“Ho, Derek.” Forest called.

  “Ho, Forest.” Derek replied without looking up from the diagrams he and Elias were working on. “I can’t let you bruise my little friend right now.”

  “I’m not hurting him, Derek. I’m helping him improve his skills.” She winked. “Free of charge.”

  Derek threw a burnt Rubik’s cube into a makeshift dustbin and tossed a rakish smile her way.

  Elias sighed. His eyes burned from staring at tiny array lines for the last six days. Derek and Forest continued to bicker over him, and he stuffed the cloth swabs he now used as earplugs back in. The bookshelf accused him, the 2 days left on the timer mocking his every failed attempt.

  He would forget. How much? For how long? Would it ever come back?

  He’d confided in Derek the day before, but was met with a simple shrug. They still had 3 days and were close. Derek acknowledged the odd skill and claimed his own was equally fraught with danger, but remained evasive as to how.

  Elias pushed mana into the diagrams after a swig of wine. Last night some unlucky fool climbing over the inn wall fell into the well, and Forest had called someone in to clean it, after beating the protesting youth until his arms and legs were tied in a knot. Elias was dragged out of bed to administer first aid. He’d protested a lack of knowledge, but the blood dripping from her sword was a potent motivational tool. He wrapped the youth threatening him with gang tattoos in a series of bandages and hauled him to a yawning Ila in the morning, making sure he educated the young fellow on how to cross over walls safely.

  It turned out he was a known member of a gang, so Elias walked back to the inn with a small silk appreciation banner. It hung in the common room now. Derek giggled whenever he saw it.

  Forest. Well, Forest just eyed it suspiciously after having checked it for listening arrays and ghost-sneak transference protocols—whatever they were.

  The mana lines spooling from his fingertips sputtered under pressure, warping into the tangled mess of yarn he would have thrown to his cats. Then get thrown out of the room by his wife. He frowned. She liked the cats more than him.

  Reciprocal attitude. That’s probably why they got along so well.

  He scribbled notes onto the ever-growing set of parchment, codifying their minor failures. Forest had suggested using stone tablets, but parchment and ink felt more comfortable. He would arm-wrestle a bear for some pencils, though.

  A tap on his shoulder had him unplug his ears to commiserating looks from Forest and Derek.

  “No luck?” Derek’s fingers gripped another cube tight.

  “No, but it’s closer.” Elias turned the parchment over. “Spinning the cube randomly was easy—we figured that out almost immediately. It’s storing the initial conditions that’s the problem.”

  “State management.” Derek nodded. “A common programming problem.”

  “There’s a solution?”

  “Yes, if you have a computer. A programming language. Oh, and whatever else you need to get it running.”

  Elias snorted. He shuffled the papers aimlessly. There wasn’t much in this week’s notes to help.

  “Be careful.” Forest stood on one leg, blade parallel to the ground, accumulating stances. “You’ve cut yourself five times now. Your luck is…special”

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  He winced, glancing at the bandaged fingertips of his left hand. Once a day, like clockwork, the parchment would pick a finger and dig in. Derek had laughed until his third cube caught fire in the sunlight. It was why they worked under the shade of the lone tree in the courtyard.

  “So is your stance,” Elias said. “Your robe’s slipping again.”

  Forest cursed and adjusted her clothing. The woman spent far too much time with them now. Elias thought he’d caught her eyeing Derek. Like every poor romance movie his wife dragged him to, Derek was oblivious to the interest.

  Forest sheathed her sword and ambled over to stand beside Derek, watching him fiddle with the prototype cubes. “You mentioned a—computer?”

  “Yeah, we don’t have access to one.” Derek muttered absentmindedly.

  Elias cleared his throat. “Don’t bring fictional tools into this. Might as well wish there were gods to help.”

  Forest hummed in acknowledgement, eyes flicking across Elias’ notes. “What’s this state problem?”

  Elias held a trial cube up and infused a trickle of mana, frowning as it slid out of one paper-cut instead of his nail. Why did it change? The cube lit slightly, slivers of light seeping through the cracks between sections. It spun randomly, rotating until the whole was scrambled. A perfect puzzle.

  “Like you tried—and almost succeeded,” that drew a glare. Gareth was far better than her. “The goal is to put this back so all the sections of one color are on the same face. But there are far too many different combinations, so how do we get an array to reverse from any position to that original set of conditions? State problem.”

  Forest raised an eyebrow and gestured at the cube. He placed it in her hand. She ran the array through another cycle, a small smile as it spun, probably tickling her palm. It was a very pleasant sensation. She weighed it for a moment, glanced at the discarded cubes in their bin, and nodded. She plucked one of the sections loose, and Elias’ jaw dropped.

  “Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”

  “It’s so obvious!” Derek was on his feet. “Why didn’t you think of it?”

  “You didn’t either. It’s already pieces so—”

  “—pop it and tie it to the central piece, just need to match the corners?”

  “No need—we bind the corner faces loosely, single mana threads with guiding arrays. Simple and effective.” Elias clapped his hands together and pulled fresh parchment out, mind flickering through the necessary arrays—all basic designs. He drew with his right hand and mumbled instructions to Derek, laying mana threads with his left hand. Forest tossed the cube in her hand into the air a few times and propped her foot on the table, just like a swashbuckler in a novel. The arrays formed quickly now that the direction was set. Elias filtered possibilities, discarding several options in crumpled balls of parchment, missing the bin occasionally, but Gareth had arrived with refreshments and was more than happy to clean up.

  He breathed deeply, and they all gazed at the mana lines engraved into the Rubik’s cube. Marked with the number 5, one of the dozen prototypes Derek had created. To Elias, it seemed to glow.

  “This reeks of money.” Derek whispered.

  Elias spun the cube using the first array, and after a few cycles, Forest snatched it out of his hand.

  “My idea. My turn. I get ten percent.” She chuckled and infused a burst of powerful mana before they could say anything.

  A crow cawed. A butterfly fluttered its wings above Derek’s head. Bird crap fell on Elias’ shoulder.

  The array destabilized.

  Forest’s eyes widened, mana shimmering into a shield, and hurled the cube forwards. She moved quickly, hand reaching out to grab the cube in a flaming claw, but it moved too quickly, too sharply—towards Elias.

  Mana explosions were rare in arrays because of something called attenuation. The thought floated in his mind, drawn from page 346 of the Moron’s Guide.

  It was partially correct.

  The cube creaked, light spilling from its core.

  Derek was backpedalling, but the sudden wave of energy from the cube caught him full in the face, taking his eyebrows in one quick swipe.

  Elias only felt a wave of heat which passed in an imperceptible fraction of time before the breeze buffeted his bare skin.

  “That,” Elias remarked, licking his lips, heart racing and eyelids flickering to blink away the retinal burn. “Was a prototype. Mana should be used carefully.”

  Derek’s eyebrow-less visage wiggled indignantly at Forest.

  She, however, was eyeing Elias carefully, almost clinically, eyes resting on the coarse underwear preserving his dignity. No sign of injury marred her or the rest of the courtyard. Even the parchment remained quiet, resting on the table.

  “Your skin tone is quite pleasing to the eye. Have you ever thought about being a model? Your special luck seems to extend further than I had anticipated.” Her voice was detached. Like a merchant calculating profits. Or losses.

  Elias wanted to spit, but, instead just closed his eyes.

  2 days to fix this mess and add music.