Sitting up, Angela once again grabbed her runemarker. There was no way she’d get scared off by one little setback, and she immediately began drawing the Chaos rune.

Unlike with her aborted attempt at Power II, there was no sense of building power when she drew the Chaos rune. Instead, it was more like creating an empty spot—like she was digging a hole. The drawing of it wasn’t difficult, and when she completed the last line it seemed to lock in place, the minor imperfections straightening out and resolving into a perfect rune shape, the rainbow edges of the lines appearing to suck into the rune itself, leaving only a yellow glow behind.

“Autocorrect? Sweeet…” she muttered. Hopefully it was better than her phone.

Once the Chaos rune was in place, she moved on to Power II. To her surprise, the rainbow lines didn’t form at all this time, only existing at the tip of her runemarker before transforming into the same yellow light that made up her already-drawn Chaos rune. The only exception was the two circles at the centre of the power rune, both of which were filled with a deep well of force the moment Power II snapped into being. Something similar had happened when she’d drawn Power II without attaching it to the Chaos rune, but that time the circles hadn’t waited until the rune’s completion to fill with power. It had also felt wilder, whereas this time it was harnessed; the might of the Chaos rune keeping the power rune in check.

Confident that she was on the right track, Angela moved on to Ithreach and, hopefully, her first spell, attaching it to the Chaos rune opposite Power II.

Leonard, who had spent the entire time peering over her shoulder and occasionally getting in the way, cocked his head and looked into the bushes. “Uh, so what now?”

“Now?” Angela said with a grin. “Now we turn it on.” It was no accident that she was grinning. For once, she actually had some idea how to proceed.

“In that case, I’m gonna make myself scarce on account of you not havin’ any idea what you’re doin’,” Leonard said before scampering off into the woods.

“Yeah, you do you…” she muttered absently, not really paying attention. Come on, Angela. You remember what it was like with the Goddess Rune. Reach out. Grab the vitality of the forest.

Taking a breath, she extended her awareness.

“Holy shit,” she said as the connection to the forest formed with such an immediate jolt that it felt like she’d crushed and snorted a tin of evergreen mints. Apparently, being an actual druid had its perks.

Smiling once again, Angela pulled on that vitality, extending it through her body and touching it to the power rune.

The lines of Power II flared to life with a bright rainbow light that flooded the Chaos rune, which in turn shone an unbroken yellow-gold. That gold light poured into the etchings of Ithreach, which itself began glowing with an earthy, brown colour. Once the whole rune lattice was illuminated, Angela had the sudden feeling of being dropped from a great height before the entire lattice flared once and disappeared, leaving no trace of its existence behind.

The entire process lasted less than a second.

For a moment, she thought the spell had misfired. Then a stone hit her.

Class Quest: “Learn Rune Magic!” Part 3 Completed!

You finally did it. You cast a spell! I’m happy for you. No, I really am. I parlayed “Attempts to draw a power rune without the Chaos rune” with the under on total attempts before a successful cast and you delivered. Now all I need is for you to blow yourself up in the next month and I’ll nail the trifecta.

Reward for Success: 1,500 XP, Spellcasting

Rune Lattices Skill Increased to Level 3 (Tier-0)

It ain’t rocket surgery, but you’re getting there.

Drawing Skill Increased to Level 15 (Tier-I)

Want to know why Class Skills advance quicker than your other stuff? Because if you try drawing an advanced lattice with the level of skill you just showed, you’ll blow your hands off.

1,800 XP Earned (cumulative)

Angela felt a shift in the forest around her and she excitedly scrambled to her feet, only for the feeling to disappear the moment her skin broke contact with the earth. She frowned, hoping she hadn’t just broken the spell, then knelt and placed her hand on the soil.

The feeling of shifted perception returned, and she grinned.

“That’s what I’m talkin’ about,” she said, nodding. “Now let’s see what this does.”

She closed her eyes.

Aaaand it was super weird.

Somehow, it didn’t feel like she was closing her eyes at all. Instead, it felt like she had hit the pause button on her vision, replacing the video feed she was used to with a still image.

No, that wasn’t entirely correct. It wasn’t an image so much as a visual echo, like looking at layers of clear acetate, with each layer representing a different moment of time. What’s more, she could mentally peel back the layers to look at the snapshots individually. They got increasingly hazy the further back she went, and her strange pseudo-vision only extended five or six metres out from her current position, but she was still able to pick out all sorts of details. Like how she had disturbed the forest in her passing, or how the animals scampered away as she approached. One thing she didn’t see was herself, which was interesting. Maybe the spell was limited to things that existed within the natural environment?

With her curiosity piqued, Angela flipped through the images until she saw the echo of Leonard in the clearing. She then used her spell to track him by moving through the images as though they were a flipbook. It was surprisingly easy to do. Other than the awkwardness of needing to remain in contact with the ground, she had no trouble following his flickering ghostly form as it wandered into the woods and over to a—

“Leonard!” she shouted, yanking her hand off the ground.

“I’m busy!” the squirrel shouted from the bushes.

“Get back here!”

“I said I’m busy! I’ll be there in a minute!”

She stood up and put her head in her hands. “You’ve got to be kidding,” she said, staring at the woods until Leonard strolled jauntily out of the brush, looking over his shoulder and making a “call me” gesture with one paw to his ear.

“Alright, I’m back,” he said, turning his attention to Angela. “What was so important?”

“You were just banging another squirrel!” Angela shouted.

“Hell yeah, I was.”

“How? You left, like, two minutes ago!”

“Eh,” he said with an unrepentant grin. “Squirrels ain’t like humans. When the mood hits ya, ya go for it.”

She pointed a finger at him. “That better have been mutual.”

“What da hell kinda comment is dat!” he said, scowling at her. “Of course it’s mutual! That’s the flip side of everythin’ wantin to eat us. If we didn’t schtupp each other around the clock, we’d go extinct in a year.”

Angela thought about that.

“Point conceded.”

“’Course it is. But hey, how’d the spell go?” he said, poking the ground with his foot. “I see the rune thingy is gone. Any luck?”

This time, the stone hit Leonard first before ricocheting into Angela’s forehead.

Luck + 1

“Any luck,” he says? You just happened to use the Earth rune while touching the soil on your very first spellcasting attempt? Yeah, I’d say that’s pretty lucky.

“Geez, who is dis weisenheimer, anyway?” Leonard said, rubbing the side of his head.

“I don’t know, but if you find out, you let me know,” Angela said with a grimace. “We’ll go kick his ass together.”

The squirrel gave her a thumbs up, which was interesting because she was pretty sure squirrels weren’t supposed to have thumbs. It did explain how he’d snapped his fingers, though. “You bet, sister. I’ll hold him, you hit him. Now, was dat guy just bein’ a jerk, or did he actually change the name of that rune in yer Tome?”

“Good point,” Angela said, bringing up her Tome. Sure enough, the entry for Ithreach now included the common name: Earth.

She looked up. “Why is it called the Earth rune?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Shouldn’t it be the Arenia rune? I mean…we’re not on Earth anymore.”

“What are ya talkin’ about? Those ain’t the same words.”

Angela thought about what she’d said, only to realize that she was using an Arenian word when she referred to “earth” as soil and the English word when she referred to Earth as a planet. Which made a lot of sense.

“Huh. Never mind.”

Leonard shook his head. “Lady, there’s only enough room in this operation for one nut job, and I’m the squirrel.”

Ignoring him, Angela switched to the Spells slab and grinned at the new entry.

POWER I

Tracking

See what has changed in your surroundings from the past to the present to determine what is, and what has been.

Duration: 30 seconds

Type: Scribed

Material Cost: Unknown

“I have a spell!” Angela whooped, jumping up in the air and dancing around. “I have a spell, doot doo doo doodoo, have a spell, doot doo doo doodoo…” She sang her song to the tune of “Baby Shark” for a good 30 seconds before finally calming down and taking a deep breath.

“Ya done?” Leonard asked.

“For now,” she said, turning her Tome to show Leonard. “What are your thoughts on the ‘Material Cost’ part? I used to have a healing spell that would beat the crap out of me if I didn’t use a spell component, but this time nothing happened.”

“You sure?” he said, gesturing to her. “You don’t look so great.”

“I don’t?” she said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You really want me to start tellin’ you what I think of your appearance all the time?”

“Absolutely not. In fact, let’s move on.”

Although…

Now that she thought about it, she was a bit drained. Like the bone-tired feeling you got at the start of an illness, except she hadn’t noticed it in the euphoria of getting her first spell. It wasn’t the body-wracking sickness she’d received from misusing the Goddess Rune, mind you, but that was probably the most powerful rune in existence. A milder penalty for a milder spell seemed reasonable.

Out of curiosity, she started re-drawing the lattice of the Tracking spell, but when she finished the power rune, she got a surprise.

Only one of the two circles was filled.

Interesting.

She finished drawing the lattice anyway, etching out the lines until it reached its shining conclusion, but she didn’t power it right away. Instead, she focused on the small rune lattice, seeing if she could deduce the material cost through simple focus. There was a bit of truth to the method, she suspected. The more she focussed, the more it felt as though she could sense the knowledge hidden beneath the surface of the runes.

There was a feeling in her brain, like suddenly remembering a word you were hunting for, and she just knew.

Angela grinned and turned to Leonard.

He frowned. “I don’t like that look youse givin’ me,” he said, taking a step back.

She gave him an innocent smile. “Oh, Leonard dear, could you come over here?”

“Not a chance, lady,” he said, jumping back out of reach.

“I’m not going to hurt you. I just have a feeling.”

“What kinda feeling?”

She sighed. “I think the spell needs animal fur as a material cost if I don’t want to get harmed by it.”

“And you think yanking out my hair ain’t gonna harm me?” he said.

“Oh, come on! It’s just a few—”

She caught herself. Just a few strands?

Reaching up to her right shoulder, Angela pulled away a tuft of hair left behind from one of Leonard’s many taxi rides. She gave her put-out familiar a wink and placed the hairs atop of the power rune before again drawing on the vitality of the forest and activating the rune.

The spell seemed to proceed normally, but right at the spot where she had previously felt a sudden drop in her gut, the material components instead flared with the same yellow light as that of the runes. The light continued to emanate from the material components for the duration of the spell, only for them to vanish with the rest of the lattice at the spell’s conclusion, leaving nothing behind.

Angela grinned as the same sense of altered perception settled over her, but this time she didn’t spend time experimenting. Instead, she opted to exert a small amount of conscious effort to cancel the spell early. She hadn’t known for sure if it would be possible or if her instincts about how to do it were correct, but she felt like it was an important test. If she couldn’t cancel her spells, that was important to know.

With all of that out of the way, she again drew the Chaos and Power II runes.

One circle on Power II remained lit.

“Yes!” she shouted, pumping her fist and looking at Leonard. “One of the circles is still lit up! Power II. Two charges. I used up a charge when I cast my first spell, but look what happened when I used spell components in the casting.”

Leonard peered at the runes. “What am I lookin’ at?”

“The power rune still has a charge left! If I have spell components, the spell doesn’t cost anything!”

“Huh,” Leonard said, nodding. “That ain’t nothin’. Does your Tome show you how much mojo you got left, or do you gotta draw out the runes to check?”

“Probably,” she said. Calling up her Tome, she searched through the Spells and Runes tablets.

Her brow pursed. How could something as fundamental as her amount of remaining charges not be recorded in her Tome?

She was so lost in thought that she almost didn’t hear Leonard talking to her.

“You alright?” the squirrel asked, pointing at her wrist. “You keep scratchin’ yourself.”

She looked down. She hadn’t even realized she was doing it. “Yeah, I think I got bitten by something during the night. I can’t wait to sleep in a bed again.”

He nodded sympathetically. “You and me both, lady.”

She looked at him quizzically. “Why would you sleep in a bed?”

“What do I look like, a bat? I ain’t hangin’ off no ceiling, I’ll tell ya that much.”

“What you look like is a squirrel. Don’t you have a pile of wood chips to sleep in?”

“Wood chips?” He looked scandalized. “I’m a familiar. I come from a proud and noble tradition, which means I ain’t sleepin’ on no wood chips!”

Angela closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Fine. We’ll sort something out, but fair warning: It’s really far down my to-do list.”

Their conversation was interrupted by a loud chittering in the nearby woods. Leonard glanced in the direction of the sound, then back at Angela. “So, uh, you’re done, right? We can get outta here? I’m gettin’ tired of this place.”

She arched an eyebrow. “You’re a squirrel. And you’re getting tired of the forest?”

“So sue me. I’m gettin’ used to the city life.”

“Really. And the sound of that other squirrel—who I’m guessing is probably female—couldn’t possibly be part of the equation?”

Leonard patted his rotund belly. “I don’t mean no disrespect, but my stamina ain’t what it used to be.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Angela asked.

He shrugged. “I got a reputation to protect. Can’t go leavin’ any unsatisfied customers.”

She stared at him. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

“I ain’t.”

“Whatever,” she said, climbing to her feet. “Come on, let’s go get lunch.”

“Seriously? I thought you was gonna give me grief since you still got another rune to work out.”

“Actually, I think I already know what that rune is for,” she said. “I’d test it out, but it might require a bit of light wounding on your part. You up for it?”

“Hell no. That’s what you got a family for. Let’s go get some chow.”