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A/N: The Haventon Born ebook has been released. See here for where you can get it!

What Laxmi had called Emms’s second lab turned out to be hidden in the reaches, not far enough from the Heartlands to be highly unstable or expose speakers to the effects of mabain but enough that the scrubby woodland around it seemed to shift slightly whenever Karen wasn’t looking at it. She wasn’t the only one to notice it because Andrew stopped in front of her and groaned.

“This place is making me feel seasick!” he complained. “I swear that tree wasn’t there a second ago.”

“Yes, it’s the nature of the reaches to be changeable,” Darlryan said. “You get used to it but you can stabilise it if you want. It would be good practice for you anyway.”

“Likadrian used to stabilise it,” Laxmi said. “It really bothered him, but not me for some reason.”

“Probably because of what you are,” Darlryan said.

“How do I stabilise it?” Andrew asked.

“You need to bleed some of your essence into the ground and imagine it spreading out.” Darlryan looked at the others. “If he is going to try, be ready because it will get colder.”

Laxmi snorted. “Yeah, the trees would petrify when Likadrian came here.”

“Oh!” Lydia said. “Like how Hannah reinforced the ground when we went after the Core.”

“Yes,” Laxmi said. “In principle, anyway. Though what I was having the dragons do was a bit different from the sort of shifting you get here.”

“I’m going to try.” Andrew took a breath and closed his eyes. The temperature did indeed drop quite sharply and frost spread across the grass and up the tree trunks, freezing them in place.

“Okay, that’s enough,” Darlryan said. “You’ll kill the trees if you put much more energy in.”

Andrew opened his eyes and smiled. “I did it!”

“You did,” Sonia said “You’re gaining more control.”

“All that practice is paying off.” Naria wrapped her arms around herself. “But now I’m cold.”

Andrew pulled off his jumper and handed it to her. “Here, I don’t need this.”

“How far to the lab?” Matthias asked.

“Not far now.” Laxmi pointed to a thicker stand of trees ahead. Karen stared at them and realised she could vaguely see a building of grey stone between the trunks. Laxmi pushed some shrubs out of the way to reveal a door. “Here we are.”

“You’re sure it’s not booby trapped?” Matthias asked.

Laxmi nodded. “He relied on isolation and concealment here. He didn’t want to put the energy into traps.”

They followed her in but in spite of Laxmi’s reassurances, Karen was tense, waiting for some sort of security measures to kick in. But it seemed Laxmi was right – there were no traps and they soon found themselves in a small room with a work bench at its heart. Laxmi began pawing through a drawer full of papers.

Sonia, in the meantime, was looking through the half-finished devices on the table.

“Oh!” She picked up a staff not dissimilar to the one Andarian had sent with Lydia. “It seems he wasn’t as confident as he made out and had a back up plan if it did go wrong again.”

“Indeed.” Darlryan lifted another half finished device and his eyes widened. “Void! I have to get this to Ind and see if it is what I think.”

“Is it bad?” Matthias asked.

“Far from it,” Darlryan said. “He may actually have done something right for once.” He looked at the other devices. “Actually, we should study them all.”

“Found them!” Laxmi pulled a sheaf of papers from the drawer and handed them to Matthias.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s see.”

A/N: The Haventon Born ebook has been released. See here for where you can get it!

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