The sons of the Emperor were currently standing around a circle etched into the ground, trying to figure out what strange magic humans had created to cause them so many problems.

They had ignored the first circle to their own peril, ending up trapped by thick poisonous barbed vines. The second one they’d tried to go around, only to get chased by large balls of raging white fire. The third one had been hidden in some bushes and shot ice spears with eerie accuracy that froze anything they touched.

It wasn’t as though they were in any real danger of dying from the attacks, but since the twins left an eye at home, they struggled to adapt at first. And while they were adapting, they got caught off guard or got hit when they’d have usually dodged. Shan Hui did fine for the most part, but he did have a horrible time with the vines (which grew directly below his feet and entangled him before he could do anything about it).

The twins discovered that even with their physical eye gone, something like a magical “ghost eye” had been left in it’s place. This “ghost eye” didn’t function as well as their regular eye, as it showed only muted colors and was nearsighted, but it still gave them depth perception and the ability to see movement. It just took them time to get used to it.

Shan Hui didn’t seem bothered one way or the other with losing an eye. If he got a “ghost eye” to replace the one he’d left behind, he never said. But that was very like him. Unless he was forced into admitting it, he’d never say he was at a disadvantage.

The fourth circle seemed to be the worst of all. Jin’s thin connection to Mei had disappeared when it crossed over it. While the other ones had been about killing any pursuers, this one was clearly for hiding the kidnappers. Without Jin’s spirit rope, they had no way to track their Mother and were at a dead end. The kidnappers hadn’t left even a footprint to follow. It was like they’d just… disappeared.

“Arg!” Yan Li grabbed his hair in frustration. “What the hell are these things?! They’re like fairy magic, aren’t they? Since when could humans use magic like that! Since when?! Why didn’t the Merchants ever say anything about something this important?!”

Shan Hui folded his arms over his chest in silent annoyance while Shi Ji was examining the circle closely. Naturally they’d already tried to erase the circle, first by getting close to mess up the lines and then simply by breaking the ground underneath it.

But the circle seemed almost self-aware and would send lightning to strike whoever messed with it. They’d all gotten fried at least once, and even though the lightning didn’t kill them, they were stunned and weakened for several minutes after each hit. Even Shan Hui, who’d been stoic through most of this trip, was starting to get frustrated at being zapped by lightning. Being the strongest, he’d taken the most hits and now a thin trail of smoke could be seen floating from the top of his head.

Of the three, Shi Ji was the most academic and patient. This was the first time the circles hadn’t been actively trying to kill him, so he could take his time to examine it:

There was a large circle, and in it something like a five pointed star. On each point was another circle, and in that circle was a character. Lines and other smaller circles were placed in the empty spaces, each having a long string of words next to them. An incantation of some kind he could only assume.

He couldn’t make any sense of the incantations, but the characters at the star points looked vaguely familiar to him. They were like warped versions of words he’d read in the scrolls within the Traveler’s Cave.

“Hm.. Maybe this is ‘earth’, then that might be ‘fire’…” Shi Ji was thinking out loud. “Could be the Nature Elements in these little circles… oh, then this…”

“Does it matter if we know how it works? We just need to destroy it.” Yan Li grumped, accidentally echoing his Father’s words from earlier.

Shan Hui smacked him on the head. “If you’re not going to contribute something useful, shut up.”

Yan Li rubbed his head and scowled. He wanted to save Mother as much as anyone in the group, but all his Older Brother did was pick on him! He even gleefully gouged out his eye! Just because he wasn’t clever like Shi Ji didn’t mean he deserved this kind of treatment!

“Yan Li is right about needing to destroy it though.” Shi Ji spoke while still examining the circle before him. “This is a guess, but I think part of how these work is by absorbing energy from nature and turning them into something else. It looks like it lists five elements of nature. If we can disrupt two… maybe that will be enough to break it?”

“Two? Why only two?” Shan Hui asked.

Shi Ji raised a surprised eyebrow. “Didn’t Uncle Ye have you read the same scrolls as me? All living things have affinities to different elements. Our family has a strong affinity to earth and wood because the Old Man is a Mountain Spirit.”

“Even I know that.” Yan Li added snobbishly and then had to evade as Shan Hui made to smack him again.

“Now that you mention it, I do remember.” Shan Hui commented, now ignoring his troublesome younger sibling. “It’s been some time since I was tutored, so it’s easy for me to miss things.” He cleared his throat. “What are the other elements they list?”

“Fire, water, and metal.”

“Ah, we’ve got some affinity to fire, water, and metal. Why not try for those too?”

“Our affinities are weaker in those. The Scholar—” This was a code word used among the siblings for their Aunt Xuiying, “—was an expert with water and the Old Man with fire. They’re both much better at controlling metal than us too. So I thought we should stick to our strongest affinities. Also, I don’t know what triggers the lightning. If we mess with it too much we might get zapped again…”

“What do you think we should do?”

“If my theory about the power source is correct; then cutting off at least two out of the five should break it—”

“What are we standing around for then? Let’s break these annoying scribbles!” Yan Li exclaimed excitedly.

“Hm… I think Shan Hui should do the actual breaking. Even if we reduce the power, it may still send lightning… though I’m hoping it’ll be weaker. Even so, that lightning affects us worse than it does Big Bro. So it seems better for us to disturb it and Shan Hui to take the hit by trying to break it directly.”

Shan Hui sighed but nodded in agreement.

“Brother,” Shi Ji looked at his twin. “Watch me and do as I do.”

Shi Ji took several steps away from the circle and sat down cross-legged and rested his hands lightly on his knees. Eyes closed, he concentrated.

Unlike humans, who had to train and work hard to view the elemental energies around them, the sons of the Fairy Emperor just needed to think on it. In Shi Ji and Yan Li’s case, it helped to close their eyes and meditate a bit to improve their focus, but Shan Hui didn’t need to do even that. He simple looked and saw when it suited him. The twins had lamented the unfairness of their Older Brother’s abilities frequently.

Shi Ji could see the elemental energies being drawn in and absorbed by the magic circle, with earth and metal being absorbed in greater quantities. He relaxed a bit seeing his theory proven correct. Above their individual written symbols in the circle each energy type swirled like glowing whirlpools before being guided to the center. The energies then combined in an unnatural way, turning into something else, and then… did… whatever it was. Shi Ji didn’t know exactly, as he barely understood the circle to begin with.

He wondered why the circle’s creator had limited themselves to only five elements. There were more, some more powerful, yet only five were being used. He really wanted to know, to understand, these strange circles. Once they’d saved Mother, perhaps the Merchants could help him find out…

Anyway, now wasn’t the time for distractions!

He “reached out” and redirected the earth and wood element away from the circle. Yan Li did the same. If what they were doing could be seen with the naked eye, it would have looked like they were creating a hollow sphere of earth and wood energy around the magic circle. Only a small amount of earth elemental energy was now being absorbed, and none of the wood. Tiny cracks could be visibly seen in the circle’s etchings.

Shan Hui stepped forward and placed a hand on the etchings, grunting slightly as the circle attempted to stun him with lightning. But since the elemental energies were out of balance, the effect was weakened and just felt unpleasant rather than disorienting him. The circle kept showering him with these minor zaps.

He attempted to “rub” the etching out of the dirt, but that didn’t work. After thinking a few moments, he shrugged and “grabbed” the water elements still peacefully circle around them. The water elements bunched together awkwardly in his hands for a moment before he roughly jammed them in wood circle. The effect was almost immediate, the cracks began to widen and the lightning continued to weaken.

Pleased, Shan Hui began doing something similar to the other circles. Grabbing elements as though they were puffy pieces of wool to stuff into a blanket, he jammed them into opposing circles. Before he’d finished, the entire circle cracked cleanly in two and then promptly disintegrated, destroyed.