Maya started toward her workshop, mind already jumping ahead to spellcrafting. If she had remembered Runescale's adjusted spell correctly, which she had, focusing brought the images back with perfect clarity... she could make a safe version that didn't harm the user so long as they remained in place, or a half-duration version that retained the flash. Runescale would probably want the latter.

Maya started testing out the hand movements as she walked, trying to smooth them into each other correctly without too much wasted effort. The more spells she dissected, the clearer the underlying principles were becoming. They shifted with variables, was the big problem. By splitting the school up by element the academy was actually hurting its progress, because element changed relatively little in the spell's formulation.

She wasn't sure yet which pieces of the spell were the biggest cause of failure. Most of her spells were variations on existing spells - and so were those of the others from what she'd seen - which made it hard to isolate any individual piece of the overall puzzle.

But she was getting there. If she could get a solid month or two of good luck, she could probably unravel the system completely.

Each spell had a shape, an effect, and an element. The shape was defined by where you physically placed the magic, except when it didn't. She couldn't figure out how to replicate Magestrike's designated location ability, and endlessly wished she'd paid more attention when learning it. To cast it more slowly would require magic to test with, and she'd need to do it slowly to figure out what parts of the complex somatics related to which parts of the spellcasting.

But alas, she didn’t have a solid month. Unless she figured out a way to destroy Bloodline, and decided it was ethical to do so, she had only today.

It was a surprise when she opened her door and noticed Andy enter behind her. She’d forgotten he was along.

"Well, since I have you here alone, would you care to switch classes?" she asked, figuring she might as well maximize her luck.

"To what?"

"Trickster."

"I saw that one, but I’m not much of a rogue."

"Trickster isn’t about being a rogue. It’s about luck and chance." She started pulling out her pages while she talked, absently beginning to sort her research notes and reminding herself of their contents. "Basically, it gives you your own personalized questline with good and bad quests each day depending on the number you roll. It’s got its drawbacks, but it’s an incredibly powerful class that augments anything you choose to do."

Andy considered a moment before answering. "How do I change my class?"

Maya passed him her Trickster’s Orb. "Just ask."

"Uh, can I change my class to Trickster?"

He blinked, then disappeared, her orb reappearing in her inventory as it fell from his suddenly absent hands and faded from sight.

Mission complete: Recruiting. Reputation with The Trickster has increased.

Item gained: Plate Greaves of the Banisher (Exceptional; +9 Int, +9 Con)

Maya smiled as her luck increased another 5. Above 80 now, she could feel the difference in her clarity, the flickering intuition, the rushing flow that made connections that would otherwise take weeks or months to work out. The extra quest had been entirely worth the minor digression.

By the time Andy reappeared, she’d already scrawled out a hasty correction sheet for Runescale’s Stun Strike, as well as making a copy of it for herself. This one bounced the stun off the outer boundary, then again off an inner one around the caster, creating a stunning echo chamber. Anyone in close proximity to the caster would be stunned and held so long as the channel was maintained, and then it would last a further few seconds. The downside was the same as any of the other most powerful spells, the caster had to remain in place. If he tried to leave the center of the spell, he’d step into its area and become stunned himself. It didn’t effect allies, but the caster remained uniquely vulnerable to it. She felt sure she could remove that particular piece of it if she spent enough time on it, but the workaround sufficed for now and she had far more important things to do.

Her stores of magic were steadily dwindling, leaving her enough for perhaps one or two more spell dissections. But since she’d already gotten started on lightning-related spells, she may as well go all in while the concepts were fresh in her mind.

Storm Grasp and Magestrike it would be. Runescale had demonstrated very dramatically how powerful a proper stun could be. As much as she wanted to delve into shielding and debuffing spells, stun was simply too good to pass up.

She started by dissecting Runestrike, Stun Strike, and Stun Strike 2.0, which were all inefficiently slow and clumsy. She cringed at how obviously kludged together they were, Runescale’s more than her own, but it was still bad. She could streamline them so much better with a few tweaks.

By the time Andy reappeared from his entrance interview with The Trickster, Maya was fully engrossed in her research. She emerged long enough to have him help test a few things, practicing the motions she was calculating to be sure they were possible to perform physically, then returned to her messy scribbling.

True to his word, Andy faded into the background and didn’t distract her with so much as a cough, silently observing, but she felt the pressure of his presence whenever she stepped too close to him, a dulling of everything.

"Did you roll a negative number today?" she asked after a half hour of getting used to his presence did nothing to dim his distracting influence.

"Yes, -32. How did you know?"

She frowned. "Not sure. Can you wait outside?"

He complied, and the pressure immediately lifted.

She poked her head out. "Sorry, I don’t think you can stay. Your luck is interfering with mine. I’ll meet you at the academy later?"

He shrugged. "If that’s what you want." He sounded a little abandoned, but Maya couldn't worry about that now. Too much to do.

When the notification of it being time to attend classes appeared, she’d nearly finished with Storm Grasp. She’d set aside the derivatives for now, until she better understood the principles. The more she tweaked them the more she felt she was missing something. And Storm Grasp was the closest analogue.

This one was trickier than any spell she’d worked with to date. While she’d appropriated parts of it for Runestrike, the translation was inefficient. Duration was heavily nerfed and the energy transfer was ridiculously high.

She should be able to make a stable version, but it continued to evade her. Either it leaked energy like a sieve or its range was nerfed to directly around the caster. Magestrike could fill that gap, but it would take absolutely all of her stored magic, and she intensely disliked the idea of not having any around for emergencies.

Still, a targeted stunning AoE? Probably worth the sacrifice. She hesitated three whole minutes, running over the possibilities, but no better option presented itself. So Maya pushed aside the nagging feeling that she was forgetting something, and dove back into her research.

Her notes grew as she skipped between testing and analysis, her store of magic dwindling and dwindling despite her best attempts to use it as sparingly as possible. She glanced at her virtual clock as a vague sense of being late began to nag at her. Her 6-hour rolling penalty had long since vanished, bringing her up to +89 for the rest of the day. She hated to waste any of it, but she had made promises.

"Guess I need to deal with the mages," she conceded, setting aside her pages and stretching. She grimaced at the mess of sketches and hasty scrawls around her. It would take several days to complete her current project even at the best of times, and probably a week to organize everything.

But she’d made progress. Significant progress, which she could probably trade to Storm.

Speaking of…

Maya gathered up her most dramatic discoveries, useless side trails that would help build toward her total understanding of magic but unecessary for her current project, and made quick copies of them.

To her surprise, Andy was still lurking around the entrance to her workshop when she exited. He waved at her, keeping his distance as he followed, and she felt only mildly disconcerted by the aura of misfortune that clung to him.

She wondered how Sevard had stood being around her on low luck days. Even if she was helping to attract more dangerous enemies, the itching feeling of impending doom would drive her crazy.

"How come you stuck around? Don’t you have a quest to do today?"

"I was hoping you could come with me. We haven’t had a chance to talk much today, you’ve been very busy."

"Well, high luck, can’t waste it." She led the way to the leypillar, pulling ahead of Andy enough that he had to run to keep up.

It was still early afternoon, though it felt so much later. The morning had been so long and her focus so intense she was surprised to see it was still bright daytime. Somehow, darkness felt like it would have been more appropriate.

"Why is it so important that you do this today?" Andy asked.

"Because I have to!"

"But why?"

"Didn’t The Trickster explain to you that we have to rely on random chance for our lucky days?"

"Yes."

"Well, this is something I can only do well when luck is high. Today, luck is very high, so I must do it. Plus, I want to, and I enjoy the challenge."

"Can you tell me about it? Since I didn’t get a chance to watch for very long."

Maya felt a twinge of guilt. "Sure."

For the next thirteen minutes, while they trekked out to the Nirsym leypillar, then back to the Academy from the Kalyx leypillar, she expounded excitedly upon the discoveries she’d made, while Andy pretended he had any clue about what she was saying and nodded and smiled politely. But every time she tried to stop, he’d encourage her to keep going, and she couldn’t help herself. It was all so exciting, and thinking about it as she spoke aloud helped her to solidify some of the nebulous thoughts that she’d yet to commit to paper.

She scrawnled out a few more pages of notes wihle they walked, taking down the handful of important concepts that came to mind, but all too soon they arrived at their destination.

Andy grew a bit uncomfortable as they entered the Academy grounds, but Maya insisted the guards let him in and they reluctantly did so.

They found Runescale in the Earth classroom, where he sat in the corner doodling sketches of himself with a lightning sword.

"Did you finish?" he asked loudly as Maya entered, causing everyone in the room to stare at him, then at Maya. She didn’t know most of the Earth team students, though one or two looked vaguely familiar.

"No, I’m looking for Star and Ben. They weren’t in the Fire room."

"Haven’t seen them. Here, these are my ideas for the new spell." He jumped up and handed her a thick folder full of rough sketches forming a sort of storyboard of him summoning a massive thunderstorm by raising his lightning sword.

"This isn’t something I can correct, Runescale. This is a concept sketch. The motions aren’t even remotely correct."

"Then you know what would be?"

"No, I just know this would do nothing. If you don’t have something more detailed, then I can’t do much."

"You’ll figure it out. It’s not that hard."

Maya clicked her beak softly in irritation, then shrugged. "I’ll see what I can do. Does anyone know where Starstar or Ben have gotten to?"

Shaking heads, murmured ‘no’s all around.

"Hm, thanks. I’ll keep looking."

She didn’t like wasting time, but she had to fulfill her promise. Or at least make overtures toward doing so, even if she ended up coming to a different arrangement due to their flaking on her.

But though they asked in every classroom, no one had seen them since the previous night. She did approach each of the group heads about their spell lists, which she was promised but not provided with. Apparently no one kept a complete copy of their successful research on hand in an easily-stolen format and it would be several days before she could get copies. Which was a setback, but not a major one. She had enough to do with finishing her analysis of Magestrike and Storm Grasp, adding more spells to the mix today wouldn’t be terribly productive.

At last, she was forced to admit defeat. Wherever they’d gone to, she couldn’t find them, and she wasn’t going to waste the whole rest of the day looking.

She briefly considered pausing to do some replacement crafting, but the spell tugged at her. She was getting so close. She’d barely have enough time as it was.

But… Xaneta had dropped everything to help her. Sevard before her, her trickster mentor. And now Andy was waiting so patiently.

"What’s the quest you need to do?" she asked, forcing aside thoughts of how much time would be lost. Sometimes, it was more important to help others than to charge after a goal without letting anything stand in the way. "I bet we can do it together, if you still want help."

Andy smiled. "That would be perfect."

And together, the two tricksters set out to begin a new adventure.