Between us, it didn’t take long to prepare the various ingredients. Checking frequently with the diagram on the interface, which I held open with one hand, I used the other to arrange everything in neat piles on the tray. The lines and shapes of various colours were definitely not decorative; they showed precise locations for pcement.

  “Oh, right, the sand.” I lost the interface while I located and added that, then brought it back up. The dial was set to “Soce” and the levels indicator suggested that it would cost me a few points but not much. I held one hand over the tray and fttened the other palm against the centre of the wheel.

  Sparkly shimmery prismatic light arched up from the edges of the tray, met in the centre with a particurly dramatic fre of colour, and faded.

  Leaving only a small bottle in the centre of the tray.

  I made a potion! Just like in my dreams, and like the old man I’d run into! I could keep crafting potions until I ran out of ingredients, and then go gather more, and make more potions, and then Serru would know the best pce to sell them and we could make back everything she’d spent on me and more besides, and...

  Well, I could keep making them until I ran out of mana. But it did regenerate, and it wasn’t costing me very much each time, maybe the same five percent or so that it cost me to change between forms, so I could do, like, at least twenty in a day if I didn’t swap forms. There was a bottle in my medical kit that was a magic booster, but it was the only one and Serru had warned me that Elixir was expensive and not always easily avaible and tended to have after-effects so keep it for an emergency. So probably I shouldn’t use that, but twenty in a day could still build up pretty fast, and I’d need time for gathering ingredients too.

  I picked up the bottle and tilted it back and forth. The contents had a watery consistency and a rather appealing sapphire tint. It wasn’t quite transparent, even though light did refract through it.

  “That appears to be correct,” Serru said.

  “How do we know if it worked properly?”

  “It obviously worked,” Aryennos said. “All the ingredients combined, we can see that, and when that particur list of ingredients is combined, it makes Soce.”

  “There are sloppy or unskilled alchemists who make potions of low quality,” Serru said. “The results are cloudy or even outright opaque, the colour may be faded or difficult to distinguish, or the swirls of colour are blurred and indistinct or barely visible. The gss might look chipped or otherwise damaged or the shape might be irregur. This is not entirely clear but it’s quite good, and the colour is strong and unequivocal. The bottle is nearly fwless. I would say that you’ve created a Soce potion that is not top-quality but still high, and quite possibly that will improve with practice and time.”

  “There are always visual signs?” I said. “That sounds very seriously useful. Woo! I made a decent potion for real! Okay, what else can I make?”

  “Slow down,” Serru said. There was a small vertical crease between her rosy brows as she looked at me. “I understand your excitement, but don’t exhaust yourself. You don’t know, for example, whether the amount of magic you have avaible is consistent between forms. You’ll be upset if you need your healing and can’t use that because you made too many potions.”

  “How’d you know it takes magic to make potions?”

  “The same way I know it takes sand to form the gss and the other ingredients to create the contents. There is a reason there is not an amateur alchemist in every small vilge seeing to local needs, and many pces have an alchemist who can make only basic potions, or perhaps advanced ones. Expert alchemists are highly respected. I think it might be a good idea to change to your centaur form so you can check whether this had an effect on your ability to use your healing magic.”

  “Gotcha. Anything for you, gorgeous.” I gestured my interface into existence again.

  The small wheel now had a third icon. I ughed.

  “Yes?”

  “The other two symbols are a human and a centaur. The new one is a straight-up silhouette of a housecat in profile, tail up in the air.” I spun the dial to centaur and let my hand fall.

  The jolt was briefly uncomfortable, and I pnted all four feet solidly and closed my eyes to wait out the moment of vertigo.

  “Nathan? Are you all right?”

  “Yeah. A little disoriented. Okay. Mana levels, right? And you’re absolutely right about that, I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me.” I brought my interface back up. “Hm, it’s lower than it would be just for the change alone. It looks like there’s just one level that’s consistent across forms. That’s important to know. I mean, even when we needed to help Aryennos, I didn’t run right down to nothing, so I probably have a bit of leeway.” I blinked, and oriented instead on the central wheel. “Whoa, what’s that?” I tilted my head as I read the text. “Hardcure. Forces healing of bone and connective tissue. May take several days to complete. That wasn’t there before.” I turned the wheel slowly.

  “So along with your new alchemist skills, it increased your healing skills?” Serru said.

  “Apparently. I have Softcure, too, and again, possibly several days. Wow. I didn’t have Lulbye before, or Soce, or Refresh. I think I can do pretty much the whole basic road kit now, or at least the potions. Except Recovery, I don’t have that. Diagnosis? Improved version of Vitals, it looks like, although I’m still gd I have my monitor too. That would feel like cheating, if it weren’t for the fact that so much is different here from what I’m used to looking for. I had basic Cleanse and Panacea and Antidote separately, but now I have Purification which will remove anything that doesn’t belong in a body—I wonder if that would work for intrusive objects as well. Probably not but I don’t really have a reasonable way to test that. That’s very cool.”

  “Has there been any change in the cost of the others?”

  “Let’s see.” I turned the wheel to Anodyne, and studied the bars at the side. “That looks lower... I don’t have clear points or anything to use, but I’m going to say that either the cost has gone down or the total avaible pool has gone up, which works out to the same thing in the end. I can do more of the basic stuff without running out of power, or do it at higher strength the same number of times. I think I levelled up.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I’ve been sort of trying to avoid references to my world’s games because expining that could get really awkward.”

  “I’m not sure how, but all right.”

  “Yeah. Probably I should just expin and get it over with. Shortest form, levelling up in a game is a way of saying that you’ve earned enough experience in the game that it allows you to do new things.”

  “Like graduating from school.”

  “Something like that, yes, but usually there are lots of levels, often just numbered—start at level one, and every level or every few levels you gain new abilities.”

  “That sounds like a very complex game. I’m gd you have a way to understand this in your terms, however.”

  “I think the Quincunx might be tailoring this to how I see things. Otherwise, it seems pretty improbable that it’s so much like what I know.” I dismissed the interface. “So I can heal directly when I’m a girl centaur and make potions to help with that when I’m a boy cat. Sure, why not? Although I don’t know why the other forms are relevant to the skills.”

  “Maybe they aren’t,” Aryennos said. “Maybe the Quincunx is just giving you options. You could make a good living and be a useful part of a community in either of those roles.”

  “It’s an interesting thought, then, but it means never seeing my family again. I’m not giving up and settling here, no matter how great it is and you are. I can’t.”

  Serru nodded. “I would feel the same, I think. So. Shall we have an early lunch and then break camp and get back on the road? Coppersands is on the border of the Forest, close to the ring road but built on an inlet that opens onto the Shallows, so it’s a major transport hub. We have the other half of the Forest quarter before we reach it.”

  “Sure. And since there’s no real reason why I need to be in centaur form, how about I switch to cat? That’ll be a lot easier for helping with gathering while we move.”

  “It will also give all of us a chance to get accustomed to that.”

  “That too.” I gestured for my interface.

  “Wait!” Aryennos said, but my hand was already on the dial and I’d turned it to cat. Felid. Whatever.

  It felt weirdly like I’d just downed an entire energy drink without pausing for breath and the buzz smmed into me all at once.

  “Whew! Sorry, what? I really hope that isn’t something like, if I change right now it’s going to put us all in danger.”

  He shook his head. “Possibly inconvenient, though. I remembered just a little too te. The felid diet doesn’t typically include berries or fruit. Felids tend to eat fish, eggs, and dairy products, more than anything.”

  “Crap! I didn’t think of that! The cats I’m used to are obligate carnivores. Well, in theory. Grace’s cats are willing to taste the oddest things and one of them is obsessed with crackers and the other one is obsessed with peanut butter, but that isn’t what they live on. I’m pretty sure even the best-quality foods she buys for them have a few pnt ingredients like lentils or spinach, but only a small amount compared to the meat. Carnivory, here, is more like ovo-cto-pescetarian, which means less than nothing to you guys so forget it. Fish, well, I guess at the next river, but do fish store okay in bags? And where do you get eggs and dairy outside of a farm? Do general stores have them? Do they need to stay cold? Can cats have dairy here without getting sick? I know cats really like milk but they’re mostly ctose intolerant so it’s usually a bad idea to give it to them, Grace is always compining about the cliche of giving cats milk.”

  “Nathan. Calm down,” Serru said. “You are talking at a quarter again your normal speed. Fish can be kept perfectly well for several days, as can eggs either raw or boiled. It would be problematic to store a frozen dairy treat in a standard bag, but simple milk, cheese, and butter are not a problem and are not expensive, although like the fish, milk in particur will spoil more quickly than many other foods. There are specialized bags that allow the storage of perishable food safely for longer periods, and some even work on frozen items. Aside from very rge ones for commercial purposes, they are often retively small and intended for household shopping trips. We will look at what is avaible when we reach Coppersands. There should be plenty, Coppersands has a high felid popution. The option does exist of simply making certain you are in another form when eating, but that may not always be convenient so we will make sure we are prepared for that. Both felids and small cats can consume dairy with no negative effects or intolerance of anything. For the moment...”

  “Some grain and vegetable foods are okay,” Aryennos said. “I’ve never seen a felid eat anything that was entirely pnt-based, though. A fish or cheese sandwich or even bread with a lot of butter were fine. Leafy sad with fish and cheese and boiled egg. Pasta and cheese sauce. It only becomes a health problem if a felid consistently eats inappropriate foods for an extended time.”

  “Useful information for ter, although less so currently, when we have limited materials to work with and limited resources for preparing eborate meals. Before anyone overreacts, however, please keep in mind that travel bars are specifically created to provide a meal for anyone of any species. I do not know whether the varieties we have will taste good to a felid, but they will be safe and nutritious. So there are two options, currently: stay felid and try that, or switch to one of your other forms.”

  I considered that.

  “I could change, but that costs mana each time and I want to spend some time in this form anyway, so... let’s see what travel bars are like.”

  They were... well, they were okay, but nothing I’d eat for enjoyment. Rosemint tea, on the other hand, smelled and tasted delicious and more than made up for it.

  “There’s absolutely nothing you can actually say about the past couple of cycles?” Aryennos said, with a wistful sigh.

  I tried, but words just wouldn’t come out. I finally shrugged. “Nothing.”

  “You did not have sand in your bag before you left,” Serru observed. “At some point you picked that up, and possibly other things. The first time, you returned having used Bandages and other medical supplies and without your scarf, but you had limited food with you and there was no sign that you had used two days’ worth of that. I don’t know what you have left for food and it would be a more complex question since you have had longer to help me with gathering. You mentioned dreams the first time and as before, you seem quite comfortable in this new form with some idea how to use your new abilities, so I think it’s likely there are dreams involved that assist with orientation. There are guesses that can be made from those facts, but I doubt you would be able to confirm or deny them. The rest of us will simply have to live without knowing. The only thing that matters, of course, is whether it gets you closer to home and we are continuing to the third. That is obviously still the case. So, if you’re done, shall we go?”

  Last night’s tents had already vanished; we needed to make sure the fire was thoroughly out and check that we hadn’t left anything in or around the shelter, but that was more or less all. Everything simply stayed in our respective bags until we brought it out to use and then put it away, simplifying the process enormously. It didn’t take long at all to clean up, check that we had everything, and get on the road again.