“Tell me how you knew,” Sir Owain growled, gesturing to the box which had held the key fragment.

“Thieves broke into Brackstone library,” Doug explained, “and went for the Church’s fragment, but they were caught. Turns out, though, the fragment they took was fake.”

“Brackstone…” Sir Owain echoed. “What hell were the Church thinking? Why not keep it at their headquarters here?”

Both men were getting distracted from the important question, Josh thought.

“When was the last time anyone here checked this fragment?” he asked quickly. Owain swung round to glare at him and he ducked his head. “Sir,” he added.

“Good question,” Doug put in. “Oz?”

Owain took a deep breath, and then released it.

“Eight months.”

“That’s our timeline.” Doug nodded with satisfaction.

“Our? Our? This is nothing to do with you, you great fat lump!” Sir Owain pushed past him and strode out of the vault, motioning them to follow him, and spinning the wheel to close it once they were out.

Raicheus, who had followed them down to the cellar but been ordered to stay back while they inspected the vault, now approached, his eyes sharp with interest. He gave Josh a filthy look. Jealous because Josh had been allowed in to inspect the fragment?

Doug, meanwhile, held his hand out to Sir Owain.

“Pay up!”

Sir Owain’s eyes flicked to Raicheus so quickly Josh nearly missed it, then stared down at Doug’s palm in disdain.

“You are mistaken,” he said icily. “I do not gamble.”

Doug rolled his eyes.

“Raicheus!” Sir Owain barked. “Send a message to the Patriarch informing him that he has an appointment with me immediately. And these gentlemen are leaving.”

A few minutes later they were standing outside the Order’s gates. Some of Doug’s levity seemed to drain away.

“Well, this isn’t good,” he said to Josh.

“What’s going to happen?” Josh asked. It was the closest he dared get to asking exactly what the Chains of Wayland held. Or had held. He was wary of asking the question outright, because it would betray his own individual stake in the matter. He'd been hoping someone would let the information drop, but no luck so far.

Doug, however, shook his head.

“We need to check on the third fragment.” He stared over Josh’s shoulder and his eyebrows rose. “Friend of yours?”

Josh turned and saw Ramina. She was standing a few feet away with her arms folded, tapping her foot.

“Er,” he said.

Local etiquette stipulated that you were supposed to introduce people in a definite order, based on their respective social status, except Josh hadn’t worked out what that order was supposed to be. But then, he reflected, neither Doug nor Ramina would care a button for that.

“Doug,” he said. “Meet Ramina the Pirate. Ramina, Sir Doug Cameron.”

“Huh,” Doug said. “And how are you involved in this?”

Ramina opened her mouth to reply, but was interrupted by the cut-out door in the gate slamming open. Sir Owain stepped out. He looked at Ramina and, unlike Doug, clearly recognised her. His face darkened.

“So Silbury’s got a finger in this pie,” he said to Doug. “I thought you swore off politics?”

SirKorey and TheAxeMan filtered out behind Sir Owain. They flanked him like a pair of bodyguards, standing stiffly with their hands on their sword hilts.

Doug just shrugged.

Sir Owain rummaged in his pocket, brought out a small purse, and thrust it at Doug’s chest. Presumably it held the fifty florins he had lost in the bet.

“I’d rather not see you again any time soon,” he said, and stalked off, his honour guard trotting after him like two obedient ducklings.

Ramina raised her hands to her mouth in a trumpet shape and bugled the Darth Vadar's theme tune—the Imperial March from Star Wars—at Sir Owain’s back. Josh wanted to laugh, but managed to choke it down, because he probably wasn’t supposed to know it. Neither, he realised, would Doug or Sir Owain. They would have vanished from Earth before Star Wars had first been released.

Josh was actually in the presence of someone who didn’t know what Star Wars was, he thought in awe, looking sideways at Doug. Not just one of those people who hadn’t seen it, or even one of those clueless types who unaccountably got Star Wars and Star Trek mixed up, but someone who had genuinely never heard of it.

“What’s that tune?” he asked Ramina, mostly to see what she would say.

“It’s evil bad guy music,” Ramina said, lowering her hands. “My mum used to sing it every time my Uncle Harvey came into the room. It used to drive him nuts.”

She sounded disappointed that it hadn’t had the same effect on Sir Owain.

“Silbury, right?” Doug said to Ramina. “Maybe me and him should have a word.”

Josh was able to drop back behind them while they walked, and quickly inspect his character sheet.

> QUESTS

>

> The Stolen Fragment (COMPLETE). Investigate the Order of the Unyielding, on behalf of the Marquis of Silbury, and find out if their fragment of the key is real or fake. Reward: 55,282 xp (shared).

> > Progress: you have revealed the theft of the key fragment. Reward: 27,641 xp (apply)

He checked the messages section:

> You have 65,364 unapplied experience points. Go to the Quest and Achievements menus to apply these points now!

>

> You have enough experience points to reach level 15! Once applied, additional levels will take effect during your next long rest. Multiple levels may take more than one rest period to apply.

Bringing Doug in to do the job for him had split Josh’s experience reward exactly in two. Given that he had just followed Doug around for most of it, it seemed worth it.

And the goggle-eyed look the Marquis of Silbury produced when Doug was shown into his sitting room was definitely worth it.

Both Josh and Ramina were dismissed while Doug settled in to have a conversation with Silbury. Once out of the room they immediately headed for the eavesdropping cupboard, but were forestalled by a servant, who informed Josh that Lord Silbury’s mage would see him now. Josh trailed after the servant, leaving Ramina behind him, fuming with thwarted rage like a small, angry thundercloud.

Josh didn’t care. He was going to get a magic lesson!

Lord Silbury’s mage introduced himself as Arcanist Gryce. He was an unassuming man, neither tall nor short, with brown hair, a subdued grey suit of clothes, and a neutral expression.

The lesson was taking place in Silbury’s library. Josh sat on one side of a leather-topped table, and Arcanist Gryce sat on the other, with his hands clasped on a thin booklet in front of him. The booklet consisted of multiple sheets of different sized paper bound together, crinkled and dog-eared with use.

Josh tried not to stare curiously at it.

“Please describe your current powers and experience,” Gryce said.

Josh didn’t reveal everything, of course. He pretended he had been an apprentice plumassier, but had one day discovered that he was able to infuse feathers with magic, and had worked out he might be able to use said feathers to write spells with. Seeking a better career than that of a plumassier, he had travelled north, stopping off at the druid grove on the way to see if there was anything left in their library. He described the rune-carved stones he had found in the cave beneath the grove, and recounted how those had given him his five spells.

He didn’t mention any of the magical objects he had acquired, and he left out any references to the book moth swarm or the Azure Cathedral.

Gryce listened politely all the way through.

“When a magical ability does manifest,” he said. “it invariably does so in the form of an enchantment, often in relation to a small, everyday object with which you are intimately familiar. A baker kneading bread, for example, might one day accidentally end up with magical dough.”

What Gryce said made sense. Josh’s Feather Folklore gave him an innate knowledge of feathers, and that in turn allowed him to use the Infuse magic ability. Infuse was probably a general enchanting skill, and it only worked on feathers in Josh’s case because he had Feather Folklore to go along with it.

It was a relief to hear that the story Josh had told aligned to Gryce’s expectations, and that he hadn’t accidentally revealed himself as an outlander.

“Happily for our digestion, spontaneous development of magical powers is rare,” Gryce added.

Josh checked Gryce’s expression to see if that was meant to be a joke. He couldn’t tell. What would happen if you ate magically infused bread? It might be like using the spell Chi Siphon, and if you didn’t have a lot of Chi to begin with, it would probably overload your Chi energy. Josh remembered that happened at the library in Brackstone.

“Enchantment is Chi-based magic”. Gryce said. “There are, however, two methods of fuelling magic. Do you know what the other one is?”

Stolen novel; please report.

“Power.” Josh had been concentrating almost exclusively on raising his Chi.

“If only most apprentices were so knowledgeable when they first came to me,” Gryce said dryly. “But do you know the difference?”

Power and Chi had been the two different types of mage stats in Spiralia Online, and different magic classes had used different proportions of both. Power was the one you used for big, splashy, damage spells like fireballs, and Chi was the one you used for enhancements, debuffs or utility spells.

Josh wasn’t sure how that translated into Six Spires.

“Power is for exploding things, and Chi is for everything else,” he hazarded.

“How interesting the world must be when seen through the eyes of an apprentice mage,” Gryce observed, raising his eyebrows. “The traditional explanation is more like this: Chi comes from the spirit. It uses the energy taken from one’s own body to fuel spells, which is why one feels dizzy and exhausted after overcasting. Power, on the other hand, pulls magical energy from another dimension. The mage breaks through into … well, experts argue over the exact nature of it, but let us call it the sphere of raw magic. They draw that raw, unbridled energy into this world and use it for casting. Such spells are massively more powerful, but also much harder to control.”

Josh nodded.

“Chi is a delicate but finely tuned magic, able to create subtle effects,” Gryce continued. “Power is more like a hammer—heavy and unwieldy, but capable of smashing anything in its path.”

The Storm King was probably pulling on oodles of Power for his weather-based magic.

“Like the Storm King,” Josh suggested.

Gryce inclined his head.

“A perfect example. Most mages are Chi-based mages, however, and it is Chi-based magic I will teach you. Let us now move on to the mechanism we use to cast spells. They can be cast purely with thought, or, more commonly, they can be pre-written onto physical objects. The mage simply infuses the spell with Chi, and it takes effect.

“Almost all Chi-based magic these days is cast from written spells. Paper is not, in fact, an ideal medium for this, as it disintegrates after the first cast. Instead, a mage will, as part of his apprenticeship, craft an amulet or wand which has pre-prepared spell scripts carved into it. More robust materials, such as wood, stone, metal or glass, allow for repeated casts, and are therefore preferred.”

Like the training staff, Josh thought. Or like Lady Paleyne’s amulet. But wait—she had been able to cast Sleep without it, when they had been escaping from Northcrag’s prison. Did outlander mages—proper ones with an actual mage class—also use amulets and wands, or was their spell-casting all innate?

“Do mages ever cast without amulets?” Josh asked, mostly to see what Gryce would say.

“Only,” Gryce said, with a severe look, “if one is extremely proficient. It requires years of practice and refinement to be able to reach that stage.”

Unless you had access to a player core, in which case the system would probably do it for you.

“I will explain why shortly. When writing down a spell, we scribe it in the secret language of the universe—”

More like the secret language of the system, Josh thought.

“—using enchanted objects. That initial enchantment is the prepping stage. Once it becomes fully infused with magic, however, the spell then changes reality in accordance with the wishes of the mage.”

The system reads the spell and follows the instructions, Josh translated.

“The first thing a mage needs to learn when writing spells the Concepts they are based on. For example, if I was to write a spell to levitate an apple, I could simply combine the Concept of an apple combined with the Concept of a fixed point in space. If I set that fixed point in space here,” Gryce held his hand a foot above the surface of the table, “the targeted apple would then float above the table. However, if I wanted to make the apple float around the room, I would have more success using the Concept of flight, which has longer and more complicated written structure, but is also more flexible.” He paused then added, “As an apprentice, I strongly recommend that you do not play around with the Concept of flight. It is highly dangerous.”

“Because I might fall unexpectedly?” Josh asked.

“Because the sky belongs to the dragons, and they take exception to any of the mortal races making use of it.”

Dragons! Josh was instantly distracted, but Gryce, noticing the change in his expression, coughed, and said, “This lesson will not cover dragons.”

“Awww!”

Gryce gave him a stern look, but Josh was sure there was a hidden gleam in his eye.

“This lesson is about Concepts,” Gryce said firmly. “Where was I? Ah yes. Great strides have been made on magical theory in the past few decades. Previously, a mage casting a written spell had to use their own imagination to envision the Concept they wanted, often with mixed results. The slightest moment of inattention, and the apple might explode, or shoot up into the sky, or the initial spell might target a different fruit entirely. Apprentices this day and age are very lucky that so many hard-working mages have spent large parts of their lives researching the best use of Concepts.”

Gryce held up the scrappy booklet that had been sitting in front of him.

“This contains all the Concepts an apprentice mage could possibly need. We will go over as many of them as we can fit into your head in the time available, hopefully without anything essential leaking out. Now, so that I can get an idea of what you are able to cast, would you be so kind as to show me the spells you obtained from the druid grove?”

Josh didn’t think any of the spells he had found there were especially rare or valuable, so he didn’t see any harm in doing that. He took out a miniature spell book, this one without any pages of poetry glued over the spells to disguise them, and handed it over to Gryce, who inspected it with a raised eyebrow.

“Were you making spell books for fairies?” He thumbed through it. “An ingenious method of storage. Yes, I see.” He added, in his dry, expressionless voice, “Fascinating.”

He handed the spell book back to Josh.

“The five standing stones you found at the druid grove are likely the master stones. Within them they will contain the full spell which creates the effects such as Hide, Stone, or Chi Siphon. Whenever you draw the pattern for, to take a random example, Hide, it automatically links to the version of the spell in the corresponding stone and casts it.”

“I can do that from anywhere?” Josh asked. “There’s no range?”

Gryce paused.

“I'm not certain,” he admitted. “The druids did not speak of their methods to outsiders, and now they are gone, so we cannot ask. You will undoubtedly discover this the hard way. Their approach is enormously advantageous in many ways—the short form of the spells can be written quickly and cast more easily, presumably because some of the heavy lifting is being carried out by the standing stones themselves. However, the flexibility of the spell is limited. I would imagine that the Hide spell, for example, can be used to Hide a person-sized object, but if you tried to use it on a building it would either only hide a small patch, or fail completely.”

“Is it possible to hide a whole building?”

“When you have time,” Gryce said, in his flattest, driest manner yet, “you should certainly read up on the Invisible Flying Tower of Wizard Hawthorne.”

Josh immediately wanted to read up on the Invisible Flying Tower of Wizard Hawthorne.

“The dragons didn’t object to a flying tower?”

“Apparently not. And since Wizard Hawthorne was killed oh, thirty or forty years ago, no-one has ever been able to ask him why.”

“Where’s his tower now?”

“You cut incisively to the heart of the matter! Alas, nobody knows. This is what happens when an absent-minded wizard crafts an invisible object and then loses track of it.”

How did you lose track of a whole tower?

“But let us return to the subject at hand. The primary task of an apprentice mage is to craft an artefact, such as an amulet, which contains all the spells they have learned. In craftsman’s terms, they are considered a masterwork, and the successful completion of one would mark the start of your career as a full mage.”

He considered Josh thoughtfully.

“My mandate is to provide you with six magic lessons. This will be sufficient to teach you some simple spells and Concepts, and to start you off with the crafting of an amulet of your own.”

After the lesson, Josh was allowed to remain in the library, albeit under the supervision of a servant, which presumably meant Silbury didn’t trust him not to make off with his precious books.

The first thing he looked up was the Invisible Flying Tower of Wizard Hawthorne. Wizard Hawthorne had been a Court Wizard, back when Queen Halina was on the throne, and had spent over a year buried in his rooms in Celespire, working on a Great Project, eventually emerging to announce he had crafted a wondrous Invisible Flying Tower. At the unveiling ceremony, his apprentice had demonstrated opening an invisible door, disappearing, and then reappearing through the same invisible door, all while apparently hovering in midair.

No-one else had been given the opportunity to interact with the tower, and over the next few days Wizard Hawthorne’s rivals had accused him of fabricating the whole thing. Queen Halina must have agreed with them, because she had eventually lost patience and demanded that he produce it immediately.

Wizard Hawthorne had rushed to his rooms to retrieve the summoning wand, then returned, ashen-faced, with the intelligence that the Invisible Flying Tower had been stolen.

By that point, no-one had believed him.

It was a crushing disappointment to Josh to discover that the Invisible Flying Tower was, like the Emperor’s New Clothes, probably just a trick. He thought it was mean of Gryce to get his hopes up.

He put the book back, and browsed through the history section. Gryce had left him with homework, in the form of a pile of books about magic, which was sitting on the central table, but the lesson had been intense, and he wanted a break before he dived back in.

Silbury didn’t just have books, he had bundles of handwritten letters from people who had lived through the events of the last fifty years. It would be a headache to go through them all and attempt to decipher the spidery handwriting, but they might have useful information in about Tylas the Undying, or the power of the Dreamer.

He would work on that another day, Josh decided.

A small pamphlet on the bottom shelf caught his eye, mostly because it looked like the lettering had been picked out in real gold leaf.

The writing said The Queen of the Fey, by Anthony Harrison.

Anthony Harrison again! Who was also Doug’s friend Tony, the one he said he had met at Woodstock. Doug said Harrison had been married to Gwynifer the Dreamer. What had happened to him? Josh hadn’t had time to ask.

Inside, the pamphlet was handwritten, not printed, even though it had been bound in red leather, and decorated in gold leaf. It was also, Josh realised as he flipped through it, an attempt at fiction. Or maybe taking something that had really happened, and writing it in the style of fiction.

The hero was a man from another world—cultured, attractive and erudite—who had awoken to find himself in Six Spires. After performing a number of heroic deeds, he had been hailed as a hero by the locals, and his fame grew quickly, until it came to the ears of the Queen of the Fey. Curious, she had summoned the hero to her Faerie Court. She was depicted as a noble, soft-spoken creature, beset by scheming courtiers, and desperately grateful to the hero for the support and advice he offered her. The maidenly confusion she displayed when interacting with him boggled Josh’s mind, given what he remembered of his own meeting with the real Queen of the Fey.

Definitely on the fiction end of the spectrum.

Josh read onwards, skimming through the pages with increasing distaste.

The book culminated in the hero adroitly foiling a treasonous plot, thus saving the Fey Queen’s life, during which time she had fallen deeply in love with him, and begged him to stay by her side forever more.

It was blatantly obvious that the ‘hero’ was a thinly disguised stand in for Harrison himself, and the book nothing more than a wish fulfilment fantasy. Josh wondered what the Queen of the Fey would have to say about it.

“I hope your magic lesson was to your satisfaction,” Silbury said, behind him.

Josh jumped, realising he had been standing there while staring blankly at the bookshelves. He slid Harrison’s slimy little novel back into its place and turned.

“Yes, my lord. Thank you.”

Silbury waved the thanks away.

“It would never have occurred to me to involve Sir Doug. I confess, that must be the first time in fifteen years I’ve seen the man sober. Although from the way he downed my best Saint-Cris burgundy in one gulp,” Silbury sounded scandalised at this cavalier treatment, “I’ll wager he won’t remain in that state for long.”

“Sir Owain and Sir Doug don’t like each other,” Josh observed hopefully, but Silbury showed no sign of wanting to discuss the feud between the two men.

“If you are free in two days, I may have a small task for you,” he said instead.

Josh already had four goals to work on. One, he needed to keep an eye on Silbury’s investigation into who had stolen the key fragments, and where that person was now. Two, he needed to find out more about the Dreamer and how Tylas the Undying had summoned the outlanders. Three, he needed to improve his magic and fighting skills. And four, he needed experience to level.

With the last one, he had discovered that Mistrz had been right—you could progress quickly via crafting at low levels, and he’d expected that to be his main source of experience whilst in Dendral. But he was at the stage where he couldn’t just throw together fifty feather bracelets in an afternoon and get a bucket-load of experience for it. The crafted items now had to be of a certain quality to count. He had hoped to be able to spend the next few days focusing on that.

On the other hand, the windfall from the Stolen Fragment quest had been as welcome as it was unexpected. Plus, any work he did for Silbury made it more likely he might be asked to help with key-related matters in future.

“What sort of task?” Josh asked cautiously.

Silbury smiled.

“No need to sound so wary. I need to send Ramina to a function, and I would like an escort for her.”

That absolutely sounded like something Josh ought to be wary of, particularly if Ramina was going to be involved.

“What, like a … polite function? With, uh, nobles? And … etiquette?” It didn’t sound like Ramina’s cup of tea at all. Or Josh's for that matter.

“Something like that, yes.” Silbury’s eyes twinkled at Josh’s description, before he grew more serious. “The King will shortly be holding a ceremony to bestow upon Lady Alianne her Philosopher’s Stone.”