"Not bad for my first time fishing, huh? Scarlett? Don't you agree?"

  Five sets of eyes surrounded me, awed by the mysterious silver neckce held aloft by the st man on Terra I'd expect to succeed at fishing. His wife, Scarlett, cd in yers of fancy blue robes unsuited for any sort of cross-country expedition, spoke with a breathy voice, as if she had been entranced. "Marcus, you handsome idiot, how in the world are you always stumbling into things like this?"

  The youngest of the three children, all boys, delighted in repeating fragments of his mother's words, approximating the sounds of 'Marcus' and 'idiot' in particur with a high-pitched squeal of ughter.

  Marcus was not the outdoorsy type by a wide margin—he'd managed to pull the fish from the river with a levitation spell rather than a proper fishing pole, which expined the ck of any struggle. Wearing a pressed shirt and scks, and sporting tidy side-parted hair with a single stark white streak amid the deep brown, the slender father polished his gsses to get a better look, smiling wider with each passing moment.

  "What can I say? I've got that Langmeyer Luck passed down on my dad's side. How else would I have ended up with such a beautiful wife and three gifted kids?" Out of the corner of his eye, Marcus spotted his youngest reaching out for the fish guts, pulling him away before they ended up in his mouth. "Well, two out of three isn't bad either. Garitt, Caleb, can you find Dax his grapes or something to snack on while we prepare lunch?"

  Garitt, the eldest of the boys, carried Dax to a wagon rge enough to transport a family of five on a long journey, adorned with eborate carvings and gilded iny patterns—and no horse, I noticed, despite the reins for one dangling from the front. I looked all around, seeing hoofprints and wheel tracks leading up to where the wagon now sat, but no further tracks leading to where the creature may have gone.

  The middle child, Caleb, snatched me from his father's hands, swinging me back and forth. "It looks a lot like the divination pendulum Aunt Bryn uses, right? Hey, neckce, find us some treasure!"

  Sure kid, I'll tell you exactly which way to go. I'd improvised my travel pns up to this point, why stop now? I extended my metal downward to a point like a pendulum, but adjusted my shape slightly off-center from the neckce chain. As Caleb's imperceptible movements in his hands started to swing me back and forth, my deliberate imbance left me pointing upstream, toward the path leading back into the mountains.

  Caleb's eyes widened, and he turned to his mother, tugging at her robes. "We gotta go back! I did the thing like with Aunt Bryn and it worked, it's gonna make us rich! Look!"

  "That trinket's probably worth a nice pile of gold all on its own," Scarlett said, putting a hand on her son's shoulder. "Besides, that would take us back toward Quinn's Peak and we're already behind schedule. If we lose a day or two to treasure hunting, your brother's going to miss his interviews and exams for Berindal Academy." Scarlett narrowed her eyes at Marcus. "Which wouldn't have been a problem if somebody had listened to me when I suggested taking the portal to the city."

  "What?" Her husband sliced the gargantuan fish in mid-air with a flick of his wand, nearly dropping their meal to the ground when the compint reached his ears. Once he recovered control, he set the fish down on the grill over a campfire. "Oh, no no no, we couldn't just take a portal! My dad brought me to Werth Academy just like this, riding in this very same Vega Traveler wagon, it's... it's a tradition! Portals are, what, you go in and you're done, thank you, that'll be three month's pay please. Where's the adventure in that? This is family bonding time out here."

  Scarlett pat Caleb's shoulder, and then held out her hand. "We'll do it on the way back, okay? I'm sure the treasure will still be around here in a couple weeks."

  Caleb dropped me into Scarlett's hand and sulked away, disappointed in his mother's decision, but I couldn't have been happier. I didn't have to do anything but be patient, and I'd end up exactly where I wanted to be! It did mean I had to travel even further from the mountains first, but even with such a long diversion from home, I figured I'd get there faster than if I tried to crawl back on my own somehow.

  Scarlett csped me around her neck, conjuring a mirror above her outstretched hand to admire her test accessory. At first, she appeared pleased with how I complemented her attire, but her face contorted in disgust moments ter. "Ugh, that smell! Marcus, why didn't you wash the fish bits off this thing yet?" She pulled me from her neck and hung me from the side of the wagon before sitting by the campfire as Marcus served ptes of fish to everyone else.

  The family chattered over lunch, but I tuned them out, instead listening to the river's roar and the chirps of birds high up in the vibrant green pines. This far down the mountainside, trees crowded against one another, parted only by the river and its companion trail running through it. Hints of the Berin Mountains peeked through the treetops behind us, further than I'd ever seen them, but there all the same.

  "So, you're ready for your interviews?" Marcus asked Garitt between bites. "Feeling confident?"

  Garitt shrugged, poking at his fish with a fork. "I guess. I've heard that Professors Owlstone and Lindemith are nice, but Professor Promell asks all the tough questions."

  Promell? That name sounded familiar. One of the books Nadia had referenced when studying me years ago had been written by a Dr. Olivia Promell, if I remembered right. Everything was starting to make sense! The Fates must have been guiding me to the ideal pce to unlock the full extent of my powers, so I could better fulfill my champion's destiny as well. I'd have preferred a more straightforward means of getting there than being stolen and turned into fish food, but I guess everyone has to endure their own trials before receiving their reward. I needed to do nothing else but wait.

  Having concluded their meal, the Langmeyer family packed everything back into the wagon, ready to move again. Marcus knocked on the wooden exterior. "Okay horse, let's get moving again."

  Ribbons of bright blue energy swirled out from the reins, coiling around one another as they descended down to the ground, forming four hooves in the dirt precisely atop where the tracks had stopped. The magic poured forth until a majestic arcane creature stood at the ready to pull the wagon. Despite gaps between the criss-crossing magical ribbons of pure energy, the horse-construct pulled the weight of the wagon with no strain or fuss.

  "We should make it past the Alcinder Woods by nightfall," Marcus said with a growing smile as he grabbed the reins up front, "and then... on to Berindal!"