on along the way.

  While he wanted to try to form a proper augmentation, Bernt had decided that he wasn’t going to put off his research for it. He’d analyze all the potentially usable materials he found and learn everything he could. If he got the chance, he’d even try to talk to an elemental to get its advice, as Xul’evareg had suggested. If he found a suitable material, he’d form his investiture and hopefully his first augmentation as planned.

  What he wasn’t going to do, though, was wait around forever for that to happen.

  Originally, he’d wanted to avoid developing his sorcerous magic separately from his normal investitures. Since leaving Gobford, though, he’d had some time to think. If growing his sorcerous mana network involved incorporating the magical potential of other materials, he didn’t have to worry about becoming some kind of second-rate mage compared to people of a similar level of advancement. Sure, that part of him would be highly restricted in the kind of magic he could cast, but it wasn't as big a sacrifice as it sounded. Ultimately all mages grew more specialized over time.

  As long as he still had the normal part of his mana network, he would still be able to shape complex spellforms normally and cast whatever spells he liked.

  He could even keep building his normal mana network and create an augmentation later by incorporating more normal investitures with his burning rain. That was essentially what Pollock had suggested to him back in Halfbridge – that he should build up both parts of his mana network independently.

  But he wouldn’t have to make that choice yet. First, he had to see what was out there.

  To orient himself, Bernt flipped through his notebook to find the rough, hand drawn map of the Phoenix Reaches that he’d gotten from the Gobford Library. There were landmarks drawn in to orient himself by, including a distinctive rock pillar, a series of small lakes of fire, and a single burning tree, which Bernt assumed had to be something different than the many burning white trees he could see from here.

  Besides that, there were quite a few small points that had been marked with glyphs. Some were marked with a “harvest” symbol, which was clear enough, but others were more ambiguous. He wasn’t planning to go out of his way for those he didn’t understand – he hadn’t brought enough food to explore everything, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t visit any of them.

  One point, marked with a glyph that meant something like “source” or “wellspring” was located just south of one of the “harvest” points in the western half of the Reaches. It was almost on the shortest path to the Sacral Peaks, so he would be an idiot not to check it out on his way. There were two other points with that same odd designation, but both were much further to the south, near the bottom of the incomplete map.

  He couldn't see any of the indicated landmarks from here, so he couldn't orient himself exactly on the map right now, but that wasn’t too important. For now, he knew that the Sacral Peaks lay west of here, and that was good enough.

  Packing his notes away again, he turned right and started walking.