So, you know how I said it'd be just a week? Life psyched me with a whammy to the backside of my head.

So, I safely got on the plane, and landed in Kansas with all my limbs attached. But then, I promptly realized that my laptop was not among the possessions in my luggage. So, I retraced my steps in my head.

In the Manchester airport in NH, I went through the security screening and grabbed all my things, but then decided to get some water, because I was really thirsty. So, I went to a small airport shop and bought a water and some souvenirs for my family out in Kansas.

Unbeknownst to me, my drivers licence slipped out of my hands, which were clutching it in between my plane tickets, since I didn't have the presence of mind to just put them the heck away.

So, after realizing that I had lost my licence, I was called down to the communications office to go pick it up, since someone had so 'helpfully' brought it down there. I managed to get it and get back upstairs on time, but I had to go through the security screening a second time.

It was during that second run through that I forgot to grab my computer, since I was in a hurry to get to the terminal before they started boarding people.

And so, having made a terrible mistake, I had to give the airport my address and wait for my computer to arrive.

The plus side of this is that I ended up with one very large sheet of bubble wrap~

But enough about me. Here's the much-awaited, much-belated chapter! Enjoy~!

------------------------------------------------------

Sunlight shone through the window, illuminating tiny specks of dust floating in the room. A slight breeze made the pastel pink curtains flutter by the window, brushing past stray wisps of a golden braid that hung down Helen’s back.

Finishing the last page of the book she was reading, Helen stretched and looked out the window, admiring the brilliant blue sky and giant cotton ball clouds that breezed by below.

It had been two months since Briar-er Thera had fallen down the strange rift in the ground, and with the wonderful tail wind they had been having, they would arrive at Plateau Peak in two and a half months, leaving extra time for training before the big tournament.

Of course, that was for Madam Rothema and Helen. The ‘two meatheads’ as Madam Rothema often said, were stoically making their way there on foot. Master Thales would not budge in that regard. Laura enthusiastically agreed, seeing everything as a way of getting stronger.

“Fifty-three books, huh?” Madam Rothema observed as she came into room with the afternoon tea. “That’s good enough for now, come help me with the tea.”

“Yes, teacher!” Helen cheerfully helped her place the saucers, cups, spoons, and platters of tea snacks on the table in their proper places.

“Good, you remember from last time.” Madam Rothema nodded in satisfaction. “Have a seat.”

Helen sat down and waited while Madam Rothema poured the tea.

While setting the table was something Helen could now do, making tea was not something she had learned yet, so Madam Rothema would make it.

“Did you properly understand what you have read?” Madam handed Helen a cup of tea.

“Yes, teacher.” Helen accepted the cup and took a few sips of it, reaching towards the tea snacks in front of her. Today’s snack was ginger-snaps with cinnamon sprinkled on top.

“Although the homework I gave to Thera was a hundred books a day, it’s all right to pace yourself according to how much you understand. Because, honestly, that girl exceeds the limits of common sense time and time again.”

Madam Rothema chuckled, thinking of all the times Thera managed to surprise her in the past five years. Helen finished her tea and her snack before she interrupted her teacher’s reminiscence.

“Teacher?”

Madam Rothema stirred, turning her head away from the window. “Ah, it’s nothing. That’s right, let’s see how your mana capacity is today.”

Helen nodded and stood up, moving to the window. During the past two months, if she wasn’t reading, she was growing her mana capacity. She shot off as many [Wind Shot] spells as she could, out the window. Today’s count was thirty, before she started feeling that fuzzy, ache-in-her-bones feeling that meant that she had used up almost all of her mana.

“Oh? You managed to bring the count up by two again. Good! Good. At this rate, you’ll be able to perhaps catch up to Thera by your eighteenth birthday.”

“S-so faraway?” The eight year old child panted, feeling a bit discouraged. She hadn’t even lived for ten years, but she was already ten years behind?

“It can’t be helped. You chose to chase the shadows of no ordinary magician, after all.: Madam Rothema sipped her tea.

“That is, if Thera is still continuing her magic training, to be sure. I bet she’s probably forgotten, though.”

----------------------------

“Achoo!” Briar sneezed explosively. Ah. Is someone spreading rumors about me again? She wondered to herself, as she rubbed her nose to relieve the itching. One would think people had a better use of their time.

“Hey! How high up does this need to be?” Grandpa Thur barked from up on his rickety scaffolding.

“The top of the character needs to be thirty seven meters, three centimeters, and point six millimeters above the magic circle. The bottom of the character needs to be thirty six meters, seventy eight centimeters and four point three millimeters above the magic circle.” Briar replied immediately.

“You really weren’t kidding when you said you needed a steady hand, were you?” The wizened old man grumbled as he placed his hand upon the stone, and poured his mana into the specified area. A perfect replica of the character in his hand was depressed into the stone as if it were nothing more than mere clay.

“Done! Now, what about the next one?”

Briar checked her notes. “The next one needs to be on the third pillar. The top needs to be twenty nine meters and five centimeters above the magic circle, the bottom needs to be twenty eight meters and 25 millimeters-”

“Hold on, hold on! The third pillar, you say?” He quickly manipulated some ropes to move the scaffolding over to the third pillar. “All right, give me the directions again!”

This had been going on all morning, or night, or whatever, since they couldn’t really measure time this far down below the ground anyways.

Karu and Rien had awoken by that time, and, not finding Briar in her room, they found her in the great pillar room that Grandpa was always working on. But when they did, their mouths dropped open in astonishment.

Grandpa Thur-their own Grandpa Thur-the gruff old man who groaned and complained and knew everything…was following the directions of the mysterious young man, Briar!?

Once Grandpa was satisfied with one of his works, he would not budge it for the world, but now, wherever Briar told him to put the strange inscriptions, he did. It didn’t matter if there was already a carving there that he had worked months on. It was all done away with in the matter of a few moments.

Briar, being closer to the ground, was the first to notice Karu and Rien.

“Good morning, you two~! You must be hungry, right? Breakfast is in the kitchen, so feel free to eat what’s there.”

“Briar…what are you and grandpa doing?” Rien finally asked. Karu nodded, also wondering what they were doing.

“Huh? This? Ah. This is…” Briar saw Grandpa Thur shake his head slightly out of the corner of her eye. She tilted her head and winked. “Well, the thing is, it’s a surprise~ You’ll have to wait until we’re finished before we can tell you, because it’s not ready yet.”

“A sur-prise?”

“What’s a Surprise?”

The two asked.

“Hmm…it’s like when you tasted candy for the first time. You had never tasted something like it before, so when you got your first taste, you were like ‘Whoah! How Sudden! But, how wonderful!’ Or something like that” She explained.

“Oy! The next one, the next one!” Grandpa Thur shouted down from the scaffolding, eager to place the next one.

“Yes!” Briar replied, once more looking through her notes. “The next one should be on the fifth pillar…”

------------------------------

Briar stretched, yawning as she crawled into bed that night. After making the preliminary calculations and matching them up to the runes, she had checked and double checked the coordinates until they were deemed acceptable. She had done this for a month using a few maps from the pile of miscellaneous goods in her room.

Now they were finally getting started placing the runes, but for the coordinates to be set, it requires hundreds upon hundreds of runes to be prescribed in order. Today they had managed to transcribe about two hundred and fifty runes before Grandpa had to stop for the day.

“Five hundred and twenty seven left.” She muttered to herself. “If we continue at this pace, then we’ll finish in three day’s time. Which means I should solve the problem of a power source right now.”

She began rummaging through her magic bag, in the hopes of finding something to use as a makeshift power source.

“Myaow~” A familiar sound came out from inside the magic bag. Briar froze. It couldn’t be….Her hand brushed by a familiar purring furr-covered mass in the bag. She grasped onto it and pulled the offending culprit out of the bag.

“Yukikage!? I thought I left you with Madam Rothema! Does this mean that you’ve been traveling along with me the entire time?”

The grey and white feline rubbed a paw across her eyes, then said.

“Nya? I don’t know. I was tired and wanted a place to sleep and found somewhere super comfy.”

Briar froze for the second time.

“Ah, but, now that I think of it, this place smells a lot different than the nice book house. Have we arrived somewhere new?”

“…” Briar stared in unabashed amazement.

“What meow?” Yukikage asked, tilting her head to the side.

Briar took a deep breath, and then let it out. “Right. This is a hallucination, or someone is playing a trick on me. Everything will go back to normal in the morning.” She lay down on the bed, turning her back upon the cat.

“Wha-! What happened to your face, Master!? Did some evil witch cast a spell on you!?” Briar twitched. That voice was still talking. Don’t mind it, don’t mind it! Ah, wait…this is a magic world, so what’s wrong with there being talking cats?

Briar sat up, and turned around to face Yukikage. “How long have you been able to talk?” She asked, blurting out the first thing that came into her mind.

“What are you saying? I’ve always been talking to you like this, haven’t I? Nya…perhaps, the witch has messed with your memory, too!?”

Briar finally remembered that she was wearing a disguise. “Ah, this? This is something Madam Rothema made for me so I could get through a certain area without being caught by cat-hating rascals like Ray and his gang.” She explained using simplistic terms.

“I see, nya~That’s a really good idea~!” Yukikage agreed hissing, with her hair rising along her spine. “Just the thought of those boys makes me want to scratch up their bedding and chew their clothing to mushes!”

“I wouldn’t do that, Yuki. They might retaliate by stealing away all the catnip.” Briar advised. “Can anyone else understand what you’re saying?”

“Nope! Just Master!” Said Yukikaze. “Ah, but I remember this really nice sparkly pink stone in your bag that was nice and warm, but then it turned white and stoppedglowing after a while. Since then, Yuki feels like she’s gotten much stronger!”

Hmm, so it looks like she used the mana in that weird stone I have to evolve her form?It turns white when it runs out of juice, huh? This sounds interesting~.

“Ho? Stronger? In what way?” She asked Yuki.

“Ah yes, look look! Yukican now scare those nasty boys away herself!” Yuki said excitedly. She grew from housecat size to cheetah size in the span of a moment. “See? Yuki can growl at them and they’ll run away! No more looking down on Yuki!” Yuki looked at Briar with sparkling eyes as if to say, ‘praise me, please~!’

Briar laughed. “I can see that, but for now, let’s keep you at your original size, okay?”

“Why?”

“Because if you try to eat your yummy food while you’re big, there’ll be a lot less of it.” She said.

“Oh no! My favorite sardines!” Yuki wailed as she quickly returned to her small, unassuming housecat size.

Briar sighed. It seemed that there was yet one more care added onto her list of things to deal with. For the time being, she fed Yukikage and had her go back to sleep in the bag. Since Yuki liked sleeping, she didn’t complain about it. Thera then closed the bag when she wassure thatYuki was asleep.

There was no physical way that Yuki could have slept all that time without waking up from hunger, so did the magic bag keep Yuki in suspended animation as it did with the foods that she would put in there?

She wanted to test it out, so she decided to experiment for the night. If the bag didn’t do such a thing, then surely Yuki would wake her up in the morning to eat breakfast. But, if not, then hadn’t she discovered a somewhat rather dangerous fact about her magic bag?

Most magic bags couldn’t hold living things inside of them. Only dead things would trigger the space magic. If one wanted to stuff a live hostage inside a magic bag, then it would become like a normal bag, and they would fail. Perhaps that upperclassman of Margie’s was studying some ancient way of making magic bags… oh well. The truth would come out in the morning.

Briar lay down to sleep.