As it turned out, having a direction and a distance did not make finding a well-hidden cave an easy task. Reaching the general area had only taken Juniper and Faro a few hours, but it was now well after dark and with nothing to show for their search.

“Maybe there’s nothing here,” Juniper grumbled as she stoked the campfire with a stick. They’d decided to call it quits once it had gotten too dark to see. Juniper could only make a light big enough to cover her immediate surroundings, which didn’t bode well for a night search.

“Zaldia wouldn’t have sent you after nothing,” Faro said. “Trust me.”

“So you keep saying, but so far it’s not looking good.” Juniper sighed. “We’ll give it tomorrow as well, but I’m not wasting more time after that.”

“What are you going to do, then? Just stumble around in hopes you find something?”

Juniper shrugged. “I guess?”

“Or, you could just do the Professor’s quest and maybe stumble onto something in the process,” Faro said, grinning. “Two birds, one stone.”

“We’ll see,” Juniper said, throwing her stick into the fire. The fire engulfed it in an instant, sparks flying off as the flames crackled. She gestured to the fire. “Think this is big enough?”

“It should be,” Faro said, taking his share of the eggs out of his backpack.

They’d decided to split them evenly, even though Faro hadn’t really contributed to the fight. His logic, Juniper thought, had been flawless: even if she was delusional and there was no time loop, then it was just fair he be compensated for helping her with Zaldia’s quest. And if she wasn’t delusional, then she could just come back the next iteration and get more eggs.

Since Juniper didn’t really have anything to lose by humoring him, she decided to go along with the split.

“The book said you’re supposed to burn them to a fine dust, and then ingest or inhale the dust.” She’d had the foresight to look into how to prepare masked ash snake eggs before leaving for the trip.

“Do you have to break them first?”

“No, you cook them whole.” She paused as she realized she’d forgotten a crucial step. “You don’t happen to have a pan with you, do you?”

Faro raised an eyebrow. “Me? A pan? Who do you take me for?” He broke into a grin. “A savage? Of course I have a pan.” He rummaged into his backpack, taking out a small pan, about two hand spans long.

Juniper blinked. “I didn’t expect you to actually have one.” He was a noble, after all, and she was pretty sure nobles didn’t cook.

Faro shrugged. “I figured I’d get bored of rations after a few days. It never hurts to be prepared.”

“Handy,” Juniper murmured.

They each threw an egg into the pan, setting it down on top of the fire, propping it with some large rocks.

Juniper took out her pocket watch. “The book says it takes about twenty minutes for the whole thing,” she said, tapping her finger against the watch.

Faro yawned. “Wake me up if I fall asleep, will you?”

Juniper kept watch for the next twenty minutes, stoking the fire every once in a while. Once her watch told her it was time, she leaned in to inspect the eggs.

If she hadn’t been keeping an eye on them the whole time, she might have thought Faro had replaced them with fresh eggs–they hadn’t changed at all. “Maybe the fire’s not hot enough?” she asked herself out loud. Frowning, she tapped one egg with the tip of her nail.

The egg instantly broke apart, collapsing into a fine, blue dust. “Okay, that was weird. Hey, Faro!”

“Yes, I saw,” Faro said, leaning over. He gave his egg a light touch, and it dissolved like the first. “So you take this ash and snort it?”

“Or eat it,” Juniper said. “Best to wait for it to cool down, though.”

Faro took the pan out of the fire, letting it rest on a nearby stump for a minute. Using a piece of paper, he picked up his portion of the ash, gave it one look, and threw it down his throat in one go. He winced. “Still a bit hot,” he said.

Juniper rolled her eyes. “Do you feel anything?”

He closed his eyes, his face going blank–he was inspecting his own Soul. “A trickle,” he finally said.

Juniper waited another minute and downed her portion of the ashes. Looking inwardly, she found the same thing Faro had described–a trickle of blue essence going into her Soul.

Taking essence out of treasures like that was, as far as Juniper knew, one of the easier ways to strengthen your Soul. It took time for the Soul to process it and make it its own–some treasures were more easy to absorb than others. The masked ash snake eggs were among the harder ones, but any essence was better than no essence.

“Should we do the others now?” Faro asked.

Juniper shook her head. “You’re supposed to wait till it’s done.” Taking more eggs at once would result in a bigger flow of essence, but it would reduce the total quantity absorbed. “Best to see how long it takes to absorb one, first.”

She had just under three weeks left in this iteration. If the eggs took hours to absorb, she could just chain them for a greater effect. If they took more than a few days, she’d have to take multiple at once to not waste them.

“Probably for the best,” Faro agreed.

***

They renewed their search the next morning, at the crack of dawn.

It should be pretty obvious, she says. A large hole in the ground, she says.

Juniper scowled, grumbling under her breath. The area they had to search was vast, and the forest floor was so irregular that Juniper might have already gone past and missed the entrance many times already. She closed her eyes, pinching her nose. This was just a waste of time.

But Faro seemed convinced there was something to Zaldia’s request, so Juniper pushed on. If they didn’t find anything, at least she’d have the pleasure of telling Faro ‘I told you so.’ For a second time.

It was a pleasant thought.

Pleasant enough that she didn’t notice the ground opening in front of her until the very last moment, her foot expecting something solid and finding nothing. She slipped, falling half-way into the slanted hole.

Juniper’s hand latched onto a nearby root, arresting her fall before she went all the way in. She let out a shaky breath, and pushed herself out of the hole, sitting on the edge. The hole extended deep into the ground, enough that the light didn’t reach the other end. “Faro!” she yelled. “Found it!”

A minute later, Juniper heard the shuffling of leaves and saw Faro appear through the foliage. He took one good look at her and raised an eyebrow. “You fell in, didn’t you?”

Juniper’s face went blank. “No.”

Faro grinned. “It’s okay, I won’t tell anyone.” He paused. “Except Evie. And the rest of the class too, actually.”

Juniper rolled her eyes. He’d probably tell Evie, but she was safe from the rest. Probably. “Let’s go, daylight’s wasting.”

“I don’t think daylight’s going to help much down there.”

“Figure of speech,” Juniper said, stretching her shoulders. The tumble had been painful. “Let’s go in, find the lily, get out. Easy.”

***

It didn’t take long for Juniper and Faro to run into their first monster.

They’d brought out the magic lights almost as soon as they’d gone in. It was as basic as spells could be, and easy to sustain even when casting other spells at the same time. It did have the unfortunate side effect of waking up the local fauna.

A giant bat, almost as tall as a human, flew out from the depths of the tunnel. On instinct, Juniper Willed gravity to pull harder on the bat, but the creature was more resilient than the masked ash snake. It fell under its own weight, its wings no longer powerful enough to sustain its flight, but though clearly affected, it was able to push through the extra burden.

Its maw opened wide, and the bat let out a wordless roar–it made no sound, yet it washed over Juniper leaving behind a strong feeling of dizziness. Juniper’s focus broke, and the bat took flight again, free from Juniper’s magic.

Enraged, the bat closed in the distance, swiping at the still confused Juniper with its claw–but Faro was right there, blasting the bat in the face with a concentrated jet of fire at point blank range.

It recoiled, retreating to a safe distance as it screeched in pain, clawing at its own eyes.

Her head finally clear again, Juniper renewed her attack on the bat, keeping it from taking to the air.

Seeing no avenue to attack, the bat unleashed its sonar wave again–but this time Juniper was prepared for it. Her head swam, and her insides lurched, but she held the spell–for just another second, as Juniper decided to change tracks and canceled her spell, reversing it to slam the bat into the ceiling.

And then she slammed it into the floor.

The bat continued to struggle for a while, but after ten or so repetitions and a few more blasts of fire from Faro, it gave up, going limp.

By the end of it, Juniper could barely stand. She leaned against a wall as she breathed heavily. “That was close.” She felt a bead of sweat as it traveled from her brow to the back of her neck.

Faro frowned. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it again.

Juniper sighed. “Just say whatever it is you want to say.” She sat down next to the wall.

“That shouldn’t have been close,” Faro said, falling into a squat next to the bat. “That’s a Soul Connection level threat at worst–Evie and I might have had some trouble with it if we fought it together, but this should have been easy for someone at Path Inscription.”

Juniper suppressed a pang of irritation. “I haven’t figured out a way to use Gravitation to attack yet,” she said.

“You didn’t need to,” Faro said. “This isn’t about your Path, it’s about how you fight. The fight should have been over when you pinned it to the ground in the first place.”

“Maybe you didn’t feel it, but–”

“It hit me with the sonic wave, too, so yes, I know you were hit,” he interrupted, making Juniper’s mouth snap shut. “You should have been able to maintain the spell regardless.” His frown deepened. “And that thing at the end? What in the abyss was that?”

Confusion bloomed on Juniper’s face. “What was what?”

“I meant the whole up-and-down thing,” Faro clarified. “Instead of just holding it in place and caving its skull in with force, you just wrung out your Soul until you could barely stand. I don’t think you could find a less efficient way of killing it if you tried.”

Juniper blinked. He wasn’t wrong. She looked away, giving Faro a light shrug. “Well, it’s dead now, and I learned my lesson. What does it matter?”

Faro rolled his eyes. “You didn’t learn a lesson. You barely just found out the lesson exists.” He sighed. “You really should have taken Professor Zaldia’s class.”

“Everyone keeps telling me that,” Juniper grumbled.

“Well, it doesn’t matter,” Faro said, his lips curling into a smile. “It was time for the tables to turn anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“Get up, Juniper. I’m going to tutor you in combat.”

***

“We don’t have time for this,” Juniper repeated, for the abyss knows how manyth time.

“Weren’t you the one claiming to be stuck in a time loop?” Fark asked. “We have plenty of time.”

“Not if we want to finish Zaldia’s merry little hunt this iteration,” Juniper complained.

“What I want is to not die because you didn’t know the first thing about fighting.” Faro sighed. “Look, it’s not going to take that long. Better to spend some time now and fix the gaps in your knowledge than to have to wait around because you overstretched your Soul again.” He paused. “Which you just did, anyway. So there’s no harm waiting a bit.”

“Fine,” Juniper said. “But just the basics, alright?”

“It’s all basics, technically,” Faro said. “Sit down.”

“Aren’t we going to spar or something?” Juniper asked, though she did as he said.

“Nope,“ Faro said, grinning. “You’re not at that level yet. I think it took half a year until Zaldia deemed us ready for actual sparring.”

Juniper raised an eyebrow. “What did you do all that time, then?”

“Honing our minds, mostly.” Faro began to pace, his voice gaining a lecturer’s cadence. “That’s what all of Zaldia’s lessons revolve around, really. The practical aspects of fighting are different from practitioner to practitioner, and finding a style that suits you is mostly up to you. But keeping a clear mind is something every combat-oriented practitioner needs to learn eventually.” He paused, kicking a rock with his foot. “Unless they want to die early, I guess.”

“So she had you, what, meditate?” Juniper asked skeptically.

“Almost, but not exactly. It’s more about divesting yourself of emotions and investing yourself in the now. To maintain perfect awareness of everything around you, so you never get distracted. Zaldia said,” Faro furrowed his brow as he tried to remember, then spoke in measured words, “The Will burns with the heat of stars, and the sharper it gets, the hotter it burns. To let it consume you is to die, so you must temper it with the dispassionate cold of the void.” He paused, letting the words sink in. “She calls it the battle trance.”

Juniper frowned as she found herself nodding. She recognized herself in what Faro had said–all her attempts at fighting had been instinctual, letting her Will respond to her heightened emotions. This meant she was never in control–just along for the ride.

“Okay,” she said. “So what do I do?”

“First, you start to meditate. Don’t worry about magic yet, just focus on keeping your emotions at bay–and whatever happens, don’t break your focus.”

“Alright,” Juniper said, closing her eyes. She was familiar enough with meditation–it was taught to students in year one as a way to speed up the absorption of essence. She could even feel the trickle from the snake eggs begin to flow faster. A minute later, her eyes shot open as something poked her in the shoulder, and she saw Faro sitting in front of her with his finger extended.

“You can’t break focus,” he reminded her. “You have to maintain your concentration.”

“Are you sure this is the way to go?” Juniper asked.

“If you can’t remain focused if I poke you, what are you going to do if a monster breaks your arm? Are you just gonna lie down and let it kill you?”

Juniper sighed. “Point made. Alright, let’s try again.”

For the next few hours, Juniper practiced maintaining her concentration in front of Faro’s aggression. He started lightly, with occasional pokes, then as the time passed, graduated her to slaps and punches, and shallow cuts from a dagger.

To Juniper’s surprise, pain wasn’t as big of a distraction as when Faro had made her meditate with her eyes open. She hadn’t considered how distracting the wealth of information that the brain had to process really was–especially when Faro kept feigning attacks only to back away at the last moment, making her flinch.

Flinching was apparently alright, though. She was only meant to keep her thoughts and emotions in check, not the millions of years of evolutionary pressure that brought about a human’s flinch reflex.

After a few hours, when her Soul had finally recovered from the ordeal of the fight, Faro made her add sustaining a spell to the mix, while he amped up the distractions.

She could see, now, the truth in Professor’s Zaldia’s words. The Will was a double-edged sword–deadly when used correctly, but so easy to mishandle and hurt yourself in the process. Keeping her emotions at bay without adding Will into the mix already took a decent amount of effort. Doing so while holding a spell was like trying to separate an emulsion of water and oil with her bare hands.

She was to keep a fist sized stone pinned to the ceiling above her head, which added a bit to her motivation–if she lost her concentration, she’d have a nasty bump to show for it.

By the time Faro decided to end it for the day, Juniper’s head was sporting three such bumps.

“That wasn’t half bad,” Faro said appreciatively. “We’re basically condensing an entire semester’s worth of practice into a few hours, but you’re doing as well as could be expected.”

Juniper gingerly massaged her scalp. She was covered in cuts and bruises, and mentally she was almost as exhausted as after she’d achieved Path Inscription. “Did Zaldia do all this too?”

Faro smiled sheepishly. “No, she used electricity, but I can’t do that. Apparently the other professors thought having students walk around looking like they’ve been in a bar fight ‘impugned on the respectability of the institution.’” He snorted. “Didn’t hurt any less, though.”

“I can imagine.” The memory of the tournament final came to her mind, how Zale the light user collapsed when Astrid finally got a good strike on him. “So, do I have your seal of approval yet?”

“Abyss, no,” Faro said, puffing out a laugh. “You’ve got a long way to go. We haven’t even gotten to the sparring part yet. But… it should be enough that you won’t immediately get us killed when we run into the next bat.”

“You really know how to compliment a lady,” Juniper said wryly.

Faro looked left and right, frowning in confusion. “Lady? Where? I don’t see any lady.”

Juniper laughed. “Don’t be an ass. So, we’re good to continue into the tunnel tomorrow, yeah?”

“I’ve got no complaints. Though, we should probably continue with the exercises for an hour or two at the end of each day. Oh–and you need to think of a better way to attack. Something less taxing than smashing the poor creature repeatedly.”

Juniper nodded. “I’ll think on it.” She had a few ideas already, though she needed to test it out before she put it into practice.

With a bit of luck, they’d find the lily the next day and be on their way.