Every time I learned to harness a little more of my magic, I was also asking a simple question: what could I do? I’d always found an answer of some kind, although each new threshold of my abilities only ever rose to the moment in question. The Py’riel no longer seemed intimidated by the energy radiating from me, they were too numerous to even register my presence as a threat. I couldn’t guide an unarmed Passguard to do much of anything against a massive enchanted tree, I’d only lead her to her death.

  The magnitude of this situation extended far beyond anything that came before. While the first Py’riel nearly worked its way through the broken portcullis, more were already heating up the steel again to tear the gate wider apart and let the horrible creatures with their deadly fire magic swarm in. They intended to leave nothing standing this time, and there was little anyone could do. And all that stood between them and the Quinn’s Peak was Janine.

  I wouldn’t let her fight alone.

  As before, panic and fear welled within me, amplified tenfold by the dire circumstances facing us. The raw magic field within me grew so great in that moment, it lifted me upward, away from Janine’s neck. I drifted just out of her grasp in case whatever came next posed a danger to her and the others. The raw energy flowed freely, and the familiar question came to mind once again.

  What could I do?

  I... I didn’t know.

  Suspended in the air, my viridian light shone brighter than ever before, the magic burning bright within me. The first Py’riel had managed to work its way through the twisted portcullis, but it came to a halt again as it waited to see what I might do, its purple fmes drowned out by the blinding green light I cast all around me, my glow reflecting off of everything and everyone nearby.

  And yet... I had all this power gathering inside, and I still had no clue what to do with it!

  Having treated Warren’s burns as best as she could, Evelyn exited the watchtower and stood near Janine, a look of awe washing away any fear in her eyes as she became mesmerized by my dispy of light. “What’s the sphere doing?”

  “I don’t know,” Janine replied. “I’ve never seen Viridian do anything like this.”

  I’d hoped for the longest time that when a moment like this arose, I’d be able to act on instinct, like I’d just suddenly know everything about my magic. I could summon forth all the magical potential I wanted in response to the dangers of the Py’riel, but I cked any insight into how to transte it into something real. I needed a guide, an instruction manual, a sign, anything! What sort of second-rate artificer would leave me with nothing to work with!

  All I had was Janine. And in that moment, all she had was me.

  My epiphany came as I looked at her, and all the memories flooded back to me from the first day her mother csped me around her neck. Every swing of the hammer to rebuild Quinn’s Peak, every swing of the sword as she trained to defend it, I saw them all at once and realized I’d been asking the wrong question. In times of great peril, I’d always focused my energy on how to protect her, always asking what I could do, but she didn’t really need my protection—she needed my help. My potential pteaued when I tried to act alone, but if I worked together with a champion and gave them the strength they needed...

  What could Janine do?

  She could save the town, if she had the right tools.

  Something clicked in that moment. This was what I had been looking for! I didn’t know what else I could do on my own, but I knew Janine. Maybe that was the point—my own ck of insight about my magic hadn’t been a curse, but an opportunity: with no purpose defined for me, I could shape myself to fit my champion instead.

  As I brightened further, a green mist poured out of me, swirling in the air like a furious bonfire. Once I started to put all the pieces together in my mind, the magic responded, igniting into a dazzling array of sparks and light, burning a new shape from my into existence out of thin air. My little round pendant grew rger, the metal of my spherical cage expanding outward in every direction as I took on new life.

  Perhaps I should have known this all along. Relics rarely act alone. In all the stories I’d heard Tobias tell the girls when they were younger, in the books Evelyn and Janine read in the quiet hours of the night, relics were always intertwined with the heroes in question, empowering them with the strength they needed to defeat their foes. They needed each other to become more than the sum of their abilities. The answer had been staring me in the face all along! I just needed to accept this truth before everything made sense. As my new shape crystallized in the air before her, Janine ran forward to me, ready to take me into her hands and embrace a fighting chance at surviving the night.

  I knew exactly what Janine could do with a proper sword.