Before the sun rose, Lissa's very kind father woke her gently but firmly on his way out to tend the sheep. She and Skottie were headed to harvest alchemical ingredients in [Silent Thicket] today, a dungeon that was an hour's walk from the city and even farther from here. Its day-night cycle wasn't quite synced to the Primeland's, and it became quite dangerous at night. If they wanted to have much time within the dungeon before it became too dangerous, they needed to get an early start. Without opening her eyes, Lissa grumbled her thanks to her father as he shut her bedroom door on his way out.
*But why does it have to be earlier than sunrise?* Lissa protested groggily.
Adorably grating chirping noises came from a fist-sized animal bed on her nightstand; Slick, the three-week-old worm wyvern was awake. He had put on a layer of black iridescent fluff along his entire spine and across the upper side of the thin membranes of his tiny bat-like wings. The rest of his sinuous body was covered in perfect miniature black scales that appeared to be covered in an oily film that left rainbows swirling across his tiny hide. To the touch, however, he was warm, dry, and smooth, like a partially feathered snake than had been sunning itself. Over the last three weeks, he had nearly doubled in size, but that still meant the tiny thing barely extended the length of her hand from wrist to finger tip if he laid straight out.
Lissa reached out sleepily and gently scratched Slick gently under his tiny, tiny chin. He gave the most adorable yawn and chirped at her again, clearly hungry. She stretched and grumbled, unhappily pushing the warm covers off. The wooden floor was cold under her feet, and she stepped quickly into her slippers. A hand held out to him, Slick hop-slithered onto her open palm, and she tucked the tiny creature behind her ear, where he nestled into her hair. Eyes barely open, she trudged into the main room of their house and over to their smoldering fireplace. She grabbed the tongs and beat a single glowing coal into several small pieces, then scooped them to the edge of the fireplace, demonstrating a surprising amount of coordination for so early in the morning.
Slick chirped, excited, and Lissa carefully placed the small creature before the meal of tiny coals. He ate the still smoldering coal bits in order from hottest to coolest, letting out small grumbling chirps as the last few bites weren't hot enough to start a fire anymore. Lissa huffed a laugh through her nose at Slick's protests. She wouldn't even have been able to handle the coolest ones without singeing her fingertips. *At least he's easy to feed*, she thought, *but if they're so dependent this young, what happened to his parents?*
Anywhere her party could survive, there would be things to burn to feed the little wyvern. She wasn't sure how the creature's life cycle worked or how long it would take to mature, but that was a problem for Bup and Ezh to tackle. Regardless of what lay in his future, today still wouldn't be Slick's first time in a dungeon: he would be staying home. The tiny creature surprised himself when he let out a belch with a small puff of smoke. *That* was new, and also not something Lissa was going to deal with right now. She moved his small bed from her nightstand to the hearth, and smiled as he tucked himself inside it.
She grabbed a basket she had prepared the night before and headed out into the crisp morning to meet Skottie. The [apprentice alchemist] decidedly did not like the cold, and Lissa imagined she would find the girl just inside the door of her master Piltho's storefront refusing to leave. Lissa was almost startled into full wakefulness when she spotted Skottie waiting at the far end of the meadow wearing only light clothing. She was barely visible in the misty grey morning, but to Lissa's magical senses, her outline glowed coral red. Lissa's sleepy mind took a minute to process what she was seeing.
"G'dmrnin," she mumbled incoherently to Skottie. "Why're'oo'red?"
The other girl snickered, her too-sharp teeth gleaming from her too-wide mouth. Her imperfect Tana'avarian nonetheless melodic, "Morning, Liss. New spell."
Lissa only grunted in response, then motioned with her basket in the vague direction of [Silent Thicket], raising her eyebrows in an unspoken question.
"Yes, ready. After you," Skottie said, gracefully motioning Lissa forward as if she didn't believe the half-awake girl would keep up if she went first.
Lissa grunted, walking just ahead of her taller, more shapely companion into the crisp pre-dawn forest. She registered with mild surprise that her path through the dark forest was illuminated with her own [night light] spell that she must have cast upon waking. They walked for a time in companionable silence, when Lissa remembered she had packed breakfast in her satchel the night before. She withdrew a couple of her mother's hardy rolls, with thick pats of creamy sheep's butter and summer-berry preserves tucked into their middles, and handed one to Skottie. Skottie took the proffered roll with a quick, precise movement. Whatever species she might be, Skottie had enviable speed and accuracy with her body. As they walked side by side, munching on Tecka's bread, Skottie's swaying gate reminded Lissa, not for the first time, of a snake or eel's lithe predatory grace, not something she ever thought she'd associate with any [alchemist].
They neared a familiar fork in the path, and Skottie led them north west. As they walked along, the [night light] became less and less necessary. The slowly rising sun gently illuminated the forest's bare branches which allowed the unfiltered light of dawn to warm their backs as morning's long shadows stretched out before them.
Only when they were over half way to [Silent Thicket] did Lissa realized Skottie hadn't really answered her question about why she glowed red to Lissa's sharp acuity. "Wait, wait—what new spell is making you red?"
Skottie burbled with laughter, and answered in her quirky idiolect, "Sleepy Lissa slow. Wakeful Lissa ask question upon question. New spell [cold resistance]; upgrade from basic version. Better." She extended her long, bare arms, grinning with her too-pointy smile. "Not cold."
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Lissa nodded appreciatively at Skottie's accomplishment, and teased, "No wonder I didn't find you at Piltho's hiding under ten layers of winter clothing."
Another laugh answered her, "*You* find *me*? Maybe in the afternoon when you wake."
Lissa just shook her head, grinning despite herself. Her ruddy-complexioned companion had a point after all; puberty had done nothing if not make Lissa even more of night owl. While they both would have been happy to walk together in silence, Skottie often conversationally prodded Lissa on early morning ventures—Lissa wanted to believe her intentions were purely altruistic, but sometimes it felt like Skottie was intentionally vexing her. Either way, by the time they approached [Silent Thicket] half an hour later, Lissa's mind felt sharply alert.
An older [guard] stood next to the hidden [threshold], and visibly relaxed when he recognized the two young women. Skottie had been coming here for years with her master to harvest the rich alchemical resources within, and Lissa had taken to accompanying her occasionally over the last few months. After exchanging pleasantries, they asked if there was anything they should know this morning. There was nothing unusual to report about the dungeon's normal status. He also told them that they were the first arrivals for the day and that no one else should be inside. Thanking him, they prepared to enter the dungeon.
"I can still only maintain three different spells at once if I need to focus on them, and we'll definitely want [eyes of the forest]," Lissa said. She was working hard to increase her [capacity] for spellcasting, but her unreliable [focus] was making that a difficult proposition.
"Hmm," came Skottie's reply. "Perhaps [smell ripeness] best for today. I will cast [sense danger] for us both and [sharpen sense] for myself like have done before."
Lissa nodded her assent, but held up a finger to indicate that Skottie should wait a moment. With her own extremely sharp acuity, she *needed* to cast the gauzy [filter senses] spell before adding any others to her already flooded pallet. It would require more concentration than her other spells. [Smell ripeness] and [eyes of the forest] required an initial application of power and then lasted several hours until the magic in the spellform was fully consumed; [filter senses], on the other hand, required constant attention if she wanted to allow for more or less information, like opening the side of a lamp to allow more light to spill out. Lissa expertly wove the adjustable gauze of the spellform from her [shadow, haze] fundament, and allowed it to settle over her.
Only after [filter senses] was fully in place did she cast [smell ripeness] over the two of them. The second-order spell [smell ripeness] would allow them to quickly assess an ingredient's appropriateness for harvest by odor. It had taken both her and Skottie a great deal of practice to learn to interpret the sense's information, but it had made the overall quality of their harvests improve significantly since Lissa had learned the spell a few months ago. The forest's scents became richer, muskier, even spicier as the interlocking mesh of the magical green filaments of the spellform settled over Lissa's olfactory. Her tear ducts stung ever so briefly as they worked to keep the sharp scents out of her eyes. The dormant winter duff offered up the quiet tang of unblossomed snowdrops, the chilled musty decay of humus, and the rich spice of perfectly ripe pine nuts. Lissa and Skottie both took a moment to adjust to their enhanced sensory load. The other girl always seemed to recover quickly from such things, and Lissa tried with varying success to be grateful that at least one of them could.
"Ready?" Skottie asked, having watched Lissa recover more slowly.
"Ready," Lissa said with a nod.
Even with her [shadow, haze] fundament's filter firmly in place, Lissa braced herself to receive Skottie's casting of [sense danger]. No matter how much she practiced, the extra senses were still a lot for her. Perhaps if her mental attributes rose a bit more, she wouldn't need the magical filter, but she did need it. Her heart filled with gratitude every time she considered the happenstance of encountering the [umbral wolves] just a couple weeks before her childhood [Ancient's Blessing] ceremony that had given her the ability. Skottie motions drew Lissa to the present, and she felt the mud-brown spell squelch almost like a second pair of ears onto the sides of her head. Lissa tuned her magical filter to allow the spell to feed her information. [Sense danger] wasn't like physical senses which gave specific information about real objects, rather it was almost like a song with tempo and mood, right now as peaceful and relaxed as the chirping of the forest's winter birds. When they entered the dungeon, Lissa knew, it would take on eerie tension that would keep her alert for very real threats.
One last spell, [eyes of the forest], she drew out from her [life, flora] fundament. This would make her fifth casting of the third-order spell, the first third-order spell she had unlocked. Even with the inherent knowledge of the spell granted to her by [ancient's blessing], the gossamer green thread seemed to barely hold together under her intangible manipulation. Rather than continue pulling, she gently twisted the length of the strand, giving it just a tiny bit more stability before manipulating it into a long crisscross that resembled a ladder. Gritting her teeth and upping the strength of her [filter senses], she placed the glowing spellform over her eyes. Nothing changed, and she let out the breath she'd been holding. Her haze filter fully held back the visual highlighting of every harvestable plant- or fungus-based life-form within two man-heights that the [eyes of the forest] spell should be showing her.
"Thanks for waiting," Lissa said to Skottie. Then she carefully repeated the process and placed the viridian spellform over the other girl's rust red eyes.
Skottie closed her eyes almost immediately, but opened them again soon after. The predatorily graceful woman grinned, her too-wide smile revealing too-sharp teeth, and for just a moment, the [sense danger]'s soundtrack played a high, quavering note. Not for the first time, Lissa wondered how much of the what the spell informed her of came from the depths of her own psyche.
"Let's go." Skottie's melodic voice oozed with eagerness.
"Wait—[muffle]," Lissa sighed, but the final spell of her suite didn't need much fussing. The doubled chain of inky black loops went over each of their hands and feet, which would keep the sound they made while harvesting and traversing the dungeon from traveling farther than a couple feet. "There. All done," Lissa brushed her hands off against each other as if removing dirt after working in the garden.
Together, the two girls finally turned toward the dungeon's entrance. [Silent Thicket]'s [threshold] was unlike that of [Hidden Glade]. Instead of a double wide, perfectly flat entryway, only a sliver of mirrored finish winked at them from between two blackened halves of a dead oak tree trunk, split long ago by lightning. A few planks had been nailed against the long-withered trunk to create a sort of ladder up to the silvery cleft.
"I will go first," Skottie declared matter-of-factly.
Lissa shrugged, not arguing the point, and waited for the other girl to climb the four steps up to the cleft and disappear through the narrow [threshold]. Taking a deep anticipatory breath, Lissa nodded to the impassive [guard] and climbed after Skottie.