The massive links of metal chain rising into the sky groan as the wind gusts push the floating island of Yon’Kor. The cracks and fissures in the alloy suggest one day the whole thing will come apart, but that day isn’t today, or perhaps in the next hundred years. Ulfgar wraps his arms around the final link attached to the ground, and his fingertips wiggle, unable to touch each other.

  “Do we climb the chain?” Nimue asks. Her voice cracks. Her face is pale.

  She should be nervous. The last time she saw a wizard, they cut open her skull and split her brain. Without a doubt, it gave her more power, but I’m not sure what the true cost is.

  “No, first we let them know we’re here.” I point to a small stone column that’s crowned by an ornamental claw with talons holding a linked crystal. It’s a dumb statement. They know we’re here. We just need to ask permission. I approach the crystal. “Zane Steelborne here.”

  “Zane?” The gatekeeper asks through the crystal. His voice sounds like it floats through a river of flowing sand, the grains shifting and distorting his words. “Not sure Master Pender expected you to come back from the funeral.”

  “I did.”

  “Who’s with you?”

  “Ulfgar. He’s harmless. Mostly.”

  “And?”

  “The girl is Nimue. She’s less harmless. She’ll be taking my place.”

  “Not sure it works that way, Zane.”

  “We’ll see. Let us in.”

  “Fine.”

  A large blue arch, two stories tall, stands on the nearby plateau. It’s obvious where it would form in hindsight because a trail of dead grass and wagon tracks leads up to the spot and then ends. White arcs of lightning sporadically form and die across the portal. It sounds like a nest of hornets trapped in a jar.

  “Follow me,” I say.

  “Are we letting the giant blue ghost mouth eat us?”

  “Precisely. It may seem crazy, but it’s just a door to up there.” I point to Yon’Kor.

  “Will it hurt?”

  “The opposite.” I would rather they go in first to make sure they actually go through, but I can understand that inserting the only flesh you have into a shimmering energy doorway can be intimidating. I’ll go first. “You’ll like it.”

  No more time to waste. I jump face-first into the crackling energy.

  It never gets old.

  My body appears instantly at the edge of Yon’Kor, but I’ll be different for a while. Inside of me, an energy pulses, like rolling waves starting from my chest and emanating out to the tips of my fingers and the bottom of my feet. Each heartbeat sends magical energy throughout me. The world is different. The colors bright and saturated. The green grass verdant like midsummer after three days of rain. My senses heightened. I can do anything. I can be anything.

  Ulfgar appears shortly after. His eyes wide, he crouches and flexes every muscle, the veins in his neck bulge like worms.

  “Vrek, yeah!” he screams.

  Nimue appears. Her face calm. She says nothing.

  A man in a tattered robe crawls over to me and clutches the bottom of my tunic, pulling himself up. He takes a big sniff. His red eyes stare into mine. I push him away, and he stumbles backward, falling flat on the grass.

  “Oh, please! Please let me just smell you. The magic residue is still there.”

  “What’s wrong with him?” Ulfgar asks.

  “Mana addict. They restrict portal access. Use it too much, and it can cause his condition,” I answer. “They have to lock up the potions, too.”

  “Who can blame him? This feels amazing.” Ulfgar stands up straight. The effects are wearing off now. “Right, Nimue?”

  She doesn’t answer. She just stares at her hands, flexing them, trying to feel the power again.

  “I’m going to look around. See you!” Ulfgar hops off into the distance. He passes the one tree on Yon’Kor, a huge oak with sprawling limbs that reach down to just above the ground.

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  “Come on, Nimue. Let’s go see Master Pender.”

  We walk through small alleyways and pathways in Yon’Kor, between the stone buildings filled with studies, lecture halls, and laboratories. Two wizards in robes pass, and their eyes train on the top of Nimue’s head.

  Master Pender’s door has moss growing between the wooden planks, and I rap on the door with a knuckle. It opens, and a bird mask with a long beak extends out, nearly poking me in the face.

  “Zane! Isn’t this a surprise? I didn’t think you would come back from the funeral.” His voice is muffled behind the mask.

  “Sorry to disappoint,” I say, stepping into his studio. The masters have a single room each, which is more than the students can ask for. A small fire sits in the center of a room, and a glass bottle bubbles above it, a blue liquid frothing inside. An unmade bed with several hide blankets sits in the corner. It smells of rotten cheese.

  “Who’s this?” Master Pender lifts the mask, revealing the face of a young man, not much older than me. Pender was fast-tracked to masterdom. “Oh, she has a—” he glides a finger across the top of his head.

  “That’s Nimue. She’ll be taking my place here as an apprentice.”

  “Oh, is she now? I’m not sure it works that way.”

  “Yes, I have many years of tuition paid here that can’t go to waste. Or do you think the Blood Coins should just come here and take it back?”

  Sometimes threats work.

  “I’m afraid that word of your precarious position has already made its way to Yon’Kor. I don’t believe the Grand Master would take well to your intimidations.”

  Not this time.

  “Come on. You have to help me out.”

  Master Pender lifts a finger to a hairless chin in thought, pulls the mask down over his face, and finally says, “The Grand Master’s golem prototype escaped last week. It burst out of her laboratory, ate an apprentice, and threw another one clear off Yon’Kor. I’m sure if you got it back for her, she would be amenable.”

  “Fine. I’ll get it back. In pieces if I have to,” I say. “What kind is it?”

  “I’m not sure. I know it’s big, and it ate a person. That should be a start.”

  “Can I come?” Nimue asks.

  “No, you stay here. This is your home now. For a few years anyway.”

  “Why are you helping me?”

  “It’s an investment. The Blood Coins could use a wizard.”

  “But what if I don’t help you?” She glares at me.

  “Investments are risky sometimes.”

  I leave Pender and Nimue behind, closing the door, and now need to find Ulfgar. Shouldn’t be too hard to find the one other person not wearing a robe in this place. Back where I last saw him seemed like a good place to start.

  At the edge of the grassy plaza, far from the tree, a crowd of wizards circles around the etlab table, their palette of dark robes obscuring the view of the game. They whisper to each other. From the center, a familiar voice belts, “Another defeated! Whose baby shall I crush next?”

  I shoulder my way through the small gaps between the crowd to find Ulfgar seated on a stone bench opposite a young wizard who has just taken a seat, resetting the etlab pieces on the checkerboard. Another helps with the game setup by shuffling the deck of cards.

  “Zane! I’m crushing everyone’s babies.” Ulfgar beams with pride.

  “The piece is called the prince, not a baby,” I say. In his defense, the marble figurine is a crib with this particular etlab set. The objective of the game is to capture your opponent's prince, with each of the others having particular rules for their movement.

  “The brute can remember the played cards in the deck, and responds accordingly to which might be played next,” a bystander says. “A genius?”

  “Genius?” Ulfgar ponders the accusation. “No, I don’t think so. I just move the pieces to places where they will win.”

  “The profundity! From a simpleton. It’s incredible,” a wizard says.

  “Truly, we are humbled this day,” says another.

  The whispers grow, and this can only go one direction.

  “Come on, Ulfgar. We have to go before they decide to study your brain.”

  “My what?”

  I clamp a hand around his arm and pull him up off the bench. The crowd of wizards parts as we head back to the portal area.

  The portal keeper sits within a stone tower at the edge of Yon’Kor, giving her a view of the area far below. “We’re fetching the missing golem,” I yell up to her.

  She shakes her head and yells back, “Don’t want the little mana addict hitching a ride down. You two can walk the chain. You seem capable.”

  “Last one down’s an inbred pig,” Ulfgar says. He darts towards the chain at the edge of the floating island, giving himself a tremendous headstart. It really isn’t fair that a mound of muscle like that can beat wizards at etlab and move this fast.

  Ulfgar leaps down the chain several links, increasing his lead. For horizontally facing links with their hole facing upward, I take a step to the left, then right, then hop to the next. The cracks and rust offer better footing than you would expect. For vertically facing links, I take two steps and move on.

  The ocean crashes against the cliff face below. Jagged boulders cut sharp by aeons of water peek out from the waves. Falling here would mean death.

  “Oh, scat!” Ulgfar misses a leap, falls into a gap, his hulking arms reach over the top, and his head turns to me, eyes wide.

  Still several chain links back, I take my time before stopping above him. I put my hands on my hips and look down at him. “Who’s an inbred pig?”

  “Me! I am! I’m an inbred pig!”

  “Alright.” I grab one of his arms and pull his heavy body up. We take our time down the rest of the chain. Who knows, maybe Ulfgar could have survived the fall. He’s full of surprises, but I’m glad we didn’t find out.

  “Now to track the golem,” I say.

  Ulfgar says nothing. He points to the edge of the forest.

  The good news is that tracking the golem would be easy. The bad news: it has carved a path through the woods with giant branches snapped like twigs and trees pushed aside, their roots sticking up into the air.

  If it can do that to trees, what could it do to flesh and bone?

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