Retrieving the toad-golem from an irate shopkeeper unable to shoo it away went as badly as he had expected.

  Moryac and his companion pushed through a throng of new arrivals towards the Interplanar Locus. The golem seemed pleased with itself. It had better, considering the two new brooms it carried and his own lighter coinpurse. Moryac was positive he had been cheated. Surely brooms didn’t cost three cowries each?

  The air grew charged with static as interplanar energies pressed against his skin. It spilled from the Locus in slow waves, rolling off his robe’s enchantments like water against lacquered leather. Invisible from plain sight. Near-blinding to his magical one. Acrid ozone stung his nose, bitter and unnaturally cold. He glanced over the Locus’ crenelations, where a rift swirling with the Mausoleum’s violet energies yawned open.

  Moments later, an airship trawled through, void-sails folded and sailors streaming out of the lower decks. Its mage crew checked for damage sustained over transit, splitting into pairs and gliding to their assigned posts with practiced ease. Ghostly witchlight flickered and licked at the ship’s hull as it glided smoothly into the Locus’ dock.

  Moryac checked a nearby sign board for departure times. There was a passenger vessel scheduled for Varmarhad in roughly two hours, all for six cowries per head. He had an hour left before his meeting with Sixty-Five, so Moryac sat at a bench and ordered the toad-golem to hop next to him.

  With a wordless command, the toad-golem revealed its inner core. Moryac fished through his personal dimension for his artificer’s kit, shifted into his inner eye, and reached into the construct’s ontological matrix.

  Moryac hummed to himself as he inspected the golem. No wonder it had been so unpredictable—it hadn’t been updated in nearly a decade! Its main programming hardly recognized anything outside of his cabal’s sanctum, which likely caused it to cling to anything familiar it saw outside of it, like brooms or dust. It took about half an hour to imbue it with a few of Moryac’s more recent memories, which should, in theory, give it additional context as it followed him and Sixty-Five on their journey.

  “Huh,” Moryac said to himself as he commanded the golem to close its core. “Why in the Hells are you with us, anyway?”

  The golem stared back with unblinking eyes.

  “Oh!” Sixty-Five shouted from across the docks. “Lord Moryac! There you are!”

  She skittered over, bulging travel pack in tow. It had shovels, picks, and a lantern hanging precariously off the sides.

  “Honored Sister,” Moryac greeted, nodding at her gear. “That’s quite the selection. Will that not be cumbersome?”

  Sixty-Five saluted proudly. “This is nothing! We Zheel’ymh are built rugged.”

  “As you say,” he conceded. “We’re both a little early.”

  “Yes,” the Zheel’ymh said. She looked at his satchel, then behind him. “Is this all you plan to bring, Lord Moryac?”

  Moryac shrugged. “I have a personal dimension that can fit small objects. Much of my necessities are there.”

  “I see,” she said. “I suppose you also have the little construct to help carry luggage.”

  “That was the plan,” he agreed. Close enough, at least.

  “Lord Moryac… is it me, or does that thing seem a little sullen?” Sixty-Five said.

  He looked at the golem. It gazed downwards, brooms dragging behind it. It didn’t hop as usual, but, rather, trudged quietly, its joints whirring in soft bursts. Hells. Was it sulking?

  “It’s probably nothing,” Moryac said. “Gave it a few of my memories so it doesn’t behave erratically around unfamiliar sights. It’s just getting used to it. Probably.”

  Sixty-Five clicked her pincers in thought, then shrugged. “Shall we be off, then?”

  “Sure,” he said, gesturing for the toad-golem to follow him. “Let’s.”

  Contrary to his expectations, void-ship crews were rather lively. Moryac imagined constant drifting through the starless, metaphysical seas between planes would be something that demanded stoicism, pragmatism, and grit. He imagined calloused hands on stark-eyed sailors, or mages brooding in dark corners muttering eldritch invocations. Instead, he watched the ship’s crew clink mugs of watered down ale as they taught him and Sixty-Five the rules to Crowns, a foreign card game involving much bluffing.

  Contrary to his expectations, the Zheel’ymh hive-mind enjoyed card games as it honed its sisters’ problem-solving and intuition. The Zheel’ymh were able to call on an extensive library of rules ranging from the ubiquitous to the exotic, which gave Sixty-Five a considerably sharp edge. Crowns, though rather quaint, shared rules and aspects with a few games her clutch-sisters enjoyed yet maintained a certain depth that allowed for nuanced play and skill expression. Or so she said.

  Contrary to his expectations, he was losing badly.

  “Got a Three of Skulls?” the player to Moryac’s right said.

  “No,” Moryac replied, revealing his hand. A Ten of Scepters—his only high card—and a One of Crowns. “I fold.”

  A ship-mage grinned and took two quarter-cowries from his pile. Sixty-Five pocketed another. Skill expression, indeed.

  “If I may, Lord Moryac,” Sixty-Five clicked her pincers. “You have a tendency to stay for two rounds during a bad hand, or three if it’s middling-to-good. The worst of both worlds.”

  Moryac hummed. “Was it not a solid strategy?” He looked at his shrinking pile. They started with twenty quarter-cowries each, but he was down to eight. “Alright, fine, but I’m new.”

  “You’ve a convincing poker face, friend,” a sailor with cropped hair and heavily tattooed face said, “but you’re a right coward. You play like my gran. Could’ve easily won last round if you pushed for it. None of us had pairs.”

  Sixty-Five nodded.

  “Nah,” a tall sailor deep in her cups slurred. She flashed Moryac a crooked grin. “I woulda called it.”

  “You’re horrid at reading people and worse at counting cards,” The tattooed sailor muttered, prompting a heated argument between the two.

  To his side, the toad-golem’s gaze flicked between each player. Its unblinking eyes settled on him and it gave a disappointed chirp. Moryac shrugged. The construct continued sweeping the lower deck.

  Outside the void-ship’s viewing ports churned an ocean of pitch black, occasionally broken by the brush of an even darker, pulsing tide against the ship’s hull or the rare glow of a distant plane. Oily shadows folded and writhed in waves as it pulled them along the immaterial, causing the floorboards to groan like a restless sleeper. Moryac glanced at the crew. None seemed to pay it any mind.

  “Another round?” one of the sailors said. Agreements were murmured around their table.

  “I shall pass for now,” Moryac said, passing his cards to the dealer. “This is a mortal blow to my already dwindling coffers.”

  Sixty-Five gasped, then clicked her pincers. “Don’t worry, Lord Moryac! I shall recoup your losses. The Divine Architect guides my hand!”

  “Indeed,” he nodded, took a final swig of his mug, then stood up. “Praise Zheel.”

  Moryac squeezed between tables and wove through the ship’s cargo hold, dodging crew and storage crates alike. The toad-golem shuffled after him towards the ship’s upper deck. There, a few sightseers leaned on the guard rails, marveling at the ship’s barrier crackling against the voidal tide.

  The wards reminded him of home. Moryac briefly wondered how his fellow cabalists were doing. Every now and then, the sails—tall contraptions consisting of glowing, glass-like hexagons that made his teeth itch—shifted against an unseen current.

  He made his way to the ship’s bow, where one of the mage crew inspected an auxiliary thaumic engine. Moryac opened his inner eye to do the same. A fragment of eternity trapped in witchsteel and satisfyingly precise sigil-work, similar to the one he and Sixty-Five worked on less than a day ago, yet more compact. Newer. Lower output, sure, but they could use such engines for their less critical wards. Humming, Moryac tapped into his magic to make a mental note to pester Melkaros and see if the cabal could get a shipment of those.

  “Sir Mage,” the sailor inspecting the thaumic engine said. A young woman with neat braids held together by a silver brooch. “Can I help you?”

  Moryac blinked out of his magical sight and glanced at her. “Sorry, Trying to occupy myself. I’ll be on my way.”

  “Wait. Sorry,” she said sheepishly. “That’s not what I meant. You can keep looking around. Um, sir.”

  Unsure of what to do, Moryac opened his magical sight once more and pretended to stare at the thaumic engine. It was functioning fine, as far as he could tell.

  “So, um,” the girl said, gesturing at Moryac’s robes. “You’re from the Mausoleum?”

  “Yes,” he nodded, staring intently at the thaumic engine.

  “So,” she hummed. “How’s the pay?”

  “Sorry?” Moryac blinked out of his inner eye and looked at her.

  “The, uh, pay,” she said. “Sir.”

  Moryac shrugged. “I’m not sure. I get a monthly stipend deposited to a ledger somewhere. Living expenses are paid for, so I’ve nothing to spend it on. It’s a considerable amount, from what I understand, but I…” he scratched his chin, “I don’t have hard numbers.”

  The sailor’s eyes widened. “Free food and board,” she muttered to herself. “Must be nice not having to stretch each cowrie between rent and tools,” the girl nodded, then looked at him. “This ship doesn't have enough positions for permanent engineers, you know? But they keep asking for helpers each time they stop by town, and Gods, I keep answering, only to get the boot once business slows. I think they’re trying to cut corners—” she caught herself, then coughed. “Would you happen to know how one, um, becomes an apprentice in the Mausoleum?”

  “Not really,” Moryac crossed his arms. “One of my ancestors entered a contract with the Mausoleum and it got passed along throughout the years,” he said. “I’ve had apprentices before, but I never really asked about their situation. Sorry.”

  “I see,” she stood and paced around the thaumic engine.

  “You could try asking cabalists in the Locus, next time you’re there?” Moryac tried. “Dark Mother knows we could always use extra hands.”

  “What sort of knowledge would an apprentice need to succeed?” she said.

  It seemed they were due for a prolonged conversation, so Moryac moved closer to sit, summoning a chair from his personal dimension. The girl gawked at the casual display of the Mausoleum’s magic. Moryac shrugged, but noticed a glimmer of recognition in the toad-golem’s eyes. Excellent. The updates to its matrix were working.

  He thought of his previous apprentices once more. Muiri, cousin of a hedge-witch, haphazardly weaving spells while relying on little more than good luck and better instincts. Kalatman, a surly urchin from who-knows-where. Brooding, steadfast, loyal to a fault, and gifted with a natural grasp of advanced demonology. Moryac had meant to ask about that, but didn’t wish to pry.

  “Hop to,” he commanded the toad-golem.

  The construct waddled over to the girl and opened its core.

  Moryac looked at the ship engineer. “What can you tell me about this construct, Miss…?”

  “Fiore,” the girl replied.

  “Miss Fiore,” Moryac said. “Give it a look. Tell me what you see.”

  Fiore gulped, then willed her sixth sense open. Her eyes flickered as a sliver of her metaphysical self brushed against the material plane, and her hand hovered over the golem’s core. Moryac felt the thrum of her magic across the aether—practiced enough, good for most thaumaturgical work, but noisy. It would be akin to a bonfire if used carelessly within the Mausoleum’s depths. A beacon to all manner of wayward spirits.

  She could do with a bit of finesse.

  “It’s a utility construct,” Fiore said, brow furrowing. “Basic ontological matrix, though its soul-core is nearing capacity. Quite a lot of features built-in, but definitely due for an upgrade. It’s pushing its limits,” she trailed off. “I would say it’s just a few years away from reaching sentience…?”

  “Indeed,” Moryac nodded, opening his inner eye to join her assessment. “Sharp.”

  “I… uh,” Fiore said. “I think it wants a name.”

  He blinked out of his mage-sight and looked at her. “What?”

  Fiore closed her sixth sense, moving her hand away from the construct. “Just a hunch. Sir. Um. It’s wonderfully made?”

  “Thanks,” Moryac said, rapping his knuckles against its back. “This little fellow was one of my first.”

  The toad-golem closed its core and glanced at him.

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  Moryac scratched his chin. “Little Moryac?”

  The toad-golem beeped and shook its head.

  “Stubby?” Fiore hesitated, then glanced at Moryac. “Y’know, because it waddles.”

  It whirred in protest, then kicked Fiore’s foot.

  “Hey!” she said.

  “To be fair, it was somewhat uncalled for,” he hummed to himself. “Ash… Ash-Nibbler? After the venerable Ash-Eater. How about that?”

  The toad-golem turned away and waddled toward the lower decks, sulking.

  “Where is it going?” Fiore said.

  Moryac crossed his arms. “Should we follow it?”

  “It’s your construct,” Fiore snorted.

  “If it’s as sentient as its behavior suggests, I don’t think it’s mine anymore,” he muttered. “Alright,” Moryac stood, opening a portal to stow away his chair. “Come on, then.”

  “What about my inspection?” she said.

  “Eh,” Moryac shrugged. “Busywork. It’s tuned well enough. Consider helping the poor construct a part of your assessment.”

  “If you say so—” she caught herself, “Yes, sir.”

  The construct, it turned out, sought a name from Sixty-Five, instead. It took surprisingly few guesses for her to figure out what it wanted, and by the time Moryac and Fiore had gotten to it, a few of the crew had joined the appellation.

  “Lord Moryac!” Sixty-Five chirped. “Your companion has been behaving most strangely!”

  “Not causing problems, I hope?” Moryac said.

  Sixty-Five shrugged. “It’s been rather friendly.”

  “Little thing offered to refill our mugs and watched us play,” one of the sailors said. “Never seen that before.”

  The construct beeped quickly. Approval?

  “Really?” Moryac asked. “‘Little thing?’ You’re okay with that?”

  The construct shrugged.

  “How is that a better name than ‘Stubby?’” Fiore scoffed, only to get kicked in the shin by Little-Thing.

  “I suppose that’s its choice,” Moryac said. He knelt next to the construct. “Little-Thing, is it? I believe I shall send you to Ash-Eater’s care. It can get you a more suitable vessel as well, if you’re inclined.”

  Little-Thing beeped and nodded.

  Moryac returned the gesture and patted its shoulder. “Apologies for your premature awakening. It was careless of me to bring something so close to sentience on a rather spontaneous journey. I’ve been distracted recently, but it’s a poor excuse.” He stood and stretched a hand out, willing his staff to him. Energy gathered in his palms. “Still, I’m glad that you developed into a fine construct. You do me honor. As your creator, I shall strive to do the same.”

  Half a minute passed. Moryac’s hand kept glowing, and though he felt the staff’s presence, it did not appear.

  Fiore cleared her throat.

  “I’ve seen this before!” Sixty-Five nudged Fiore. “He’s summoning his staff, I believe. Just wait!”

  The construct looked at him expectantly. Several seconds passed.

  “Does it normally take this long?” Fiore whispered. “Oh, I’m Fiore, by the way. His new apprentice.”

  Moryac stared at her and sighed. “That’s tentative.” He looked at his hand, then scratched his head. “Strange. Aetheric interference, perhaps?”

  Fiore shrugged. “This is generally a choppier part of the trip, sir. Your magic being unstable makes sense.”

  He switched to his mage-sight, then weaved a minor noise-suppression enchantment around the group only to quickly unravel it. Fiore gasped as the air around them shimmered. Moryac tried a different enchantment next, slightly lowering the temperature, followed by another that slowed dehydration. Sixty-Five nodded and gave him a round of applause. Bemused, Fiore joined her half a beat later.

  All three enchantments held fine. Perhaps somewhat slower to come than usual, but expected due to their conceptual distance from the Mausoleum, and only marginally so. Hardly enough to stop him. The staff was certainly still tethered to him—he felt its presence through the aether, but it refused to heed his call. It would’ve been an easy journey.

  Then again, he was no expert on summoning.

  “I see,” Moryac looked at Little-Thing. “Apologies once more. I promise to send you back as soon as I can.”

  The construct shrugged in response, then waddled off to grab a broom.

  “Don’t let it get to you, Lord Moryac,” Sixty-Five clicked. “It happens to the best of us.”

  Though far from being the best thaumaturge in his cabal, let alone the best in the Mausoleum, he let the matter drop. Perhaps the distance from his House’s ancestral vaults was simply too far. Perhaps he could use a review on interplanar magical theory. Melkaros had acquired several grimoires and treatises last year on cosmological metaphysics that he had meant to study.

  Either way, Moryac wished he was back at his sanctum.

  The golem seemed to have a propensity for politeness. Some of Moryac’s memories must’ve taken root, as it kept to itself unless prompted and generally stayed out of harm’s way. Little-Thing was curious but never precocious, exploring the void-ship’s interior as it cleaned, but few paid it any mind, so Moryac let it be for the evening.

  Afterwards, he spent three bells testing Fiore on the fundamentals of thaumaturgy: enchanting, conjury, theory, augury. Fiore’s magical reserves were estimated, followed by her fine control. Middling in all aspects for one her age, but she proved to be a fair hand at artificer work.

  Much like himself.

  Though she had much to learn, her foundations were solid. All who darkened the Mausoleum’s halls eventually found themselves wanting in some regard, anyway. Great cabalists overcame such trials time and again, and he had reason enough to believe she could manage with proper guidance. She would be a fine fit, hopefully one that would stick around. Hopefully with his cabal. Exhaustion—or boredom, it was difficult to tell—took her soon enough, and she bowed out to talk with Sixty-Five.

  With little else to do, Moryac went to his bunk to lay down. Varmarhad was still two days out. The Mausoleum moved further away with each passing breath, but it was too late to turn around, so he shut his eyes. Sleep took him quickly.

  That night, Moryac dreamt.

  On a distant plane, he saw a field under a cloudless night. Distant, as too-real stalks of grain surrounded him from all sides, their alien leaves whispering against a cold, rolling breeze. Distant, truly, as he recognized none of the stars above him. Neither of the twin moons above—one eerily near, the other distant and eerily crimson—looked familiar.

  Moryac walked aimlessly for several minutes and thought of how unusual it was for a dream to come to him—one of his enchantments ensured restful sleep at the cost of curbing them, after all, and he had never been the type to dream often. If he woke up now, he would interrupt his own sleep, so he sighed and trudged onward. His magic was perfectly functional, which helped Moryac clear a path. To where, he was unsure. It didn’t seem to be a nightmare, anyway.

  After what must’ve been at least two bells of pushing and hacking through the picturesque yet otherwise overgrown vista, he eventually reached the outskirts of a village. About time, Moryac reckoned. Part of him was beginning to feel paranoid. Perhaps it could be attributed to his dream being particularly unusual, but his magical reserves did not feel drained in the slightest despite his efforts. He felt it swirl within him, yet his spells seemingly pulled from an outside source.

  As he wandered, it grew colder. Though his robe’s enchantments kept him just shy of balmy, Moryac’s breath still frosted into mist. He hopped a dilapidated fence and scanned the area. Not a candle or torch in sight. Instead, dim, pinkish moonlight blossomed from opposing angles of the nighttime sky, giving the shadows of eaves and fences a reedy, snake-like quality.

  The village wasn’t large, by any means. Worn dirt paths ran between a dozen wood-and-brick buildings built in a foreign style he’d never seen before, with narrow slits for windows and unusually tall doors. There was a winding main street in the distance, unpaved, with visible wheel-tracks but a palpable lack of carts or wagons.

  Moryac switched to his mage-sight, which proved rather unhelpful as the entire town was saturated with magic.

  He paused to weave a scrying enchantment. Caution never hurts, after all. A violet mote of light materialized in front of him. It shot forward and zipped between buildings to look for signs of life, returning half a minute later to note a faint response from the center of town. He walked towards it, hands in his pockets.

  Threxan once mentioned that dreams came easier to mages, as the barrier between the metaphysical and the mundane ran thinner for those with the gift. It had never been the case for Moryac, but opportunity was opportunity—he heard of practitioners finding profound insight in their sleep, and this dream ran far more lucid than anything he’d ever experienced. Still, he wondered where this one got the fields, the buildings, the stars. He couldn’t recall anything of their like. Perhaps they’re fragments of other sights, formed into a nighttime amalgam? Perhaps his time in the void is affecting him?

  A few minutes of skulking around empty buildings got him a glimpse of the scrying spell’s target: a lone woman sitting at the town center, kneeling down and sketching something against the dirt with a broken twig. Moryac looked through his inner eye. Magic flowed from the strange woman in slow waves, warping the air around her. A fellow practitioner, then? It was almost as much a dead giveaway as the finely woven protective glyphs on her robe. Odd. He was unsure what script they were in.

  Moryac stepped out of the building and towards her. “Hello!” he said, arms raised, palms open.

  The woman jumped, wide-eyed. She dusted off the edges of her skirt and stood.

  “I seem to be lost,” Moryac said. “Can you help me?”

  She tilted her head and scrunched her brows, as if she didn’t understand him. A lovely gesture, he had to admit. Moryac stepped closer.

  “I seem to be lost!” Moryac said, slower and slightly louder, “Can you—”

  “—help me?” the woman repeated, her cadence pleasant and rhythmic but otherwise strange. “Azsathka fharann,” she muttered to herself in seeming irritation, “zha intindha sha dhazi.”

  “What?” Moryac said.

  She rolled her eyes—unnaturally golden, he noticed—and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Azsathka,” the woman pointed at him. “Cantus? Alelo-La? Thtoma? Sinkopa?”

  Moryac’s eyes widened. “Third one,” he hesitated. “Can speak, but slow.”

  “No kidding?” the strange woman replied airily and in fluent Thtomic. “Could’ve fooled me.”

  Moryac shrugged. Was she mocking him?

  The woman glared. “What brings you here?”

  “No…” he said slowly, gesturing to his surroundings. “No sure. Home. Far. Very far. Was sleeping. Now no home.”

  The woman winced.

  “Apology. Poor Thtomic,” he said. “No sure. Bring… bring…”

  What was Thtomic for ‘dream’ again?

  “Night walking?” Moryac blurted out. He winced a beat later.

  “Stop,” she said. “Please. Just use gestures. They tend to be universal enough,” she muttered, then glared at him. “Do. You. Follow?”

  Moryac sighed, then nodded.

  Not his best introduction, he reckoned. It wasn’t his fault. Thtomic was an obscure tongue these days, used typically by scholars and particularly stubborn fringe-dwellers, and it had been several decades since he studied it, besides.

  “Again,” the woman said. “From the top. Do you know how you got here?”

  Moryac shook his head.

  The stranger clicked her tongue. She waved surprisingly dainty fingers in an almost offensive motion: nonsensical, exaggerated gestures—a layman’s depiction of spellcraft. “Warlock?”

  Moryac nodded, though he held reservations regarding the term. How horribly imprecise. It was like calling a swan a mere bird. Technically correct, sure, but missing further nuance. He was no woodland mystic weaving unpracticed hexes and mixing love draughts for a handful of cowries a vial, nor was he a desperate spellcaster bartering their misbegotten soul piecemeal to the lowest and doubly misbegotten bidder. He had plumbed forbidden archives. Vivisected fell grimoires, time and again. And, though ill-advised, he dedicated nearly a century to arcane mastery. But it was done with discipline, caution, and a desire to unravel what few truths lay behind reality’s veil. He was no mere warlock. He was a thaumaturge.

  The air around Moryac warped and flickered as the woman weaved a spell around him. He tried to swat it away with a working of his own, only for his magic to somehow dissipate with a halfhearted flick of her wrist.

  “You’ve a few centuries to go before you can even think of going against me, boy,” she snorted, her gaze aglow and piercing into him.

  Boy? Moryac scoffed. She was powerful, sure, but by her looks, he had to be at least half a century her senior. Was she using an illusion to seem younger, then? If so, he hoped the woman tripped over it.

  Bloody mages. Always hard to tell exactly what’s going on behind them. Made it hard to befriend regular folk, to boot. Had he known he would end up communing with metaphysically wayward, insufferably condescending, and unbearably provincial members of his ilk, he would never have picked up thaumaturgy. Moryac could almost imagine himself without it, perhaps with another taking up his family’s ancestral debt to the Dark Mother. Alas, he was an only child, and his House’s contract was deftly woven to ensure indenture for its scions in some form. But, if he had siblings or maybe close cousins with the gift, he could’ve lived normally. He would’ve married. He would’ve had kids. Grandkids, even. Hells, a good litter of them—

  The woman snapped her fingers several times. “Azsathka!” she cursed. “Are you even listening? First, you have the stones to wander into my dream, then you, what, just brush me off like some common serving girl?”

  Moryac looked at her and shrugged. Her dream, was it?

  The stranger groaned, then paced while muttering in her alien tongue. There was a sort of martial certainty to her, Moryac noted. From her withering gaze, to her poised stride, all the way to the perennial readiness in her stance. Her fingers twitched every so often, and Moryac wagered cowries to coffins that it was to prime a protective ward or some infernal method to incinerate him. A war-mage of sorts, then? Moryac hummed to himself. Typical. Of course she would be the sort to use magic in its basest of functions.

  He tried to awaken several times while the other mage ruminated and scowled about, only to find that he couldn’t. With no solid lead on how to leave the dream, Moryac decided to follow her from ten paces out, lest she decide he was being more intrusive than he already was.

  About a quarter-bell or so of pacing and wordless responses to increasingly snide questions later, he conceded the moral high ground and glided on top of a roof to sit. If there was no way out of the dream, he could at least take in the sights. Moryac watched the foreign constellations and used a pinch of magic to remember the moment. The stars twinkled as brightly as they did under his native skies, and it had been far too long since he’d observed those. Though the idea of being stuck in the dream of an abandoned foreign village with no escape gnawed at him, when push came to shove, his means were rather limited.

  Besides, the sights were pretty.

  “What are you gawking at?” she snorted as she glided next to him.

  Moryac shrugged.

  The other mage sighed. “Look, you don’t seem like a malevolent spirit or curse that wormed its way into my head. I’ll at least give you that much.”

  Moryac gestured for her to continue.

  “What?” the woman tilted her head. “Oh. No. That’s it. You’re still azsathka. Dimmer than most, I might add.”

  He frowned but let the matter drop. Quietly, Moryac weaved an enchantment around her that quickly condensed the atmosphere. The air thickened and slowly cooled, though it took nearly a minute for the stranger to notice the water beading down her hair and robes, which earned him a pointed look. Good.

  It took five minutes after that for Moryac to undo the spell she used to glue his legs to the roof.

  At some point, without realizing it, Moryac awakened from the dream.

  No screaming manias. No bleeding from the eyes or ears. No pools of cold sweat against his back. Not even a hint of a headache. He was, through some miracle, oddly at peace. Just to be sure, however, he used a spell to check whether he was possessed or under some form of magical interference, but found no trace of either.

  He rolled to his side and felt a certain tautness pressing against his groin.

  Ah.

  Well, she was his type.