The world around Caen was a severely blurred version of the restricted section of the Ser-gwu library. Rithya sat across from him, a blurred table between them. They were in the sub-Astral: the lowest layer of the Astral Realm. It intersected the Material Realm and served as the primary conduit for most forms of mental communication.

  A lesser portion of Caen’s mind controlled his body in the Material Realm, which influenced his astral form here, but that was no problem. There weren't many people here in the library at this time, as the festivities were in full swing, but anyone watching would see him studying resources on intermediate Spirit-healing techniques for children, and Rithya would appear to be using a memory crystal.

  But in actuality, they’d been talking for hours.

  Here in the sub-Astral, numerous frail threads extended from Rithya in every direction, but an unusually strong cord of connection stretched between her soul structure and Caen’s. He’d Mimicked her Contract affinity to tap into this feature of her Xihx ability, her meld. It allowed them to communicate privately.

  “What terms did I just add to the contract?” Rithya asked in Klakalk. She’d taken to conducting their lessons this way to help him get practice with the language.

  Caen took a moment as he carefully sorted through the visualizations in his mind, trying to interpret them. Contract magic allowed for the formation of magically binding agreements. It was far more nuanced than Caen had initially supposed.

  Hshnol had explained to him how practicians could sneak conditions into a magical contract without the knowledge or awareness of the other party. So it was always vital to insist that all the terms be outlined. Still, a contract could be secretly amended by the practician at any time.

  Caen could discern no additional terms, but he was still new to this. “I… didn’t find anything.”

  “Try touching your forehead,” Rithya said, smiling.

  Caen squinted and did as she asked. His hand kept slipping to the side and touching his left ear instead. No matter how hard he tried.

  “I added a conditional. If you are still reading, you would be unable to touch your forehead. You continued reading.”

  In the Material Realm, the lesser portion of Caen’s mind stopped reading to stretch and yawn. This time, he could touch his forehead. He laughed.

  “Ridiculous, isn’t it?”

  He shook his head, still trying to discern the terms of their ongoing contract. “More horrifying than ridiculous, frankly.”

  “If you find any of this worrying, then you might want to try standing up from your seat.”

  Caen tried. He couldn’t. He was bound to his chair. He cast a quick kinesis spell to propel himself off of it. The spell collapsed. “How did you sneak complex conditionals like these into the contract?”

  “I didn’t. This is a separate contract. It’s always in your best interest to assume that any contract practician you meet is a multicaster and can maintain more than one contract at a time. I used your incredulity as a baseline for consent.”

  He remembered how he’d been drawn into a contract with a dryad at the front zone of the Parthran Plane after he’d merely nodded his head in understanding.

  “There’s a reason many high-level agreements take place in Grat-line,” Rithya continued. “And there’s a reason anyone with half a lick of sense has a contract practician on retainer.”

  Caen nodded. Even Vai—who was a licensed attestator in Grat-line and was particularly skilled in assessing information there—always preferred to have Hshnol present for any magical agreement he entered into.

  “So there are conditionals for everything,” Caen mused, while splitting off yet another portion of his mind to go over the terms of the second contract she’d made. “What about silence and non-action?”

  “Even those,” Rithya said. “The Binders’ Guild is very ruthless about enforcing standard practice worldwide. You can tell this from the mere fact that public perception of Contract magic isn’t generally negative. Most Contract practicians would be far more subtle than this, of course. Here on the island, detrimental terms and duress-laden agreements are criminal offences. But, well…” she shrugged.

  “It’s always best to take precautions,” Caen said in understanding.

  She nodded. “First, setting up antecedents or preventive terms and measures to account for hidden clauses. Second, using nullification or dampening magic to nullify portions of the contract that are questionable. And lastly—this is the most important precaution as far as I’m concerned—pay rigorous attention to the terms of the contract. You’ll get better at that with time. It’s the single most important facet of Contract magic. You can’t call out the other party on their bullshit if you can't see it in the first place.”

  Hshnol had loaded Caen with various exercises to help him improve his ability to scan and interpret contract terms and conditions. There was so much work to do. “I have a question about the second contract you formed. I cast a Kinesis spell that collapsed. Did you actively set terms for that?”

  “Yes. A geas would have prevented you from even casting in the first place, but this was so much easier and faster to establish. Less of a demand on my will as well.”

  “Alright,” he said. “My turn?”

  She nodded. “Yup. Ah ah ah. Not so fast, cherche. Ditch that term you just snuck in.”

  “Dammit.”

  ***

  Caen and Guinevere trudged through the snow as Zeris reclined lazily on a floating platform that hovered between them. They were descending a canyon at the edge of Uncle Vai’s Astral domain, and a gentle wind tugged at their clothes as they chatted.

  Caen was currently storing sleep.

  When using the sleep reposit spell that allowed this, he could only gain lucidity around the tail end of the storing process. He’d timed this window of lucidity to coincide with when Zeris and Guinevere would be asleep so they could hang out in the Astral Realm together.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “I still can’t believe you fed it all to Chasma,” Zeris said.

  His family members had been shocked at the number of treasures he’d taken out of the trial. Vensha had seemed particularly baffled by the fact that he hadn’t used some of the treasure himself. She felt they could have aided his advancement.

  “How much treasure exactly?” Guinevere asked.

  “A lot,” Caen said. “Chasma is much stronger now.” For a given definition of ‘much’.

  She frowned in thought for a moment. “So, I’ve narrowed my list down to one ‘candidate’,” she said.

  When Caen had told Guinevere that he’d be fighting masked, she’d insisted on guessing who he was. She’d drawn up a list, and all her guesses were wrong. He’d already explained that this was supposed to be a big secret, and he trusted her to be discreet.

  Caen sighed good-naturedly.

  “Gwen, I’ve told you,” Zeris said. “He’s Herb Mask.”

  “Mm. I don’t see it,” Guinevere said. “Now, Snake Mask, however, has a Parthran fragment that he wears on his off-arm. He fights with a reasonably-sized longsword. He’s a Body-enhancer, a Flora practician, and he uses a bit of Fire magic.”

  Caen shook his head. “Snake Mask is several inches taller than me.”

  “Platform boots,” Guinevere answered with a shrug.

  Zeris burst out laughing.

  A large swathe of space up ahead twisted and glitched, with large sections of it tinged with the purple of the Deep Astral.

  “Uncle Vai is doing some renovating,” Caen said. Vai had mentioned the day before that he’d had a small accident and had refused to explain further. “We should probably just… head in a different direction.”

  They all turned east and continued at a leisurely pace.

  “Either you’re Snake Mask,” Guinevere continued. “Or you got eliminated in the first round.” She suddenly looked worried. “Oh dear. You said you needed points to get a sponsorship? You weren’t eliminated, were you?”

  “I’m still in the trials. But I’d need to make it all the way to the end of the competition to redeem those points without steep tariffs.”

  “How many do you need for the sponsorship?”

  “About three hundred, according to my uncle,” Caen said. “But I’ve currently made—”

  “Waitwaitwait, let me guess,” Guinevere cut in. “Hmm. The average competitor has eighty points by the end of round two. You’re a fellow Surfeitist, so… one hundred and thirty points? No, one hundred and thirty-five.”

  “Gwen, I have two hundred and ninety-five points.”

  “Again with this Herb Mask thing?”

  “I could just give you a sign in the third round to prove it.”

  “The only thing that could convince me is holding Stormsong’s astral form in my astral hands,” Guinevere said. “Nothing else.”

  Caen snorted. Every living thing had an astral representation and location. This location was determined by where one was born or created in the Material Realm. It was why Chasma never appeared with him in the Astral Realm. Caen had no idea where Stormsong had been forged, but its astral form was probably with its creator.

  “You have your orders, Caen,” Zeris quipped. “Now, go and ask the Percipient who created Stormsong to hand over its Astral coordinates.”

  “Wait, she’s alive? And still a Percipient? Isn’t Stormsong several centuries old?”

  “Eh, who knows?” Zeris said.

  “Hera-Lienixur Erehsta’al,” Caen said. “She’s alive, I think.”

  “Caen,” Zeris said gently as she sat up on her floating platform. “You’re obsessed with ancient people being alive.”

  “She attended the Patronage trials three decades ago,” Caen said.

  “No, she was ‘said’ to have attended,” Zeris countered.

  “The announcer mentioned her name in the traditional greetings that year, along with the names of other elders who were proven to be in attendance.”

  “Announcers say weird things all the time. ‘Her spirit encompasses all things’ or ‘She inhabits this vessel’? They’re figures of speech, Caen. Doesn’t mean that Spirit Mother didn’t die off millennia ago.”

  Zeris huffed. “Besides, if Hera-Lienixur were alive, she certainly wouldn’t appreciate seeing participants dishonor her late son’s legacy by swinging Stormsong like a club.”

  It was a chilling thought, but Caen laughed. “I can’t argue with that.”

  “What’s up with that, though?” Guinevere asked. “I’ve seen a lot of weird shit on Grat-line about the original wielder. Her lover, her son, her daughter. Hell, I've even seen rumors that it was a fiend she created.”

  “Legend has it that it was the last weapon she ever made,” Caen said. “For her son. Ro-Hexur. He died a few centuries ago in a Vedulan battle.”

  There wasn’t a lot of accurate information about him, but at one point in Caen’s childhood, he’d been obsessed with Ro and the sword. “He was a fierce warrior. The sort of Attuner who fought Percipeints on occasion and lived to tell the tale.”

  “Bullshit,” Guinevere said, laughing.

  “Probably. It’s said that Ro was so compatible with Stormsong that he could unsheathe the sword without its primary enchantments activating. No one else has ever managed that. Better still, he never suffered any negative effects from using the sword.”

  Guinevere raised an eyebrow. “Stormsong has negative effects? I thought those were rumors.”

  “Nasty jolts of electricity into anyone who so much as touches it. Wield it, and those jolts become constant. Then there’s the mana expenditure. It’s awful. But all of that is when the weapon is sheathed.”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen recordings of those who unsheathed it,” Guinevere said. “Absolutely beautiful.”

  “Though there was that one person who died after doing so,” Zeris added.

  “He wasn’t the only one,” Caen said. “Not counting the three in the Patronage trials, four other persons—besides Ro, of course—managed to unsheathe the sword. They all died afterwards. All four of them.”

  Guinevere winced. “Oof.”

  “Mm.”

  She squinted at him. “If you’re Herb Mask, why haven’t you unsheathed the sword yet?”

  Caen had been working on this since the first trial, actually. All awakened weapons had one or more primary abilities enchanted into them; Caen had yet to locate such an enchantment in Stormsong’s soul structure, as the ability was inactive. He believed that Mimicking this ability would grant him stronger compatibility with the sword, allowing him to finally draw it and use it without hindrance. Connecting to Stormsong was one degree of synergy. Mimicking one of its affinities was a higher degree. Higher still would be Mimicking the sword's primary ability. This all hinged on whether or not primary abilities were represented in soul structures. And Caen suspected that they were.

  Still, he scowled at Guinevere. “Did you miss the part about several people dying after unsheathing the sword?”

  “Boo!” Zeris jeered, sitting up on her platform. “Two people unsheathed it and managed just fine. Give us entertainment or bow out!”

  “Yeah!” Guinevere joined in. “Boo!”

  Caen laughed.