“That was stronger than before,” Raehel said, watcing approvingly as Mary tested her magic. The pony was rather stupid. It still kept its head trapped in the hole in the wall, thrashing and snapping at them. Surely that was why Raehel was so comfortable carrying on a casual conversation between the two of them, when there was a horribly stinky, screeching pony monster that definitely wanted them all dead not twenty paces away.

  “Did that feel different?” Raehel continued.

  “It did,” Mary said. It had been like this before, when the fire was spreading. Was it a matter of danger? Or did she not want to get caught? She wasn’t sure herself.

  “Just…” Raehel approached Mary, stood behind her, and positioned her arms right in front of her. “Goddess, I’ve never actually used Gemgear, you know? I’ve only used pure Gems… Let me think about how to adapt my lessons…”

  Mary wondered if this was going to work at all.

  “Alright. What’s a fan for?” Raehel said into her ear from behind.

  “We had this discussion already.”

  “Humor me! Repetition is good for learning.”

  “A fan,” Mary said, “is good for making wind.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Yesterday you said it was good for another thing.”

  “…A fan is good for hiding your mouth when you gossip.”

  She felt so stupid even saying that. She’d never been close enough to a noble lady to know that for sure. Most major balls had been on pause since the days of the Crylaxan Plague, and most houses were too poor or recovering too slowly to support such grand events.

  “And why would someone do that?”

  “To make it obvious they’re gossiping.”

  Raehel frowned. She seemed genuinely confused as she asked, “Why would hiding your mouth make it obvious?”

  “Because it’s clear you have something to hide, so you can make someone feel bad about themselves while having plausible deniability.”

  That was the villainous young ladies did in all the stories she’d heard, anyways. She wasn’t even sure villainous young ladies were real.

  “I don’t get it,” Raehel said. “If you want someone to feel bad about themselves, why don’t you just be better than them?”

  Over her shoulder, Mary gave Raehel a very dubious look. Right now, Mary sounded awfully like Archmund when he was coming up with his stupider ideas.

  Raehel raised an eyebrow, as if the suggestion had been the most natural one in the world.

  The pony thrashed wildly. There was the sound of stone cracking.

  “Anyways!” Raehel said. “When you make someone feel bad about themselves, it’s because you want them to go away. Right?”

  “Right…”

  Raehel was just winging this. She had to be.

  “So channel that. Channel that idea — making wind and blowing someone, a very specific someone that you hate or don’t like, go away. Channel those feelings into your Gem — and speak your feelings!”

  It sounded awfully silly, like she was a hero in Ardur’s Faery Tales. She was just a maidservant, who’d lucked into the role because Granavale Manor had been so desperate for extra hands after the Crylaxan Plague had devastated the land, who’d made it so far because of her grit and a fair bit of luck and the friendship of Archmund Granavale. She wasn’t a Hero or even a Noble.

  And yet the fan pulsed with grass-green light beneath her clasping fingers nonetheless. She was not born to it, and luck, not fate, had led her here, yet here she stood.

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  She closed the fan. Like the noble ladies she’d always imagined, she raised it before her mouth and flicked it open with an elegant twist of her fingers.

  With the fan before her mouth, she chortled. Goddess, this was goofy. She was so very glad Archmund wasn’t around to tease her, to get back at her for all the times they’d shared exchanging jabs.

  And then she swept the fan before her, with a grand motion of her arm, like one noble lady slapping another in the face.

  “Begone!” she shouted, and something about the word felt different, felt like it resonated with the Guts of Hell and the Arched Vaults of Heaven, screaming like music and madness against the stale air of the Dungeon.

  A blast of wind followed her arm, not a vast wave, but a sharp and narrow gust. She almost thought she saw a distortion in the air, like the path of an arrow instead of a wave crashing against the shore.

  Her [Begone! ]struck the pony-like Monster, throwing it back with immense force. It struck the Dungeon wall with a sickening crunch. Through the holes in Raehel’s walls, Mary saw it crumple to the ground in a broken bile of bone and darkness, and then it shuddered. It rose to its feet, though its neck was bent the wrong way and one of its legs was bent and no longer touched the ground. A revolting sight.

  Even half broken, it turned towards then and bared its fangs hatefully as it broke into an undead parody of a gallop.

  “Again!” Raehel shouted.

  “Begone!” Mary cried with genuine disgust, as she swept her fan down. Her blast of wind tore through the still air once more, stripping shards of loose stone from Raehel’s barriers and bombarding the pony Monster with rocky shrapnel. Again it was slammed against the wall.

  “Keep it up!”

  Mary flapped the fan with her wrist. She didn’t cry out “Begone”, her strange and bewildering word of power. She’d already flung the Monster back, breaking it against the wall, and she was getting tireder. It was easier to keep it there instead of forcing it back every time, and even her small, slight wrist movements channeled her magical power.

  “Keep it here. My turn,” Raehel said. “Salamanders of Fire, Gnomes of Earth, shape these stones in molten hearth. So my purpose might advance, form for me this Molten Lance!”

  As she chanted, chips of stone flew from the Dungeon walls to form into a roughshod spike before her, conglomerating from pebbles and gravel into a pointed cone. It spun, like pottery upon a wheel. Simultaneously, Mary felt the air heat as the stone spike started glowing, first red-hot, then orange, then yellow. When the spike was a brilliant white, so bright it hurt to look at, Raehel flicked open her hand with a flourish.

  The [Molten Lance] flew, breaking through the remaining stone barriers, spearing the pony in the heat. There was a sizzle. It gurgled as the last semblances of breath failed. And then it finally slumped, fully broken at last.

  Mary’s blood was pounding through her ears. Channeling the winds, unlocking a Skill — that had been exhilarating. The vast oceans of power Raehel unleashed seemed almost insignificant compared to the paltry energies flowing through her own veins. Now that the danger was gone, all that was left was adrenaline.

  “Not bad for a first time,” Raehel said. “But still — you named the Skill ‘Begone’? Real hoity-toity of you.”

  “What… what does any of that mean?”

  Raehel ignored her daze.

  She walked to the corpse of the pony Monster. “Hmmm. Nothing too great.”

  She gave no physical signal, but droplets of water condensed from the air and washed over the Molten Lance, bursting into steam upon contact, hastening the cooling. Raehel grabbed the shard of stone — Mary wondered how she was able to bear it, even with her gloves on, surely stone that had glowed white-hot wouldn’t have cooled so fast — and it crumbled into nothing with a squeeze. Was that a normal level of strength? Mary could no longer tell. She’d seen too much in the past three months.

  “We could harvest the hide, but I’m no good as a butcher so it’ll be mangled. Other than that…”

  Mary considered mentioning that she’d had some experience with butchery. Mostly of rabbits and small wild game, but still. Her skills were likely somewhat better than a mage’s.

  Raehel grabbed the Monster’s legs and tilted them for a closer look. “Thought I saw these!” she said.

  There were Gemstone Horseshoes, yellowish-brown, attached to the feet of the pony.

  Mary frowned. “Can animals use these?”

  “Not for magic, enchantments, or Skills. But they’ll get the strength and endurance bonuses you’d expect, and I hear that these sell for a pretty penny to any Satyrs or Centaurs.”

  Mary had never heard of those peoples, but she’d heard that on the Frontier there were tribes of nomadic horsemen, so of course they could gain a great deal from enhancements to their steeds. They were creatures of myth as much as fact. But then again she’d stepped into myth herself, hadn’t she?

  “And you,” Raehel said, finally turning back to Mary with a smile on her face.

  “Me?”

  “Look at you! You’ve got a Skill!”

  “A Skill,” Mary said. Archmund had mentioned his Infrared Lance and his Microwave Skills, but he’d gained those through deep thought and practice and a fair bit of pressure. She had no idea how she’d gotten hers.

  “Well, I guess it’s a little less impressive than a Skill from a Gem,” said Raehel, which was a return to form. “But it’s still pretty impressive. See, like I told you in our lessons, you only get Skills once you’re Attuned to a Gem. You can deepen that Attunement, but the fact that you’ve Attuned that Gemgear in only a few months is seriously impressive! Most soldiers take like a year to fully Attune, and even longer to learn their first Skill.”

  “It’s less impressive with Gemgear?”

  “Well, yeah,” Raehel said. “Gemgear is easy to Attune, hard to Awaken. What’s a fan good for, other than making wind and hiding gossip?”

  Mary rolled her eyes. She feigned waving her fan at Raehel playfully. “Begone.”

  Raehel’s eyes widened. With a flick of her wrist, her Gems swung in front of her, and they scattered a blast of wind in a half-sphere that blasted loose sand and pebbles against the rustic dungeon walls.

  “Be careful with that!”

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