Gabriela proceeded to perform another series of spells, each demonstration more uncanny than the last.

First she ran through the rest of the Elementals. She gathered moisture out of the seemingly dry air to make a shimmering loop of water, then broke it apart into smaller strings, then even smaller individual droplets. The blobs of water sluggishly encircled her before spreading outwards in a wobbling ring.

She made flames curl and dance over her palm before extinguishing them with a silent command. Afterwards, a miniature dirt replica of Henna’s cottage rose up from the earth at their feet, complete with the sheep stables and the fenced front yard.

“I won’t demonstrate Immaterium techniques right now because they require some mental preparation beforehand,” explained Gabriela. “And without the proper precautions for Sorcery, summoning spirits carries some risk for non-mages in the same vicinity. But I can show you some good old Arcana while we’re out here.”

So saying, Gabriela lifted her staff. Bright dots began to harden all around her, diamonds of sunlight gaining solid form. In no time at all, an array of emerald-colored crystals materialized around her like a stone tornado stopped mid-spin. The crystals bobbed slightly in the wind as Gabriela gathered the cylindrical formation into a row and loosed them like a hail of arrows into the distance. They disintegrated before they hit the ground, crumbling into glittering dust.

As they watched the particles blow away in the breeze, Tryle asked: “What about that other Arcana method you mentioned earlier? The one you said could be an alternative to Elemental wind manipulation?”

“That? That calls for something bigger.”

Gabriela extended both hands (in one which of which held her staff) towards one of the half-submerged boulders in the clearing around her. Taking a deep breath, she spread her fingers. For a moment, nothing happened. Then spidery cracks suddenly appeared on the rock’s surface.

Gabriela’s eyes narrowed in concentration, and the cracks grew larger. The earth shuddered as the boulder twisted this way and like it was being tugged by some invisible force. Finally, it worked its way out of the ground and jerked into the air, dirt falling away.

Gabriela held her stance until her arm began to tremble with the strain. She let the rock fall to the grass with a tremendous fump.

Gabriela glanced at Tryle. “Satisfied?”

Tryle fought to look nonchalant. “Well, I do have lots of other questions, too.”

“Like?”

“Small, random ones we don’t ask very often. Like how would you measure the energy of a lightning bolt? How do mages manage to create the sun like you just did from seemingly nothing at all?”

“We don’t create the sun,” corrected Gabriela. “We create a facsimile of the sun, and even then the resemblance is superficial. We don’t fabricate the mass or replicate the gravity. As for manipulating lightning, mages can wield it discretely and discharge it at the moment of absorption, but it’s impossible to contain a singular bolt of lightning long enough to measure it. Not to mention that if you want to get a purely natural lightning bolt, you’d have to predict where it would strike next. And the measurement itself would be only an approximation.”

“A rough estimate is better than nothing.”

“And you’d need a way to instantly measure the temperature change in the air to reduce the margin of error. Otherwise, I don’t know how else you’d be able to quantify the energy of the lightning itself.”

“Assuming we could predict a lightning strike, and assuming we had a device to store electricity — theoretically speaking, I wonder if we could measure the potential difference between the cloud and the ground and add that somehow to the electrical power captured by the storage device.”

Gabriela rubbed her chin. “That is an interesting idea. We would have to expand our understanding of climate and its interaction with electromagnetic forces. I don’t think there’s a name for the field yet.”

“I thought so, too! I’d call it sky-ology!”

Gabriela winced. “A…vivid…name, to be sure, but let’s call it a work in progress. Besides, such an experiment would be incredibly dangerous. To do the measurement, you’d probably need someone in the middle of a lightning storm with the unfortunate ability to temporarily attract lightning. Even the most powerful mages I know would think twice about absorbing lightning bolt.”

“So? I could try to measure it myself. I understand the risks.”

“You do?” Gabriela laughed. “But Tryle, consider the ethics!”

“So what? It’s in the pursuit of scientific knowledge! In any case, I know some ethics. Don’t kill without good reason. Minimize suffering. Don’t steal what isn’t yours.”

“It’s a lot more complicated than that. You can’t just place a life in certain mortal danger to get a scientific result. Even your own. Such an act would be considered unlawful human experimentation.”

“I’m not a human.”

“True. But if you were a scientist at my university, you wouldn’t be allowed to do it, though. It goes against the standard practices of magical science.”

Tryle was silent for a long moment, twiddling his clawed fingers. “Do you think they would really let me be a scientist there?”

Gabriela hesitated. “To be honest, I don’t know. From what I can remember, nothing in the application rules says outright that goblins can’t apply. But…”

“But what?”

“Goblins just aren’t a common sight in Medeira. Or anywhere outside the Woodlands, for that matter.”

A warm, giddy feeling was rising in Tryle’s chest. He almost couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “So I could attend your university — theoretically.”

“Theoretically, I suppose.” Gabriela shook her head. “Look, that’s beside the point! Can I see your boot?”

Tryle gave it to her without hesitation. At that moment, he’d have given her his left arm if she’d asked.

Gabriela twirled her staff. “Now for a little shape-shifting trickery. Don’t worry, it’s temporary. One second there lies a perfectly normal piece of smelly footwear. The next, there will be a — whoops!”

A large rat materialized into existence at Tryle’s feet. He barely noticed, aglow at a future that suddenly looked bright and promising. With a formal education in magical science, there was no limits to what he could do: travel the world, conduct whatever experiments he liked , maybe even publish his own findings. He had a vision of a textbook with his name inscribed on the spine in gold lettering, sitting on a library shelf alongside the books of other wise, hallowed minds just as dedicated to understanding the universe as he was.

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It was only when Gabriela exclaimed “Tryle, it’s getting away!” that Tryle snapped back to reality. Pushing his daydreams aside, he began to chase after his boot, which was now scurrying on four, pinkish, newly-sprouted legs.

Fortunately, Gabriela was able to turn his boot back to normal. By that time, it was around noon, and they headed back to the cottage for lunch. Sir Cadoc had packed enough rations to share with everybody, but both Connor and Gabriela declared they would rather go without food than munch on another rind of hard bread, what with all the fresh ingredients lying around Henna’s kitchen.

“It’ll be fun to cook for once,” said Gabriela, casting her gaze along the line of hanging pots above the sink. “No disrespect to Grandma, but if she learned how to do it, I certainly could.”

“Fry an egg with the shells?” retorted Connor. “That you can. And have done.”

“I was experimenting.”

“You must forgive me if I protest any ‘experimenting’ with today’s midday meal.”

Gabriela smirked, opening a cupboard of kitchen utensils. “You really think you can cook a better lunch than me? Do you even know what this is?”

“Of course. That is a cheese grater, I believe.”

“I think that’s a rolling pin,” piped Tryle.

“No matter,” replied Connor in crotchety voice. “They are both reductive instruments of simple design.”

Gabriela snorted. “What are you even saying? Even Tryle knows more about cooking than you.”

“Silence, wench!”

Gabriela planted a hand on her hips. “I bet I can make a tastier lunch than you.”

Connor was already jabbing a finger in Gabriela’s face. “I accept your challenge! Besting you will be no grand feat. We shall have our retainers be the judges.”

Sensing the growing possibility of being accidentally poisoned, Sir Cadoc said, “Your Highnesses, perhaps we should stick to the supplies we brought with us.”

Both prince and princess ignored him.

“Fine!” said Gabriela. “But I say also include Tryle as a truly impartial third-party.”

“Wait,” said Tryle. “I’m okay with eating rations.”

“A deal it is!” exclaimed Connor.

“You’re going down, squirt.”

And before Tryle or the knight-guards could further protest, the contest was on. With a cacophony of banging pans and clattering knives, the two of them set about preparing their respective ingredients. There was great deal of shoving involved as each fought to claim a working space in the small kitchen. Many insults were flung over the sounds of rushing water and slamming drawers.

At one point, as both were waiting for their pots to boil, they nearly came to blows after Connor accused Gabriela of cheating. Cadoc and Reya had to pull Connor away from the stove as Gabriela looked on smugly with a languid finger pointed at her own pot, causing it to heat up at an unnaturally fast pace.

“Can’t use your fire elementals without burning the cottage down, can you?” she taunted over Connor’s sputters of rage. “If only you were a Level 1 mage.”

Magical powers aside, the amateur chefs were clearly pushing themselves to their culinary limits, measuring liquid stocks to the line and vigorously taste-testing their products at each stage of their cooking.

The result was a meal Tryle found exotically inedible.

Mushy tomatoes swam about in a peculiarly sour beef broth. Charred bread sat in a pile like aged coals, a chunk of rock-cold butter sitting precariously on top. A plate of half-cooked omelettes (thankfully without the shells, and no doubt inspired by Grandma Henna’s example) sprinkled liberally with coalfire pepper and blazeroot, which Connor had mistook for paprika.

Connor had also produced packs of dried brittle squares which, when boiled in water, expanded into long, tubular foods of a gelatinous texture. They were called “noodles” — a bizarre term for an even more bizarre food. Tryle merely thought of them as wheat-like worms that slid about in his mouth. Admittedly, they weren’t too bad since they were utterly tasteless.

Reya’s face turned green after the soup, and she briefly excused herself to the bathroom halfway through her bowl. Cadoc fared better, lasting through all the dishes without a break, but Tryle caught him slipping a slice of the hopelessly burnt bread into his pocket when the children weren’t looking.

By some silent agreement, the two knight-guards voted for the opposite sibling, leaving Tryle as the tie-breaker. Gabriela was wrong; he was not in a mood to be impartial, and despite her mouth-puckering beef soup, voted her as the winner. Connor cursed loudly when the verdict was read, but after his lies about the water sprite, Tryle had decided Connor’s opinions were about as valuable as crow droppings.

As they gathered up their dirty dishes, Gabriela got up from the table and sauntered down the hallway towards her room.

“Wash your dishes, Gabriela,” said Connor imperiously, rinsing his plate and stacking it to the side.

“I’ll do it when Grandma Henna gets back,” said Gabriela over her shoulder. “I have a mage exam to study for, remember? Besides, winner’s privileges.”

“We made no such promises!”

“Fine, then don’t wash mine. I can do it ten times faster with magic, anyway.”

Connor looked like he was going through an enormous internal struggle as he stared at Gabriela’s dirty plate and bowl. “Perhaps I won’t.”

Gabriela grinned Tryle. “Just watch, he can’t help himself. When the servants clean our rooms, he’ll always check it again. One time he threw a tantrum over a piece of lint on his bedspread.”

“I did not!”

Gabriela ignored him. “Do you want to see something else interesting, Tryle?”

“Sure.”

“Splendid. Meet me outside.”

They didn’t go very far, but Cadoc insisted that if Gabriela wasn’t practicing magic, Reya would have to accompany them. Gabriela was turning something over and over in her hands.

“What is that?” asked Tryle.

“A most quaint invention,” said Gabriela. She held it out for Tryle to see.

The gadget was made of polished wood, comprised of a cylinder and a rectangular prism fused together at near-perpendicular angles. As Gabriela turned it over in her hands, Tryle realized the rectangular part was meant to be some sort of handle and the cylinder functioned as a kind of barrel. The rectangular part showed some type of metal switch on its side.

“I designed it myself,” said Gabriela proudly. “This is a prototype I made in my Devices seminar. I call it the grappler gun. Or the Grappler, for short.”

She held the gadget up so the cylindrical part was pointing straight across and the switch-like part was facing forward. She took something out of her pack. It was a bundled coil of rope with a metal socket on one end a steel arrowhead with four claw-like appendages folded at its sides on the other.

Gabriela thumbed a lever and swung open a hidden flap up on the side to reveal a small block of pink crystal. Two tiny specks of light flitted within its depths.

“When you press the trigger here, the springs inside jostle the action core, causing the spirits inside to warp the space inside the chamber and propel the hook outward. This bundle of rope has the toughest tensile strength of any rope in the kingdom — Hell-Spider silk composite, I think. It can hold up to one hundred and fifty pounds of dead weight, in a pinch.”

She opened another panel on the top of the barrel and fitted the rear socket of the rope bundle into a well at the back barrel’s chamber, twisting it home with an audible click.

She closed the lid and handed the Grappler to Tryle, who ran his fingers along its smooth barrel. The metal point of the spike jutted out the barrel, glinting with a wicked edge.

“Can I try it?” he asked.

“Of course.”

Tryle took aim across the field and pressed the trigger. The Grappler bucked in his hand, launching its cargo through the air. Its rope swiftly unspooled, shining with an unnatural sheen.

The spike landed with a great puff in the middle of the road, kicking up dust as white as flour in the sunlight. At the moment of the impact, the claws folded at its sides snapped close at empty air with spring-loaded precision.

Tryle felt a switch on the back of the Grappler’s handle and instinctively pressed it. The line began to suck back into the barrel, metal and rope slithering over grass, until the spike jacked back in with a hefty thump.

Tryle held the gun up to his eye, thoroughly impressed. “I wonder if there’s a way increase the weight strength. Maybe launch more than one kind of projectile. Cycle through different attachments.”

“Oh-ho, my little Grappler isn’t up to your standards, huh?”

“No, this is a great invention! Versatile, easy to use. But my mind always goes to making things better, you know? Optimize and enhance.”

“Then keep it. It’s yours.”

Tryle looked at her, unsure if he’d heard right. “You mean it?”

“I haven’t told anyone this officially, but rumor has it that my lab has several more prototypes on hand to iterate. Like you said, optimize and enhance. Works for all things.”

Tryle raised an eyebrow. “Even cooking?”

Gabriela chuckled. “Even cooking. The next time I make a meal, I promise not to make my soup that sour again.”

“For your stomach’s sake, I hope you’re right,” said Tryle honestly. “Connor as well.”

“The main difference between me and my brother is how we approach failure. Whenever I make a mistake, I make a note in my head to never do it again. Whenever Connor makes a mistake, he will run through a hundred brick walls before admitting his error. Call it stupidity or stubbornness, but he will never give up in the face of impossible odds.”

Tryle flipped open the action core panel on the Grappler, marveling at the miniature iridescent shapes swimming within the spirit crystal. “More stupid than stubborn, I’d say.”