The pattern inscribed on the flat surface wasn’t a very complex design. On the outside was a large circle, taking up all of the available space. Contained inside it was a square, with its corners touching the circle. Inside the square was another square, offset from the first one so that its corners touched the center of the first square’s sides, splitting the first square’s perimeter into eight parts.

  Between the outer square and the circle were inscribed eight smaller circles. In each of the smaller circles lay a different object.

  There was a branch taken from a tree, with the leaves still attached

  A small mound made of earth.

  A geode, broken so that the crystal inside could be seen.

  A cloud, floating around a few centimeters above the ground.

  A flame, burning even though it had no visible fuel.

  A charred stone brick.

  A pile of sand.

  A piece of ice that somehow managed to remain frozen in the heat.

  In the middle of the design stood a small pedestal, above which hovered a crystal orb.

  The lines forming the smaller circles were glowing, and periodically, a pulse of light would travel from one of them into the outer square, along the line to the corner of the inner square, and from it to the crystal orb.

  I’m betting this is the ward I’m supposed to be disrupting. Question is, how do I disrupt it, and does my disrupting it cause it to blow up in my face?

  Before even trying to deal with the ward, Will took the time to restore himself to as good a condition as possible, and to loot the bodies.

  The spearzards and the archers all dropped the standard piles of scales, though three of them turned out to be of excellent quality.

  The fancy looking Lizardkin, on the other hand, had a skill shard Will had never seen before.

  Rude. Looks like a useful skill though, assuming I can get some more allies. I don’t think it’s worth the skill slot if it’s just the one monkey. Definitely worth keeping around though.

  There was also a drop called “The Tale of the Crimson Wyrm”, which turned out to be a piece of parchment with a poem written on it.

  Huh. This is surprisingly decent, considering the quality of the poems in the riddle shrine. If they can even be called riddles. And I do believe that this is a clue. And in a burst of whimsy, Will aimed the next thought at his Lesser Light Beast. Do you agree with me, Miss Drill?

  Wait, what?

  There was no visible change in Will’s summon. It, or possible now she, was still a slightly translucent looking Mandrill monkey.

  OK, no. I’m not dealing with this right now. If this naming thing even matters, I’ll deal with it when it does. I’ve got this ward to disrupt right now.

  Let’s see now. The poem capitalized Clouds, Frost Sea, Desert, Hills, Caves, Ruins, Forest and Fire Lake. Those sounds very much like the different sets of Spaces I’ve seen here, and the poem seems to agree.

  There are also eight circles in the diagram, and each one can be correlated to one of the locations in the poem.

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  I’m betting I need to do something to them, and in the order that they appear in the poem. Do you have anything to add, Miss Drill?

  Will honestly had no idea what prompted him to ask that question. It was as much a whim as naming Miss Drill had been to begin with. And, of course, the Lesser Light Beast didn’t answer. Or even acknowledge the question in any way.

  She was, after all, nothing more than a construct made out of mana and Light.

  Shrugging at the expected lack of response, Will went to the ward.

  According to the poem, the cloud should be first.

  Reaching out with his paw, Will touched the small cloud hovering inside the circle. The circle immediately darkened, the lines tracing it going dark.

  Yeah, that seems to do the trick. Next is the Frost Sea, which would probably be the lump of ice.

  One by one, the circles went dark. And when the circle containing the flame went dark, so did the rest of the ward.

  And once every line was dead, whatever held the crystal orb in the air disappeared, and the orb fell down and shattered.

  No quest completion? I guess either this was a red herring, or there’s more than one of them that I need to shut down.

  It took a couple of hours, and three more groups of Lizardkin, before Will found another flattened piece of ground. Just like the previous one, it was guarded by a group of ten Lizardkin, led by a robed elite.

  The fight against the guards went more or less the same as the last one. The magic using Lizardkin used a skill that dealt fire damage to both Will and Miss Drill for every second they were within twenty five meters of it.

  It was only least damage every second, but it managed to ignore Will’s Passive Defense completely. Still, once Will managed to charge into melee range, the Beacon fell down before the damage could really accumulate.

  Will would have liked to get his paws on a shard for that skill, but the Lizardkin didn’t have the decency to drop it. Instead, Will got another shard for the Fire aspect. The rest of the enemies only gave the standard piles of red scales, which was about what Will was expecting to get.

  The second ward was almost identical to the first. The circles were arranged in a different order, but they contained the same eight objects.

  This time, however, there was no poem to tell Will what the correct order was.

  What now? Do I just go with the same order as last time?

  Touching the cloud worked, and the circle went dark. Touching the lump of ice, however, resulted in a blast of freezing energy erupting from the circle. The blast hit Will for twenty damage, without doing any actual wound. Which meant that Will could only heal four of it with Least Cure Wounds.

  Ouch. Guess that this isn’t the right order then. But if this isn’t the right order, then what is?

  Looking around the area turned up absolutely nothing. But during the search, Will did manage to notice something about the ward.

  Wait. These pulses don’t seem to be random. The cloud is always followed by the branch, then the ice, and…

  Hell, this isn’t even a memory game! It’s just following the same order as the Board! But why start with the cloud then? Shouldn’t the forest be first? Or maybe it doesn’t even matter, and I can start with any circle, as long as I follow the order from there?

  Not worth trying, really. I may as well just start with the cloud, since it worked the first time.

  The answer was, in fact, as simple as following the order of Spaces on the board. And just like the previous ward, as soon as the circle containing the pile of dust went dark, the rest of the pattern followed suit, and the crystal orb fell down and shattered.

  This time, however, the awaited message screen deigned to make its appearance.

  Followed immediately by the other.

  Nice. And this also brings me up to more than a thousand XP. I probably need to do something with it. I think I’m going to max out the Mana Beast skill. It’s kind of a two for one deal since it’ll also raise the effective level of her Power Attack.

  Ignoring for now the fact that the whole damn skill just changed because I named it, those are really decent upgrades. More damage and an extra skill would be very nice. Not sure which skill I want to give her, but I don’t really have to decide right now. Maybe I’ll go with the offensive aura. It’s not like Miss Drill is using her mana for anything else right now.

  Now, let’s see how Power Attack is doing.

  Nice. More damage, and with a hundred stamina, she can use it twenty times before she runs out.

  Wait. Why the hell am I thinking about the Mana Beast as a she now?