I drifted off to sleep well before Katira joined me, and awoke facing her. Or, rather, I awoke facing her cleavage.

“Good morning, Master,” she whispered.

I looked up, seeing her smiling face. “Hi there. Why are we whispering?” I replied.

“It’s early, and I don’t want to wake the others. Besides, I like having you right here. It’s cozy,” she said, blushing slightly.

“Oh really? Well, I must say that it is a rather pleasant place to be. Very soft. Very comfortable. Just the right place” -I hefted her breast and pressed my face into her chest, letting her breast rest on my head- “for me be, wouldn’t you say?” I said.

She gasped as quietly as she could, and gripped my body tightly. “Yes, Master. I think you’re right,” she said as quietly as possible.

I held myself there for a long time, relishing the warmth and sensation of being where I was. She clung to me tightly, no doubt enjoying what was happening.

“Katira?” I mumbled.

“Yes, Master?”

“While I absolutely love being where I am, I think it is time we got up. Or at least you got up. I have to, ah, calm myself down,” I said.

She snickered and shifted slightly, testing my statement. “Well. Has my Master gotten too excited to wander around? It certainly seems so. It would be a problem if the others saw this, no? I think I’ll leave you to your…calming,” she said, standing. Clothing appeared on her nude form as she left the tent.

I sighed, flopping back onto the sleeping bag. That woman would be either the death of me, or my return to life. Nothing was ever easy. I sat up, and took several deep breaths, centering myself.

Once I had more or less calmed down, I dressed and left the tent, as well. Katira was preparing breakfast, handing me a sausage wrapped in cheese and bread. “Here you are, Initiate. You will need your strength today. All of you will. Today, you will try -and fail- to create your message stones. Even Initiate Merideth will fail,” she said with certainty.

“Well, that’s just a challenge, then. That’s all you just did,” I said, taken aback.

The other three nodded, each incensed by her words.

“We shall see. We will not assist you in any way, beyond holding your Grimoire. You will each be responsible for crafting your message stones. Do anything you wish, so long as you attempt to create your stones,” she said.

“Sensei?” Morita-san began, receiving a nod from Katira. “How will we know when we have made them?”

“Good question. You must test them. They have a single use. One short sentence is all you will be capable of doing. In order for it to work, your recipient must be able to hear your message clearly,” Katira explained.

“So, if I’m understanding you properly, we must craft these, test them, get verification that the test worked, and then what?” I asked.

“Nothing. Once you have completed that, you’ve completed the lesson for the day. Your familiars will accompany you at all times. Get to it, Initiates,” Katira replied.

I nodded and put my boots on. Time to go rock hunting. I left the cave and headed back down towards the holler, Katira on my heels.

“So, what do I get if I’m actually able to make the stones today?” I asked as we walked.

“If you actually succeed in making the stones today? Hmm,” she said, stopping me.

She placed her hands on my hips and pulled me tantalizingly close. “We shall see, Master. If you make the stones today, I shall reward you somehow. Of course, it is a rather large if,” she said with a smirk as she released me.

“If? Sweetheart, you challenged me. I’m putting on my thinking cap for this one. Follow me, please,” I said.

I climbed down the holler, wondering just how the Hel I’d done this yesterday without any recollection of the feat.

“Master? Why are we going down here?” Katira asked.

“Because there’s fresh, running water down here, and the area is in dappled shade. Perfect for mint. If there is mint to be found, this is where it’ll be,” I said.

“Smart. How do you know this?” she asked.

“I used to collect it in my old neighborhood where I grew up. We had a huge drainage ditch that would fill and stay running all spring and summer. In the shade of the beech trees that grew around it, mint would grow. And it was always only there. In full sun, it would grow, but not thrive,” I explained, winding my way around a bunch of trees and bramble.

“Ah. I see. What will you do about the stones themselves?” she asked.

“Well, I have a theory about that. The stones are paired, so it serves to reason that a larger stone that is broken in half, and then turned into a message stone set would be best. I would think that carving a spike or a blade into both stones would be needed to activate them, otherwise they’d simply send whatever noise they ‘hear’ almost immediately,” I said, hearing the waterfall in the distance.

“Is this where you disappeared to, Master?” Katira asked.

“Yep. I dunno why I came here, but I was drawn, and so I came. I’m glad I did. It really is peaceful. The first thing I did was-”

“Sit on that boulder over there, didn’t you?” Katira interrupted.

“How did you know?” I asked, bewildered.

“This is the same place my former Master would come to, also. She would sit” -she motioned toward the boulder- “right there on that boulder, and just watch the wildlife in the pool. It was one of her favorite things to do here,” she said wistfully.

“I wonder if maybe we Necromancers can subconsciously detect things like that. You know, let whatever universal constant there is guide us to a thing we never knew we needed,” I mused.

Katira smiled. “You may be on to something, Master. Anyway, now that we are here, what will you do?” she asked.

I looked around, trying to find some mint. Seeing none, I turned to Katira and shrugged. “Keep looking, I suppose,” I said.

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“A worthy plan, Master. Let us look,” she said.

I turned and scanned the banks of the creek for the sweet-smelling plant. Even though I detested the taste of mint, I did enjoy the scent. I walked up and down the banks, searching for the elusive plant by scent and sight.

After a half hour of searching, I had come up empty. I decided to change tactics and started looking for a decent stone, when it occurred to me to use flint. I stopped and chuckled. Things were making some type of sense to me.

Katira cocked her head to the side and I smiled. Spying a rather large piece of flint in the water, I reached in and grabbed it. I found a second stone that I could use as a hammerstone and continued my search for the plant.

The sun was nearly overhead before I chanced upon some mint. Nearly two miles away from the cave, but I had finally found it. I knelt next to it and pulled the flint and stone from my pocket, and with an experimental strike, managed to break off a thick chunk of the flint that was sharp enough to cut the stem, and about the size of a credit card.

Using my new stone knife, I cut the plants about four inches from the ground, and gathered up as much as I could. Definitely more than I would need.

Mission accomplished, I stood, stuffing the stones and the plants into my pocket. Taking Katira’s hand, we walked back to the waterfall, where we simply stood and watched the crawdads darting around for a few minutes. After a while, we turned and hiked back up the holler, eventually getting to the cave.

Once inside, we found the other three pairs were waiting for us. Robert was the first to pipe up.

“And where have you two lovebirds been? We’ve all been back for a couple of hours by now,” he said with a grin.

Katira was about to speak up, but I silenced her with a hand. “Where we have been and what we have been doing is simple to answer. We have been hunting mint and stones. It just so happens that the only place I knew of was the place I went yesterday. We had to range for a couple of miles to find anything useful,” I said, fixing him with a blank stare. He had the decency to look ashamed.

“Furthermore, as to what you are alluding to with the ‘lovebirds’ comment, I will make no secret that she and I have had sex, and are developing feelings towards the other. However. While we are here, she is my Instructor, and will remain as such until we are finished here. I have instructed her to give me no special consideration. She will do as I have commanded,” I added. Robert turned red.

“Robert, understand that I’m not irritated or bothered. I simply wished to get that out in the open. I was lucky that this” -I gestured towards all of Katira- “was the form she took for me. This was the most helpful and genuinely useful form she could have taken for me. I know she looks like a -forgive me for butchering this, Morita-san - mommy dragon waifu, but this is where my head was at the time. She hits all my buttons, and we will give it a shot, eventually. For now, she is my Instructor. Does that clear things up?” I asked.

“Yeah, man. I’m sorry for bringing it up,” Robert mumbled.

“It’s okay. Seriously. I can tell you that neither of us are offended. It needed to be said, and so it was. Devoid of malice or anger. I swear it,” I said.

“I tell you to say nothing, friend. Is their, uh…work,” Joaquin said.

“I think you mean ‘business’, Joaquin. And, yes. It is our business, but in the interest of fairness, this needed to be said. Everything is fine, and nobody is mad. Robert may be a bit embarrassed, but that is the price one may have to pay for publicly broaching a potentially sensitive, definitively personal subject. It could happen to any of us. It’s happened to me several times in my forty-three years, so go easy on him,” I said with a smile.

Katira cleared her throat. “Thank you. Anyway, I trust we all have our mint and our stones, yes?” she said.

We all pulled out our respective stones and plants. I had harvested the most, by a wide margin. Most had only taken one or two plants. However, I only had the one flint stone, while the others had at least two pairs of stones each.

“Now, I would like to hear what you each think would be the proper way to craft your message stone. It looks like most of you simply ripped the plant out of the ground. Interesting. Initiate Grimes? You first, please,” Katira said.

“Well, I thought I’d use the stones as a grinder to grind the mint and my essence together, and that would infuse the two stones with mint and essence?” he ventured.

“Okay. Next? Initiate Morita-san?” Katira said.

“I will distill the essence of the mint, mixed with my own, onto the stones,” she said.

“Interesting. Initiate Madras? Your turn,” Katira said.

“I use my essence on plant, rub it on stones,” he said questioningly.

“Creative. Initiate Merideth? I would like for you to tell the rest what you did and why,” she told me.

I sighed. “Well, I found a good sized piece of flint in the creek bed, and broke off a flake to make an edge. I harvested the mint with that stone knife. The reasons are as follows: I figured the message stones would work best if they are infused with the plant’s essence from the beginning. Since flint has been used as a tool for millennia, I figured it would be a natural option for a blade. I also thought that if you made the message stones from one piece of a larger stone, it would already be paired with itself, essentially. And, since it forms an edge fairly easily, you could use the edge of the stone to kinda ‘charge’ it with your essence in order to speak the words or sentence you need. The other stone would simply follow suit.

“As far as crafting the message stones themselves? I was thinking along the same lines as Morita-san. Basically, our alchemy kit is a distillation unit, right? Crush the mint, add pure, clean water, your essence, and distill it onto the stone, then break the stone properly to form two edges,” I concluded.

Katira looked at me and sighed. In a defeated voice, she said, “What Initiate Merideth here says is a very old method of crafting the message stones. He is correct in everything he has said.” She heaved another sigh and looked into my eyes. “What I really wish to know is this: How did you come to that conclusion, Initiate? What was it that led you to that extremely specific answer?” she asked, irritated.

“Well, I’ll start off by saying this. I’m pagan. Have been since I was fourteen. In all this intervening time, nearly thirty years, I’ve devoured whole entire libraries of arcane and mystical information. Some of it was absolute bunk. Some actually held a kernel of truth in it once I delved deeper.

“For me, to my mind, mixing my essence with that of mint, which was thought to be a plant that enhanced communication, would ‘bind’ myself to whatever that mixture was applied to. Flint just happens to be shapeable, and was used for millennia as a tool. It all seems, to me, just a logical conclusion,” I said self-consciously.

Everyone simply stared at me.

“Dude. Like, how? How did you even get to that point in your life? To spend your teenage and young adult years buried in books that have had no real bearing on anything for hundreds and hundreds of years?” asked Robert. The sentiment was echoed among the others.

“Uh… Lack of friends, really. I was always the fat nerd in a little country school. Hated sports, didn’t care about cars or guns or any of the things that the other folks thought were so important. So, I, um… I read. I read everything I could get my hands on. The existence of other gods and religions had interested me since I was in the third grade and had to do a report on why Thursday was called Thursday. Religion and mysticism have always enthralled me. So, I filled up on it, I guess,” I mumbled shyly.

“Initiate, you and I will need to have a chat later. However, your reasoning and methodology is solid. I would suggest we all pay keen attention to what Initiate Merideth does with his kit. While he has the correct method, I am interested to see if he is able to do as he states. Understand that the challenge is not yet complete, Initiate. You still have to make the stones. I think we would all like to see this. Right?” Katira goaded.

A chorus of affirmative answers reached my ears. I cringed inwardly. I hated being put on the spot, and Katira knew it.

“Fine.”

I centered myself and grabbed the mortar and pestle. It looked like granite, and I made a guess that it probably was. I chipped a tiny portion of the knife into the mortar, and ground it until all I had was a fine powder. Leaving that aside for a moment, I turned to the mint. I layered it into the pot as best I could, then sprinkled the flint powder on top. Nicking the back of my hand with the knife, I dripped two drops of blood into the pot, making sure to land it on some of the powder as well as the mint. I watched as the reagent absorbed my blood and essence, then began to grow. I poured two bottles of water in, then set the fire.

While the water was heating, I arranged the rest of the still, and positioned the stone under the spout where the oil would drip down. And the rest was a waiting game.

“And now, we wait,” I said, somewhat unsure of myself.