From the outside, Berindal appeared majestic—but inside its walls, it might be better described as... maddening.

  "Hold on, this is Berindal Academy, is it not? There's no doors or anything, so where's the lobby?" Marcus leaned out of his seat toward the passerby he'd fgged down in the middle of the busy street, yelling over the cacophony of vendors and shoppers and bizarre creatures mingling within 'The Tangle'. These cramped strips of space between the imposing structures at ground level, hazy from the residue of unfettered spellcasting by its denizens, offered little room for a horse-drawn caravan to maneuver without bumping into stalls of exotic fruits or candles or enchanted hats. Along this street alone, the stalls contained enough magical accessories to fill a tiny mountain shop's shelves dozens of times over.

  "It's up at the top!" the passerby pointed a hand riddled with gemstone rings and bracelets skyward. He shooed a merchant carrying a box of bizarre blue mushrooms away from the wagon before her sales pitch could interrupt their conversation. "Berindal is three-dimensional, my dear friend! Down the street, you'll reach a garden ring, yeah? On the outside of the tower for the Arcana Guild. Goes all around the building. Lovely lics. It shifts up and down levels every five minutes. Take that up, exit onto Houndstooth Road, go to the next ring, take that down a level..."

  I lost track of how many twists and turns and elevating roadways we'd have to make to reach the entrance of a building no more than an arm's length away. The yout of Berindal, the rgest city for the study and practice of magic throughout the central nations, required four separate maps of the different levels of roadways, making Berindal more like multiple cities stacked on top of one another. Above us, a network of bridges and paths interlinked the massive spires of steel and stone and marble and gss, some linking to those levitating gardens that rose and fall like clockwork, while others vanished into the side of one of the rge buildings to go tunnel within them and exit the other side. Add to all of that an inter-city portal system, and it became clear that the Langmeyers really should have studied the city routes ahead of time.

  "Dad, we're gonna be te," Garitt said as he shuffled through the maps.

  Marcus chuckled, fidgeting with his gsses. "We'll be fine! It's all fine, probably. We just need to get above this haze and get a better view of things, that's all. I bet it'll become clearer once we've found the first garden ring and gain some height."

  Nothing became clearer after the first ring. The world did grow quieter the further we ascended, making it easier for the family to argue amongst themselves about how lost they actually were. We traversed a marble path along the pristine, manicured fauna featured on the levitating ptform as it ferried us up to the fourth level of the city's road network, but we'd have to take two other rings to get to the proper part of the third level that connected to the top ptform of Berindal Academy. At least sunlight graced us in the upper levels, as the haze and the density of the buildings left the Tangle, with its tourist attractions and overpriced shops, starved of natural light. The second and fourth levels, devoted more to prestigious magic firms and businesses, felt more like a quiet sanctuary for a more civilized approach to magecraft, its occupants passing by the wagon with wordless nods of greeting. As we approached Berindal Academy on the third level, the city came to life again, with students reading tomes filled with ancient knowledge or practicing wizardry in circur gardens sprouting off of pathways like leaves on a vine. Some spent their time turning flowers into butterflies; others pyed an eborate game of hide-and-seek where participants tried to counter another pyer's invisibility magic, raining blue streaks of energy upon the wn from their wands.

  "Are you absolutely sure this is the right school for you, Garitt?" Scarlett said, gripping her son's hand. "Don't get me wrong, I love the gardens and the vines and all, but it's so big and confusing and overwhelming, don't you think? There's no shame in attending smaller schools. I got along just fine at the academy in Cauldron Grove, I'm sure you'd fit in there too."

  "No way, mom, Berindal's my destiny," Garitt said. "Only the best of the best go here, and then they get into the top magic firms. I heard the professors here are so good, they taught someone born without magic how to cast spells!"

  Scarlett scoffed. "That bcksmith story? Don't believe everything you hear, Garitt. Magic channels are inherited, you know that. Anyway, I will respect your choice to attend Berindal Academy, it's just..."

  "Just what?"

  "Your mother wishes admission wasn't so expensive, is what," Marcus said, only to be shoved in the shoulder by his scowling wife a moment ter. "Err, I mean, we'll make it work! Maybe we can sell that neckce we found, make a little extra money."

  "Or we use it to get that treasure..." Caleb said.

  After a winding maze of roads and portals, we made our way to the final bridge extending toward Berindal Academy, its purple logo embzoned on the side of the structure. The conical marble spire at the center of a lush green courtyard appeared modest at first, until I realized that it was little more than decoration for the true structure underneath it which housed the lecture halls and boratories—and the paths branching out from it extended the campus to other nearby buildings where the libraries and museums and dormitories resided. The cylindrical building descended into the purple haze at ground level, its base vanishing from sight.

  "Well, it's still no Cauldron Grove," Scarlett said with a shrug, trying her hardest to feign disinterest.

  Once we reached main archway, Garitt leaped out of the wagon. "I'm going to sign in for interviews. I'll meet you at the hotel ter?"

  I'd been a spectator up to this point in our travels, but now I had to take action. This was my chance, my destiny! The Fates charted this path for me to finish Nadia's original pn for me, to reach an expert in relics like Professor Promell, I just had to take these final steps somehow. How? Maybe, I thought, I'd been around Scarlett's neck just long enough these past couple days... maybe I could give her nudges as I'd done with Janine. I focused my mind, projecting a singur thought toward Scarlett: give Garitt the neckce.

  "Good luck, I love you, I know you'll do great." Scarlett hugged her son, smiling at him before she froze in pce. She blinked and took a deep breath, furrowing her brow in confusion as a new thought bubbled to the fore of her mind. "Wait, before you go. The neckce, you should take it with you."

  "What for?"

  Marcus rubbed his chin. "Hmm? Oh, that's a brilliant idea, dear! One of the professors might know something about it, that would save us some trouble. Just don't tell them we found it on the trip, say it's a family heirloom or something. Any lingering fish smells?"

  Garitt took me from Scarlett and brought his nose close to me. "All clear."

  "Wonderful. Good luck!" Marcus gave a wide smile as he turned the wagon around. Once the rest of the Langmeyers disappeared over the bridge, Garitt braced himself for a long day, tucking me into a shirt pocket before making his way inside.