“What?” I ask.

“The spell circle!” Noli points to the spell book, still open to the Core Bond instructions. “It’s right there. Let’s copy it.”

“But no chalk,” I sign, stumbling through the movements of the last word. I’ve caught Noli signing it a few times now, but she still moves too quickly for me to replicate on the fly.

“Yeah, we don’t have the magic chalk,” Noli agrees. “But if we get it all drawn out first, then that means Attiru could trace it faster with the null chalk once they get it, right?”

Or I could trace it with my Attuned void—a thought I quickly put out of mind. I’m not fully on board with this idea. Neither of us have opposable thumbs. Noli can’t move. I have broken legs. What does she expect us to do? “We need wizard help.”

“Kanin, you are a wizard,” Noli signs. “You can shape glass like it’s taffy. That’s magic. And anyway,” she adds. “If Attiru doesn’t find anyone who can help, I don’t want to be stuck with no fallbacks. If they do find someone, great. If they don’t, we’ll have to hope they can find that chalk—and then we’ll be prepared to take matters into our own hands.”

The idea makes me nervous. What happens if you botch a spell like this? Trenevalt did, and look where we ended up. Not to mention he was an experienced wizard. I’m just… me.

But she’s right that it beats sitting around hoping for someone to save us. It can’t hurt to be prepared, and I guess there’s no risk if we’re just drawing stuff with normal chalk. No magic, and certainly no void. I guess, if nothing else, it’s worth a shot.

I roll back over to the book and look at the spell circle. The pattern wouldn’t be too complicated with hands, but we lack those. Start simple, I guess.

I tap the outside circle. “This first.”

“Oh, I have an idea for that,” Noli signs. She points over at Attiru’s bag, sitting on the chair next to our desk. “In there. Attiru’s got some map supplies they brought along—I guess it’s hard for them to step away from work. There should be some twine. Can you get it?”

I spend a moment thinking through how I’ll get down there, before recalling that I don’t actually need to. With my increased range, I send my signing glass down and flip open the flap.

“Oh, wow,” Noli signs. “Your magic’s gotten stronger!”

The compliment sours in my gut. That might be true, but the cost of two lives will never have been worth it.

I feel around blindly in the bag before my glass snags on some twine, and I pull the roll of string out.

“Hand it here.” Noli takes it, tugging a few of the loose ends out. “Now put a piece of glass down here.” I obey, and she begins to tie the string around my glass. It takes some time, given a general lack of fingers, but I help as much as I can with my other pieces of glass, nudging the string around and threading it through. Noli points to the chalk. “That next.”

I think I see where she’s going with this. “How big?” I ask.

Noli hesitates as she’s unwinding more of the twine. “Good question. I don’t know. You’re the wizard.”

It feels weird for her to defer to my expertise on anything. I’ve been doing magic for less than a month. I don’t even understand what it is I’m doing half the time. But I guess in this one case, I might know more than her. I head back over to the spell book to reread the instructions.

Focusing on the first item of the checklist I had Echo make, I’m rewarded with a visual of the spell circle I need to draw—and the dimensions. A little crowded for the desk.

“Give it to me,” I sign, asking for the string. I don’t know how to sign units yet, so I’ll just do the measuring and cutting. Noli hands over the string, and I unwind about a foot and a half of it, using a broken edge of my glass to saw through the end. I hope the circle doesn’t have to be exact. The spell book did mention you could scale it, though what that means for the magic requirements or any other adjustments I’d have to make, I have no idea. I’ll just have to hope this is close enough.

Noli ties the other end of the string to the piece of chalk.

Great. My tools are ready. Now I just have to get down to the floor.

Which normally wouldn’t be an issue, but with nonfunctional legs, I’m not seeing how that’s happening.

Void Check.

[Void: 54%]

I’m already nervous about how high it is. But if I want to get down there, if I stand a chance at making that circle, I’ll need to be mobile. Reluctantly, I call a few of my glass fragments over and activate Sculpt. It only takes a minute to fix my broken legs, but…

[Void: 60%]

What’s done is done, I guess.

Ready to descend, I stab the glass with the string into the top of the table, then grab the rest of the string, loop it through my leg harness, and start climbing down the table. I use the string mostly as a backup, trying not to put too much weight on it, as I climb down the back of the chair, over Attiru’s backpack, and onto the seat. Now it’s only a two-foot fall to the floor: probably not lethal. I unhook the glass with the string attached to it, re-secure it on the base of the chair, and continue my pseudo-rappelling to the floor. Hey, I’m not too bad at this. Maybe that Climbing skill is finally paying off.

The room is small, but empty: I’ve got at least a three-foot span of space to work with.

Noli watches from her perch. “Move a bit to the left! No, sorry, I mean my left. Your right. Good! Now a little forward… okay there! That should be good.”

I stab the string-tied glass into the floor, then grab the opposite end, tied to the chalk, and pull the string taut. Following the chalk to stay within range, I start to trace out the circle.

It takes a couple false starts. Once, when I’m not concentrating on it, the middle piece of glass pops out of the wood, causing the chalk to veer off course and add a zig-zag to the circle. I do my best to brush it away, but that’s easier said than done when your only eraser is made of glass. It goes smoother after that, although the chalk marking is barely visible against the wood floor. I can’t press down with much force, so I end up going around the circle five times to make the chalk noticeable.

“Great job!” Noli signs. “Now for the next one.”

Ugh. She doesn’t need to tell me. I consult the diagram, spin the middle piece of glass to wind up the string and shorten it a few inches, then repeat the process.

There’s four main circles to draw altogether, and I finish each one faster than the last. But that was the easy part.

Next are all the cross-hatches. There’s a main shape, like a ten-pointed star, but there’s more lines and smaller circles off-shooting from the primary design. I feel a headache coming on. This looks like math.

Noli also seems stumped. “Hmm, maybe we guess at the spacing and put some initial marks down, then erase them if they look too far apart and shuffle them around that way?”

I guess it’s an idea. But I haven’t been great at erasing the chalk so far. Wait—what am I thinking? I’ve got better options than that.

“String,” I sign back up at Noli. “Drop here.”

Instead of asking why, Noli drags herself away from the edge. She’s gone for a minute, and I cringe at how much effort just that simple task is taking her. Then she reappears at the edge. “I promise not to drop things on you this time!” She rolls the string off the desk, and it tumbles to the floor nearby.

“Thanks!” I unknot the twine and begin to stretch it out. Grabbing the end with one piece of glass, I spread the rest of my signing glass around the circle, sticking ten of them down as equal distance from each other as I can manage. Checking the diagram once more, I start to wind the string around the design.

“Oooh!” Noli claps her arms together in excitement. “Great idea! But that one on the left is a little off. It needs to move closer to the one on its right. No, not that piece of glass, the other one. No, the other one. No, the other one. Yeah! That one. Okay. So nudge it a little to the right…”

With Noli’s bird-eye view and the string to guide where I’ll be drawing with the chalk, we start to get all the angles right. I keep making tiny adjustments, walking around the circle to check every perspective, as Noli continues to shout encouragement and directions from above. Finally, we both think it’s as close to the diagram as I can make it. I pick up the chalk and start tracing it out.

It takes a long time. I have to go over each line half a dozen times, and it seems like there are always more shapes to trace. Luckily, they all seem to be circles or straight lines, both of which I can manage with the string. But it still takes me all day to get the simple three-foot circle drawn to completion. At least, I hope it’s to completion.

The sun is setting when I’m done, filling the room with long, slanted shadows. I’m mentally exhausted, my mind buzzing with lines and angles. Physically, though, I have enough strength; I don’t seem to experience physical exhaustion at all. Wearily, I make my way back up to Noli.

“Isn’t it grand?” she says, still looking off the edge of the desk.

I carefully step up beside her. It is impressive. It looks, dare I say, professional. Not to mention, it feels good to be productive. Now if Attiru does bring a wizard or some magic chalk back, it should be quick work to trace our circle and renew our spell. We’re so close.

Attiru, however, still hasn’t returned. It’s almost nightfall, and we haven’t heard a peep. I guess there’s nothing we can do but wait for them to get back, but it still makes me nervous. I check Trenevalt’s beads, and my soul skips: There’s only one bead left lit.

But how much time is that really? When will that last bead go out? Do we have a full day? Under?

Echo, can you Check the mana sustaining our Core Bond spell? I ask.

Numbers pop up over Noli’s head. [Mana: 31]

I rack my brain, trying to remember how much I’d seen before. It was back when I first learned about these spells. What was that, two weeks ago? How much mana had been sustaining our spells then? It was at least 700, I think. I know it was way more mana than I could use at that time. 31 sounds worryingly low. Even as I watch, it ticks down to 30.

Nervous static crawls through me as I stare at the number, waiting for it to move again. It doesn’t—for now. But if it was 700 two weeks ago, and it’s 30 now…

“Kanin?” Noli asks as I head over to her board and grab a piece of chalk.

I was never great at math, but I think I can still work out some long division. Noli peers curiously over my shoulders as I painstakingly write out the numbers and divide my guess at the mana by fourteen days.

“What language is that?” Noli wonders. “I’ve never seen those symbols before.”

Shhh, I am trying to keep track of numbers.

“One of these days I’m going to teach you enough words so you can explain all this to me,” she adds.

I don’t reply because I’ve just finished the calculation. I drop the chalk as dread seeps through me.

50. The spell drops 50 points of mana per day. Which means we can’t wait until tomorrow for Attiru to get back.

In fact, we’ll barely make it through morning.