Pirin released his hold on the walls and deactivated all his techniques. He dropped to the ground and landed in a crouch, cushioning his landing to stay quiet.

“We won’t have long,” he whispered to Myraden. He pulled his void pendant off his neck and activated it, then pulled out the largest glass decanter he had. He approached the first vat of elixir, stepping softly and checking for traps.

He was at the Catch stage, so his spiritual senses should have been developing a little more. He had discussed this with Nomad a little, but he wasn’t entirely sure how it worked, and he hadn’t beena Catch long enough to try it out much.

But he knew the general principle.

First, he squinted, narrowing his eyes as much as he could while still able to see. Then he tensed up his muscles around his eyes and pushed a touch of Essence into them. Through the dim slits, he picked up on lines of light and glowing auras that wouldn’t be there before. They danced in his vision like fireflies and guttered like the flame of a candle.

Swirls of golden light rushed through the air, blowing on an invisible wind—the Eane—and a bright bar of golden light ran between him and Gray. It passed through the wall and linked to her, wherever she was. That was their Reyad. In his spiritual sight, he picked up the same from Myraden to Kythen.

But he was here to look for any kind of traps. He turned to the silos of elixir.

It was like staring at the sun. Vibrant blue light seared his eyes. Squinting wouldn’t help. He barely contained a yelp of shock, then opened his eyes all the way and dispelled his spiritual sight.

“We will have to go about it the usual way,” Myraden said, approaching the closest silo and reaching for a spigot at eye-level—eye-level for her, chest-level for Pirin. “We will not pick up on any traps near such a powerful elixir.”

“The usual way?”

“Act first and deal with consequences later.”

Pirin sighed. He didn’t want to do it that way, but unless he wanted to waste a few hours searching for alarms or traps by hand (they couldn’t), they had no other choice.

He placed the decanter beneath the spigot and uncorked it, and Myraden opened up the spigot.

Opaque azure liquid sloshed out of the tap, filling the decanter. It was slightly more viscous than water, and even in his normal sight, it glowed. When it hit the glass, it let off a crystalline chime. Pirin’s mind and body told him that this wasn’t something that should go in his mouth.

After a few seconds of pouring, a thin rune-line lit up along the edge of the spigot—so thin that it would’ve been impossible to see before it glowed. The power of the flowing elixir filled the rune-line. Pirin tried to stop it. He held the decanter with one hand and tried to scratch the line, but he was too slow. It bled up into the side of the silo and hit a circle of runes, where it circled around quickly, creating a cyclone of wind.

The wind blew into a windstone, and a dissonant chime rang out, loud enough that he wanted to cover his ears.

Not good.

Pirin pulled the decanter away and corked it. It was only half full, but he stuffed it back into the void pendant anyway and deactivated the device (but not before retrieving his sword), then let it fall back around his neck and hang.

The storeroom’s doors burst open and the guard sprinted in, his horse Familiar a few steps behind him. He brandished a short sword with horse-head ornaments and pointed it at them. “You!” he exclaimed, staring straight at Myraden.

“Us?” Pirin cycled Essence as quickly as possible and took a fighting stance with his sword.

“In the name of the Aremir family, you are under arrest,” the guard said. Then, he sneered, “Give me an excuse. Give me a reason to do whatever I want to you two. Especially the traitorous antlerhead.”

Myraden retrieved her spear from her void pendant and pointed it at the man. He was a peak Flare.

Pirin closed the distance between himself and the man with a push of air, then met the man’s sword with his own.

While he distracted the guard, Myraden reached for the handles of the doors and pulled them shut, then wedged a beam in them to lock them in place. Her spear twirled behind her, slashing up the rune lines on the spigot and the silo until the alarm stopped blaring.

The Aremir family’s Path of the Prairie Gap was a wind-based Path, but their Familiars were horses, and horse Essence fuelled their techniques. A mane of glowing green Essence manifested along the guard’s sword arm, and wind swirled up around his sword like a tornado.

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Pirin countered with his own technique, encasing his sword in a wedge of wind. Their blades stayed in a bind, but metal didn’t touch metal.

At least, not until Pirin harnessed his sword Reign. He squinted, activating his spiritual sight, and watched as the Eane swirled around his sword, building an aura of gold mist on the blade that would’ve otherwise been invisible. It sharpened into a wedge in front of the sword and split the air. The barrier of wind around the guard’s weapon shattered, and their weapons clashed back together.

Myraden charged at the guard’s horse, ducking under its hooves and swiping at its stomach with her spear. It reared up and kicked at her, but she had already ducked around it. She struck the guard in the back of the leg with the haft of her spear, then slashed the horse’s flank.

She moved slightly faster than an average person could. Despite her claims, she had begun to integrate the Essence into her muscles and enhance her body—almost like a constant fortification technique.

Pirin needed to catch up.

The guard unleashed a flurry of blows at Pirin’s sword, and it took all of Pirin’s concentration to block them. He backed up toward the silos, trying to draw and cycle more Essence between him and Gray, but their bond wasn’t strong enough yet.

The guard enhanced his sword with a coating of wind, strengthening the blade with raw power, and he used a fortification technique across his whole body to boost his strength even further. With every swipe, his sword split the air with a boom, and all Pirin could do was enhance his speed. One of the guard’s swings smashed through the silo, leaving a gash in the edge. It ripped through the metal tubes winding around and slashed the internal container. Elixir and seawater coolant poured out onto the ground.

Harnessing Reign to break techniques wouldn’t do Pirin any good here. He needed to break the man’s weapon.

Are you doing alright in there? Gray asked through their link.

“I’m fine,” Pirin whispered, whether it was true or not.

He ducked under a swipe, then used a Winged Punch. It struck with its usual power, and the man skidded back a few feet. Myraden punched the horse in the side of its head with a Tundra Vein-enhanced arm, sending it stumbling to the side, then she flung her spearhead out and wrapped it around the guard’s sword. She clenched her fist and the spearhead tightened, shattering the wind-shield around the blade.

Pirin harnessed sword Reign one last time, but the guard’s sword had no technique to protect it. His sword slashed straight through the guard’s weapon like it was butter.

Before the guard could recover, Myraden tugged him to the side, destabilizing him further. Pirin spun and slashed him from shoulder to hip, and Myraden stabbed the horse in the flank. They both collapsed, writhing, but Pirin drove his sword through the guard’s neck to end his suffering.

Leaning on the sword, Pirin panted. “Someone…someone had to have heard that.”

Myraden ran over to the storeroom’s door and pushed another beam through the handles, holding it shut. “Nomad had better keep his end of the bargain.”

Pirin ran over to the window. The partygoers still lined the beach, mingling around the fires, and no other guards walked over. But eventually, someone would notice that a guard had left his post.

“I need to advance,” Pirin said. “And before we leave the storeroom. If most of the guards are Flares, I won’t make it much further.” He ran over to the leaking elixir silo. The coolant was mixing with the elixir, though, making it less pure.

Good thing there were two more sources.

He ran over to the second silo, then used his sword to scratch and damage the hair-thin rune lines on the spigot to disable the alarm. When he opened up the spigot, the windstone didn’t scream.

He cupped his hands beneath the spigot and filled them with elixir, then slurped it out of his hands without a concern for how much he had just ingested or its potency.

Immediately, the spiritual weight of the elixir in his mouth forced him to his knees. Gray let out a string of frightened noises, both outside the storeroom (which he could hear through the wall) and inside his head. The elixir burned the channels in his head and neck, so he swallowed quickly.

When it hit his stomach, it tingled like a manabulb, only a hundred times as intense. Ice blasted through his body. He shut his eyes and cycled, using the new integration pattern Nomad had taught them. Pulses of blue energy shot out into his channels and swirled in his veins.

Faintly, he felt Myraden approaching behind him, kneeling and placing a hand on his shoulder.

What did you do? Gray exclaimed.

Pirin grit his teeth. “I…might have underestimated the potency of the elixir.” He dropped his sword so he could focus only on cycling.

“Do not panic,” Myraden said. “Keep pushing. You are only a Catch. That single burst of top-quality elixir will be enough to raise your Essence and core to the Flare stage—if you can trigger the advancement.”

Pirin forced himself into his regular cycling position—sitting cross-legged and holding his hands in his lap—and controlled his breathing. He threw off the gossamer shirt so it didn’t soak up all his sweat, then focussed his willpower and concentration.

Instead of taking weeks to integrate a manabulb with his basic cycling pattern, Nomad’s pattern of Essence integration only took an hour. While he cycled, Myraden filled the decanters and bottles from his void pendant. He could only hear what she was doing—he kept his eyes closed the whole time—but she must have started filling kegs and barrels directly from the storage room and loading them into the void pendant, because he kept hearing woody thuds.

After an hour, Pirin had pushed himself to the peak of Catch. But, unlike the early stages, Essence accumulation alone wasn’t enough to push him to the next step.

According to Nomad, there were certain revelations and insights that he would need to reach if he was to advance to the next stage. To advance from Catch to Flare, a wizard needed to reach the Familiar Insight.

Opening his eyes, he stood up and ran back to Myraden’s side, helping her fill and load the kegs into the void pendants.

The pendants were about halfway full, but they’d need to fill each about three-quarters of the way if they both wanted enough elixir to fuel their ascent to Wildflame.

While they filled the barrels, Pirin contemplated the Insight. If he could reach it, he could advance. There was still time, but it’d run out soon enough.

He needed the Familiar Insight.