“No.” I tossed them into the discard pile we’d started and went back to swinging.
Barnaby had surprised me. After his initial despair at the size of the task, something in him had shifted. He’d grabbed one of the smaller chisels and gone to work with a determination I hadn’t seen since before theChallenge was served. His technique was different from mine—more precise, working at the seams between stones rather than trying to break through them. But it was effective.
Having a clear target helped him, I realized. No anxiety spiraling, no catastrophizing about impossible odds. Just: find crystals, bring them to Grix, repeat. Simple. Achievable. Concrete.
Nearby, Grix sat on his boulder like a particularly judgmental gargoyle, muttering under his breath as he made notes on his papers. Occasionally he’d cross something out with enough force to tear through the page, then mutter something that sounded vaguely like cursing.
“…ridiculous contract clause… who even writes this garbage… seventeen subsections for a simple non-compete…”
Another crystal tumbled free from the wall in front of me. This one was pale yellow, its light steady and warm. I added it to my growing collection. I’d gathered seven so far, none of them right according to Grix’s continued indifference to our pile.
Barnaby hopped over with two more crystals clutched in his paws. Both were small, barely larger than marbles, and pulsed with a soft pink light. He added them to the pile, wiped rock dust from his fur, and went back to his section of wall without a word.
The rhythm of work was almost meditative. Swing, crack, examine. Swing, crack, examine. The chamber filled with the steady percussion of stone breaking and crystals falling. Dust hung in the air, glittering in the light from the embedded gems.
My shoulders burned. The too-small pickaxe handle was digging grooves into my palm despite my calluses. But I kept swinging.
Thirty minutes in, I’d extracted maybe fifteen crystals. Barnaby had twice that. His more delicate approach was slower but yielded more intact specimens. The discard pile had grown to a small mountain of cloudy, dim, or cracked crystals that apparently contained nothing useful.
I was reaching for another section of wall when a crystal the size of my fist suddenly broke free, tumbling down with enough force that I had to step back to avoid getting hit. It landed with a heavy thunk that was different from the lighter clattering of the smaller gems.
This one was unique. Deep blue, almost black, with veins of silver and red running through it like lightning. And it was bright—bright enough that I had to squint against the sudden glare.
Grix’s head shot up. “Oh! You actually found something!”
He didn’t bother moving from his boulder. Instead, he imperiously gestured for us to approach. I picked up thecrystal and carried it to him, half-expecting this to be a complete failure, too.
Grix snatched it from me and turned it over in his clawed hands with the focus of a jeweler examining a diamond.
“Impressive.” He held it up to the light. “Most clients take hours to find even one piece of usable information. You got lucky.”
“What does it contain?” Barnaby hopped closer, ears perked forward with interest.
“Give me a moment.” From the inside of his suit jacket, Grix produced a small hammer and a velvet cloth. He wrapped the crystal carefully, then gave it a sharp, precise tap.
The crystal fractured along invisible seams, and light poured out. It was not the steady glow of the embedded gems, but something brighter, more focused. The light coalesced into an image hovering in the air above Grix’s palm.
A figure ran across a field. Fast. Impossibly fast. The landscape blurred around them, and I realized after a moment that I was watching from the runner’s perspective. The image showed what they saw as they moved.
The image shifted. Now the runner was standing in front of obstacles that appeared without warning—walls of fire, pits of ice, thorny hedges that grew as fast as therunner approached. But each obstacle bore riddles written in flowing script, and choosing the wrong path caused the walls to shift, creating dead ends or looping paths.
“Physical prowess and intellectual cunning,” Grix announced. “The first two components of the Challenge of Competency.”
“I used to be fast, but not anymore,” Barnaby murmured. “And Reynard’s been outwitting people since before the days of Charlemagne.”
“You don’t have to win both.” Grix let the broken crystal fall to the floor. “There’s one more component, and it’s the most important.”
He suddenly stood, gathering his papers with deliberate casualness. “I need better light for this section.” He moved away from his boulder, gesturing vaguely at the wall behind where he’d been sitting. “You might as well try there. The stone’s denser, so it’ll be harder work, but…”
He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t need to.
I approached the spot where Grix had been camped. The wall here was different—smoother, darker, with fewer visible crystals embedded in the surface. I raised my pickaxe and swung.
The impact sent vibrations up my arms that made my teeth rattle. The pickaxe barely left a mark.
Barnaby hopped over with his chisel. He struck the wall with his usual precision, and the chisel skittered off the surface without gaining purchase.
“This is going to take a while,” he muttered.
