Dubbie Kestovar had a rather unfortunate habit of getting swept up in random razzmatazz.
Once, she and her airhead brother spent an entire afternoon trying to catch a frog that had allegedly mastered teleportation (it hadn’t—it was just very good at jumping and Fabrisse kept sneezing). Another ti, Tommaso roped in her and three other kids from their commune to help build a rudintary wind-powered ice cream churn using only salvaged spell-cores and a stolen fan. They’d also once declared a ten-day “Research Expedition” into a nearby willow grove to determine if trees could, in fact, hold grudges. It was concluded that trees didn’t have emotions.
Today, she was dragging around a paper lantern tied to a stick with conjured twine, so her brother could throw rocks at it for ‘precision spell targeting.’
“Dubbie! Can you run faster?” Fabrisse shouted as he flung a rock at her. Right at that mont, a surge of wind swept over the valley and altered the pathway of the rock. It grazed the lantern’s bottom edge before bouncing off and landing in a clump of soggy pine needles.
“That was literally a perfect throw. It’s the wind,” Fabrisse muttered, already rummaging in his pouch for another.
→ Trajectory Curvature: Stable
→ Estimated Launch Velocity: 11.79 m/s (88% max) → Dipped mid-way to: 8.58 m/s (64% max)
→ Accuracy Deviation: ±22.7%
Okay. Maybe not that perfect.
He blad it on the Stupenstone. He’d accidentally thrown his glowing Stupenstone, and that must’ve ssed with his concentration.
His sister was already huffing as she stopped to catch her breath. “Why do I have to be the moving target? Can’t we tie it to a squirrel or sothing?”
“Unethical,” Fabrisse said imdiately, squinting as he adjusted his grip on the next rock. “Also, squirrels are statistically harder to track. You’re moderately predictable.”
“Gee. Thanks.”
“You’re welco. Now pick up the pace. I’m calibrating my RES control.”
Fabrisse exhaled slowly, planted his feet, and this ti channeled the full extent of his strength stat—a truly awe-inspiring 8. He wound back and let the rock fly, gritting his teeth as it arced through the air.
The stone sailed forward, skimming low over a rise in the ground. Dubbie surely couldn’t have noticed the epito of skills until the last second.
The rock clipped the side of the lantern dead-on, sending it spinning on its twine like a drunk firefly. Dubbie squeaked and nearly tripped.
[Mastery Training: Stupenstone Fling (Rank II)—Progress to Rank III: 96%]
[SYSTEM NOTE: The faster and more unpredictable the moving target, the more progress you gain if you can hit it with intent.]
“Yes!” Fabrisse crowed.
Dubbie straightened, rubbing her arm where the twine had slapped her. “You could’ve warned that one had actual murder intent.”
“It wasn’t aid at you. It was aid at success,” Fabrisse said smugly. Then added, “Although your shoulder was a strong secondary target.”
“That’s it. I’m done being your glorified lantern mule.” Dubbie yanked the twine off the stick and flopped onto the nearest half-rotted log like a disgruntled towel.
“Field training is over,” she declared, cradling the abused lantern in her lap. “The pack mules have unionized.”
[Training Completed: 19 EXP]
[Progress to Level 5: 1498/1500]
2 EXP left?
“Wait, no!” Fabrisse yelped. “We can’t stop here!”
High up on a crooked branch, Ilya’s dark-feathered raven tilted its head. One of its eye glinted like glass in the shadows, locked onto him with avian stillness.
“Why?”
“I’m about to level up,” he said. His voice cracked under the weight of sheer existential frustration.
“And . . . you’re panicking because . . .”
“I can use the extra attribute points for SYN and RES, Dubbs! SYN and RES!” He pinched his fingers as he shook them up and down.
That did not seem to bring any clarity to Dubbie’s face. “Fabri . . . I know nothing about your bond with the artifact aside from the fact that it generates air from your armpits.”
He opened his mouth to retort, but she held up a firm hand. “Fabri. Listen to for a second.”
Fabrisse stopped. He knew that tone.
He set the rock down slowly. “What is it?” He wandered over, brushing dirt off his hands. “You didn’t even tell you were coming today.”
They settled in the hollow between two sloping hills, where the ground dipped just enough to cradle them in a quiet pocket of earth. This was the most unclaid, unbothered part of campus—more natural than the manicured ponds or ornantal gardens, which were littered with containnt glyphs and caging aether to keep the animals from wandering too far. The wind didn’t bite as hard here, buffered by the natural curve of the valley. Wild grasses, browned from the cold, rustled around them, and a few stubborn stalks snapped underfoot as Fabrisse settled down next to Dubbie.
[REMINDER: Don’t forget to retrieve your Stupenstone. Total ti unretrieved: 2 minutes]
“I know.” She picked at the moss-padded bark beside her. “I didn’t want to risk you saying no. But it’s sothing I’ve decided.”
Stolen novel; please report.
That startled him more than the rock to her lantern. She never used that voice unless it was sothing serious. Or serious-adjacent, like the ti she thought she was in love with a bard who turned out to be their tax collector, but in a trench coat.
“You . . . talked to Mimi about it yet?” he asked. Mimi was her best friend, Milein Hoggs.
Dubbie shook her head. “No. She’ll tell to quit it.” Dubbie hugged her knees to her chest, voice low but steady. “But I’ve decided. I’m eighteen now. I want to work in town.”
Fabrisse’s eyes widened. “You an Aurelienth?”
There was only one town anyone from around here ant when they said the town—Aurelienth, a sprawling sun-ward valley hub laced with canals, tethered airship docks, and floating trade pylons. All the communes, like theirs, sat in a great irregular ring around it, divided by ancestry or old work factions. Technically independent, but everyone knew the rhythm of life pulsed out from Aurelienth like it owned the land. Because it did.
“I an it,” she said. “There’s nothing left for out here except empty chairs and faded paint. Everything’s in town now.”
But isn’t that what she wants? Dubbie had always hated crowds. All she had ever wanted was to stay ho, read, knit, grow crops in the back garden, and ambush wandering bards into teaching her the harp.
“Did you and Mom argue again?”
“Maybe.” She shrugged, but the kind that ant yes, obviously.
Their mother, Madlen, never seed to want the finer things in life for herself, but insisted her children should. She’d had no problem sending Fabrisse to the Synod despite his lack of talents, and had spent years pushing Dubbie there too, practically flinging her at old loremasters and scholarship representatives like a baker pitching bread at pigeons.
“There are grants,” Madlen had always said, as if that were a magic spell. “You have a chance. Do sothing with it.”
Free commune-adjacent student grants had only been around for fifteen years. No one knew how long they’d last, and their mother treated them like a ticking clock.
“But why did that end with you getting a job?” Fabrisse asked again.
Dubbie, of course, had dodged every effort to educate herself in anything remotely official. She spent that ti learning to knit complicated patterns by touch and selling her finished work—blankets, charm-hats, hexwarrs—door to door or through the barter stall. It worked, sort of. But it wasn’t the kind of life that could stretch very far.
Dubbie shrugged one shoulder. “I want to register as an artisan, with pay dues and get listed. Maybe apprentice sowhere serious, like one of the textile houses that still use handwork. There’s a loom master near the canal quarter who doesn’t hate commune folk, apparently.”
“That’s not a job. That’s a life overhaul.”
“I want a life overhaul.”
He rocked back on his heels. “How do you expect to help you with that? You know how well I’m doing at the Synod.” He gestured at himself, covered in twigs and unsuccessful enchantnt soot. “I just threw a rock at my own lantern.”
“I don’t want you to get in,” Dubbie said. “I just want your help to be brave enough to try. You’re the most headstrong person I know.”
“Huh?”
“You stick to things, Fabri. I admire your ability to persist with your rock categorization even after failing five consecutive exams.”
“Aww,” he said, touched. Then he frowned. “Wait.”
She smiled a little. “You can co with in the sumrs, you know. Aurelienth has guild-backed scriveners and surveyors who work with the canalworks and restoration projects. They hire people with a sharp eye for mineral grading and enchantable stone. There’s even a lapidary shop that takes apprentices.”
Fabrisse looked up. “Lapidary?”
“Yeah. You already know the elental saturation points of half the rocks in this valley by heart. Imagine getting paid to sort and carve the ones that can hold spell-channels properly. They’d actually want your opinion.”
“That’s terrifying.” And potentially a decent pivot if he could never make it out of the Synod. He actually entertained the idea for a second.
“You don’t have to keep studying just because people expect you to graduate, Fabri.” Dubbie reached out and nudged his boot with hers.
“No.”
“No?” Dubbie looked at him like looking at a raccoon that’d learned how to fly.
“I’ve got sothing they want now, Dubbs. The Wing of Stratal Studies actually asked for .” He spread his arms, still streaked with soot and leaf litter. “. And I’ve got a rock-throwing test in two days.”
“A what?”
“It’s good practice. Next week, if I don’t ss up, I’ll be sustaining flas.” His voice tipped upward, almost giddy. “An actual fla, Dubbs.”
Dubbie opened her mouth, then closed it again. By the ti she finally spoke, her voice was tiny. “I . . . never heard you talk about Thaumaturgy like that.”
Then she gave a slow nod, like she was weighing sothing heavy and deciding to set it down. “Still, visit in the sumr, okay? I’ll be staying with Mimi’s aunt. She lives not far from here. I’ll write you. Write Mom soti too. She misses you more than she cares to admit.”
Fabrisse nodded, dazed. Two weeks ago, he’d been recollecting the rocks he’d dropped on the sanctum floor. Two weeks ago, Dubbie was reading books at ho waiting for Mom to nag her into shrine duty. Neither of them had any clue what they were doing.
Now she had plans and he—well. He had a ga of Arc Pebbles.
And maybe for once, things were actually—
[REMINDER: Don’t forget to retrieve your Stupenstone. Total ti unretrieved: 7 minutes.]
What now? Why keep reminding ? Who’s gonna steal my rock? he thought. Who even wants it?
[WARNING: [Wild Cranecrow] has stolen: Stupenstone (Rare)]
What?!
[SIDEQUEST RECEIVED: THE STUPENSTONE HEIST]
Objective: Retrieve the Stupenstone from the Cranecrow before it escapes the valley bounds.
Reward: 1 Air-based Thaumaturgy Mastery Point
Bonus Objective: Recover your dignity by doing it without getting pecked more than twice.
Bonus Reward: 1 Inventory Slot
Would you like to accept?
[Yes] [No] [Request More Information]
“The what?” he said aloud.
A sharp cry split the air.
He turned just in ti to see sothing flapping heavily into the sky—a bird, but not like Ilya’s raven. It was bigger; stranger. Its joints were too long, its beak too flat, and its wings fanned out like drapes caught in a gale.
And in its claws, a glowing rock. His Stupenstone.
“A cranecrow?” Fabri sputtered. No. He couldn’t lose that Stupenstone. That thing was Rare-graded.
High above, a smaller shape streaked after it in furious pursuit, shrieking of bloody murder. Ilya’s raven. He dove with surgical precision, wings slicing the air as he tried to herd the intruder, snapping at its tailfeathers and banking to keep it from breaching the valley’s natural periter.
It was working. Almost. The cranecrow veered, wobbling off-course with a confused croak, but it was still climbing—one strong gust from clearing the ridgeline entirely.
Fabrisse didn’t have long. Once it crossed that ridge, it’d be gone for good.
He stood.
“I knew I should’ve put a leash on it,” Fabri muttered, eyes locked on the ascending speck of glowing theft. “Like a little rock harness with a bell.” Then he ran after the cranecrow without looking back. “Help get my rock back, Dubbs. That bird stole my rock!”
Dubbie, still clutching the lantern behind him, murmured, “What am I to do? We can’t fly.” But she stood anyway.
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