[Ythri Drega Dun]

Ythri closed her eyes. For a moment, she felt nothing. Then, there was a blast of stinging cold. In surprise, she opened her eyes, only to find that she was alone. The Conservatorio was gone, and she was standing in the middle of a long, lonely stretch of rolling hills. The wind was rising, and she shivered. She was not dressed for this, and she wrapped her arms around herself.

Then, she had a strange feeling that there was something behind her. She turned abruptly, but didn't immediately see anything. Then, at the edge of the horizon, a thin dark line appeared. For a moment, her curiosity got the better of her, and she simply stared at it, trying to figure out what on Telath it might be.

The line spread, like a drop of ink placed in the water, moving away from the horizon and toward the place where Ythri was standing. It wasn't a cloud, and it wasn't any other atmospheric phenomenon she'd ever seen. It was much too solid to be a flock of birds. What was it?

Then, slowly, the irregular shape started to resolve itself. There were five protrusions coming out of the very end, and they began to curve slowly downward. Only then did Ythri realize what it looked like.

It looked like a hand.

Then it was swooping downward, moving at an impossible speed. Panic momentarily filled her, and she started to run, but there was nowhere to go. Her long legs ate up the ground, but she couldn't move faster than the hand. It was coming, so close that she could almost feel its frigid touch, and she tried desperately to move her feet faster...

...but something else was happening too, something that felt like her mind was being filled with knowledge, spells, bits of information that she didn't understand...

...and then her eyes opened with a start. She was looking at Master Montago, who looked back at her with an expression that was unreadable.

"When you're ready, you'll want to go home. It's usually not fruitful to continue lessons the same brightening as the unbinding, especially since I took the liberty of doing the imparting immediately after. Come back tomorrow, and we'll take it from there."