I didn’t laugh. I just stared at Ruth in confusion. “Am I supposed to know what that is?”

  Ruth blinked. “You mean you’ve never heard of the Harmonic Genesis?” She looked at Nimbus. “What about you, Nimbus?”

  Nimbus shrugged and finished eating whatever he was eating. “Nope. Can’t say I’ve heard of it, either, though it does sound vaguely familiar.”

  Ruth sighed in relief. “Thank the Logos. I was worried you would laugh at me like everyone else.”

  I gestured at Ruth to go on. “It’s okay. What is the Harmonic Genesis, and how is it supposed to heal Codexblight?”

  Ruth drew herself up to her full height. She looked like she was about to deliver a lecture like a professor in front of his class. “The Harmonic Genesis is a Codex healing spell thought to be a myth by most Harmonic Healers. According to legend, the Harmonic Genesis can heal all diseases, regardless of how severe they are, but is especially good at healing Codex-related diseases like Codexblight.”

  “Wow,” I said. “That sounds really cool. Why would anyone laugh at you for trying to find something so great?”

  Ruth’s shoulders drooped, and she looked away from me. “Probably because it doesn’t actually exist. Or, at least, most people don’t believe it exists. But I do.”

  Ruth said that last sentence in a smaller voice, like she wasn’t entirely sure of that statement herself. Or she was just afraid that Nimbus and I would laugh at her again, though right now I didn’t find anything humorous about anything she just said.

  Nimbus wriggled his nose. “Why do most people think it’s a myth? And how do you know that it exists?”

  Ruth smoothed out the front of her robes. She seemed to be gaining back some of her earlier confidence now that she knew neither Nimbus nor I was going to laugh at her. “Because nobody has ever been able to find it or earn it from the Codex. Lots of people have tried, but nobody has succeeded. In fact, it is believed that if the Harmonic Genesis existed, then the last time it was used was before the Collapse of the Node Network five hundred years ago and disappeared during the chaos that followed the Collapse.”

  I folded my arms in front of my chest and considered Ruth’s words. “So you are looking for a powerful healing spell that has been missing for five hundred years?”

  Ruth ran her hands through her hair, looking sheepish again. “I know it sounds really arrogant when you put it that way—believe me, people have told me—but—”

  I shook my head. “It’s not arrogant at all, honestly. I think it’s great that you have this ambition, even if the odds are against you. You aren’t the only person with major ambitions.”

  I was thinking about my quest to end the Codex Wars when I made that statement. I didn’t tell Ruth that just yet, however, because I still remembered the Codex warnings about not sharing my quest with very many people. Ruth seemed like a decent person—certainly nicer than Martha—but until I got to know her better, it was probably best for me to hold my cards close to my chest.

  Ruth let out another sigh of relief. “Thank you, Aaron. You are probably the first person I’ve met who actually takes me seriously when I say that I want to find the Harmonic Genesis and use it to cure everyone suffering from Codexblight. Everyone… everyone else laughs at me or tells me to focus on things that are real and not just tales spun by illiterates during the Chaos Century.”

  Nimbus nodded. “Aaron does have a very poor risk analysis ability, so that makes sense.”

  I lashed out with a kick at Nimbus, but he thumped his back foot at the last second and teleported well outside the range of my kick, reappearing on top of an overturned tree nearby. He then thumped again, though this time it seemed like a mocking thump to me.

  Ruth looked from me to Nimbus and back again with a puzzled expression. “I always thought that Codex Beasts and their masters had a tight relationship built on mutual trust and understanding. Not… whatever you two have going on.”

  “Aaron is my temporary partner, not my master,” Nimbus corrected. “Codex Beasts do not have masters, anyway. We have partners. And sometimes, we even have competent partners.”

  I resisted the urge to cast a spell on Nimbus—perhaps Shadow Web to teach him a lesson—but before I could say anything, Ruth put a hand over her mouth and said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that people out here in the First Kingdom used such egalitarian terms when referring to their bond with their Codex Beasts. In Admah, where I’m from, Codexers who are synced with a Codex Beast are called masters rather than partners. I meant no disrespect to you, Nimbus.”

  “Apology accepted, Ruth,” said Nimbus as he scratched his ear. “But that information does make me feel sorry for the unfortunate Codex Beasts living in your kingdom. It must grind their gears to have to refer to their partners as masters.”

  Ruth frowned slightly. “All of the Codexers with Codex Beasts I know have great relationships with them. They get along really well, and their Codex Beasts seem happy all the time. They also get great healthcare thanks to Admah having so many great healers. We even have an entire secondary Guild dedicated to animal and Codex Beast health.”

  Nimbus huffed. “Yes, it must grind their gears very much to have to refer to their partners as masters. Those poor, sorry little Codex Beasts.”

  I raised my hand before Ruth could comment on that. “We’re getting off topic here. You’ve told us several times already that most people from the Seventh Kingdom don’t believe that the Harmonic Genesis is real. So why do you?”

  Ruth hesitated and rubbed the back of her neck. Once again, like when I had asked her about her mother in The Squirrel’s Nut, I got the impression that I may have accidentally asked a very personal question. “The reason I am looking for the Harmonic Genesis is because the Arcane Codex itself told me that it exists.”

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  Nimbus, who had been busily grooming himself like he always did, snapped his head up as he looked at Ruth. “The Arcane Codex told you? Like, it literally spoke to you?”

  Ruth rubbed her forehead. “Not like a person. But it did give me a quest to find the Harmonic Genesis and use it to cure Codexblight. And part of that quest required that I come out to the First Kingdom—specifically to this part of the First Kingdom—so I could complete the first part of the quest.”

  I raised an interested eyebrow. That quest sounded eerily similar to my quest to end the Codex Wars, though again I didn’t mention it. “You got your quest from the Seventh Kingdom, yet it required you to come all the way out here to the First Kingdom?”

  “That’s not unusual for high-level quests,” said Nimbus as he scratched his ear again. “They usually span Kingdoms.”

  I hadn’t known that, but now I was curious about Ruth’s quest, even more so than before. “Ruth, why don’t you tell us more about your quest? You said it was a multipart quest, so I assume there must be multiple parts to it that you need to complete.”

  That may have been an awkward way to put it, but as I said before, I didn’t want to tell Ruth about my Codex Quest just yet. The Arcane Codex warning in my quest description about not sharing it with a bunch of other people still hung in my mind like a warning sign over a doorway. At the same time, however, I wanted to know more about how multipart quests worked, so I hoped Ruth would have more information about it than I did.

  Yet I could tell that Ruth had already deduced I was trying to keep something from her based on the way her eyes narrowed when I asked that question. But she decided not to pry because she said, “You aren’t wrong. It is a multipart quest, but it’s a bit different from most. It is one quest but with three steps. If I complete the three steps, then I will gain access to the Harmonic Genesis.”

  Ruth looked over her shoulder into the forest. “The first step requires that I find and collect three ancient resonant scripts from different parts of the Nine Kingdoms. Allegedly, one of the resonant scripts is located within a Node Dungeon somewhere in the First Kingdom. So if I can find and access that Node Dungeon, then I should be able to find the first resonant script somewhere inside.”

  I laughed for the first time, causing Ruth to start and look at me with a scandalized expression. “What are you laughing about? You said you wouldn’t laugh.”

  Chuckling, I put a hand on my stomach and said to Ruth, “I’m sorry, but there aren’t any Node Dungeons around here. I think there are a few near Hebron, but there aren’t any near North Forest. If there were, I would definitely know about them, and we would probably have a lot more Codexers around here.”

  Ruth furrowed her brow with a concerned and confused expression on her face. “But there are Node Dungeons in every kingdom.”

  I held up a finger. “Yes, but you seem to have forgotten that we aren’t near any big or even medium-sized cities. That’s where you will find most of the Node Dungeons in the First Kingdom. Maybe where you’re from, Node Dungeons are more common in rural areas, but otherwise I’m afraid you’re in the wrong place for that.”

  I was not being snarky with Ruth—at least, not trying to be. It was just the truth.

  During my training over the past week, I had managed to get Isaac to tell me more about Node Dungeons, and he had flatly told me there weren’t any in the North Forest area. The nearest Node Dungeon was 100 miles south of us, closer to Hebron and the border with the Second Kingdom than to us.

  Not that I hadn’t already known that. Node Dungeons were prized by individual Codexers and Codex Guilds alike for being great places to train and progress through the Codex, often much easier and faster than following Codex Quests. While new Node Dungeons were being discovered all the time, or so Isaac had told me, North Forest and the surrounding area simply didn’t have any. And if there had been any Node Dungeons around here in the past, they likely weren’t even active anymore—meaning that even if you found them, you wouldn’t be able to access them or get rewards for completing them.

  But I kind of regretted saying that when Ruth sat down on a nearby stump and stared at the ground as if all of her dreams had just collapsed in front of her. “But I was so sure… my research indicated that… I’m sorry, Mom…”

  Tears began to form in the corners of Ruth’s eyes, tears she didn’t even bother to wipe away.

  Awkwardly, I walked over to Ruth and patted her on the shoulder, mostly because I had no idea what else to do. “Hey, it’s not the end of the world. Like I said, there are quite a few Node Dungeons around Hebron. Maybe you can convince Martha to let you explore some of those on your way back to the Seventh Kingdom.”

  Ruth slapped my hand away and glared up at me through tear-filled eyes. “You don’t understand! Getting the funding for these types of trips is difficult enough even for experienced healers like Martha. A novice healer like myself, who isn’t even on Page Five yet of the First Chapter of her Discipline? It might be years before I can afford to come out here again, and who knows how bad the spread of Codexblight will be by then, assuming no one has found a cure yet?”

  I stepped away from Ruth while holding my hands up. “I was just trying to help you feel better.”

  Ruth huffed and looked away from me. “I feel like a massive fool for even coming out here. Maybe the others were right, and I’m just an idiot for thinking that the Harmonic Genesis is real. I should probably visit the Codex Keeper at the Grand Codexium in the capital and ask him to review my quest just to make sure it’s not some kind of glitch or mistake or something.”

  “Why are you squabbling so much about Node Dungeons?” said Nimbus, who had stopped grooming himself long enough to start paying attention to the conversation. “I swear, you humans will squabble about just about anything with each other. You should learn from us rabbits. Whenever we have disagreements or challenges, we always work them out calmly and peacefully.”

  I raised an annoyed eyebrow at Nimbus. “Oh, yeah? Exactly how do you work out disagreements with your fellow rabbits?”

  Nimbus nodded. “Glad you asked! If they are another male rabbit, I typically try to assert dominance over him as aggressively as possible. If they are a female rabbit, however, then I first have to verify that she is a member of my harem, but if she isn’t—”

  “Rabbits have harems?” asked Ruth, who was apparently distracted from her anger and sadness by Nimbus’s statement.

  “Only the highest-status male rabbits,” said Nimbus dismissively. “But anyway, if she is a member of my harem, then she is probably just ready to mate, so—”

  I held up my hands before Nimbus could go into greater detail on rabbit reproduction. “That’s okay, Nimbus. We both get the picture.”

  Nimbus wriggled his nose and glanced at Ruth. “I’m glad that you do, but unfortunately, since Ruth isn’t part of your harem yet, I don’t have any useful or actionable advice to give you on dealing with her outbursts.”

  Now it was Ruth who looked like she was this close to kicking Nimbus into the next kingdom. “I don’t want to be part of anyone’s harem, you silly rabbit.”

  I shook my head again and turned my attention to Ruth. “We are getting completely off topic. The point is, Ruth, that I’m sorry you mistakenly thought there was a Node Dungeon around here connected to your quest. I’m still happy to help you and your fellow researchers with any other guidance you might need, but it sounds like my help will be pretty limited, seeing as you aren’t here for the same reasons as your fellow researchers.”

  Ruth didn’t say anything to that, but the tears, anger, and regret in her eyes were obvious even to me. It definitely made me feel guilty, but I stood by what I said. Noble though Ruth’s quest may have been, I didn’t think there was anything I could do to help her with it right now.

  That was, until Nimbus scratched his ear again and said, “What are you talking about, Aaron? Of course, there is a Node Dungeon around here. In fact, it’s right over … there!”

  Nimbus thumped the log he stood on, and a strange notification popped into my view:

  Codex Beast Nimbus the Cloud Rabbit used Node Sense to locate the entrance to a previously hidden Node Dungeon!

  Then the ground rumbled under our feet … and a thick crack burst through the earth, heading directly toward us.

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