The group had stopped again for dinner after walking two more days through the great forest of Gnul. They snacked on a simple trail mix of nuts and berries while waiting for their stew to boil.

The first thing I’m going to eat when we get to a town is bread, T’faide thought to himself.

Lulura was small and didn’t eat more than a few berries before running around to play. She had gotten much better at using her hands and feet to get around in these past two days.

She saw T’faide starting to scribble runes on the ground and pouted, giving up her pursuit of a cricket to come over and criticize him.

“Don’t you ever get tired of drawing? It’s boring. Play hide and seek with me instead.”

“I’m learning new arcane runes,” the halfelf frowned, tossing a handful of nuts into his mouth with his free hand. “Go away.”

Lulura stomped her foot, and her glow turned pale red in irritation. “What are you learning? You’ve just been drawing useless scribbles for days!”

She trotted over to Arwin and clung to the hem of his rich green robes with her tiny fists.

“You’ll play with me, right? You’re just sitting around!”

“I was resting,” the elf smiled tiredly. He was obviously worn out after another day of pathfinding. “I can play a little hide and seek, I guess. Don’t leave sight of the campfire when you hide, understand?”

“Yes!”

Arwinthall smiled and covered his eyes, counting slowly down from ten. He humored the wingless faerie for several minutes, even pretending to have a hard time finding her luminescent figure in the foliage.

Much more cheerful and with some of her pent up energy expended, Lulura returned to the campsite after being found by Arwinthall yet again. She rode on T’faide’s staff all day every day, since she couldn’t keep pace with the rest of the group on her own. Thanks to that, she was always bursting with energy when the others stopped to rest their weary feet.

Her solid blue eyes were sparkling, and Arwin was sure she was about to ask to play another round, but then they were both distracted by a sudden gust of wind.

It wasn’t natural wind. It was rising up strongly from a glowing blue rune carved into the dirt at T’faide’s feet. Niasha quickly stood between the rune and their cooking pot, worried the sudden gust would put their fire out.

After a few seconds, the rune burned out, leaving a small patch of dry gray dirt where it had been. The magical wind, of course, stopped as well.

Lulura stared in shock for a minute longer before running over to the halfelf and tugging excitedly at his pant legs.

“Wait, no way, did your scribbles do that?!”

“That’s what I’ve been saying,” T’faide huffed, a tinge of pride visible on his face. “That was an arcane rune I made based on what you told me about wind.”

“I wanna do it too! Show me how to draw one!”

“Move away from the fire if you’re going to do any more of that,” Niasha chided the children.

T’faide and Lulura took a bit of distance while staying in sight of the camp, and Arwin spread out some hides to lie down comfortably while he waited for dinner to be ready, happy the faerie’s attention was now elsewhere.

The young wizard in training drew a wind rune for Lulura in the dirt. Yet again, it had some noticeable similarities to the druidic rune for wind, and yet it was different. Now that the boy knew a bit more about the different magical forces, he was beginning to suspect that the root cause of this discrepancy could be found there.

“Done. Fill the rune with magic, and say ‘vuld’.” T’faide told her the arcane word for wind.

“You mean ‘waldi’?” Lulura asked, repeating back the druidic word for wind.

“Why do you-? You said you weren’t a druid. Why do you know druidic?”

“Because I know some druids. I learned a few words from listening to them.”

T’faide sighed. “Well, no. ‘Waldi’ is druidic; ‘vuld’ is arcane. This is arcane magic: you need to use the arcane word.”

“Okay, fine.”

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Lulura held her little hands forward and filled the rune with magic. Standing directly on top of it, she shouted: “Vuld!” and her small body went gleefully shooting into the air.

Just like before, magical wind had surged from the flaming blue rune until it was expended, and T’faide had confirmed that others could use his runes.

While he was nodding to himself with his arms folded, satisfied by learning this detail about arcane magic, Lulura was falling back down from where the gust had blown her. She landed harmlessly in a bush, her glow buzzing a gleeful yellow, and she rushed over to his side again, enthusiastically drawing another rune in the soil.

“Vuld!” she shouted… but there was no wind. “Huh? Vuld!” Again, the rune didn’t glow, and no wind appeared.

“Hey, did I draw it wrong?” the faerie frowned and tugged at T’faide’s trousers.

“It looks right,” the boy muttered. He tried pushing his own magic into the rune Lulura drew, and he found that his mana didn’t neatly fill it like usual. He had to put effort into keeping the shape right to avoid the mana just spilling out freely.

It was as difficult as using magic without any physical rune.

“That’s weird,” he muttered.

The shape was perfect, but it didn’t work as a rune? Why not? The halfelf held his chin and pondered. “Maybe a wizard has to draw the rune, like how a druid or whatever else has to be the one to cast a spell?”

Lulura’s solid blue eyes widened. “Not a wizard, Tiff; someone who has a connection to the arcane force!”

“That’s not what it’s called,” T’faide pouted. “I haven’t named arcane magic’s magical force yet.” Only he, the discoverer of this magic, had the right to name it. Sure, he named arcane magic because it was new and unknown, but he had decided to call a practitioner of arcane magic a wizard, and a wizard was a wise person who understood the arcane. He wanted the magical force behind arcane magic to have a name that expressed his understanding of it, not one that professed his ignorance.

“And what did you just call me?”

“What, you mean Tiff? It’s a nickname.”

T’faide frowned. “I don’t like it. Don’t call me that.”

“I thought it was pretty good,” Lulura pouted. “Anyway! Hurry up and make another—”

“Dinner is ready,” Niasha called. “Stop with the magic for now and come eat.”

Lulura faced the sky and groaned loudly. “But I was flying!”

After dinner, Arwinthall went immediately to bed, while Niasha tidied up the cooking area. T’faide used Lulura’s help to experiment more with letting other people use the runes he drew, and they found that she couldn’t use all the runes he knew. He decided that he needed more runes to test before he could figure out what the difference was between them.

***

At the edge of the Great Gnul, the trees simply stopped, giving way to vast fields of golden grass. It was a scenery that the forest dwellers had never witnessed before. There was no canopy above their heads, and the sky stretched out to infinity. Unconsciously, T’faide reached up toward the endless sapphire expanse.

“What are you doing?” Lulura asked him. “Why did we stop?”

To her, who had once been able to fly, the sky was a familiar and tired sight, and now it seemed more dangerous than beautiful.

The halfelf blushed and took his hand back. He glanced over at his mother, staring out at the endless plains in shock, and his father, already peeking longingly back at the treeline. Arwinthall tugged uncomfortably at the tip of his ear.

Niasha eventually took her eyes off the scenery and noticed her lover’s expression, nudging him with a concerned gaze.

“I’m fine,” he said with a small, anxious smile. “I’m not the first elf to leave the forest. Let’s keep going.”

Arwin tried to look bold by heading the party again. It was convenient how the grass bent out of their way as they passed, thanks to his pathfinding. T’faide briefly tried running his hand through the stalks, but he found them to be deceptively sharp, leaving small itchy scratches on his tan skin. It would’ve been very unpleasant if they’d had to walk through these golden fields without a druid’s pathfinding.

“Are there still animals in a place like this?” the boy wondered.

“They’re underground,” said his father. “Or close to it. Be careful if you come here alone; there are lots of snakes.”

T’faide decided that the fields were unpleasant… but the sky was nice.

The group camped only one night on the plains, and they could see the town even then. It was much, much farther than it looked, though. The plains were broad and flat, and so distances gave the impression that they were more travelable than they actually were.

Looking at it from afar, the town was like one big, rocky plateau set down in the middle of an amber sea.

As the group approached closer the next morning, exactly three things about the town stood out to T’faide: its walls, its moat, and population. The first two elements were why he was here: they would offer protection from demons. The residents were the same brown-skinned humans that T’faide had grown up around. He was a little surprised that the people living on the plains didn’t look more exotic to him, but they were just ordinary people.

The way into the city was through a large open gate in the wall, where two guards stood keeping watch. They were both burly human men armed with spears, who looked the group over with dull eyes.

“Passing through or staying a while?”

Niasha glanced at Arwinthall and T’faide.

“Staying a while, if we like it.”

“Will you be selling any wares in town?”

“Yes,” Arwinthall smiled and nodded.

“Stop by the merchants guild before you do,” one of the guards turned and pointed at a white stone building with a large bronze emblem affixed to the front of it. “You need to get a permit from there. If you try to sell anything without a permit, your goods will be confiscated.”

Niasha nodded. “Where do travelers stay here?”

“There are a couple of inns near the main road,” one of the guards said. “Keep an eye out for any buildings with beds drawn on their signs.”

And just like that, they were let into the city.