The new Energy Heart which consumed the inferno has definitely transformed into something a bit different. I frown as I draw my fingers over its surface. On a normal Energy Heart, like the fire-aligned one sitting next to my experimental one, I would have gained some sort of residue with that action. But no. With my magic sight active, I see that it glows far brighter than the other Energy Heart and the movement of Energy within it is faster too. Yet it’s also far more contained. Like the inferno has accepted its new home and is uninterested in changing locations again, where the others are eager to be absorbed and used.

  A little nervously, I touch the Energy Heart with a small tendril made from fire-mana. I’m ready to cut it at a moment’s notice, but nothing else I’ve tried has made the Energy Heart react – it’s time to take a little risk. Worse comes to worst, I’ll call Aingeal down from the balloon envelope to help me – we’ll just slowly descend to the ground as the air inside it loses heat. Nothing serious.

  As I hoped, the Energy Heart reacts to the touch of the fire-mana. It starts whirling quickly and latches onto the offered tendril eagerly. In contrast with what I was expecting, though, it starts to pull my mana in rather than giving me anything. Have I turned an Energy Heart into a black hole somehow?

  I cut the tendril off at my fingertips and watch the Energy Heart slurp the cut-off strand like it’s a noodle. It then goes quiescent again, the frantic whirl of its energies slowing down again to the relaxed movement it had shown before.

  I use Inspect Item on it.

  Curious. Is that why it’s trying to suck me dry? Because my fire affinity isn’t sufficient?

  “Lord Markus?” I look up to see Laeman leaning on the side of the basket and gazing at the ground far below.

  “Yes?” I stand up and wander over to him. I have to pick my way carefully through my unmoving companions, but I make it to his side soon enough.

  “There’s a stream down there,” he tells me, pointing. I shade my eyes and peer in the direction he indicated. Water glints through the canopy of the trees below. “We could land on the road itself and take a few minutes to stretch our legs and drink some fresh water.” His voice is persuasive and though my first reaction is to deny the request – the sooner we get to Sandend, the better – I take a moment to consider it.

  We’ve been in the balloon for a day and a half by this point. The first few hours were interesting as we saw the patchwork quilt of fields, pastures, trees, rivers, villages, and hamlets all spread out below us. After that, my companions asked me for Energy Hearts – I handed them out, agreeing that this trip was a perfect opportunity to do some meditation.

  In the end, I decided not to offer any to the human guards. I felt a bit guilty about that, especially when I saw Pelan looking at Bastet’s enviously. I pretended not to see – I’m wary about what the Energy Hearts might do to them and I can’t see their internal matrixes since we don’t have Bonds. Especially when I’ve noticed signs of damage to my own channels when I overuse them. Anyway, the guards aren’t mine. Not in the way the rest of my companions are.

  So the guards have done what their name implies – stood guard in shifts. They don’t seem to mind too much. When they’re off-duty, they sleep or play a game with what looks kind of like dice except with different characters instead of dots. I watched it for a bit, but, like my Bonded, I’ve had other things to do – with my own meditation, dual magic practice, and now exploration of the changes to the Energy Heart I used during the inferno.

  It might be worth taking a break, though. To be fair, the porta-potty hide bag could do with emptying – its stink is very unpleasant every time a gust of wind comes from the wrong direction. I didn’t think that the villagers below would appreciate a bit of golden – or brown – rain on their heads every time one of my travelling companions needed to go, but I also didn’t want to need to keep stopping for breaks. So I improvised.

  “Which road is that? Not the one to Sandend, surely?”

  Laeman shakes his head.

  “Doubtful, considering our direction. That’s most likely the main road to Haven – it’s big and well-maintained enough.”

  The road to Haven…that means we must be about halfway towards our destination. We’re making decent time, then.

  “Alright, we’ll descend for a bit. But no more than half a mark,” I warn. Half an hour is unlikely to make much difference, but we’re not stopping for the night.

  “Thank you, my lord.” Laeman sounds relieved. Maybe he doesn’t want to use the bag again.

  How are you guys doing? I ask Ivor and Noir.

  They both reply with nonchalance – they’ve been taking turns to come and perch on the edge of the basket to give their wings a bit of a rest, so neither is in a bad state. During the night, they even slept a bit when the wind was blowing in the right direction, tucking their heads under their wings like a bird. Aingeal just needed to increase the temperature of the air inside the envelope to account for their increased weight, and there was no problem. Otherwise, they’ve just been pulling steadily in the direction Mathis’ compass indicates we should go.

  Great. Let’s head for that spot over there. I send a picture to the two of them of a place where the stream flows almost next to the road. They send me their agreement and change their direction – it’s a little out of our way, but not by much.

  I next turn my attention to our source of lift. Aingeal himself is as happy and indefatiguable as always – he doesn’t need rest. I regret not having him with me the last time I needed to travel by balloon – I recall that trip as being highly stressful. This is challenging in different ways, though the urgency to reach our destination is the same.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Why don’t you come out now, I suggest. I’ll pull out the hot air bit by bit so we descend gently – we don’t need any more heat now.

  Aingeal also agrees, and a moment later, he zips out of the balloon envelope, dancing around my head. I don’t think there’s any particular reason for him to dance – he just wants to. Though he does feel pretty proud of himself – from what I can tell, it’s for how much more control he has now.

  “You’ve done an excellent job keeping us level,” I agree, but he seems to have been distracted by something, zooming off to where I was sitting before. I head back through the minefield of meditating beasts and find him circling the transformed Energy Heart thoughtfully. “Be careful with that,” I warn him. “It sucked my mana in. I don’t want it to suck you in.”

  He sends me a sense of reassurance, but a moment later, dips to touch the surface of the Energy Heart itself. Hoping he knows what he’s doing, I reactivate my magic-sight. To my surprise, though the Energy Heart does react, it doesn’t try to pull the mana out of Aingeal. If anything, it looks like they’re merging.

  Aingeal sends me a feeling of desire. Strong desire.

  “You want this Energy Heart?” I ask him. His agreement is enthusiastic enough to almost make me stumble backwards. “Alright, have it,” I agree with a shrug. It’s a curious creation, but I don’t need something that tries to eat me all the time. I’ve already got the black core for that. If Aingeal can get some benefit out of it, then great. I suppose that if anyone has a sufficient fire affinity, it would be the fire elemental.

  In between pulling out judicious amounts of hot air to make us descend in stages, I keep an eye on what Aingeal is doing. Unfortunately, there’s not much to see. Through my magic-sight, all I see is one blazing shape atop another — no detail, only heat.

  After sealing up the porta-potty, I start rousing everyone else from their meditations. When we’re about a metre above the ground, I let the hide bag drop and allow the basket to push us so we won’t land on it – I have no desire to deal with the mess that would create. And I doubt anyone else does either.

  By the time the basket bumps onto the ground, everyone is champing at the bit to be free. In fact, Lathani doesn’t even wait to land – she leaps out when the basket is still moving. She’s quickly followed by Bastet and Ninja who both spread their wings to glide a little.

  Everyone else waits until we actually land, though, including Kalanthia who steps out elegantly and disappears into the trees around. I’ll never get used to how easily a leopard the height of an elephant can vanish.

  Meanwhile, I use a rope and Earth-Shaping to fix the basket into place – I don’t want it wandering off without us because a gust of wind has come along at the wrong moment.

  “Would you like some help, my lord?” Sulir asks – the other three are stretching with signs of evident enjoyment on their faces.

  “It’s fine,” I wave him off. “Magic makes this so much easier.”

  He follows me as I head a little down the road to find the porta-potty bag. Despite being sealed, there’s still a fairly obvious smell that lingers. I make a face – there’s no way I’m touching that. But I also don’t want to leave it in the middle of the road as an obstacle for future travellers.

  Fortunately, with magic, I don’t have to. And it will be good practice.

  I don’t have any sort of teleportation ability, but what I do have is an increasing amount of control over earth. I once saw Kalanthia do this, and I’ve been trying to recreate it ever since. Finally, I think I’ve got it – I press magic into the earth and shift just the top layer. The road is beaten dirt which makes this easier. The collapsed bag of foulness moves as if it has lots of little legs propelling it. Actually, that could be something I try in the future too.

  Sulir seems keen to stick with me despite the smell – perhaps he’s my assigned guard right now. I decide to ask something I’ve been curious about for a while even as I automatically use Inspect to check the area around us as we step off the road and into the trees.

  “So, if it’s not offensive to ask, how did you become a Tracker?”

  Sulir shrugs by flicking his hand.

  “It’s not offensive from you, my lord. I got my Class from my father, who got it from his father before him. And my grandfather was given it by Lord Nicholas’ father. It’s why the firstborn son always serves the Titanbend family – in gratitude.”

  “Do other members of your family have it?” I ask even as I start digging a hole with my Earth-Shaping – we’re far enough off the road for it not to be found before it’s had some time to decompose. Hopefully.

  “Some. It is the responsibility of our patriarch to reach level fifty in our Class and then to share it with as many of our family as he can make Class stones.” He’s silent for a moment, but I sense he’s not done. “My sister is an excellent Tracker,” he muses. “I have no brothers, you see,” he explains abruptly, as if he was expecting me to disdain the idea of a girl being given a Tracking Class.

  “I’m sure she is,” I agree neutrally. My thoughts turn, inevitably, to my Bonded – there’s a reason we have a Tracker with us. But if Nicholas’ ritual struggled to get through whatever’s hiding my Bonded, and didn’t even get an accurate location for us, won’t there be similar protections against Trackers?

  Perhaps Sulir sees my thoughts on my face; perhaps he’s just that sharp. But he seems to know what I’m thinking.

  “We’ll get them back, I promise. There are always traces, no matter how well they’re hidden.”

  “You didn’t find any traces where they were ambushed,” I can’t help pointing out.

  “I didn’t. We didn’t. But this is a different matter. You are with us – your Bonds will resonate with them,” Sulir insists.

  I dip my head in a brief nod, then finish digging the hole in silence. Once it’s done, I tip the bag into it and close it again. At least that was far less messy than cleaning the latrines usually is. Though I’ll need to make and attach a new hide bag, that’s far preferable to trying to clean the old one. Yuck!

  We wordlessly head back to where the others are. Halfway back there, I pause as a bodily requirement makes itself known to me. Quickly using Inspect and focussing on checking for beings around me. The return of my pulse only indicates the normal birds, insects, and small animals, and few of those even. The hush below the canopy feels denser than normal, but these woods are unfamiliar to me. Sulir doesn’t seem to think there’s anything unusual about it.

  “Go on without me,” I tell Sulir, dismissing the faint sense of unease as my nerves over my absent companions. “I’m just going to do some business behind a tree before we get back in the balloon.”

  “I should stay,” Sulir informs me with a hint of uncertainty, looking around the empty forest.

  “I’d rather not have an audience,” I tell him firmly. “This is still well-within shouting distance of the others – if, for some reason, I need help, I’ll call.”

  Sulir eyes me for a moment, then dips his head briefly.

  “As you wish, my lord. But I will be listening intently for your call.”

  “Sure,” I agree, then wait for him to get out of hearing range. Going behind a bush, I do my business. Though it’s not a proper toilet, it’s far better than being within hearing, sight, and smell range of everyone in the balloon. At least Flesh-Shaping makes toilet paper unnecessary.

  I’m just pulling up my trousers again when I hear an odd scraping noise. I immediately follow it upwards. I blink as I see a pair of boots on a branch. But…Inspect?

  A second pair of boots slams into my back. The world flips.

  here!

  here!

  here!

  here