“Any guesses?” Sophia wasn’t sure where to start on picking a path forward. From what Larryt said, it could be anything. There was no way to know. Si’a’s clue didn’t really help, either; sure, care and attention to detail were important, but which detail?

  “Do you sense any spirits?” Dav asked as he moved towards the tree at the split.

  “Oh, right.” She should have looked, since she was the only one who could sense them with anything other than her eyes, and they were really quite difficult to see. It took her a long moment to feel both directions. “There aren’t any on the road. There are … three, no, four, in the tree in the middle of the Y and a few scattered on either side of the path in both directions. Should I count them?”

  “Not yet,” Amy answered. “Are they clustered or scattered?”

  “There are groups in a couple more trees,” Sophia answered after she checked again, “but there are also some in the underbrush and those are generally singles.”

  “Then we’d have to know how far to look, unless you see another tree with exactly four?” Amy offered.

  Sophia counted all of the trees. “There’s one with three, but the other two near the crossing with multiple spirits have six and eleven.” She pointed them out, but it didn’t make a pattern to her.

  “The tree here has one mostly leafless branch pointing right,” Dav offered. “Maybe it’s a directional clue?”

  “Could be,” Sophia agreed.

  “There’s a large branch and a small branch pointing left, though. How do we know which one’s right?” Amy objected.

  “The only way to know is to try.” Dav glanced in both directions, then looked back at the others. “Why don’t we try right and see if it works. If it doesn’t, we’ll go left and check the next intersection for the most branches or the biggest branch in the tree at the fork.”

  Sophia shrugged. She was fine with it. Amy was also agreeable, and Taika was apparently asleep already.

  The right branch led them back where they started.

  The left path led, as expected, to another split in the path. Unfortunately, this time there wasn’t a tree exactly in the middle of the split. There was a tree that was closer to the split a little to the left and a tree that was farther away but still close to the right. After some discussion, they decided that since the closer tree was bigger, they’d treat it like it was the bigger branch and head that way.

  It led back to the beginning.

  That led the group to start over. They carefully combed the first area for anything else that might have indicated to go left, from the fact that there was more leaf litter on that side to the higher number of ghosts in trees on the left as opposed to the right. When they got back to the second split, most of that still indicated the left.

  Dav didn’t say anything as Sophia ran through checking everything they’d looked at. It wasn’t until the fourth thing that she realized she hadn’t even gotten a quiet “uh huh” from him and actually looked at her lover. He was staring straight ahead, completely focused on something she couldn’t see.

  Sophia knew exactly what he had to be doing: he was comparing pictures of the two intersections. It only made sense; he had to be looking for what they’d overlooked. Sophia was certain there was something they were missing. It was probably even something really simple, something so obvious she’d feel like an idiot once it was pointed out.

  Dav shook his head and blinked a moment later. That wasn’t a good sign. “The color balance changes at the split, but I don’t think that’s it. It’s not off enough to be obvious. Let’s go right and get another example. Unless one of you came up with a good idea?”

  Sophia shook her head as Amy answered out loud. Neither of them was happy with their guesses.

  Dav stopped moments after the third split came into view and groaned. “We need to go right this time.”

  Sophia frowned at him. “What are we missing?”

  “We need to follow the road and not turn off it,” Dav answered quickly. “Both times, the correct route was a smooth curve and the other direction was a sharper turn. It was also narrower, so either we need to follow the wide way or the one that turns gradually. Both of those are to the right.”

  Sophia sighed. That definitely fit the “easy to see once you know what the answer is” criteria that she’d guessed it would follow, just like the tree branch they’d initially guessed. “Seems worth a try to me. Amy?”

  Amy shrugged. “We’ll only know if we try it, and it’s easy enough to check.”

  The next five splits were easy, with the wide route also forming the gentler curve while the other path turned away. On the one after that, the two paths were both wide, so they picked the gentle curve. A few minutes and another eleven splits later, they saw Si’a and Larryt waiting for them in the distance. At first, Sophia thought they’d gotten something wrong, but this time there was no branching path in front of the duo; the path continued forward.

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  “Congratulations on completing the Autumn Paths,” Si’a said with a nod.

  Sophia sighed and relaxed at the words. Until she heard them, she’d been worried that maybe they’d failed so badly they were being kicked out or something.

  “You were faster than many, but not even close to the fastest,” Si’a continued. “You will have a chance to try your luck with the Autumn Stone.”

  The Autumn Stone, as it turned out, was a more or less flat rock covered in glyphs that sat on top of a pair of wider, moss-covered flat stones like it was sitting on a table. This time, the symbols stuck out from the stone, like someone had carved down everything but the marks themselves, and they formed a circle around a large sigil in the center. A small set of glyphs was embossed on each of the sides.

  This was a structure Sophia recognized: a very simple spellform in the middle, surrounded by modifiers. The central symbol was even similar to the generic structure that would affect the spellcaster’s vision. “This is Spirit Sight, isn’t it?”

  “Ah, yes,” Larryt answered. He sounded surprised. “Good guess.”

  Sophia didn’t tell him it wasn’t a guess. It was far more likely that a vision-related glyph would be in the middle of a spell called Spirit Sight than one called Spirit Shriek.

  Just like in the previous spot, all four of them made their attempts to gain an Ability. Sophia, Dav, and Taika were confident, while Amy was hopeful.

  This time, Sophia was the first to finish. The spellform just wasn’t that hard to make and it didn’t try to fight at all. She knew she’d cast the spell properly when Si’a seemed to become vivid in front of her eyes, even more vivid than the rest of her surroundings. The animal spirits around her also became obvious instead of nearly invisible wisps of fog.

  It probably wasn’t a surprise that the clusters of spirits in trees were mostly birds.

  Feat Completed!

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

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

  Reward: Spell Fragment: Spirit Sight

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

  See the spirits which surround you. This spell does not view auras, but it can reveal spirits that are not native to the forms they occupy.

  Dav finished second, with an Ability Fragment that was otherwise identical to Sophia’s Spell Fragment. Amy took only a little longer, and ended up with an Ability rather than an Ability Fragment once again. This time, its description was otherwise identical to Dav’s and Sophia’s.

  Sophia had to assume that this meant that the much simpler spellform led to less variation in the possible Abilities. That would also explain why the Spell or Ability seemed to be the same as the one Larryt knew of.

  Unfortunately, Taika almost immediately made Sophia question that guess, because he learned a different Ability. Illuminate Spirit would allow him to make them obvious for everyone, not just Taika himself. Sophia guessed there was still more to it; maybe that was because Taika’s innate Abilities were illusion-based, so that was how he was able to see it?

  Clearly there was at least some influence of the person gaining the Ability … or maybe it was the method used? Sophia, Dav, and Amy all used methods that were closer to each others’ and also closer to the “standard” method than Taika’s, which relied on creating an illusionary duplicate of the spellform. Maybe that was the real reason.

  Si’a ushered them onwards and the world quickly turned to winter. Somehow, Sophia ended up in frint, just behind Si’a. It made it easy to see the land in front of her, but she only knew her friends were behind her because she could feel the crunch of the falling snow beneath their feet; even that was muffled by the snow itself. It scattered with each step as she moved forward. Sophia’s left foot slipped sideways a tiny amount on one step and she slowed down and made sure to carefully plant her weight firmly with each step.

  The one thing that didn’t change was the air temperature. Oh, it was cool, cooler than the autumn they’d just left, but it wasn’t cold. The snow and ice weren’t cold either, even though the snow melted into cool water when Sophia picked up a handful. It was very obviously stage dressing rather than reality, and whoever set it up did not know how the cold was supposed to feel any more than they knew the true heat of summer.

  Snow gathered on Sophia’s shoulders and pack as she moved forward. It was not quite a blizzard; she could still see where she was going and where she’d been. It was bad enough that Sophia initially thought that the blurs she could see were an artifact of the snow, but as she got a little closer to the nearest one, they clearly weren’t. The spell Spirit Sight was still active and there was some sort of spirit gathering in the woods that was visible only as blurs of light or darkness, even with the help of the spell.

  It was easy enough to confirm. Sophia dispelled the spell’s effect, then looked again. The strange blurs were gone.

  There was one major problem: Sophia didn’t know what they were. She stopped where she was and looked towards Si’a. “Where are you leading us?”

  Si’a inclined her head as she paused. “The first Test of Winter does not have to be seen or discussed, merely experienced. All you must do is stay on your feet and reach the end of this path. Come.”

  Si’a turned and walked forward once more. She passed right next to where Sophia had seen the nearest insubstantial spirit. There was no effect, but Sophia didn’t expect an effect.

  Wait, haven’t Si’a said she was a spirit of Winter? Were these more spirits of Winter?

  Sophia decided not to take the time to recast the Spirit Sight spell; she could feel her way with her aura just fine, especially if the spirits felt of death the way the other spirits of the Challenge did. She extended her aura and moved forward a step, before she once again halted in surprise.

  To her aura, there weren’t individual spirits ahead. The entire area positively radiated Death magic. Oh, there were places that were a bit stronger or weaker, but they weren’t coherent. With Sophia’s heritage and training, she would be fine, but she wondered about the others. “This area is full of Death magic. It’s hard to say what that will do, but most people find it tiring and saddening. It sounds like we just have to get through it.”

  The key was to stay on the path, but that seemed like a bit too obvious a clue. Maybe I could have had Si’a say it anyway? It would have been easy enough to overlook, wouldn’t it…