This is the first fanfic I wrote since joining this site about three years ago. I rediscovered it and filled in a few gaps.

I realise that I may be using the wrong meaning for threefold here. Rather than returning just three times stronger, I assume an additional three times.

Disclaimer: As the nature of this site suggests, I do not own the original books.

The four friends slowly relax as the dust settles, the ground no longer rolling and squeezing around them. No one speaks, the rocky hollow filling with tension as it sinks in; what just happened, where they are, what will happen next. It feels like the eye of a storm, the world holding its breath in anticipation. It's not over yet.

Tris trembles as she feels the wave approaching through the ground. "Guys, I think we're in trouble… more trouble. There's another quake coming; not just yet, but soon. And it's bigger." She gulps, remembering her ill-advised experiment with the tides. "There is no way I'm going to be able to deal with this one on my own, I need your help."

Sandry laughs, the sharp edge of hysteria echoing around the small space. "Help, how? We're in a cave! In case you haven't noticed, none of us are stone mages and I don't see any forges, plants or thread around."

"Calm down saati, we'll think of something." Daja feels around then lays a comforting hand on her knee before turning towards Tris. "She does have a point though. There are metals in the ground, but they're not in a form I can work with."

"The magma." Daja cocks her head in confusion at Tris' words. "You're a smith mage, you need heat and metals. Well, magma is molten rock, full of metal ores, plenty there for you to work with."

She nods tentatively in understanding. Heat and metal and force. That is all her magic is, really. Nothing to say her forge can't be the Earth itself.

"I'm not sure if I can work it at a distance, with just my magic, but I'll give it a go."

The little cave is silent as she falls into meditation breathing, the others automatically following suit. They feel a brief rush of warmth as her magic spreads out, flowing into the surrounding rock, stretching to reach the raw materials of her magic.

Long moments later, Daja relaxes, sweat sticking coal dust to her dark skin. "It's no use. I can sense it, just, and I can feel what to do with it, but any magma is way too far away to use."

Tris growls in frustration. "I can reach it just fine, but that's no use when you're the one who knows how to shape it. And I don't dare bring some up where you can get at it; the last thing we need right now is a volcano to go with the earthquake!"

Sandry whimpers, Tris's comment really not helping her vivid imagination. Tris pokes Briar next to her. "How about you, thief-boy, any luck?"

She feels his muscles shift as he shrugs helplessly. "Same problem as Daja. I can sense the plants, but they're too far away. It's a pity we don't all have your range, Coppercurls; we're just not strong enough!"

Suffocating silence fills the hollow.

Sandry swallows thickly. She knows that she is useless here – good f'r naught but t' be waited on and t' marry – but she'd hoped that one of the others…

Little Bear squirms and something digs into her hip. She reaches down and moves her drop spindle, fingers running over the familiar shape. Suddenly, she sits up straight, an idea bursting into her mind.

"Wait, I've got it! Tris, you need more power. Daja and Briar, you need Tris's reach."

Briar rolls his eyes, the action obvious despite the dark. "So our magic is useless. We know that, how does that help?"

She glares towards him as she frees her spindle. "Let me finish. We use my magic. Separately we are weak, just like individual fibres. To make us stronger, we need to be spun together like a thread."

"Whatever we are going to try," Tris' voice is tight, "we need to do it soon. The next earthquake is coming closer and my protections aren't going to last long the way they are now."

A sudden thought, and Sandry scrabbles in pouch, panic fading as her fingers tangle in the string coiled inside; her first thread. A few practiced motions later, it is tied to the green spindle, hanging before her. Dropping back into the calm of her meditation, she reaches inside, drawing forth a honey-coloured strand of magic.

"I need your magic." Her voice is a quiet murmur in the dark. "Find your magic and give me a thread, let me draw it in, spin us together."

She reaches mental fingers towards Daja beside her, an orange-red wire glowing in her mind's eye. Grasping it, she pulls it towards her, the wire growing longer as she draws it from its source. Keeping a firm hold she turns her attention to the green presence opposite, coaxing out the thin vine wriggling towards her. The final magic is the hardest. It flashes when she touches it, sparking, and she pulls back in shock. A second try, and it is a cool blue ribbon – water or air – softly flowing as it twines around her fingers. Holding the strands before her she pauses, preparing herself. Then her physical hand reaches out and flicks the spindle sharply, setting it spinning.

Sending a quick prayer, she adds the threads of magic to the leader. They take, and the spindle bursts into light in her mind, the four strands trailing from the end as she spins them together, colours twisting around each other. Then a jolt of warmth surges down the thread, tingling with the warmth of hot metal, the vitality of growing plants and the electricity of lightning. She spins more and the feeling grows, her magic spinning tighter yet reaching out.

Daja groans as she strains to reach the molten metals hovering tantalisingly out of reach. Tris gasps as she shoves a tremor around the cave, feeling crushed by the power of the front rolling towards them. Briar's hands curl into claws as he just brushes the root tips of the plants above.

"We need more power!"

Sandry watches the spindle, seeing how the individual threads are fading as the last of their magic is spun together. Desperately, she reaches down inside herself to the place where she stores her magic. She searches for any last stray threads she can give to her friends but the glowing white spindle she stores it on is empty, the only light in the dark.

Without knowing what she is doing, she reaches out and touches it, feeing the essence that makes her Sandry. The living circle teaches that magic is life and life is power, so surely…

The spindle collapses into a pile of thread. Finding an end, she takes it and adds it to her green spindle hovering between them, adding to her and her friends' magic all her strengths and dreams and feelings. She adds her stubbornness, her ease at making friends, her love for her favourite uncle. She adds the beating of looms as it drowns out painful memories, and her noble blood which she only remembers to call on when protecting her friends. She adds her half-formed images of clothes, infused with magic, shaping themselves to dazzle, to heal and to protect. They run up her thread, twisting with the others, making their combined cord blaze brighter.

The others sense what she has done and, with barely a pause, add their own memories and feelings; their essences. She spins them all together; twisting, twining, merging.

The thread on the spindle flashes, a surge of power flooding through them. Sandry feels Daja reach into the distant magma and draw out a wire, quickly followed by more, shaping them into a cage, a shield. She feels Tris catch the next tremor and use it to prepare the ground, directing the worst of the earthquake's power around them. She feels Briar leap from the plants in the garden to connect to his shakkan, sending more magic rushing through their link. She feels their magic joining with her own, returning it threefold.

When their teachers finally rescue them from their rocky chrysalis, they emerge not as four, but as one.