Pirin, Myraden, and the Familiars walked south-southeast across the estate’s plains of groomed grass. They kept low, even as the sun set over the ocean and the land darkened. The cluster of staff hovels still loomed in the distance, but even as it got darker, no lit candles or torches. They were probably all still working.

Pirin passed the map back to Myraden. She pulled it open and held it in front of them. There was no scale, but comparing the distance of the staff housing in real life with the map, the estate had to be fifty or so miles across.

The Spiritfount storeroom was close to the beach, according to the map, so they walked west, approaching the shore.

When they reached a ridge, where the land abruptly dropped a few feet then sloped down toward the shore, they both laid down in the ankle-height grass. Someone had maintained the entire property, but that seemed only to entail shearing off the tips of the fescue grasses and weeds and whatever other shrubs grew here. A twig poked Pirin in the gut, and he ignored it.

He and Myraden looked over the ridge. The beach was still a hundred paces away, but they were close enough to look over it all. A cluster of buildings lingered closer to the shore. There were a few huts with thatched roofs and wooden walls. Every building had the same style of thatched roof with horseheads carved on the eaves, and their lattice windows glowed with candlelight.

But only one building in the cluster was three storeys tall. Wooden silos poked out of the roof, and its only windows were well above ground level.

“How’re we gonna get in there?” Pirin whispered.

People crowded every inch of the beach and swirled around the cluster of buildings. Braziers and bonfires crackled in the sand, and partygoers gathered around them, cooking meat and drinking ale and mead. There were a few guards in their light armour and horsetail helms, and Pirin felt a pressure on his core about equally as strong as Myraden’s. Some Flare-stage wizards were present.

Any of the true guards, the Aremir family wizards, stood next to horses. According to Nomad, that was the only Familiar the family took. But they weren’t the only wizards present. Pirin picked out a few Catch and lower wizards amongst the partygoers.

Immediately, he veiled his core so the wizards wouldn’t pick up on him, and he felt Myraden do the same.

“We run in and break down the door, then steal as much elixir as we can,” Myraden said.

It wasn’t a horrible idea, all things considered. He was almost certain he had a stronger foundation than those Flares and could match up to them in combat strength, and Myraden was a Flare.

“But chances are, there are alarms,” Pirin said. “If we cause too big of a stir, this entire place will go on high alert. We might get some elixirs, but we won’t get anything else.”

Myraden nodded. “We have to sneak in and look like we belong.”

“Once we sneak in, I’ll get one of the guards to open the storeroom,” Pirin said, flexing his fingers. He pulled strands of his hair over his pointed ears. His hair had gotten long enough to cover them, and he wouldn’t immediately be identified as a black-haired elf. Their Familiars would stand out—they weren’t common Familiars—but as long as they moved quickly and didn’t get caught up in a conversation, it wouldn’t be a problem. No one knew them by appearance, nor by their Familiars.

“You will need the Whisper Hitch,” Myraden said. “Use your Reyad.”

“And that was my next problem,” he muttered. “Look at their clothes.”

Or lack thereof. It was a beach; the men wore only light shorts with complex patterns of embroidery, and the women wore shorts and chest-wraps. Pirin’s mask wouldn’t fit in—no one else was wearing one. He’d have to go without a Reyad for the moment.

Worse, they wouldn’t blend in at all.

“We will have to steal them,” Myraden said. She pushed herself up to a crouch. “Come on. Nomad cannot keep the wizards busy forever, and we have a long list to fulfill.”

Before she could stand all the way up, Pirin whispered, “Wait. I only have my haversack, and if there’s truly as much elixir as Nomad says, we’ll want to carry as much as we can.”

“What do you suggest?”

He winced. “I…it’s slipping off the tip of my tongue.” He knew instinctively that there were items that acted like tiny voids and could store much more than they looked like, but his memory failed him when he tried to pull out what they were called or what they looked like.

“A void pendant?” Myraden asked.

Pirin expected a revelation or for something to click in his mind. Nothing did. “Uh…yeah, that. Can you sense them at all? There are a lot of wizards here, and one of them has to have something we can steal.” Something like a void pendant would probably have an unique spiritual signature or weight, and her arcane senses should have developed significantly after advancing to Flare.

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Myraden shook her head. “My senses will take lots of practice to use. But…Kythen has always been better at using his senses that I have.”

Kythen bleated softly.

For a few seconds, she spoke to Kythen in Íshkaben, pausing as he replied through their mental link. For a moment, a pang of jealousy blasted through his chest. It would be nice to always have a Reyad and not worry about it.

But if he wasn’t an Embercore, he wouldn’t have the Shattered Palm and the Fracturenet. He swatted the thoughts down. He’d prove his worth in other ways.

“Kythen senses a few void pendants near the edge of that cluster,” Myraden said, pointing down to the edge of the shore at a cluster of partygoers near the very edge of the main beach outcropping. They spread out, and they didn’t stay near any of the bonfires, but they were still within sight, and if Pirin or Myraden attacked them, someone would see.

“Any others?”

She pointed further down the beach, letting her finger drift toward a sheltered bay, where a few pristine sloops floated, their sails furled. They bobbed up and down at a set of wooden docks. At the moment, only a single pair of partygoers walked away from the ships—new arrivals, ready to bask in the splendour of the Aremir family. “Those two. They are carrying a high-quality void pendant each.”

The two lonely partygoers weren’t out in the open, and with the sun going down, they were the perfect targets. An ostal man and a woman, both with housecats as their Familiars. He shut his eyes and concentrated on the minor disturbances they caused to his core.

Both Flares, but coddled from birth in the upper families of the Mainland. They barely had three foundation Timbers each.

“Those two,” he said, jumping up to his feet. “Those two are perfect targets.”

Myraden rose up to her feet completely, too. They beckoned their Familiars along, then slipped over the ridge. By now, the sun had dipped completely behind the waves, and as long as he and Myraden stayed low, kept their cores veiled, and moved slowly, no one would notice them.

The grass and shrubs underfoot blended into soft white sand. The shores of Plainspar were still largely gravel and rock, but in sheltered bays like this, there were a few sandy beaches.

Pirin, Myraden, and the Familiars approached the two isolated partygoers from the side. The dry sand of the upper beach cushioned their footsteps and made everything quieter. The partygoers didn’t notice anything.

At the last moment, Myraden activated her Tundra Veins technique, and Pirin used the Fracturenet. He drew his sword in the blink of an eye and struck the man on the back of the head with the pommel of his sword, and Myraden plunked a fist down on top of the woman’s head.

Both wizards collapsed. Pirin held his hands at the ready, preparing to face the two cat Familiars. They were just housecats, though, and when their wizards collapsed, so did they.

Pirin deactivated the technique and sheathed his sword, then grabbed the man by his legs and dragged him behind a log of driftwood. Myraden followed him. She said something to Kythen, and the bloodhorn ducked down behind the log, keeping his head out of sight. Pirin motioned for Gray to do the same.

Pirin first searched for the void pendants. These two partygoers wore the same beachwear as the others, just with light, unbuttoned gossamer tunics overtop. He pulled away the lapels of the man’s shirt, revealing a silver chain around his neck. It ran down across his chest, hanging like a necklace. At the very end was a small silver diamond with a hollow center and miniature runes carved along its edges.

“A void pendant,” Myraden said, plucking a second one from around the woman’s neck. She held it out in front of her, then fed a touch of Essence into the runes. They glowed red for a second, then a diamond-shaped rift opened up in the air above the pendant. It was about a foot across and two feet tall, and inside looked like a simple wooden crate—about four feet in every direction.

There was nothing inside except fancy alcohols of assorted colour. Alcohol was illegal in the Dominion, but the laws of mortals didn’t apply to wizards from wealthy families.

Myraden unlatched her cuirass and stuffed it inside her stolen void pendant. “Look away.”

“I’m not…I’m not watching you change…” Pirin muttered.

“Just look the other way.”

Pirin offered a half-joking salute, then spun around and said, “Yes, ma’am.” He plucked the void pendant off the man’s neck, then activated it with a push of Essence. It was almost an exact copy of Myraden’s, only it had a lot more alcohol in it—enough that he could barely fit a hand in it.

He was about to dump them out unceremoniously, but they might need the bottles. He pulled the glass bottles and decanters and flasks out of the void pendant and poured out their contents. The colours of the alcohol—turquoise, reds, and yellows—all blended together into an expensive waterfall and trickled out to sea. He tucked the empty bottles back into the pendant, then traded his clothes for the partygoer’s shorts and gossamer tunic. He didn’t button his up.

He looked down. It had been four…maybe five months since he’d embarked on this journey, and being an elf, he’d never be able to build as much muscle as a man. But his muscles were more defined, and he’d still gotten a bulkier. He couldn’t close his hand around his bicep anymore.

He stuffed his old clothes into the void pendant, then drew the Essence out of the runes, sealing it. The void pendant didn’t require much effort to fuel, though he thought back to being at the Kindling stage. Pushing Essence through all the runes might have been a problem for him back then.

He almost instinctively turned around, but Gray chirped in alarm. Right. Myraden. He muttered, “Sorry.”

“I am done,” she said.

Pirin turned, bracing himself for a slap or for Kythen to start bleating. Nothing. She’d put all her armour back into the void pendant and swapped her clothes as well—an intricately embroidered chest-wrap and shorts, matching green with Pirin’s. Scars covered every inch of her body, as far as he could see at least, varying in their degrees of seriousness. Nothing was fresh, as far as he could tell.

“Admiring the view?” Myraden asked.

“I—” Pirin was thankful it was dark out, because he knew his face was heating up. But he only put his hands on his hips and said, “And you’re staring, too.” He could turn it back on her, if that was the game they were gonna play.

She opened her mouth, then shut it again and spun around. She stepped out from behind the driftwood log.

Gray chirped and let out a rumble that sounded almost like a chicken clucking—it had a teasing tone to it. At least he didn’t have his Reyad active. She wouldn’t let him hear the end of it.

“We’ve got a job to do,” Pirin muttered to Gray. “Try to stay focussed.”