The list of things Talia needed to avoid doing was growing longer by the day, or so it seemed, month-long coma notwithstanding.

I really have to stop waking up like this.

The specialist wagon was empty, curtains pulled tight around the room, even in the safety of first haven. Talia took comfort in the fact that at the very least, she didn’t have to deal with the arcano-sun blinding her as soon as she opened her eyes.

Her aching body was quick to protest that a little light was the least of her worries.

Blissfully, whatever the healer had given her to sober her up had saved her from the misery of a hangover, but the manaburn had well and truly settled into her bones. Her chest pulsed painfully; her hand and arms felt numb. Talia rubbed her temples in an attempt to clear the mud from her mind.

Her brain felt like it had been filled with rocks—not quite a headache, but heavy and…slow.

How in the hells did I end up here?

Laying limp in the infirmary cot, Talia thought back to everything that had happened in her life, recently. Rather quickly, she realized that her decisions of the past weeks—or month— had been entirely reactionary. Things had happened to her, forcing her to act.

Find out you’re a mage? Flee the city. Get attitude from a surly quartermaster? Confront him directly. Can’t contain your powers? Force the issue while in a life or death situation. Deep dwellers threatening your life? Fight like a rabid beast until they die, or you do. Wake up from a coma? Go and get so hammered on delver moonshine that you awaken a new talent—sense, whatever.

While her actions thus far were understandable and likely the only reason she was still alive, none who knew her well would deny that she’d been uncharacteristically rash. None of the methodical planning Reggie had cultivated in the two years she had apprenticed under him had stuck, it seemed. When faced with dire straits, Talia’s first thought was either fight, or flight. Reactions that were admittedly normal, but that the young woman had considered beneath her.

Apparently not.

Clearly, her lack of forethought—or any real thought—meant that, as a consequence, she got to wake up from extended periods of oblivion; sore, tired and more often than not, injured.

If the trend continued…

Who knows if I’ll actually wake up next time?

Talia pushed away the dread that followed closely on that particular thought’s heels, slotting the insidious emotion into the already overfull box in her mind, as she’d learned to do as a child. Of course, fear, anxiety, grief, and all the other negative emotions had their place.

But now is not the time to fall apart. If I want to avoid…undesirable outcomes…planning and logic are my friends, not unreliable mental impulses.

She would deal with her precarious mental state…later. For now, much more pressing matters demanded her full focus. Chasing the pain of manaburn from her mind and body and ignoring it where it stubbornly stuck, Talia whipped off the blankets and stood, making her way out into the quiescent space of first haven.

The young woman had seemingly woken up when the rest of the expedition was still asleep. Delvers lay strewn about the cave like puppets with their strings cut; perched atop benches and slumped against stonework buildings. A fair few had set out bedrolls around the dying embers of the cook pit, presumably to ward off the ever-present cold of the Deep Under. She thanked any god listening that her new telepathy was still somewhat dormant, seemingly overstretched from the prior night’s festivities.

From the groans some of the crew were emitting in their sleep, knowing their thoughts would be…uncomfortable at best. Luckily, all she sensed as she made her way to the officer’s bunk wagon was the dim glow of sleeping minds, flickering under the breeze of dreams.

Padding softly through wagon two, Talia made it to her bunk in relative quiet, and rummaged through the cupboards, finding her journal stuffed beneath her apothecary bag.

The thick, leather-covered book had been a gift from Reggie on the day of her apprenticeship. It was a large, bulky thing, big enough that she had to hold it with both hands. A rune lock ensured that only Talia, or those she had given the combination to, would be able to open it. The pages were yellowed, but still crisp, and a little loop on the back held the trinket pen that had been her first test of arcanistry.

The journal held all of her notes from her apprenticeship: Reggie’s lectures, the experiments she’d participated in, common runic arrays, and even her nearly completed journeyman dissertation.

Padding back out of the wagon, journal in hand, the young woman went to settle herself at the base of the mithril-plated monument to the dead. Names were engraved on the metal for all to see and remember. A permanent reminder of the risks of delving too greedily in the Deep.

Talia suppressed a shiver as she realized how full the stele was; only one side of the four-sided pyramid remained blank, sharp letters trailing off into a smooth silvery blue polished enough to reflect her face back at her.

Every name here died on the way to first haven, or on the way back. So many souls, just—gone.

Firming her resolve, Talia turned away from the stele, and from the unfamiliar face staring back at her in the smooth metal. She leaned her back against it, propping her journal on her knees and clicking in the rune combination.

If she wanted to avoid ending up as just another name on a memorial, she’d have to ensure that she was prepared for what came next. Which meant planning, and every good plan started with a list, as Reggie was so fond of saying.

Talia snapped her trinket pen out of its loop and flipped to a blank page.

The first danger that came to mind was, simply put, the inherent risk of the Ways, and the Deep in general. Which brought her to the first item on her list.

Combat readiness:

-martial/tactics

-magic

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

-information on common hazards

->Consult Darkclaw?Zaric?

Her first week on the expedition had clearly displayed that the Deep would expect a large amount of combat from her. So far, Talia had survived by the skin of her teeth, managing to take down enemies through sheer luck and persistence. In the future, she would have to be prepared with better information on what she might face, better honed martial skills to deal with any threats, and a better grasp of tactics to meld the two.

We’re staying here for a week. If I can convince Darkclaw and Zaric to help me train for a few hours every day, that would go a long way. And…maybe Calisto has better information than what Orvall’s bestiary can provide. Any extra information is a baseline I can rely on.

Talia penned in the addition, and then moved on to the next glaring threat, and the second element on her earlier list.

Magic:

-remain free

-gain a grasp on psionics

-practice control

-expand Core?

-combat applications?

-finish reading Elidé’s books

-mage-madness?

->Zaric; Books

Talia frowned. Taming her magic wasn’t as pressing as it had been when it was still fighting against her to be let out. However, the previous night’s party had exposed with glaring clarity that just because she thought she had a handle on it, didn’t mean she always would. Not to mention that the implication of psionics did not bode well for the state of her mind. Zaric would be crucial in learning how to, in effect, be true mage, instead of patching up the holes in her control as they appeared.

Mage-Madness, the foreboding book that lay yet untouched in the bottom of her cupboard would have to be read eventually, personal discomfort aside. But for now, it would remain on the bottom of the list. The whole topic of mage-madness was worthy of a list of its own, but more pressing priorities meant she couldn’t focus on it.

So far, everyone has said it isn’t a big risk at my age, so I’ll trust them until it becomes an…issue.

The final danger she could think of was similarly existential, but far grander. Hesitantly, as if writing it down would make it real, Talia began her last list.

Death of the Arcano-Sun:

-matrix core failing

-safe extraction of Karzurkul matrix core

-other solutions? UNCLEAR

-possibility of failure? UNCLEAR

-how to reach the Karzurkul matrix

-> Calisto; ‘An Exploration on the Mechanics of Arcano-Suns’; on-site examination

The solution to Talia’s other problems was relatively clear: time, effort, knowledge and training. When it came to extracting Karzurkul’s matrix core safely… The knowledge of how arcano-suns worked was lost to time, if the Ancients had ever shared it to begin with. The rune matrices that shaped their inner workings were obscure and convoluted even by the standards of centuries-gone arcanists.

At best, modern arcanistry could imitate the works of the Ancients, which was how master arcanists could create entirely new artefacts: by piecing together the building blocks the Ancients had left behind.

But nothing compared to the true effort of what many in Karzgorad worshipped as gods. Wyrr himself was said to have molded the arcano-suns with his own hands, inscribing vast swathes of runic in mere hours where it would take ordinary sapients days or weeks of work. All without tools, heat or mechanical assistance.

If runic was the original language of arcanistry, and Old Dwarvish its descendant, then the Ancients were the language’s creators.

That very complexity was what had drawn Talia to arcanistry in the first place. From running water to sewage and farming techniques, all of society relied on arcanistry to survive.

Mages were needed to power it, of course, but the true magic was in the runic language, its flexibility and nuance, and most of all its mystery.

The tongue of the Ancients. Everything ran on it, and yet they knew so little. When she’d just begun her apprenticeship, Talia had daydreamed of being the one to revolutionize the craft, of cracking the code that arcanists called The Enigma.

An entire series of characters and symbols that had no known use, but that had been passed down through history as precious knowledge from Wyrr and his siblings. The possibilities were endless. Whole new branches of arcanics, never-before seen artefact functions, even the ever coveted secret of manaless arcanistry.

From the moment her schoolteacher had mentioned the topic —a footnote in a longer diatribe on the history of the city— Talia had been enamoured by it. Her fascination had led her life down its current path, at least until recent events happened.

She still remembered the day she’d met Reggie, deep in the public archives of the city library, searching for any clue as to where to start researching the problem. At seventeen, Talia had quite literally run into him, knocking the scatterbrained old gnome right off his feet, sending papers flying.

The young woman looked up from her journal, smiling at the memory. The gnome hadn’t even scolded her, instead angrily demanding to know ‘exactly what a young lass was doing shuttered up in a library outside of school hours’. When she’d told him, completely serious, that she was researching the Enigma…

He’d laughed in her face. A loud, full-belied laugh that brought tears to his eyes, threatened to send him tumbling back to the floor and got them both kicked out of the library by a scandalized librarian.

The master arcanist—though Talia hadn’t known that at the time— had walked her home, lecturing the teen on how she should leave, in his words, ‘stupid impossibilities to the old and senile’, and saying that she should focus on ‘the basics like mathematics, physics and metallurgy’ if she wanted to become an arcanist. When she’d protested that the material the school taught was simple for her, and that she already had a good grasp on the fundamentals, he’d grilled her on the spot, stopping in the middle of the road and pulling out pencil and paper for her to work on.

By the time they’d gotten back to Talia’s home, Reggie, as he’d introduced himself, had offered her an apprenticeship in his workshop, giving her a letter to hand to school administrators and telling her to meet him on the outskirts of the Low Quarter the very next day. Talia had been baffled, confused, but most of all, elated.

She would have chance to delve into the mechanics of arcanistry, make a living out of it even! Her apprenticeship had seemed a gift from the gods themselves. Dreams had bombarded her sleep that night. Visions of prestige, accomplishment and most importantly, ancient knowledge that only she would hold the key to.

Disappointingly, the topic of the Enigma only resurfaced occasionally during her years of apprenticeship, mostly when Reggie was cursing at some unidentified artefact brought in by the delver’s guild or bemoaning a particular lack in runic vocabulary. Talia had resigned herself to simply being the best arcanist she could be, leaving what her master called ‘narcissistic pursuits’ to those who had already built their careers and fortunes.

And yet, in recesses of the Deep, beneath the threat of existential annihilation, the Enigma had reared its ugly head once again, as if to taunt her.

For if they were to repair the arcano-sun, or even extract the matrix core from Karzurkul, that was what Talia would have to do. The complexity of the Ancients’ work demanded nothing less.

No big deal, solve the most difficult mystery in all of arcanistry. Oh, and do it in less than a year or we all die. Thanks, Evincrest, I’ll get right on that.

Talia sighed frustratedly, convinced that the magister didn’t understand what she was asking for, but also convinced that there weren’t really any other choices. Talia glared down in irritation at her journal, scribbling one last word and underlining it twice.

Enigma

Then, deciding to focus on the most achievable tasks, she got up and moved into the stirring camp, in hopes of finding that Zaric or Darkclaw were just as hungry as she was.

The Enigma could wait. For a little while longer, at least.