I

spread my mana senses out around me in as wide of a net as possible, empowering my Analyze Space spell to try and get a sense for any gaps that would indicate a cave. Finding none, or at least none I could sense, within range of my senses, I ignored the site that had been set aside for campers and started searching for a cave. I chained together several Foxsteps, which began to take increasingly more mana as the snow continued to thicken, and I was forced to push through the thick eddies and whorls of energy that moved through the storm.

Worse, the thickening snow obscured not just vision, but mana senses. It was like trying to feel my way through thick syrup, rather than air, as once again the powerful energy in the storm fought to push my mana senses back, and was forced to flare several more of my analyze spells to life, just to beat back the power glowing in the storm.

My temporal mana ran dry, and I shaped out the Testudinal Reserve spell with my energy, drawing the mana out of it to restore myself as I kept pushing through.

I felt a pulse at the edge of my senses. If my senses weren’t so sharp, I wouldn’t have been able to sense it at all, but I felt the delicate brush of another’s mana senses against mine, totally unimpeded by the power of the storm. If anything, it seemed to ride along the powerful currents, casting its senses through them like a stone skipping over the surface of a lake, or perhaps a fisherman casting their lure into a swift moving river.

Another one of the strange deer-bird creatures dove out of the storm, horn glowing with a physical-heavy composite, and I barely had time to teleport out of the way, cursing the murky power in the air that made it all too difficult. The monster facing off against me felt near the peak of third gate, as strong as one of the powerful drakes that I’d had to battle with the help of Octavian, Araceli, Roh, and Kene.

I’d grown since then, but I could admit to myself that I hadn’t grown enough to take this on completely alone. Maybe if it had been a good matchup for me, like the war root had been, or had strangely weak power like the spriggan or the war root, I would have been willing fight, but as things were… I needed to run.

Come to think of it, why was it that there seemed to be such an extreme difference in spellbinders? I’d thought that maybe it was just a simple matter of well-built mana, but it seemed more extreme than that.

The deer-bird roared, drawing me out of the contemplation, and I felt an attack buffet at me, cast through the scream. It buffeted at both my body, my mind, and my senses, and the way the monster’s power seemed to ride the winds gave it a solid advantage.

Not enough of an advantage.

I poured energy into Placid Mind, and I felt the membrane form around my mind. The monster’s attack was strong, puncturing the bubble in several spots, but I drew my mana senses within, pushing them out. Like air blown into a balloon, the defenses around my mind expanded, pushing out the foreign intrusion.

At the same time, I began to draw power into Foxstep, using it to push against the boundary-like effect of the spell. I teleported out of its grasp and over the monster, releasing a stream of overcharged bones and briars at the bird-deer’s wings, doing the best I could to make myself not worth the effort of fighting.

Before it could even attack back, I pushed out another foxstep, draining nearly half of my temporal and spatial mana as I teleported to the edge of my sensory range and caught myself with an Immovable Lock.

A lance of magic shot through the air, and I teleported forwards again, catapulting myself at least another sixty feet away from the creature, then dove into the treeline. That wasn’t a move I normally would have risked for more than a few moments, since going off the trail more than a couple of steps could get dangerous shockingly quickly.

With the power of the storm, however, there was already a thick enough layer of snow over things that I was having trouble making out where the path was anyways. That didn’t make predators lying in wait, unexpected pitfalls, or injury from unstable footing any less real or present, but I kept Immovable Lock primed and ready, prepared to do the best I could.

But I figured that it would at least make it more likely for me to find a cave, and being hidden under the thick canopy of trees should, in theory, make it harder for the creatures in the sky to hunt me.

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I slogged through the thickening snow, and it quickly became apparent that I’d need to find something soon, or I was going to have to drink another warming potion. I’d packed a couple of extras for both nutrition, warming, and scent suppression, in case of emergency or destruction, but I wasn’t exactly teeming with extras. Glass vials of liquid, even ones that only held a couple of ounces, got heavy shockingly fast, and I’d needed to carry over a hundred in total.

As I spread my senses out again, I kept trudging on, until I felt the gentle gust of winds within my spirit. They carried me off course, and I allowed them to.

As the tips of my fingers and nose were starting to grow from a cherry red color to a fainter pink, I felt a gap in the mountainside in my spatial sense, and trudged towards it at my absolute top speed. That top speed was still painfully slow, as I had to be careful with every step, but I still forced myself forward.

The entry of the cave was hidden, and if I’d not had my senses guiding me to the gap, I wouldn’t have been able to spot it at all. There was a massive, glowing, purple boulder that blocked its mouth from view. There were a gap between the boulder and the edge of the mountainside that it was jutting over, but not so much that it made me think there would be a cave hidden in the crack. Worse yet – or perhaps better – the mouth wasn’t visible from any angle, as I had to press myself into the cold stone and shimmy my way around a slight bend before it finally opened up into the cave itself.

The cave was… Surprisingly roomy. More like a mineshaft than a proper cave, in fact.

I traced my hand along the edge of the cavern, even as I conjured a small light out of ungated mana. I missed the peacepyre. It’s flickering and darting silver illumination would have been a familiar comfort.

But the pale yellow-white light of my spell was fine for getting a closer look. The faint purple glow of all of this mountain stone was enough that I could see the tunnel outlined against the darkness, but it wasn’t the best for looking at fine detail.

The smooth walls of the tunnel looked… strange. Cut, almost. I knew Ed’s stone cutting or shaping or whatever he called it, left long, flat marks, not entirely unlike the ones I found here.

That might be normal if this was basalt or obsidian, which were want to create such flat marks, but this definitely wasn’t either of those stones.

I paused. Ed’s newer studies into different types of rock and how to use them must have been rubbing off on me somewhat, because I wouldn’t have known that before I started working magic.

Well, either that, or I’d learned it in school and totally forgotten it. That was also entirely possible. Reading and learning were fun, but school was… a struggle.

I focused, feeling the walls, and I could find that they had ever so slightly more power running through them than the rest of the mountain seemed to, but it was slight. Either the cut had happened long ago, or this was simply natural variation, and I was using it as evidence to bolster my theory.

The faint purple glow led deeper into the earth, and I pushed my mana senses out along the path it traced, feeling for anything.

There was nothing more than patches of lichen and moss, as well as the power of the mountains, steadfast as always.

That, even more so than the oddities of the stone, convinced me that there was something deeply unnatural about this place. The blizzard and hunters that used the storm to bolster their power should have caused animals to flock to this place for shelter. Even if they couldn’t find it, there should have been a few creatures who could – those whose magic focused more heavily on the layout of the earth and stone, like a cavern estragon, should. Bats that were looking for a place to nest and rest, who had the echolocation or magically enhanced senses to find this place. Even creatures who had strong senses in general, like those spelltheif cats should have stood a reasonable chance.

I’d found it, after all, and I was no master of survival. It was well hidden, but not so well hidden that it should be completely empy.

I felt a growing sense of unease at this, and decided that I’d be sticking nearer to the entrance. It was a touch colder there than it was in the rest of the cave, but it was still much, much warmer than the outside. So long as I made sure to keep the snow at the entrance clear, I should be able to teleport out if things went poorly.

Then I had the horrible idea of a cave in, like what had happened to those poor kids during the Idyll-Flume.

I frowned, then let out a sigh and headed out into the storm, just long enough to reach a nearby tree and pump a spatial anchor into it. I spent a few minutes smoothing out the ripples in space that the spell created, then pushed my way back into the cave.

There.

I slowly unpacked my vials. Unable to bury them or the flowers, I stuck them behind a decently sized stone, then wrapped myself in the spare clothing I had to help myself warm up.

With nothing better to do, I started shaping my energy into the my last pair of unmastered spells – the brand new Testudinal Reserve, and my still-fairly-neglected Lesser Psychometry.

I shaped the patterns out over and over again, starting with Lesser Psychometry, since it was the one that was closest to mastery. I’d started practice with it on the boat, and I’d made a bit of progress in reading the history of objects…

I felt like slapping myself.

I had a spell that was specifically designed to read the history of objects, the moments that had left a powerful enough impression on the temporal material to create an echo of it.

I could use that on the strange cuts in the cave. It might not reveal anything, but it was better than nothing at the very least.

I stood up and walked over to one of the strangely flat, cutlike impressions on the wall. I pressed my hand onto it, and cast Lesser Psychometry.