The dawn came a few hours later. The wind coming off the lake was cool. It was something like mid-fall at this point, though the seasons had never been as coherent as Michael was used to on Earth. Then again maybe the natives would've found the seasons on Earth just as incoherent.

Michael began his morning training, devoting it to Bruntus aloud even though he no longer needed to do so. He worked his way through all of the basic movements he knew with a blade. Once he was done he shifted the blade into a mace and worked his way through those movements as well. He'd gotten to the point where he was barely breaking a sweat after even a full hour of training so he focused primarily on technique. He clearly remembered those first swordstrikes he made in Stent, the feeling of nailing a perfect swordstroke. Now he would shoot for several hundred in a row at that level. Lys, Davi, Pyotr and basically everyone he'd sparred or trained with had told him he had a very straightforward style, but it suited him. He'd rather be perfect at the basic movements than ruin the foundations he built by attempting to fight stylishly.

Once he was done he said some brief prayers and got to preparing breakfast. He started a small cooking fire and began to fry some of the thin strips of pork he still had, tossing in a few freshly foraged mushrooms and seasoning it with salt. It wasn't a perfect meal, but it was filling and before too long Ollie poked a sleepy face out of his tent.

"Save some for me?" he asked as he emerged from it like a clown from a clown car, his height making his entrance or exit from anything mildly comical.

"Sure did," responded Michael before scooping another bite into his mouth.

"Thanks, mate," said Ollie as he got himself a bowl and started to eat.

They ate in silence for a short while and eventually the fog from the lake began to drift toward them again, revealing the same shades they'd watched the previous day.

"Oh good, TV's on," said Ollie as he shoveled a mushroom into his mouth.

The phantoms began to move about their daily routines. It seemed much the same as the previous day except there were a few minor changes that indicated to them that the phantoms weren't repeating the exact same actions.

"Do you think they go through every day of their lives here? Or just a few days?" asked Michael as he watched them drift about in an approximation of life.

"I don't know. Don't really want to be here long enough to find out," replied Ollie.

"Fair enough," replied Michael.

They finished their breakfast while watching the phantoms move around and then put out the fire.

"So, how're we supposed to keep busy until your god-stuff starts working again?"

"It feels like it won't be much longer," said Michael, receiving a slight pull that was beginning to grow from his Seer title.

Ollie shrugged, "Guess I'll watch these things for a while then."

Michael left him to it and decided to search the ruins a bit more. It took some time, but eventually he found the area where the road to the manor would've had to be. He found some indicating that a stone wall and gate had been there at some point, but between whatever damage had been done to it, and the ravages of time there wasn't really much to see. He decided to head back to where Ollie was and found him watching a specific figment very attentively.

"More adultery?" asked Michael.

"No, though they did sneak a quickie in in the garden just a bit ago. It was bold, and I'm pretty sure a different figment saw it from a balcony."

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"Scandalous."

"I know, it's like I'm sitting with my mum watching Home and Away."

Michael would've said Days of our Lives, but he realized they may not get civilized TV in the outback. He shared as much and was surprised when Ollie held up a hand.

Michael went quiet and reached for his mace, looking for an enemy, but saw and sensed nothing. He looked in the direction Ollie was and saw one of the figment walk directly into the ground.

"A basement?" asked Michael.

"Either that or a vault," said Ollie pulling his staff from his back. He began to chant a series of curses as he walked in a square, smashing the bottom of his staff at four different points. Michael could feel him channeling magicka, and when he released it he raised his staff and with it rose a perfect five by five square of stone and dirt. He moved it to the side and began casting again. This time he seemed to be cursing in two different languages at once, both Hume and English. He finished and this time two five by five squares were removed at the same time.

Michael was impressed. He doubted he could've moved more than a foot of dirt, maybe two. He also forgot that Ollie was capable of casting two spells at once. Usually that meant rapid-fire fireballs on the battlefield, but in the chaos of battle Michael wasn't really able to appreciate the power and skill that took. He had to focus more on keeping himself and others alive.

As Ollie moved dirt and stone it became clear that while there was a basement, it had collapsed in at some point. There were a few remnants of chests that must've been filled with goods that had long since rotted away, but one square of dirt had a distinctly metallic glint to it as it was raised out.

Ollie had that one land close and poked at it a bit with his staff. It was a bit funny after he'd just done such impressive magic, but after a few pokes a single gold coin tumbled from the dirt and landed on the ground. He scooped it up, wiped some dirt off of it, and bit it.

"Seems real."

"Why…why wouldn't it be?" asked Michael. "Why put that in your mouth at all?"

Ollie shrugged. "Saw it on TV once."

He flicked it to Michael who caught it and took a closer look. It depicted the profile of a man with an impressive beard wearing a crown on one side, and had the six pointed symbol of the divine on the other. That was interesting. That meant that at the time of the manor the worship of the gods was still active enough to print on money. The Hidden Village had told him that the gods' merge into the divine had coincided with the cataclysm. It didn't take a genius to see that the cataclysm was what his visions were building to. If Michael's vision was of the man who caused the cataclysm though, and he himself had been a taker, that meant that something else had caused the takers. Something from before the cataclysm. He supposed he knew that if he thought about the legend he'd heard in Svict of the Taker prince, but he hadn't really sat and tried to figure out the timeline. Were Takers a feature or a bug? Had he been intended to arrive? Did the gods want takers for something? Or had they made some kind of mistake that had led to them?

He directed the question to the murmurs of the gods, but found them busy and focused as they had been since he'd finished his pilgrimage. Or perhaps…perhaps they didn't want to answer.

That thought concerned him, but before he could put much energy into it Ollie pulled out another square of dirt. He was going to place it with the dirt blocks that held nothing, but Michael saw a flicker of gold lettering drifting off of it.

"Wait, I see something in there," he said and Ollie gently placed it next to the dirt square that held the coin they found.

Michael took his sword and used it to break the dirt, looking to figure out what exactly was giving off the divine lettering. Eventually he saw a piece of black fabric. He grabbed the edges of it and pulled it out, brushing the dirt from it carefully. It just seemed like a black circle of hardened fabric, but he eventually realized that there was a point to it. He pulled up the point and it extended into a perfectly pointed hat with a wide brim. He took a moment to divine it.

Title

Thinking Cap

Grants:

Major Concentration

Middling Magicka

"Damn!" yelled Michael almost involuntarily.

"What is it?" asked Ollie as he placed down a few more blocks of dirt.

"It's a titled hat," he said, holding it out. "One of the strongest titled items I've ever seen. Major Concentration and Middling Magicka." Looking at it closer it was the same cap that Sylas had been wearing in Michael's vision. He held it out to Ollie.

"Makes more sense for you to have it, I think."

Ollie sighed and put it on, the point of the hat adding a foot to his already substantial height. With the scaled jacket he had from the bounty hunter it made him look like a proper wizard.

Ollie adjusted it and smiled. "You think the ladies will like it?"

"I don't see how they couldn't."

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