Erin, Sigrid and Liam agreed that doing some training with their magic was in their best interests, and so Erin marched once more through snow covered forest until they came to a clearing, the village well out of sight.

“What spells do you have, Liam?” Sigrid was asking.

“Just one so far.” He answered, and Erin turned to look at him.

“We’ll have to do something about that. Though I imagine lucking our way into three more Spell Runes might take a while.” Sigrid nodded before turning back to Liam.

“So what is it, your spell I mean?” Rather than answer, Liam held out his hand and Erin watched those shifting runes fade into existence all across his exposed skin. A sudden crunching noise accompanied a small pillar of stone rising from the ground in front of Liam's hand.

“An Earth spell.” Erin said, moving closer. “How do you fight with it?”

Liam turned his hand so that his palm was facing up and he curled his middle finger back, hooking it under this thumb and then he made a flicking motion. With barely a sound, a spear of stone shot out from beneath the snow, sticking out of the ground at an angle where it would’ve taken a person directly in the stomach.

Or a qek square in the face. Erin thought.

“What’s that with the flicking?” She asked, moving around the spear.

“I don’t know,” he said, letting the magic fade off his skin. “It makes it easier to control how much magic I’m putting out.”

Erin and Sigrid shared a look, and Erin shrugged. Sigrid turned to face the far side of the clearing and runes blossomed across her face as she lifted her arm and made a chopping motion. A pressurized stream of water arced away from her arm and sliced into the tree line of the far side, tearing up the bark and leaving a gouge in the wood.

“It works better the closer I am,” she said, studying the damage from a distance.

“I’ve seen.” Erin said, recalling qek with skin and muscle peeled straight off their bodies with a shudder.

“What about you?” Liam asked, turning to Erin.

Erin held her hand up and called the spell. She could feel the runes surge up from inside her, and her fingers popped open like the petals of a flower as a ball of flame sparked to life above her hand. Liam let out a long whistle and Erin turned her hand around, angling her arm down towards the snowy ground about halfway across the clearing. She wasn’t exactly worried about setting the forest on fire in its frozen state, but stranger things had happened, and being personally responsible for a forest fire this close to Dangole was something she could do without. With a fwip of cloven air, the fireball streamed in a red-orange blur and impacted the snow with a thump and a loud hiss as rapidly heated snow turned to steam.

“Fire, huh? I guess all we need now is a wind guy.” Liam said, and Sigrid turned to look at him.

“Why would we need someone with wind magic?” She asked, her expression serious.

“You know… it’s a whole thing. The elements and stuff.” He said, clearly surprised at her tone.

“He’s talking about classical elements.” Erin came to his rescue. “Fire, water, earth and air. It was the subject of a lot of fantasy and mythology in my world, and I assume Liam's.”

“Wait,” Liam said, turning toward her. “Wait,” he repeated. “What do you mean ‘my world?’ Aren’t we all from the same world?”

“We can discuss that later.” Sigrid said, making a dismissive gesture, as if her hand could brush aside Liam’s questions about the multiverse. “What’s the significance of having all four of these classical elements?”

“There is none,” Erin said, then paused with a frown. “At least I don’t think there is.” She continued, less certain. “I mean, I don’t know. It’s magic, so maybe there is something to it.”

“But you’re not from my world?” Liam asked.

“I don’t know. What country are you from?” Erin asked, shifting her attention to him.

“Eriattan,” he said.

“Well, I’m from Colorado.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a state. One of fifty that make up an entire country.”

“Is it really a small country?”

“Liam, I think we’re from different worlds.” Erin said with a grin.

“You’ve never heard of Eriattan?”

“Nope.” The big man clapped a hand to his forehead and seemed unsteady on his feet.

“So what happens when you have all four of these ‘classic elements’ together? In the myths I mean.” Sigrid asked, cutting back into the conversation.

“I don’t know. I think it’s Greek.”

“What’s greek?” She asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Nevermind. Look, I think it’s a safe bet that if we had a wind guy and we joined our powers, all we’d make is mud. My understanding is limited to a really old cartoon about pollution, which I-.”

“So wait,” Liam cut back in, his eyes wide. “Does that mean there’s other versions of me? I remember hearing about that. Nearly identical timelines with different coin flips or something.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works.” Erin said, but again she was unsure. Everything she thought she’d known about pretty much everything had turned out to be woefully incomplete at best, so why couldn’t they all have multiverse doppelgangers running around. “I thought we were supposed to be out here to practice our magic?” Erin said, trying to bring things back on track.

“I think we should still find someone with wind magic, just to see.” Sigrid said, rubbing her chin.

“Do you think that means our worlds are just divergent timelines or something?” Liam carried on, clearly still overwhelmed. Erin clapped her hands together in a way she’d learned from her mother. That produced a much louder sound than normal. Liam turned a startled gaze on her, and Sigrid raised an eyebrow.

“At some point we’ll be heading to a place called Academy City, where I’m sure we can find some learned individuals to help us unravel the mysteries of the multiverse and the elements that make it up, but for now we should definitely focus on what we’re going to do if we have to fight monsters.”

Sigrid nodded, albeit reluctantly, but Liam was a harder sell and if Erin was being fair. When she’d first made the realization, she’d been sitting in a dark cave with nothing but time to unpack the concept. No one had been asking her what she was going to do about the tide of monsters that was sweeping across these small towns and villages. Eventually she brought him around to the more immediate concern of getting in some practice with his lone spell, but it was Sigrid who really got things moving for them.

“You need to spend time on your wings.” She stated, arms crossed and feet planted in a wide stance. “You’ve hardly practiced with them, and almost every time you try to use the spell in a fight, you hurt yourself. It’s a powerful ability if used correctly and if you don’t work it out, the only thing you’re going to do with, it is break your neck.” Erin took the admonishment with a wince, and nodded. It was true. She relied heavily on her fireball spell and treated the wings like a backup plan for if fire didn’t work out.

“You have wings?” Liam asked, turning toward her. Rather than answer, Erin pulled the magic to the surface, and the semi-translucent wings sprouted from her shoulders, and then hung on her back. They were clearly constructs of magic and not flesh and bone wings, but still felt very much like spontaneously sprouting extra limbs. “Woah,” Liam whispered as he stepped around her, taking them in. “You can fly with them?”

“I kinda flew, once.” She said, “It was…” Erin held her hand up and wiggled it back and forth to mean ‘so-so’.

“I want you to practice maneuvering with them, close to the ground.” Sigrid said, “I saw you try to use them that way while fighting those qek in the street. It almost worked. I think with time spent, you’ll find them effective tools for closing distance and evading attacks.”

Erin could already feel the strain just keeping them manifested was having on her body, and Sigrid seemed to think along the same lines.

“I bet it’s a hard spell to use. You always seem exhausted whenever you pull them out.” The dark-haired woman brushed a strand of said hair from her face and walked around Erin. “Dismiss them,” she said after a moment and Erin was happy to let the wings fade away, but her relief was short-lived.

“Now call them back.”

“What?”

“Activate your wing spell, as quickly as you can.” Erin sighed and closed her eyes. She pulled the magic to the surface and felt the wings construct themselves from it. “It takes a second, maybe a bit more.” Sigrid said thoughtfully, her slit-pupils so narrow that Erin could barely make them out within the bright blue iris. “Tell me, did you get faster at calling up your fireball the more you used it?”

“Well…” Erin said, thinking back to the first time she’d conjured one. When she’d surprise attacked the Nor Wolverine, and during the ensuing struggle the spell had come painfully slow it seemed like, but in more recent struggles with the qek, she’d been able to churn out the spell much more quickly. “Yeah, it’s definitely gotten faster.”

“So has my water jet,” Sigrid said thoughtfully. “So spells can be trained to improve cast time, like reflexes. Alright, then what you need to do Erin, is get used to calling up and dismissing your wings quickly, to prevent them from burning up all your stamina. Just for those windows of time when you need them to maneuver. The quicker you can do it, the more efficiently you’ll be able to fight.”

Erin sighed, but nodded. Not that she didn’t like the wings. She did, and she hoped that in the future she’d be more up to the strain of using them and she’d be able to fly properly, but despite being in the best physical condition of her life, calling up the magic wings hit her like a truck.

[Cough.]

Did you just say ‘cough?'

[No.]

Erin frowned, but pushed her questions aside. Lisa saying odd things was nothing new, and she needed to focus.

“Alright. I’ll work on calling the wings up quickly. What’re you going to do?”

“I have some new spells that I need to figure out, and Liam…”

“Liam,” he addressed them. “Only has one spell and isn’t sure why he’s agreed to join your Mage bootcamp.”

“Bootcamp?” Sigrid said with a wry smile. “I was thinking more like a team building retreat, but if you want me to treat you like a boot…” Liam held up his hands in surrender.

“Nope, no ma’am. I’ll just go over there and throw some rocks. You let me know when to change it up.” Erin laughed and Sigrid grinned.

"That means you too."

"Yeah, yeah I'm on it." Erin turned away and began the process of summoning and dismissing her wings; over, and over, and over.