Adran crested the slope and pressed his hands to the stones narrowing his path. He felt a burst of energy pass through him as the stones began to lift and pressed outwards, sending them careening away.

“The ledge is clear,” he called down to Torean, clinging lazily to the cliff face below. “Come up and check the view.”

Adran felt a shadow glide over him, and watched Torean alight on the plateau in front, light as a sparrow. He stood and shook the dust from his clothing. The expanse visible from the high ledge was enthralling as ever, with the towering trees of the mountain range stretched below him, fading from giants of the forest to a green bedding scarcely recognizable in the rough-carved lands.

“Do you recognize the valleys?” Adran asked, his eyes tracing the curve of a lonesome river.

“No, the landscapes all bleed together in my mind.” Torean replied. Adran sighed and sat on the rock, staring down at the wagon of supplies far below.

“If it weren’t for the damned horses we’d be home in days.” Adran muttered, a common refrain.

Torean sat beside him and began reciting the arguments of the past few days. “But without anything to show, we’re too in debt without the horses to sell again. But with the horses slowing us, we’re unlikely to find anything. But without knowing the way home, we can’t find anything a second time anyways. And now we’re looking for a path home we don’t need to use, to better travel with horses that don’t help, to find something we’ll then lose, to hopefully make another trip out again.”

Adran turned to look at his friend. “Well it just sounds bleak when you say it.” He looked out over the valley, waiting for inspiration to strike him. It was already three days late, so he was sure it would come anytime. As he stared down at the expanse of valleys and mountainsides, he heard Torean scuffing his feet along the ledge behind him. “So what’s with the cave?”

“What cave?” Adran asked, staring intently at a twisting river, hoping to see a familiar course emerge.

“The cave, my friend, on whose doorstep you sit?” Torean replied, his voice growing fainter. Adran turned to find himself alone on the shelf of stone, and noticed a break in the slope like a stab wound, punched through into the mountain’s heart. He moved to the opening, gauging whether or not it would fit his frame. He hesitated, and shuddered, and moved a few cautious steps closer.

“You’re blocking the light!” Torean’s voice emerged from within, a faint note of fear ringing in the rocky echoes. Adran stepped back and waited for his friend to emerge. He returned to fruitlessly searching the horizon, growing ever more irritated as the sounds of Torean’s delight tumbled from the rocky wound. Finally he emerged carrying a waterskin and a mischievous smile.

“There’s a spring down there, if you take the right wall.” Torean called out, passing over the skin.

Adran lifted the skin to his lips, but stopped as an unusual smell wafted out. He looked into the skin, wondering at the quality of the water, and tried to place the odor. It permeated like the smell of woodsmoke, but held the freshness of a sea breeze, of salt and sand mixing. “Did you drink any?”

“Of course not! I’m not mad. I thought we’d try boiling it to see if the smell’s from something growing, or if it’s minerals.” Torean rolled his shoulders, looking down at the camp below. “Shall we head back?”

Adran sighed. “There’s little else for us to do up here.”

–

Adran could hear raised voices before Ulner’s wagon even came into view. Qarnet, their research colleague and improvised cook, would be arguing for a swift return home with the sun’s light to guide their general path; Torean, having gone ahead, would be glorifying the few things they’d managed to find today, more for the sake of argument than anything; and Ynten would be steadily groaning louder from the wagon floor, praying that they would stop for the sake of his cracked skull.

Adran passed through the last of the trees, passing by the wagon to his tent. As he bent to collect his journal, he heard the conversation clearly.

“…in my cooking pot, you won’t. You’ve no idea what’s in it, and I’m not risking the fate of my soups for your curiosity.”

“But you’ve no idea what will happen, Qarnet!” Torean pleaded, holding his wineskin protectively against his chest. “For the sake of knowledge!”

Qarnet glared at him, his lips pursed, and then glanced at the cooking fire. Several skewers of meat were well roasted in the open flame, and the pot lay to the side, unused.

“It’ll only take a few minutes, and I’ll clean it out after.” Torean said, sensing his opponent was tiring.

“You certainly will, residue or no. And if it’s tainted it in the slightest, it’ll be on your head!” Qarnet walked over to the fire and tended to his skewers.

When it was clear that he wouldn’t be adding anything more, Torean grinned and grabbed the pot, emptying his wineskin into it. Again, a sandy salt smell wafted through the air, strong enough Adran could smell it from beside his tent. He continued his notes and listened in to Torean’s running narration.

“Coming to a boil quickly on the open fire. It’s boiling well, nothing visibly unusual. Bubbles linger on the surface slightly longer than usual, indicator of dissolved materials. Bubbles are… following channels in the water? Now that’s odd.”

Adran heard Qarnet’s stomping over to the cooking pot, and imagined him as a mother hen watching Torean play with his beloved child.

“Did you do anything to this fire, Qarnet? Change the temperature or burn rate for the skewers?” Torean’s voice had a slight quaver to it, as if he was afraid of the answer.

“No, it’s just burning wood. Let me see…” Adran glanced up to see Qarnet looking into the pot, a growing concern on his face. “I don’t know what’s causing it, but I don’t like it. End your experiment and get scrubbing.” Torean began to groan, but it was immediately overtaken by a louder groan from the wagon.

“Um, uh, ok then.” Torean concluded, pulling on thick leather gloves to handle the hot metal. Adran began writing the soup-pot argument into the journal, thinking it might give him a laugh on some cheerier day in the future, when a heard a grunt and a loud thud.

“What. Was. That!?” Qarnet shouted, striding over to Torean. Adran glanced up again to see Torean still holding the pot, a look of disbelief upon his face. Adran stood and walked over, following their eyes to a patch of wet, flattened grass.

Nestled into the blades was a roughly circular lump of crystal glass.

–

Torean, Qarnet, and Adran sat near the fire, each ignoring a skewer of meat held in their hands. Every few moments, Qarnet leaned forward as if to bite but never managed to finish the thought, and slowly returned to his former position. In front of them lay the glass, still smelling faintly of salt and sand, refracting shimmers of firelight across the ground between them.

“So the water boiled…” Adran began, then hesitated. “And then… turned to glass?”

Torean shook his head. “That can’t be. Makes no sense. There’s no way to dissolve that much of anything in a single skin of water.”

“How then? Did it draw something from the air, from the ether?” Adran leaned forward and drew a finger along it. “It feels like… glass. Just normal glass.”

Qarnet tapped his fingers on the pot beside him, and ran his hand absentmindedly around the interior. He glanced down and seemed surprised to find no residue on his fingers. He’d seemed surprised each of the dozen times he’d done it now. “At least it didn’t break my pot.” He decided.

Qarnet took a bite of his meat skewer, and his eyes refocused on the meal. “Well, it’s beyond my understanding. Apothet’s blessing is fire and metal, not boiling water.” With that said, he turned his attention wholly to his food.

Adran sighed and took a bite, eating without thought. “It’s a marvel, that’s for sure, but-“

“But what do we do with it?” Torean concluded, falling backwards. He held the skewer aloft, staring as if the simpler concept of cooked beef might help him understand. “With the right moulds, it could be an artistic wonder. With the right craftsman, you could make fine tools, or easier optics. But that still doesn’t answer what we’re going to do here!”

“We can’t sacrifice one of our water barrels for it. We can’t even find the route home yet, it’s too risky.” Adran said, still staring unhappily at the rough lump. “We can probably spare one of Qarnet or Ynten’s waterskins,” he said, ignoring Qarnet’s evil look, “but I don’t know if we can do much more.”

“But the minute we leave it, we’ll never find it again!” Torean complained loudly, waving his skewer in the mountainside’s general direction. “We have to buckle down and take this risk, or else we’ll-”

“THAT’S IT! I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE!”

The huddled explorers looked at the wagon, disbelief etched on all their faces, as Ynten staggered out. He was pale as the moon, the left half of his face a mess of bruises and cuts, and his bloodshot eyes roamed wildly, never seeming to properly notice the faces around him.

“Why is it that you lot are incapable of even one solid minute of blissful silence? I’ve been lying in that wagon for days, fighting the cold grip of death, and yet you haven’t even had the decency to still yourselves for the sake of my broken skull. I’d even say that… that you… why is everything blurry?” Ynten swayed slightly, his roaming eyes unfocused, then sat on the edge of the wagon. “So what have you found that’s so important as to disturb my attempts at peaceful demise?”

Torean glanced at Adran and smiled. “Well I guess we know what to make from the glass.”

–

Adran walked slowly down the mountainside, holding his knife carefully extended to one side. After the damage caused to Ynten, he’d decided not to descend slopes hastily. He stopped at a tree and carved a large blaze into the bark, looking back to ensure the next one up the hill was visible. He was nearly back at the camp, and as if on cue he could heard the sounds of arguing echoing past the trunks.

He sat at the base of the blazed tree and sighed, feeling weariness down to his bones. He’d expected friction between companions at times, considering the attitudes of most researchers and mages he’d met, but this had been unending. His ears began to pick out the words, “heat” and “bend” nearly shouted, but tuned it out as best he could.

In the foggy silence of his imperfect denial, he mused at the thought of music, and wished they’d brought along someone who could carry a tune. It’d never struck him before how hollow conversations could get before they’d left.

His thoughts were dashed by an outcry, as ever, and he rose to his feet to walk back. Something felt off, though, and he stopped mid-pace. It wasn’t a feeling of being watched, though he’d had that before in the foothills. No scent on the breeze besides a trace of woodsmoke. It struck him: at least one voice was joyous. This was a sound beyond success, it was a discovery, a burst of understanding visceral in it’s strength. He strode through the last trees, ignoring the knife in his hand, and rushed past the wagon.

“What’s going on? What have you found?” He asked, staring at Torean’s unrestrained glee, tears brimming from his eyes.

“It’s glorious, all of our dreams fulfilled!” He cried out, rushing towards Adran before stopping at the sight of his knife still in hand. “Put that away! We’ve no need to worry. No blazing to do, nothing to fear. It’s all going to be alright!” At these words the tears spilled over, and he collapsed into Adran’s arms, the knife clattering to the ground.

Adran stared at Qarnet, dumbstruck, leaning slightly with Torean’s meagre weight held against his side. Qarnet simply smiled, a restrained exuberance pouring from his glittering eyes.

“He’s right.” Qarnet said simply. “We’re saved. Teph’s blessing, we’re saved!”

Adran began to smile, their glee infectious as the buried tension within him relaxed ever so slightly. He held a calm façade as he said, “Please, have mercy. Just tell me what you’ve found.” He walked over to the fire where a shallow bowl of wood lay, charred, and the pot sat nearly filled with oval glass pieces. He sat and waited for the lecture that he knew would come.

Torean straightened and attempted to compose himself, his smile pulled around his face before resuming its post in the center. “Look at these lenses,” Torean said, holding out a pair of glass lumps, “and tell me what you notice.”

Adran held them up and observed the warped images of the surrounding forest. “They don’t seem to match, do they?” Torean prompted, failing to restrain himself. Adran shook his head, and passed them back.

“We thought it was a poor mold, at first, but once the wooden cast was fully smoothed the problem persisted.” Torean waved his hand at the ground surrounding the fire, showing Qarnet’s measuring cups scattered all about. “We thought it might be uneven amounts of glass, so we took to measuring. Then, Qarnet did as he always does, and thought of heat.”

Qarnet jumped in, clearly eager to tell his part. “I realized that the fire was probably not boiling the water evenly, so I dampened the heat a bit to even it out. When we compared to the previous lenses, the refraction was completely different!” Adran frowned, confused. “The glass bends the light a different amount depending on the curing temperature. It’s unlike any transparent material I know of!”

Adran cocked his head to the side. “That would have some interesting uses, I’m sure, but I don’t think-”

“We aren’t done yet!” Torean interrupted, grinning maniacally. “How would you, if you had a mage with control of fire and heat, cure lenses at an even temperature?” Adran opened his mouth. “By direct application, of course!” Torean finished, laughing. He passed a waterskin to Qarnet, who cupped a handful of its water.

Qarnet adopted a serious expression. “Now, for the real trick.” He flattened his palm, and the water failed to flow out of his hand. He clenched his fist and a trickle ran down his fingers. He opened it and in his palm remained a hollow-sided glass pyramid. “It didn’t boil.” Qarnet said, eyes aflame. “It simply felt the push of magic and… formed. Directly.”

Adran strode forward and grabbed the waterskin. Pouring it over his palm, he pushed weightlessness into the fluid, and felt a glass glove encase his hand. Slowly, as if holding the finest of crystal, he pulled the waterskin away, and marvelled at the unfaceted gem, gesturing in supplication, with his fingers distorted within. A true god-given miracle. In fading disbelief, he felt his worries fall away.

His façade cracked, and Adran fell to his knees and wept.