According to the creator of shamanism, Tai Olm, spells are the physical manifestation of an individual’s will to bend the world to their will using aether.

  When a shaman wants to change a part of the world, there are five laws they must follow. The law of 3 from 4, of aspectual pyramids, of aether harmony, of half-spells, and of impermanence.

  Each law is deep and complex, with many schools of thought and study trying to uncover its secrets and improve upon how well they are understood.

  The basics taught to every apprentice shaman are as follows:

  From one core, you must build three equal and different wholes. All materials are aspected in the eyes of the Tao and can only be used to make a spell of that aspect. A spell must be balanced with equal amounts of aether in all four parts, so a stronger core makes for stronger spells.

  The study of half spells is reserved only for high shamans and above due to their requirements and backlash. Lastly, the law of impermanence is something all shamans observe every time they cast a spell.

  ***

  As Beri crushed the wooden carving, the spell began to activate, and her eyes closed before her mind was pulled away from the physical world as a prescient aura filled her body.

  She reopened her eyes in a large forest, each tree full of carved secrets and possibilities. She glanced at one tree and saw it had sentences written around it from the base to high up in the branches, each line slightly tired so that it spiraled around the trunk. It would take her more time than she had to read all that information.

  She began to walk quickly, habitually ignoring the cold wind on her bare body and the scraping of rocks and twigs on her feet. Her body wasn’t real anyway, so it wouldn’t matter once she returned.

  Each tree was different and contained different information. Some were tall oak trees with lines and lines written across them. Some were short saplings with only a few words carved into them, barely forming an incoherent sentence.

  She passed a purple-leaved willow tree that swayed lifelessly in the wind as she noticed the writing on the tree had been carved over with a deep and horrifying symbol of Mer - the symbol for death.

  Remembering her teacher’s warnings about such carvings, she turned in a different direction and sped up.

  Oak. Redwood. Cecropia. Birch. Pine. Baobab. Teak. Acacia. Willows. Eucalyptus. Hemlock.

  The longer she walked, the more different types she saw until she was in an area where she didn’t recognise any plan around her.

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  To her left was a small silver tree a little taller than Song. Its leaves were gold with azure veins that shone with a slight hue and extended from the edges of the five-stared leaves to the main branches before merging into a lichtenberg pattern down the bark and into the ground.

  Despite having bonded with the whispering nightshroom, whatever language that pattern was supposed to be, she couldn’t read, so she quickly moved on.

  As time passed, she started to worry if she would find the right tree in time.

  There!

  She rushed forward and fell to the ground. Her hands and legs took the brunt of the collision as she landed on her knees, her cut feet bleeding onto the green grass. She began to read from the bottom of the tree as the sentences were carved into spirals on the trunk and lined up in uneven sizes.

  In front of her was a pale blue trunk. The head of the blueshroom tree was hundreds of meters above her and blocked by the foliage of the other trees. Despite its huge size, the blueshroom tree was only a few meters thick.

  “The path is under the mist…”

  As Beri continued, she began to mutter aloud to try and remember key bits of info. Her master had taught her that the more something is repeated, the more likely people are to remember it.

  “Follow the bridge…”

  “The core material for surviving in the Red Sea is the small intestine of an Apogee Chitlin…”

  “The controls can be substituted with an Unbound rank spell…”

  Although she didn’t understand what most of the secrets would mean now, she was desperate to memorize as many as she could. A moment of inspiration had saved her life on more than one occasion.

  Equally, hindsight had also made her feel like a complete fool just as frequently.

  She continued for a few moments before suddenly hearing the sound of grass rustling quickly.

  She turned around just in time to see a pair of jaws clamp onto her throat. Their teeth sank into her soft flesh before twisting and tearing. Violently.

  A small gargling noise escaped her doomed lips.

  The Unbound spell is called–

  Her last thoughts were interrupted as a loud clamping sound tore through her neck, clamping shut and letting her head fall to the floor.

  As the young girl’s eyes started to lose their sheen, reelected in them was a ferocious beast with midnight fur, two pairs of front limbs and three rear, four ears sprouting from its shoulders, and a wolven head with six sharp, slanted red eyes.

  Beri’s body suddenly fell forward before Vaal caught her. The concern in his eyes was only momentary before his usual plain expression returned.

  “Beri, you good?”

  The worry in Kai’s voice was evident. He looked at the young girl who had gone from nervous to resolved, to motionless, to serene, all before collapsing in a shivering mess into her colleague's arms.

  “Yeah… I’m fi–”

  Her response was interrupted by a wave of acidic vomit spewing out of her body as it reacted to the sudden memory and experience of dying.

  A few moments and one of Vaal’s silk handkerchiefs later, the young girl was finally ready to stand on her own. After throwing a thankful look to the stoic soldier, she addressed the rest of the group.

  “So… We need to jump off the cliff.”

  The group’s silence was their only reply.