Sword, Scorch, Scintillation II.

  The chest was locked until it wasn’t.

  The chest was small, and its items were few, yet far more intriguing than most of the previous treasures I’d seen buried.

  First was a sapphire of decent size, which would be a change in fortunes to any man not imprisoned. I took it anyway, though it revealed no magical properties. Sapphires were purported to have their uses.

  A scrap of mail could be used to repair any damaged armour I didn’t have, and the small statue of a bear was well made, but without current utility.

  I gave the pair of shoes to Attar, which fit him well, but didn’t silent his footfalls like his other shoes. He kept them anyway, which I assumed was for backup, or when it was necessary for his footfalls to be heard.

  The sapphire was not the only treasure in the chest. Beside it was a Golden Sickle.

  Not a tool used for harvesting herbs made of gold, not even the druid’s sacred emblem, but the incarnate form of the ideal. It was a word, and a tool, and a twisting shining spectre of a thing, which diminished everything next to it by proxy. It was, more specifically, a Magisterial concept made manifest by the hyper-reality of the Bleak Fort. A dream torn from its realm and left on the mortal plane.

  All that to say, I could grasp it, and I could use it. A Golden Sickle, as used by the druids was a symbol of preservation, as used by a farmer of isolation and harvest. I could use this to harvest my own spells, though to what end I couldn’t say.

  I was willing to test it.

  I turned my spellbook to the page containing Compass, and swung the Sickle horizontally, as though cutting the rune at its roots.

  The spell lifted from the page, text, written in wax, hovering above the page.

  I grasped it, and placed it against the cloak I used as a sash across my chest. The rune took root and the Sickle unravelled from reality.

  Strange.

  Compass

  As far as I could tell, the spell cast the same as it ever had, which was to say, very slightly increasing the rate at which I healed.

  The ability to move spells, especially if I was able to safely move them to my body, would be an incredible boon. If the Golden Sickle ever returned.

  Attar and I returned to the lift shaft. The afternoon was growing long, and though the stairs down were tempting, we had no idea of the length of the descent. Plus I’d feel a lot safer once I had my cockatrice slaying spell fully formed.

  Lift II provided our means of return to our temporary haven.

  The fire was still burning when we returned, barely more than smouldering ashes, but still giving off heat.

  Strange. I would have expected the fire to be dead days ago. Perhaps the wood was a kind I wasn’t familiar with, or, given that this was the Bleak Fort, it was also possible the rules of nature were breaking down.

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  I sung one of the old Northman sagas I’d learned to entertain us until nightfall. The higher singing voice required paired beautifully with my new voice in its normal register, and I even switched to the godly tones for the lines sung by the Rejuvinator. The effect was haunting, and greater than my own skill alone could provide. By the end I had chills.

  Every blessing was a curse, and every curse was a blessing.

  ***

  The sun rose at its normal time and place, waking me to the new day.

  Our repose the previous day had not been interrupted by another spell recording, leading me to believe the wheel of suns had ended. I could take my time to eat and drink properly this morning.

  “Oswic? Oswic!” the words were spoken with my voice. The last of the rising sun let me see Attar’s joyous expression at his returned speech.

  I jogged over and slapped him on the back, “It’s a relief to hear my voice.”

  He laughed, “Five years? It is a wonder anyone becomes a Magus. One day was bad enough.”

  “It gets easier. And then harder again. Ideally you aren’t crawling through a dungeon full of dangers and traps.”

  “I only just had the thought, and perhaps too late, but can your illusion speak?”

  Attar summoned the illusionary Attart who immediately said, “I never tried, can i...”

  She trailed off and all three of us looked at each other. Though only Attart’s expression was visible to one without my ring.

  I felt a tugging pang in my heart. The illusion sounded just like her.

  “I should have tried!” Attar said, “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.”

  “I didn’t either. There was a lot going on. Today should be slower.”

  We continued to talk as we ate and drank and readied ourselves for the day. Weapons were checked and backpacks were shouldered. Despite only taking an hour, the delay felt luxuriously decadent.

  Lift

  ***

  The cockatrice in the glowing room next to the lift shaft would soon start to smell, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that smell was lethal. Attar and I stayed well clear of the exit while I prepared my next spell.

  Inferno II. One, two, three and a- Inferno III.

  Inferno IIII: Every 3.25 seconds for an hour a fireball 50 feet in diameter and four times as hot as flaming coals fills the room in front of the caster at the time of casting.

  It was a simple as that.

  The heat caused the body to burn to charcoal and the glowing glass to turn into a glowing gas-one which thankfully stayed in the room. A bright white light, glowing iron, maybe?, shone from the far end of the room, but nothing came of it. The cockatrice wouldn’t survive.

  Attar waited back in the defensible room of yellow smears while I stalked carefully down the hall to my prey.

  I could hear a loud clucking from the covered up hole in the wall. I stayed back far enough from the wall that my ring only revealed the barest edge of inside of the room. My ring had apparently protected me from the glowing glass, but a gaze should never be poisonous in the first place. I had no idea if it could help me here.

  Inferno IIII

  I retreated the moment I cast the spell. I didn’t need the last breath of a panicked or enraged cockatrice filtering through the covered hole to the room. The heat rushing through would be dangerous enough.

  “Is it dead?” Attar asked the moment I finished crawling through the hole.

  “It better be, but I can’t be certain. I didn’t want to risk sticking around.”

  “I’m going to be forever looking after my shoulder until we see the body.”

  “That’s no way to live,” uncertainty was part of life.

  “Even so.”