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Her pensive frame of mind continued all the way back up the trail out of the forest, though at least it didn't become a psy-draining dark mood.  The more times she walked up and down this particular stretch of path without encountering any danger, the more Tzi could appreciate it.  The forest truly was beautiful.  Forests were known to be good for a person's psy, which was one of the reasons wizards often set up shop deep within one.  As she grew used to this one and it began to seem less ominously alien, Tzi found it to have a soothing effect on her mind, even moderating her pace to a leisurely stroll.

Knauer's Tower of Power was built among volcanic mountains without a single tree within kilometers.  In hindsight, she wondered if that should have been a warning sign.

Ahead, the trail rose to the mountain.  From this angle, it wasn't an impressive peak for someone who'd been living in a towering craggy range as she had been until very recently.  The slope was low, and its top appeared blunt as if shorn off; while the slope grew steep enough in its last few meters that the vanilla grass and floofberry shrubs didn't climb the edges, there was nothing to reveal the presence of the lush valley inside.  Tzi knew that some of the cinnamon stick trees within rose above the rim of the caldera, but from below they weren't visible.  It might have been simply a plateau, if not for the path leading straight up to the crack in the walls.  She wasn't yet close enough, here, to see that, or the warning skulls, just the trail petering off ahead in the direction of the flat peak.

She slowed, lifting her head.  What was...?

Lost in thought she hadn't consciously registered the sound, but instinct made her stop, turn, and peer around at the path.  There it was again...a clear rustling.  The sound of something moving through tall grass.

Tzi drew her wand and braced her feet, seeking focus.  Suddenly her heart was pounding, which didn't help her, but she did not have to concentrate deeply to cast a sigil she already knew.  She summoned Fireball, letting the image of its sigil hang in her mind, like an overlay across her vision, but did not yet pour any energy into it.  The crystal tip of her upraised wand began to glow a hungry orange.

The rustling occurred again, and this time its source was within her field of view.  A disturbance upon the waving vanilla grass, like a wake across the water left by something swimming just below the surface.  It came toward her for about three meters, deliberately keeping to the lowest points in the rolling terrain, then stopped.  Not more than five meters distant, something hunkered down there.  She could just barely see the indentation of its presence among the long beige blades.

“Hello?” Tzi said loudly.  “No vruphs, please.  You wanna go hunt something softer, trust me.”

Nothing happened save the constant breeze over the grass for a few moments, rustling the trees of the nearby cinnamon stands.  She was emerging from beneath their canopy, but they continued to sprout in smaller clusters as the land rose toward the mountain.

Then the grass rippled again, and whatever was hiding in that spot rustled a full meter closer.

“No!” Tzi shouted, her pulse hammering in her throat.  She'd never actually harmed a living creature before—not to mention her Fireball could ignite the whole area—but if it was gonna be her or the vruph...

It rustled again, this time not moving, as if gathering itself to spring.

Tzi bared her teeth, took aim with her wand, and focused.  It came less smoothly than when she had demonstrated the spell to Kino, her psy in a ragged state from the stress of the confrontation.  The orange light blazing from the wand's crystal brightened, shimmers of heat rising into the air above it...

“Wait, wait!” a familiar voice shouted, and a Mirbal popped up out of the indentation in the grass, hands upraised.

Tzi yelped in consternation, and at the last second wrenched her hand upward.  The fireball, already forming and too late for her to stop, streaked away into the sky.

“Whoah,” the new arrival said in an awed tone, turning her head to track the spell's arc.  It soared off at an angle, arching slightly and just passing the apex of its flight before it erupted in a burst of flame and a boom that was soft but audible at that distance.

Almost due north, of course, toward the Khetri.  She had just effectively sent up a flare for anybody within a kilometer to see.

“Scio!” Tzi shouted, torn between relief, surprise, and outrage.  “What the hell do you think you're doing?!  You could've—I almost blasted you to charcoal!  Do not sneak up on a wizard!”

“Sorry,” the young Mirbal said contritely.  “I was just playing, I didn't mean to scare you.”

“Scare me,” Tzi snapped.  “Don't worry about me, I'm not the one who almost got Fireballed.  Wait—what are you doing here?  Did something happen?  Is your family okay?  If I can help—”

“It's fine!” Scio said soothingly, raising her hands, palms outward.  She began wading through the vanilla grass toward Tzi and the path.  “Don't worry, they're all fine, but thanks for offering.  No, I just thought you could probably use some help!  A local guide, at least.  It's not like you really know your way around here.”

Tzi hesitated, then narrowed her eyes.  “Really.  And your mother's...all right with this?”  Even having met Kino only briefly, she could vividly imagine the Claedh matriarch's expression at hearing this idea.

“Oh, sure,” Scio said lightly.  “I mean, it's about time for me to think about heading off on my own anyway, starting my own family, you know.  Mother said it was fine if I left to travel with you for a while.”

Tzi shifted her gaze from the girl's eyes to her tall ears, which were swiveling rapidly back and forth, and occasionally twitching to the sides.  She wasn't familiar enough with Mirbals to read specific meaning into those movements, but in her conversations with Kino's and Scisia's families, she hadn't noted such obvious signs of agitation.

Scio noticed the movement of Tzi's eyes, and her ears immediately stilled, sticking straight up into the air more stiffly than was their usual posture.

“Uh huh,” Tzi said flatly.  “Come on.”  Turning, she started back up the path down which she'd just come, on a return course for the blondewood crossroads.

“All right!” Scio cheered, bouncing into place beside her.  She was lanky in build, but even so had to practically hop to keep up with Tzi's gait, which she didn't seem to mind in the slightest.  “So where're we going first?”

“Back the way your family went,” Tzi stated, “to find your mother.  So I don't have to deal with her coming to scalp me later for abducting you.”

“Whoah, wait a second!”  Scio skittered ahead and pivoted, bracing her feet wide to block the path, and held up her hands again.  “Okay, all right, fine.  I'll level with you.”

Tzi folded her arms and stood expectantly, wand still dangling from her grip.

“It wasn't what you'd call a...quiet conversation,” Scio hedged, and it was almost funny how recognizably apprehensive was the expression on her furry face.  “I may have, sort of, implied a calmer decision than it was.  Really...it was more of a yelling match that ended with Mother telling me to do whatever I wanted and see if she cared.”

“Yep,” Tzi said in exasperation.  “Thought so.  Come on, your family can't have gotten far.”

“It still counts though!” Scio said desperately.  “It's permission—”

“Scio, I know you aren't this dense, and for future reference wizards value intelligence above all else; implying that either of us is dumb enough to swallow that is just going to annoy me further.  You had a fight, your mother still loves you and is protective of you despite being mad, and if I drag you into Syrr ruins or Khetri camps or any of the stuff I'm gonna have to poke around in, she will come after me and try to put that spear in me.  Now come on.”

“Oh, you come on!  Why are you afraid of my mother?  You've got all that magic!”

Tzi had already started back up the road, but at that she stopped and whirled on Scio again, causing the young Mirbal to shy back from the expression on her face.

“I am afraid,” Tzi stated, “of being forced to cast Fireballs at someone who just just rightly trying to protect her family.  Don't you dare put me in that position, Scio.”

“You don't understand.”  Slowly, Tzi straightened up and relaxed, watching and listening; Scio was finally addressing her with a simple earnestness which, to judge by her performance thus far, she wasn't sly enough to fake.  “I'm serious, I am on my own right now.  I've heard a conversation like that before.  I've got an older sister, did you know that?”

“Uh...no, I didn't,” Tzi said warily, suddenly fearing she was about to hear something more tragic than she wanted to.

Scio nodded.  “Well, we haven't heard from Nio in over two full orbits, because she's back on Vaila.  She had a fight like that with mother and it ended the same way.  Mother told her to just go if she wanted to, so...  She just went.  And that was that.”

Tzi drew in a deep breath.  “Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the reason you can't go back to Vaila because the Khetri are blocking the Gate?”

Scio looked away.  “I mean, yeah...  Probably, eventually we would've found her again and made up, if we could.  So yeah, it's different here.  But the fact remains, I know my mother.  She means well, she really does!  Kino is a good provider and protector, but she's stubborn as a shagga with a sore hoof.  If you contradict her wishes and put your foot down over it, well, that's that.  No middle ground.”

“Why in the world would you do something like that over something like this?” Tzi demanded, unable to keep the exasperation from creeping into her voice.  “Scio, I don't know what stories you've heard about Travelers, but this isn't some exciting adventure I'm on.  I've been one step ahead of starving since I got here and it'll be a miracle if I manage to find the magic I need without getting killed.” Saying all this out loud wasn't doing her psy any good, but she bulled on regardless.  “And at the end, in the best case scenario, I'll be gone, forever.  This isn't worth creating a rift with your family over.”

“You don't understand,” Scio said in mounting frustration.  “We are dying out here!  Everyone's always one step from starving, at least on the moons, that much is normal.  I don't know how it is wherever Travelers come from, but here?  You wanna survive, you work at it.  We can't magic up food, we have to earn it.  But it's different now.  Everything from our memories is changed by the Khetri.  They keep coming and coming, and pushing and pushing, and every season they've spread more and there's less land and worse land available for us to hunt.  When my parents were little the Khetri were just a nuisance that would occasionally come out of the Gate from Caladel and mess up hunting grounds, looking for Syrr artifacts.  When their parents were small you'd only meet Khetri when visiting the Caladel tribes to trade furs for metal.  Now?  They've built stuff all over big swaths of Vaila and more of them keep pouring out of the Gate, spreading all across the moon.  Mother brought our family to Xyzz to get away from Khetri and now they're here too!  And they're camped out all around the Gate and we can't even leave! Do you get it, Tzi?  This is just never going to stop.  They'll just keep coming until there's nowhere left for us.  And what happens when they're all over Xyzz, too?  Once the Khetri have you backed into a crevice with nowhere else to run, you die.”

Tzi stared at her.  Painful as it was to meet the girl's gaze after she had ended that speech with her voice cracking, she couldn't bring herself to look away.

“Scio...”  She tried to make her tone gentle.  “I don't want to sound callous, but...but I think you're expecting something of me that I just can't give.  I can't make the Khetri leave you alone.  I am not going to start trying to force them out—me getting involved in a war on this moon is a terrible idea even if I could win it.  Which I can't!  Magic or no, I am one person.”

“I...I wasn't asking you to...”  Scio paused, scrubbing at her eyes with the back of one hand.  The fur on her face made the effects less apparent, but clearly Mirbals had tear ducts.  “I know, Tzi.  This isn't even your world and you've got problems of your own.  I don't expect any miracle and I'm not trying to drag you into Claedh stuff.  I just thought...  I just thought if I help you, if we were friends, it might be...”  She trailed off, and swallowed heavily, avoiding Tzi's eyes now.  “Well, for one thing, I know I'd be safer with a Traveler around.  And...  I thought maybe if my mother or the other families get closer to you, well, then if the Khetri come to cause trouble and you're there, they'll probably be smart enough...not to.”

Tzi pursed her lips.  “Scio, that sounds like getting me involved in your racial conflict, but with just enough extra steps that you don't have to feel guilty about it.”

“Master?”  Her Grimoire floated up from its pouch, turning in midair so that the face-like design on its cover was toward her.  “If I may—”

“Wah!” Scio stumbled backward, tripping on her own tail and falling to sit on the path, where she pointed at the levitating book.  “What is that thing?  It talks!”

“It's okay!” Tzi assured her.  “This is my Grimoire, it's harmless.  It helps me store spells and keep track of information.”

The young Mirbal peered suspiciously up at the Grimoire.  “Information?  You can't just remember what you need to know?”

“Wizards need to know a lot of things,” Tzi said, smiling in spite of herself.  “Besides, a Grimoire doesn't just store information, it protects it.  Everything recorded in a Grimoire is preserved more completely than a mind can.  It isn't degraded with time or corrupted by emotion; it's as secure as in a normal book.  Except better, because a Grimoire has a governing intelligence that can sense it surroundings and recall specific information according to a wizard's need, without making me go searching through a whole library.”

“Oh.”  Scio blinked twice.  “What's a library?”

“Ah, I guess you probably don't have those on Xyzz...  A library is a place where there are lots of books.”

“Ohh...  I've heard of a Traveler called the Librarian, it must have to do with that.”

“I guess so,” Tzi agreed.  Actually, she recalled Kino mentioning that, and doubting whether the Librarian was real.  If he was, that implied there was a library somewhere around Dysland, which would be worth visiting.  It clearly wasn't on Xyzz, though, which made that a concern for the distant future.

“And...”  Scio tilted her head inquisitively.  “What's a book?”

“Oh, boy.”  Tzi rubbed at her eyes with both fists.  “How about we get into that another time?  And I thought you were being discreet around the Mirbals,” she added to the Grimoire, which was hovering patiently.

“Yes, master, but as you just commented, my duties include responding to situations as they unfold and you have need of my perspective.  In this case, I think it is important to take Scio up on her offer.”

“Yeah!”  Scio finally bounded back to her feet, nodding eagerly.  “Listen to the grimmer!”

“That's funny,” Tzi replied.  “Not long ago you were cautioning me not to get involved in Mirbal business.”

“As a rule, master, I think your hesitation to insert yourself into their politics is extremely wise.  However, staying completely dissociated from the occupants of the world on which we are stranded is not realistic.  We will need help to navigate Xyzz, especially if we are to unearth Syrr magic to get home.  And it is unfair and unrealistic to expect that the Mirbals will drop their own concerns and help you without expecting anything in return.  It may not be to our advantage to enter strictly transactional relationships with them, as we must with the Innkeeper.”

“That's for sure,” Tzi muttered.

“I think your offer to help Daer is a step in the right direction.  Letting Scio accompany us until she mends the rift with her family is another.  It's more to your benefit to cultivate friendships than to try to buy help as it is needed.”

Tzi rubbed at her temples; her eyes fell on Scio, who was staring up at her with a heartbreaking expression of pure hope.  The truth was, she wasn't entirely sure she agreed with the Grimoire's assessment here.  There were things it wasn't well equipped to judge, and the emotional complications of making friends who were embroiled in a protracted race war were definitely on that list.  Not to mention that its previous observation, brutally calculating as it had seemed at the time, was correct: when it came to helping her find magic and other Syrr secrets, the Khetri probably had a lot more to offer than the Claedh.

But the Khetri weren't here, and she had already sort of befriended two groups of Claedh...

The Khetri weren't here yet,she amended mentally.

“Well, first things first,” Tzi said, gently plucking the Grimoire out of the air and returning it to its pouch.  “Thanks to you, Scio, I just accidentally launched a flare right at the Khetri, so I think we should clear out of here and continue this conversation someplace they aren't going to come sniffing around.”

“Oh.  Uh, yeah, that's a good idea,” Scio said, peering around with a display of sudden nervousness.  “I can show you to somewhere a little less well-known...”

“Well, I was heading back to the Hollow,” said Tzi, “but I guess you probably don't want to go there...”

“Are you kidding?”  Scio actually bounced off the ground in her excitement, grinning with wide-eyed childish glee.  “I've never seen the Hollow, mother would have staked my ears to the ground!  Let's go there!”

Tzi sighed.  “Yep.  I think I see how this relationship is going to go.”

***

“I expected something spookier,” Scio admitted shortly thereafter, gazing around at the shielded valley.  “This actually looks really peaceful.”

“There's not much to see,” Tzi agreed.  “I slept by the rocks over on that side, near that tree.  Uh, what are those trees called?”

“Cinnamon stick trees,” Scio said distractedly, craning her neck to peer over the vanilla grass.

Tzi sighed.  “Really?”

“Yeah, what's odd about that?”

“It's just...cinnamon is a thing on my world, and it comes from trees, and they don't look like—”

“Isn't there any Syrr stuff in here?”

“Well, there's a worn-down bit of stone and crystal where I first arrived.  And apparently there's a door into some kind of Syrr ruin, which is what people sometimes disappear into.  Daer said it's straight across from the entrance, here, against the far wall.  I actually haven't looked at that part personally, I just prowled around enough to find that it all looks pretty much the same.  This is actually a pretty nice little spot.  Apparently predators don't come here, so I can at least sleep in peace.”

“It's not a good sign if animals avoid a place, Tzi,” Scio said, frowning up at her.  “Animals are smart, they can feel storms and earthquakes coming, and smell swamp gas before—something's coming this way!”

Tzi turned to follow her pointing finger, where indeed there was a disturbance in the vanilla grass heading straight toward them.  Once they both fell silent to watch it, they could hear a small sound accompanying its approach.  It was a thin squeaky noise, like—

“Oh, it's Rascal!” Tzi exclaimed.  She stepped forward and knelt in the grass, holding out her arms.  “C'mere, buddy!”

The little black and white cat was already purring as he emerged from the grass.  He immediately hopped up onto her leg and leaned ecstatically into her hand when she began scratching his ear.

“What is that thing?” Scio demanded.

“He's a cat,” Tzi explained, grinning.  “And he doesn't belong here any more than I do.”

“No kidding!”

“He got caught up in events, though.  Remember I said I found my master doing blood magic?  He was about to sacrifice Rascal, here.  But then he teleported me to Xyzz and I guess the cat was caught in the spell.  Poor guy.”

Scio circled around to kneel in front of her, watching in fascination.  “Can you eat it?”

“No!” Tzi clutched Rascal protectively; he and Scio both gave her exactly the same look at the outburst, eyes wide and ears back.  “Cats are friends.  They hunt pests and provide company and affection.  Here, scratch behind his ears, like this.  You'll see.  Pet from the front to back so you don't mess up his fur...”

Scio gave her a look.  “Yes, I understand how fur works, thank you.”

“Oh, uh.  Right.  Sorry.”

The Mirbal smiled, though, stroking Rascal's head.  Aside from sniffing at her fingers, he accepted this with perfect equanimity, eliciting a little giggle from Scio as she scratched just under his ear and he leaned his head into her touch.

“Why's he buzzing, though?  I never heard an animal do that.”

“He's purring,” Tzi explained, grinning.  “It means he's happy.”

“Actually, master, purring is a social reflex, generally indicating a desire for companionship.  Cats do, therefore, purr when happy and contented, but also when injured, sick, or dying, or in the presence of a friend who is likewise unwell.  The purr vibrates at a specific frequency which facilitates the healing of physical and emotional injury; it is extremely beneficial for psy maintenance.  That's just one of the reasons they are popular familiar for wizards.”

“Thank you, Grimoire,” Tzi said wryly.  “C'mon, Rascal, let's get up.  I'll Conjure you some fresh water and something to eat back at the camp.”

Scio and Rascal both trailed along behind as she led the way, but while the cat pulled ahead to hop up onto her couch, the Mirbal stopped following.  Tzi turned back to find her staring, aghast, at the rough lean-to, the couch, lantern, and iron cooking pot.

“This is your camp?” she demanded shrilly.  “Oh, Tzi.  Forgotten and forsaken memories, who taught you to make a camp?”

“Nobody,” Tzi said with some irritation.  “I'm used to living indoors.  I'm learning all this stuff as I go, all right?”

“Well, don't you worry, Scio is here now.  Don't tell me you slept on this thing?”  She poked the couch experimentally.  “Actually it looks kinda comfy.  Was this here before?”

“It's a copy of the one in the inn.”

“Ohhh, right, I remember where I've seen it now.  We don't go in there much, mother doesn't like dealing with Travelers unless we urgently need to trade for something...  Wait, don't you even have a blanket?”

“Everyone's a critic,” Tzi said to Rascal, who blinked slowly in reply.

***

“Well, this has to be it,” Scio opined, craning her head around the boulder to peer at the darkness within.  “I can see why people don't find this unless they go exploring pretty seriously.”

“Yeah, look up there,” Tzi said, pointing.  “It's mostly buried along the side, but see how regular the stone is along the top?”

“Hey, yeah, you're right,” Scio agreed, clambering up the side of the fissure, seemingly having no trouble finding handholds in the rough stone.  Tzi wouldn't have tried it—but then, apart from being heavier, she was a lot less experienced with climbing in general.  “This is carved!  It looks like the stonework in Syrr ruins.  I mean, I think.  Mother wouldn't let us near any except the Gates, and it's been a couple orbits since I was close to one of those...”

“I'm pretty sure there was a whole carved doorway here,” said Tzi, “it just got buried when the cliff face collapsed.”

The stone wall of the crater was at its lowest near the crack which formed the entrance, rising higher on the other side of the valley.  What would have been the highest point was directly opposite the pass, but it had long ago caved in, creating a maze of boulders on the ground in front of the cliff and leaving behind jagged outcroppings along the upper rim where wind and rain hadn't had time to smooth the rock.  A particularly sizable chunk had landed right in front of the door in the cliff wall, mostly obscuring the gap and leaning against the nearby piles of stone which covered the sides.  Between the rock narrowing the doorway itself to a crack not much wider than a Traveler could walk through and the big piece blocking it from the front, the entrance was practically invisible except from very close.

It was also oppressively dark inside.

“Sooo...”  Scio hopped back down and dusted off her hands, looking up at Tzi.  “How do you wanna do this?  I figure you ought to go first, no offense.  You're the one with the magic.”

“Yeah...”  Tzi drew in a breath, bracing herself.  “Actually, Scio, I think it might be better if you and Rascal stay at the—”

“Oh, no, you don't,” Scio interrupted, pointing accusingly at her.  “We agreed I was gonna come help you!”

“In case you've forgotten, Mirbals tend to vanish in there,” Tzi replied.  “I really appreciate you helping me set up a proper campsite and showing me how, Scio.  Seriously, I do; I'm completely at a loss about that stuff and you're a huge help.  But this is wizard business now.”

“It's also underground-on-Xyzz business,” Scio said, folding her arms stubbornly.  “Do you know what kinds of mushrooms and lichen are edible and what kinds are poisonous?  Can you hunt cave lizards?  Would you recognize the signs of a skedadder lair nearby?  What do you do if spuffspores explode at you?  Do you know what flammable gas smells like?”

“Depends on the gas,” Tzi said quickly, seizing on the one answer she knew.

Scio wasn't having it.  “Oh, good job, you can answer one of those questions.  The one that leads into more questions whose answers I bet you don't know.  And that was just off the top of my head!”

“All right, all right!  Enough.”  Tzi massaged her temples.  After spending a few minutes with Scio, learning to dig proper fire pits and latrines, collect and store firewood, and discovering the uses of various local plants in seasoning and personal sanitation (neither of which had been mentioned in her Grimoire's entries when she Divined them), her psy was in a generally good state.  Just spending time with another person she didn't urgently need to trade or negotiate with had been a balm, even if it was a furry alien.  Now, though, facing the prospect of dragging her new (and very young) friend into Mirbal-killing danger, guilt and trepidation were starting to well up again.

“I get the feeling you haven't been in danger a lot in your life,” Scio said unexpectedly.

“Well...not in the last few years,” Tzi admitted.  “Until the very end there.”

Scio tilted her head, ears twitching.  “Years?”

“Oh.  Um.  A year is the period it takes the planet to complete one orbit around the sun.”

The girl's eyes widened.  “But that would take...  By the memories, how old are you?”

“I'm not—oh, I see the problem.”  Tzi couldn't help grinning.  “No, I'm from a planet that's a lot closer to its star.  Its years weren't nearly as long as Dysland's probably are.”

“Sounds like it'd be pretty hot,” Scio said skeptically.  “But, anyway, what I was saying was, you're not used to danger.  I am, Tzi.  I'm not saying that whatever's down there is the usual run of trouble for a Claedh hunter and you saw how hard my mother works to minimize risks, but seriously, 'you could die' is not a new revelation for me.  I'm not an idiot; I would not go in there without a Traveler.  And you,” she added, once again pointing imperiously up at Tzi's nose, “should not go in there without a Claedh!  This is gonna take Traveler magic and Mirbal know-how.”

“Okay, okay, you've made your point,” Tzi said with a heavy sigh.  “Just...stay behind me, all right?”

“Excuse me, but you don't get to say that like you're being all protective.  I just suggested that a minute ago.”

Tzi pulled out her wand, not deigning to reply.  The sigil for Wisp Light was a simple thing, lines suggesting a star with a tail.  She focused her mind upon it, imbuing the sigil with power, experiencing its associations of cool air, the distant echoing murmur of wind through a cave, a tingling sensation like a limb fallen asleep.  The tip of her wand glowed, and then another light flickered into being before her.

The wisp drifted over to hover near Tzi's left shoulder and Scio almost fell on her tail.

“That's amazing!” the Mirbal gushed, forgetting her haughty attitude of seconds ago.  “Do it again!”

“I think I'm gonna conserve my focus for now, no offense,” Tzi said with a pleased smile.  Honestly, she could get used to this.  Back in Knauer's Tower she had been the juniormost apprentice; getting this kind of enthusiastic appreciation for her extremely basic spells was just the ego boost she needed after the last few days.

Tzi hesitated a moment longer, sweeping her stare across the peaceful Hollow.  There was no sign of Rascal, who had fallen asleep at the camp after lunch.  So much the better; hopefully he had the sense to stay out of this cave when she was not around.

“Well, I guess there's nothing else to wait for,” she said, stepping toward the dark crevice with her wand upraised and the wisp bobbing at her shoulder.  “Stay close.”

“You got it,” Scio said more soberly, falling into step right behind her.

The wisp at least alleviated the darkness, though its pale light did not penetrate far ahead and made their surroundings more eerie than well-lit.  At least the access corridor opened out almost immediately.  The slabs of stone forming the narrow crack were, indeed, nothing but fallen rock from the cliff face above, and were scarcely more than a meter thick.  Once past them, the two found themselves in a comfortably broad corridor cut right into the living rock.  One along which they traveled in a small island of light for a few seconds before Scio spoke up.

“Well, I'm a little less impressed now, I'll admit.  Can't you make that thing shine a little farther ahead?”

“It's, uh, actually meant more as a reading light,” Tzi replied.  “Hang on, I know a spell that might be better...  I didn't want to use it because the wisp is a lot more energy-efficient, but you're right, I have no idea where we're going like this.”

Calling up Sunbeam was always a pleasant experience, as its associated sensations fittingly brought her mind back to lying upon a hill with warm sun beating down upon her, surrounded by the music of cicadas and the smell of freshly-cut grass.  Her first attempt at the spell actually fizzled as a wave of nostalgia disrupted her psy; it had been years since she'd had such an experience, not since entering Knauer's apprenticeship, and she never would again if she didn't manage to escape from Dysland.  Tzi rallied, disciplined her mind, and tried again.  This time, rays of warm, golden light blossomed from the tip of her wand to illuminate the corridor ahead of them.

They immediately revealed a monster waiting.