One formidable element about Baloria was its sheer scale. A hike of two full days lay between the gate on Ferdina’s side in the south and the gate on Argento’s side in the north, even by the shortest possible route; a route carved and marked through decades of trial and error on the adventurers’ part.

But though it was all very far underground, the way was not without light.

In the taller halls, the builders had pierced long shafts into the mountainside, through which daylight was cleverly rerouted and amplified by means of mirrors, so that you could behold a natural day of sorts even under untold masses of rock.

At night, clusters of phosphorescent ore types came to life along passages and close to public buildings, so that even in the sun’s absence, darkness was never absolute. The natives had even cultivated species of luminous fungi, which neglect had killed off in places, but which elsewhere had overgrown far and wide past their intended boundaries, and turned into a sort of effulgent pestilence.

As your eyes grew accustomed to the below-standard brightness, you would see a wealth of geometry emerge from the ancient shadows that ought to have been empty. Even lost to monsters and reduced to ruins, the kingdom under the mountain was never unsightly.

Here houses weren’t built brick-by-brick from the ground up, but sculpted straight out of rock, as if they had been there all along from the dawn of time, merely waiting to be excavated. So clean, smooth, and precise was the rock cut, you could scarce bring yourself to believe it was done by hand. It took me aback to see buildings and facilities that would in human cities be their own distant, standalone entities, lie here comfortably under the same ceiling. As though they were only shared rooms in one great house, which a single family of thousands had populated.

The buildings’ hard faces stood virtually pristine despite the passage of time. The residents weren’t forced out of their homes by fighting in this specific district, but had evacuated willingly, to avoid being ensnared later on. Alas, we weren’t there as tourists to learn about a now-lost culture, and had no time to give the city’s splendor the appreciation it deserved. We passed dwelling after dwelling without looking twice.

More goblins showed up.

More and more goblins, to the point that we had to suspend with the lectures. Our soldier escorts were compelled to take up their spears and bows too, and, come nightfall, we were all fighting merrily side by side for dear lives.

At first, I was grateful for the opportunity to show Ray the proper ways of operating as a team too. But by the time the collective kill count passed forty, we could only forsake battle and seek shelter off-path instead. Quitting while you were ahead was undoubtedly wisdom.

We holed up in the tight corner of what looked like a barn, killing our lights, save only for one faint candle, and held our breaths. An hour passed without pursuers, and we dispatched Corporal Thiselt to scout out the area alone. In another hour, she returned and told us the fiends had set up a major nest in an amphitheater not far west by the marked route, and we’d almost stumbled upon it.

We could all agree that becoming heroes here, without anyone to see, had no point, so we circled cautiously far around the nest, and avoided additional hostilities. We weren’t on an extermination quest, after all. It was getting late, and we had fallen behind schedule as we were. We did mark the location on our map, with the intent to report it to the Guild bureau in Argento later.

To make up for the time lost, we kept up a good pace until around three o’clock in the morning, by my own estimate. Only when the memory of goblins had sufficiently faded behind our backs, we stopped to make our own camp, and put it in the backyard of a stately residence that rose by the district wall.

It had surely been the house of a figure of importance, once.

That two-story stone mansion had a handsome wall going all the way around it, complete with a cast iron gate, securely locked. But walls that were daunting to dwarves were quite less so for humans, and with the aid of a crate, we could all make the climb well enough—save for Corporal Samuel, who took strong men to drag him over.

The idea of hiding in the building itself was tempting, but also a tactical mistake. Goblins were known to be good trackers. They might not be able to break into such a fortress, but getting out could become a problem of its own, if they chose to lay a siege on us. We chose to stay in the backyard instead, where our senses could better follow the goings-on in the vicinity, and had multiple escape routes available.

“Wow, I’m beat,” Ray murmured as he plopped down on the floor close to the campfire, almost close enough to touch the flames, and hugged his knees. He had visible trouble keeping his eyes open.

Making fire here was not a problem. Air conditioning was one thing dwarves never neglected in their settlements. Smoke was drained to ventilation shafts high up in the dark ceiling, and smells didn’t escape far either. Our footprints bore a more distinct scent to track, but there was nothing we could do about that.

Corporal Samuel was an enthusiastic cook and prepared us a veritable feast to celebrate another hard-earned day among the living. Gold-brown toast with herb butter, smoked beef, and sunny-side up eggs. He had a jar of pickled beetroot and sun-dried tomatoes in his sizable backpack, too. I was unused to such heavy meals, but the rich flavors did hit the spot after the unusually rigorous exercise.

After dining, a thick blanket of drowsiness fell over the party.

We made ourselves comfortable as best we could on the barren stone backyard and got ready for the night.

“You did well today,” I told Ray. “Keep up as you have.”

The fledgling hero answered with a snort, “Gee, thanks.”

Ray didn’t seem too satisfied by his own performance. Certainly, he’d had several very close brushes with death over the day, mostly resulting from his own inexperience rather than the enemy’s excellence, forcing the others to jump in.

But, in all fairness, he’d done a lot better than could be expected of any standard mortal in his shoes. Rather, his rate of growth could only be described as staggering. He’d struggled with only two goblins before, yet by nightfall, he had held his spot in the formation no different from the veterans of the guard. But I didn’t want to let that get into his head. It was not my job to lavish the hero with praise. So I drank my after-meal tea in silence.

Ray regarded me from the side and frowned.

“Aren’t you tired at all?”

Here I’d wondered what he was ogling me for, but it appeared he’d sought for signs of fatigue. Naturally, even at a dungeon campfire, I sat promptly tidy and upright, and held my steely camp mug as I would one made of porcelain.

“Even if I were, I wouldn’t show it,” I said. “Whether in a dungeon or a palace, I am still a maid.”

Ray shuddered. “I’m starting to think being a maid is more a pain than being a hero.”

“You think? But I’m not the one of us who has to defeat the Dark Lord.”

“Thanks for reminding me.” He exhaled another long sigh. “I already forgot there’s more than goblins in the world…!”

Displaying no personal dignity whatsoever, the youth lay down on the dusty pavement, his back to the fire, and closed his eyes. He really had to be weary, to think he could sleep that way.

“Before you sleep,” I said, “rinse the blood off your clothes and hang them to dry. Then clean and hone your sword. Then wash your face and brush your teeth. You will not get far unless you maintain your equipment and your body both.”

“What are you, my mother?” Ray groaned and sat up. “How do I wash? We don’t have water to spare, do we? I’ve only got a bit left to drink, too. Is that a well there?”

There was indeed a well in the backyard, but I told him not to use it. It wasn’t safe. Finished with my tea, I set the cup away, stood and raised my hand.

“I’ll make water for you now.”

Using my index finger, I drew a simple pattern in the air. The trail left by the finger glowed faintly.

Elemental Gate: Aqua.

“Water Sphere.”

At the brief incantation, water appeared bubbling out of nothing in front of me, forming a round orb. I kept feeding power into the orb, and it grew slowly larger, as if there was an invisible tank being filled. I let the sphere expand to a volume of roughly ten liters and stopped there. It was a taxing spell, and you were better off always keeping a bit of power in reserve. For emergencies.

Ray stared at the floating, rippling bubble with rounded eyes.

“You can use magic too?” he asked.

“A little.”

“Wow, that’s way cool!” He smiled like a small boy and sprung up to examine the ball of water from every angle. “By the way, what’s that pattern that appears whenever you want to cast a spell? The thing you have to draw. Do you know?”

“The Sigil?” I asked and failed to fully hide the astonishment on my face.

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He smiled. “Yeah, that.”

“Didn’t you learn magic under Maester Cassandra herself?” I questioned the hero with a scowl, dreadfully close to losing my temper. That would’ve been unbecoming. “How can you not know what a Sigil is at this point?”

We were deep in a dungeon, and such was the extent of his education?

“Hey, cut me some slack!” Ray argued. “Do you have any idea how many books I’ve had to read this past year? My poor head can’t fit all that! I do know you need it to use magic, but like—why? What is it, really?”

I sighed and rubbed the bridge of my nose. Maybe I was tired too.

It was unreasonable to expect him to know everything, of course, but I was hardly the best person to teach him magic. How to best explain something I didn’t understand so well myself? I took a moment to recall what I’d been told and what little I’d read elsewhere, and made something of an attempt.

“Basically, it’s like this: imagine you’re in a large store, such as pharmacy.”

“Huh. Pharmacy?”

“You see shelves full of bottles of all kinds in front of you. These bottles each contain one piece of nature. A phenomenon that exists in the world. Now, a Sigil is like a key that you hand to the shop clerk to get a corresponding bottle from the shelf. This lets you use that one fragment of nature as you see fit, for a time. But without the correct key, you will get nothing, however much money you have. That is a long and complicated story made offensively brief.”

“Oh, I see.” The man nodded along with a smile. “Hey, thanks, Ria! That was a lot easier to understand than the story Cassie gave me, for sure. She rambled on for hours about Akasha, and the world of ideas, cave allegories, and whatnot. And whenever I asked a question, the answer I got left me even more confused.”

“Well, proper magicians have their own way of seeing the world.”

Ray poked the water sphere with a finger, absorbed in thought. His hand could pass through the water, but as long as I maintained conscious control, the spherical shape would be restored again.

“And you can learn Sigils by having someone who knows one teach it to you, or by reading a grimoire where the Sigil is described. Is that right?”

“It’s not quite so simple,” I corrected him. “Beside learning the Sigil, a sufficient understanding of the linked phenomenon is needed to truly acquire the magic.”

“Understanding?”

“You can’t create what you don’t know. Visualization plays a strong role in it. A desert inhabitant who has never seen running water would have trouble mastering Aqua. And there are Sigils even more abstract than this one. A description in a grimoire could say, ‘smells sweet’, for instance. Almost everyone reading that line would imagine a different smell then. Sweet like honey? Sweet like fruit? Like lilies? Like perfume? You might think all those qualify as sweet smells, but not necessarily. You need to hit close enough to the ‘truth’ of the phenomenon to learn a Sigil. Even if successfully acquired, it may be that you can only invoke the magic partially. For example, I also know a healing Sigil, but I’m only able to apply the effect to myself.”

“Really?” he asked, puzzled. “Why’s that?”

“Who knows? Maester Cassandra theorized it is due to psychological factors. My understanding of ‘healing’ is to restore my body to how I feel it should be. However, humans are all different, as goes without saying. It makes little sense to me to apply ‘my body’s state’ to a person who is not me. Neither could I know the ideal state of a stranger. I find it so absurd as a concept, I can’t do it at all.”

“That’s...a really weird way to look at it.”

Everyone would tell me that. But as far as I was concerned, it was those, who could impose their personal image of health on strangers and make it somehow work too, who were weird. It made no sense.

Ray pondered for a moment.

“Say, how many Sigils are there in the world?”

“Who knows? A popular story claims there are sixty-eight ‘true grimoires’, depicting as many Sigils, but whether that is true or not is anyone’s guess.”

“That’s a lot fewer than I thought. Has anyone learned all of them?”

“Of course not.” The very idea made my head hurt. “What an utterly pointless endeavor that would be. Many of the Sigils are such that no ordinary person could ever have any need for them. Being able to say, ‘I did it’, would be the only reward for a colossal waste of time, money, and effort. Moreover, the number of Sigils you can memorize correlates with your overall magic capacity. You should select with care which to acquire, if given the choice. Once learned, a Sigil cannot ever be unlearned.”

Ray cringed. “Damn. So how many do you know, Ria?”

“Only three.”

“Three?” The hero looked as though he had taken a critical hit from a monster as he squatted by the fire. “Despite all those lectures, I was only able to learn one…Now I really wonder if I chose a very good one…”

His appearance turned exceedingly pitiable.

“Don’t lose heart,” I told him. “Magic capacity works the same way as your muscles. The more you use it, the stronger it gets, as a rule. I dare say you are guaranteed to learn much more magic over the course of your journey.”

“Really?”

Ray’s face brightened up quickly again. He was like a dog, showing all his thoughts and feelings without restraint. He wouldn’t have made a very good valet in that sense.

“Just don’t get reckless,” I cautioned him. “Depleting all your power is a dangerous state to be in. Especially if you are already tired from physical exertions. It puts a heavy burden on your heart. You could die.”

“Oh…”

Ray refilled his water bottle in silence, absorbed in thought, and eventually resumed,

“But, if mastering magic is all about learning Sigils and using them, how come there aren’t more wizards in the world? Aren’t we technically all wizards if we can use even one kind of spell? What’s the difference between ‘proper magicians’ and normal people?”

That was what he was thinking?

“Why, the difference is very simple.”

“It is?”

At the young man’s curious face, I gave him the answer I’d personally arrived at, after observing life at the imperial capital, and the daily toils of a certain Court Wizard.

“Witches and wizards are those privileged few, who can afford to hoard books and toy with fire all day, while the rest of us must actually work for a living. Having to make ends meet tends to put a hamper on any sorcerous ambitions.”

Ray received my answer with something of a grimace.

“You know, Ria, you have this miraculous talent to suck the magic out of life.”

What a coincidence. His majesty had told me the very same thing.