Saul landed on the slushy dirt of the battlefield sword in hand. He glanced around, assessing the situation.

The demise of the giant spiders had taken all of his attention, and the rush of sudden noise that followed the quiet of the Windspeed spell threw him for a moment. He moved away from the carcasses of the spiders, searching for enemies.

Nearby, a warlock was preparing to cast a spell, but before Saul could reach him, an arrow curved out of the darkness and pierced his chest. The warlock staggered back and died without a sound.

Saul was facing north, toward the cliff and the forest. Behind him, the last of the berserkers were dying at the hands of the Xornian infantry and a newly redoubled flanking attack from a detachment of raptors.

To his left, the reinforcements were charging into the flank of the warlocks and their thralls, who were still doing their best to hold out against the ravages of the raptors.

Everywhere, there were flashes of fire magic from the warlocks, but they were becoming fewer and fewer as the warlocks were killed.

The newly arrived reinforcements gave a great roar as they charged, and the warlocks fell back toward the path.

Saul felt a tugging at his arm. He turned, surprised to see Zorea standing there, her hand on his sleeve.

“Saul,” she said in a strange, dull voice. Her eyes were glazed and her expression distant.

“What is it? Are you well? You seem strange.”

He looked her over, searching for some sign of a wound. A blow to the head, maybe?

“I’m fine,” she said firmly. “But I can sense a powerful magical item on the battlefield. We need to go there and get it, now.”

“Where’s Brand?” Saul said.

He glanced about, then saw the young man jogging toward them across the muddy field. Behind Brand, the last of the berserkers were falling under the swords of the Xornian footmen.

Saul turned to Zorea again. her eyes were still distant, gazing off into the gloom of the swiftly descending night.

“We’d better go,” Brand said. “She can feel it, can’t you?”

Saul shook his head. “No. But Zorea has displayed this talent before now. She can sense magic clearly. When the Sigil that caused the soldiers to be frozen in place was activated, during the skirmish, Zorea saw the magic as a dome of shadow over the village, whereas I only had a vague sensation of a spell in place, but I couldn’t tell what or where it was.”

Brand looked at Zorea with admiration.

“Show me where this item is,” Saul said to Zorea. “Lead the way. Brand, watch our backs.”

With Brand warily bringing up the rear of the small party, and Zorea leading, the three of them made their way across the battlefield.

Zorea was watching something he could not see. She seemed to be moving toward a beacon in the darkness, but night was falling swiftly now and there was no moon. To Saul, everything seemed pitch black, and he wished for a lamp.

Then he remembered his most basic level of the School of Fire spells, the ones he had already been granted back when he’d found himself weak and half-dead outside the warlock coven’s hideout.

He smiled to himself in the dark and activated Generate Light. He was pleased with the effect.

Back at the beginning of his new timeline, when he had only been at Level 1, the light had been not much more powerful than a small candle, and it had not lasted long.

Now, he was at Level 12, and a powerful globe of white light spun up from his palm to float slightly ahead of him, just as if it were a lamp on a string. It had a new name, too. No longer was it called Generate Light. Now, it was named Light Globe.

“Wow! I wish I could do that!” Brand said as he saw the globe of light sailing up from Saul’s outstretched hand.

Despite the terribly difficult day and the battle they had all been through, Brand’s admiration of Saul’s magic was unabated. The young man grinned in delight like a child watching a show as the harsh white light of Saul’s spell illuminated his pale, tired face.

His enthusiasm was infectious, and Saul was glad to see that Brand had not lost any of his natural enjoyment of the world and the wonders around him.

Many who see battle and other hardships can become cold and callous, unable to enjoy the beauty in the world. Saul was happy that this was not the case for young Brand.

In his days as a battle commander, he had seen it happen too many times.

“Perhaps you’ll get the chance to use magic one day,” Saul said, giving Brand a smile.

Though he had not given it much thought recently, Saul still hoped that in time, he might be able to use Sigils in some way to transfer his power to his companions. There were plenty of limitations on the use of the system’s magic. He had a growing suspicion that the System might eventually be able to do such a thing.

As they made their way across the muddy battlefield, the fight was moving away from them. The remainder of the warlocks and their thralls had engaged the reinforcements, leaving this stretch of the field empty.

Here were the remains of many broken tents, campfires, cooking spits, and other gear of a hastily created encampment. Saul and his friends stepped over the carcasses of dead warlocks and broken monsters and picked their way among the wreckage of the warlock base.

Zorea, her eyes glazed and her expression distant, was leading them back toward the ruin of a large tent. She stopped in front of it, blinked a few times, and then looked at Saul with her eyes clearer than they had been.

“It’s here,” she said with certainty, though her expression was confused and a bit unsettled, as if she’d just awakened from a dream.

“You okay?” Brand asked her.

Saul stepped into the wreckage and started rummaging through the chaos in the light of his conjured flame.

“I’m okay now,” said Zorea.

Saul’s foot bumped into something solid but yielding. He pulled the canvas back to reveal the drawn, white face of a dead warlock. He glanced up and saw Zorea leaning into Brand, the young man’s arm around her.

Saul concealed the small smile at them. Then he pulled the canvas further back and saw that the man was clutching something.

Something black and gleaming, circular and made of many beautiful and intricate curves and decorations.

“Is that it?” Saul said to Zorea.

She had stepped away from Brand and was looking more herself again.

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“I think that’s it,” she replied, “but the bright light that was guiding me to the spot has gone now. It seems that my ability to detect magic is a bit variable. What is it? I can’t make it out…”

“It’s a Sigil,” Saul replied, “and so I have no doubt that it is the item you were able to detect from a distance.”

“A Sigil!” brand and Zorea both said at the same time.

“But I thought they could not survive the death of the mage who created them?”

Saul shook his head. “Apparently this one can. I don’t know much about Sigils, not really, but based on my System, I come to suspect more things can be done with Sigils than anyone has ever guessed, wouldn’t you say?”

“What do you think this one does?”

Saul gingerly took it from the slack hands of the dead man. He held it up, and it glimmered in the light of the globe.

The two youngsters gawked at it in amazement.

Saul focused his intent on the Sigil and said, “System, scan this item.”

He was not entirely certain it would work—it didn’t always, and his System was nowhere near as reliable as the captain’s Sigilite Scanner, but to his surprise he got a reading of this item.

Words scrolled across his vision.

Detected: Crafted Sigil

Power Contained: Unknown

Select: Activate

Saul looked at his friends and quickly explained what was going on. Zorea and Brand shook their heads.

“No, you shouldn’t activate it,” Zorea said. “You don’t know what it is, it might be a trick, like the Sigil that was on the bow.

Warning: Sigil activating independently

Prepare for Transition

“Ah, no, wait!” Saul cried.

He tried to fling Sigil away, but it stuck to him. There was a moment of reeling, dizzying sensation, and he saw his companions’ faces with expressions of shocked surprise.

Saul was wrenched from his feet and hurtled through the air. With an unceremonious crash, he appeared on the floor of the Workshop.

“Ugh,” he groaned, peeling himself from the floor. He felt that he had been dropped from a height.

What had caused that? He’d never experienced that before. Usually, he landed fairly gently despite the abruptness of the transition.

He got to his feet. He was still holding the strange Sigil. He inspected it, frowning, when suddenly there was a noise from behind him.

A cough, the scrape of a footfall.

Saul spun, dread flooding him suddenly. He had never had anyone else in the Workshop. He didn’t think it was possible.

Yet here it was. There was someone in the Workshop with him.

A dark figure rose from one corner, and then another.

The darkness filled the corners of the room. The hazy light from the Spell Tree in the middle of the room did not reach them, and there was no light from the window.

Apparently, the Workshop had decided that now was an appropriate moment for it to be night outside—just when Saul could have used the extra light. The light in the Workshop window usually bore no relationship to the light in the real world, and this was no exception.

Saul reached for his belt and found that—as always—his weapons were gone. No sword, apparently, was ever allowed in the Workshop. They always dematerialized when he entered and reappeared again afterward.

Never had he felt it less convenient than right now.

“What is this place?” a voice said from the corner. “And where is my sword?”

With the sound of that voice, Saul’s fear left him immediately.

“Zorea,” he said, dropping his hand and stepping forward. “Brand.”

“Saul?” Brand’s voice came from the shadows, swiftly followed by the young man himself, looking more than a little the worse for wear. From the opposite corner, Zorea stepped out, looking around her in wonder.

“What in the world…?” she said.

“This is the Workshop,” Saul said, gesturing around. “This is the place where I come to craft Sigils and level up. I confess, I had never imagined others could come here with me. I’m not quite sure how it’s happened, or how we’ll reverse it.”

As he spoke, he was rapidly glancing into the System’s options.

The usual option to leave the Workshop, Select: Deactivate Workshop, did not have its usual gleaming, silver sheen.

Instead, it was a dull gray, like lead. He was not surprised when it did not respond to his focused intention.

“Saul, what is going on?” Brand demanded. “How did we get here?”

“I think it’s something to do with this Sigil,” Saul said, holding up the gleaming black object that he’d taken from the dead warlock. “I don’t know what we’re supposed to do with it, but we have to do something.”

“Well, what do you usually do?” Zorea asked.

Saul tilted his head at her. “That’s a good approach,” he said. He walked over to the Sigil Crafting Table and gestured to it with an open hand. “Usually, I take Gold XP and Arcane Dust from the Resource Table over there and place them on here. I get an option to Craft Sigil shown to me, and I select it.”

Zorea examined the table. Then she glanced at him. “What happens to our bodies while we’re here?”

“They lie as if dead or very deeply asleep,” Saul replied.

“The battlefield is not the best spot for that to be happening,” Zorea pointed out dryly.

“The battle had moved on from us,” Brand said in a distracted voice.

They both turned to him. He was standing near something Saul had not noticed before.

“What’s that there, Brand?” he said.

“Huh? Looks like an Anvil,” Brand replied, looking down at the item he’d absent-mindedly placed his hand on.

It was an Anvil, but it was like no Anvil Saul had ever seen in any blacksmith’s shop.

“Wow, that’s new,” Saul said.

He approached the Anvil. It gleamed in the light of the nearby Spell Tree, the light rippled off the surface.

It was not made from metal but clear, gleaming crystal.

“What use could this be?” Saul said, running his fingers across the slick surface of the marvelous object. “Surely I couldn’t go hitting this with a hammer…”

Brand had wandered off, amazed by the Spell Tree. He stood in front of it now, the light glowing across his features. Brand attempted to tap at the strange, shadowed-over spells on the upper branches.

“Saul, Brand!” Zorea said firmly.

Both men snapped their heads to her. She looked annoyed, her fist on her hips.

“Can we please address the present issue of how we get out of here and back to our bodies?”

“Ah, right,” Saul said. “Of course.”

Brand looked a bit sheepish and came back over to the Sigil Crafting Table.

Saul joined him, grinning. “You’re right, Zorea. We ought to get back.”

“So,” she continued, “Once you’ve crafted a sigil here, what do you do next?”

“Well, if it’s a Sigil to achieve the next level, I will absorb it into myself. If it’s to open a new spell, I take it to the spell tree over there, and place it on the new spell.”

“Right, well it seems to me that the Sigil you took from the dead warlock is the cause of all this. It activated, even though you didn’t ask it to, and for whatever reason, that activation brought us to this Workshop of yours. There must be something we have to do with this Sigil that we can only do here in the Workshop. That seems clear, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” Saul said, “you’ve summed it up well. But exactly what do we do?”

“What about trying to absorb it, like you say you do with your Level Up Sigils?”

Saul brought up the System’s interaction interface, pointing his attention and intention at the strange Sigil.

There was no option to Absorb and indeed no apparent option to interact with the strange Sigil at all. Saul frowned.

“All right, let’s try this,” he said.

He moved to the Sigil Crafting Table and attempted to lay the Sigil on the wooden surface.

Nothing happened. In fact, when Saul tried to open his fingers and put the Sigil down on the table, he physically couldn’t. The Sigil seemed stuck to him. He could not set it down.

“What about that Anvil, then?” Brand suggested.

“Of course!” Saul said. “My mind has been fogged by the fatigue from the battle and the unexpectedness of this transit to the Workshop. Of course, that makes complete sense. Why else would the strange object have appeared just now?”

He marched over to the crystal Anvil and immediately placed the Sigil on its gleaming surface.

Experimentally, he released the Sigil from his fingers. It worked. Instantly, words appeared over his vision.

Sigil Active: Body Sigil Magic

Select: Craft Body Sigil x3

Select: Abandon and Destroy Sigil

Warning: Sigil Unstable

Timer Begun: Sigil will collapse once timer ends!

In that moment, the familiar sand timer appeared in the corner of Saul’s vision. When Windspeed had been active, the spell’s timer moved at an almost leisurely pace, giving Saul plenty of time to work and use the magic.

This timer was moving very, very quickly, and if he did not act within the next few seconds, he would lose the chance to do so.

He had no idea what a Body Sigil was, but he was not going to lose the chance to find out.

“What is it?” Brand asked.

Of course, he and Zorea had no idea what was going on. They could not see the readouts from the System.

There was no time to explain. Saul activated the option Select: Craft Body Sigil x3 and the letters swelled up for a moment then the options disappeared.

The crystal Anvil glowed out brightly with a sudden white internal light. The light flashed out so brightly that Saul and his friends all closed their eyes.

When they opened them again, the single black Sigil was gone. It had been replaced with three smaller sigils of a similar gleaming, polished black color.

Body Sigils: Created

Warning: Sigils Unstable, Prepare to Apply

Timer Active

Again, the timer appeared.

“How do I apply them?” Saul asked aloud. “To what?”

The answer appeared immediately.

Body Sigil: Application options:

Apply Sigil: Saul Kramitz

Apply Sigil: Brand of Harkin’s Holdfast

Apply Sigil: Zorea the Healer

The sand was moving through the timer. Saul looked at his friends. They were gazing expectantly at him.

“I think we need to take one of these each,” Saul said.

The two young people stepped forward immediately.

“What will they do?” Brand asked, not sounding afraid at all.

“I don’t know for sure,” Saul said, “but I think that we’ve discovered a way to share Sigil Magic among the three of us.”