Dealing with the Sahevin should've been simple. Fly higher, get out of range.

It turned out doing so wasn't as simple as I'd expected. They were able to fire that beam roughly once a minute. And it didn't seem to have a limit.

The only thing that gave us a chance was that just before it fired, it sent forth an invisible to normal senses alignment beam, similar to Lightning Bolt's targeting portion.

"I don't remember anyone mentioning the Sahevin having a giant 'back-off' laser," I called to Arizar as we wove through the latest shot's turbulence.

"Such a spell wasn't within any of the records I've read either," Arizar yelled back. "This is new. The Sahevin don't do new. Not since the time of the Void Heralds."

"Then someone else must be involved," I said, flipping to the side as a half-charred wyvern tumbled past, caught in the blast.

"The idea that someone could work with the Sahevin would turn our understanding of them on its head," Arizar said, drifting closer for a second before soaring away.

"Couldn't someone have just given it to them? Or made the savvy men work for them? Soul magic can do that, can't it?" Bevel asked, voice unruffled. She'd been the one to notice the targeting beam and had been responsible for pushing us apart before it had hit the first time. She also was making sure we moved before any of the follow ups could hit us.

"It can, though getting it applied to the Sahevin en masse would be an undertaking of centuries," Arizar replied.

"Centuries? Like, say, since the old Alvian empire collapsed?" I asked as we all swung to the side to avoid one of the beams.

Arizar didn't respond for nearly half a minute before letting out a long sigh. "Yes. And subjugating the Sahevin is exactly the sort of thing they would've attempted."

"Great," I said as we all dodged out of the way of the next laser. "Bevel, can you get what you need while this thing is shooting at us?"

"Huh? Oh, I already did," Bevel replied. "Were you waiting on me? I thought we were trying to figure out the giant light sword."

"We don't have to stay so close to do that," I said, already shifting course away from the Everstorm. The twisting winds immediately got worse until Bevel swept past, smoothing them out.

Despite the tumultuous environment around us, I hadn't appreciated to what degree Bevel had been dampening the wind. Instantly we went from fighting to stay level to having a healthy tailwind.

"Aren't you using too much mana?" I asked her as we soared away.

"There's plenty coming off the storm," Bevel replied with a bounce of curly hair as she nodded in the direction of the Everstorm.

Right. Had been too focused on the laser. It really did feel like my enhanced pattern recognition and memory recall had made me more distractible than I'd been before at times.

Activating Mana Draw, I spent a second simply enjoying having access to nigh-unlimited mana once more. Then I asked Arizar to cast one of the spells she'd prepared as part of our excursion, Sound the Depths. The wavering shapes forming out of water didn't provide a perfect picture, but it was enough to see the massive device orienting in our direction.

It looked like an old telescope observatory from Earth, with a huge tube set inside a rotating dome structure. Was pretty sure those observatories weren't as quick to rotate as the dome below us though.

Arizar's Sound the Depths revealed it wasn't the only dome down there. It looked like they were spaced evenly along the curved edge of the Everstorm. The first one firing also seemed to have worked the Sahevin into a frenzy. There was an army of them attacking the dome even as it continued to fire at us.

After some experimentation we discovered the dome didn't have the ability to lower below a forty degree angle or so, meaning we were soon out of its range.

"Have you ever seen anything like those? The domes that housed the laser?" I asked Arizar. "It's kinda hard to tell with the quality of Sound the Depths, but they seemed like part of the rock. And the Sahevin weren't too happy about it shooting."

"I have, though I've never heard of one firing a beam of light before. There are a great many of them, stretching all along the edge of the Everstorm. Most theorize that they're related to the Sahevin, yet it didn't hesitate to vaporize those that swam before it," Arizar replied, shaking her head, golden hair fluttering in the wind. "It feels as though there is something we're missing."

"Well, if it is an Alvian sleeper cell, they might've just brought the one dome online. We'd have to test the others if we wanted to be sure."

"Yes, and that would be rather dangerous."

"Incredibly. Irresponsible too, especially with Bevel here," I agreed, glancing towards my daughter.

Arizar was silent for a second, before a small smile slipped into place. "So… shall we then?"

An answering grin slipped onto mine. "Read my mind."

After another three domes shot at us, we felt we'd gathered enough data to confirm that there was something weird going on with them.

We'd also figured out they were targeting me specifically. Arizar and Bevel could approach without the lasers reacting. At least at first. If they got within a hundred feet of me, then the laser would start targeting them, even if I split off from them.

It wouldn't forget them either.

The lasers also weren't under the control of the Sahevin. Every time one activated, the rabid sea creatures would turn their attention on it, attacking in force, getting themselves incinerated by the thousands.

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If anything, the lasers demonstrated how important it was to fortify our borders. Even after incinerating those thousands of Sahevin, the ocean still teemed with them, to the point where most regular ocean life simply didn't exist in the area. I suspected there was mana involved with their grown cycle, cause I couldn't see another way they could sustain their churning birth and death rate. It was possible they fed directly on the Everstorm. Maybe that was why they hadn't invaded further inland.

We might've spent more time with the lasers than strictly necessary, since we'd figured most of that out with the first. Still, we'd had another reason to stick around.

"No, I definitely got closer that time," Bevel said, shaking her head while pointing to the edge of her glider where a small wisp of smoke rose.

"The rules were as close as possible without getting hit. That counts as a hit," Arizar replied evenly, though I could hear the warm undercurrent she often seemed to have when talking to Bevel. "We agreed that getting grazed meant we'd failed."

"That's barely a graze though," Bevel complained, though I could tell she was just arguing for the sake of it. The smile kinda gave it away.

"Either way, I think that if we measure it compared to our physical body, and not just our glider, we can agree that your Papa was the closest," Arizar said, laughing softly.

"Yep. That was scary Papa! I thought it'd got you," Bevel said, dropping her glider back into my wake while she looked it over, as if she'd spot some burn mark.

"It just looked like it since you were on the opposite side. I had almost two feet between me and the beam," I said, doing my best to hide my smile.

Encouraging Bevel to play this sort of game really didn't feel like the sort of thing a responsible parent should've done. Counterpoint was that we'd all gotten much better at avoiding the lasers, to the point we barely had to think about it by the time we'd finished our scouting and had turned it into a game.

"No, it was closer than that," Arizar said, drifting closer on the other side. "I had a perfect view. That couldn't have been more than six inches in front of you."

I gave my best theatrical sigh. "Fine, you caught me. Guess that means I win."

That earned me a laugh from Arizar and a protest from Bevel as she once more tried to argue that the singe mark didn't count since it had been the heat of the laser not the laser itself that had caused the damage.

Good winds and a good mood carried us onward. It took us almost two hours in flight before our next objective appeared on the horizon. A collection of peaks a hundred or so miles south of Cape Aeternia.

Somewhere in those mountains was a powerful Earth mana-well. Which led to interesting interactions with pretty much everything.

It certainly stood apart from the other mountains in the area. For one, it had an active rock slide that was in the process of sliding up the mountain. For another, there were several 'foothills' that were sort of floating there. Turned out, it hadn't been hard to find despite our lacking directions.

"So, explain to me, how does a strong Earth affinity lead to floating islands?" I asked Arizar.

"I've never studied the phenomenon in depth, but I believe it has something to do with an interaction with the high concentrations of lodestone in the area. The Earth mana magnifies its effects. I hadn't been aware it could be quire so powerful, however," Arizar said, consideration in her voice.

"Yeah, I could see how it might be useful," I said. We'd only just started rolling out rails across our territory. If we could use relatively cheap Earth materials to enchant our trains and their cars…

Could we skip straight to magnetic suspension?

Again, Bevel dived into the most dangerous part of the swirling chunks of earth and stone, weaving with the sort of grace that Calbern often displayed when… doing anything really.

The mana well was a strong one. And completely unclaimed, since building on an Earth mana well presented some rather unique challenges.

I was pretty sure those were the sorts of challenges that would attract people like the cadres of Shapers who'd come to visit. Since their arrival, I'd learned they weren't the sort to 'rough it' so they'd need someone else to bring a touch of civilization first. With the Earth mana-well sitting on the border of Nexxa's domain, building a settlement there would likely be a good idea, in the future.

I'd leave the details of that headache to my sister.

After the Earth well we moved on to a weaker fire well located inside Nexxa's borders further from the coast. It was in a volcanic region that Nexxa hadn't cleared yet. A healthy population of Inferno Drakes lazily objected to our presence, letting out the occasional gout of flame. Inertia would be happy to know we'd found another source of potential Forgehearts.

Bevel flitted about, with us chasing just behind, getting several new singe marks on each of our gliders, but nothing worse than that.

After a game of the-floor-is-actual-lava-tag we settled down for lunch on the rim of an active volcano that was sluggishly releasing a stream of lava over the far edge.

Between the cool breeze, a first Order heat specialized shield for each of us, and a Water Breathing spell for the smell, it was a very memorable, and not entirely unpleasant, place for a picnic.

We once more ended up spending much longer than we'd been planning to there. This time, we decided to test several new spell designs and their interactions with the ambient fire mana.

Fire was one of my most neglected affinities, though after watching Arizar release a Firebird spell that was capable of incinerating even one of the highly resistant Inferno Drakes, I was seriously considering expanding my repertoire.

It was only as the sun was setting that we realized we'd wasted the entire afternoon playing with spells.

Since our next destination was supposed to be safer - at least compared to a literally active volcano with fire-aligned beasts wading within - we decided to push on.

Halfway there, Bevel announced she'd successfully unlocked her second 2nd Order spell slot.

"Congratulations, Bevel. This trip has already proven its worth and we've barely started helping you with your palace spell," Arizar said, bringing her glider closer to tap Bevel's with the tip of her wing.

"Yeah, good work, kiddo," I added right after, mirroring the motion.

"Thanks Ari, thanks Papa," Bevel called back, managing to bump us both at once by blatantly cheating with her wind magic. "Maybe I'll be able to get my third slot too. Then we can all be Pegasus together. That'd be so fraying awesome."

"Yeah, yeah, that would," I agreed, chuckling softly, Arizar's own laughter carrying from the far side of our little wedge.

Half an hour later, we reached our destination for the night.

"Wait, what affinity was this again?" I asked as I admired the gleaming temple that sat atop a jutting overhang that sat at least a mile above the broken surface below.

"Lunar," Bevel replied as we circled. It was a much smaller mana-well, though the potency of the mana was incredible. Unfortunately, we'd need to design a new version of Mana Draw to make effective use of it. Lunar mana was infamously tricky to convert to anything other than Sun or Star mana. Something the three mana types shared.

It was possible, just not efficient.

"You know, I don't think I've even read any Lunar spells. What are they good at?"

"The most common are restful sleep spells. I personally had a Lunar mage attend me after my mother's…" Arizar trailed off, going silent for several seconds before clearing her throat. "That is, it encompasses most types of sleep or dream spell. It is also good for divination spells designed to pierce interference," Arizar said as we circled the abandoned temple. There wasn't even a sign of stairs that might have once led up to it.

"Did your father use a Lunar mage for scrying my territory?"

"Oh no, Lunar specialists are too rare to use for scrying a… well, such an unimportant backwater," Arizar almost sounded embarrassed by her choice of words.

"Fair description," I agreed, nodding, even though it was unlikely she'd see it.

We followed Bevel down to a flat area near the edge of the temple. There was a statue there, which had a plaque dedicating it to a Dragon-souled I'd never heard of.

"Kentel, patron of Theatre, Wine, Childless Sex and Spellcrafting," Arizar read off, her voice taking on a hint of amusement as she read. "That's an interesting combination. Quite the place for us to set camp."

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