Emily surveys the destru wrought by her spell with immeisfa. The bed trees are still smouldering as more magical fog rolls in, sm the small fires she has actally started, making her realise she mao partially clear it with her spell.

  Curious. I clear a rge area of the fog with a single dispersed third circle spell. We needed Oscar to use airspace cim to achieve even half of this effect st time. I guess that’s the differen circles showing.

  She turns away from her achievement and is filled with pride as she sees the stunned looks of disbelief on her friends' faces, still shocked even after her earlier dispy of another equally impressive spell.

  “Was that enough raw power for you?” she asks with a teasing tone, snapping them out of their reverie.

  “Fug hell!” Dante cries, uo tain himself as he looks around with a giddy grin. “That was incredible! Do you have any fire spells like that?”

  Emily ughs at his predictable rea to the more explosive spell.

  “I have fireball, but I’ve only made a few third circle spells so far, and my only other fire-based one is more siarget than area of effect.”

  He nods, his mild disappoi uo dampen his excitement over such a destructive spell.

  “It was certainly impressive,” Hester agrees, drawing her gaze baily from the excessive damage around them with a curious glint in her eye. “Was that all one spell? It looked like you ged it halfway through without dispelling it.”

  “Good spot,” Emily praises. “It’s teically two different spells.”

  She stops speaking as the strong aroma of singed flesh hits her. She turns around, looking at the burning ders that used to be ocexes and makes a quick decision.

  “Let’s get out of here first. I made a lot of noise and these corpses will be useless to us now. I’ll expin as we move.”

  Her friends all agree, so Emily sets off towards The Waters’ tunnel again, leaving the destru behind.

  “At first, when I was designing arc, I was looking to turn my sed circle spell, bolt, into a more powerful third circle version,” Emily expins as they walk, all of her friends listening attentively. “However, I thought that instead of just sending out a powerful shot in a straight li would be better tet my enemies, since lightning spells don’t lose a lot of force even after peing oarget. That led me towards targeting in the way I used for scattershot, where I apply a small magical mark to eaemy within my range before casting the spell. But that didn’t feel quite right for the element.”

  She turns around, walking backwards at full pad fag her audience. She raises her hand, fingers spyed, and courses maa through it. Small arcs of electricity jump between her digits, crag from the base to the tip.

  “You see, lightning moves in a very unique, erratic way. It likes to move along the path of least resistance, and that means that if you block its other routes, you get it to do some iing things.”

  Emily points at Juliana, building up maa at the top of her finger until it bursts. A glowing arc jumps to Juliana’s body armour, buzzing across and dispersing. She lowers her hand as she tinues expining.

  “Living beings are great ductors! So, I decided to create arc, where I simply build up a mass of charge a go wild, jumping to the lowest resistance objeearby and therefore hitting my enemies. But, because I’m tinually dispersing a single spell across a wide area, it is very weak. The arcs it shoots are only strong enough to disable a sed circle target. So, I went bay inal idea of a single powerful bolt, and then bihem. They have the same base of a dense orb of lightning, but one is a slow discharge, and one is a single pressed burst.”

  She pauses, looking over her friends’ faces to gauge their uanding. They seem a little fused by some of the things she said around the path of least resistance, but a general air of uanding sits over them.

  “How does this rete to you ging a spell you’re casting?” Tom asks.

  “I’m getting to that,” Emily says dryly, pig up where she left off. “I desighe two spells with the same base, so the majority of the magic circles are the same. The major differences are the parts for discharge, and the targeting system. Arc applies a small magical mark to all living targets it hits, and arc-bolt targets those marks. So, sihe main body of the spells are the same, after f arc I ge a fearts of the spell to ge it into arc-bolt without affeg the energy gathering and pressioions at all, meaning the gathered mana never disperses. It makes it faster and cheaper to cast two spells!”

  Emily beams with pride, looking at the astonishment on her friends' faces.

  “Crazy,” Enzo mutters, receiving several nods from the others, fusing Emily.

  “What’s crazy?” Emily asks, smoothly stepping backwards over a knot of roots.

  “You,” Dante responds instantly with a grin.

  “What’s crazy about that?” Emily asks, tilting her head.

  Juliana sighs, giving Emily a gentle smile.

  “Emi, that castihod works for you, but it’s ridiculous for most other people to copy. You made those spells yourself, right?”

  Emily nods silently, waiting for her to tinue.

  “Well, most of us haven’t ever made a spell. We memorise magic circles and ts, then cast them. Most of us don’t actually know what each rune is doing. Being able to pick apart a spell while casting it without breaking the magic circle is incredible, and requires an intimate uanding of the spells you’re using.”

  “Hmmm, I see,” Emily mutters, sidering her words.

  I guess most mages don’t have my processing speed and ability to perfectly multitask. If it weren’t for my perfect memory and cortex, it would’ve probably taken weeks or months to learn all the spells I know, let alone make new ones.

  She shrugs, fshing her friends a cheeky grin.

  “Guess I’m just amazing.”

  They roll their eyes at her, chug as she turns back to face the front again.

  They mar through The Gde, following the guide pose deeper into the mist. Emily spots several mroups of beasts through her bird scouts as they move, but none are rge enough to warrant a third circle spell, so she sticks to less extreme measures, flying lightning and the Spitter, to save the corpses. Ivor and Dante join her in dispatg the ehe tter excited to finally fight again after pining about the ck of fights so far pared to their first expedition.

  Late afternoon, as the sun is vanishing beyond the horizon and the shadows of the trees stretch ever lohey arrive at the shifting fog wall that marks the end of the first leg of their journey.

  “Woah,” Juliana gasps in surprise at the sight of the roiling wall of shifting white, her voice barely louder than the stant patter of heavy rain falling around them.

  Tom aer show equally impressed reas to the strange phenomena. Emily silently steps forward, vanishing through the ethereal wall to join her birds oher side. One of them flies down and nds on her head, waiting to be sed out with a spider for the night watch.

  Her friends step into the clearing behind her, and all of their attention is immediately drawn to the ominous cra the earth. The three who apanied Emily st time spare it a quice before looking around the rest of the clearing, cheg it’s in the same state as st time. The other three keep their eyes fixed on the crack with wonder, watg the billowing fog rolling down the edges.

  “ here for tonight and head in tomorrow,” Emily says, calmly walking out into the open and turning back to face her friends. “We’ll stay here for a little lohan usual to do a few final preparations on the surface, so spread out a up however you want. Oh, but don’t go into the craless you’re fighting something ing out.”

  She pointedly looks at Tom as she says that, trusting him to look after himself the least.

  “I’m not stupid!” Tom cries in injustice, receiving a doubtful gnce from his sister so genuine Emily ’t help but double over in ughter.

  After Emily finishes ughing at Tom’s expense, she reassures him it was Hester’s rea that made her ugh, to keep him from being too hurt, then they move to set up camp. The tents are split between Tom, Hester, Juliana, and Ivor to set up, while Enzo and Dante leave the clearing with one of Emily’s birds to gather firewood.

  Emily casts a water barrier over the clearing, blog the rain above, before throwing the barrier disk into the air at the tre of the area. She leaves it to set itself up as she positions a spider at the entrao The Waters. The instant it starts g its legs, she spots enemies rising from the depths. Without a word, Emily steps up to the edge of the crad drops in. She walks down, past the lower boundary of the sound barrier and quickly reaches the point where darkakes over and es to a halt.

  She slides the Spitter from its holster, summoning the silencer into her other hand and screwing it on as she waits. Five cat-sized roaches skitter towards her, clear in her spider’s vibrational vision. She raises her hand, not giving them time to hurl fming bile at her, and flicks her pistol into burst mode.

  She squeezes the trigger, a light sheen of maa dang over the on’s body as two bullets fly into the same spot on the first bug’s head, crag its hard exoskeleton with the first shot and pulping its innards with the sed. Before the third shot of the rapid burst leaves the barrel though, Emily flicks her wrist in a precisely timed motion, sending the third bullet into the head of the bug.

  Without hesitation, she pulls the trigger agaiing the same flick after the first shot, killing two bugs simultaneously. The st two bugs pause and open their mandibles, building up flickering red masses in their jaws. Unfortunately for them, they don’t get to release their attacks before Emily’s gun kicks against her hand again, sending three more bullets de.

  The bullets fly through the bugs’ mouths, sending the built-up fming bile bato their throats and ripping apart their ihey curl up, twitg as life fades from their bodies.

  Emily sweeps spatial mana over the corpses, moving them to her utility belt as she turns and walks back up the slope while disassembling her gun to stain. She rises above the lip of the crack, meeting with Juliana’s ed gaze as she stands to the side waiting for Emily.

  “Is everything okay?” she asks as Emily approaches.

  “It’s fine,” Emily responds with a warm smile. “I just spotted a few bugs ing to bother us, so I dealt with them.”

  She waves a hand, dropping the five balled-up corpses from her ste and onto the floor. Tom aer’s attention is drawn by the a, and they both leave the tents they were setting up to e over. Hester looks excited as she walks towards them.

  “Are those poisonous?” she asks eagerly.

  “No,” Emily answers, raising a brow. “Fire-spitting bugs should be safe to e. Why? You pnning on cooking them?”

  As she asks, she he faint smell of cooked chi ing from the two bugs she filled with fire.

  “Of course! We make burgers from desert crawlers bae, they’re good.”

  “I see. Go ahead then, they’re all yours. I’ll show Tom how to strip them now.”

  Juliana aer leave them to it and go and help Ivor finish setting up the tents. Emily finds a good rock to sit oo the tunnel’s entrand gestures for Tom to join her.

  They sit down, each with a bug in their p, and Emily slowly guides Tom through the process of cutting away the hard exoskeleton from the soft flesh beh before jamming in a knife and prying the individual ptes off.

  “Save the mandibles and any mostly undamaged ptes of armour, they’re the valuable materials. As for the rest, gather the flesh for your sister, a Ivor or Enzo to help you bury the rest. The ans are annoyingly fire resistant so we ’t just burn them,” she says after finishing her demonstration.

  “Got it!” Tom says cheerfully, grabbing an to get started on.

  “Do you like butchering things?” Emily asks, slightly taken aback by his suddehusiasm.

  “Hmm? No, not really. I just really like bug burgers!”

  “Fair py. I’ll go get her started on those then,” she says, pig up the flesh from her finished bug and walking towards their nefire.

  Enzo and Dante have returned from gathering wood and piled a few of the dry logs from Tom’s bag in a circle of stones before lighting them. o the crag campfire is a small storucture made by Enzo, which is filled with damp wood, with open gaps oher end to allow airflow. Juliana is sittio the structure, using a basid spell to blow the warm air from the campfire over the wood, drying it quickly.

  Emily hands Hester the bug meat and sits dowo Juliana, ing an arm around her waist aing her head on her shoulder.

  “Let me take over drying,” Emily says quietly.

  “No. You already do enough,” Juliana argues, keeping part of her foaintaining her spell.

  “You need scious effort to maintain the spell. I don’t. You do some weaving for a bit if you let me take over.”

  Juliana sighs, giving in to the devil’s temptation and releasing her spell.

  “Thank you, darling,” Juliana says, pg a kiss on Emily’s forehead before pulling out her weaving supplies.

  Emily smirks, casting a first circle wind spell with barely a thought aing one of her sedary cores ma. They sit together in fortable silence as everybody fulfils their tasks, the sound of the crag fire and falling rain mixing together in the clearing to give a pleasant atmosphere.

  Slowly, everyone fiheir individual tasks and gathers around the fire, waiting for the surprisingly good-looking patties of meat to finish cooking.

  “Do we have an actual goal for this expedition?” Tom asks after a while, growing unfortable with the silence.

  Emily lifts her head from Juliana’s shoulders, looking around at her friends, all expetly looking to her for an answer.

  I guess it’s time to tell them.

  “We do,” she says calmly, a smirk growing on her lips. “We’re heading for the end of The Crystal Waters.”