Everyone came over to get a mug of rabbit hot-pot. It wasn’t very ‘breakfast-y’ but it was what they had. They all ate quickly, then Cassy volunteered to do the dishes while everyone else finished packing. Danielle, Heather, and Sadie loaded up with their Decision Day satchels, school satchels, and Necessities Store backpacks; Cassy had only brought her two satchels, though they knew she had a backpack. “I wanted the load to be balanced, and I fit everything into the two bags,” she explained. Akari only had the two satchels, and also didn’t feel the need for more carrying capacity. “My project for the day is going to be weapons practice,” she insisted, “so I have room to spare as it is.”

  Akari did ask everyone who had sketched plants to find into their notebooks to please bring the notebooks, though, so Danielle was pretty sure she had another task in mind too. That was fine with her; she was hoping the group could be convinced to explore a bit more for food and materials around their favorite fish-trapping spot. She made sure everyone brought their vegetable bags for foraging, and work gloves in case they ended up gathering materials. Heather was the one who remembered to pack two days’ worth of purple tomatoes for herself, and then everyone else did too. (Danielle took 24, which was technically only one day’s allowance, but was also pretty nearly the limit of how many she could fit into the chosen canteen).

  With two or even three bags, none of them was really packing their bags tight, but they expected to be bringing back fish, meat, and foraged plants of various uses, so Danielle and Sadie took the attitude that they weren't going to leave any behind just because they weren’t full yet. Heather went along with their plan, and of course they took a lot of their reusable shopping bags, empty and stuffed into their pouches or folded into other bags.

  Danielle and Akari went around to slide a quick note under Lauren’s door. It read, “To Lauren and the Lemonade party: The SHAD Party is going on an overnight fishing trip, so don’t worry when you don’t see us today (Monday). We’ll be back sometime Tuesday, probably by noon.”

  Back in front of their own room, they climbed the retaining wall and headed for the trees. From there, they took their usual path to the Dome road, paralleling the Rooms road but not using it so as not to be visible to anyone that happened to step out between the four main buildings. They made it to the Dome road just after 6am, making pretty good time in Danielle’s opinion.

  From there, they followed the road to the old bridge, and then the river to the fish trap and the convenient outcropping of rock; they made that trip in just under two hours. Danielle didn’t rub it in to Heather, but they were definitely getting faster. Akari took her nasty packing bubble full of scraps out and dumped it into the fish trap, then went ashore on the island to find a couple of replacement sticks to fill in a gap that had appeared in one wall.

  Sadie talked everyone into tying their snares in the woods right away, so they did that next. Akari said since she was wet already, she was going to set traps on the island, but everyone else went into the woods beside the river. With the fish trap baited and snares set, everyone settled down to work on the projects they’d brought. Sadie had hauled some more clematis out of the trees on her way back from setting snares, and started using that and her grass cordage to make a new drying frame. Heather started whittling a stick, working from notes in her notebook. Cassy pulled out a clipboard and paper, and started working on what Danielle assumed would be her next scroll. Danielle built a fire under Akari’s observation and occasional guidance, lit it the hard way, then talked Akari into taking off her jeans so she could dry them as part of her campaign to get a water-removal Skill. Akari took off her denim shirt, too, and proceeded to work out with her sword in her shorts and T-shirt, which was frankly a more appropriate outfit for it considering the hot weather.

  The clouds from Sunday evening had blown over entirely, and the day was clear and rapidly becoming hot, though it was still more than a little breezy. (It was a good thing Cassy was using a clipboard and not just her book as a writing surface.) Danielle tried a little of everything; wringing the jeans out, holding them up to the breeze, holding them carefully close to the fire – that one worked best but made Akari nervous, so she went back to breeze-catching.

  Eventually, she laid the mostly-dry jeans out in the sun on the rock (with an extra rock or two to hold them down in the wind) and got out the necklaces she’d brought, to try alternate enhancing. She suspected that the enhancements, even if they worked temporarily, would ultimately fail due to the lack of whatever anchored mana to objects; but she also thought if she succeeded in creating the enhancements short-term, it might be enough to unlock the actual Skill to make them properly. Accordingly, she’d brought one necklace-pair each in several of the available colors: magenta, since it was theoretically the closest color she had to the infracolor associated with fire; red, which wasn’t as close but had a stronger association in culture; bright green, olive green, cyan, and sky blue, she had brought to cover the “green/cyan range” per Heather’s advice about possible light associations.

  She consulted the notes she’d copied into her Planner, then started with cyan. The color was associated with the Wind element in Systemist six-element philosophy, but also with “connection and communication,” according to the book. Danielle felt that light could be related to either of those ideas, so she had some hope for it – if her crazy idea worked at all. She sat down with one of the pendants held up in front of her, activated her Illusions Skill, and started constructing the symbol for light around the pendant. Her first attempt failed; the pendant felt ‘in the way’ as she tuned the illusion to the exact shape it needed to imitate free-casting, and when it finally triggered, it ignored the pendant.

  Undaunted, Danielle tried again, this time holding the pendant so the stone overlapped one of the points of the symbol instead of just hovering in the center. That felt less wrong, somehow, but it still didn’t work. Danielle found herself staring into the depths of the gemstone (such as they were) as if it could tell her the answer; then a rather annoying idea occurred to her – maybe the symbol would need to be inside the stone, rather than the other way around. She wasn’t sure she could make the symbol that fine; and yet she could make some pretty fine details with her illusions. It was worth a try.

  On impulse, she switched to one of the sky-blue pendants. “Come on,” she murmured, “sunlight in the sky, let’s go.” She held the stone close, and began drawing the illusion inside the crystal. It was immediately harder than she was used to; the illusion didn’t want to work the same way inside the crystal as it did in air. Worse, she ran into problems with its third dimension; the zirconium was cut with a deep point like a faceted cone, and then a semi-domed bit on top. She couldn’t quite get the shape she needed to fit entirely inside the stone. She could draw the 2D shape, and then add the bottom point down near the point of the crystal, but then the top point protruded, and the illusion broke across the boundary between crystal and air – like a prism, Danielle thought sourly. Well, exactly a prism. She tried to correct for it, but her skill ended before she got it right.

  She did get to the point of being able to feel the ‘almost-right’ feeling, though; so she activated her Illusion again and started over. Four points in a plane below the surface; one pointing to the point of the gem; then the hard part making the upper point keep its shape where it escaped from the stone. She started to tune it, and activated Focus to get past the fear that she’d be almost done when the Illusion ran out of time again.

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  Finally, the symbol flashed (hurting her eyes, since she was of course staring fixedly at it) and took on its own light. Danielle ended the Illusion Skill, and slowly lowered the pendant. To her delight, the light symbol followed it. She turned – slowly, oddly afraid the symbol would come unmoored if she wasn’t gentle with it – and set it on the rocky outcropping behind her. It continued to glow – several seconds past the point where the rune alone had stopped, before.

  “I did it!” Danielle whispered. Then, louder, “I really think I did it!”

  “Did what?” Cassy asked, looking up from her scroll. Sadie also looked up from her work. Heather and Akari had their heads together over a notebook; Danielle wasn’t sure when they’d switched activities, but now they paused.

  “Look!” Danielle said, pointing to the pendant. “My Skill’s off!”

  Akari squinted at it. “Is it glowing?”

  “Argh. Yes, it’s glowing,” Danielle said. “I know it’s not that obvious in daytime but – let me shade it with my bags. It’s been going longer than the glow lasted when I first tried making the light symbol with my Illusions Skill, so something about the gemstone is stabilizing it. I don’t know how long it will go, but I definitely attached the symbol to the stone in a way that made it stronger.” She picked up her bag and set it where its shadow fell over the pendant.

  “Ooh,” Cassy said. “That’s wild. Do you even know what that is??” she asked.

  “It’s an enhancement, that’s what it is!” Danielle said with a grin. “A lame, possibly leaky enhancement, but still an enhancement.”

  “That, my friend, is free enhancing,” Cassy said. “It’s like free casting, except even more stupidly difficult. If you’ve just unlocked the Skill for it – and I have to assume you just did, seeing as it’s still going – that’ll help with anchoring.”

  “My Illusions Skill seems just a tiny bit overpowered in this area,” Danielle said gleefully.

  “Why does the glow look spiky?” Sadie asked.

  “That’s the point of the symbol coming out of the stone because I couldn’t quite make it small enough to all be inside,” Danielle said. “It’s staying the shape of the symbol.”

  Cassy shook her head. “You are so unfair,” she complained. “I wonder if you unlocked Mana Shaper as a personal Skill, too?”

  “We’ll find out when we get to the Access Point,” Danielle said with a grin. “Do you happen to know how to unlock an illusion-type Skill? You could always join me in my unfair pseudo-casting!”

  Cassy sighed. “Illusion Skills are notoriously fickle to unlock. I strongly suspect my best bet will be to save up – what was it? Three times cost for regular Skills and five for especially valuable Skills?”

  “That’s what the Rangers tell me,” Danielle said.

  “Five hundred mana, then,” Cassy said. “Good thing I know a Skill Sharer who can do the job!”

  “I’ll be delighted to do it, too,” Danielle said. “After all, you basically taught me to do this.”

  “I’d appreciate the compliment more if we didn’t both know it was an accident,” Cassy said.

  Danielle laughed. “Oh, come on. You totally agreed to teach me about mana shapes and mana casting in general, and even if I didn’t use knowledge of the light symbol the way you expected, I still wouldn’t have learned this trick if you hadn’t been open with your casting knowledge with me. You’re helping me learn to use my shaping Skills more efficiently, too, aren’t you?”

  “Well, I’m trying,” Cassy said.

  “So it’s entirely reasonable for me to return the favor,” Danielle said. “You still have to save up at least the 100 mana for the token itself, though.”

  “I’ll pay you properly for the Skill token,” Cassy said. “It’s the instruction on how to use it to fake free-casting that I expect to get for free!”

  Everyone laughed at the absurdity of the statement. “Get the hundred mana, and you can give me the rest on a payment plan,” Danielle said. “That way, you can get started faster.”

  “Fine, fine. What are you going to do for your next trick?” Cassy asked.

  “Mm, well my mana is back down to single digits,” Danielle said, “so I’m thinking of working out for an hour. Staff and archery.”

  “You can use my bow,” Sadie volunteered.

  “Sure, thanks. Akari, do you want to do some staff sparring when you’re done with what you’re working on now?” Danielle asked.

  Akari nodded. “Yeah, as long as you’re doing bow first so we have some time.”

  “What are you two actually doing?” Cassy asked. “You’ve been whispering over there for a while.”

  “We’re working on Identify Plants, we hope,” Heather said. “I feel like I don’t have a lot of Skills to use outside of an emergency – except Find Edible Plants, and don’t get me wrong, I’m super glad I have it. It’s frustrating not to know what I’ve found when I do find it, though.”

  “I want it too, so we’re quizzing each other from our notes,” Akari said.

  “That’s a good idea. We should actually go foraging, later, and you can field-test your studying,” Danielle said.

  “I was thinking this afternoon, when we all need a break from the sun,” Akari suggested.

  “Ah, yeah, that’s a great plan. Well, I’m going to go shoot some trees now,” Danielle said standing up and stretching. The pendant was still glowing. Danielle tucked its chain under the bag that was shading it, then went to pick up Sadie’s bow. She shot a full quiver of arrows, then got them all back thanks to the bow’s arrow-protecting enhancement, and shot them all again. She activated her Bow Apprentice Skill for the third round, trying to pay attention to subtle nudges it might be making to her form, then shot a fourth round before Akari finally came over to spar.

  Danielle put Sadie’s bow next to her, then asked, “Can I actually borrow your staff, too? I think mine might have kind of a dangerous enhancement for sparring.”

  “It does?” Sadie said, giving her a blank look; then it changed to a look of dawning comprehension. “Oh yeah, the moves faster/hits harder thing. I almost forgot about that. It’s not as cool as your bow’s enhancement.”

  Danielle laughed. “You might be right; it’s pretty subtle. I definitely don’t want to accidentally hit harder than I thought I was going to in a spar, though.”

  “Yeah, go ahead,” Sadie said. “I don’t mind lending out my weapons while I’m crafting anyhow.”

  Danielle set her staff next to her bags and the pendant (which was still glowing), and picked up Sadie’s unenhanced staff in its place. She and Akari moved a little way off from the others and ran through some school sparring exercises, then a slightly more serious mock-battle. Then Akari offered a suggestion.

  “I’ve been thinking about how you got that tag,” she said, “and how you talk about us needing to protect the healers, and how we might need to protect you sometimes on account of the whole Skill Sharer, VIP of the State, thing.”

  “And the ‘Wolves have a grudge against me’ thing,” Danielle agreed morosely.

  “Yeah. So I was thinking we should actually practice guarding other people,” Akari said. “Like we’ll designate a tree to be guarded, and one of us will be the guard and one the attacker; the attacker wins if they can hit the tree. The defender wins if the attacker gives up, or by time or something.”

  “Sound like a good exercise,” Danielle said. “Shall we take one turn on each side, and then see how we’re feeling?”

  “Works for me,” Akari said. “Do you want to defend first or attack first?”

  “Defend. I bet the other round will go a lot longer,” Danielle admitted.

  Akari grinned. “But you might learn a lot more from the short one!” she predicted.

  “Maybe,” Danielle admitted, scanning down the line of trees. “Let’s defend that one,” she said, pointing to a smallish tree growing close to another, even smaller one.

  “What? Why not this one?” Akari asked, pointing in turn to the nearest tree.

  “I want to at least try to teach you something, too,” Danielle said, “and I think this will be a better spot for it. You still get to attack first, though.” She walked down toward the tree, and took up a stance ahead and a little to one side of it.

  “Don’t you want to get more directly in front of the tree?” Akari asked.

  “What are the chances I just happen to be directly between, say, Heather and any given attacker?” Danielle asked. “This position is more realistic; it’s my job to get properly between when you come for us.”

  “Hm. That’s a good point. OK, I’ll start there too, when it’s my turn. For now though – ” Instead of finishing her sentence, Akari attacked, stepping to her right to get around Danielle towards the tree.

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