When I woke back up, I was lying in Sigmir’s comfortable embrace. When I tried to move, stinging pain in my arm stopped me, making me hiss in discomfort, catching Sigmir’s attention.

“Love, you’re awake,” her voice was gentle as she spoke, though filled with a mix of relief and reprimand, “Are you alright?”

“I think so,” I tried moving again, only for the stinging pain to return. “Though my arm hurts,” I admitted, leaning against her chest. My Astral Power had mostly recovered, but not fully, making me wonder how long I had been out.

“You really shouldn’t do your experiments while sitting on the high branches,” Sigmir gently chided me, sounding both exasperated and relieved at the same time. “You overdid it again and fell from your tree. What if next time, you don’t hurt your arm but break your neck?”

The mental image of that made me flush with embarrassment, I had come so far in this Beta without dying, I had no desire to die for the first time by knocking myself out and falling from a tree.

“Thanks for collecting me,” I snuggled in, drawing on my recovered Astral Power to repair the injury. It wasn’t grave, a simple fracture, and while my Blood Magic wasn’t efficient at recovering those, with enough magical brute force, it was possible.

“Always,” she quietly promised me, hugging me close to her.

As my bone was slowly fusing back together, I looked into my log, curious if I had gained anything. There had been that strange sensation towards the end and I wondered if there were any hints in the log.

Sadly, the only new entries were the increases of my Astral Meditation skill, rising from fifty-six to fifty-nine. A nice boost, but not a clue that allowed me to understand this world. Maybe I should have expected that it wouldn’t be this easy to peek behind the curtain, but I had hoped.

“I failed,” I sighed, feeling a little morose.

“Shouldn’t you be used to that by now?” Sigmir asked, and I felt a soft chuckle shake her chest. “I mean, of all your experiments, doesn’t the vast majority end in failure, with a small gain in knowledge?”

“Well, yeah,” I admitted, not too happy about that quota.

“Your willingness and ability to keep trying is what makes you a great Sorceress,” Sigmir stated with utmost conviction in her voice, “Combined with your willingness to take insane risks, as much as it pains me,” she added, her voice a mix of worry and mischief.

“You know I won’t die,” I reminded her, mentally checking that my broken arm had set correctly.

“And yet, I worry every time you get hurt,” she replied, pulling me closer to her.

There was nothing I could say to that, nothing that mattered. Instead, I remained silent and simple cuddled with her, letting myself get lulled into sleep by her presence and the steady beat of her heart.

The next day, Jenn pointed a particularly shaped hill out to us, telling us that it was one of the most important landmarks. It wasn’t terribly impressive, merely an odd formation of rock, but it sat close to the area of Wild Magic we were supposed to investigate and hopefully cleanse.

My first instinct upon knowing that we were near was to call for a stop. If at all possible, I had no desire to expose the whole group to some strange magic, not if I could help it. With a few practised motions, I conjured up my Throne, getting a strange look from Jenn as I did.

“I’ll take a look from here,” I promised the others, sitting down on my Frozen Throne, the Crown of the Northern Wind sitting proudly on my head.

With the others watching, I began to swiftly construct the now-familiar magic in my mind and the shadows beneath me started to squirm. While there was still light out, the forest had enough shadows to allow for some scrying, though far less than I could accomplish at night.

An unkindness of shadow-constructs, formed into Ravens, took off from beneath my throne, the images feeding back into my mind, making me a little dizzy. It was akin to watching multiple videos at the same time, trying to pay full attention to each of them. Without Lenore to monitor the construct’s movement and direct them, I wouldn’t have been able to get anywhere.

The swift-moving ravens only needed a few minutes to cross the distance to the area we were supposed to explore, though sadly, there was little to actually see. The forest looked just like it had before, even after flying a few minutes into the area, maybe the forest was a little more lush and green, but nothing truly special. No signs saying ‘Wild Magic Forest, keep out,’ or maybe some sort of hint about what was going on. Just a lot of trees, shrubs and insects.

Finally, I noticed a bit of movement through one of the constructs and focused my attention on its vision. Between the leaves of one of the trees was some creature, I couldn’t clearly see it and before I could get closer or try anything, there was a flash and the construct I had been looking through was destroyed. Losing the connection, especially while focusing on it, gave me a brutal headache, as if an icepick was driven into my skull, but sadly what was done was done.

Drawing back my mind, I let the other constructs fade, not planning to expose myself further.

“There are creatures there, alright,” I told the others, probably sounding rather grumpy. “And they either don’t like getting spied on or are reflexively destroying my shadow-constructs,” I added, looking around the area we were in.

“We should find a spot to prepare camp, we won’t be heading into the area for now. We really need more information, or we might die without knowing how or why,” I shook my head, using a wave of my hand to dissolve my Throne. “Let’s get to work.”

After looking around for a bit, we found a nicely secluded spot, a wide clearing with a pond in the middle of it. Lenore, Adra and I worked together to make sure no strange magic creatures called that pond home before all of us started to set up a base camp.

Compared to our normal camps, what we set up now was a little more involved. Instead of planning to simply rest for a night, we now wanted to have a fixed base from which we could head out to explore and we were in potentially hostile territory. While there was nothing that hinted at the creatures and magic of the Wild Magic area being able to leave it, there was nothing that guaranteed that they couldn’t. Caution was advised and so, more effort had to be invested.

Rai and Jenn helped Sigmir to prepare the camp itself, while I began moving around the area, carefully measuring and setting up magical alarms. It wasn’t something I had actually studied myself, but luckily, the Grandmother’s Grimoire had a few useful spells for that. Nothing fancy, just a weave of magic I could spin between anchors, alerting me if it was broken by another living thing.

Adra was working in a similar fashion, setting up her own early-warning system, trying to keep us safe from detection and harm. Neither of us was truly skilled at this, but together, we managed to weave something that should protect us.

Finally, once night had fallen, I summoned my throne once more, Sigmir remaining nearby to protect me. Compared to earlier in the day, I was even more cautious, creating an orb of Shadows, modelled after the Water Mirror spell from the Grimoire and linked that orb to a shadow construct. It was something I had used in the past to create a cut-out between me and the scrying construct, keeping me safe.

Once that was done, Lenore manifested on my shoulder and together, we let the raven soar into the night. Hopefully, the night would allow us to see more of that strange forest, maybe find out what was waiting for us between those ancient trees.

Sadly, even after travelling for almost half an hour, the only difference we could see from above was that the trees were steadily growing taller, according to Lenore’s judgement. Given that we had little way to compare them, I could only trust her expertise.

“I don’t think we’ll find what we are looking for this way,” Lenore grumbled in my mind.

“Probably, simply seeing from above is not enough, we’ll need to use our own senses to find the magic that messes things up here,” I replied, just as grumpy.

With little to show for it, I pulled my Astral Power out of the construct, carefully venting it into the Astral River where it would rapidly fade into the background. No need to alert anyone to our snooping, if there were people looking for it.

Standing, I looked at Sigmir, who had been watching over me the whole time. “Nothing,” I told her.

“Not a big surprise,” she grinned, “If it was easy or could be done without taking risks, the Empire would have taken care of this a long time ago.”