It was easy enough to tell that the symbols on the pillar were another spellform. Sophia was certain it worked the same way as the three etched trees, for all that these did not glow orange. That made her task straightforward, along with Dav’s and Taika’s.

  Amy’s was not as simple, and Sophia saw no reason to have Amy watch without trying. Unfortunately, she wasn’t sure she could help, either. Gaining Abilities from a Challenge the way the locals did it clearly worked, but not reliably and with worse results than treating the symbols as the spellform they obviously represented.

  Actually, this seemed like a good time to tell the others that she’d managed something special, since Si’a was keeping Larryt away. “So, uh, I didn’t want to say it in front of Larryt, but I didn’t get a Spell Fragment from the Spring area. I didn’t get something I can slot at all. I got an entire new category called a Grand Spell.”

  Dav nodded, clearly unsurprised. Taika didn’t even give Sophia that much; he sniffed at her as if she were unimportant, then started examining the monument.

  Amy’s reaction, however, was everything Sophia could have wanted. She stared at Sophia, took a deep breath, and sputtered incoherently. Sophia made out the words category, Grand Spell, and Fragment, but other than that she wasn’t certain what Amy said.

  “It sounds good,” Sophia admitted, “But right now it’s useless. Even less useful than what Dav and Taika got. I tried making something with one of the three trees the way Taika did and it didn’t do anything. There’s probably a trick I’m missing. If nothing else, I’m sure I need to get Spell Fragments that tie together. Or something. I just wanted you to know before I forgot.”

  Sophia knew she would have forgotten if they waited until they were outside the Challenge. She wasn’t good at remembering things she reminded herself to remember, especially not when they were things she was trying to remember not to say in front of some people.

  Dav squeezed Sophia’s shoulder lightly.

  Sophia turned and found him smiling at her. She returned the smile and brushed a hand along the scales that adorned his cheekbone. There really wasn’t anything she needed to say; Dav’s gesture said it all.

  He gently squeezed her shoulder again, then turned towards Amy. “I think I have an idea of how this works. I also expect that it will be harder for you than it is for Taika; I suspect he has an affinity with spirit-type spells. That’s probably why he picked up three. I’m not sure if I do or not, but I can at least walk you through what I did and see if you can get it to work. If it doesn’t, you can try the usual way. How does that sound?”

  Amy sighed, then seemed to shake herself. “It’s not really necessary. None of these are useful for becoming a Night Owl.”

  It was a weak protest, and Dav clearly saw that. “Come on, let’s give it a try at least?”

  Amy shook her head reluctantly. “I don’t want to delay you enough that you don’t get your chance. You should try, then talk to me about it afterwards. I can try for the next one.”

  “It won’t take me that long,” Dav countered. “Not now that I know what to do.”

  It took Dav a couple more minutes, but it was already obvious that Amy was going to agree as long as Dav was willing to keep asking.

  Sophia moved forward to the obelisk. It was indeed covered in spellforms. Once again, the pieces were familiar to her but the way they were assembled was not. It was another pillar-like shape, but at least this one didn’t have missing connections; they all lined up properly.

  Sophia kept an ear out for Dav’s explanation as she sketched the spellform into her notebook, first as a copy of what was on the obelisk and then in her own preferred notation. Dav was mostly ignoring the visualization part of making the spell; given his advantage, that made sense. It was something he couldn’t help Amy with. It sounded like it was something Amy was already familiar with anyway.

  Instead, he was focusing on how to push mana out to envelop the image once Amy had it solidly. It wasn’t how Sophia would build and energize her spellform, but it was clearly related. It was probably simpler to push mana out all at once to fall into an image than it was to build the spellform. In a lot of ways, it reminded Sophia of the far more variable Intent-based casting than the rigid spellforms that she usually used.

  It was kind of funny to use Intent to push mana into a spellform using its image, but it would probably work if you held the image clearly enough in your mind. It would waste a lot of mana, but if you didn’t have the control to do it properly, it was a decent workaround.

  From what Amy said, Dav’s instructions weren’t all that far from what she’d been told to do by her family. They’d spent most of their time on the visualization part; apparently, filling it with mana was where personal ability came in. It made sense that some people were better at some sorts of magic than others; that was always true. There were even some people who were simply bad at using magic at all, though almost everyone could learn something if they wanted to.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  At least, everyone Sophia knew of. The only people she knew who couldn’t use magic at all were the people who’d never tried.

  Once she finished her sketches, Sophia had to completely concentrate on the spell and lost track of Dav and Amy. The sketches looked oddly familiar as she started to build the framework, so she flipped back to diagram of the Grand Spell. It took a moment, but she quickly identified the oddity: each of the four sets of connections on the spell lined up perfectly with connections on the Grand Spell, almost like they’d been designed to be built together.

  In fact, Sophia was willing to bet that was exactly the case. She wasn’t sure if it meant she could drop one of the pillars in the Grand Spell or if the spell was supposed to have four pillars instead of three; there were several possible ways to make it work out. That was something she’d have to try after she was out of here, as she took the spell apart. For now, she needed to build this one spell.

  The spell on the obelisk was all one piece, unlike the one in the Spring plaza, but that didn’t actually make it easier. It was less complicated than the entire Grand Spell, but it was still more complicated than any one of the three pillars of that spell. Unlike the three-part spell, this entire spell had to be balanced at once and that meant she had to work her way around the pillar, adding pieces without unbalancing it.

  It wasn’t easy, but it was well within Sophia’s ability. She’d learned spells harder than this in the past. She made a few mistakes, but she only had to completely start over twice. The first time, she made a mistake and noticed it too late to fix it without starting over. The second time, the spellform actually unbalanced and slipped out of her control. Fortunately, it was before she’d energized the spell, so there were no consequences besides a momentary sharp shock to her aura as the spell collapsed.

  When she finally did succeed, the world around her seemed to pause for a moment, almost like it was listening. Amy and Dav were long since done talking, and there were no small animal noises in the Spirits of the Woods Challenge, but even the water in the distance and the wind in the trees seemed to take a pause.

  Or maybe that was simply how it seemed to her as a far stronger feeling like the shock she’d gotten from the collapsing spell ran through Sophia’s aura. It wasn’t painful this time, but it was a little distracting. She knew she could direct it at any of the auras she felt around her, but the only ones she could feel belonged to Taika, Dav, and Amy. She didn’t want to distract them, and this spell was supposed to be Stunning Touch. She allowed the spell to dissipate instead.

  It wasn’t until after she released the spell that she wondered if that would still count. Did she have to affect something to get the Guide’s recognition?

  A screen congratulating her on gaining the Spell Fragment Stun Spirit told Sophia that she didn’t need to worry. This time, there was no message from the Wanderer; it was nothing more than a simple notice.

  Feat Completed!

  For your Feat of casting the spell shown in the Summer Obelisk of the Spirits of the Woods Challenge, you have been granted a reward!

  This Feat is awarded to anyone who casts the Spell Fragment Stun Spirit while near the Summer Obelisk of the Spirits of the Woods Challenge without having cast it before or gained it as an Ability previously.

  Reward: Spell Fragment: Stun Spirit

  Spell Fragment: Stun Spirit is a Fragment of the Grand Spell: Part the Veil.

  Stun your opponent's spirit rather than their body. They may still take actions that do not require thought.

  When she looked up, Dav was already done. His new Ability was another Ability fragment, Stunning Dread. Like Sophia’s spell, it didn’t say that it required touching. Instead, all it said was that Dav could make his opponent freeze in terror. As with most of Dav’s Abilities, the description was lacking; they’d have to test it out once they were out of the Challenge.

  Amy finished shortly after Sophia. She’d only managed the Ability Stunning Touch. She seemed to bounce back and forth between joy at managing to gain an Ability the first time she tried for it and envy of Dav’s Ability Fragment. For some reason, she seemed a lot more interested in it than she was in Sophia’s Spell Fragment even though they seemed similar on the surface.

  Taika took the longest, just like he had taken the longest in the Spring Plaza. He barely had time to give the name of his new Ability Fragment, Stunning Light, before the trio heard Larryt’s footsteps on the path.

  “The way to the Autumn Forest is past the obelisk,” Si’a announced before she led the way to a matching path that Sophia was absolutely certain had not been there before. It wound through the forest. Before long, a fog started to gather and Sophia started seeing trees with colorful leaves.

  A dozen yards after that, all of the trees were covered in red, yellow, or orange leaves and fog covered the distant forest. Si’a stopped and waved ahead, towards a spot where the path split. “As the summer is a time of preparation and plenty, the autumn is a time of work and gathering the results. There are many ways to succeed, but care and attention to detail will show you the route.”

  “It’s a maze,” Larryt added. “If you take the wrong route, you’ll end up back here. There’s always something that shows what the right way is, but it’s different every time. It can be anything from the number of leaves on a branch to the presence of a spirit in the road on the path you shouldn’t take. It’s possible to solve the maze by picking a direction and keeping track of your route and which paths lead back here, but that’s slower. There seems to be more to it than that, too; people who get almost every branch correct get a lot more time at the reward than those who take the hard way lost in the process. Try to figure out the clue. That’s all I can tell you, but I’ll stand here so that you know when you’ve gone the wrong way and have to start over.”

  Seems a little mean to put something where you have to think and make guesses right after a huge amount of exercise, doesn’t it?