The adventurer sloshed over the mantle of the cave, sending bits of snow and ice gliding against the polished floor. She paid no attention to the way it sizzled and evaporated, she was more preoccupied with peeling off the outermost layer of furs she wore and shaking the water out of it.

She was getting ready to shake the snow out of her boots when she saw three figures huddled in the back of the cave, chatting quietly and watching her as she moved. “Greetings,” she offered with a wave before turning back to her outfit.

The snow was waist high in places, and as anything having to do with water, it found a way to get through every manner of moisture seal she had prepared. She had a toe or two that had gone numb about a quarter mile back, and was very much looking forward to warming them up by the shelter-stove.

There was more muttering from the three in the corner, but finally the smallest of the three, a girl not much older than the adventurer had been when she began her first journeys, seemed to forget to be quiet. “She’s so powerful…”

The adventurer smiled, and made a point to remove the layers around her head so she could show them she took it well. Her smile was genuine, and it reached into her violet eyes. This was her element, her world. “I’m just on a pilgrimage to the Point of Force, the same as you all.”

The oldest of the three, a very dark skinned Marran with silver hair shook his head, “We’re actually preparing to head back once we’ve warmed ourselves and rested. Even being this close to the Point was, well…”

The middle boy finished his sentence, “Life-changing.”

The adventurer frowned, “Then why stop here? The point is where you’ll be sanctified.”

She looked about the shelter and saw their dripping wet clothes everywhere. There were enough of them, surely. Once dry, they would be more than enough to withstand the cold up to the next shelter, and then on to the point. Their packs, too, looked full enough still. Didn’t they realize the value of seeing one of the true sources of mana in the world?

The oldest shook his head, “It’s no use. I feared we’d lose Lantel before we even got to this shelter. We’ve learned a lot about Force, but mostly that it’s more dangerous than any of us had guessed.”

The adventurer sighed. She really wasn’t a good judge of other people’s strength. She saw how easily they could grow stronger, and couldn’t see why they wouldn’t live up to their potential. Did they think she had been formed of different mana than them?”

“It’s very humid in here with everything drying. Would any of you mind if I clear out the vapor?” the adventurer asked as she began to hang her clothing up on the makeshift stone rack behind her.

“No, of course not,” said the youngest, Lantel.

With a simple motion the adventurer pulled all of the mana in the room into a tight ball in the air. She studied it for a moment, then it rotated and rippled. She split it, pulling out a smaller ball of dirty water, and flung it from the cave. The three young travellers watched in stunned amazement, and imagined that ball freezing before it ever hit the snow.

The rest of the water the adventurer poured into a canteen at her side. It was too cold to be putting snow in her body every time she needed to hydrate. The canteen wouldn’t freeze, either. It didn’t take a very complicated enchantment to ensure that.

The three began chatting excitedly together, and the adventurer caught two words prominently. “No rune.”

With how they said those words with wonder, she was forced to smile, “It’s just a simple spell, nothing to gawk at.”

All three of them immediately clammed up when they realized she had heard them, and she laughed guiltily, “I don’t mind the curiosity. None of us are born knowing how to utilize the forces in this world, after all.”

“How did you get here all by yourself anyways?” blurted out the middle boy.

She smiled again, “I walked, same as you I’m sure.”

“But we had to use traps and all sorts of tactics the guides said required three people!” Lantel added. “You’re… alone. And like me.”

That raised an eyebrow. “You mean a woman? Most powerful source masters are. It’s the men who are too busy talking about their own strength to notice.”

The boys looked abashed, but the girl was impressed. “I wanted to see the point. But it’s true, it was too hard to get here. And the paths are supposed to be much worse further up. But I really don’t get it. How did you pass the impenetrable eyes?”

The adventurer blinked at that, “How would anyone? I just fought them. Didn’t the guides tell you how?”

“You fought them? If they can focus on you for more than a few seconds they can launch you off the mountain!”

“They can try, I suppose. But they have weaknesses, you know. Here, let me show you.” The adventurer rummaged in her bag and pulled out a small, glass orb.

“You have the core of one? But… they’re called impenetrable for a reason!”

“Well then how do you think anyone sells these at market? I guess your fear is why they fetch such a good price then. I’m really out of touch with the cities these days.”

The young travellers all looked at each other, then back at her. “Just how powerful are you?” asked the oldest.

The adventurer sighed, “Strong enough to forget that people can survive without such strength. Tell me, if fighting them is so baffling, how did you pass them by?”

Lantel dug out a small stone that flashed red and pulsed an aura of mana. “These catch their attention. If all three of us run back and forth holding them up, they can’t focus on any of us. Then they don’t fire at all.”

The smile filled the adventurer’s face now and she leaned back in laughter, “Brilliant, absolutely clever. I don’t know why they don’t just teach you all a few good fundamental runes so you can defend yourself, but I can hardly fault someone for developing an alternate solution. Definitely safer, I’d imagine. If they work, that is.”

The three shifted uncomfortably and looked at one another silently. The adventurer noticed and leaned forward, “What? I’m missing something, aren’t I?”

“Father said most of the source masters didn’t know,” the eldest began, hesitantly.

“They don’t teach source magic in the cities anymore,” Lantel burst out.

The adventurer just shook her head. That didn’t make any sense, “What do you mean, they don’t teach magic? It’s in our veins. It’s all around us in the world. What, did they stop teaching math too? Too many fancy vehicles and no more budget for the basic studies?”

“Well, not quite. They still teach spells. But they teach spell runes. You know, follow the full pattern to create a specific effect. The government said it was too dangerous to allow the common people to learn source magic or fundamental runes.”

“You still can if you have a source master in your family to teach you, or if you have special permissions for your field of work. But most people our age know too many spell runes to ever hope to go that way.”

She stared at them unblinking for several long seconds. The young travellers were worried they had broken her.

“It hasn’t been that long since I caught up with the cities, has it?” she asked herself, stunned. “You’re sure of this. This isn’t just… your city?”

Lantel shook her head, “No, it’s all over. Our father taught us the basics of source magic early enough that we don’t have to learn the spell runes. But it’s too hard to come across real fundamental runes for us to learn much. That’s why we decided to come up here.”

“Damn them!” the adventurer shouted, standing up in a huff. She looked around the cave at all of her wet clothes though, and saw the sheet of white falling from the sky outside of it, and sat back down. She stared at the glowing sigils on the warming box in the center of the room.

“I heard the talks about this last time I was in the city, but laughed it off as an impossibility. How could we pass up a connection to the source of our world, our very beings, for those shoddy spells?” she mused.

“They did talk for a long time. Programs wound down slowly. But in a span of a few months, there were three major incidents of novice source users causing tremendous amounts of destruction from backfiring spells. They said it just wasn’t safe enough,” explained the eldest.

“Safe? Magic isn’t meant to be safe. It’s meant to test you, strengthen you, change you! I mean, how many people die on the paths to these source points every year? Sure, they regret their mistakes, but they chose to pursue something noble! Nobody ever became great because they played it safe!”

The travellers looked at her with a mix of awe and pity. Not one of them was unaware of her strength, and they had seen their father’s abilities. She was… something else. To see an adventurer who could probably disable their father with a single spell lose her countenance like this was discomforting. But they didn’t know what to say.

She seemed to notice the looks they were giving her though, and she calmed herself with a breath. “I’m sorry. Here you are stuck with a stranger in an icy mountain pass and she looks like she’s losing her cool. The world just continues to change and rarely in the ways you expect it to.” She smiled sadly at them.

“You’re right, though,” said young Lantel. “It’s in our veins. Father always told us to remember that we’re made of mana, and that the source points mold our world into what it is. Some people might not learn the best ways to use magic, but that doesn’t mean that nobody will.”

The adventurer smiled at that too. “I like the way you think.” She dug into her bag and pulled out a black bag with an orb concealed inside. “Keep this to yourselves, but I had begun transcribing some of the fundamental runes that I’ve encountered myself. It won’t make up for not reaching a true source point, but maybe you three can study these and gather up enough skills to make it there on your next run up the mountain.”

The young girl’s eyes went wide when she peeked inside the bag and probed it with her mana. The transcription was clearly incomplete, but just these basics could improve their power tremendously, given enough years to decipher and practice with them. A well-travelled source master’s experience was incomparably valuable.

“You can’t be for real. We can’t repay this,” said the middle boy.

“Source magic should be spread to anyone capable of learning it. I’m not going to be an obstacle in your path if I can help you instead. Just share what you learn, when you find the strength to use it.”

She rose early the next morning while the young ones still slept. It had been a long time since she had been able to sleep for more than a few hours at a time. The long paths she had walked had opened her up to a great many things, and that greatness in turn filled her with power. So her days stretched long as she found ways to spend that energy, and her rest would end as soon as it was filled once more.

But there was much to do, and she was always glad to get to it.

For some reason though, on that particular morning as she fumed over the news of the changes in the cities, her mind was drawn to things past and lost. The snow had slowed to a gentle powdering, and she felt an inner joy when she felt the mana waxing in the air. The source point, too, was waking for the day.

Each step she took in the snow crunched noisily, and she moved slower than she necessarily had to. There was no telling what unexpected problems she would have to deal with throughout the day, so it would be pointless to waste precious energy and mana just to move swiftly through snow.

And as she moved, she wondered. What would happen to the cities now that they had set themselves down this course? She had long since given up on her dream to visit every source point personally, but she always hoped she might have some role to play in the life of the one who would. However, finding an apprentice was difficult in the best of the times, and this was clearly the end of the age of heroes.

There was a bitterness in her chest at that thought. She recognized it, and had for a long time, that she was part of an age past, but to be so thoroughly confronted with the brute fact of it was galling. It stuck in her like a barb, and itched as she walked.

She had given up weeks of work in passing on the memories of the source runes to those three young travelers, but if she felt remorse about her decision, it was only that she couldn’t do more. Source runes could only be transmitted as ideas about experiences, and she had tried to collect them as well as she could, but how do you capture the raw nature of one of the fundamental aspects of the world?

If any of the three were diligent, they would definitely benefit from the musings she had passed on. Of course, it wouldn’t be comparable to even visiting a single source point directly, not without her to personally teach them through the inheritance. But perhaps it would be the launching point of their own personal journey. She could only hope.

But more likely, and she had to admit this would be prudent, if insulting, they could get an expert to use that knowledge of the source runes to form out several clear spell runes. They wouldn’t have any great power, but they would definitely enable abilities that had never been seen before outside the circles of source mages. In other words- they could make a great deal of money off them.

She punched the face of the mountain pass and almost screamed when a snow drift crashed down on her head. Impulsivity never failed to punish her. The adventurer shook off the snow and freed herself, but even as she resumed walking, her mind wasn’t on the path.

Never having been particularly religious herself, she hadn’t taken stock in the priests that often guarded source points, claiming that they were pieces of the gods or whatever else they believed. But if she didn’t worship the source, she did respect it, and that respect could often appear as reverence. That was what she felt then as she wondered if the world would be angered when the heroes stopped coming to commune with its nature.

What calamities would fall on her people?

Bitterly, she admitted that this would not be the end of the powerful people in the world. Commerce and politics were stronger than ever. Long had it been since a renowned hero could make a declaration, and Marrans would rally to their side. Now, it didn’t matter the strength of the person if they didn’t hold clout in the political circles. Or if they couldn’t pay the right people.

And there were other paths to power, too. Source Magistry may be the most honorable of pursuits, and may offer the highest potential to those who could survive its perils, but it wasn’t enough to claim dominance over all the world’s forms of power.

She grinned as finally a pleasant memory passed her mind. That strange man who had bested her without a single spell. There were few on Marra who didn’t use magic in some form, but he somehow had found another path, and a powerful one at that. He had laughed when she admitted defeat, but it had been the most exhilarating fight she had been party to in quite some time. He had proved competent with several other skillsets that evening, too.

Pleasant pasts aside, she was still troubled about what it meant that source magic was being shunned. If she had, like her master before her, learned to use the Tree of Memory, she could pass on a great deal more of her skills. But that path had been closed to her. Nowhere on Marra had she found another skilled enough in the Soul Arts to open her branch.

Or, at least, none who would admit they had the skills. What ignorance had led to the Soul Arts being treated like a crime! They were merely another path to power, and one aligned closely with Source Magistry, at that.

Inside of her, she could still feel it. The budding piece of her soul which formed its own Source. Ah, that was what the priests said, she remembered. That the gods themselves had been Marran once, but upon mastering the source within themselves, they rose temples and let the power consume them, becoming source points.

But then where had they learned Source Magistry at all if there were no source points before them? It was a myth which only raised more questions.