The team that set out for the next dungeon made good time, riding on the backs of the various miasma possessed beasts. Mina and Grandma clung to Pluot’s back while it gamboled about, nearly dislodging its riders and definitely making the poor girl nauseated. Fiddler deigned to carry Donovan and Fariel, its larger size able now to accommodate the two men sitting side by side. Tanner sat atop Zoop, an enormous snake that Grandma thought might have been a garter, but she was never very familiar with snake species, and it didn’t seem especially important anyway.

The others had to choose between a giant frog, an enormous lizard, a huge chipmunk, and a large rabbit. The movement of all of their remaining choices were profoundly unsettling, and many regretted their decision to ride, wishing they had instead opted to run alongside. Jiyon, on the lizard, was the only one who managed to not lose the contents of his stomach the entire trip, though it was a very near thing.

The bonded animals ran, slithered, and hopped unerringly toward the dungeon, its pulsing mana a familiar signature to them, even without Mina’s directions. Grandma knotted her hands in Pluot’s fur and devoted her attention to keeping a cloud of dust and pebbles swirling over their heads, obscuring them from overhead observers that might want to eat them.

Large birds flickered in and out of their view. Not all of them were shrikes. They only caught glimpses, despite the creatures’ size, flashes of striking gold, dusty rose, or deep blue that shone in the sunlight. Once, Grandma caught sight of a murder of crows, their sizes ludicrous, but their behavior still the same as ever, raucous and playful and alarmingly intelligent. She made sure to greet them, holding up a hand silently and wishing she had peanuts or something to offer them, as their team ran by.

The dungeon entrance, once they finally reached it, turned out to be wedged in the crotch of a tree, roughly a man’s height off the ground. The limbs that branched out around it seemed almost to cradle the opening, like a nest around a bizarre, swirling egg that led to a different space. Grandma scrambled up the tree using her gecko hands, then dropped through the opening. Through their link, Grandma shared a mental image of the view on the other side: a sprawling vista of high cliffs and dizzying drops, navigable only by winged beasts. She stood on a precarious outcrop of stone, a sheer fall beneath her feet that descended into clouds which hid the bottom.

“That’s going to be a problem,” Mina sighed.

Carefully, the team slid through the opening into the dungeon, then edged along the cliff until they found a more spacious area to congregate. Then, the animals came through, guided by Tanner and Grandma so none of them fell.

“I think you should leave your bodies here,” Tanner said as he looked between his beasts and the terrain. “We’ll build you a bunker to keep your bodies safe.”

When they set out to explore the dungeon, they were surrounded by colorful clouds of mana dancing around in the air, unconstrained by such trivial matters as gravity or logic.

[Pluot, Fiddler, I want to try something.] Grandma held both hands up in the air. [Can you lift me up?]

Pluot’s miasma swirled around Grandma’s left hand, growing denser and denser until she could grab hold of it. Pluot formed a gauntlet around Grandma’s hand and tugged upward. Fiddler did the same, albeit much more reluctantly, until Grandma’s golem was hovering a few inches off the ground.

[Maybe this will help with traveling,] Grandma told Mina and Tanner.

Fariel whipped out his ever present notebook and pencil, and scribbled furiously, walking in a slow circle around Grandma and the two miasma creatures. “You never fail to amaze me,” he muttered. Grandma couldn’t tell if he was genuinely impressed or upset at her shenanigans.

The team set off, hiking in the direction of the densest mana knot, something that the miasma creatures seemed to know instinctively, and which Mina could sense in the flow of the mana. Grandma ranged ahead, relying on her golem body and gecko hands to climb up and down cliffs which would have killed a regular person, and fed information back to Mina. The girl in turn did her best to direct the team on where to go and how to get there. [Tell Fariel when we get back, I want to record muscle movements from a mountaineer,] Grandma complained, worn out from having to manually control the golem’s movements.

Tanner found a thick patch of tumbling vines clinging to the side of the cliffs, and poured mana into them to weave the individual thin strands together into a thick, sturdy rope. They used the vine rope to help them scramble down vertical faces that lacked obvious handholds, with the miasma creatures as a final failsafe in case someone slipped and fell.

The team’s progress was painfully slow. On the first day, they barely managed to descend to the layer of clouds before everyone was too exhausted to go farther. Grandma led them to a small cave system to set up camp. The cliff had been dotted with small indents here and there, almost too shallow to be called caves. Many of those little ledges bore remnants of nesting material, tufts of feathers, or even bits of broken egg shells. Beneath the ledges, the cliff face was often streaked with bird droppings. Part of the challenge for Grandma had been to pick a route that was relatively easy, but not too filthy.

There was sturdy natural cover, so Grandma didn’t have to exert herself to build a defensible resting area, but there was little in the way of fuel for a fire. The stony cliffs had little to offer in the way of even the most stunted trees. In the cave, there was enough moisture to sustain a coating of moss far in the back, but that wouldn’t have made for good, long lasting fuel in any case. The soldiers ate a cold meal of jerky and dried fruits with water Mina pulled from the clouds around them, then huddled together to discuss their next steps.

“We could send the miasma creatures alone and just camp here waiting for them,” Tanner offered.

“Last time we did that in Bow Harbor, we nearly went crazy waiting, and that was a small, shallow dungeon that Pluot took care of pretty quickly.” Mina shook her head. “I don’t want to do that again.”

Fiddler, whose dungeon they had been talking about, spasmed violently, then drifted out of the cave. 

[I think it’s sulking,] Grandma noted. [I guess it didn’t like having its home called small and shallow.]

Pluot drifted around them in a way that Grandma swore was smug. [Tasty crab,] it commented unhelpfully.

“I would have to agree,” Donovan said. “That wait was hell. To be fair, we didn’t exactly know what was going on back then, and now we’re a lot more experienced, but I’d still rather be active than just sitting around.”

The soldiers shifted restlessly. Some muttered in agreement, but others seemed to rather enjoy the idea of sitting around doing nothing. 

“Teach soldiers magic,” Grandma rasped. Before they went any farther, Grandma wanted to at least teach the chosen soldiers how to circulate mana to refresh themselves in case of an emergency.

Fariel hid his face in his hands and groaned. “You’re not seriously proposing to teach the soldiers how to use mana, are you?”

“I am.” Grandma stared at the court mage. “Your school over-complicates things.”

The scholar sighed. “I really can’t argue against that.”

Jiyon spoke up for the first time since entering the dungeon. “How will you teach us magic?”

“Hands,” Grandma said curtly, holding out her own to him.

The Crown Prince hesitated, then clasped the golem’s hands in his own. Grandma circulated mana through her golem body, then sent a stream of power flowing down her right arm. There was a slight resistance as it left her palm, as if puncturing a soap bubble, then she was circulating mana inside Jiyon’s body. The prince gasped and jerked, nearly breaking their connection, but Grandma had expected it, and held fast. She completed the circuit, drawing mana from Jiyon’s right hand back up her left arm. They sat for a moment, the power flowing in a circle between the two of them.

“Circulate mana yourself,” she said, as she slowly brought his hands together. She pinched off the big circle into two little circles, one flowing in herself, the other in Jiyon. “Then circulate mana from the world.”

“That’s not vague at all,” Tanner muttered. Mina had to stuff a fist in her mouth to stifle the laughter that threatened to burst out.

The two kids each took on a soldier. Fariel joined in too, as Grandma beckoned to another to replace Jiyon. Soon enough, each soldier was busy concentrating on maintaining a steady flow of mana through their own body. Even Donovan sat cross legged and focused, feeling the flow of his magic in his body, and occasionally sipping from the mana streams flowing in the world around them.

“Once they get good at it, we can teach them more fun tricks!” Mina grinned broadly.

“Please not the water chainsaw thing,” Tanner groaned.

Mina only laughed.