Nic prepared for the journey as best he could. Nylea provided him with a condensed form of the Esper fruits, combined with countless other medicines to form a two compact pills, no bigger than a fingernail and scented with coffee’s rich earthiness mixed with tart, fragrant sweetness and vanilla.

They were true treasures. Nic’s Archive Recall registered them the peak of E-Class.

“That should provide you ten minutes of protection against any alien influences. But. If you go longer than ten minutes, it will burn your inherent Esper quickly. Leaving you defenseless.” She explained. “Be careful. Medicine like this is always a double-edged sword.”

Nic nodded along. He didn’t really understand Esper, except that it was the energy of the mind, fulfilling a similar role to aura in strengthening and reinforcing one’s natural capacity. After raising his Mental Acuity several times, he’d found that his perceptions increased and time almost began to slow when he entered dangerous situations, his mind working faster than ever before in the heat of combat.

As for using it more actively? He truly had no ideas…

"Ten minutes," Nic echoed. "I think I can keep myself out of trouble for that long."

"We'll see." Nylea answered, with a trace of a mysterious smile as she drifted away to tend to her cauldron; a furnace into which herbs, grasses, and dried powders went, producing a many-colored flame that smelled of pine resin.

Unfortunately for any mood that might have blossomed just then...

Kiana was also here.

She looked up from carefully splitting and dicing long stalks of medicinal grass, her eyes full of weary despair.

"I have been cutting, grinding, and chopping since dawn." She sighed. "Can you tell her to actually teach me alchemy? I already know how to work a knife, I was a line cook. And somehow, somehow, this is worse."

"Patience makes practice simple, practice makes perfection easy." Nylea called back, keeping her back turned.

"And the measurements!" Kiana continued, not quite talking to Nic, but not directly at Nylea either. "'As small as a longan fruit' or 'as much time as it takes a spark to fly off a piece of flint'. Who talks like that, I ask you? It's ridiculous. I even got her a watch, and she refuses to use it."

"The watch is very nice. Such a clever machine." Nylea agreed, with saintly patience. "But this is how I was taught and how I will teach."

Nic carefully backed away from the strange argument, giving Nylea a last wave before darting out the door.

Tarquin was waiting outside.

"I don't know how you made it out of there alive," The satyr-boy joked, nudging his friend across the shoulders. "When you said we were going on an adventure together, I didn't realize you meant something so dangerous."

"And you let me go in alone?" Nic shot back, mock-serious.

"You always were a hog for glory." Tarquin said.

“Just don’t feel the need to keep up.” Was Nic’s riposte. “I know it’s hard for you mere mortals.”

As they made their way into the center of town, the sense of power Nic got from the sealed door floating above the temple became stronger and stronger. It was still faint - but it was everywhere. He watched as a woman burned talisman-runes into lengths of prepared bark. She was using a blot of flame held directly and harmlessly atop two fingers to scorch the runes onto her ‘paper’ in place of a pen, saving her the need for costly tools.

Using her Shard to write instead of an exterior, unreliable tool was already clever, but what caught Nic’s eye was that she dipped her fingers into the ash at the bed of the fire each time as well; that ash was made from burning her failed attempts, and with each unsuccessful talisman, more Essence gathered within the fire.

As it danced, talismanic runes actually floated within the tongues of flame, close to the blue core of the heat. As best Nic could tell, she’d been keeping the same fire going for days now- gathering strength all the while.

“Hey, ink-for-brains.” Tarquin tapped him on the head with his knuckles. “Are we going or what?”

Reluctantly, Nic pulled his gaze away from the scene and to Tarquin. “Right, let’s head up.”

‘Heading up’ meant clinging to Tarquin’s back as the boy levitated them both upwards, his robes fluttering in the breeze. Together they landed on the tallest spire of the temple, the gate hanging in the air before them.

It had taken all of Nic’s focus and effort to push the door shut earlier, and very nearly damaged his soul in the attempt. Now he found it opened without any struggle at all. It was worrying how easy it was; the door wanted to open. The silver chains loosened and fell slack as the twin door swung open, wider and wider, a wave of power unfurling and lifting Tarquin’s hair as it sent feelers of mist cascading down the temple’s tiered rooftops.

“Take your pill.” Nic instructed, before downing his own. “In we go.”

And they both stepped forward, unto the breach and into the unknown.

---

Inside the world of the golden doorway, everything was made of mist and fluttering paper. Layer after layer of densely scrawled talisman papers folded together to form the twisting limbs and solid trunks of trees, their edges fluttering about in the breeze. Mist roamed under canopies of paper and origami flowers. Water flowed, carrying runes in its depths, appearing and disappearing amidst the quick-running currents.

The mist pulsed with that impossible color - neither yellow, blue, nor green, but akin to all of them, a color that reminded Nic of pearls and beetle’s shells. Motes of impossible light drifted in mist that took on more mundane hues, lines of fog sweeping through the empty space like the descent of an artist’s brush. In a matter of moments it had shaped the outlines of an entire world in broad, bold pastels.

They stood in a swamp of dark blue waters made from mist, before twin trees of yellow with trunks covered by twisted vines. Flowers of white and pink grew along the banks, while paper fish swam below the waters.

“Amazing…” Tarquin sighed out. His eyes were wide and full of wonder as he reached down, lifting up one of the origami beasts. It dissolved into a swarm of shapes like butterflies and escaped from his fingertips, leaving a single bent, folded square of paper fluttering about in the cage of his fingers trying to fight free.

With a laugh Tarquin let it go free.

“The runeworks…” Nic was…

Truly, truly in awe. The script was alive. Each time the talisman papers settled into place they formed new combinations, the edges of their characters fitting together like puzzle pieces. Yet every combination was capable of carrying the same enchantment, in endless permutations.

He actually felt his soul ache with the knowledge of what this would have taken…

Centuries of practice to even brush this level of skill…

Decades of research to make it even slightly possible…

Years of work to bring it into being…

And yet what it did, at its core, was simple. It was a gathering array. Only it didn’t gather aura, or Essence, or Esper.

It gathered the strange energy of Inspiration itself, from somewhere deep within the formation.

Nic started forward. He walked into the mist, step after step, descending into a land of fog - only to reemerge at the opposite edge of the lake and the twin trees. He had wrapped completely around. Tarquin paused and turned.

“That was the weirdest thing to see…”

“You go then, and I’ll know what it looks like.” Nic responded.

Nodding, Tarquin stepped forward. As he passed between the two trees, space bent and warped like folding paper, creating impossible mirrors that looked in on him from all directions. As they closed completely over Tarquin, Nic was expecting his friend to reappear at the grove’s edge alongside him…

But no such thing happened.

There was sudden stillness. The paper insects and herons that filled the lake made no sound but a faint, dry rustling.

Tarquin wasn’t coming back.

The thought stung into Nic’s mind with hideous fury and he burst into action. His long, powerful legs braced, aura pushing down into the roots of their musculature, and Nic kicked off. The leap was powerful enough to send him rocketing high over the trees-

But he crashed back down right where he was. Slamming into the empty ground and sending the fog rushing away in a wide circle.

Nic growled in frustration. This damn world was a trap. He wanted to escape, to go in any direction but a closed circle, and his eyes fixed on the far mountains painted in pink mists.

As he did, the paper forest erupted. It rose up into a wave, a wall of fluttering butterflies. Nic was washed back by the tide and for a moment, all there was around him were countless runes in flight, rearranging themselves according to some impossible and meticulous pattern.

It couldn’t have been more of a holy land for Nic. The work of a master to study under.

But right now all Nic could think of was where Tarquin had gone. When the world regained form and focus…

He stood in the barren heart of the desert. Fragments of white emerged from red-mist sands. Bones. He was looking upon the tattered remains of a familiar campsite, where Azmin Hale had once ruled over the scared and weak chaff of humankind. All that remained now were charred corpses.

For a moment guilt stung at Nic, but then anger returned. Was this place trying to toy with him?

“Not here…”

The secret to motion in this strange world was to push his way forward with his thoughts, not his body.

He picked a point on the horizon and focused with the single-minded force of fury.

As he set his will upon his goal, the landscape rearranged once more. The world moved for him.

When the fluttering origami butterflies settled into shape, he stood in a dark tomb. The papers covering the walls barely stirred, giving the impression of ancient, solid stone. Painted over every surface by the crawling mists were images of ancient gods, their silhouettes outlined in the blue of open sky.

In the depths of the tomb stood a massive statue, bent under the weight of an enormous golden sphere. In the shadow of that statue was a hallowed throne carved from sandstone, with a lions head outlined in gold at each armrest, and a base that was held up by dozens of miniature statues laboring like sinners in hell.

The throne was empty.

Nic knew where he was. Or at least, he could guess…

“The Hall of the Sun…”

The core of the Scales of Sand Dungeon.

“Are these…”

What was happening here? Each time Nic tried to move forward, he stumbled onto a new and desolate scene. He had figured out how to move- but not how to steer himself.

“Sofia?”

There was no answer. Nic’s brow furrowed. He was alone, and faced with a problem that was hard to break his way through by force…

The situation was stacked against him, to say the least.

But…

Maybe the solution was that it couldn’t be done by force. Maybe the solution was in surrendering…

Sofia had said this was a realm of the spiritual and the mental. What was moving Nic was his will.

A will that was agitated, angry, and forceful; it had led him from one scene of desolation to the next. Was that the secret? Was it as simple as his own emotions guiding him.

Nic bound his fury with an iron tether. He choked it as best he could, forcing himself to breathe slowly in and out until the fog of hot anger receded from his mind. His fists curled, then gradually lost their tension.

Instead he focused on the words he and Tarquin had shared. On the morning meal arguing about dumplings. The light, careless way he felt when he was surrounded by friends, talking a lot and saying little..

Once more the world changed shape with the fluttering of paper…