The next morning, Gust shared his afternoon’s plans with his friend while they ate breakfast in the courtyard. There were some light gray clouds overhead, but they did nothing to sway Gust’s decision.

Locke’s expression soured and he shook his head. “I don’t think I want to spend half a day walking through the woods.”

“Even if it means you might find some cool bugs?” Gust offered.

“It’s tempting, but I should finish what I’ve started before introducing new species to my colonies. It’s a delicate balance, Gust. Besides, are you sure you’re ready for that?”

“For gathering herbs? Yeah, man, I think I can manage. My Mage Sword can through rock when I use sword mana, I think it’ll be able to deal with a few animals.”

Locke snorted. “When they’ve gained some level of cultivation, we call them beasts. They’re different, Gust. They get smarter, as well as stronger. In the higher worlds, the most advanced beasts have been known to speak and reshape their bodies to imitate humans.”

“That sounds creepy. Have you ever seen one of these talking animals?”

“No,” Locke admitted, “but if they can exist in our world, it would be here! There’s nothing but trees for miles in every direction. It’d be easy for a smart beast to hide out there.”

Gust almost made a joke about sasquatch, then realized his friend wouldn’t get the reference. “Sure, sure. Well, if I have a conversation with a bear while I’m out, I’ll tell him you said hi.”

As soon as their daily work was finished, the map was in Gust’s hands. He headed south and noticed Jonas standing guard at the gate. He leaned against the outer wall with a book in his hands, barely paying attention.

Another guard, who had been cultivating, briefly opened his eyes. “Augustus, right?”

“Yeah,” Gust replied quickly. The other young man nodded and briefly wrote something down in a small notebook. After waiting awkwardly for the guard to say something else, Gust pointed toward the road, “Can I go?”

The mage snorted. “I don’t care whether your work’s done or why you’re leaving, I just keep track. In case they don’t come back,” he added with a somber tone.

As Gust left the pair of mages behind, he heard Jonas’s book fall to the ground. The cultivating guard laughed, “I swear, the whole school would get wiped out before you even raised the alarm.”

“I might as well make some use of this time,” Jonas argued. “If any of the pages are ripped, the repair bill’s on you!”

“Oh, just keep your senses open. If I can knock a book out of your hands from ten yards away, what do you think a real enemy could do?”

Their voices faded as Gust headed toward the largest golden area on his map. He followed the road for a while, but it led to a town a dozen miles away. If he wanted to find an untouched patch of Goldenseal, it would need to be off the beaten path.

Within minutes, however, Gust was lost.

After growing up with the luxury of GPS, the young mage had no experience reading a map. It seemed so simple when Theo handed it to him and explained the scale, roughly five miles was the length of a finger, but once Gust was out in the wild with no one to turn to… he had no idea what he was doing.

As a result, he headed in the direction he hoped was southeast. He stopped and glanced up at the sun, only to mutter aimlessly, “So, if the shadow points this way and the sun is descending in the sky then… fuck, I still don’t know what that means.”

While he grew more frustrated over time, Gust took solace in the comfort of his improved body. He was only at the first level of Pathway Establishment, but though he hiked through thick forestland for hours, he didn’t even begin to break a sweat. Gust felt like he could run the entire way home… if only he knew where that was.

At a certain point, Gust noticed the day’s light waning. Other than ‘around dinner,’ he couldn’t say what that meant for the present time. He didn’t head back to the road, but instead tried to point himself northward as his search continued. He’d only seen small critters, so Gust spread out his mana sense without fear of attracting the attention of any beasts and searched desperately for the flowers or berries which would distinguish Goldenseal from the rest of the brush.

And finally, he spotted some. There was a mass of plain green leaves with small white flowers spread throughout. Without pause, Gust shoveled as much of it as he could find into the bag of holding Theo provided and rushed on toward home. He couldn’t tell how many ounces he’d picked up, but Gust was just glad he wasn’t going home empty handed.

As the sky darkened, Gust increased his pace. His mana sense wasn’t affected by the poor lighting, but Gust only observed his immediate area. He worried about predators hiding in the darkness. If they felt his mana sense, or heard his footsteps, they might give chase.

Soon, evening fell, and it grew almost too dark to see. Red stars began to appear in Gust’s right eye’s vision. They did nothing to light the night, however.

Finally, he found a clearing in the forest which contained a small house. The school followed a simple, consistent layout, and every building was well-maintained, so Gust could already tell that he was far from home.

The arrow that flew close enough to ruffle his robes was the second hint he was in the wrong place.

Gust leapt back and thrust his hands into the air as he shrieked, “Wait, wait! I’m not armed! I’m just lost, I swear!”

He moved behind a tree and clenched his eyes shut. A few footsteps told him where the archer was, but he wasn’t confident he could reach them before they could get a few shots off. After several seconds of silence, Gust smirked and spread his mana sense toward his enemy. If this person was using a bow and arrow, they probably didn’t know any spells.

Another arrow pounded into the wood just above Gust’s head and shattered some bark. “Ah!” he shouted and jumped toward a thicker tree, but an overgrown root snagged his foot. Gust slammed his head against a branch on his way down and cut his hands on the twigs that broke his fall.

Before he could rise, a blunted arrow landed like a hammer’s blow on the side of Gust’s head.

***

With no idea how much time had passed, Gust came to in a dilapidated old cabin lit by a fire in a stone chimney. There were sharp voices on the other side of the room, and the sound of pouring rain outside.

“You didn’t know! Oh, well why don’t you just tell his elders you killed one of their students by mistake! Maybe they won’t slaughter us if we swear to serve them for the rest of our lives!” This voice was a man several years older than Gust.

The other voice was that of a teenage girl. Her soft tones were sharpened by anger. “Any real mage would have swatted aside my arrows or turned them against me! He probably found the robes somewhere and doesn’t even know what they mean!”

There were a few seconds of silence. “You had better hope that’s true.”

Gust stayed still while he listened to the pair argue. Judging by the fear in their voices, Gust could tell they feared his school and he might be able to use that to his advantage. Making a quick decision, Gust rose to a sitting position.

It was too dark to see the faces of the man and woman who had been speaking, but they noticeably froze and turned toward him.

“Do you always have a kill-on-sight policy, or is that just for me?” Gust spat out. There was a sharp pain on the side of Gust’s scalp, and he had a killer headache.

Now that they knew he was awake, Gust tried pulling at the rope which tied his wrists together. It didn’t budge. He could have used a Mage Sword to free himself, but he worried these two might attack again if they saw him using a spell. Gust cycled mana into his head to clear the pain.

The man dropped to his knees and bowed so low his head touched the floor. The girl was much slower, and as she lowered to only one knee, she kept her eyes on Gust. There was a moment where he could see her face before she bowed, and it made him gasp.

Dark tattooed lines about an inch thick ran along either side of a pretty face and met up to form a diamond in the center of the girl’s forehead. As the lines led away from that focal point, they broke up into several other, smaller lines which ran down beneath her robes. She didn’t say a word, but Gust could feel her fury.