Sophia examined the sketch one last time before she started. She wouldn’t have tried anything more than the spellform if Dav hadn’t mentioned the possibility, but now that he had, she couldn’t escape the notion that it meant something, the same way the layout meant something. The lack of directions on what to do probably meant that the Guide expected to be doing it, not the user, but Sophia didn’t like the idea of being limited to what the Guide wanted her to know.

  She doubted anyone liked it. That was why Amy had been taught how to visualize the components of the Ability-examples inside stable Challenges, after all. For that matter, it was probably why the stable Challenges existed at all.

  Sophia shook her head and walked around to the back of the floating sigil. She’d almost forgotten it.

  One quick sketch later, Sophia started building the spellform. This time, the inner spell circle snapped into place immediately and gave her a solid base to build everything else. Once the full spellform was complete, Sophia tried to sketch the other bits of the floating object with mana. It didn’t want to stabilize, but she hadn’t really expected it to.

  Sophia held what she wanted in mind and pushed out a wave of mana that triggered the spell at the same time as it flashed a version of the object in mana around the spellform.

  The world around Sophia lit up as if it were filled with light. Nearly as quickly, the light vanished and she was left in near-darkness with only the false light of the floating crystal and a new message from the Guide.

  Grand Feat Completed!

  For your Grand Feat of activating the primary ability shown in the Perceptive Crystal of the Caves of Darkness Challenge, you have been granted a reward!

  This Feat is awarded to anyone who activates the Grand Ability Shrouded Insight while standing at the end of the Unlit Maze of the Caves of Darkness Challenge without having activated it before or gained it as an Ability previously.

  Reward: Grand Ability: Shrouded Insight

  Like all Grand Abilities, Shrouded Insight is highly flexible and variable, with effects that vary depending on the spellcaster and their Attunements. Common Spell Fragments include Night Sight, Mana Sight, Sense Spirit, Aural Perception, Blindsight, Groundsense, and Weakness Vision. The Grand Theme is perception that goes beyond what is physically possible.

  (feather image)

  Your Patron greets you!

  I wish that I could truly talk to you. It begins to seem like you are not merely a prodigy; instead, you understand something of the Guide's methods that have escaped the rest of us for well over a thousand years. While we do not always cooperate well, I'm certain I would know if someone else was able to gain every Ability or Spell they encounter and even choose if it is an Ability or a Spell the way you and Dav do. Even Lady M'Beja cannot do that; she could only create spells. It seems likely that you know more than Dav; it's clear that you can create Grand Spells and Abilities on command, while his new Grand Ability is the result of extreme compatibility and the possession of related Abilities that may as well be Ability Fragments for how closely they align to his being.

  Ah, but I should not envy you. Nothing is gained by envy. If you ever manage to reach a place where we can truly speak, I will invite you to spend some time in pleasant conversation. I believe we would both be better for the exchange.

  I do not have much for you right now. All I can offer is a little advice about Grand Spells and Grand Abilities: having them will change which upgrades are best for you. I do not limit upgrades to only the top few choices, so you should be able to choose what you want instead of solely following what you have learned. Even so, it is something to be wary of; Grand Spells and Grand Abilities will affect the rest of your Spheres. Indeed, in some ways, they act as additional Spheres even though you cannot merge them with Spheres.

  I personally hold only a handful of Grand Abilities, but I am a master at using what I have. They are perfectly suited to how I choose to live and fight.

  I think you will go the other way, in the footsteps of Lady M'Beja, so I will tell you what she told me once, very long ago: Grand Spells can be merged and split if you figure out the method. She couldn't explain it to me and I don't know how to explain it to you, but it is possible and very helpful.

  --The Wanderer

  The first thing Sophia noticed was that she’d gained a Grand Ability instead of a Grand Spell. That had to be because of the additions she’d made to the spellform; it seemed like they weren’t useless even though they weren’t proper spell traces. Maybe they were a way of binding a spell to whatever the Guide did to provide Abilities? If they were more of a key than a spell, the odd useless-looking shape might make sense.

  Sophia wasn’t sure what to think about the Grand Theme; did that mean she could develop Abilities to read radio waves, or was it limited to things closer to normal like some sort of infrared vision? Perhaps she could sharpen her hearing?

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  At the same time, it was awfully limited. Things like sonar and lidar required some way to send out a signal, not simply the ability to receive them. Any sort of two-way communication did, as well. She might be able to develop the Ability to hear someone’s thoughts but she wouldn’t be able to send them a message, much less create some sort of mental attack or illusion.

  It was strange to realize that something that everyone knew provided the Ability to see in the dark could be the product of a higher-level Ability that could also read minds or even allow for realtime communication if multiple people had the Ability.

  Sophia chuckled and shook her head. She’d leave the telepathy to Dav. She was totally unskilled at it and it didn’t suit her Affinity at all. Neither Part the Veil nor Shrouded Insight actually suited her Affinity; they were applications of magic instead of refinements of it. Perhaps that was what the Wanderer meant when he talked about Grand Abilities influencing her Spheres and Sphere suitability. She wasn’t about to walk away from her heritage for something she’d stumbled on.

  The more she thought about it, the more she liked the idea of collecting a lot of Grand Abilities and Grand Spells. It seemed like that would be right in line with her Affinity to magic. They’d all be weaker than those of a specialist, but flexibility was its own power.

  Sophia wasn’t sure if she should be encouraged or horrified that the gods here didn’t know how to read and use spellforms. Sure, they were called Patrons, not gods, but it seemed like it was more or less the same thing. The idea that only one Patron knew how to gain Grand Spells on command was bad enough; the fact that she couldn’t also gain Grand Abilities when Sophia had already figured it out meant that she wasn’t doing it the way Sophia did.

  It was an advanced technique back home, but it wasn’t that unusual.

  If spellforms really were unknown here, it could be a tremendous tool. At the same time, her knowledge of it might be a huge threat if the reason it wasn’t known was that someone was suppressing it.

  It would certainly explain why being a “siege mage” was a big deal even though she’d never been asked to do anything with it; all she’d ever done was one ritual circle to move water from a stream to put out some fires. If you couldn’t create spellforms, repeatable large-scale spells that weren’t mediated by “Spell” Abilities would be very difficult. Maybe ritual spells was how they dealt with the lack.

  Of course, that only added to the idea that information was being hoarded and hidden. Samuel hadn’t known anything about rituals any more than he did about spellforms. All he knew was standard mana manipulation and how to use it to tweak the Guide’s Spells.

  Sophia didn’t discount that knowledge. It was useful. Extremely useful, in fact, as long as she had a “Spell” that would do more or less what she wanted. Unfortunately, it didn’t give her a way to cast spells that weren’t on her list.

  By now, it was clear that there was a way around that: stable Challenges. She wondered why no one mentioned them in Casterville. A glance at Amy told her the other woman was still busy trying to learn Night Vision, so she’d have to ask later.

  Sophia pulled up her Status. What appeared wasn’t the Status she expected; instead, it was a question.

  Grand Ability Fragments Available!

  You have synthesized a Grand Ability with related Ability Fragments slotted. Do you wish to:

  Shatter the Grand Ability and leave the Fragments in place to be used for another Grand Ability?

  Move the Fragments into the Grand Ability?

  Perform an incomplete Fragment transfer?

  From what Dav said, the choice was obvious; if she moved them into the Grand Ability, it would free up slots wherever they came from. It sounded like the Guide would also create slots in the Grand Ability without charging Wisps, so it was a great deal.

  Sophia selected the option to move the Fragments, then felt like someone had punched her in the chest. It almost felt like she’d had the wind knocked out of her, but that wasn’t the problem; she could breathe just like normal. What she couldn’t do was touch or move her mana.

  And then her mana started to move without her input. It wasn’t moving properly, either; it wasn’t following the correct channels. For a moment, Sophia felt the painful sensation of mana actually leaking out of her torn mana channels. She stole a glance at Dav and choked out the words, “You didn’t say it would hurt!”

  “It didn’t,” Dav answered immediately. He stepped over to her and wrapped an arm around her shaking shoulders. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  Sophia shook her head, knowing that he’d see it. There was nothing he could do, nothing anyone could do, not even her. It hurt and it only got worse the longer it went on. Sophia quickly lost any ability to pay attention to what was going on outside her; the only thing she could do was try to resist the pain and lack of control.

  Suddenly, the sensation vanished. It left behind only a minor soreness. Sophia wasn’t certain if that was really there or not; it could have been the afterimage of the pain rather than actual soreness. Whatever damage she’d thought she felt was gone. It was either an illusion or the Guide had fixed everything moments after it broke them.

  Sophia’s guess was that it wasn’t an illusion, that the Ability Slots had some reality. She’d felt phantom sensations when the Guide did things in the past that Dav hadn’t felt; this was by far the worst, but it was also the only time it had moved Abilities. “Would the partial move hurt less, or would it just mean that I have to go through that more than once?”

  “Partial move?” Dav sounded confused.

  “The third option,” Sophia clarified, “An incomplete fragment transfer was the wording, I think. I picked the second one, moving the Fragments, since you said that left open slots.”

  It seemed strange to Sophia that having “slots” was more valuable than gaining Abilities, but that was the way the Guide did things, at least once you had more than a few Abilities in a category.

  “You had choices?” Dav still sounded a little confused, but he chuckled anyway. “I didn’t. They just moved.”

  There is a reason the Wanderer knew that Dav’s Grand Ability was a result of extreme compatibility, while Sophia’s wasn’t. There is also a reason Sophia got choices where Dav didn’t. There’s also a small little detail about what the Grand Abilities can do that may be obvious or may not … but more on that later.