“This. Is. Bullsh*t.”

Dathra, her youthful face set in a vitriolic scowl, spoke these words slowly and quietly, although nobody was near enough to her to hear anyway. The gorgeous, clear blue day had done little to improve her mood. In fact, she had rather hoped it would storm and perhaps ruin the day for everyone else, just as hers had been ruined even before it had dawned. Dathra stared down the hill where the rest of attendees were gathered, the soft breeze of the day lightly carrying the sounds of music and laughter back up at her. Her scowl, suitably, deepened.

Today should have been a glorious day. It was the day of the Innleachd Latha, the triennial fair and competition of inventors and inventions. All manner of would-be artificers, tinkerers, and contraptionists, sometimes from all over Xandroth, came to present their greatest achievements in the shade of Cnocùr. Or, at least, most of them were in the shade of the steep hill. Dathra, and a few others with no legitimate chance of winning, had been given spots on the hill itself, close enough to be counted as presenters, yet far enough away to avoid too much embarrassment to their clans.

Dathra bit her bottom lip as she fought off a wave of bitterness. This should have been her year. In truth, six years ago should have been her year, when she’d entered her first Innleachd Latha at the unheard-of age of sixteen. Nobody had ever entered before their eighteenth summer before her, and her clan, the lauded LocTierans, had exerted their influence to get her a booth near the center of faire. Unfortunately, her invention had been too brilliant for the judges to comprehend. It was a vast improvement on the contemporary thopter design, although it required a power source that did not yet exist. The judges had chided her for presenting a theoretical design instead of a working one, but it was hardly her fault that she didn’t have access to even the existing power crystals, let alone the hyper-advanced versions that would be needed for her idea to work.

Three years later, she entered her second Innleachd Latha, and this time, her clan offered her no special placement. Based upon her disappointing performance the first time, the judges had placed her much further from the center. This time, she came prepared with a working, scale model of her latest invention. Unfortunately, her latest invention was a Lava Flow Dam. The judges openly scoffed at the idea, noting that lava flows only existed on a few islands near the equator, and the dam would be impossible to build after a flow had started. They refused to even examine the scale model, and called the entire endeavor impractical.

Now Dathra was twenty-two years old, and all talk of her as the newest prodigy of the LocTieran clan had dried up. This year, she had been all but exiled to the top of the steep hill, where few people bothered to go. The judges, if she were lucky, would make the hike near the end of the day, long after they had realistically made up their minds about the winner. Her invention for this year didn’t matter. The judges had damned it from the moment she’d submitted her application. She would never win the coveting Conath Buinn, the top award of the Faire, at this rate.

Dathra took a break from staring bitterly out over the crowd below and refocused her attention on her submission for this year. To all outward eyes, it looked like a large piece of twisted metal. At each of the four corners, the device tapered down to legs that ended in a hollow hemisphere of steel. These held the main bulk of the device about a foot off the ground, which according to Dathra’s calculations was the perfect distance. The internal construction of the device was beyond complicated, and hidden by the smooth, metallic panels that made up the body. The top of the device featured a series of vents carefully aligned to direct the output into very specific directions.

“Fascinating design.”

The sudden voice made Dathra jump. She had not noticed anybody approach, although she rarely did. Granted, it was usually because she was engrossed in her designs or the actual building process, but she had never been particularly easily distracted. The man who had spoken to her was a plain sort of man, thin and wispy, with sandy blond hair that he had apparently not attempted to comb. He wore no beard, although his face was covered in a couple days’ worth of stubble, which seemed to grow in unevenly. All in all, Dathra was not impressed.

“You have no idea what you’re looking at,” Dathra said, allowing just a drop of venom to enter her voice.

The man chuckled. “You’d be surprised.”

“Not easily,” she replied.

The man cocked his eyebrows and nodded slightly at her. “Very well. If you won’t humor me, I’ll humor you. So what is it?”

Dathra sighed heavily. “It’s an energy converter.”

“Internal turbines?”

“Naturally.”

“Conversion rate?”

“Infinite.”

“That’s impossible.”

Dathra shrugged. “Well, for all intents and purposes.”

The man shook his head. “Even a perfect machine, if such a thing were to exist, couldn’t exceed one hundred percent. Basic laws of thermodynamics-”

“Laws are meant to be broken,” Dathra interrupted. The man visibly winced. “Well, maybe not broken,” she conceded. “But laws of man, laws of nature…” she trailed off, thinking. “They usually come down to wording.”

“Are you telling me that your device here can create energy out of nothing?”

“Not nothing,” Dathra said. “But it returns what it takes and makes something additional while doing so. I’m sure that doesn’t make any sense to you.”

“It can’t possibly return everything it takes.”

Dathra rolled her eyes. “Alright, fine. You really want to boil this down to semantics? Fine. The energy output isn’t strictly speaking, technically, infinite. But it would last for a hell of a lot longer than you or I will live. And if the source works the way I think it must-”

“And what is the source?”

Dathra stared at the man for a long moment, then simply shook her head. “Look, it doesn’t matter anyway. It’s all just theory, alright?”

The man looked from her over to the device and then back at her. “Theory?” He scratched his head. “Why build a working model for a theory?”

“The device isn’t a theory,” she answered back. “The source is.”

“Ah,” the man said. “So that’s why the judges aren’t fawning over it, then.”

“Look, if you came here to mock me, can you just do me a favor and piss off? It’s bad enough I need to hear crap from my peers. I don’t need to hear it from a talentless, uneducated passerby.”

The man stared at her for a long moment, before an amused smile began to slowly appear across his face. Dathra was just about to say something else when the man reached up to his neck and pulled out something that was hanging from it that had been tucked beneath his shirt. When it came into view, Dathra’s eyes grew wide. It was a large disc of gold with a some words inscribed on it, and although she could not read those words, she knew instantly what the disc was. This man had a Conath Buinn.

“Where the hell did you get that?” Dathra asked, incredulous.

“Here, naturally.”

“Bullsh*t,” she said. “I’d remember if you’d won three years ago, and you sure as hell didn’t win six years ago.”

The man laughed. “Indeed not. I’m afraid I won this long before your time.”

The red-headed inventor stared at the strange man, taking in his features as best she could. He was older than she was, to be sure, but not by nearly as much as his words insinuated. At most, he looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties, and she had never heard of anyone younger than twenty-two winning the award. It was part of why she had so wanted to win it herself.

“I don’t believe it,” Dathra said, mostly to herself.

“I don’t like to brag, but I am quite the accomplished inventor, in my own right. And I did not come to mock you, or your design.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I’ve been a fan of your work for some time. I thought your thopter redesign was quite clever, although I admit I was somewhat relieved that you didn’t win. Please don’t take that personally.”

“So, what, you’re some kind of stalker, then?”

“No, but I always watch the Innleachd Latha. So many brilliant minds, and I’m always on the lookout for the best of the best.”

“For what purpose?”

The man seemed to consider this question. “I want to say ‘to hire,’ although that is perhaps not the most accurate phrasing, especially knowing how you feel about semantics. Maybe ‘looking for an apprentice’ is more accurate.”

“Oh, really? And you’re such a master that people here would want to apprentice themselves to you?”

The man shrugged. “I’m talented, sure. But the people I work for have a far more staggering amount of talent and ability. We are always looking for people who can help us.”

“Well, I hate to disappoint you, but I won’t be winning the Conath Buinn this year, so you’re wasting your time here.”

“I said I was looking for the best of the best. That’s not necessarily the winner.”

“Isn’t the winner, by definition, the best of the best?”

“Semantics,” the man said. “The winner of this disc,” he said, indicating the award hanging around his neck, “is the one who the judges consider the best. But their view is often limited.”

“Like when they gave you the award,” Dathra challenged.

The man laughed and looked around, seemingly at nothing. He shifted his view back over to Dathra’s device. When he finally looked back at her, his expression had turned serious. “Miasma lakes.”

Dathra’s self-contented smile faded instantly, and her eyes widened. “How the hell did you know that?”

“Know what?” The man asked, although it was obviously more of a testing question than one of genuine curiosity.

“The source.”

“The more interesting question is what leads you to believe that such a thing exists?”

“It’s irrelevant if they exist or not,” Dathra said. “What matters is that this device would work if they existed.”

“And what makes you think that?”

“Because I designed it that way.”

“Have you travelled much around Xandroth?” The man asked.

“Very little,” Dathra admitted. “But that’s hardly the point.”

The man thought for a long moment, then nodded. “I suppose not. But then again, what is the point of a device that you cannot prove works?”

“I don’t need to prove it works,” Dathra said, narrowing her eyes slightly. “I know it works. And if miasma lakes existed, this device could supply nearly endless energy, until whatever produced the miasma ran out, which, to my earlier point, would be far longer than a lifetime.”

“Tell me something, Dathra,” the man said. “Are you a betting woman?”

She noted that he clearly knew her name, although if he had been following her Innleachd Latha career since her first entry, that only made sense. “I am the greatest inventor in the history of the LocTieran clan,” Dathra said, “and instead of sure-winning designs, I submitted theoretical ones. What do you think?”

“The greatest, you say? What about Conath LocTieran? Isn’t he the one this award is named after?”

“Conath lived some four hundred years ago. Even thopters would have mystified the judges of the Innleachd Latha in those days, and I built my first model thopter at six and a half years old! Does anyone even know what he did to earn his award?”

“He created this hill.”

“He…what?”

The man smiled. “This hill. It’s called Cnocùr, isn’t it? Haven’t you ever wondered why this place is called ‘the new hill’ in the old language?”

Dathra paused. She hadn’t. If the man’s statement were true… Dathra shook her head. “Anyway, yes. I’m a betting woman. Why?”

The man stroked his chin. “Because I would like to make a bet with you. I bet that I can prove that your device works.”

“I told you. I know it works.”

“No. You believe it works. Until you prove it, it means nothing.”

“No,” Dathra said through clenched teeth. “I know it works. And anyway, you can’t prove it works. It needs a miasma lake to work, and they don’t exist.”

“And what if I could prove that they do exist?”

“That’s a bad bet for me,” Dathra said. “You can’t prove a negative. You would need to cover every square mile of Xandroth, and then somehow prove to me that you had done so.”

“Then what if we put a timeframe on it?” The man asked. “Within one day, I can prove to you that miasma lakes do exist, and in doing so, prove that your device works.”

“That bet is much more in my favor. So, what are the stakes?”

“I have already told you what I’m looking for. I want an apprentice. So that is my half of the wager. If I win, you join me and the organization I represent.”

“And if I win?”

The man shrugged. “I named my prize,” he said. “It would only be fair if I let you name yours.”

“True,” Dathra said, and then thought for a moment. Then her eyes glittered briefly, and she smiled. She pointed at him. “I want that.”

The man held up his Conath Buinn. “This?”

Dathra nodded. “If these judges are never going to give me my own, then taking yours is the only way I’ll get one. Do we have a wager?”

She expected the man to back down, or at least hesitate, but he didn’t. “It’s a bet,” he said. Then, very thoughtfully, he walked over to her device and gently laid his hands on it. Dathra just watched him, a confused look pasted across her face. He stood there for longer than was comfortable. As the moments dragged on, Dathra stared getting bored again, and was just about to say something when the man opened his eyes and turned back to her.

“Really, it is a fascinating design. Anyway, let’s go.”

“Go?” Dathra asked. “Go where?”

“We have a bet, don’t we? We may as well get to it.”

“How the hell do you plan to-”

Before she could finish her sentence, the man started to move his hands in a complex pattern, which confused Dathra into silence. After a few seconds, there was a sudden pop of rushing air, and in the open space on the top of Cnocùr, a small, two-person thopter appeared out of nowhere. Dathra nearly tumbled off the stool she had been sitting on, both due to the impossible appearance of something that was most certainly not there beforehand because she immediately recognized the design. It was the same one she had submitted in her first Innleachd Latha. The only difference was that hers had been a theoretical model. This one was actually there.

It was rare that Dathra was ever at a loss for words, but she was now. At the back of the thopter was the recess she had designed, but of course, in her scale model, there had been nothing to fill that recess. In this one, though, there was a large crystal set there, which was glowing a dull red in the bright noon sun. Dathra did not know precisely what the crystal was, but she could guess. She had designed the thopter to use a power source that had not yet been invented. Apparently, now, it had.

“Get in,” the man said, and Dathra was surprised to see that he had already climbed into the pilot’s seat. “We have a long way to go.”

“What makes you think this thing will even work?”

The man smiled. “You designed it, didn’t you? I would think you would know whether it would work or not.”

Dathra knew a challenge when she heard one. She briefly wondered if it was a good idea to go along with this stranger, but two realizations told her it didn’t truly matter. The first was that, if he were capable of summoning a thoper out of nothing, he was likely powerful enough to force her if he wanted to. The second was that he was offering her a chance to fly in her own design, a chance to prove that the judges of her first Innleachd Latha had been wrong and she, as she knew she was, had been right. Without another thought, she climbed into the seat behind the strange man.

The thopter roared to life, and the wings began to flap gently, propelling the vehicle across the grass. The man steered toward the steep drop-off of the hill and Dathra’s breath caught in her throat as the thopter plummeted over the side, only to then almost instantly correct itself. The man banked and gained elevation, and a few moments later, they were flying southward well over the sprawling hills below. Dathra had never flown before. Despite having worked on the thopter design in her teens, she had never had the opportunity to actually fly in one. She found herself falling in love with the feeling, the wind in her face and the freedom surrounding her. It was the most amazing feeling she had ever felt.

They flew southward for hours, and they were moving much faster than a conventional thopter could, although that did not surprise Dathra. Her calculations had told her that this design, with an adequate power source, would do just that. But still, it surprised Dathra just how travelling at that speed felt. It also surprised her how easily she and the man could converse. The roar of the thopter and the rush of the wind around it should have made conversation virtually impossible, but the two talked easily, mostly about the design choices of the thopter and of Dathra’s other inventions that she had not submitted to the Innleachd Latha.

Eventually, the man’s demeanor seemed to change. He grew more serious, more focused, and less talkative. Dathra took a moment, then just nodded.

“We’re almost there, I take it?”

“Almost where?” The man asked, although there was no true curiosity in his voice.

“The wherever it is you’re taking me, obviously.”

The man paused, and if Dathra guessed, he seemed to be choosing his words. “If everything goes well, we have two stops. But yes, we are nearing the first one.” He pulled one of the thopter’s levers, which the young inventress immediately recognized as the one used to decelerate the craft. The thopter began to slow, and after a minute or two, the man pointed straight ahead of them.

They had been flying over the ocean for some time, and in the direction he was indicating, Dathra could just make out a break in the endless waves. She was just about to ask what it was when the man handed her a spyglass. Without a word, she accepted it, and peered through the telescopic glass at the mass in the ocean. As her eyes focused on it, her breath left her in an audible gasp.

Through the spyglass, Dathra saw a large, volcanic island, and from near the center of the island, moving toward the water, was a massive lava flow. In it’s way, however, was a massive lava flow dam, the design of which she recognized instantly. Like the thopter in which they rode, it was her design. It was a large-scale version of the work she had submitted at the Innleachd Latha three years earlier. And just as she had envisioned it, the lava was being funneled through the central chute. The power that must have been pouring through that structure!

“You are a genius, Dathra, but you already know that,” the man said suddenly. “I can appreciate how confident you are in your designs, and from what I’ve seen, you have good reason to be. But ultimately, your designs mean nothing until they’ve been tested.”

“How the hell did you do this?” Dathra asked. “That dam…it would have had to have been built before the eruption, but to do that, you would have had to know-”

“We built the dam first, and then we triggered the eruption. We directed the flow to the dam specifically because we wanted to test it.”

“That’s impossible.”

“And yet, there it is,” the man said. “And the energy output is immense, as you likely suspect.”

“But there’s nothing in the world that could use that kind of power!” Dathra insisted. “That’s why it’s theory! All that energy, wasted.”

“Hardly,” the man said with a slight smirk. “How do you think I got the crystal to power this thopter?”

“But-”

“There’s no time for debate, I’m afraid,” the man interrupted. “I’ve tested your hypotheses, and now, unfortunately, it’s time to test mine.”

“Yours?” Dathra asked. “What do you mean?”

The man looked at her, and although she was not nearly as talented at reading people as she was at reading blueprints, she noted a distinct sadness in his eyes. Then, without a word to her, the man reached down and removed something from the thopter’s lever array. He held it up to show her. “I assume you know what this is.”

Dathra’s eyes widened as she recognized it. “That’s the steering pin! What the hell are you doing? Without that, we can’t-”

Before she could finish, the man reached over and dropped the pin into the ocean below them. Dathra screamed and made a lunge for it, but it was far too late. “You maniac!” She yelled. “Now we can’t change course! You realize that means we can’t land, right?”

“In a minute or two, that won’t matter,” the man said, then indicated in front of them again. Dathra suddenly realized that the thopter was not flying level. It was pointed slightly downward, aimed directly at the damn. “Surely, you must realize that the crystal powering this thopter, infused with the power harnessed from your lava flow dam, is incredibly volatile. You designed the dam to withstand incredible heat, but you did mention in your design notes that is would be susceptible to a powerful enough explosion.”

“You’re going to kill us both!”

“And destroy any evidence that your designs for the Innleachd Latha actually worked. I wonder which is worse to you.”

“What is wrong with you?” Dathra said, her panic building. “Why the hell are you doing this?”

“To test a theory.”

“A theory! You’re going to get us both killed for some damn theory? Tell me you have another pin. You must, right? This is some kind of joke, isn’t it?”

“I have no other pin, and I’ve already taken the precaution to prevent any jury-rigging to fix it. Your thopter will crash into your dam any minute. What are you going to do about it?”

Dathra looked around frantically, but there was nothing there, nothing to use. “I’ll kill you. I’ll-”

“And what will that accomplish?” The man asked. “Killing me won’t help you avert the thopter, and as far as you know, I’ll die when we crash anyway. You’re wasting your time, and you have so little left.”

Dathra was finding it difficult to breathe. The dam was getting close by the moment, and she had no ideas. Nothing made sense. This man was insane, and he was about to get them both killed. There was no way out, apart from jumping out of the thopter to the ocean below, but the fall would kill her just as much as the explosion would. She tried to think of anything, anything that would make sense and get her out of this.

Suddenly, the man’s voice sounded again, but this time it was soft, almost caring, despite the situation he had put her in. “Come on, Dathra. You specialize in this. You designed a thopter that can’t be built. You invented a dam that can’t be constructed. You created an energy converter that requires a geographical feature that doesn’t exist anywhere in the world. Your expertise is literally in doing the impossible. So do it.”

Dathra tried, but nothing came to her. The only thing getting close was the dam, and her imminent death. She felt her muscles starting to lock up, and she found it nearly impossible to force the air through her throat. Tears began welling in her eyes as she thought about how young she was, how much she had failed to accomplish, and how little time there was left to her. She was going to die, an eternal disappointment to the LocTieran clan. It was almost too much for her to take.

“Dathra, listen to me,” the man said, his tone soft and altogether too much like her father’s. “My name is Conath. Conath LocTieran. Look at my Buinn.” He held up is award, and Dathra could not help but waste a few of her fleeting remaining moments to look it over carefully. Unlike the other Conath Buinns she had seen in her time, this one did not say “Conath.” It said “Innleachd Buinn.”

Dathra was confused. They had not been called that in centuries. Not since…

“I won this some four hundred years ago. I am Conath LocTieran. And Dathra?” He paused, meaningfully. “I believe in you.”

Suddenly, her muscles seemed to relax. She had never heard anyone say that to her before. Even six years ago, when her clan tried to give her an edge at the Faire, none of them had ever said they believed in her. The LocTieran clan was a clan of inventors, and had been since Conath’s time, all trying to match his achievements. To hear someone, who claimed to be a LocTieran, who claimed to be Conath himself, say that he believed in here? That meant more than she ever imagined it would mean.

“You specialize in the impossible, Dathra,” Conath said. “Now do it.”

Dathra looked into his blue eyes, and something inside her seemed to click into place. She looked forward, seeing the dam just a few second away. But Dathra was suddenly calm. And although she had no idea how she did it, she did the impossible. Just before her thopter crashed into her dam, Dathra left Xandroth behind.

Dathra LocTieran prided herself on her understanding. She was intelligent, brilliant, even, and she had always had an intuitive grasp of nearly everything she attempted. That was not the case now. She had no idea or understanding of what she was experiencing. Her best assumption was that she were dead, because if she felt anything it would best be described as being surrounded by nothingness. But Dathra was, as Conath had noted, supremely confident in her own ability. She had tried to escape her world, and she therefore must have succeeded. If that were true, she could not be dead.

She wandered through the nothingness for a time, although time was not the right word, because time had no meaning. She tried to find some explanation, some description, for what was happening. The best she could come up with was a spark of energy, travelling along infinite pathways that twisted and turned, knotting back on themselves and then jutting outward again until she was completely lost in the pathways she was haphazardly trying to follow.

Suddenly, she became aware of another spark, following and overtaking her in her endless trek. This other bead of energy came close to her, although proximity had little meaning in this reality. Still, this other spark seemed to signal to her. To Dathra’s perception, it would dart close, then leap away. This happened again and again until Dathra decided to try to follow it. Once she did, the other spark lead her on a long, twisted route, but somehow, she felt like it knew where it was going. Then, they came up to a large glow, although vision was not real in this place. But the glow seemed to pull her in. At first she was afraid, but the other spark entered the glow without reservation, and so, Dathra followed.

It was an exceedingly strange sensation, feeling her body reform itself. When her senses returned to her, she saw the man, apparently Conath LocTieran, standing there waiting for her.

“What…” Dathra began, then stopped as she struggled to breathe. The air in this place was thick, almost toxic.

“In time, you’ll learn that you don’t need to breathe anymore,” Conath said. “You are beyond the concerns of ordinary mortals now.”

Dathra collected herself, and then spoke, trying to force the burning in her lungs away. “What did you do to me?”

“I awakened you. Most of our kind refer to it as ‘igniting the spark,’ but we will have time enough for explanations later. All you need to know right now is that you are a planeswalker, as I suspected. There are many worlds out there, and Xandroth, our home plane, is only one in a vast sea. Planeswalkers are those who can ‘walk between them.”

“So that was your ‘theory,’ then? You didn’t know that I was a planeswalker?”

“No with certainty, no.”

“And what would have happened if you were wrong?”

“You would have died in the crash.”

Dathra scoffed. “You mean to tell me that you were willing to risk my life on the chance that I was one of these ‘planeswalkers?’”

“I knew I was right,” he said.

“This. Is. Bullsh*t!”

Conath shrugged. “As I said, I’ve been a fan of your work for quite a while. The planeswalker’s spark, even unignited, lends itself to extraordinary talent. I’ve been watching the Innleachd Latha for nearly as long as I’ve been a planeswalker, watching for those glimpses of brilliance that might indicate a spark. Considering all of your inventions hinted at things beyond your experience, and in the case of the converter, beyond the experience of Xandroth. Your spark’s been whispering hidden truths to you for a long time, Dathra.”

The younger LocTieran tried to make sense of everything the older was saying, but something so monumental was going to take time. Instead, she just looked around the strange world on which she found herself. “Where are we?”

“This plane is known as Jad. Few live here, and fewer still visit.”

“Then why did you lead me here?”

Conath laughed lightly. “I would have thought that would be obvious. We still have a wager, don’t we?”

He gestured behind him, and Dathra’s jaw dropped open as she saw, in reality, what she had only ever imagined in theory. They were standing on what could only be described as the shore of a vast miasma lake. As far as she could see, it looked as though some great being had emptied out a lake of water, and in its place put in swirling and steaming gases. These fumes seemed to roil and churn from some from some agitation hidden beneath the mists, and as the gasses billowed upward, they would roll back down again in an infinite ebb and flow.

Conath moved his hands in another complex pattern, and after a moment, Dathra’s miasma converter appeared in the air with the same rush of air that the thopter had back on Xandroth. With a motion of his hands, Conath willed the device to float over and onto the lake. For just a moment, Dathra’s confidence nearly failed her as she dreaded the moment he released whatever magic grasp he had on it. But, as usual, she needn’t have worried. As Conath released his telekinetic hold, the artifact dipped downward, but the metal hemispheres on each of the four feet caught the gas, and the device began to bob up and down, as if on water.

As the miasma churned beneath the converter, the device came to life, as the internal turbines began to whirl with just a slight hum. Despite herself, Dathra grinned to see her device work so smoothly.

“You know,” she said. “It’s not going to do much without something to collect all the energy it will produce.”

Conath nodded. “I know. But we can work on that.”

“We?” Dathra asked.

“Of course,” Conath said with a smile. “After all, I won our bet didn’t I. I’ve proven that miasma lakes exist, and that your device works. You agreed to be my apprentice, remember?”

“I already knew my device would work.”

“You still took the bet.”

Dathra thought for a long time. Things, obviously, had changed a lot for her since she made that bet, even if it had been just a few hours earlier. She was, as always, supremely confident. She didn’t need to apprentice herself to Conath or to anyone. However, Conath did have knowledge she didn’t have, and he seemed capable of teaching it, even if his method to ignite her spark wasn’t exactly her favorite experiment. Still, the chance to work with the famous Conath LocTieran, and maybe to someday prove she was a greater inventor than he, was too tempting to pass up.

“Very well. I’ll honor my bet, for a while, at least. But don’t get any ideas of me calling you ‘master’ or anything like that.”

Conath laughed. “Don’t worry about that. Our organization already has one of those.”

“What do you mean?”

Conath shrugged. “You’ll find out soon. In the meantime, though, Dathra LocTieran? Welcome to the Dominia Cabal.”