“We’ve arrived!” said Kaila excitedly. “That means lunch!”

  “I was hoping we’d encounter another blackthorn boar along the way,” lamented Indon, salivating at the memory of last night’s meal.

  Evran dropped his pack to the ground, forgetting the presence of fragile equipment within. He reached in and pulled out three hard biscuits and a pouch of assorted nuts and dried berries. With a wave of his hand, he materialized a bowl and cup for each of them, then distributed the field provisions. They each filled their cups with mana-formed water and inspected their dry, salted provisions. After that miserable breakfast, they were hoping for a better showing at lunch. They were sorely disappointed.

  “The biscuit is bland as usual, but the trail mix is quite tasty!” Evran said, trying to brighten the mood.

  “I could really go for some cured meats right now,” added Indon.

  Kaila sat gnawing on a hard corner of her biscuit with a look of crushing despair on her face. Evran did happen to have a cured sausage in his pack, along with other emergency rations. Given the keen senses of the beastkin, Indon likely knew about it and was politely suggesting that Evran share.

  With a sigh, Evran withdrew the sausage from his pack. He could see Indon’s tail wagging, something beastkin took great efforts to avoid doing in front of humans, as they found it degrading for some odd reason. Indon’s excitement was too great to contain, however. Kaila seemed to have tears in her eyes when she saw it.

  “Were you holding out on us?” she accused.

  “Don’t be silly. These are my emergency rations!”

  “Well, this is an emergency! Give it here!”

  She snatched the meat right out of his hands, then went about cutting it up for everyone. He couldn’t help but notice how generous she was with her own portion. There wasn’t much to go around, but the sausage was packed full of flavor, doing a great deal to restore morale to the group.

  “So Evran, I heard that you plan on forming an adventuring party with Narro and the other male — what was his name? Lar?”

  “Lerrum, and yes.”

  “Ah, that sounds like a lot of fun. I wish I could do that, but my folks would never allow it. How do yours feel about it?”

  “It’d always been a dream of mine since I was a kid, though one I’d strayed from until recently. Both of my parents were adventurers, though they retired after my older brother was born. In hindsight, they were oddly supportive of my dream, despite knowing how dangerous the profession was.”

  “Oh, is that how your parents met?” asked Kaila, strangely curious for once. “Were they in a party together?”

  Her pointed ears had twitched at the mention of his parents. Unlike Indon, she knew that they weren’t alive anymore. Evran hoped that fact wouldn’t come to light during the conversation, as he didn’t want to have to explain it or suffer any well-meaning but hollow sympathies. He was more than happy to talk to Kaila about how they lived rather than how they’d died.

  “Yes, they called themselves ‘Skyright’. There were a few others in their cohort, but I don’t really remember them. I haven’t seen them in four Tempests or so.”

  “Not to speak ill of your parents, but that’s an atrocious name for a party. Then again, they did name you Evran.”

  He responded by throwing an inedibly hard portion of his biscuit at her face, but the elf effortlessly dodged the deadly missile. Gracious in her victory, she taunted him further by sticking out her tongue.

  “So what did they do after they retired? I recall you mentioning that your mother became a guardian mage, right? What about your father?”

  “I’m not sure, actually. He was always hosting strange people at our place and writing letters to people from distant bands. Maybe he was a merchant? Why the sudden interest in my parents, anyway?”

  “Well, I assume she’s planning on meeting them someday,” said Indon, prompting confusing looks from the two of them. “You two are mates, are you not?”

  Evran and Kaila turned and stared at each other awkwardly, neither willing to address what had just been said. Kaila shifted uncomfortably in place, her eyes flickering back and forth from Evran to the cup in her hands. He felt compelled to say something — to deny it — but he couldn’t form the words. He wanted it after all. But then what did her silence mean?

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  “Ah, I seem to have been mistaken,” Indon apologized, turning to Evran. “Thank you for the meat. Shall we get back to our survey?

  ***

  They spent the next few hours exploring the western side of the creek. The forest was much thinner here, with many clearings and a few small fields. Indon took it upon himself to map the region, trying his best to accurately convey the contours of the coast and stream while making note of any prominent features that usable as landmarks.

  Meanwhile, Evran conducted tests on the soil and extracted stone samples from deep beneath the surface. One did not need to be an expert in farming or soils to perform the tests, which was fortunate, as Evran was neither. Unfortunately, that meant he couldn’t make sense of the results, not knowing if he was finding an amazing location for a farm or an unproductive wasteland only able to support a few trees. Regardless, Evran dutifully recorded the results in his survey journal.

  Their resident elf seemed to think the land quite fertile, as she went about finding an incredible variety of herbs and flowers, some of which were quite rare. Kaila even harvested a few rare samples for personal gain — a privilege generally afforded to explorers. The academy would have had a difficult time preventing it in any case.

  After surveying the western portion of their region in a loop, they found themselves back at the stream further inland. They had recently encountered a rare white fox monster with three tails. Though the creature was quite small, it was a potent magic user. It took a great deal of effort for the party to defeat. Afterwards, Indon had to use his body as a shield in order to protect its corpse from Kaila’s morbid compulsion to confirm the death of her opponents. He had wanted to sketch the magnificent creature, but more so, he’d wanted to harvest what he’d assumed would be a valuable hide along with a rather pretty red gem in its forehead.

  “Stop, you’ll break the gem! It’s clearly dead!” Indon insisted.

  “Fine, but don’t ask me to heal you when it gets back up and bites your hand off!” replied Kaila.

  While those two were arguing over the corpse of the mystic fox, Evran approached the edge of the water. The stream was quite wide so close to the coast, though it wasn’t particularly deep, not even up to his waist from the look of it. He had heard tales of larger streams called ‘rivers’, but those were only found on continent-class islands. Evran had never been to any, and therefore had never seen a river, but his parents once had a painting of one back home. He wondered if it was still there.

  Evran raised his staff, preparing to make a series of stepping stones across the stream. No sense in getting wet, after all. After finishing the first two stones, he looked across the stream to the opposite shore. There, he noticed something strange. Hidden behind several tree trunks and a layer of thin underbrush, Evran saw the heavily deteriorated remains of a cobblestone wall

  “Kaila, look!” Evran shouted, recalling her fascination with the fallen world. “Ruins!”

  Kaila ran over to the bank and peered across the stream toward where Evran was pointing. Her eyes lit up. In the five years they’d known each other, Evran had never seen the elf girl this happy. Her smile had always been pretty, but in this moment, it glowed.

  “We have to go now!” she demanded, just as they heard the unwanted chime of a bell echo over the island.

  Just like that, her spirit had been crushed. The bell was the signal for everyone to return to camp. As they were deep into the afternoon, it probably wasn’t an emergency recall, but simply the scheduled end of the day’s expedition. The school likely wanted everyone back with daylight to spare in case anyone was missing.

  “Can we hold off on returning?” Kaila asked. “Just ten minutes! Please!”

  Seeing how excited she was made it difficult to say no. There was still plenty of time left in the day, and they weren’t even the farthest team from camp. They could spare ten minutes.

  “I’m fine with it. Indon?”

  “I’d like to see them too. I hear you can find great treasures in ruins if you are lucky.”

  Kaila attacked Evran with a bear hug. “Thanks, you two.”

  After finishing the last four stepping stones, Kaila deftly jumped across the stream, nearly knocking Evran into it as she passed. She disappeared behind the wall by the time the boys finished crossing.

  As Evran got closer, the full size of the ruins revealed itself. There were several buildings joined by walls to form a rectangular compound. What looked to have been a gatehouse had long since collapsed into a pile of impassable rubble. That was not a problem, however, as there were several gaps in the ruined walls they could slip through. After climbing through one such gap, they found themselves in a large courtyard, empty save for a single dead whisperwood tree at its center. Its eerie white branches seemed to glow in the sunlight, as if polished.

  “This is quite the find,” Evran mused. Whisperwood was a highly valued medium for magical artifacts such as wands and staffs, as Kaila could attest to with hers. “This tree alone is probably worth quite a few platinum.”

  Though most of the ruins were in terrible shape, one or two were in decent enough condition. It would take the better part of a day to clear out most of the rubble, even for two and a half mages. Evran joined Kaila at the entrance of a small building that was still mostly intact. She peered through the rubble obstructing the doorway, hoping to get a glimpse of something inside.

  “You know, Ev, if the school finds out about this place, they’ll send a team out here immediately. Then we won’t get to loot it for any secret treasures.”

  Why were those words so damned tantalizing? She was right, though. If the school learned of these ruins, they would be the ones to excavate them and collect whatever valuables were hidden in the rubble.

  “I’m not some greedy goblin, Kai. But I understand what you’re getting at. We can’t let anyone else find out until we’re finished exploring it ourselves.”

  “Agreed,” said Indon, joining their small conspiracy. “But that will have to wait until tomorrow.”