The next morning rolled around with surprising speed. They all spent most of the previous day on their individual projects, only coming together at the end to put a meal together and recap on the day.

Verdan had made decent progress. He’d finally finished his first gathering spiral and was feeling a bit more confident on making an Aether construct to monitor the darjee camp. It would be Aether intensive, but that wouldn't be an issue if he kept progressing at this rate.

Each successive spiral was slightly more complex than the last, requiring more concentration, more time spent on compression and a better grasp of splitting the mind to work on different tasks. However, it was still all things that Verdan had done in the past, so he was confident of progressing at a reasonable speed.

‘So, I’ve given it some thought, and I’m going to go ahead with using a spell to monitor the darjee camp, though that does mean that we’ll need to go back every other day to recharge it.’ Verdan announced his decision after finishing the fresh fruit they had for their breakfast.

‘That’s no issue. It will give us a chance to explore the area as well. There may be other threats that we haven’t encountered yet,’ Kai said with a firm nod of approval.

‘I’m making good progress with my reading, but there’s still a long way to go. Perhaps you could join me tomorrow?’ Gwen added, looking over at Verdan with a raised brow.

‘Of course, if we head down today so I can position the spell, I can then spend tomorrow going through what you’ve found so far,’ Verdan said with a smile. He was already looking forward to sinking his teeth into those journals. He had plenty of alchemy equipment on the way. He wanted to get his knowledge to the point that he’d have something to do with it all.

The others all agreed with his plan, so getting everything packed up for their journey back to the darjee camp was straightforward enough. Now that they’d been there once, it would be an easier trip, but they were still going through mostly unknown land to get there.

‘Good luck,’ Gwen called out as she sat on the step of the college and watched them go, a book in one hand already. It was an almost idyllic setting, an objectively pretty woman waiting for their return to a quaint cottage with well-tended grounds and magical protection. It almost felt like a scene from a terrible romance novel.

Kai lingered for a moment more before turning away and leading them out across the wards and into the forest proper. The safe feeling from the ward faded as soon as they left the glade, the morning light bathing the dense undergrowth as they retraced their steps once more.

The place they’d fought the spiders looked no different from anywhere else now, which begged the question of how many fights might have happened here, the land reclaiming the bodies and growing over the scars to hide it from new travellers. Verdan could see a similar thought on the faces of his companions as they pushed onward, the sooner they got there, and he could enact the spell, the better.

Despite their misgivings, they made good time to the camp, finding it just as abandoned as previously, though the refuse pit showed some wear and tear from scavengers.

‘So what now?’ Kai asked, his posture tense and his eyes watchful despite the lack of darjee.

‘Well, now I create an Aether construct with two integral components, one for detection and one for messaging me. This may take some time, so don’t let anything interrupt me,’ Verdan said, taking a seat on the floor in the centre of the camp, his staff across his legs, and taking a few deep breaths as he closed his eyes.

Like with any spell, visualisation was vital in creating a construct, perhaps even more so than usual. With that in mind, Verdan started from the basics of what he wanted and worked his way up.

The first step was to visualise a contained well of Aether that would power the construct. Verdan's personal choice for this was a sealed box that contained a few ports for connecting external spells to the Aether within.

Of course, it didn't really matter what form the well took. The key was that there was a clear barrier between the Aether inside the well and the ambient Aether in the outside world. Verdan chose a sealed box as he also visualised that the connections for the Aether were one-way only, which helped limit Aether loss.

With that done, Verdan visualised two spells attaching to the connectors. The first would detect nearby creatures and categorise them as either humanoid or non-humanoid. It would repeat this effect every four hours.

The second spell would send a direct message to Verdan with the information from the first spell. Thankfully, he would be staying nearby, so the Aether cost wasn't too exorbitant.

The mental strain of holding everything together had been building as Verdan worked. This was a complicated construct to make, one that was straining his ability to keep it all together. He had to act quickly.

‘Gward canfo dyn neges,’ Verdan intoned, each word taking exponentially more effort to speak, with the fourth word seeming to burn his throat on the way out. Despite the pain, the spell took shape as power poured out of him like water and hung in the air like a drop of water, invisible but detectable to his Aether attuned senses.

A pulse of Aether rippled out over the clearing from the droplet, a tight packet of Aether flowing to him from it a moment later as it registered the presence of five humanoids in the local area.

Verdan rose to his feet, his mind not quite catching the problem with the feedback from the spell until he was already turning to speak to Kai. His eyes went wide as he looked at his three companions. It registered five humanoids, not four. There was something, or someone, else here with them.

‘What, what’s wrong?’ Kai asked, eyes narrowing as he saw Verdan’s reaction.

‘Canfo dyn,’ Verdan said, throwing out a quick and dirty spell that was a cut-down version of the construct he’d just created.

A ripple of unseen Aether swept out from him, but this time he was able to get detail on where each of those five readings came from. Kai and the brothers caused disturbances in that wave, but there was another disturbance out in the woods.

Narrowing in on it with the spell, Verdan was able to work out that it was around fifteen feet into the woods. He felt its presence for the briefest of moments before the spell faded, but it wasn't enough to gather any more details.

Verdan had spent far too much Aether already between the construct and that rough spell. He dared not cast anything else right now, just in case they found themselves in a fight.

Verdan’s gaze must have automatically turned and followed his attention to the fifth person, as Kai frowned and glanced over to see what he was looking at.

With both of them looking their way, the hidden watcher realised it was exposed and bolted. There was a barely visible flash of grey fur as something small jumped to its feet and ran away, moving nimbly through the dense foliage.

Kai growled something and took off after the creature with blistering speed, his legs almost a blur as he went into a dead sprint. It was the first time that Verdan was able to see Kai use his powers without any distractions, but sadly there wasn’t time to do a proper study of them right now. All he could do was watch as Kai streaked off into the forest, only to plow into a wall of soil that thrust itself up out of the ground in his path. The power behind Kai’s charge was enough for him to smash through the wall with little difficulty, but it slowed him down and disoriented him for a moment.

Verdan frowned as he hurried along in Kai’s wake. Kai had said the darjee never fought with magic, which meant this was likely something else entirely. Keeping his focus on the world around them, Verdan watched for any further signs of magic while Kai raced off into the undergrowth at speed. Tim and Tom were running to them now as well, their weapons in hand and expressions grim.

Verdan felt a few flickers of Aether further into the woods, but the distance meant that there was little he could do without seeing what was happening or who they belonged to. Pushing on into the woods as fast as he could, Verdan arrived just as a dishevelled Kai smashed through another wall of soil and thrust his spear down at the creature he was pursuing.

The creature heaved up a smaller, much more compact wall at the last moment, catching the strike and stopping it mere inches away from its target. The momentary pause in the creature's flight gave Verdan the time to see it clearly.

Five-foot tall with long and thick claws, grey fur and large dark eyes, the creature was something Verdan was familiar with, a fwyn.

Fwyn were one of the main non-human members of the Grym Imperium. They were exceptional builders and diggers, even without their inherent magic. More importantly, that meant that their descendants were included in his oath of service.

Kai had smashed his spear free of the wall while Verdan was recovering from his surprise at seeing a fwyn, the sorcerer closing the distance to the smaller creature before it could react and thrusting his spear towards its chest.

‘Ast!’ Verdan barked, conjuring a hasty shield in between the two combatants, stopping Kai’s blow but shattering under the impact. ‘Kai, stop!’

‘What are you doing, Verdan? It might be working with the darjee!’ Kai shouted in surprise, his eyes flicking to Verdan for a brief moment.

‘Stand down, I want to talk with him first,’ Verdan said, waving for the oncoming brothers to wait where they were as he slowly moved towards the fwyn, not wanting to antagonise it with any quick motions. ‘Do you speak common?’ He saw its eyes flick to him for a moment before back to Kai. It clearly realised something was happening but wasn’t sure what to do.

‘Monsters don’t talk, do they?’ Kai asked as he backed up a few steps, some of the tension draining away as he watched them both.

‘Some of them do. I’ll see if I know the language he speaks,’ Verdan said as he came to within half a dozen steps of the fwyn, capturing its gaze with his own. He wasn’t surprised it didn’t speak common. That was rare even back in the height of the empire. ‘High Imperial? Traders Tongue? Low Imperial?’ He listed each of the other languages of the empire, in its own words. The fywn reacted to the final question, and Verdan smiled in satisfaction, low imperial it was.

‘A human speaks the tongue of our ancestors?’ The fwyn replied in the same language, its voice surprisingly low and gravelly for its short stature.

‘I do. My name is Verdan.’

‘I am Gruthka. Why do you squat in the camp of the Darjee, sachka?’ Gruthka used the same word for the darjee as the others had, causing Kai to visibly tense. The last word he used wasn’t one Verdan recognised, though, and he’d been raised speaking low imperial.

‘Sachka?’ Verdan let the word hang as a vague prompt.

‘Yes, one like him,’ Gruthka pointed at Kai, who immediately bristled at the action. ‘I saw you use magic.’

‘Ah,’ Verdan paused, weighing his options, before deciding that honesty was always the best policy. ‘I’m no sorcerer,’ he decided that sorcerer was the best translation, ‘I am a Wizard.’

‘A Wizard? They all died with the empire. The tales of our forefathers tell us as much,’ Gruthka’s eyes were wide as he stared at Verdan, his voice full of disbelief.

‘Not all of them, I slept under a spell and awoke only recently,’ Verdan said, giving Gruthka the full story in the knowledge that he couldn’t spread it to humans and cause a problem. Gruthka clearly understood what a wizard actually was, which somehow made proving it more important. ‘I’m surprised that you know what a wizard is. The humans I’ve met so far have no records that go that far back.’

‘We Fwyn live longer than humans and pass on our ancestral memories with pride. We’ve watched your kind burn their own civilisation down many times in the pursuit of strength. The Empire was a different time, though that would explain why you chose to talk rather than to kill. Why are you here then, Wizard?’

‘I was placing a ward on the area to alert me if any darjee return,’ Verdan said, keeping it simple to see what information the fwyn would offer them.

‘They will. They’ve been hunting this area for some time. Things have been different recently, though. They’re capturing sentients, not just hunting them. Have they taken one of yours?’

‘No, we haven’t encountered them yet, but I was told how much of a threat they could be. Do you have any idea of when they’ll return?’ Verdan asked, trying to prompt the fwyn further.

‘Our forefathers passed down stories of wizards who fought to hold together what they could while the world crumbled around them. Wizards who held to their oath, even when no one else did. Are you one of them?’ Gruthka’s gaze was intent as he watched Verdan, giving his words a weight that resonated with him.

It was a difficult question. It cut deep to Verdan's worries about his new life in this changed world. He was no hero. He’d seen true heroes fighting in the war. He wasn’t going to start a crusade to rebuild the empire in his own image or make the world a better place. That didn’t mean he could just let it go, though. He’d sworn an oath, and he couldn’t just walk away from that. He knew that it would make his life difficult and would bring trouble down on him, but he couldn’t live with himself if he abandoned the principles that his friends had fought and died for.

‘Yes,’ Verdan said, the single word breaking the pregnant pause that had built while he wrestled with the idea. ‘My oath still stands.’

‘Then I ask for your help. The darjee have ravaged my clan. They have been hunting us for the last few months. Each time they come by, they capture a few more of us, taking the captives to their main camp. We suspect they are trying to breed slaves or, worse, livestock,’ Gruthka said, ending on a whisper that was filled with dread.

‘Gods below, that is a horrid thought,’ Verdan said, repulsed by even the idea of what the darjee may be trying to accomplish. ‘I will do what I can, but I am no war wizard, able to destroy regiments of enemies single-handedly.’

‘No, I understand that, but if we kill this hunting party when they next arrive, we will have destroyed a third of their strength. Enough to risk a raid on their camp to free my people and drive off the darjee.’ Gruthka’s large eyes all but sparkled with excitement and hope, drawing Verdan even deeper into his plan.

‘How many of you would join in this raid?’

‘I could convince a dozen to follow me if you were coming. Wizards are still a big part of our ancestral stories and would give them hope,’ Gruthka grew more excited with each word, no doubt envisioning them driving the darjee before them like rats.

‘A dozen? How many would we be facing, both here and then in the main camp?’

‘Twenty now, with a total of sixty, so forty more at the camp.’ Gruthka’s energy was waning now as he considered the odds that were stacked against them.

‘I will help, but let me speak with my companions,’ Verdan said, giving Gruthka a nod before stepping aside and gesturing the others over so he could translate and explain most of what Gruthka had told him. The part about the empire would stay out. He’d simply say that the Fwyn had come across people like him in the past.

‘This is a dangerous mission indeed, though from what you’ve said, the area will not truly be safe until the darjee are dealt with. I’m in favour of it,’ Kai said, still keeping one eye on Gruthka while they had their meeting.

‘We agree. Besides, it’ll be a good chance to earn our keep,’ Tim said with a hefty grin and a wink.

‘My companions agree,’ Verdan said, switching back to low imperial for Gruthka, ‘we will aid you in this fight. Tell me what you know.’