We emerge from the forest within half an hour. The view doesn’t really improve, though, because now instead of being surrounded by trees we’re surrounded by the foothills of what must be the Leoswell Mountain Range.

The road also finally deigns to recognize the existence of terrain, albeit in the least sane way possible—the engineers that were “responsible” for the project decided to bore tunnels straight through any hills that were too sharp to summit. I don’t know enough about tunnels to know how impressive these examples are, but I have a feeling that their sheer size puts their construction far beyond of any of Earth’s medieval civilizations. They’re tall and wide enough to admit the wagons, which are noticeably bigger than a big car, and in some places are a quarter-mile long. I do wonder how they get air to circulate reliably in tunnels that long; maybe the wagon caravans move so quickly that they blow out any accumulations of problematic gases?

We also cross a number of bridges, spanning rivers and narrow valleys that would require the road to descend too far. These I mostly expected, as I’ve seen pictures of soaring Roman aqueducts and similarly huge bridges from other ancient cultures.

The mountains themselves dominate the view to the north, on my right. There’s not a lot to say about them. They’re huge, they’re made of rock, there’s a ton of snow on top of them. They’re mountains. If we were up on one of the ridge-crests I might be able to see further to the south, but because we’re mostly down in the valleys, all I see are more foothills. Also, being out of a forest doesn’t mean that there aren’t any trees. It’s just that they’re not so oppressively dense.

Over the course of the next few hours we rise into, then descend from the foothills. We never see snow, but we do get within maybe a thousand feet of the treeline. It must be a relatively warm part of the year. Or, well, a relatively warm part of the weather cycle.

The air changes, becoming colder and much more dry. I didn’t think we were gaining that much altitude, but that might just be because I’m not used to roads that occasionally go straight up or down hillsides. There might also be some kind of rain shadow type effect going on, but that would depend on weather making any sense at all on this ludicrous plane.

The view does open up at one point, revealing the landscape to the south. More of Bascroft Forest, then grassland, then patchy farms that blur together and are eventually hidden behind hills. In the distance I can see more mountains, which I recognize must be just as tall as that ones we’re next to but look strangely tiny. For some reason it feels like the landscape is curling up to fall on me. I know it’s because I’m used to a curved planet and without that curve my brain is over-correcting, but it still hurts my eyes. Then we plunge back into another forest. Its selection of trees might be a tiny bit different and it has marginally less moss, but overall it’s pretty much the same as the last forest we were in.

Most of my attention is dedicated to learning Stall. I need to be able to cast it reliably before I can start miscasting it scientifically, after all.

Learning somatic components is starting to become almost meditative. It’s nice. All I have to do is pay attention to how my hands are moving, whether I’m producing shapes that look useful, whether I’m getting the checksums correct. None of those tasks require any particular brainpower, so I can just focus on my hands and on the spell and not worry about anything else.

I think I have the spell down when we stop for lunch. Its most difficult parts are entirely shared with Make Ready, which I’m well on my way to memorizing.

Lunch is also the same as it was last time, a pile of sandwiches already prepared and handed up to the wagon by a friendly tavernkeep. This time I get something like a BLT. Thick, juicy tomato slices, crispy bacon, something green and fresh and vaguely lettuce-like, and a bit of good fresh mayo. I am entirely happy with this.

Liv takes the opportunity to catch my attention. “Feeling any better, Whitney?”

“Mmph,” I say, having just shoved three inches of sandwich into my mouth in an attempt to keep a half-eaten slice of tomato from dribbling. I hold up a finger to buy time. “A little bit,” I eventually manage. “Acute symptoms are over, but I’m still pretty off-balance.”

“How so?”

“Not exactly sure,” I say, and take another bite of my sandwich. “Like, keeping an eye on how I’m thinking is a professional skill and I have a lot of practice, but this is unusual enough that all I can tell is that I’m thinking weird, not why or how exactly. It’s kind of really bothering me. If I don’t know what’s giving me trouble I can’t fix it.”

Liv nods and motions with her sandwich, encouraging me to elaborate.

“I had a plan for what I was going to do this morning, then completely changed it about five minutes after that thing attacked us,” I admit. “I’m pretty sure that the plan I came up with this morning wasn’t great either. I don’t think I ever sat down and really thought about the implications of Shield for One.”

“But we did go over it last night,” Liv says curiously. “We tested it, did some exercises, and decided that it was worth practicing with even with its limitations.”

“Not its direct utility,” I disagree. “What it means for the kinds of effects I can produce and what types of spells I should be shooting for. For example, I should try to focus all of that force down to a single cutting edge,” I slash my un-sandwiched hand through the air to illustrate the principle. “I casually threw Heather twenty feet by accident; if I put the same force into a one-micrometer-by-one-meter area I bet I could go straight through solid steel.” I see that Liv is confused and realize I’ve used units that she probably has no idea about. “Uh, one one-millionth of a yard by one yard, total area about uh, a hundredth of a square centimeter but thirty-six inches instead of a hundred cm so ten sq cm per sq in so div ten, one thousandth of a square inch. Couple hundred pounds on that, that’s enough pressure to make anything get out of the way.” Liv’s eyebrows go up, but I just grimace. “Eh, something about that math feels wrong, I’m doing it off the top of my head. Long story short, I should be able to bisect anything within a couple orders of magnitude of my durability. It’d be wildly overpowered compared to everything else I’ve seen, and it’d be easy.”

Liv looks skeptical. “It’d take you, what, ten seconds to cast? Ask Agnes to show you what she can do if she gets ten seconds to wind up,” she counters. “Or Ji, I know he has at least one attack that he can charge up.”

“I suppose?” I consider. “But I’m not actually sure it’d take me ten seconds. Ready that instead of a shield, if nothing else. And cutting buildings in half is just the start. Force without reaction is flight. Well,” I ramble, “if I’d trust any of my code in a fail-deadly application like magical flight. I could accelerate a ball bearing until it’d go through a concrete pillar. I could just reach into someone and pinch their neck closed. Make a box and cut off their air. Just… make two shields inside them, pointing in opposite directions to tear them in half. And where is the energy coming from!?” I realize I’ve forgotten about my sandwich and take my frustrations out on it. Tomato and bacon soothes the hungry beast.

“And?” Liv asks. “I’ve seen good spellcasters do all of those things. You’re not here to fight fair or fistfight zombies. You’re here to do the things we can’t do.” She looks at me seriously. “And yes, finding traps for us was only the start. Heather is hoping you’ll be able to fly us between cities, level buildings, and kill things that’re too fast for Agnes and too armored for me. We don’t need those things often, but when we do…”

I shudder. “I suppose.”

“But I think we’ve gotten off topic anyway. You feel like you’re too off-balance to think, and your evidence is that you’re, what, not fully following the implications of your magic?” Liv nudges my shoulder playfully. “Between exercise, sleep, breakfast, and that cat, you’ve had maybe fifteen minutes to think since then. And you’ve not been sleeping well, which is entirely as expected for a new environment like this. Despite all that, you’re still able to casually reel off five different major workings that your shield could lead to, and you say it’d be easy.”

“Oh. I’d forgotten about the sleep thing,” I mutter. “That’d explain at least a little bit of it.”

“I’m not going to say you’re doing fine,” Liv says. “But I think that you’re doing better than you think you are.” She smiles. “You got your shield up impressively quickly this morning.”

“I suppose I can be proud of that.”

“And you’re handling it way better than you did the last two combat situations,” Liv points out. “Having plans and reflexes make you more able to act instead of panicking, and acting is far less stressful.”

“True,” I muse. “Thanks,” I say, and dig back into my sandwich. Liv gives me a reassuring pat on the shoulder and heads back to the front of the cart as we set off.

Ten minutes later, I realize that I’m completely roadblocked until we stop moving. I can’t help but laugh. It’s the stupidest blocker ever.

I manage to cast a Stalled Belighten… and it instantly flies out of reach and out of view of Read Mana, fixed to the world, which we’re moving past at thirty miles an hour courtesy of Chase and Mas, siege engineer carters. And I’ve already established that I can’t see the mana flows in operation in Make Ready because they don’t activate until I’ve stopped casting, which dispels Read Mana! So I can’t inspect the two spells I care about at all. I could continue to make attempts, but I feel like it’s not worth the time or effort. I guess it’s back to learning Firestream and Farpunch.

Which, now that I think about it, I bet that Farpunch is basically what I’d get if I did try to turn Shield for One into a one-hit-KO spell for newbies.

I am such an idiot, wow.

I can’t wait until I can get rid of this janky somatic-component casting system and find a way to make spell matrices and mana generators using spellcraft. The instant I can do that I can just cast a spell that casts my spells for me and it’ll be so much better.

Aaaaaaaaaargh.