Emily sits dowo Dante as he sets up a small fire using some dry wood from within Tom’s bag and roasts skewers of a razor-fanged wolf he killed during the night.

  “Wow, you actually butchered something on your own?” Emily asks with mock surprise.

  “It gave me something to do,” he grumbles back. “Sitting on waty own is s!”

  “Wow, bored after a few days. Now you knoe felt after weeks,” Emily says with a snort.

  Their friends slowly start joining them before the food is done cooking, drawn by the smell of sizzli.

  “Did you even season those?” Hester asks as she sits down opposite Dante and Emily.

  “Yep!” Dante says proudly. “I used the mix you made.”

  Emily resists the urge to ugh at his pride over following instrus, fog oer instead.

  “Did you kick your brother?”

  “Yeah, he should be up in a sed.”

  “Good, I didn’t expect waking up to be the biggest challenge on this expedition,” Emily says dryly, thinking of their twenty-minute dey yesterday because Tom refused to get up.

  Juliana walks over as they chat, sp a mischievous grin. Dante goes to hand Emily a finished skewer, but Juliana steps between them and drops down into Emily’s p with all her weight. Emily pys along, letting out a pained grunt even though the impact barely bothers her as she s her arms around her girlfriend’s waist as her on her shoulder.

  Juliana takes the skewer Dante was and starts mung on it with a self-satisfied smile. Dante gives Juliana a small, amused nod before tinuing as if nothing happened. He hands finished skewers to everyone else, purposefully leaving Emily till st.

  Emily rolls her eyes, unbothered, and addresses the group ohey’re all eating.

  “We should reach the tunnel down into The Crystal Waters by this evening. We’re probably going to run into a lot more beasts today, and I have a new spell to test, so I’m going to take over bat for now.”

  Nobody has any pints, so they finish their meal and pack up their camp quickly. An hour into the m trek, Emily hears a faint boom ahead, slightly off their intended path.

  Ps?

  She sends one of her birds up above the opy into the free skies where the mist thins a little. The sight she sees makes her eyes light up as a rge smile spreads across her face.

  “I just found the perfect target for my test. Follow me,” Emily says, turning to the right.

  “What is it?” Juliana asks, following close behind her.

  “A huge flock of sominal bombers!”

  “How big is huge?” Hester asks.

  “About fourteen. No, wait, make that fifteen,” Emily says, watg another bird rise from the trees to join the flock. “And they seem pretty agitated, so probably whatever they’re attag too.”

  Juliana, Hester, and Enzo start ting, preparing defensive spells, just in case, after hearing the numbers. Emily doesn’t say anything, inwardly chug.

  They won’t get a ce to attack us.

  Emily stops a hundred metres away from the flock, holding up a hand to signal for her group to halt. They reastantly, falling silent and stopping dead iracks.

  Emily stands still, nding all of her birds and ign them to free up threads, two of her cores still asleep. She quickly pulls upon her magical perception, spread by a free thread as she approaches, and begins casting her new spell. She locates all of her targets: fifteen sominal bombers; twelve ps in their clutches; and five razor fangs on the floor below them. She directly brands all of them with her mana, writing a few ruhat don’t even qualify as a spell onto each, dividing them into two groups.

  Glowing green and silver runes flow out of Emily, eng her in a spinning matrix of letters aric patterns within a sed. At the tre of the spell, silver mana slowly denses into a mesmerisial bow, the limbs twisting out from the handle like a tornado. It’s then delicately ed in faint green mana that denses into shimmering winds that flow through the grooves of the limbs, bursting out from the tips to ect together in a swirling string.

  Emily’s friends are mesmerised by the beautiful on as Emily reaches up her left hand to grasp the ha fits perfectly, and she smiles as she raises the bow to the sky, pointing straight at the flock of birds. Her right hand draws back the barely visible b, flexing the limbs back as more mana flows from the spell to deo a thin, straight arrow of twisted metal.

  She holds it there for a sed, waiting as more mana is poured into the arrow, ing it in a violently twisting gale.

  “Scatter,” Emily decres with a wide grin, releasing the arrow.

  Faster than any of her friends’ eyes follow, her aerial targets die.

  Emily is only barely able to watch the path of the arrow since she knows it in adva rips through the air, cutting through the few leaves and branches in its way with ease. A few metres away from the flock of birds, the spiralliallic der at the tre of the projectile bursts. Twenty-seven jagged shards of metal rocket off at different angles, already lined up due to the strawists in the inal projectile.

  The winds around the arrow split, joining each shard and adding a violent rotation. They fly towards the marks Emily left on the beasts, targeting the skulls of the bombers and the hearts of the frogs. Eae hits its mark, tearing through any flesh or bone in the way.

  As the first wave of corpses falls from the sky, Emily draws baother shot, waiting for the arrow to charge again. Instead of aiming up or directly towards her targets, Emily points at an odd angle slightly to the right of the five razor-fangs still ahead, aiming for the lo gap between any trees.

  Emily’s friends hear a chorus of thuds as the falling bodies hit the floor, and Emily releases the arrow the moment siletles. It flies forward before suddenly jolting sideways, windiween the gaps irees towards the wolves, and then bursting into five much rger shards of arrow that all weave their way into the beast’s hearts. They don’t eve a ce to yelp before their chests are pulped and they drop dead.

  “Target’s eliminated,” Emily mutters, l her hand and dismissing the spell.

  The bow bursts into glittering light and a final gust of wind, signalling the end of the dispy to her friends.

  “That was incredible!” Tom shouts excitedly, receiving a smack to the back of the head from his sister.

  “Idiot. Don’t shout,” she chides him.

  He lowers his head sheepishly, and Emily ughs, gesturing for them to follow her as she walks towards her quarry. They walk through the trees until they e across the littered bodies, scattered through the trees, a few frogs and birds stu the branches above, dripping gore to the floor.

  Her teammates let out surprised excmations at the sight.

  “Did you hit all of them in the head or heart?” Enzo asks, iing a few of the corpses.

  “Yep!” Emily says with a proud grin, starting to gather the corpses together with her friends’ help. “Scattershot works by marking my targets, then the arrow splits to hit them all. I was sidering having a single arrow folloath through all of the marks, but it would have been weaker per hit after the first few because of the drastic dire ges.”

  “Incredible. I’ve only seen a few third circle mages in a before and I never realised their spells could be so... precise,” Enzo says with admiration.

  “Ha, thanks. Were you watg members of the Hibiscus family by any ce?” Emily asks in a teasing tone.

  “Yes actually. I’ve watched a few friendly spars between some of our siblings,” Enzo firms. “I ’t really bme the Hibiscus mages though. My siblings arely refined.”

  Enzo’s tired sigh is drowned out by Dante’s ughter at the ent.

  “Your siblings are great!” he says through his ughter.

  “So they use big explosions then?” Juliana asks with false innoce, smiling pyfully.

  Emily is caught off guard by Juliana’s tone and breaks into a fit of ughter, quickly being joined by everyone else.

  They gather the corpses together, as Tom starts harvesting the valuable parts and pg them into his bag. Emily gracefully asds a few trees to fish bodies out of them, before joining him to quickly finish stripping the bodies. It doesn’t take long with a little help from everyone, and they soon finish up and turn to tiheir march.

  Emily pulls out her guide pose to correct their course and, as they start walking, Tom asks her a question.

  “Why do you have to use that to find the entrance? Don’t you already know where it is? Couldn’t you just plot a course on a map and use a pass?”

  Emily looks over her shoulder at him with a raised brow.

  “Haven’t you done any researana-dense regions? I would have thought it would fit into your is sinany flicts happened around The Gde.”

  “No,” he responds, scratg his cheek embarrassedly. “I’ve only read a few things about The Gde in passing. Not many historical texts give much detail on it in the C grade se.”

  “Ah,” Emily nods in uanding, not having sidered his limited access to knowledge. “There are a few reasons. First and foremost, the geography of The Gde is stantly shifting: how drastically depends on a lot of factors, and not all of them are fully uood, so we ’t rely oraaying in one spot or predict how it will move.”

  Hester, Tom, and Juliana all react to the information, but the other three don’t, having already heard about it on their st trip.

  “Sedly, and probably the rger issue,” she tinues, “Is this.”

  Emily reaches into a pouch at her hip and pulls out an ornate bronze pass, tossing it over her shoulder to Tom. He catches it and looks at the face.

  “Woah,” he mutters, drawier and Juliana io him to look too.

  Ivor, Enzo, and Dante also try to look over his shoulder, not knowing the sed reason themselves. The needle of the pass erratically jumps, pointing in several different dires. Some of its jumps happen rapidly in succession, and some give long pauses iween, creating an impossible-to-predict pattern.

  “Simple passes don’t work in mana-dense regions,” Emily expins, holding her hand out to take back her instrument.

  “Why?” Hester asks, earning an approving nod from Emily.

  “Do any of you uand how passes work?”

  Her friends fall silent for a few moments before Hester hesitantly says: “The needle is pulled towards the north?”

  Emily sighs, raising a hand to rub the bridge of her nose.

  I wonder if their ck of knowledge reflects a ck of uanding in the kingdom, or eduy knowledge of this is all given by the system.

  “I’ll start with the basics then. Do you know what mags are?”

  “Metals that stietals!” Tom says proudly.

  “Close enough. Think of mags as objects with an aura of attra around them, like a spell that draws in s. The p we’re on, Ulea, has e aura that will affect all s on it. So, to make a pass, we pce a small mag,” she expins, holding up the pass and pointing to the needle in the middle. “On a pivot, and it’s automatically pulled towards the top of the p, aka, north.”

  Murmured uanding spreads through the group.

  “Why do mana-dense regions affect them then? Aren’t they on the poo?” Juliana asks.

  “They are. But, the dense mana here has a stronger influehan the p’s light stant aura. So, the pass reacts to the fluctuation of mana instead of the p’s aura.”

  Though, I could probably make a pass resistant to the influeh the right alloy of magid maaals...

  She puts the pass away agaiurning her focus to their path as she spots a feroag beasts, probably drawn by the noise of ps going off. She signals for her friends to stop, her mouth stretg into a grin as arikes her.

  I’ve shown them precision, now time for overwhelming power.

  “Some mudscraps and ocex are ing. Wait a moment,” Emily says calmly, casting ahird circle spell.

  A crag matrix of sky-blue runes flickers to life in front of her. The air around buzzes with energy as a giant orb, the size of Emily’s torso, of violent lightning forms.

  Emily draws a rune on each of her teammates quickly, excluding them from the spell’s targeting, as the beasts rush towards them through the trees. She holds the spell, watg the beasts through one of her birds and waiting for them to step inte. The five ocex arrive first, stopping a few metres away from Emily, cautiously watg the giant ball of sizzling mana she trols and not approag.

  Good choice, but not smart enough.

  The st of the eight approag mudscraps steps withiy metres of her, and she raises her hands dramatically, putting on a show for her audience.

  “Arc!” she announces, g her hands together in time with a r thunder as she releases her spell.

  The orb of lightning that was tained by the carefully structed spell matrix shakes, firing out searing tendrils of psma. The thin lines of lightning stretch out, striking at the trees as around them indiscriminately. Bark is burned bck, leaves and bushes set alight, and the beasts howl in pain.

  Each deadly limb of mana released from the orb bounces from target tet, not doing a rge amount of damage per impact, but not stopping until they reach a distance of thirty metres from the orb, where they fizzle out. Power pours out of the spell, creating arically charged territory ruled by lightning.

  All of the beasts struck writhe in pain, uo trol themselves as tendrils repeatedly strike then leap away.

  All of them have been marked. Phase two.

  Emily moves her arms, grasping at the air in a precise, well-pnned manner, like a ductor building up their orchestra into a r cresdo. The magic circle around the orb morphs, runes vanishing and being repced, shapes bending and twisting to ect different points in a dizzying, twisting motion as the entire spell seems to shrink around the orb, strig it and holding iriking limbs, bringing quiet to the forest again.

  The orb of psma starts to shake violently, pressing into a glistening ball the size of a fist that starts to buzz in a high-pitched hum. Emily’s movement ceases suddenly, with both her hands csped together, her fingers interlinked, pointing straight ahead.

  Her friends stand behind her in awed silence, watg the mesmerising dispy of mastery pying out before them. The beasts lying around irees quiver in pce, unmoving, their skin still crag with residual lightning even after the main assault has paused.

  “Arc-bolt.” Emily’s voice flows out, mixing with the crag hum in a chilliion of death.

  Emily’s hands rex and part as deafening noise and light fill the forest. A powerful roar shakes her friends to the core as a single, white line is drawween every beast in the viity. The beam of psma only targets the immobilised creatures, instantly ending their lives the moment it touches them as they are struck by millions of volts and an intense, seari.

  The beam hits all thirteen targets before vanishing, leaving nothing but stunned silen its wake.