They make camp just outside of Bramridge. Neil sets out tents and bedrolls which he purchased in town, and mulls over their options while stirring a pot of stew over the fire.

  Wyn sits on her bedroll, just inside her tent and away from Neil and Mirana. She sets both spell tomes open in her lap, pages catching the distant firelight as she flips through them. She barely notices her friends; their voices blur into the background. Wyn keeps her focus on the spell tomes in her lap.

  Anytime her focus fades, she sees Blintsy stepping down from nothing with that devilish grin. She can still hear the screaming cries of the people of Lethisburg, doomed to die. She sees Lothran’s face and feels her stomach twist.

  She does not have time for that. She has a problem, and problems can be solved. The spells will fix it. They have to.

  Wyn sighs. These tomes, while simple, are far different from what she’s grown accustomed to. Her essentia resists her as she tries to follow the clear steps of casting. It’s nothing like Spellweaving. Spellweaving is shaping essentia to fit her needs based on instinct and a healthy dose of guesswork. This is just following directions. It feels wrong, lacking the artistry of spellweaving. But in order to weave the spells, she has to learn them first.

  After several attempts, she finally gets the steps right, her movements now fluid and assured. The tome levitates off the ground slightly as a notification rings in her ears.

  Ability Discovered!

  Ability: Basic Telekinesis - Common

  Description: Allows the caster to move small objects using essentia.

  Would you like to learn this ability?

  Y / N

  She selects yes and tries the spell again. She focuses on a small pebble nearby and activates the ability in her mind. The magic circle floats before her, before settling around her wrist like a bracelet. The pebble lifts half an inch off the ground. Wyn rotates her wrist, and the pebble spins in place.

  It works, but leaves her wanting. It’s far from a satisfying accomplishment compared to her own spells she’s created.

  Wyn barely hears Neil’s voice as it reaches her ears, focused on the task at hand. “How’s it going?”

  “Telekinesis is fine.”

  “That’s one of the two.”

  “I know.”

  Mirana shifts on her bedroll. “Let her work, Neil.”

  “I… fine.”

  Mirana snorts a laugh. “Just let it go. Let her figure out her magic, and we’ll figure out the rest. It’ll all be fine.”

  Neil and Mirana argue, and Wyn tunes out their conversation. Them arguing won’t help her.

  Wyn opens the containment tome, finding similar instructions. Having unlocked the secrets in the first tome, the second comes to her much easier.

  Ability Discovered!

  Ability: Containment Rune - Common

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Description: Prevent an object from being tampered with. Can also serve to magically lock doors and contain dangerous artifacts.

  Would you like to learn this ability?

  Y / N

  Wyn accepts the ability and attempts to cast it. She holds her hands out, palms facing each other, and follows the instructions closely. A faint distortion forms between her hands as blue lines appear, forming into a cube. She spreads her hands apart, and the distortion expands to about a foot and a half on each side.

  She reaches forward a tentative finger to poke the floating cube. It zaps her in warning, and her hand does not pass through it.

  She deactivates the spell, and the cube disappears. Wyn notes that the spell uses a tiny, constant trickle of essentia. If she wants to keep the spell active while she’s not in the room with it, she’ll need to find something to power it. A problem for later. For now, she needs to weave the two spells together.

  A moving cage. That’s what she needs to create. The spell needs to move at her command and maintain its containment properties. Given the nature of the two spells, one focused on preventing tampering and the other being all about tampering, this won’t be very easy.

  Wyn sets a palm-sized stone on the dirt in front of her. She casts containment around it, watching as the blue-framed cube appears. To test the containment, she casts telekinesis, attempting to shift the rock inside the containment cube.

  Nothing. The stone doesn’t move. Wyn supposes she should’ve predicted that, after all, the containment spell prevents outside interaction, but she had to try the simple solution.

  Another idea forms. Instead of casting telekinesis on the rock, what if she tried to move the cube? She casts it, sending a silent prayer to whatever gods might exist, and once again nothing happens.

  Wyn sighs. There isn’t an easy way out of this. She has to weave the spells into something new, even though they fight her every step of the way.

  Outside, firelight flickers against the tent wall. Somewhere out there Neil stirs the stew with more force than the stew deserves.

  “You’re still at it?” Neil asks, voice muted by the canvas tent.

  Wyn doesn’t look up. “Yes.”

  Mirana stops him before he can say anything else. “Don’t.”

  Neil makes an irritated sound. “I’m not telling her to stop. I’m asking if she’s making progress. This whole quest hinges on her figuring out the spell.”

  Wyn shuts out the rest of that exchange and pulls the tomes closer, comparing diagrams. The containment spell is structured, solid and steady. Telekinesis is a directed force, having a clear intention, but lacking stability compared to containment.

  In order for the two spells to mix, she needs to find a middle ground between the stability of the two spells, allowing them to merge into one. If they can be the same, she’d end up with some sort of telekinetic containment cube. Easier said than done, but it should work.

  Wyn recasts Containment Rune, but this time she does it slowly, watching the lines form. She stops before the final corner locks, holding the cube half-finished. The spell strains toward completion. It takes all of her focus to deny the spell from completing fully, but it holds, the lines of essentia flickering.

  With the spell holding steady, Wyn begins weaving threads of telekinesis into the spell.

  At first, nothing happens. Her telekinesis slides off the cube, the two spells refusing to meet, mixing about as well as oil and water. Wyn grits her teeth and tries again, tightening her focus and willing the spells to combine. She reaches for Lothran’s lesson and forces herself to apply it instead of brute-forcing the weave.

  She can still picture him: hands steady, shaping empty air into clean angles to prove the rules mattered. “Magic isn’t just power,” he said. “It’s an agreement between the fabric of reality and the will of the caster.”

  The spell flickers. Her distraction causing the spell to falter. Wyn draws in a slow breath and fixes her mind on the corner again. She pours a thin thread of essentia into the forming spell, using the basic construct of the telekinesis spell to will the spell to complete.

  She watches as the lines begin to knit together, guided by her will.

  Her telekinesis slips again, refusing to cooperate. She tries to hold on to the spell, but she can already feel it unraveling. The lines of essentia get brighter and brighter, lighting the tent in a blue glow.

  Wyn uses her essentia control to separate the two spells, preventing them from reacting to one another and causing some kind of dangerous cascade. Wyn has never seen a reaction like this before, and it takes all her focus to keep it from going wrong. The spells threaten to unravel, but within the instability, she can feel them beginning to pull together, bonding within the chaos. She holds on as long as she can, pushing the two wildly unstable spells back together.

  For a heartbeat, it works.

  The stone lifts inside the forming cage, and the whole construct shifts an inch across the dirt in a wild and erratic jolt of movement.

  Then the blue lines twitch and re-route on their own, sketching unfamiliar runes. The runes all activate simultaneously in a bright blue glow, and the containment cube rockets upward as if it’s been fired from a cannon. The tent ceiling bulges as it slams into the canvas, yanking stakes loose and dragging fabric and poles into the air.

  Wyn, her tent soaring high above her, can only smile awkwardly at her companions.

  Mirana chuckles. “Good job, you made a tent missile.”

  The laughter barely leaves her mouth before the tent reaches the top of its arc. For one weightless moment it just hangs there, canvas snapping in the wind. Then it tips, and Wyn’s stomach drops with it. The tent falls back toward them, a flailing mass of cloth, wood, and stakes.

  “Everybody move!”