"This might not be a good idea," I say. My head hurts a bit, but it's not too bad. Not like after drinking most of Lictor's beer.

Henna and Finna glance at me but continue mumbling with each other. Henna's hand draws gestures into the air, but it's not runes this time. She's just an expressive speaker.

We're in her room, or office. I'm not sure which it is. Things seem pretty informal here. It's on the top floor of the small building that our room is in as well. The windows open toward the lake. Most of the jonungaard live in the buildings around its shores, tending the fields and spending time in the relative light shining out from below.

Rworg sleeps in the corner of the room, sprawled on a large chair. At the end of the night, he went around the circle, exchanging stories with everyone, learning their songs, and teaching the jonungaard his. I could still hear him howling when I was going to bed. He woke up enough to drag himself up the stairs and into her room but fell asleep right after on a large chair in the corner. I told him he could stay and keep sleeping, but he mumbled something about duty and pushed himself up from the bed. What a stubborn guy.

I try again to reach Henna and Finna. "I mean, Lictor told us that knowing magic is dangerous here."

"Doesn't seem to be doing them any harm," Finna says. "But don't worry, I'm not learning spells or anything. She's just explaining the basics to me."

Henna points a finger up at the ceiling. "You told us the magic up there is unbearably thick. I have never heard of there being so much mana that it could do what you described, but I do take the warning seriously. Don't worry."

I close my eyes to rub at my temples. "So, what are you two talking about, then?"

"The basics, I said it already--" Finna says, but Henna bonks her on the top of the head with her fist.

"It's good he's interested as well," she says. "It seems the mana affects all of you, each differently. You'll have to find a way to counteract its effects."

"Yeah, they both turned real dumb," Finna says.

"Well, even more the reason for finding a way then, eh?" I say. "Unless you want to lead us around while having a splitting headache yourself."

Finna scoffs. "No, thanks."

Henna raises both hands in the air, a smile playing on her lips. "There are few solutions I can think of. One is more effective but perhaps impossible. The other more finicky and limited, but doable."

"The impossible one," Rworg mutters. He twists, turning to his other side.

I wait, but he doesn't say anything more. Finna scoffs again.

"The impossible one is to find a small chunk of ambronite," Henna says. "It sucks all the mana away from the area. Absolutely everything. Spells don't work, magic items stop being magical. The effect is permanent, so if you have some magical items, be careful. Normally, you can't find such chunks anywhere, but it's possible pieces have broken off from the large deposits."

"So the same stuff that makes time run weird breaks magic too? Weird," Finna says.

Henna shrugs. "Ambronite is weird. The weirdest substance that exists. Nevertheless, that's how it works. Large deposits affect time, small ones magic."

"Maybe they both affect magic," I say, frowning. "Wait! That reminds me, would this count as a magic item?" I reach into my shirt and pull out the pouch hanging on my neck.

"You sure?" Finna says. "I thought it's pretty important."

Henna watches me pull open the strings holding the pouch closed. She's waiting, eyes moving from me to Finna.

"They have been nothing but nice so far," I say. "Lictor said this might be important once we get inside."

Light swims and reflects off the Time Gem as I pull it out. Its facets pull in my gaze into its depths, and I force my eyes off it before I forget what I was doing. "This is the Time Gem. We got it from an elf."

Henna's mouth opens. She closes it and opens it again, licking her lips.

Finna tilts her head to the side, watching Henna. "I guess this means she knows something about it."

The Time Gem sits on the table. It lies there, unmoving and untouched, but the reflections of the blue lamps playing on it move and rotate. The shadows they cast on the walls are distorted, like they aren't really there. It's enough to make my head start hurting again.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Henna leans on the desk with both palms, peering close into the Gem. "I thought it was just a myth, but this matches the description perfectly. I'll be."

"Well, what does it do? We have no idea," Finna says.

Henna pushes herself straight, blinking and squeezing her eyes shut. Looking into the Gem that close must have been weird. "Unfortunately, I can't tell you many specifics. The stories tell of elven warriors, who used these to be invincible, moving faster themselves or making their opponents slower at exactly the right moment."

"There are more than one?" I ask.

"I thought there wasn't even one," Henna says.

Finna slaps the back of my head. "What does it matter? Can we use it?"

I shrug sheepishly. I guess it doesn't. "This place has a problem with time and an astonishing amount of mana everywhere. One way or another, it might come in handy"

"It might," Henna says. She scratches at her head, runs a hand through her hair. She glances at the Gem, but turns to look away before getting mesmerized again. "Do you have any idea on how to use it, yourself?"

"So far it has taken people out of time," I say. "It was what happened to Kertharians and also to her. I think Lictor just pushed mana into the Gem, and she froze into a statue."

"That doesn't sound too useful for our current situation," Henna says. "And if your problem was that too much mana was pulled from the world and shot up into the sky, using the Gem might even make things worse."

I walk to the desk and grab the Gem, placing it back into the pouch. Everyone has to keep turning their eyes away from it. Even Rworg twists in his sleep, disturbed by the weird reflections and the light thrown from the Gem passing over his eyes occasionally. I pull the strings tight, hiding the Gem from view. "Hmm. It might be. The Gem might just suck up all the mana, and who knows what would happen next."

"So, a paperweight after all?" Finna says. "What the hell are we supposed to do, then? The stupid machine fell apart already."

I pace around the room, hiding the pouch under my shirt. "I think we'll need to find a way to disturb the flow of mana. Maybe it's like the siphon effect? Once you get the flow going, it doesn't stop."

"What are you on about?" Finna asks.

"That might make sense," Henna says. "Mana does act like water in some circumstances."

"Whaaat?" Finna groans.

"I'll explain later," I say. It's weird she doesn't know about a simple thing like siphon effect, but I'm getting a feeling that Gran taught us better and about more subjects than many people get taught. "The question is, how could we disturb it?"

Rworg makes a sound. He's trying to speak, but yawns so widely it turns the words into a mumble. Finna taps her foot on the ground as we wait for him to finish his yawn and wipe his face with his arm.

"Break the conduit. Mana leaks out. The flow breaks," he says, cracking his neck.

"Just start breaking things?" Finna says. "Go back to sleep, Rworg."

"No, he might have a point," I say. "Maybe we wouldn't need to carve our way through the whole Monolith. The mana ran in those tubes, didn't it? Maybe it would be enough to break one of those?"

Henna shrugs. "Some of our earliest patrols did talk about the mana conduits. It's possible. Damaging the black stone is difficult, though."

Rworg smiles like a wolf, the corners of his mouth creeping up his face further and further. His teeth shine bright white.

"Oh, goddamn," Finna says.

Rworg points at the largest sledgehammer in the corner of the tool shed. The hammer stands as tall as my waist, the head larger than my foot.

"It's broken. We tried chipping the black stone with it," Hearn says. "There's still a crack in the handle from the time we tried it."

He looks somehow even whiter than usual. Maybe it's because of the deep, dark rings below his eyes.

"No worry. We will make it durable," Rworg says.

"Can we, though?" I ask. "It's not like we actually have an idea how the Time Gem works."

Rworg grabs the hammer and swings it around like it was a toy. "We will try."

Henna led us down the stairs from her room to the small shed. It's a wooden cube, constructed to stand leaning on the gray stone wall of the main building. A single lamp shines its blue light over shovels, pitchforks, and other assorted tools. Hearn bumped into us on the way out. Rworg wrapped an arm around his shoulder and dragged him with us, even if the old man looks ready to fall asleep where he stands. He kept wincing as Rworg slapped him on the back and thanked him again and again for the feast last night.

Henna watches us, arms crossed before her chest. Finna stands next to her, arms crossed as well. They look surprisingly similar, even if Henna is bright white and Finna's hair is almost black. They're the same height. Maybe if Finna doesn't get herself killed, she'll grow into a fun adult like Henna.

"Would you be willing to do this?" I ask Henna, pulling out the pouch from below my shirt. "We don't know anything about it. It could even be dangerous."

She reaches out a hand. "I wouldn't pass up a chance to try using the Time Gem, even if I knew it to be dangerous."

"Tell me how it feels," Finna says. "I want to be able to try it too."

Henna takes the Gem and holds it between her thumb and forefinger. She keeps her eyes on the hammer. "So, he pulled some strands of power out of the Gem?"

"Yeah," I say. "That's what it looked like to me. He also collapsed right after."

Finna watches Henna closely as she presses the Gem on the haft of the hammer. Lictor was amazingly powerful compared to all the Kertharian magic users we fought. The amount of power he used in his fight with Corum was staggering, even if he still lost. If he had trouble using the Gem, I really hope we don't have to depend on Finna to do it. Still, I guess it's better than nothing if we end up in a pinch, and I'm not stupid enough to say anything out loud.

The single blue lamp on the shed wall starts to flicker and goes out.

I hear a yelp and some stumbling steps from the outside.

"Damn lights," someone says.

"The gloom affects even the mana," Hearn says, half whispering. "It's better around the lake, but it feels like there's even less now than when I left."

The light gathers around Henna's hand, illuminating the room in place of the lamp. Just like Lictor, she pinches her fingers across the Gem's surface and pulls out a single strand of light. The strand is a thin, translucent line, hanging in the air like spider silk in the forest. It glows and flows, blown by some invisible wind. She drapes it on the hammer, and the light wraps around its haft and head. The light glows brighter, but not as bright as when Lictor did it to Finna.

The light fades, leaving us standing in pitch black.

"That wasn't so bad," Henna's voice says, the last word already slurring.

There's a sound of her falling over. Her head lands on my toes as she does.

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