"...Whaddya mean?"

"He punches blocks," Bella says. "And coins appear. Enough of them and he gets a second life."

Alice laughs again. "That's awesome."

"I haven't played any video games in a long time. I never had my own system - had to go over to people's houses to play. But I'm pretty sure that's how it works." She slows down her pace a bit. "I wonder how many coinmakers there are in the world. And who they are."

"Betcha we could find out."

"By magic?" Bella asks. "Or by looking?"

"By taking over the world and seeing who squawks? But those too."

"But," Bella says, "if there are a bunch - and Elias knew like five individuals and one little cabal and they all lived on this continent - why hasn't one of them taken over the world yet?"

"Didn't think of it," he suggests. "Didn't wanna put the work in. Too busy smacking each other around. Never hurt themselves enough to get a good stash going. Who knows?"

"Or, one of them has," Bella says. "And is running the world in secret." She cocks her head. "If so they are doing a terrible job and I must depose them."

"...I love you," says Alice.

"I wonder how far we've come. I should have checked the time when we started out from the car. Does fifteen minutes sound right to you?"

"Just about, yeah. So, any bright ideas for how to find this thing once we're in the right square mile of forest?"

"Well, if we're lucky, then to me it'll look like it's got a great big neon sign on it. If we're not lucky, I start chucking squares at the problem."

"And I sit down and hope you don't fall down any holes," he says. "Okay."

"Well, if there's no neon sign, then you can help, you just look for - markers, or anything that resembles some odd word choice from the cipher, or something out of place that most likely got there by magic."

"Okay," he repeats, a little more brightly.

Walk-walk-walk. "Does your map have any useful landmarks?"

"Yeah, actually. See any fuck-off huge rocks?"

"I don't. Are we meant to be approaching one about now?"

"Soonish," he says.