Over the next two days, the range of Wirrin’s new sensation through the ground expanded on its own, without her needing to concentrate. She could feel further and deeper, and those hills and valleys below the wetland were back.

She wasn’t struggling to keep track of what she was seeing, as she had on that first morning. The headache and nausea didn’t return, though she kept sipping her tea so that it didn’t go to waste.

It was the morning of her fifth day in the wetlands when Wirrin came to her next landmark. This was a much less specific sort of landmark than that rocky outcropping had been. It was a slow, wide creek. She could see and feel the crocodiles floating like logs in the water.

This creek was a problem. If she’d been confident to ford the neck-deep water and continue as directly south as she could, she would reach her destination by the end of the day. But Wirrin had no confidence in her ability to deal with the crocodiles, with the buzzing, patchy, stagnant water.

In her twenty years of exploring Nesalan, Wirrin had killed quite a number of predators who had thought she could serve for a meal or two. Compared to the number of wolves, cats, bears, birds, hyenas, snakes, and lizards, Wirrin had killed a single crocodile in her life. It had been hard and scary, more than she remembered any of the rest being.

In the creek ahead, Wirrin could see and feel three crocodiles, floating lazily. It was late enough in the morning that she might hope they had eaten already and would leave her alone. But there was no kind of guarantee of that.

Still Wirrin paused, several metres from the edge of the creek, and considered fording straight across. Though it had been a long time since she was here last, she knew that following the stream east to a much safer crossing and then back west would add an extra two days to her trip.

Surely she wasn’t in a hurry, or she’d have left as soon as she had made her map. But, unlike two days spent with Bilar, Wirrin was not much enjoying the wetland. The insects were getting worse the deeper she got into the swamp, further from the mint and into wetter ground.

If she could save herself four days, there and back, of travel, would that be worth the danger?

But wasn’t there a constant rumbling in the back of her head? Hadn’t she already passed proof of what a mage of Mkaer should be able to do? Perhaps it would be tiring, and perhaps it would bring the headache back. She did still have a little tea.

Wirrin closed her eyes and leaned against a tree, it rustled lightly and dripped onto her hair. She focused on her new sense of the ground. She ignored the wriggling worms and the skittering insects and the pleasant ripples of the stream.

Beneath those hills and valleys of harder soil there ought to be stone, surely? Wirrin had lived in a mining town in the mountains for a lot of her life. She knew there was stone down there somewhere.

The headache was already starting to come back when she felt what she thought must be stone. Deep, deep under the soil was something solid and big. Something that felt endless.

‘You ought not strain yourself so soon,’ Mkaer rumbled through the deep stone into her mind.

‘Sin vecetir vana,’ Wirrin thought back. She imagined a simple bridge into the endless-feeling stone, an arch with a central pillar. Her head almost split with the pain as she pulled at the shape she saw in the stone.

That rumbling was deafening, and it drowned out Mkaer’s voice, as that bridge-shaped piece of stone dug its way through the thick soil below the creek. It felt almost as if something popped in Wirrin’s head, as if there were a release of pressure, but it didn’t help the pain.

The bridge shot up through the soft, water-logged soil of the wetland and dragged itself out of the water. Wirrin knew enough about engineering to pull the bridge too high and reach into the ground for that harder soil. She pulled it up like a geyser and packed it under the ends and centre pillar.

Another pop in her head, another release of pressure and this time the pain did subside just a little as she felt something warm running down the side of her head. Wirrin lost her balance and slid to half lay, half sit at the base of the tree she’d been leaning against.

The rumbling of the world subsided and there was a moment of peace before the rumbling, clattering feeling of Mkaer’s voice seemed to crush in against her skull. ‘San opetic bisav ahir fegesav?’

Wirrin liked to think she was fluent in Estanen, and she was. But through the pain, the wobbling, the rumbling, the bleeding, she couldn’t muster the energy to think of a reply in the same language.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

‘I did not think you were taking in the view,’ Wirrin thought back, and it hurt. ‘I simply didn’t care.’

‘Do you care, now?’ Mkaer rumbled, quieter, softer.

‘I don’t regret,’ Wirrin thought as she lay, panting on the ground.

Mkaer’s rumbling receded, too.

It must have been at least an hour that Wirrin lay on the ground with her eyes closed. She was shivering, she felt like throwing up, her head throbbed. But the blood stopped flowing from her nose and left her ear.

Eventually, she sat up against the tree and retrieved her tea skin. She sipped gingerly on the last of her tea, and soon enough the headache and the nausea were receding again. They didn’t leave her, by any measure, but they were much improved.

When, eventually, Wirrin opened her eyes, the world was too bright. But she had succeeded unequivocally. There was a smooth, arched, stone bridge across the creek, and the crocodiles had left.

Moving slowly, Wirrin covered her right ear. She could still hear through her left, it seemed, so the bleeding didn’t indicate any significant damage. The world swam as she moved to unsling her pack and retrieve more food. Her balance was still off.

Slowly, gingerly, she ate until she stopped shivering, a much bigger meal than the breakfast she’d already had. She listened to the animals and the bugs and the worms slowly return to the area and still didn’t feel any crocodiles in the water.

It had to have been more than two hours before she finally got up. She wavered and had to steady herself against the tree. But she kept her feet even as the headache washed over her again.

When the lights had cleared from behind her eyes, Wirrin reached up into the tree for a long branch and pulled it down with a loud crack. It was straight enough, she supposed, to use for a walking stick until her balance returned.

Carefully, slowly, Wirrin stood away from the tree, gently leaning on her stick. The world swam around her as she took slow steps, but the stick was enough to keep her balance down the bank to her marvellous bridge.

Mkaer’s shuddering, thundering voice returned. ‘You could have simply compacted the dirt,’ it rumbled. ‘This was too much.’

Wirrin resisted the urge to shrug as she made her slow way across her bridge. ‘That seems much less fun,’ she thought.

‘Much less dangerous, too,’ Mkaer rumbled.

‘I think you worry too much,’ Wirrin thought, reaching the south bank of the creek. ‘The world is a dangerous place, after all.’

‘Wirrin,’ Mkaer rumbled. ‘If you die, I will be lost again.’

Wirrin tried to remember if Mkaer had ever used her name before. ‘Only for a few months,’ she thought.

Mkaer’s rumbling did not recede quickly, but it said nothing else.

Though Wirrin’s condition improved as she walked, she was much slower than she’d meant to be. She stopped for a long lunch as soon as she found a good spot for a fire, eating again much more than she had been for the past few weeks.

She was honestly impressed with herself to be able to walk all the way through until night. With this new sense of the world around, she could have continued. But she was tired and the headache had not left her since that morning.

Wirrin supposed she still wasn’t in a hurry. It would be fine if she reached the ruin tomorrow. She brewed more willow bark and peppermint tea and ate most of the rest of her food. She would have to hunt on her way back, but she would worry about that when she needed to.

Her head still throbbed and her stomach still clenched when she lay down to sleep in the dark night. But she didn’t mind it in the slightest. Visions of that bridge played in her head when she closed her eyes.

She smiled to herself at the thought that she was the first Fiend mage in five hundred years. Wasn’t that something impressive?

Wirrin felt much better when she woke in mid-morning. The headache and nausea was still there, waiting in the background, but as she sat up she found that the world no longer swam in her head.

She drank more of her bitter tea, much stronger than the last batch, and cooked the rest of her food, leaving only dry rice to eat in her pack. When she got up, her balance stayed, but she decided to keep her walking stick just in case she needed it.

There were a few more diversions on her path to the ruin that morning, but they were nothing compared to the one she had avoided with her bridge. It was only just coming up on noon when Wirrin felt people ahead, pacing and talking, through the ground.

She stopped and tried to listen, but she could not hear them with her ears. When she tried to concentrate, her head ached, and it got her no closer to understanding what was being said.

Wirrin debated stopping for lunch before she approached the people in the wetland, but plain rice didn’t attract her. So she sipped her tea and leaned on her stick and wiped at the dried blood on her face as she continued.

The range of her sense through the ground had expanded massively since yesterday, Wirrin realised only now. It was still several minutes before she could hear the voices with her own ears. Two men, one complaining and one sympathising.

She was fairly good at moving quietly, but Wirrin made little effort to actually sneak up on what felt like a pair of people ahead. One of them noticed her before the other and stopped speaking, shushing the other one as he continued his complaints.

The two men saw Wirrin at the same time she saw them. They stood in a round clearing, where the ground was solid and the grass tall. Both wore very familiar, red-dyed leathers and had very familiar faces.

They had to be much older than the siblings had been, the older of the two looked perhaps fifty and the younger at least the same age as Wirrin. They both had the same, almond-shaped, large, monolidded eyes that the siblings had had, the same thin noses, the same pursed lips, and the same black hair.

Wirrin was certain it wasn’t simply regional resemblance. They had the same, condescending stare and their new leathers were dyed exactly as Wirrin remembered the siblings’ clothes being. The younger of the two carried a thin sword at his hip, longer than the one Wirrin had taken from Leran.

‘Oh,’ said Wirrin. ‘Fellow explorers.’

‘How fortuitous,’ Mkaer rumbled. ‘Sacrifices for Naertral.’