For the next two days, Pirin recovered his Essence and practiced. He forced himself to get more comfortable with using his pure Essence fortification technique. In the evenings, when sitting with Gray, they named the technique: “Fracturenet”.

It was mostly Gray who insisted it got a name, but it’d make it easier to talk about and concentrate on that way.

They sailed southwest, but more south than not. The land flattened out almost completely, and in the distance, the ocean cut inland. Coastal marshes whisked past beneath the airship, and there were a few distant, sandy beaches. The winds were warmer, both from their travel south and because it was getting later in the season.

Pirin should have been happy, but that just meant time was ticking by. He had to be advancing

During the days, under Nomad’s instruction, he fed the crystal fox Essence. He could only feed it pure Essence; gnatsnapper Essence wouldn’t help it very much.

But he couldn’t just put Essence into the fox like he was fuelling a rune. He held out his hand and manifested a small sphere of Essence. He imagined making the Essence condense into a solid form and applied willpower and pressure on all sides. Instead of just swirling above or around his hand as gassy, weightless power, it permanently manifested into the form he chose for it.

It was barely the width of a fingernail, but it held in place, resting on his skin as any other physical object would. It had the texture of ice, and when he touched it, it flexed and bent. It still glowed pale blue, like any other pure-aspect Essence would.

He placed it in front of the fox’s snout while it slept on the cot. After a few seconds, it began to sniff. Then it opened its mouth and snapped up the orb, before slipping back off to sleep.

Pirin patted it on the head. “Still need to give you a name…”

He couldn’t think of anything to call it until Myraden approached from behind it and said, “If you call it ‘White,’ I will throw you off the airship.”

He gulped. He had been the one who named Gray, after all, even if he couldn’t remember it.

“Any suggestions would be nice,” he said.

“Refr,” she said. “It means…well, means ‘fox’ in Íshkaben.” She hesitated a bit when she said what it meant, and Pirin tilted his head.

“That’s better than White?”

She crossed her arms. “I suppose not.”

“What does kythen mean? Or is it just a name?”

Again, she hesitated, then said, “It means ‘gift’.”

Pirin patted the little fox’s head. “How do you say ‘helper’?”

She shut her eyes and bit her lip, then finally, said, “Göttrur.”

“Göttrur, huh?” Pirin nodded, then looked back at the little fox. “Yeah, I can see it.” He took one more glance at Myraden. She probably hadn’t forgotten her birth tongue, but that meant she had consciously been hesitant to tell him. But he’d done all he could—maybe she just needed time to come around.

On the second day since Myraden’s nightmare, when the sun was just starting to set, Nomad shouted from the upper viewing platform, “We’ve arrived!”

Pirin and Myraden climbed up to the platform.

“And we’re on schedule,” Nomad said. “They should be entering the second day of solstice celebrations, if I’ve kept track of time right.”

Myraden tilted her head. “I thought…the solstice was only one day.”

“Oh, it is for most people,” said Nomad. “But the most powerful families of the Dominion will take any excuse they can to flaunt their wealth, and what better than a week or so of celebrations?” He shook his head, disdain plastered to his face. “Waste of time.”

On the western horizon, a single-storey tall cobblestone wall—a fence, really—ran as far as Pirin could see. A few wooden watchposts perched on the wall’s edge, but it was more of a property marker than a means of defending the land from a siege. It extended down to the beach and back up the shore as far as Pirin could see.

They had reached the Aremir Family Estate.

Beyond the wall, there were a few simple structures with glowing lights. Most were single-storey huts and hovels, but there were a few stables and stacks of hay blocks.

“Not what I expected from an Unbound Lord’s estate,” Pirin muttered.

“Those are the staff houses,” said Nomad. “Far from the splendour of the estate’s main halls and palaces.”

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Pirin narrowed his eyes. How big was this place?

“We can’t go any further by air,” Nomad continued, “or someone will spot us.”

The Featherflight turned north again, and they sailed until they reached a copse of trees large enough to hide the airship in. They hooked it down and pulled it into a clearing, then snuffed all the lanterns and furled the sails.

“Alyus, Brealtod,” Pirin said, “you two should stay behind. We’re…going to be in the presence of an Unbound Lord, yeah?” He glanced back at Nomad for support.

“My younger brother,” Nomad confirmed.

“His brother. Who’ll be…very powerful.” Pirin looked directly at Alyus. “We can’t sail this airship without you, though, and we can’t have you dying because his unveiled presence was too powerful.”

“Don’t have to convince me, elfy,” said Alyus. “I’m perfectly happy to stay out of the business of wizards and lords. Unless they pay me.”

Brealtod hissed in agreement.

The three wizards stepped out of the gondola. Pirin and Myraden gathered their Familiars from the cargo hold, then walked on foot to the wall. The ground here was slightly spongy, and outside of the copse of trees, the grass still rose to Pirin’s knees.

Here, in the center of Plainspar, it was all just open fields and farmland. As Nomad had explained, Plainspar had once been a proud nation of horse-lords, but the Dominion had conquered it for the fertile land. It was their breadbasket—the fuel for their war machine. Without the food Plainspar provided, the Dominion’s armies would crumble.

As they walked across the fields toward the outer wall of the Aremir estate, Pirin asked, “So…how are we getting in?”

“That will be the easy part,” Nomad said, holding up a hand. A gust of wind rushed across the prairie at his command, and just the sheer strength of Nomad’s technique was enough to make Pirin’s veins tremble. A tingle built in the back of his neck.

The wind rushed under Nomad’s arms and feet, lifting him up a few feet off the ground before he cut off the technique and dropped himself. “Ah, it’s good to be back in the prairies…” His racoon-cat mrrrrped in agreement.

“The wall is only one obstacle,” Myraden complained. “If there is a solstice celebration, then there will be many wizards and guards, and someone will notice us sneaking around and stealing their resources.”

“Indeed,” Nomad said. “Once we get over the wall, you two will be on your own—I will keep my brother and the most powerful wizards of the family off your trail.” He reached into the pocket of his coat and produced a roll of parchment, then slowed down so he could walk between Pirin and Myraden. He held it open.

“A rough map of the estate,” Nomad said.

“Did…you draw that?” Pirin asked. The lines were thick and messy, and the handwriting reminded him of a child’s.

“Yes, why?”

Pirin rolled his lips inward. “No…uh, no reason.”

“It was last night, and I was scrawling it out as best I could remember,” Nomad grumbled. “Forgive me if it’s a little messy.”

“Focus…” Myraden said.

Nomad rolled the map back up and passed it to her. “Use it to navigate the estate. I am hoping that you will gather the resources to reach Blaze, and perhaps you will even advance a stage each while on the property. I left you a list of resources on the back.”

Myraden turned the scroll over, and Pirin slipped behind her so he could read over her shoulder. In the same messy handwriting, Nomad had left a grocery list of resources that they would need to seek out.

“ ‘Spiritfount elixir,’ ” Myraden read out. “For both of us?”

“You will both need to gather Essence and push yourselves closer to the next stage,” said Nomad. “The more Essence you have, the easier it will be to rise through the stages. I expect you both to acquire a healthy dose of Elixir, and enough to push you through all the stages.”

“Is there a refinery here?” Pirin asked.

“Just a store-room. But they’ll have more than enough.”

“ ‘Wild treasures,’ ” Myraden read next. “I suppose those are for rushing the bodily enhancement of Flare?”

“Precisely,” Nomad said. “If your minds can handle the spiritual load and strain of such fast advancement, of course. You will need specific treasures for different types of bodies, a few options of which I listed below—but don’t read that all out now; there’s no time.” He pointed ahead. The wall was only fifty paces away.

“And ichor-ink and chisels for crafting our Blaze-stage Runebonds,” Myraden finished. She rolled up the scroll and passed it to Pirin. He tucked it into his haversack.

“Your first problem will be getting into the spiritfount store-room,” Nomad said. “Follow the map, and move fast. I won’t be able to keep everyone busy for long.”

Pirin glanced over at Nomad. Was this another test? He thought he’d passed all of the wizard’s other tests.

Nomad snorted. “If I was going to sell you out, I’d have done it weeks ago.”

That wasn’t why Pirin was staring, but after that, Myraden lowered her shoulders a touch.

When they drew within twenty-five paces of the wall, a man on a watch platform shouted out to them, “You there! Halt and identify yourselves!”

He was an ostal, and as far as Pirin could tell, a mortal—there was no tug or pressure coming from the ostal. He wore a simple white gambeson, light armour, and a green cloak. His helmet had a horsetail plume flowing out its peak, right between his ostal horns.

At least Pirin knew what the guards looked like, now. “Nomad…” he whispered.

But Nomad didn’t stop walking, so neither did Pirin.

The guard picked up a loaded and charged crossbow. “Halt!” he yelled. “You are approaching the property of Lord Aremir. If you don’t have an invite, you must turn away!”

Only one guard. Pirin cycled his Essence, ready to activate the Fracturenet, and Myraden reached for her spear, but before they could do anything, Nomad raised his arm, and a gust of wind struck the guard from behind. His head slammed into one of the watchpost’s pillars, and he slumped down, unconscious.

Pirin activated the Fracturenet anyway. A crosshatching of blue Essence lines burned beneath his skin, and strength temporarily flooded into his body. He bounded forward, reaching the wall in ten strides, then jumped over and landed in the groomed grass of the other side in a crouch.

As he dispelled the technique, Nomad lifted himself over the wall with wind, and a few seconds later, Myraden and pranced over, riding on Kythen’s back. Gray fluttered over the wall and landed beside them.

“Meet me back at the Featherflight once you have everything,” Nomad said. “This is where we part ways—for now. Good luck, and happy thieving.”