The ring on her finger started to constrict, and Jayna frowned, starting off without even hesitating.
“What now?” Eva’s voice carried too loudly through the trees, but Jayna ignored it.
A dark creature.
There had to be one here.
They had come across quite a few different dark creatures in the forest since she had come to Nelar, but none over the last few weeks.
The ring stopped constricting.
So Jayna stopped. She was in a denser part of the forest, darkness surrounding her.
She waited, but the constricting didn’t return.
When a surge of heat came from behind her, she spun to see Eva approaching, practically floating as she made her way toward her.
“Did you find anything? You’ve been so restless these days, maybe it would be good for you to come across another dark creature. Perhaps not one of the dwaring,” Eva said with a hint of a smile, “but maybe hitarin or covis or—”
Jayna frowned. When the constricting still didn’t return, she started back the way she came.
“I haven’t been restless.”
“It’s only been my imagination,” Eva said, shaking her head.
She paused at the clearing, then returned to the pattern she had been working on.
There was no point in delaying this anymore.
Rather than trying to drag her foot through the rest of the pattern, she stepped away from it and onto a large boulder near the edge of the clearing, looking down upon what she had created.
As much as she hated to admit it, Eva might’ve been right. She had created a bit of irregularity with her halting movements. For the most part, the star looked to be relatively intact, as did most of the triangles that ringed it, but there was an uneven spot along the border of one of them that she worried wouldn’t hold the contents of the spell as she powered through it.
She either had to try it and hope it was effective, or she had to erase the triangle with the uneven spot and start again, which might mean that she would need to erase all of them and start from scratch. The patterns had to be layered in a consistent manner or everything reset.
Of course, they didn’t have a whole lot else they were doing today. They didn’t have a whole lot else they were doing these days in general. Preparations. That was about it. They had spent their time in Nelar getting ready for additional attacks—at least the possibility of additional attacks—in addition to chasing down the occasional dark creature.
But Jayna was happier doing this for now. She didn’t need to go running after dwaring or shiisii or any of the other awful things Ceran had her chasing down.
“What are you waiting for?” Eva asked.
Jayna shook her head. “I am debating whether or not I need to redo this one.”
“Redo it? You have been standing there for the better part of five minutes thinking about what you’re going to do.”
“Sorcery can’t be sloppy.”
Eva snorted.
The entire purpose of all of this was for her to practice making these larger patterns so that she could eventually transfer and use that same level of control to make enchantments in a more skillful manner. That was one part of what she needed.
There was more to it, which she suspected Eva knew. It was probably the reason Eva taunted her a little bit about everything. Jayna wanted to know if she could do it—if she was capable. After having left the Academy, and having abandoned what she had trained for so long to do, she still wanted to know whether or not she could be a sorcerer. She believed she had the necessary skill, but at the same time, having not had the need to do it, she didn’t know if she could.
Sloppy.
Though a sorcerer’s magic needed to be neat and tidy, there was a time when a little bit of a mess didn’t matter. There was an advantage to simply attempting a spell, rather than fumbling around, waiting for perfection. There was an advantage to simply getting that magic out into the world.
Eva watched her, almost as if she knew Jayna’s thoughts.
Jayna jumped down and reached into the leather pouch she had slung over her shoulder. She grabbed the strand of horsehair, along with the other two ingredients, and carefully placed them into the center of the marking. Once they were situated, she leaned her hands forward, pressing outward with just a hint of power within her.
“Are you doing it?” Eva asked.
Jayna ignored her. At this point, she needed to focus on her concentration and control over her magic. If she lost that concentration because of Eva, there was no telling what might happen with the spell. It was more likely than not that it would go awry, and she would end up with magic streaking off in ways she didn’t intend, possibly hitting buildings—or people.
She called upon the power from some place deep within her.
Sorcery had always been a part of her. She had known it since she was young. Maybe not in the same distinct ways that she did now, but she had always known she had magic. It had come when she was very little. Things had happened that shouldn’t have. At first, it had been small accidents. Unintentional spells. That was the way it started with all sorcerers. It came as a burst of power, and she remembered her parents’ reaction when she had first demonstrated magic by opening a cabinet. Both of her parents had potential, though Jayna didn’t think that either of them were within the Society. Dular, more likely than not, but they had not revealed that themselves.
She had to push those thoughts aside.
The training from the Academy always came to her as she focused on the magic within her. The Academy had taught her that there was a bubble of magic within her, and accessing magic was a matter of accessing that bubble. Most of the time, it happened instinctively. When she used the Toral ring, however, she simply summoned the power within the ring, letting that flow out from her. It came from something else, the Toral ring connecting her to a greater magic that she couldn’t access otherwise. When she used other power, such as sorcery, it required that she channel her power in a very specific manner.
In this case, Jayna needed to harness that energy and send it flowing through the pattern, which would then envelop the other ingredients and fold it all into the spell. Together, it created something more potent than each one individually. Her magic acted like an oven, adding heat to the ingredients she mixed.
“If you wait long enough, you’ll find some dark creature here.”
Jayna looked over, shooting her a hard stare. “You’re going to help me if I do anyway.”
Eva shrugged. “No, but I would watch.”
The power poured out of her in a trickle, easing up, and flowing distantly, slowly, into the pattern.
It tracked around the perimeter of the pattern before finally settling upon the star where she could practically see the magic shimmering into the spell, then it folded. There was something about that shape that caused it to not only hold on to her magic, but also to fold the power upward and turn it into something else.
She waited a moment, then another, and finally the power exploded through, coalescing and twisting, shrinking down. With a burst of pale-white light, the spell expanded before collapsing back downward again.
When it was done, the pattern had erased from the ground. The oil and the powder were gone. The only thing remaining was the strand of horsehair, and that had thickened, looking now like a small twig.
Jayna stared at it. “I think it worked.”