Seth sat on one of the stone benches beside the Thunder Tower as he waited for the others to arrive. Mentally he went over everything he knew about the East Well, and the plan for jump starting Blaise's power again.

The timing should be fine. And even if it wasn't, the East Well was the safest of the five. There were also no rules against visiting the wells. The main ones just had guards there, and they were there to protect the wells from beasts, not humans.

Seth just hoped the well would have enough mana to make the trip worthwhile. Between his spells and Mau's natural talents, if there was a strong mana location then they'd find it.

The mana within the school was already higher than in the city. The towers pulled in mana that was then contained by the formations on the walls of the school. Where it went from there, Seth wasn't sure.

Owen and Duvessa arrived next, followed by Selendrith. Selendrith didn't approach the group though, and sat down on a bench a little bit away from them. Finally came Booth and Blaise.

"I don't think we'll be hunting or fighting anything," Blaise said, looking at Duvessa and Owen.

"Oh! But I like my bow," Duvessa said. "I even know how to shoot things! And you can never be too prepared when you're wandering in the wilderness."

"It's a few hours hike further up one of the mountains we are already on. It's hardly 'the wilderness', Duvessa," Seth said.

"I feel better having it," Owen defended Duvessa. "I brought one of the school swords too. It's one of Professor Kaban's."

"Are the guards at the gate gonna just let you walk out into the city armed like that?" Booth asked.

"We won't use the main gate," Seth said and Booth's interest was piqued. "I know another way, and it's closer to where we're going anyway." He didn't actually know the way, but he trusted Mau.

Seth gestured to Mau. The previous night Seth had wondered aloud about the city guards and his concerns for being seen, and Mau let him know he should follow her. So they did and she led them to the school wall that bordered the East Side of the city and into a tunnel that let out in a basement near Isolde's place. Mau opened the gates and doors with none of the others even realizing that they were locked in the first place. Booth studied the passage and exit carefully.

From there they crossed the city and followed the winding road up the mountain. There were small farms eking out a living in the rocky soil along the way. Goats and chickens roamed loose from most of these farms, with most of the small herds minded by dogs. After a few hours of walking and climbing there were no more farms, and the road turned into a steep path littered with boulders.

"Ugh, I'm done walking," Duvessa complained. "My feet hurt."

"We can stop for lunch," Seth suggested.

"That sounds fabulous. Who brought the food?" Duvessa asked. She sprawled on a boulder.

"We were all supposed to bring our own food," Blaise said. "Didn't you bring anything?"

"Dumbass," Booth muttered.

"Don't call me a dumbass, dumbass!" Duvessa retorted. "How was I supposed to know? I was told to pack for two days. I did."

"And you don't think you'd need food during those two days?" Booth replied.

"Food is different!"

"Stop it, stop it," Seth said. "It's fine. This is not a big deal. I have some jerky. I'll share what I have with anyone who didn't bring any, and we can hunt for rabbits or something tonight after we make camp."

"Do you think someone else was dumb enough not to bring food?" Booth asked.

"Actually, I thought I was bringing a tent, so someone else would be bringing my food," Owen said.

Blaise nodded. "Who else has a tent?"

No one answered.

"Really? There's six of us, and only one tent?" Blaise asked.

"Who brings tents to school?" Duvessa asked.

"This is a school tent," Owen said.

"I didn't know I was supposed to have one," Selendrith said. "That would be a lot for someone to bring, if everyone had to carry separate tents and all their food and supplies too. I thought we'd be sleeping inside somewhere."

"I expected to just sleep with a blanket," Seth said. "I've done it before. And yes, there should be some kind of shelter up there."

"There's more nip in the air here than in the city," Booth commented. "Is just a blanket warm enough?"

"Oh, we'll light a fire!" Duvessa said. "Maybe we should light one now?"

"We ain't staying here," Booth said.

"Maybe we do need a leader," Owen muttered and put his pack down next to a boulder.

Seth nodded. "This is a mess."

"We'll deal with that later," Blaise said. "Let's just take a break and eat. How much further to the top, Seth?"

"We're going a lot slower than I thought. Two or three hours I'd guess?" Seth answered.

"We'd be faster if we didn't stop to gawk at every tree or rabbit," Booth muttered.

"It's not wrong to be aware of your surroundings," Duvessa said haughtily. "And those goats were soo fluffy!"

Duvessa sent Reginald looking for water, and Owen, as the least tired of the group, was sent to fetch it. Blaise took stock of who had what food. No one had pots to boil water or cook with. Selendrith did know a spell for purifying water, but nothing that would help cook anything.

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They cleaned up and continued up the mountain. Finally they came to an abandoned guardhouse a short distance from the peak. It looked like someone came by infrequently to check on things. The single room house was dusty but in good condition and there were even logs stacked for a fire. A good sized flock of chickens roamed free outside.

"Oh, will this work?" Duvessa asked. "It would be so much better if we could stay here for the night, and not be camping outside."

Seth looked at Mau who shrugged and headed outside. He pulled out his notes on Detect Mana he had copied and prepared to cast it.

"Hold it, hold it!" Blaise shouted. "Have you ever cast that spell before?"

"Yes?" Seth questioned.

"Oh." Blaise relaxed. "I thought you were trying a brand new spell when you pulled that out. It would be right in line with everything else for you to try a new spell and knock this hut down."

Detect Mana was just a cantrip, and even if it exploded Seth didn't think knocking the guardhouse down was possible. Not that Blaise would know that. "I thought it better to refresh my memory before casting it. I'm still pretty new at this one."

"Maybe cast it outside then. Just in case."

Seth shrugged. It didn't hurt anything to be careful. Outside Seth studied the spell and then focused. He didn't target anything in particular and just focused on getting a feel for how much mana was in the area.

It detected that the mana in the area was much lower than in the school. Seth's heart sank. This might be a wasted trip.

He walked up the road a bit towards the ruined mana well tower and cast the detection spell again. Still low, but slightly higher. He walked another couple minutes and tried again. Slightly higher still. Seth headed back to the guardhouse.

"We need to go all the way up," he said. "There isn't enough here, so we'll need to go up the rest of the way."

"I can stay here and make a fire," Duvessa said.

"You want to stay by yourself?" Seth asked.

"Of course not. Who wants to catch a chicken for dinner?" Duvessa said. She started searching the guardhouse for cooking utensils.

"I think we should stay together for now," Owen said. "Once we know what we need to do for Blaise, we can come back and get settled then."

"But I'm done with walking," Duvessa said.

"It's just a little bit more," Seth encouraged. "There might even be someplace better up there."

Duvessa scowled. "All right, fine. But this means I'm not going to cook dinner."

"Small blessings," Booth muttered.

The well tower was only another fifteen minute hike. It was a large and squat building with everything above the second story having been knocked down. It had been a dual tower, and one half was just walls open to the sky while the other still had two complete floors. Building stones and sections of the upper walls were scattered quite a distance, making traversing the courtyard treacherous. A rooster crowed from the top of the broken tower.

The group searched through the tower, finding nothing that was still intact. Seth continued to cast the mana detect spell, with Selendrith also casting it now, with no success. The mana here was only slightly better than the school.

"So this was just a waste of time," Booth complained. "We walked all this way for nothing?"

"We are having an adventure!" Duvessa replied. "Nothing is wasted."

"You're the one who didn't want to walk anymore," Booth shot back.

"We've only been here a few minutes," Seth cut in. "We aren't going to be walking home in the dark, so let's just use what's left of daylight to see what we can find. I don't know what the well actually looks like inside."

"Whatever," Booth said and went back inside the tower. Seth figured he was probably looking for anything of value that he could take.

"If you want to catch a chicken, Duvessa, go ahead. We'll be staying the night either here or at the guardhouse, so dinner will be nice," Seth told her.

The group split up but stayed in shouting distance. Reginald circled high above the tower, Mau wandered off to who knew where. Booth and Blaise were in the tower, Selendrith was examining a formation she found on the broken stones, Owen walked the perimeter, and Seth could hear Duvessa chanting "here chicky chicky chicky."

Seth himself was searching through the open air half of the tower. He noticed that Reginald's circling was directly above the open portion of the tower and wondered if the shadow raven was attracted to some kind of mana thermal. Come to think of it, Seth thought the thin air of the mountain was dangerous to chickens, yet there was a whole collection of them here. Maybe this one wasn't too high for them?

Gazing out at the distant mountains, Seth felt that this peak wasn't lower than any of the others. Maybe all the towers had livestock around? He supposed it might be easier for the people manning the defense of the towers. But also, having animals around could just as easily make the towers even more appealing to wyverns and other dangerous creatures.

Seth cast the mana detection spell again while standing in the middle of the destroyed tower. To his surprise and relief, he picked up a distinct increase in mana. Maybe if the tower had a basement or something they could find a strong source.

Mana was such a funny resource. Intellectually he knew that all mana came from Above. It was why the most powerful mana wells were on mountain peaks. Yet when looking for mana, the best places to find or use it came from underground, or in the Below.

Seth didn't want to keep casting the mana detection spell over and over. It would use up his mana pool too quickly and not tell him how to get to where the mana was. So he turned to the wind version of a detection spell, one that he only knew how to use unstructured, and wasn't terribly good with yet.

All you have to do is listen, Saben had told him. The wind will tell you all kinds of things if you learn to listen to it.

Saben had an uncanny knack with his power, one Seth wasn't anywhere close to. Saben had tried to teach Seth when Seth developed the same wind power, but Seth just wasn't the natural Saben had been.

Seth sat down on a large block and closed his eyes. He cast the spell, but didn't specify looking for anything. Instead he focused on listening.

He could hear Booth rummaging inside the tower. Owen kicked rocks down the mountainside. Chickens clucked and squawked. And the wind drifted by in near silence.

He focused on the wind, and the faint sounds it made. The wind was all around and far away, but Seth wasn't interested in the far away, he wanted to hear about what was right here. As the minutes ticked by he noticed the wind drifting, then pausing, then drifting again, like it was breathing. And in the moment it started drifting again there was a faint whistling.

If the wind was whistling, then there was an opening nearby. Seth poured more mana into his active detection spell and focused on pinpointing where that whistling was coming from. He was close to it, he was certain, but he just needed to know where to look.

The rooster crowed again just feet from Seth, startling him and breaking his concentration.

"Hey, look at this!" Owen called out.

Seth sighed and stood up. "What did you find?"

"There are animal crates down there. Quite a few. Take a look," Owen said. He was down a path winding behind the tower along a cliff face. He picked up a broken piece of wicker and pointed down the side of the cliff. "Someone tossed wicker crates down there. Most of 'em look like the fall and the weather got 'em, but there's some that look like the type chickens go in."

"That explains why there are chickens here," Seth said.

"What would someone be bringing chickens up here for?" Owen asked.

"To eat them, silly," Duvessa said, walking up next to Seth and looking down at Owen. "Why else?"

"Ain't nobody here to eat them. The well has been busted for decades. Those wicker cages would have rotted to nothing if they were that old," Owen argued.

"Patrols still come up here though, yes?" Duvessa asked. "They need to eat."

"The patrols don't live or stay up here though," Seth said. "It would be easier to just bring food instead of live chickens." Could someone still be living here? He hopped down next to Owen and searched the cliff face. It was a weird place for someone to toss away a pile of chicken cages. Could the opening he'd sensed be near here?