Hina read the first card, which described a working: Bell's Lesser Barrier. It showed how to use a series of patterns to invest power into an area that you wanted to protect. The area had to be marked out by a line in the ground, and you had to walk along that line while completing the working.

She read through the instructions and the diagrams three times, and once more for good measure. The symbols were strange and twisted things, but the process was simple enough to follow.

After two more passes through the instructions, Hina felt ready.

She hunted through the ground around the campsite until she found a fallen branch that looked suitable, straight and about the length of her forearm. She stripped off the bark and the connecting twigs and branches until it was reasonably neat and clean. The end was rough with exposed fibers where it had broken off, but she trimmed it as neatly as she could with her knife.

With her branch in hand, Hina sat and cycled, drawing power into the pool within her chest. She filled herself with buzzing energy until she was near to bursting.

The instructions for the barrier required her to visualise three symbols—a kind of spiral, a knotted line, and a bundle of hooks. She had to visualise them one after the other in a loop, while she projected her intent into a line she traced upon the ground.

She built the mental picture of the spiral, one kinked angle and jagged loop at a time.

The finished image didn't feel like anything. Maybe she'd missed something? She wiped the image in her mind clean, and started again.

On her third try, she felt the pattern click into place within her mind, and it changed. Instead of an image that Hina was imagining, the pattern felt like a living thing, shimmering and turning within her mind's eye. It tugged at her in some intangible way.

She dismissed the image, and the symbol disappeared with a pop.

Hina summoned the sign once more to be sure that she could do it—the instructions wanted precise timing. The spiral popped fully formed into her mind, and disappeared just as quickly as she banished it.

She could feel that a tiny fraction of the buzzing power within her chest was gone. Fed to the pattern? Or consumed by her connecting with it?

The next two patterns came quickly now that Hina knew what to expect.

She summoned each one three times before she moved on to the next step in the instructions. Adding power.

Hina got to her feet and held the branch in one hand with the tip resting on the dirt.

With the first sign held steady in her mind, she pictured a thin line of energy, running from the pool of crackling power within her chest, and extending towards the pattern.

The spiral reacted, growing and twisting as energy flowed into it. It pulled at her thread, trying to draw more energy into itself. Hina resisted, keeping the line thin and steady.

And then she dismissed the pattern, and switched to the next one. And the next. She extended the same thread of power to each one.

With the patterns empowered, it was harder to keep up the cycle of summoning and dismissing them in turn, and the amount of energy that she had to spend to keep them in place increased. And they fought her the whole time, trying to draw more and more energy from her.

At the current rate of drain, she would only be able to keep this up for a minute or two before she was drained dry.

She could feel a pressure building, as the working tried to take effect. If she didn't give it an outlet, it would collapse, and Hina would be left with a headache and a drained pool of energy.

So the next step then. And quickly.

With the signs cycling through her mind, Hina tried to project her intent through the stick and into the ground—the starting point of the circle.

The working slipped out of her control, the energies thrown out of balance. The twisting spiral flared with emerald light and then dissolved.

Hina's head throbbed, and a wave of dizziness washed over her. She sat down on the ground, and rubbed her temples.

The instructions said something about needing to keep the working balanced? And that was what it had felt like—she'd shifted the balance of the working and it had all slipped out of her control.

The pool of power within her chest was more than half full—she could try again.

But no. While this was turning out to be an extremely valuable gift that would keep them safe—Hina offered Gerda silent thanks—better not to overdo it. And she had other gifts to look at before they moved on.

The title of the next card read: The Lesser Sigil of Guidance

There were four complex geometric figures drawn below the title, and at first glance something about them made Hina's brain buzz. Blood rushed into her ears.

These figures were loosely similar to the patterns from the barrier working, but different. More complex.

Hina didn't want to try to summon them, not right now. Her head still ached from the barrier working, and the pain didn't fade as Hina looked at the figures. Something about the way the lines moved was distressing on an instinctive level, like the shapes weren't allowed, like they were somehow wrong.

But they were fascinating.

It felt like she was looking at a puzzle that she couldn't quite solve, but the solution was tantalisingly close. The pain in her head grew as she continued to look at the marks, but it was a distant sensation, like it was happening to someone else.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

But something felt wrong. With an effort of will, she forced herself to look away from the card.

Hina stared towards the horizon, the pain in her head fading.

The morning was bright, birds were singing in the trees. A breeze brushed through the leaves. It was just a drawing, printed lines on paper—it couldn't hurt her.

She felt a flash of embarrassment for being concerned in the first place. She could handle this.

Hina picked up the page once more, ignoring the feeling of wrongness. The drawings were sickening, but they were just drawings. She resisted the urge to look away.

This could be how she survived, how she kept Kai safe. How she kept herself safe.

It could be exactly what both of them needed, just like the barrier. And the barrier had been perfectly suited to her situation.

There was another niggling thought in the background, but Hina ignored it.

She stared at the twisted lines, glancing from one figure to the next and to the next and back again. There was something here. A secret truth, a hint, an underlying principle about—

Each and every angle, every one of the twists and curves within the diagrams—every marking was precise, placed exactly where they should be and nowhere else.

Understanding began to form within her.

Beyond the mind-bending shapes themselves, there was a commonality between each of the four figures. They were a variation on a common theme, a shared truth.

The longer she looked, the more the drawings seemed to make sense.

The buzzing within her head intensified, the roaring in her ears was louder now. But Hina was on the edge of something.

The shapes—as complex as they were—they were a simplification. A representation of something greater.

Four points of reference for single whole.

Four shapes that when combined—

The combined sign popped together in her mind, each of the four figures slotting together to form one whole twisting three dimensional shape.

The sigil came to life, inked lines redrawn in fire and electric pulsing light.

It twisted and rotated, the lines moving and changing, the shapes shifting and reforming.

Hina watched with fascination. It seemed almost alive, and somehow real. More than anything she'd ever seen before.

Floating there within her, the sign felt more real than Hina herself felt real. Like Hina was a dream and the sigil was the one who dreamed of her.

The unreality of it left Hina adrift, disconnected. She watched the thing, mesmerised.

Secondary shapes entered her awareness, hundreds of twisting lines and loops and whirls. These were simpler, less difficult to look at—less wrong, but they confused her all the same. They were constantly changing in an endless stream of complexity, fading in and out of her mind's eye.

Hina's stomach turned, bile rising in her throat. This wasn't right—she needed to stop it.

She tried to dismiss the vision, to banish the sign. She tried to force herself to think about something, anything else. She was vaguely aware of the exercise card slipping out of her fingers, falling to the ground.

Her eyes were open, she could perceive the world outside. She stared off into the distance past the shifting boulders and into the trees. Trying to replace the sign with another image, any other image.

It didn't help. It didn't matter.

She had seen it.

She had seen it and—

She felt a faint sense of amusement from the horrible thing, hanging there in her mind, all writhing lines and pulsing shapes. A sense of sickening mirth, and of acknowledgement—a barely perceptable nod from a stranger.

It had seen her too.

There was an inaudible snap, and the sigil unravelled within her, dissolving into its consitituent parts then fading away, taking the lesser signs with it.

Hina felt hollow, like she was an egg that someone had poked a hole in, and drained her substance out. Like she was the shell of a person and everything else was gone. Like everything she was had been taken away.

The boulders around the campsite fell to the ground with a deep thump, spraying dirt and dust into the air. The world went brown and dark.

* * *

When Hina woke, the air had settled and there was a thin layer of dirt over everything. The boulders, the nearby trees and all of their things.

It was early. The shadows long on the ground.

Hina's lips tasted like dirt, and her throat was parched. And something smelled awful.

She reached blindly for her water bottle. It wasn't there. Her bag wasn't in reach.

"Kai?"

"Hina! You're awake!" And then Kai wrapped her in a hug—it was an awkward angle, but she tried to hug him back.

"What—what happened?" Her tongue felt thick and heavy.

"I don't—I dunno. You did," he gestured, sitting back on the ground nearby. "Then you collapsed. I didn't know what to do," he said. "I thought about—you know, getting help. But where would I even go?" His voice went small. "And then that woman came back."

Hina coughed and spluttered. "Water?"

"Oh, here." He handed her a water bottle.

Hina drank and coughed and drank again. "Thanks."

"You're welcome." Kai was still talking small.

"What happened, Kai? Was it Gerda?"

He nodded. "She came back."

"What did she do? Did she hurt you?"

He shook his head. "Not—not really," he said. "She made me get out of the way so she could look at you. I tried to stop her, but." He shook his head. "After, she said that you needed help that only she could give."

Hina had a sinking feeling.

"She put her hands on your head and did ... something. I could feel it, almost. Like a rushing feeling," he said. "And then. Then she said that you needed to sleep, and that you would be okay once you woke up. And..."

"And?"

"That I had to tell you when you woke up that you owed her two debts now. One from before and one for this. And that she would come to collect."

Hina groaned.

"I've been waiting for you to wake up since yesterday."

This was not good.

"And, there's a circle around the campsite, like the one in your card. It has been there since she left, since last night."

"You read the cards?"

He made a face. "Of course I read the cards."

"And you didn't see anything? A vision?"

"No," he said. "I didn't look too hard. Those symbols are strange—they hurt to look at." He shook his head. "Is that what happened to you? You looked too long? I knew that woman was bad."

"Yeah. And that was a friendly one." She groaned again.

"What?"

"When I looked at them, really looked, the four drawings snapped together into this greater... thing." As she described it, the image of the sign half-flashed into her mind—she focused her eyes on the darkening sky, the leaves of the trees swaying above. The image of it went away after a few moments.

Kai was frowning at her.

"Whatever it was, it burned itself into my brain, and I couldn't get it out of my head." She had another flash of fiery lines writhing. She banished it.

"And it moved the boulders?" Kai asked. "They could have squashed us. Those rocks are huge!"

"The big one made more of them," she said, remembering, "and all together they moved the boulders?" Or was it the little ones? "And they used me, used my power to do it? I felt so so empty." She didn't feel like that anymore.

"And that's what knocked you out?"

"Yeah, I think so. And then it let me go."

"It let you go?"

"It—I couldn't do anything, couldn't get it to leave." She shrugged, feeling an ache in her shoulder—a lot of aches. "It felt wrong. I think that if I had been better, been stronger, it couldn't have done anything I didn't want it to."

"You're not going to try again?"

Hina shook her head, hard. "No. Not now. Not any time soon. No."

"Well, good," Kai's voice was firm.

"I think that's what the woman was talking about last night—the night before last? I didn't think of it while I was looking at the card. But she said I shouldn't use it yet, didn't she?"

Kai nodded.

"And I guess this is why the academy didn't give me instructions on how to use a sign." She shook her head, slowly. "That could have gone badly. Could have gone worse," she said, remembering the debt. The debts, plural.

"Did she do this on purpose? The woman?" Kai wondered aloud. "Did she do this to make you even more in debt to her?" His eyes widened. "Like the people in the cottage?"

Hina hesitated. "I don't know. She didn't seem like she was trying to hurt me."

"I don't like her."

Hina shook her head. "Hopefully we never have to see her again."

She didn't think that was likely, though. Whoever this woman—Gerda—was, Hina was sure that she would be back.

Hina only hoped that it didn't cost them too much.