There was a short silence as Dav’s question registered. Sophia grinned at him, then shared the thought that occurred to her at the news that she wasn’t the only one who was able to achieve something special from the pavilion. “You know, somehow I think the Cloud Clan is going to have an easy time trading Challenge slots now.”

  Amy laughed. Her amusement was evident in her words as she countered Sophia’s suggestion. “Only if you two tell them how you did it. I saw you do it, and I’m not confident I could repeat your success. Might be fun to try, but I’m not sure there’s enough time left. Si’a?” She turned towards their guide. “You said you’d let us know when it’s time to move on?”

  The ghostly woman in armor nodded. “You still have time.”

  Sophia noticed that she didn’t volunteer how much time was left.

  Amy didn’t ask again; instead, she shook her head. “It’s not worth the time. I thought that before, and it’s still true. If it were the right Ability Fragment, we could come back … Dav, what did you learn?”

  Dav gave Amy a somewhat annoyed look but answered her anyway. “Spirit Shatter. The description isn’t very helpful; all it says is ‘purge spirits with your eldritch chaos.’ It says it’s an Unaffiliated Ability Fragment; what does Fragment mean there?”

  Sophia grinned at the way he slipped the question into his answer. For once, she had an answer for him, too, if it was like the Grand Spell she’d gotten. That list gave her an idea what his Ability might be, too. The word Purge was a big hint. “Apparently you can put multiple Fragments together to create a more capable Ability, maybe even its own category. I think yours might be an exorcism Ability, something that can get rid of spirits that shouldn’t be there?”

  “Hmm.” Dav didn’t sound pleased with the idea. “Normally I’d say that wasn’t all that useful, but we’re in a place full of spirits. Are there other places like this, ones where we might have to actually fight?”

  Unexpectedly, it was Larryt that gave the answer. “You’re headed to Izel, aren’t you? The quickest route from here is to follow the old road through the Olhan ruins. That’s where the Challenge seed for the Spirits of the Woods Challenge came from. The ruins are full of spirits; a spirit-based Challenge appears there several times a year. Those spirits aren’t like the ones here; they’ll eat you if they can.”

  Larryt paused and shook his head. “I don’t think we’ll be trading this Challenge for anything for a long time, not if there’s a way to get an exorcism Ability here. The Ghost Riders Challenge offers one, but it’s a far more difficult Challenge.”

  Sophia frowned. She wasn’t quite sure what to think about the idea that you might choose Abilities that would influence your future because you happened to live near a particular type of monster. That wasn’t that big a problem on Earth. At the same time, it was undeniably true that people who lived near the ocean were more likely to take Skills that dealt with water in some way; was that really all that different?

  Also, if you lived near a ghost-infested ruined city and didn’t plan to leave, you might well want a Sphere that dealt with ghosts. Maybe that was even a good thing?

  Amy tapped Sophia on the shoulder and pointed at her head. It took Sophia a moment to realize that she was trying to silently say that she wanted to talk mind-to-mind instead of out loud, but once she did she found a question from Sophia already waiting. “I can see how Taika managed it, and he has strange enough Abilities with his illusions that few people will be able to duplicate his success. He’s also a lot slower than you two. I can tell you did something but I’m not sure what. Don’t say how you managed this until we talk to the Cloud Clan’s elders. We can trade that knowledge for a lot, like an escort to Izel. Maybe more.”

  “I’m not sure anyone here can do what I did,” Dav answered silently. “Other than Sophia, that is. I can, ah, remember an image really well if I choose to, so I did that then tried to build a mental image. It looked a little like some of the patterns Sophia’s been teaching me, but I just don’t have the mana control to draw anything even close to that complex so I just sort of blanketed the image in mana. I figured that has to be more or less what you described and what Taika is doing, just faster and more accurate since I know the image is right.”

  Sophia raised an eyebrow at Dav. She could guess what “remember an image really well” had to mean; he meant that he took a picture. That left only one possibility; the normal human memory was simply not that good at details, other than a few exceptional individuals. It really shouldn’t have been a shock, given his background, but it somehow was.

  “You have cyberware?” The words slipped out across the mental link before Sophia realized she was going to say anything. She was glad they were silent; only Dav, Amy, and Taika would be able to hear them.

  “Cyberware?” Dav’s thought carried the tone of confusion, the same way his voice would if he spoke out loud. If anything, it was clearer in his thoughts.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  It was clear Dav didn’t understand the term. That was a surprise to Sophia; a lot of slang did seem to be common between their worlds, so why was cyberware nor one of the common words? “Uh, implants? Tech connected to your nervous system, maybe your brain?”

  “Oh, of course.” Dav sounded a little off balance still. “It’s basically what everyone has. The only upgraded component is the interface, and I’ve had that since before I was on my own. A limited sandboxing area with high throughput and low latency is important for what I do.” He paused, then asked a question that sounded almost a little strained. “Are you saying you don’t?”

  “Not yet,” Sophia admitted. Dav seemed pretty uncomfortable about it. Maybe mentioning her future plans might help? “I probably will at some point, some of the things Tek’s working on look really nifty, but I don’t feel like being the test subject for Tek’s work. She sometimes forgets things, and some of those things can be pretty uncomfortable. It’s not really important to a delver, not the way it would be to you.”

  “You don’t have Dust.” Dav projected the words as if they were a revelation. He ought to know that Earth didn’t have the nanite infestation his homeworld had by now. “Which means you don’t need an identity beacon. Why didn’t I think of that?”

  Oh. It wasn’t the lack of Dust that was a surprise to him, it was the realization that it meant a lot more than what was obvious. Sophia guessed that made sense. “Are you uncomfortable because I don’t have one?”

  Dav paused, then admitted the truth. “A little, even though I know you don’t need one here. It makes me worry about what would happen if I took you home with me.”

  Sophia was pretty sure there was a magical solution to protect herself from Dust, but that didn’t change her answer. “When we head there, you can go with me to get one.”

  It was a small price to make him comfortable. She’d look into how to disable it and also how to block Dust as well, but they could talk about that when the time came. If nothing else, Sophia was certain that Tek would like to get her hands on a piece of technology that could talk to nanites and also was cheap enough that everyone on a world had one. There wasn’t anything quite that ubiquitous on Earth.

  Dav nodded, then walked up to Sophia and enclosed her in his arms. It wasn’t tight at all; in fact, it was barely even a hug. He seemed to just want to know that she was there.

  There was silence for a long moment, then Amy seemed to mentally clear her throat. It wasn’t really audible; instead, it was more like a feeling that she wanted to politely change the topic. “Can you teach me, too?”

  Sophia blinked at Amy. It took her a moment to focus on the question after Dav’s emotional moment. “Teach you … oh, you mean teach you spellcasting, the way I’m teaching Dav?”

  She’d assumed the other woman was so focused on her shapeshifting Abilities and her bow that she wasn’t interested in magic. That was pretty common; people who were more physical usually preferred to focus on enhancing themselves with mana instead of casting spells. It could be just as powerful as traditional magic.

  Maybe Amy wasn’t really interested in spellcasting; maybe she was more interested in learning how to learn Abilities the way Dav had. That wasn’t a bad reason at all.

  “I didn’t realize you were interested. Sure. Do you know…” She stopped short. Amy wasn’t going to know what her Affinities were; that wasn’t how the Guide showed things. “Um, do you have an attuned mana core?”

  Amy shook her head. “Is that a problem? Night Owls don’t usually have mana cores until they’re at least level six, and there are only a few attunements that are really compatible. That’s when you need to decide whether you want to specialize again or broaden back out when you hit the second upgrade. I can take it any time after the first upgrade, if that’s necessary.”

  Sophia tilted her head to the side and decided that the second upgrade was a discussion for a later time. There wasn’t anything about it in the stuff they’d reviewed at the Registry; it went into detail on first upgrade options. It sounded like that was because it was another chance to change your direction. It definitely wasn’t the time to bring up the comment on the third upgrade from the Wanderer. “No, it’s fine. If you had an attunement, it’d change which spells you’re best at, but I can probably still teach you how to start. It’s not easy and I’m not a great teacher, so it’ll take years, but we can start once we’re out of here.”

  “You taught him an easier way to gain Abilities than looking for personal resonance. If you can do that, I don’t care how long it takes. I may not be able to the sigh-thing with images, but I shouldn’t be much worse than Taika. Even if I can’t make them show up in the real world.” Amy’s thought ended as she turned to look at the colorful chinchilla. He stood in the center of a trio of duplicate pillars. She smiled, then spoke out loud. “Do you think Taika’s almost done?”

  “It looks like it,” Sophia agreed. Amy must have decided that they’d talked about everything Larryt wasn’t supposed to hear and that this was a good segue back to normal speech. Sophia half wanted to ask if Amy actually wanted to learn spellcasting or if she only wanted to learn what Dav actually did; those two things were very different. Well, she could ask later when they weren’t around Larryt.

  As far as Sophia could tell from where she stood, Taika’s pillars were done, but he didn’t seem happy about them. He looked from one to the next to the third, then shook his head. Normally, he looked incredibly adorable when he got frustrated, but this time Sophia could almost see the smoke rising from his ears.

  No, wait. That wasn’t smoke and it wasn’t rising from Taika; it was fog and it covered the entire area between the three pillars, deepening the shadows near their base. Light seemed to gleam off the top of the pillars for a long moment, before the entire construction shimmered and faded away, taking both the glow and the fog with it.

  Sophia was pretty sure Taika had to have succeeded. It was well within his capability to do that as an illusion, but she couldn’t see why he would. The fact that his frustration was no longer evident in the exhausted-looking ball of fluff grinning where he lay on the stone floor was also a clue.

  This is not exactly the most useful set of Spells and Abilities; after all, who deals that much with spirits?

  Well, unless you’re like the Quinns back in Casterville …. Or headed to the place the Challenge seed that turned into a spirit-based Challenge came from…