Bernt trudged across the endless, grassy plain four days later, keeping his course due west toward the distant mountains. He could just barely make them out as shadows hidden in a distant haze on the horizon. How massive did they have to be, to be visible from such a distance?

  Those to the north, to his right, were already much taller than the portion of the Sunset Range that he had crossed a week ago. He’d been lucky. Who knew how impassable they would be here?

  Far closer, an enormous crumbling butte jutted out of the otherwise flat plain. It had sheer walls and a flat top, crowned by an enormous tree so large that Bernt could make out its individual branches, even from here. It was one of the landmarks on his map – and it showed he was getting close.

  The land here was lush, in its own way, with coal grass, exotic herbs birds and small, rat-like rodents that lived in enormous colonies in the ground. Occasionally, they would pop their heads out and squeak at him as he passed. Bernt had tried to catch a few for some meat, but they were surprisingly quick. After several attempts, he’d managed to hit one with a fire dart, only for it to shrug the attack off as if he’d squirted water at it. He’d forgotten where he was – of course that wouldn’t work.

  After that, he’d tried again using magic missiles, but he was too slow in casting them. They always got away.

  Eventually, he’d given up and continued on his way. There were more true elementals here as well, including a fire whirl and a flaming bird that he’d briefly mistaken for a phoenix, before realizing that it was far too small. He’d kept his distance, regardless. None of these would be intelligent enough to talk to him, and he didn’t want to risk a fight if he could help it.

  Soon, when he was even with the tree, he would have to turn directly south to reach one of the points marked with a “harvest” glyph shown on his map. From there, he’d continue to try to find the place marked with the “source” glyph. If he was right about what that was, this would be the best place he was going to get for either finding an intelligent fire elemental, or potentially summoning one.

  He still didn’t know how he was supposed to communicate with it, exactly, but Xul’evareg hadn’t seemed to consider it a major concern. He would just have to work something out. The real trick was going to be getting an opportunity to try at all.

  So far, he had managed to collect only four potential materials for his next investiture: an eternally burning tailfeather, a thrown antler from a deer, a bit of glassy, burnt clay from what had looked like an abandoned termite mound, and bark from one of the burning trees. He’d tested each of them with a diagnostic circle for at least a cursory examination of their spellforms, and all of them were pyromantic.

  Three of them were some kind of plant or animal parts that retained magical properties. Bernt didn’t understand how that might work, since most creatures’ bodies lost all magical potential when their spirits disappeared on death. But he supposed quite a few well-known magical materials were technically grown on a magical creature of some kind – dragon scales and phoenix feathers being the most famous examples. Pollock would probably be able to explain it, but Bernt supposed it didn’t really matter now.

  ***

  The “harvest” location, as it turned out, was empty – at least assuming that this was it. There was nothing here except a small pond, filled maybe knee-high with stagnant water. Curious, Bernt stuck a finger into it to try to sense any mana. Maybe it wasn’t water at all, but some kind of exotic material? But… no, it was just normal, dirty water.

  Was he in the wrong place? Annoyed, Bernt looked around for some kind of vantage with a better view of the surrounding area. It was awfully flat here, and sloping ever so gently down toward the south. There were no hills or rocks to get on top of. He saw a few trees, but Bernt wasn’t eager to try to climb into their flaming branches.

  Besides, the fire would probably block his view.

  Feeling disappointed, he continued southward. He could try veering slightly to the side on his way back toward the north – maybe he’d find something then. The Sacral Peaks effectively formed the northwest corner of the Sunset Range, so he’d have to come back up roughly in this direction regardless.

  A short while later, Bernt noticed that he was sweating. It was getting warmer – a lot warmer. He hadn't really thought about it before, but that was almost certainly a good sign. Probably. He just hoped it wouldn’t get too hot before he reached his destination. The trees disappeared first, then the grass grew sparser, hanging on for dear life in the cracked earth. Then, not far ahead, he noticed a shimmer in the air warping his view beyond it, like hot air rising from a fire.

  He didn’t see the shallow, circular depression until he was practically standing at the rim looking in at the source of the phenomenon. The grass thinned at the edge of the depression where he stood and disappeared completely toward the middle, giving way to bare sand.

  The rise in temperature as well as the odd shimmer in the air gave it away, but otherwise it looked kind of… anticlimactic. Bernt had been expecting something more like a sky-high pillar of flame or a lake of molten rock. Heat was leaking through here from the elemental plane of fire, shouldn’t it be more… spectacular?

  But in this case, anticlimactic was probably for the best. He’d found his confluence point. The closer he could get to it now, the more likely this next part was to work.

  The entire Phoenix Reaches was generally referred to as a "confluence", but that was true only in a general sense. In actuality, the Reaches contained many points of confluence with the elemental plane of fire – enough to transform the entire region under their collective influence. This one looked relatively small, but it was more than enough for his purposes.

  He’d hoped originally that he would just manage to find a sapient elemental to talk to, but he’d correctly guessed that the gods didn’t hand out that kind of luck on a silver platter – not to the likes of him. No, as far as he could see from here, there weren’t any elementals running around the confluence at all. It was probably for the best.

  This way, he could create his summoning circle in peace.

  Digging around in his bag, Bernt pulled out a bound sheaf of notes detailing the summoning procedures from the book on elementals that he’d borrowed from Hallan at the Halfbridge Library what felt like an eternity ago. He’d wanted to take the book along, but his librarian friend had refused, insisting that he copy everything he needed himself.

  Bernt was glad now that he’d been thorough and included the more complex summoning rituals designed to summon powerful elementals. He’d originally done it with the thought that he might be able to learn something about demon summoning from them. Now, all that ostensibly pointless work would come in handy after all. Grinning to himself, Bernt took a step in toward the confluence point. Then he yelped and jumped back, holding up an arm to cover his face. The heat radiating from the center of the confluence burned as though he’d stuck it in front of a furnace.

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  Carefully, Bernt cast a temperature barrier almost twenty strides in front of himself, near where he judged the center of the phenomenon was. The glaring radiant heat cut off instantly. It was still oppressively hot, but more in that the ambient temperature was too high – not as though he were being cooked over a fire.

  Advancing directly to the spot where the barrier stood, Bernt worked to cast another barrier just in front of it, though this one would be much more complicated. Tweaking the spellform to change the spell’s shape and adjusting it to draw quite a bit more mana than usual, he cast a large dome-shaped barrier directly in front of the confluence point. The closer he could place the circle, the more likely his summoning spell was to succeed.

  Sweating, Bernt ducked into the invisible dome and immediately began casting a basic cantrip – heat transfer – to push the heat outside and cool the space. It wouldn’t work long, since the ground here was hot enough to cook on, but it helped. He would have to repeat the spell every minute or so at this rate, until the sandy ground beneath him cooled down.

  In the end, it took nearly thirty minutes to get the temperature somewhere approaching normal. He had to recast the protective dome only once in the meantime, but Bernt could already tell he was in for a difficult time here. He wouldn’t be able to give his entire concentration to creating the summoning circle, since he’d have to keep moving heat every five minutes or so to manage the temperature.

  Kneeling on the warm ground, Bernt smoothed the soft sand in front of him and then solidified it into a smooth pane of sandstone using his now well-practiced stone shaping cantrip. Then, he put his notes down on the ground next to him, weighed down with some sand to keep the wind from carrying the pages off, and pulled out his shard of burnt termite clay. He preferred working with chalk, but elemental summoning circles were supposed to be drawn in a compatible material according to the book. Bernt wasn't really sure why that was, but this wasn't the time to try to cut corners.

  Leaning down, he started scratching runes into the stone.

  A circle for a basic lesser flame sprite, which he'd originally meant to summon, would have likely worked anywhere in the Phoenix Reaches. What he was doing here, though, was something else entirely.

  The summoning circle he was drawing now was far more complex, made up of three concentric rings of runes that had to work together perfectly to safely summon the target elemental. He’d gone through his notes several times, trying to decide what kind of elemental was most likely to work, and he’d settled on a magma elemental. It was the only one he could theoretically summon that had a humanoid shape. Bernt knew that didn’t necessarily mean it would talk to him, but he was pretty sure it meant that it could if it wanted to.

  That was likely as good as he was going to get. It wasn't exactly safe, either, but the risks would be well-managed. The summoning circle would contain the summoned elemental inside it until it was freed.

  He began with the innermost circle, copying it down out of his notes with extreme care. He had to get this right. Every so often, when he got too sweaty to ignore it, he stopped to cool the space inside the heat barrier again, occasionally recasting the barrier as well. He wasn’t sure how long he’d worked and glanced up at the sun. An hour, maybe? The first circle was the easiest, but the runes that made up the second circle had to align perfectly with those of the first. That meant double and triple-checking them, smoothing them out and redrawing them only to find that the adjustment had misaligned something else.

  It was infuriating work, but he was progressing. He’d finish soon, he was sure. The third circle shouldn’t take much longer than the second, so another hour should be more than enough.

  Bernt was cooling his workspace again and thinking about how to start the third and outermost circle when something caught his eye. He jerked his head around, staring up at the edge of the depression that he stood in. Something had moved up there, hadn’t it?

  Watching carefully, Bernt raised his right hand and started to form a magic missile spell. His magic missiles were relatively weak, but they they would be more than enough to deal with most of the animals that ran around here, and probably a few of the lesser elementals. He didn’t have a lot of options to deal with things that couldn’t be harmed with fire.

  Slowly, a head poked up over the side. A human head. Bernt just barely caught sight of his eyes before the man ducked back down.

  “Hey!” Bernt called. “I can see you. What are you hiding for?” Who would possibly be all the way out here? Were there Illurians wandering around this far north? Maybe calling out to them in Beseri hadn’t been the best idea…

  Before he could try to think of something else to say, though, there was a shout and three people jumped up, charging toward him.

  “Glory to the Great One!” a crazed-looking woman shrieked. Then, just as Bernt had done, two of them stopped, holding their arms out over their faces against the heat before backing up several steps.

  “Agh!” hollered a human man. “It’s too hot!”

  Bernt was so confused by the spectacle that he almost missed the fact that the third member of the group – a burly dwarf – hadn’t slowed down at all and was about to barrel into him. Thinking quickly, he cast the magic missile at him and activated his infused belt. His adversary took the spell on his shoulder, grunting in pain as his arm went slack. He’d broken his collar bone, but he still kept coming.

  For once, though, Bernt was ready. Bending his knees, Bernt ducked down low, sidestepped and seized the dwarf by the belt and his bad arm. Then he threw him directly behind himself and to the left, right into the center of the confluence.

  There was a loud popping and hissing noise accompanied by a horrible burnt-hair smell as he passed out the far side of Bernt's heat barrier, then it was done. The dwarf didn’t even have time to scream. Preparing a fireball spell, Bernt turned back toward the other two. Before he could cast, though, something hit him hard in the left arm and his fingers went numb.

  Hissing in pain, Bernt flung a handful of manaburn at her with his good arm. He missed.

  “Hold him off!” the woman hissed at the man. Then she turned tail and ran.

  What had she been shouting – “Great One”? A bad feeling settled into the pit of his stomach.

  Bernt clenched his teeth and glared at the last attacker remaining. The man shouted something, but Bernt was too busy casting to listen. He dodged another thrown rock and cast his fireball at the asshole's center of mass. This time, he didn’t miss.

  Carefully, Bernt hurried out of the crater, leaving the heat barrier at his back so he could safely get away from the confluence to inspect the body. Someone, probably the man himself, had carved a demonic glyph into his lower left arm, scarring it. Definitely a cultist.

  Shit.

  How could they have possibly found him, and how many of them could there be? There would be demons coming, once the woman got word to them. He stood up tall and looked out over the plain, trying to find her retreating form, but she was nowhere to be seen – probably ducking down beneath the tall coal grass.

  How close could the others be? Should he run? Bernt turned to look at the confluence, torn. Did he have an hour? A day?

  He wasn’t going to get another opportunity like this one. Besides, they must have scattered all over the region trying to find him – he wouldn’t have to face all of them. And while he couldn’t do much against a fire elemental, he could do terrible things to demons and their idiot cultists. For that matter, the confluence might be the most defensible spot he could find against a bunch of other humans if it came to that.

  Making up his mind, Bernt began to cast, creating an arc of perpetual cold fire that rose in a low wall in front of him. He would encircle the entire confluence. If any of them got here in time, they’d have at least as much trouble approaching him as the cultists had just had – more, probably.

  It was a risk, yes, but he could handle this.

  A soft crack sounded from nearby and Bernt whirled, trying to find the source of the noise. Where was it?

  After a few seconds, he saw it. The slab of stone he’d made – the one he’d been inscribing his circle on – was cracked. His heat barrier had winked out.