Oh, great.

So not only was she expected to figure out Arithmancy, but she was also expected to figure it out in some weird, foreign-type language. What gives?!

Sierra copied down the random letters.

XOBWEIXSDZ DXS CQ AOXDWBDXP!

...and all she had to start with was D equals C?! What about the other twenty-four letters?! What did THEY equal?

Sierra changed all the D's to C's.

XOBWEIXSCZ CXS CQ AOXCWBCXP!

...and then she consulted the books, because...what else could she do? She read all about ETAOIN and how some letters appear more often than others. This was hurting her head! She began counting how many times each letter appeared in the words.

There sure were a lot of X's. Sierra marked E's, T's, and A's above all the X's and then added a little question mark to the end. There were no contractions in this word. Merlin, Hadley! Sierra moved on to the one three-letter word in the puzzle. There was an X in it, but...that wasn't helpful.

On a whim, Sierra counted the letters in the first word. Hmm. What would Hadley give them a message about? HA! Arithmancy! Sierra counted the letters again. Heh. She wrote the word Arithmancy above the first group of letters. So now she knew the X's meant A's, and she went through the word and marked those, too.

ARITHMANCY CAS CQ AOADWBDAP!

Arithmancy...cas? Cas... Cas... CAN! Arithmancy can...what?

She began to match up letters based on what she'd figured out about the first two words. Finally, she ended up with:



She was so excited to have figured it out that she put a ton of exclamation points behind her answer.