None of the individual steps were all that hard. They weren’t easy, but Sophia was certain they were possible even without the gear she had. That worried her, because there had to be a reason Larryt thought they shouldn’t try, and she couldn’t see it yet.

  At the same time, Larryt didn’t know what they could do. If they could reliably pass the test, why shouldn’t they? Maybe Stunning Touch would be worth it, especially since they were all likely to use their own methods and put their own spin on the Ability.

  The climb down at the end was the easiest part; climbing down using a rope was explicitly allowed, as long as they kept contact with the wood and that was easy enough. Once she was back on solid ground, Sophia found her thoughts drifting to the Abilities again. What were the odds that she had a Spell available somewhere in her huge list that would do exactly what the Stunning Touch Ability did? Sure, she hadn’t found it, but she also didn’t look for it.

  What she didn’t have was anything labeled a Grans Spell, Spell Fragment, or Ability Fragment. That was clearly the real benefit of the Challenges, not just saving the Wisp cost of Abilities. Of course, maybe there was more than that for most people? If Amy’s list of Sphere options was only going to have three to five choices, maybe there weren’t many Ability options, either?

  Had they inadvertently revealed the fact that they were Hallowed of the Wanderer to Amy and Rensyn while they were researching options? Sophia didn’t remember anything that would say they had, but she was pretty sure she wouldn’t have noticed. They’d focused more on how they could get access to Abilities and Spells they didn’t have as choices than what they did have available, so maybe they’d gotten lucky?

  Was the real reason Amy thought Dav’s “Species” focused on mental Abilities because she thought there wouldn’t be any there if it didn’t?

  “Sophia?” Dav gently touched Sophia’s shoulder. “You okay there? You seem pretty distracted.”

  Sophia shook her head, more to shake away her negative thoughts than in answer to her boyfriend. “Yeah, sorry. I was thinking about how Abilities from Stable Challenges fit with everything else. They seem … I don’t know, a little pointless if you can already choose the Ability, so are they just for getting things you don’t happen to have in your list?”

  “More or less,” Amy answered. “Fragments are more than that, of course; they’re a whole new way to develop that isn’t dependent on your Sphere. Normal Abilities are just more options, with some influence on your Upgrade choices. They’re worth collecting if you can, in case you can get something good, but at the same time they’re usually not that important unless they’re something you plan to use. The Ability Slots take too many Wisps, and Stable Challenges don’t give out many Wisps.”

  “Is that why you were in Casterville?” Dav asked Amy while Sophia turned to retrieve her gear. “I thought you said this area was too dangerous for you alone, but it seems like you should be able to get help, maybe others who could work with you?”

  Amy sighed. “No, I couldn’t. At least, not people I wanted to work with.” She sighed and shook her head before she continued. “Most people group with others of about their age from their Clan. There isn’t anyone within five years of my age in either direction in my Clan. Trying to find people from other Clans to work with wouldn’t have worked, not for me. It was better to look outside. That’s normal anyway; most Called leave the Skylands until they’re either at their first Upgrade or they’ve decided they want to follow one of the known Upgrade Paths that requires a particular Stable Challenge. That’s why I came back.”

  Dav nodded. He clearly remembered their reason for returning, just like Sophia did. “So how do you plan to get the Wisps? Is that what’s dangerous?”

  “It can be,” Amy admitted. “It would be if we were trying to get them near Izel. The thing is, my brother’s been trying to put together an expedition to the Wildlands for years. He wants to retrace the steps of an expedition that found ruins. Old ruins.” Her eyes sparkled with excitement.

  “Ruins?” Larryt had clearly overheard at least the last few words. “You found ruins near the hunting camp?”

  Amy’s eyes widened and she shook her head. “No, not near the hunting camp. They’re in the Wildlands somewhere.”

  “Oh.” Larryt seemed to deflate a little. “The Wildlands. Figures.”

  “What’s important about ruins?” Sophia glanced between Amy and Larryt. Ruins were history, and sure, history could be interesting, but that wasn’t enough to cause the sort of reaction Amy and Larryt seemed to both have to it. She didn’t know Larryt well, but Amy rarely ever talked about history and when she did she moved past things quickly. All of the history enthusiasts Sophia knew back home were more than happy to talk about details.

  “You never know what you’re going to find in ruins,” Amy answered easily. “There’s always danger, but a lot of times there’s valuable stuff there just waiting to be taken. Most of it’s too damaged to use immediately, but not all. Even the damaged stuff is worth a lot to Professionals, if they have the right Profession. If they can figure out how it works, sometimes they can make ones that actually do work.”

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  Oh. She wasn’t interested in the history of the ruins, she was interested in the stuff in the ruins. It seemed a lot like Indiana Jones, in a lot of ways; didn’t he explore old ruins and tombs and stuff and take things out so they could be studied?

  “So why would an expedition to the Wildlands be less dangerous?” Dav asked before Sophia could figure out what else to ask. “It sounds more dangerous than staying near a city, not less.”

  “It is and it isn’t,” Amy answered unhelpfully. “I left Izel for a lot of reasons, but one of them is that there’s nothing worth any Wisps that’s worth doing near Izel, not for a level one Called. There are always more people who want the easy Wisps than there are things to do to get them, so leveling is really slow. A lot of people leave the Skylands for a few years to level faster. Many actually pick up Professions instead of continuing to try; some never get past level one. The rest take years to get the Wisps to level, and most of those Wisps come from Nexus Defense during monster horde attacks. ”

  Sophia didn’t need to ask why that would be dangerous. A horde of monsters sounded a lot like a dungeon break, and that was dangerous even if you could normally deal with them; having defenses in place would help, but that didn’t mean people didn’t die in every attack.

  “We’re still really too weak for any of the tasks that are worth doing, but a Wildlands expedition is different. There will be people on the expedition that can handle the monsters. There have to be quite a few people at the first upgrade at a minimum, but not everyone has to be that powerful. Even if you don’t fight, you get some Wisps, more if you find anything useful in the Wildlands and ruins are one of the places to look. It’s slower than a Nexus Defense, and if you get really unlucky the expedition can disappear, but it can be good for everyone.” Amy rubbed her hand along her pants leg for a moment, then admitted, “That’s part of why I pushed us to come to the Skylands so quickly, my brother said he’d make room for us if I returned with people we can trust who are strong enough to watch my back.”

  “Do you think he’d take one more person?” Larryt offered. “I am past the first upgrade.”

  Amy chuckled and shook her head with a wide grin. “Not a chance.”

  ”Aww.” Larryt sounded disappointed but he didn’t sound surprised. It was obvious he hadn’t expected a different answer.

  Sophia frowned. The wildlands sounded familiar. She leaned over to Dav and whispered, “Wasn’t Catshold carved out of the wildlands?”

  “I think so,” Dav agreed. “But I don’t think Arryn used that term for it, I think he just said it was wilderness.”

  Sophia nodded with a frown. It still sounded like the same thing to her.

  “Now that you are all here, we can move on. Congratulations on completing the first part of the Test of Summer.” Si’a had an edge to her voice that once again made Sophia think there was more there than just a construct. She turned sharply and led the way along a trail made of tiny pebbles that led around the edge of the cliff face. It ended in water, the water that fed the waterfalls they’d seen earlier.

  Sophia was still wearing her climbing boots and socks that weren’t wet and they were about to go traipse through water again. Dammit.

  For a moment, she considered asking everyone to wait and change boots, but realistically the climbing boots were probably better for this anyway; they wouldn’t slip easily even if the rocks were slick. She also still had extra socks. It was probably best to continue as they were.

  “Where is that mist coming from?” Amy sounded worried.

  Sophia looked up the stream. To the right, there was a cliff covered in trees; to the left, the slope was gentler but there were still piled up rocks. The mist Amy was talking about was farther down the stream. It was more like fog than mist, and it hid the lower part of the cliff from Sophia’s view.

  “That’s not mist,” Larryt said. He had a stern expression that kept twitching, like he was poorly hiding a smile. “It’s water, and it’s the first sign of the reason I told you not to bother with the Test of Summer. It only wastes time.”

  The reason that water would look like fog was easy to figure out, even though the nose was easily explained as being from the waterfalls they already knew about.. “There’s another waterfall, isn’t there? A bigger one.”

  It wasn’t obvious where the waterfall was, but it looked like it came from the left. Maybe it was hidden by the trees? The slope did go up in that direction, even if it was more gentle than the cliff to the right.

  “Wait and find out,” Larryt said as the noise of falling water seemed to lessen and the fog started to dissipate. He set out into the stream ahead of Si’a.

  The noise and fog came and went several times as they made their way up the stream. That worried Sophia, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it if neither Larryt nor Si’a wanted to say anything, and it was clear they didn’t.

  Weirdly, the water around their feet never seemed to change much; it didn’t run faster or rise higher even when the waterfall was clearly more powerful. Sophia wasn’t certain if that was just because there wasn’t enough water coming off the waterfall to make a big difference or if the Challenge was somehow overriding the water level. Either seemed possible.

  It was probably to be expected that when they were close, they walked into the spume of the waterfall. When the fog cleared, Sophia looked upstream. It was easy to see; there was a jagged wall covered in water and small plants that still dripped heavily. A few places were even wet enough that they probably still qualified as waterfalls.

  The weird thing about the wall was that it was a wall, not a cliff. It was clearly artificial, made of a wide range of rectangular blocks that were placed haphazardly into a wall that could only be considered flat in that all of the outward faces were more or less flat; the closer blocks stuck out at least a foot and probably more than the blocks that were the farthest back.

  I think the problem with the next part of the Test of Summer should be pretty obvious now…