“Bridge is a language?” Dav sounded doubtful. “That’s a strange name for a language.”

  Sophia shrugged. Bridge was almost as familiar to her as English was, since she’d grown up in a multilingual household where the languages everyone knew were English and Bridge. “That’s its name. The translation, anyway. Is it any weirder to translate the name of a trade tongue than to use a word for a people that is long gone?”

  Dav started to say something, but stopped with his mouth open. After a moment, he shook his head. “I want to say that it is but I don’t know why.”

  Sophia grinned. It was nice that Dav always tried to come up with actual reasons for things. It was one of the things she liked about him. “Are there any other words on the pillar? I didn’t see any, but I want to know if I missed some.”

  She had a strong suspicion that the Ability might help Dav in a way it wouldn’t help her, since she spoke the language.

  Sophia moved on to the next pillar, the one Larryt identified as the source of Cloud Body, while Dav examined the first one. It also had a label above the glowing design. Sophia silently translated it as Shadowed Clouds, or maybe the Clouds’ Shadow. It was just as clearly related to the Ability the Cloud Clan had figured out as the first one was, but it still seemed like an odd name. She shook her head and turned towards Larryt. “Do you know what the description of Cloud Body is?”

  Larryt shook his head. “I’ve seen it used, that’s all.”

  That wasn’t helpful.

  Neither was Dav’s conclusion that there were no other words on the pillar.

  When Sophia turned to check the last pillar, a glow near the Mist in the Sun pillar caught her attention: a second identical pillar rose next to the first. She blinked, then realized what had to be going on. “Taika? What are you doing?”

  “Memorizing the tree,” Taika called back. “Isn’t that what we’re supposed to be doing?”

  Sophia was pretty sure it wasn’t.

  “You’re supposed to duplicate the-” Larryt’s words stopped suddenly. Sophia glanced over at him and saw him standing with a startled expression on his face. Sophia could see why he was startled; Si’a stood directly in front of him with her arm in his chest. He clearly wasn’t supposed to say more.

  “We’re supposed to see if we can figure out how to do something with the symbols on the pillars,” Amy stated quietly. She stood to Sophia’s left, near the Shadowed Cloud pillar. “Normally, you meditate while envisioning the symbols and think about what they do. We’re only going to be able to learn Abilities that resonate with us, because we don’t have the time to practice what we see. Those Abilities are supposed to be the best because they fit you; it’s just that finding them can be really hard. Most Challenges won’t have anything you resonate with. That’s why learning Abilities on the first try is impressive.”

  That sort of helped, but Sophia was still not confident about what they were supposed to do. It didn’t sound like Taika was doing anything wrong after all. Trying to make an illusionary duplicate wasn’t how Sophia would choose to learn something, but it was how Taika dealt with the world.

  Sophia wasn’t sure what to expect from the third pillar. She couldn’t see anything immediately obvious about it that was different from the others, but something had to be different or the Cloud Clan wouldn’t ignore it. She wasn’t going to spend much time on it, but she did feel like it should be checked.

  It was very similar to the first two, with orange glowing symbols on all four sides and a label above one of the sides. The third pillar’s name was just as uselessly symbolic as the first two; what did Spirits’ Veil or Veiled Spirit even mean? The fact that Spirit specifically meant the animating spirit in a being didn’t help; it was also the word for ghost, since that was the remnant of that very spirit. Soul might be a better translation, though that came with connotations Sophia didn’t feel like thinking about.

  Sophia shook her head. She still had the distinct feeling that she was missing something and -

  Wait. From where she stood, she could see where all three of the names appeared on the tree-pillars. They were too far apart to actually read the names, but they all faced towards each other, or maybe towards a central spot. There was a spot more or less in the middle with something that could be a worn stone floor; maybe that meant something other than a path. Sophia couldn’t really tell.

  That still wasn’t what she was missing. Sophia cast her eyes over the pillar again, then turned to watch Taila’s reproduction. It was more interesting to see him build it out and try to adjust the circuits than it was to stare at the glowing patterns with no real idea what to do with them. Sure, she could try to hold them in her head and get them to do something, but was there actually a point in that?

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  Sophia slowly made her way over to Taika’s illusion. There was something about it that pulled at that nagging feeling of familiarity. It was almost right, but not quite.

  She stared at it until it began to swim in front of her eyes. She just knew that whatever was nagging at her would come to her later; that always happened. It was annoying.

  Instead of trying to dig for what it was, she began to look for differences between the illusion and the actual pillar. At first, there were quite a few and they were easy to find, but it took only a few minutes before the illusion improved enough that Sophia had to actually compare the shapes of the glowing symbols to see where they weren’t curved correctly. She wasn’t the only person helping Taika, either; both Dav and Amy were quietly offering comments when they saw something.

  “We really should start moving on if you aren’t trying to learn the Abilities,” Larryt prompted them. “You will need the time later.”

  “No,” Dav answered before Sophia could. “This is how Taika thinks he might be able to learn Mistform. This may not be how you learned the Ability, but if our illusionist can move without being seen or hurt, that can only help.”

  Larryt might have a point, and he was certainly trying to be helpful, but he wasn’t thinking about Taika as part of the party. Sophia wasn’t entirely sure about Dav’s reasoning there. Taika was already something of an escape artist, so Sophia wasn’t sure he needed Mistform; that would be more useful for their scout. Unfortunately, Amy seemed uninterested in it.

  Still, if Taika wanted to try, Sophia wasn’t about to argue about it. She might not think he needed Mistform, but it was his choice and it wasn’t like anything else was all that important. On top of that, Sophia could see other reasons to let Taika continue. This might not be the best place for it, but it was good practice in visualization for all of them. Visualization was important in illusions, obviously, and it was key for most spells as well. Amy might not cast spells, but Sophia was certain that the attention to detail wouldn’t be useless for her either.

  This was also fun, oddly enough. It might make a good game to add to their evening routine.

  When Sophia looked back at Taika’s image, she was thinking about spells rather than symbols. The line in front of her eyes looked exactly like the times she failed to properly form the connection between two parts of a spell; it had a bend where it flowed into the next piece of the spellform. That would be a weak point in any spell, since it was outside the shaping that turned it from a mere mana loop into an active spell component; it was literally just a connection.

  She shook her head. This wasn’t a spellform; it was some sort of Ability trainer-

  Was there any reason that it couldn't be a spellform?

  The spot on the tree where the kink was in Taika’s image was straight on the tree. Sophia pointed it out to him, then began to trace the symbols on the tree with the thought that they were spellform components rather than a mystery language or abstract nonsense meant to guide her thoughts in a specific direction.

  No wonder it seemed familiar to her. Almost everything she saw was familiar to her, if written in glowing light instead of mana itself. Most of the ones she didn’t recognize were made up of bits she did know; they were just put together weirdly. It wasn’t even close to the best spellform diagram she’d ever seen; there was something clunky and formulaic about it rather than elegant and optimized. It was still a spellform.

  She had no idea what the spell would do. Well, no, that wasn’t true; it had to be either something related to Mistform or the Mist in the Sun that the label said. She hummed to herself, then pulled a notebook and pencil out of her backpack. There were only a handful of spell components per pillar; if she could identify them all and how they fit together, she could probably determine what the spell was.

  Spells weren’t exactly like programming, but they were similar and this was a very simple spellform.

  Sophia sketched all of the spellforms on the first pillar. She was much, much faster than Taika because she knew what the shapes were supposed to look like and could simply write them down. Once she was done, she looked over the four sketches and frowned. Some of the connections were wrong; she could tell that they were connected more or less around the pillar, in a three-dimensional shape that made her want to smack whoever came up with it. The complexity wasn’t necessary.

  It also wasn’t a complete spellform. There were a handful of connections on three of the pillar sides that didn’t connect to the next side. She could probably tie them off; that would be a complete spell, but it was clearly not what was intended. It definitely was related to mist, and if she tied it off like that it would target the spellcaster, so the connection to Mistform was obvious.

  It didn’t have a proper exit condition; if she tied it off, it would connect back to the starting point and simply keep pulling on the spellcaster’s mana in a more or less infinite loop. That sounded a lot like the way Mistform worked, too.

  It would be easy enough to fix, but Sophia didn’t quite believe that anyone who could write such a brute of a spell would leave an obvious flaw like the dangling connections. They would be obvious the first time you tried to cast it. That probably meant there was more to the spell hidden somewhere.

  She didn’t even have to look far, because the conclusion was obvious: there were two more pillars with similar glyphs. They were probably spellforms, too, and this was probably all one spell. It was a nonsensical way to arrange it, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true.

  The open connections were all on the sides of panels near one of the other two pillars. The side that didn’t have any missing links was the one that faced the outside. That was close enough to confirmation for Sophia.

  “Didn’t you say it was Mistform?” Taika’s voice broke through Sophia’s concentration. “The Ability I was just offered isn’t Mistform. It’s Invisible Ink!”

  I think it should be pretty obvious why Taika didn’t get Mistform. Well, part of the reason, at least.