The Emblem of Courage

The ocean waves danced back and forth among the rocky and stony landshore. The cold waters hit the rocks and turned into white foam that spread high into the air like fireworks. All the droplets, which were sent toward the sky, fell to the ground wetting the nearby stones, and whenever enough droplets grouped together, they formed a stream and returned back toward the ocean like snakes sliding between crevices.

Not so distant from the ocean, stood a lonely temple. Far away from any towns or villages, in a land infertile and hostile, stood a building like a lonely lighthouse in the middle of nowhere.

With a hammer in his hand, Sycamore looked at the last nail. It was still sticking out too much for his liking, so he hit the nail one last time. Once he was finally satisfied, he stepped away, and took a good look at the wooden structure, which he had just finished building.

All of his hair was tied in a small ponytail at the back of his head in order to keep it away from his face, so that it didn’t interrupt his work. He wore pants and a sweater, but without his usual sleeveless coat, which he had left inside the temple.

"Is this my home?" the carriage, named Heavenly Flame of Oleander, or Heavo, asked, and Sycamore could swear that if it had eyes, it would start crying from joy.

"Yes," the man responded flatly, "I don't want to dig you out from under the snow, whenever I need to use you, so this is your garage."

Right next to the temple, stood a new building made of three walls, a steep roof, and a double door, which was just wide enough for a carriage to pass through as long as both doors were opened all the way.

"Can I go inside?" Heavo asked, overjoyed at the idea.

Sycamore opened both doors, and said, "go ahead.”

Rolling its own wheels, Heavo entered the garage on its own will.

"It's so good to have a home," Heavo said, and Sycamore silently agreed with him.

A small dog came running from behind the house, and entered the garage, "ey, get out of here," Sycamore scolded her and chased her out, before he closed the garage doors.

When he came to this temple for the first time, it took him several weeks to make himself feel at home, but as soon as he got to know the temple and the area well, he began planning for the improvements. First he went to the mountains to collect rare herbs and plants, which later on, he sold for quite a high price in the town of Bearhand to travelling merchants. The plants were valuable for both their rarity, but also for their purity, because they were collected in forests far away from any human settlement.

With the money he earned, he bought wood, tools, and a dog.

Using the wood and the tools, he built a simple garage to keep his carriage ready to go, regardless whether it was raining, hailing or snowing. He wasn't sure whether he'd make it on time, because the month of Veuf was almost over, and he expected the first snows to arrive any day now. However, he was glad that the snows this year were getting late, and he managed to finish the garage just in time.

After he closed the garage, he locked the doors. Naturally, there were no thieves around to steal his carriage from him, and even if they did steal the carriage, Sycamore was sure that the vehicle would return back to him by itself. However, he had to lock the doors as an extra security measure against the strong winds that blew around the temple almost every day and night. Sycamore simply didn't want to wake up one day, see the doors wide open and his carriage buried under snow.

Afterward, he looked toward the west. The sun hadn’t yet lowered all the way to the horizon, but it was already late in the afternoon, and soon the strong freezing winds from the north were to rise again, like they did almost every evening. Sycamore walked back toward the temple, opened the front door and looked behind himself at his dog still playing outside. It was only a puppy three months old, but she had a lot of energy to play around the temple.

"Nana," he called her and she came running to him like crazy.

When she ran into the temple, she ran up to his leg, and began running in circles around him.

Almost tripping over her, Sycamore somehow managed to enter the temple, with Nana walking between his legs. As soon as they were inside, Nana went running straight toward his bed, and Sycamore walked up to a small fridge, which he had bought recently. From inside of the fridge, he took out leftovers of the bird, which he had hunted earlier and ate some of it for lunch. He warmed up the remaining bird meat on a stove and had it for supper.

Meanwhile Nana was scowling next to him, wanting a bite, but he calmly told her, "wait," and continued eating.

Once he was full, he took whatever meat was left, and carried it over to the counter, where he put the meat inside a dog bowl, before he put the dog bowl in front of Nana, who happily ate everything while wagging her tail faster than a hummingbird would flap its wings.

Just as Sycamore walked away from the dog bowl, he heard the loud howling of the northern wind, which began its assault on the temple. It wasn't nighttime yet, but the sun was already approaching the horizon. Through the western windows, yellow gleams of sunlight entered the temple room, and painted the wood on the eastern wall orange-red.

Sycamore sat down on a chair by the table, and with a mind empty of all thoughts, he observed the signs of the dying sun. When the last ray disappeared, it was almost as if he woke up. He didn't know what time it was or how long he was just sitting there doing nothing. Understanding that soon it would get too dark to see anything, he lit a candle, took a bath, and after putting out the candle flame, he headed to bed.

Already in bed, he turned around to lay down on his right side. He closed his eyes, but just then he heard a familiar voice coming from behind, "you look quite happy."

He furrowed his eyebrows, and slowly turned around. A hoary monk was sitting on the adjacent wooden bed, which was left bare and without any bedsheets. The whole temple was dark, and nothing could be seen. Yet the figure of the patriarch was as clear as a during the daytime.

Sycamore recognized the face immediately. He was the same Elder Father, who let him live among the monks, and who passed away more than a year ago.

"They didn't want you in Heaven?" he spoke to the patriarch without a grain of respect.

Sycamore knew that it couldn't be the case. After people died, they had to go to the afterlife. One of the options was Heaven for the people, who lived their lives without harming others. The other option was Hell for those people, who lived their lives intentionally harming others: people, animals, and nature alike. However, the majority of people harmed others unintentionally, so they couldn’t go to either Heaven or Hell. These souls always ended up in a purgatory, where they remained until they paid for their deeds.

Moreover, whether an action was done intentionally or not wasn’t decided before the action was done, but afterward. Unintentional actions were those surrounded by regret and remorse.

Regret was an unbreakable will to never do the same deed ever again. And remorse was a sacrificial desire to repair or undo the damage, even at the cost of one’s own life, if necessary. If remorse and regret coexisted together after the deed, the sin committed was erased altogether as if it never existed, because regret meant that the deed would never be committed again, and remorse meant that whatever could be fixed would be fixed.

Most people, who expressed some regret and some remorse at their actions, ended up in purgatory, Which also meant, that the only people, who went to Hell, were the ones, who showed neither regret nor remorse, whenever a victim spoke of their actions on the day of their judgment.

Yet neither regret nor remorse was a feeling, so waiting for it to occur by itself was foolish. Those were skills, which all people were born with. And just like with any other ability, one could get rid of it or improve it.

Clergy spent all their lives practicing and learning to be more and more regretful and remorseful of any harm, which they had done to others. Ergo, it was unthinkable that a monk wouldn’t make it to Heaven.

The patriarch laughed, "do I look like a ghost to you?"

A ghost was a term used for those souls, who ended up in a purgatory after their death. Ghosts were often seen wandering around the world as part of their journey to purify themselves through repetitive suffering. However, the soul of the Elder Father, who visited Sycamore at night, looked nothing like a ghost.

Ghosts had terrifying faces due to the agony they had to experience in purgatory, but the patriarch’s face was full of happiness and bliss, and his body was full of light, which would imply that he was not a ghost, but a saint - a term used for those souls, who went to Heaven. Unlike ghosts, who were chained to the Material realm until their penance was completed, saints could freely travel between the Divine, Spiritual, and Material realms.

There was no term for souls, who ended up in Hell, because these souls were never seen ever again. Those, who went to Hell, were never able to return from there to tell others what that place was like.

"Should I start praying?" Sycamore answered the question with a question.

It was a common sense to pray for the dead, because prayers could heal the pain of ghosts, and ease their penance. However, it was also common to pray, when meeting saints, who often met the living people in order to request prayers for the ghosts stuck in the purgatory.

Nobody knew why, but God created the world in such an odd way, that the prayers of the living could help the dead, and the prayers of the dead could help the living. However, the prayers of the living had no effect on other living ones, and the prayers of the dead had no effect on other dead ones.

The saint smiled at Sycamore, "you haven't changed at all."

"Have you ever observed any signs, which would imply that I would ever change?" Sycamore grimaced as he considered the idea of changing. "I'm plenty content with who I am."

"I know you are," the patriarch laughed happily for a bit. Then he stopped laughing and looked serious, "Sycamore," he addressed the man by his first name. "Do you still remember the name you had in that world?"

Sycamore furrowed his eyebrows, "I try not to," he answered honestly.

The Elder Father nodded his head, then he swayed his body back and forth as if he was half-thinking, half-praying. After a long moment of silence, he looked around at the temple, and said, "nice home you set up here."

Sycamore raised one eyebrow. The only thing he saw in the darkness was the figure of the monk, and he wondered how well can a saint see in the darkness. He also wondered, whether the monk was going to complain about the dog in the temple.

"It looks like you're missing only a woman," the saint added and smiled again.

"I do not…." Sycamore began to speak, but he stopped, when he recalled that the souls, who reside in Heaven already know all of the past, all of the present, and all of the future. "Are you implying I'll bring a woman in here?"

He quickly recalled the previous world. He had a woman he loved there. They both went to school together, and he planned to confess his love to her, on her eighteenth birthday. However, his beloved woman died in a war, which was destroying that world, before she turned eighteen yrold. After that event, he put a lock on his heart, and decided that he would never fall in love again.

"I wasn't implying anything," the monk responded right away. "But you know, it's not good for a man to be alone."

"Said the man, who was always alone," Sycamore pointed out the irony.

"Naaah," the patriarch laughed. "No monk is ever alone. We have God with us all the time, and that's more than enough."

"Good for you," Sycamore responded. "If there's anything important that you want to tell me, get straight to the point. If not, I want to go back to sleep."

The saint smiled with a gleam in his eyes, as if he knew something that Sycamore didn't, which to Sycamore was the most obvious thing in this conversation.

With a soft voice, the Elder Monk said, "He knows your fears," and Sycamore immediately knew who 'He' was.

There was one being, whose name was as mysterious as the being itself. A being, who was known by many names, and whose existence was known by all. It was a being, which was omnipresent. Every existence in the world had come in contact with that being, but nobody had ever been able to fully describe that being.

And there was only one thing certain about the being: if nobody else, then - Him; if nothing else, then - Him. If anyone talked about «He» without ever mentioning the name, everyone knew that «He» meant God. Even demons, who hated God, would often use the phrase «you-know-who» to describe how God had once again hindered or thwarted their evil plans.

"This is not that world, and it will not fall like that world did," the patriarch’s words were full of hope and courage. Those weren't just words of wishful thinking. Those were facts. "You need to step out of the cage, which you built around yourself. You aren't safe in there. You'll never be safe in there."

Sycamore squeezed his lips and clenched his fists, but he didn't look away from the apparition. Without a warning, the memory flowed into his mind like a movie playing right in front of his eyes.

He saw himself lying dead on the ground. He had been stabbed by a large knife, still embedded in his heart, while his assailant was running away with his wallet. It wasn’t a robbery, but it was made to look like a robbery.

Under the night sky, in a shadowy area between two streetlights, his own body was getting colder and colder, and he saw his own soul leave the body and move up, higher and higher, toward the endless starry sky.

He recalled his own experience from that time. He remembered how surprised he was to see so many stars. He was certain, that it couldn't be that way, because he was in a big city, where no stars could be seen due to the light pollution.

The movie in front of his eyes disappeared, and Sycamore recalled his own past from a first person view.

Just when he thought that he'd be able to touch the stars, a blinding light appeared all around him and he floated through it, feeling as if he was one with the light. Then he felt a presence like never before. It was the presence of infinite power and glory, the presence of endless grace and beauty, the presence of perfect wisdom and mercy. He turned around to look at the presence of God, but to his surprise all he saw was a tiny fluffy ball of pure light.

"Where are they?" He asked.

Unknown how, but Sycamore knew that He was talking about his friends and family, many of whom have died before he did. And to his own surprise, he also knew where they were. Some were roaming the world as ghosts, unable to run away from their suffering. Others were sent to Hell, from where they could not return.

Sycamore didn't know how, he knew all of that, but the fact remained that knowledge was entering him out of nowhere. In his current state, he could tell where each person was, where each soul was, and what each one was doing. It was almost as if he knew everything about everyone, and it all felt so natural, that he couldn't comprehend why he was unable to know all of it until now.

"Do you want to save them?" He asked again.

However, Sycamore didn't need to answer His question. The desire to help them was so strong in his heart, that even if he wanted to deny it, he wouldn't be able to.

Furthermore, all of his thoughts, feelings and actions have merged together, so he could no longer separate them. He could no longer take actions different from his feelings. He could no longer say things different from his thoughts. He could no longer hide his feelings, and he could no longer contradict his thoughts.

And he felt as if God was pleased with his response, even though he did not respond at all.

His body, which was lying dead on the ground, was teleported right in front of him, into this place full of divine light. He looked at it, while feeling peace of mind, even though there was nothing peaceful about his life and death.

The surrounding light came in touch with his body, which began to heal as if the time was being turned back. The wound disappeared, and the body was growing younger and younger, until it was back to its newborn form. At that moment, Sycamore felt as if someone pushed his back, and suddenly his soul was thrown into the body of this newborn baby.

As soon as he was in the body, he opened his eyes, and saw a beautiful angel looking down at him.

The angel picked him up, and carried him away. Before the angel left that place full of light, Sycamore heard the words of God once again.

"Go," He said. "You have my blessing.”

Right after he heard those words, which were like a soft breeze on a summer day, the light all around him disappeared, and instead of the light, he saw a huge chamber, which looked like a temple, full of monks, nuns, and two people - his new parents. He held out his tiny hand toward them, and they both smiled in response.

The vision-like recollection of his past ended right there, and Sycamore realized that he was in bed, an adult man holding out his adult hand toward the roof.

It was late morning.

The sunlight of the rising sun was already entering through the eastern windows, and there was no sight of the Elder Father anywhere in the temple. Sycamore didn't know whether he really met him last night, or whether all of that was just a dream, but it didn’t matter.

From the moment, when he was given this second chance, he resolved that he would never again repeat that same mistake.

It was the thirty seventh day of Veuf in the year fifty seven hundred ninety nine.

Sycamore wasn't surprised that the temperature during the nighttime had dropped down below zero centigrades, because he already saw frost on the ground every morning for the last two weeks. However, he was surprised to see the snow.

“So it had finally arrived,” he said looking at the snow accumulated in the corners of the windows.

His morning had started like usual. He got up and quickly dressed in the warmest clothing he had. The outside temperature was ten points below zero, but the thick walls of the temple protected the temperature from dropping too low inside the building. And yet, it was still too cold in the temple without extra clothing.

Nana, who had her bed right beside his bed, was hidden among the old fluffy comforter that Sycamore gave her for the night. She looked up at him, but didn't dare to move. Her eyes were full of hope and pleading, and he knew what she wanted.

He quickly turned on the oven, and as soon as the room began to warm up, Nana got a lot of energy and wagging her tail, she started running around the temple.

Afterward, Sycamore dressed up in outdoor clothes and together with Nana, he went outside to see, if anything was caught in the traps that he set by the seashore. He was happy to see three fishes inside. He brought them home, put two small fishes into Nana’s bowl, and the third one, the mid-sized one, he set aside to make into his own breakfast.

On the previous day, he made plans to go again into the woods, but after seeing the heavy clouds in the sky and the snow-covered ground, he decided against it. He didn't want to risk going out, when a snowstorm could arrive at any moment.

Nana, on the other hand, was overjoyed playing with the snow. She didn’t want to go back home so fast, and even the two tasty fishes had to wait in her bowl for quite a bit before she got too hungry to play.

Sycamore calling her home didn’t work either, so the man left the front door slightly ajar, not enough for a dog to pass through, but enough for Nana to push the door open, once she was too cold and wanted to return.

Nana, who was still a puppy, would get cold overnight, and yet as soon as she started running, she wouldn’t feel the cold anymore. Sycamore was already aware of the need to warm her up at night, because the seller had warned him that this winter breed of dogs was sensitive to cold as puppies, but they would grow thicker fur with age.

However, what surprised Sycamore was Nana’s ability to generate heat as soon as she started moving. Whenever he touched her after she came back running, it felt like touching a heater. No wonder she wasn’t feeling cold, when she was running outside, while playing with the snow.

Sycamore added a towel under the door to stop the winds from opening the door any wider, and he began preparing the herbs, which he had gathered the day before. He didn't have the time to prepare them yesterday, because he wanted to finish building up the garage for his carriage as soon as possible. He was extremely glad that he managed to complete it on time.

First, he took up herbs and some mushrooms, which were set for drying. He cleaned them the day before, so now he only needed to tie them up. With a needle, he pierced each mushroom, and put them one by one onto a thread. With each thread holding eight to twelve mushrooms, he hung the threads on a rope high above the oven.

With the herbs, the situation was much simpler. He just tied the long stalks together with a thick thread, and hung each bundle of stalks on the rope next to other herbs, which were already hanging above the oven. Afterward, he moved on to prepare yet another bunch of herbs. He separated their leaves, flowers, buds, stalks, grains, and roots, and each part of the plant received a separate treatment.

He boiled the stalks, but only simmered the flowers. He saved the dry grains for the future by putting them in an empty jar. He mashed the leaves into a green puree. He put the buds inside a bottle, added some other herbs, and poured vodka over them before tightly sealing the bottle. As for the roots, he put some of them inside a wooden bowl, while he chopped the rest.

He cut apart the head of the fish, and sliced its body open in half. He took out the skeleton of the fish, and put both slices on a pan, added oil, some pepper and salt, and the chopped roots. Then he took out a dry leaf, and crushed it in his hands into tiny pieces before he sprinkled it over the fish, and covered the pan.

He put the fish head into the fridge, to use it later to make the broth.

While the fish slices were frying on the pan, he took out a mortar, and crushed the fish bones until they all turned into a powder, which he could add in the future to other dishes. He spread the fishbone powder on a plate next to the oven and left it to dry.

After the fish was done, he ate it together with a salad, which he made for supper the day before. To save himself time, he made enough of the salad to last him for two days, and even after he ate some with the fish, more than a quarter of the salad was still left in the fridge.

Sycamore Snow was a graduate of the school of Iris, which specialized in medicine, both non-herbal medicine and herbology. It was a school, which dealt primarily with the topic of human health. However, unlike other students of Iris, Sycamore didn't go there, because he wanted to be a doctor. He went there, because he didn’t want to learn anything new.

In that world, where he came from, biology used to be his favorite subject since his early childhood. The plants interested him a lot, but he was even more interested in how the plants interacted with humans. Whether it was poisonous plants or healing plants, didn’t matter to him. As long as the plant had an effect on a human, he wanted to know about it.

Coincidentally, the majority of plants of this world were exactly the same as the plants in his previous world, so he didn’t have a lot to learn. Quite on the contrary, he possessed more knowledge than his teachers.

However, this was not some common knowledge from his previous world. Sycamore, like all people obsessed with one subject, wasn’t content with the general knowledge. He kept searching on and on, learning everything no matter how obscure info about this one topic, which interested him. Furthermore, he did his own experiments in secret using plants he found and whoever was willing to drink his “tea”.

When he was preparing herbs, he felt that strange sensation of being home, even though there was nothing in common between his passion and his childhood home.

Back in the school of Iris, he was granted a special teaching process due to his already immense amount of knowledge. He didn't have to attend any classes, and he had access to every book in the library. It was up to him, how long he wanted to stay in the school of Iris, and regardless whether he stayed there one day or nine years, Iris was still going to provide him with a certificate of graduation coupled with a certificate of excellence.

Sycamore didn't care about either one. He remained in the school for eight years. It took him that much time to read through every book about plants, which he had found in their expansive library. After graduation, he received a countless number of job offers, because of the certificate of excellence, which the professors attached to his diploma against his will. He rejected all the job offers.

Instead he began his quiet life in a temple among monks. He had no plan of becoming a monk, but he knew that the temples would take kindly to him, because the clergy believed him to be some sort of God-sent savior. However, that didn't last forever. Years passed, the Elder Father died, and yet no danger befell the world.

Clergy started to doubt their original assumption and instead they took a more neutral attitude. They allowed Sycamore to live in their temples, without becoming one of them, but over time, more and more monks were uncomfortable with the arrangement.

It was inevitable that sooner or later, Sycamore had to move out, but he was already prepared for this for a long time. However, he didn’t expect that the monks would have given him a temple all for himself, and he didn’t mind the gift at all. Quite on the contrary, he was very glad. Over here, he had far more room for himself, far more freedom to do whatever he wanted, and there was no one - simply no one to disrupt his peace.

He loved solitude.

If anyone asked Sycamore, what paradise looks like, he’d always answer the same way: a paradise is a place, where there are no other humans except myself. If Sycamore had one wish to come true, he’d wish to live in a world without other humans. From the day of his birth, Sycamore never enjoyed being in the presence of his own species.

Just as he was enjoying his time alone in this temple far away from any settlement, Nana suddenly returned back, pushing the door wide open, and running into the temple.

Sycamore turned to look at the entrance, and he saw two people dressed in hooded robes. The encounter quickly brought back memories of the war, but he forced himself not to think of the distant past. He wasn't living in that world anymore, and whatever it was, it couldn't be anything, what his body feared.

One of the men took off his hood and Sycamore realized that those two weren’t any humans. Still his guests were human-like in appearance, which did bother Sycamore a bit. But at least they weren’t humans, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

The man, who took off his hood, had skin whiter than snow. His long nails shone like ice. His eyes were navy in color like deep lake waters on a moonlit night. His lips were bright blue like the petals of Centaurea flowers. And his white hair looked like millions of thin strands of silk thread.

"Are you Sycamore, the son of Snow?" the guest asked, and Sycamore was certain about his identity.

Only elves used that odd phrasing of calling humans 'sons of' or 'daughters of' followed by the household, which they belonged to.

"Yes, I'm Sycamore of the Snow household," he responded with a phrase that was very formal, but logically more correct than the phrase used by the elves. He was a member of the Snow household, and an adopted son of two other members of that household. Albeit, he wasn't a son of the household's label.

"Our King would like to speak with you. May we come inside?" the same elf spoke.

"I have nothing to offer to your king, but you're welcome to come in and sit wherever you wish," he responded in a cold and uncaring voice.

Both guests came inside and the other still-hooded elf ordered, "close the door.” The first elf promptly did that, shutting off the flow of cold air into the temple.

Sycamore didn't say anything. He kept the door slightly open for Nana, who was already inside the temple, and hiding under the bed.

The second elf, who gave the order, took off his hood, and Sycamore had to admit that there was no man more beautiful in the whole world. Unlike the first elf, this one appeared almost human-like, if not for his spiky ears.

Sycamore wasn't surprised at their different appearance. Elves, just like fairies, were creatures of the nature. Over time, they adapted to their environment, and their appearance changed to match the place, where they lived.

The appearance of fairies, which were only several centimeters tall, changed within minutes, while for the elves, it took many years for the transformation to complete. However, it wasn't a problem for them, since elves, just like fairies, lived for thousands of years.

The beautiful elf sat at the table without asking for permission, and his companion stood by his side like a guard.

"I came to ask you about the world, where you were born," he said as he looked directly at Sycamore. "Will you answer my questions?"

Sycamore approached the table, pulled out a chair, and sat down with an empty chair separating him and the beautiful elf. "Ask," he ordered the elf, whom he was sure to be the King of Elves.

The elf, who was standing by, furrowed his eyebrows in confusion, as he looked at his king expecting some reaction, but there was none. The King of Elves made no comment, and instead he put his hand on his chin and asked, "what is the name of the demon, who possessed your world?"

"Anagape Infida," Sycamore responded.

"What about her real name?" the elf asked what he thought was the obvious question, but Sycamore twisted his mouth in disgust.

"You know that the human mouth has its limits and we cannot make sounds like that."

"So you call her A-na-ga-pe?" the King of Elves repeated the name.

"An… a-ga-pe," Sycamore separated the words. "In one of the languages of that world, it means: without love."

"All demons are without love," the elf pointed out. "They rejected God. They rejected love."

"But only she spread that onto humans."

“What do you mean?”

Sycamore took a deep sigh and explained. "She possessed one of the humans, and using that human she wrote a book. It was a book without God, a book without love, a book without hope. And the book she wrote had the power to possess others; to spread that loveless, Godless domain of hers."

"That's not possible," the elf crossed his arms. "Words belong to God, and even when they're used with evil intentions, they cannot grant any demon the power to possess. One must enter into the demon’s domain on their own free will to end up possessed."

Sycamore knew that very well. When God created the demons, each one was given a domain over which they had control, and that was at the same time the maximum and the minimum of their powers.

A domain was any action that a living being could take in a physical world. For example, a demon with a domain of murder cannot possess anyone, who has never murdered, but could easily possess a murderer.

"The book she wrote - it was read by people all over the world, and many of them acted out the message that was hidden within the book."

This new info cleared out the elf’s confusion. If the people only read the book, then nothing would have happened to them. However, if they acted out what was in the book, and turned words into reality, then the actions they took could fall under the demon's domain, thus granting the demon the power to rule over them.

"So by practicing in reality what was presented in the books, they have entered the domain of that demon?"

"Correct."

"So what is her domain?"

"Despair."

The King of Elves furrowed his eyebrows, "could you clarify?"

"Despair is a state of losing hope," Sycamore gave the definition.

"I know what despair is. I want to know how did anyone fall into despair just by reading a book. It's not easy to lose all hope."

"You'd have to read the book she wrote."

"Summarize it for me."

Sycamore sighed, "it started as a tale full of hope.” He stayed quiet as he unwillingly recalled the plotline. “Like a typical hero, the main character was given superpowers to deal with the evil, but the more superpowers he was given, the more powerful the evil became. He fought, but he couldn’t win.”

“It doesn’t sound like a good plotline,” the elf tilted his head. “How did that kind of a book get famous?”

“The demon didn’t publish the whole book all at once. She took time, giving people a hope that at the end, the hero would defeat the evil.”

“And what happened in the end?”

“It turned out that both the hero and the villain were puppets.”

“I see,” the elf locked his fingers under his chin. “She spread the idea that people had no ability to change their fate.”

“Precisely,” Sycamore nodded. “Subtly, she taught her readers to abandon all hope and to drown in despair of not being able to change one’s own present situation or even decide one’s own future."

The most common lie of demons, was the lie known as: I was born this way. Demons knew that men make mistakes, and they also knew that men have the ability to get over their past mistakes to self-improve. However, if a man were to believe that he cannot change, the man would forever remain drowning in his own flaws. Nothing would change, and nothing would improve.

Indeed, such a pattern of thoughts had led many straight into the domain of despair.

“Both the hero and the villain of that book were set up to be who they were by a prophecy from the past,” Sycamore added. “And neither one of them was able to free themselves from the chains of that prophecy.”

“So the readers of that book began to believe that their future was predetermined, and instead of creating their own future, they had fallen into passive acceptance of whatever happened. I understand," the elf put down his hands. "So what did she do with those, whom she possessed?"

"She turned humans into monsters," Sycamore said, then remained silent.

After waiting for a while, and seeing that no more info was coming, the King of Elves spoke, "be more specific. What happened to humans?"

"She treated each one differently, however she pleased. But she left no one unaffected," Sycamore sighed heavily. "First, she threw people into deeper despair, then led them toward suicide, but she wouldn't let them die, unless they went out and harmed as many people as they could."

"But it’s not like everyone who read that book lost all hope?"

"Those, who had kept some hope after reading her book, should have realized how blessed they were, but instead they took it for granted," Sycamore said in a very sad tone.

"Did you read it?" the elf asked, even though he already knew the answer.

Sycamore leaned his head on his hand, with his palm on his forehead, "unfortunately," he said so quietly that it was almost a whisper. "I wish I never did," he added. "If it was possible, I wish I could have unread it, and forget that it even exists." His voice had a strong hint of suffering, which that book had caused.

However the elf wasn't going to drop the topic, because he wanted to know exactly what kind of an enemy was looming over his world, where he and all the other elves lived. "So did you fall under her possession?" he asked, and when Sycamore nodded, he asked another question, "how did you free yourself?"

"Did I?" Sycamore responded and stared blankly at the table, "am I really free, if I cannot forget what happened?"

"You're no longer possessed, are you?"

Silence was the only response to the elf’s question. After a long moment Sycamore spoke up, "my head hurts. Can you come another time?" The man didn't raise up his head or look at anything other than the tabletop in front of his eyes.

"Before I leave, I have one more question. How is it possible that no one realized that the book was written by a demon? If only someone pointed it out, the book would lose its power. The readers would be aware of the hidden goal behind the book, and they wouldn't fall into her trap so easily."

Once again his question met with nothing but silence. However long the elf waited, there was no response, so he got up and headed toward the door. His companion walked up to the front, grabbed the handle, and opened the door for him. The King of Elves put his foot forward, but right before he exited, he heard the answer.

"She lied," Sycamore said with a strong voice filled with disgust and anger. "Like a scammer, who falsely labels the products he sells, she misnamed the evil as good. Purposely and intentionally, she changed the meaning of the words, and overwrote their true definitions. By the time anyone realized, it was already too late. We were all in her domain, caged in despair like prisoners with no hope to escape."

The King of Elves quietly listened to the answer, and when Sycamore was done speaking, he exited through the front door. His companion exited after him, closing the door behind them and both of them headed toward the forest. However, they didn't go far. Soon they stepped on a piece of ground that had a crack, and upon taking that one step forward, they disappeared like a light of a candleflame that had been suddenly blown out by a strong wind, with no sign of their presence left behind.

Inside the temple, Sycamore remained sitting by the table, with his face hidden in his hands. Nana stayed under the bed for a bit longer, but once she was sure that the guests weren't coming back, she came out, approached the man and put her head on his lap.

Sycamore looked down at her, and slowly began to stroke her head.

"Do you know why humans are God's greatest creation?" he asked the dog, who didn't speak human language, but she certainly understood what was spoken.

Nana didn't respond to his question and just continued to remain by his side, while Sycamore continued to talk to her as if they were conversing.

"Because it's the only creation with an infinite potential to change. Elves are born beautiful and remain so forever. Dragons are born with wisdom and keep it all their lives. Demons are the most powerful from the beginning to the end, but humans - they are born with nothing; ugly, stupid, weak, noisy, slow, useless, defenseless, helpless, naive, lame, sickly, and so much more... there's no end to all the flaws that humans are born with."

He sighed as he looked up at the ceiling.

"And yet, it is humans, who can become more beautiful than elves, or more wise than dragons, or more powerful than demons. Humans can stand above all the others of God's creations in the divine hierarchy. So why, oh why, do so many humans choose to waste the endless potential that God gave them?"

He stopped petting Nana, and closed his eyes.

"Like pigs humans desire to play in filth, but humans are worse than pigs,” he opened his eyes, and continued to talk about humankind, and about himself. “We could dream big, but instead we are content with minimum. And when we have more than what we need, we turn stupid, and long for evil, because we’re always bored of good.”

He looked at the statue in the center of the temple, “if not for those sick desires, no one would have read that book. No one.” He looked at Nana. “Why do humans always have to learn through suffering?”

Nana lay by his chair on the floor.

“To be born a human is more a curse than a blessing.”

Wasabi sat by the table in the living room. Galangal sat next to her, and both girls were doing their homework. It was Wednesday afternoon, and they already finished all their classes.

"I’m done with the last question," Galangal said, as she looked at the completed sheet of answers in her notebook.

Wasabi moved closer and looked at her roommate’s homework. "We still don't know the answer to these two questions," she said as she pointed at the two numbers followed by an empty row. "You sure, you don't want to come along?" she asked her roommate.

"No," the younger girl responded. "Just hurry up and bring back the answers."

Wasabi chuckled. She found Galangal's lack of social skills rather cute. Moreover, she didn’t mind Galangal’s princess-like attitude and wasn't bothered at all, whenever the smaller girl ordered her around. "Why don't you try?"

"No," Galangal’s response was definite and short.

"Just once?" Wasabi tried asking with a cuter voice.

"No."

"Why not?"

Galangal looked away, and murmured her response, maybe in hope that she wouldn't be heard, but Wasabi still heard her. “Because they're too big."

"Who? My cousiness?" Wasabi smiled as she put her face closer to her roommate. "Don't tell me you're scared, because of the size difference?"

Galangal, who was only seven yrold was much smaller than any other first year student, and compared to third year students, she was like a tiny speck of dust. Thus, she had a very good reason to avoid being anywhere near older students.

"Don't be afraid," Wasabi put her hand on Galangal's head, "Anise is a very nice person."

Galangal pushed her hand away, stood up and walked off, "no!" she yelled at Wasabi, before she turned around the corner.

"Oh well," Wasabi summed up her efforts. She packed up her backpack, put on outdoor shoes in the entry room, and left heading toward the cottage, where Anise and Golpar lived together.

When she arrived at her older cousiness's cottage, she entered through the front door without knocking. Once she closed the exterior door, she called out from the entry room, "I’m here!" but there was no response.

After changing her shoes, Wasabi walked inside and found the cottage to be empty. "I guess their class isn't finished yet," she thought and looked at the clock.

It was about time that their class was to end, so Wasabi entered the kitchen and looked through their food. She found some dried seaweed snacks, and took to eating them, while sitting on the sofa and waiting for Anise and Golpar to come back.

Half an hour later, she heard the sound of the front door opening, and voices of a conversation.

"...and then she forgot to explain why water magic doesn’t work on human tears," Anise said.

"Yeah," Golpar agreed. "I hope she explains that next class."

"And hopefully she does that during class. I wish she wouldn't keep us overtime like that so often," Anise complained.

"At least, it was our last class for today," Golpar responded, and both girls entered the living room.

Anise saw her younger cousiness on the sofa, "Wasabi, sorry. We're late," she apologized. "The teacher kept us overtime again."

"It's okay," Wasabi waved down her hand, while she put another dried seaweed flake into her mouth.

Anise put down her backpack on the table in front of the sofa, and sat down next to Wasabi, "so how many questions is it this time?"

"Just two," Wasabi raised up her index and middle fingers.

Golpar put her backpack on the chair besides her desk, which stood next to the wall, and went to the bedroom.

"Then let's get it over with quickly," Anise stretched up her arms, ready to tutor her younger cousiness.

Wasabi took out her notebook and the textbook. She opened the textbook on the page with exercise questions, and with her index finger she pointed at the question number eight.

"Explain why some animals can see sky magic, but humans cannot," Anise read the question. "Oh, I remember. It was that tricky question. The answer's in the textbook, but it's only one paragraph, so it's easy to miss," she took Wasabi's textbook, and began to sort through the pages. “I’m sure it was somewhere here…”

After looking for a bit longer, she flung her finger at a paragraph on one of the pages. "Here!”

Wasabi looked at the sentence above Anise’s finger and read it out loud, "humans possess only color vision, but some animals also have motion vision.” Wasabi grabbed her notebook, and wrote down the answer:

…Some animals can see sky magic, because they possess motion vision, and they can see the movement of the air…

"Sky magic is mostly made of the movement of the air,” Anise read the rest of the paragraph. “which is why humans, who cannot see the colorless air, cannot see sky magic, but those animals, who possess the ability to see movement in addition to seeing colors, are able to visually see the moving air and the sky magic, when it happens."

"I wonder how it feels to have motion vision," Wasabi wondered after she wrote down the answer.

"Dunno, and the next question is?" Anise looked at the open notebook in front of Wasabi.

When Wasabi first opened the notebook, there were two empty rows. Now that Wasabi filled in the answer in one of them, Anise saw which other question her younger cousiness couldn’t figure out herself.

Wasabi turned over the page in the textbook on Anise’s lap, pointed at question number fourteen and read it, "list two reasons, why there are more magicless people than magic-talented people."

"That's something you should be able to figure out yourself," Anise said.

"How?" Wasabi was truthfully confused.

Golpar stepped out of the bedroom, where she changed her clothes from the nice-looking ones into less-pretty-but-more-comfy ones. She went into the kitchen, put on an apron, and began preparing dinner, looking more like a housewife than a student.

"Where does the magic talent come from?" Anise asked.

Wasabi tilted her head and grimaced, "I don't know."

"Then do you know who were the first magi?"

Wasabi shook her head.

"Oh, come on. You do know!" Anise clapped her hands. “Everybody knows. You’re just acting like you don’t know anything, because you want me to tell you all the answers!”

Feeling somewhat guilty after her laziness was discovered, Wasabi looked up toward the ceiling and tried looking through the knowledge accumulated in her brain over the years.

"The three magi, who…" Anise gave her a hint.

"The three magi, who…" Wasabi repeated and then she recalled. "The three magi, who visited God."

This short story was an ancient tale, and nobody really knew how ancient the tale was, but it was one of the tales, written in kindergarten textbooks, which the kids read in order to learn how to read and write.

...A long time ago, on a day like any other, God decided to meet humans. He descended from Heaven, took on a human form and mingled among the humans. No one realized that it was God except for three wise men, who visited and brought Him gifts. The three wise men were called magi, but they had no magical talent. In those times, the title of magus was given to any man, who possessed great wisdom and knowledge. However, in response to their gifts, God gave the three men a magical talent, and they became the first magi to ever walk on Earth...

The story was beautiful and simple. However, there was no proof that it was real.

The tale of the three magi, who visited God, was older than six thousand years. However, the first actual mention of magic (the ability used by magi) occurred around five thousand years ago, and it was very poorly described as a divine power to make miracles. This implied that the understanding of magic was very limited at that time. Furthermore, the first comprehensive book on magic was written only two thousand years ago, even though there were brief mentions of magi and wizards in tales as far back in time as nine thousand years ago.

“So magic talent comes as a gift from God,” Wasabi concluded, based on the tale, she recalled. “So the answer is…”

She recalled more tales and stories she read in the kindergarten. There were many other tales, where God gifted men with not only the talent of magic, but many other talents as well. After all, it was common knowledge that all talents came from God. God was known to give and take talents, however and whenever He wanted. Sometimes people would be born with a talent, but lose it later on in life. Rarer, although still possible, were cases when someone in his or her lifetime acquired a talent, which they didn’t have before.

Some talents were so widespread that almost anyone had them, like a talent to speak, or a talent to see, or a talent to walk. There were also other talents, who were quite common to encounter, like a talent to sing, or a talent to draw or a talent to run fast. At the tip of the other side of the scale, there were talents so rare that they occurred only several times throughout the history. The magical talent was among the rarer ones, but it wasn’t one of the rarest talents.

Furthermore, talents were never spread equally among the recipients, which meant that some people were always more gifted than others. Even those who possessed the same talent didn’t have the same amount of it, so if any two people with the same talent were to be compared, one was always more talented than the other.

Wasabi finally figured out half of her answer, "because magic talent is one of the rarer talents in the world."

"Correct," Anise clapped her hands several times.

Wasabi wrote down the answer.

"Magic talent isn’t common,” Anise added, “so if a magicless person and a magic-talented person were to marry, there is a much higher probability that the child will be magicless."

And for a moment, Wasabi stopped writing, and recalled her own past. Ever since she was a kid, she kept asking her parents over and over, why she cannot use magic like her mom. Each time her parents patiently explained to her the reason, but somehow she never really accepted their explanation, because she didn’t want to accept that the talent, which she wanted so much, wasn’t hers.

It was only after Wasabi’s younger sister was born last year that Wasabi stopped asking her parents about her lack of magical talent. Just like Wasabi, her younger sister was magicless as well, and to Wasabi it brought a heavy sensation of relief mixed with empathy. It felt good to know that there were others, who had to go through the same thing, but she also felt pity for her younger sister, who was just as unlucky as Wasabi.

For many children from mixed marriages between magic-talented and magicless parents, being magicless was the hardest thing to accept. Of course, every once in a while, a lucky child would be born with a magic talent, even with one of his or her parents being magicless. However, those kinds of situations were rare, and Wasabi wasn't that lucky child.

Quite the opposite - whenever she saw her mother freely using magic around the house, she thought of herself as the most unlucky child in the world. She wondered why she cannot do the same. Secretly, she copied her mother’s movements hoping that one day something would change. However, no matter how many times she copied her mother’s movement, no magic ever came out from her. Yet the hope in her heart refused to die and continued to deny reality.

To add to her agony, everyone in her maternal family could use magic. Whenever she went to visit her maternal grandparents or cousins, her joy of meeting her family disappeared within minutes, because soon she could think of nothing else other than that one thing she didn’t have. She loved her maternal grandparents. She loved her maternal cousins. She loved Anise like a sister, so she would never complain, or tell them what it felt like to be around them.

She wanted to remove that feeling of dejection from within herself, but she couldn't. Something inside her was fighting against this fate, and it wouldn't give her any peace of mind. It was because of this something, that she went to the school of Hecate with no magical talent. And it was because of this something, that she wouldn't give up on magic no matter how talentless she was. She knew that life was unfair, but she wasn't going to submit to this unfairness.

She finished writing down the answer to the fourteenth question, and completed her homework. Meanwhile Golpar prepared stuffed paprika for dinner, which was already cooking inside the deep frying pan.

"You're not staying for dinner?" Anise asked after Wasabi, who put her notebook back into her backpack.

"No," the girl said as she got up. "I still need to share these answers with Galangal."

"Okay then, see you next time."

"Take care," Golpar added as she walked out from the kitchen and waved bye to the guest.

Wasabi changed her shoes in the entry room, and when she was ready to go, she put her hand on the door handle, and stopped her movements. She slowly let go of the handle, turned around, opened the interior door, and looked at two girls in the living room, who looked back at her.

"I'm not sure, whether it’s important. Maybe it is," Wasabi started. "Do you remember that magicless boy my age?"

"Spruce?" Anise asked.

"No, the other one."

"Uhm, what was his name?"

“Yew,” Golpar gave the answer.

Wasabi nodded, "yeah, him. I saw him with Chervil."

"What do you mean: saw him with Chervil?" Anise asked, and Golpar looked uneasy hearing this news.

"Around the beginning of Veuf, I saw him and Aspen following Chervil, while they headed to the city."

"Maybe they were asking for directions?" Anise offered a possibility.

"I also thought so, but I saw them together again. Chervil gave Yew a book, and they talked as if they knew each other well."

"What about that other boy - Aspen?" Golpar asked, feeling anxious.

Wasabi looked up, "he's too mysterious for me. He doesn't talk a lot, and he looks suspicious, so I think that he's also like that,” she put out two fingers, index and middle ones, horizontally on her right hand, with the thumb and other fingers hidden in the palm. “But I don't know about Yew. Maybe he just doesn’t know what’s going on."

"Okay," Anise nodded. "Thanks for letting us know. We'll find some time to talk with him, and maybe we'll find out what is his relation with Chervil."

"Thanks," Wasabi responded, waved a bye at her cousiness and Golpar, and left their cottage.

She walked back to her cottage, but on her way back she saw Yew, who was quickly walking in the opposite direction. She wanted to know, where he was going, but she didn't want him to realize that she was following him, so she kept her distance.

It wasn't hard to hide herself among hundreds of students present on school grounds, but it was hard to keep an eye on Yew, who was only a first year student in a crowd with almost no first year students. For a moment, Wasabi thought that she lost sight of him, but as she looked around she saw him standing next to a much older student.

Once again, he was talking with Chervil, and it certainly was not a conversation between strangers. He took out two books from his backpack and gave them to Chervil, who told him something. Unfortunately, Wasabi was standing too far away to hear their conversation.

Yew shook his head, and put his backpack back on his back. He asked Chervil several more questions, then he sighed and the two of them separated. Chervil waved an energetical bye-bye, but he just raised up his arm a bit.

After Yew began heading back to the hamlet number four, Wasabi followed him again. When they entered the hamlet, she ran until she caught up with him.

"Hey," she shouted behind him, and patted his back.

He turned around, and stared at her as if she was a ghost. "Hey," he said in a confused tone, wondering why did Wasabi suddenly speak to him.

"So what are you hiding?" she asked and Yew took a step back.

"I'm not hiding anything," he responded, but his eyes were full of surprise and worry.

"Really?" she smirked and her eyes narrowed as if she was able to see through him.

"Yeah," Yew gulped down his saliva.

"But you totally look like someone, who's hiding a very big secret," she smirked even wider.

"I don't have any secrets!" he raised his voice and quickly walked past Wasabi toward his cottage. He looked behind, expecting her to follow, but she didn't.

Wasabi wasn't following him at all. She was just eerily standing in that one place, where he left her, observing him in that unusual way, which reminded Yew of crows, who sometimes observe humans with that mysterious stare.

Yew looked in front of him, and sped up his pace.

"You're wrong," Wasabi said to herself, when Yew was no longer around. "In this life, everyone has secrets."

Yew returned back to his cottage. The recent meeting with Wasabi oddly stood out in his memory. He was sure that she was only joking about his big secret, but the suddenness of that statement shook him up a bit. He knew that it was her way of being friendly, but unprepared for the accusation, he overreacted, and now he felt stupid. She must have been shocked by his response, and that was why she just stood there in silence.

He wanted to go back, undo the time and act it out better, but what was done couldn't be undone, so instead he blamed Wasabi for appearing in front of him so randomly, and saying such random weird things. He wasn't going to apologize, and he didn't have a reason to get along with her. They weren't even in the same class.

He threw out of his mind all thoughts about Wasabi, and returned back to thinking about Cypress's older brother. When he met with Chervil today, he asked her if she heard anything from Liquorice, but she said that she didn't.

Yew understood that searching for a missing person was time-consuming and might take months or even years. He didn't want to be pessimistic about it, so he scratched off years, and narrowed down his expectations to months, hoping to progress with the search before the end of his first year of Hecate. Of course, he wouldn’t mind if Liquorice gave him all the info today or tomorrow - the earlier the better.

It was almost sunset time, but neither the sun nor the sky could be seen due to the heavy dark clouds hovering above the ground. At least there was no rain, and the cold winds had been unusually quiet in the last several days. The season of Veuf was going to end after this week, and no one was foolish enough to expect anything other than cold snowy days during the season of Tsun.

Yew wasn't surprised, when Linden didn't return for the night. His roommate already told him after the classes ended, that he wouldn't be back until morning, so once again Yew had the whole cottage just for himself.

When the dusk began, he didn't get ready to sleep like all the good kids. Instead, he decided to stay up in order to practice spells, which he shouldn't have been able to cast as a magicless student.

Just when he was going to try out a new spell from a second year textbook, he heard a knock on the front door, and a chime followed.

He glanced at the clock, and was surprised to have a visitor at this time. It wasn't yet nighttime, but still it wasn't the right time for visits anymore. He quickly hid the textbooks, which he got from Chervil, in the drawer of his desk. Then he walked into the entry room. It couldn't have been Spruce or Aspen, because they could enter the cottage without knocking.

Yew looked through the window on the side of the door, and saw Wasabi's older sister, waving a hi at him. He assumed that it was something to do with Wasabi's odd question from earlier, and there was no choice but to do some explanation. He opened the door, and was surprised that Wasabi wasn't with them.

"Do you remember us?" Anise asked, and Yew nodded. "Can we come in?" with an open palm, she pointed at herself and Golpar, who stood on her left side.

Yew wasn't sure about that, "it's late."

"We'll be quick," Anise said as she took a step forward and looking straight at Yew she added, "there's something that we really, really need to ask you," she put her palms together as if she was praying.

Yew looked at her face, then at her hands. "Okay," he said and stepped back. The two girls entered the entry room, took off their shoes and entered the living room, while Yew closed the door before following them.

The girls sat down on the sofa together, so Yew sat on the armchair across from them, and readied himself for a scolding about how mean he was to Wasabi, but the scolding never came.

Anise looked directly at Yew, "do you know Chervil?"

Yew was puzzled by the unexpected question, and he wondered how did Chervil Sun became the topic of this conversation.

Golpar looked around the room, "is your roommate sleeping?" she asked, and knowing the answer to this question, Yew answered immediately.

"No, he's out. He won't be... back…" and then he realized that maybe telling them that he was the only one in the cottage wasn't the smartest idea. "... before nighttime," he added, hoping that the girls would assume that Linden was to return at any moment.

Yew could feel that there was an odd atmosphere around the girls. Golpar especially was totally different. The last time, when he met her, she was a kind person with a quiet voice, but today her voice was much stronger and although not loud it was certainly louder than her usual quiet voice. Her kind personality was nowhere to be found. Instead she had the eyes of a warrior prepared for his final death duel.

"So, Yew," Anise started again. "How did you meet Chervil?"

Yew looked away from Golpar and straight at Anise, "she's a tutor of our class four of four B."

The girls looked at each other.

"So you go to her for tutoring?" Anise questioned.

Yew nodded. He didn't understand, why the girls were so inquiring about Chervil, but he was sure that he shouldn’t disclose any non-general info.

"Hmmm…" Anise put her chin on her hand, whose elbow rested on the other arm. "You should find another tutor.”

"Why?" Yew asked in a straightforward manner.

"I'm not sure, whether you've realized it or not, but Chervil is my older sister," Golpar joined the conversation. Her words were pronounced with a resolve to act, which was so very different from her usual self.

Golpar and Chervil looked different enough, so people couldn’t automatically assume their kinship, but they were similar enough that it was a good probability that they were siblings.

Yew had already realized that Chervil and Golpar had the same family name, but he dismissed it as a coincidence. It wasn’t unusual to meet people, who descended from the same family, but it had been millenia since their last common ancestor, or they might as well be totally unrelated. Moreso, he never saw Chervil and Golpar together, which further convinced him that the identical family name was misleading.

"I didn't realize it," he acknowledged to them, that he had indeed thought that the two gals were unrelated.

"I thought so," Golpar said in a grave tone of voice, then she continued with a somewhat threatening tone, "let me warn you before it's too late. You should stay away from my sister."

Yew stared blankly at her. He didn't know how he should interpret what he was told just now. However he didn't have to ask for an explanation, because Golpar didn't finish.

"I know that it's going to be hard to believe, but actually my sister is not a student of Hecate. After she applied to Hecate, she got an invitation from Hypnos, and that’s her real school. She's attending Hecate as a cover-up."

Yew wasn't sure how surprised he should act. He already knew those facts.

“He’s confused,” Anise said to Golpar, seeing how Yew wasn’t reacting.

“Oh sorry, I should have explained better,” Golpar sounded like her usual self for a moment.

“I’ll do it,” Anise said, and faced Yew. “The school of Hypnos is a dangerous place, where suspicious people learn suspicious things. The school is hidden, and their lessons are also taught in secret. To avoid any investigation, students of Hypnos apply to other schools, so on the outside it appears as if they graduated from legitimate schools. However, the reality is that they’re the type of people, with whom you should never ever interact.”

“Why?” Yew asked, wondering what the girls were going to say.

"Students of Hypnos are like chameleons," Golpar said. "Just like you never know which schools they attend, you can never trust their words. They can switch from being good to being evil in mere seconds, so you should never get close to them."

"Is Chervil really like that?" Yew began to understand, why the girls had a problem with the students of Hypnos, but they didn't know that he was also one of them.

Golpar took a deep sigh, and began to tell her story. "When my sister got an invitation to Hypnos, our parents were strongly opposed to it. They didn't want my sister to go to some shady school with a dubious reputation. Nevertheless, Chervil accepted the invitation by responding in secret. Then she got another letter specifying the time and the place to come."

Yew listened attentively to every word. If he had accepted the invitation before coming to Hecate, he would have followed the same route, but he didn't accept the invitation right away, so to him all of this was new info.

"However, my parents found the second letter from Hypnos. That’s how they found out what Chervil did in secret. Afterward, they locked her in her room to stop her from going to the meeting place, and in the end Chervil didn't go anywhere on the day specified in the second letter. We all thought it was over, and that we wouldn’t have anything to do with Hypnos anymore, but the next day, a gal came from Hypnos to speak with Chervil.”

Tears began to accumulate in Golpar’s eyes as she recalled the event. “Without calling my sister, my parents told her that Chervil will not attend Hypnos. Our parents thought that we could end it all peacefully, but…"

Yew gulped. From Golpar’s reaction, he knew that something bad happened.

Golpar wiped away the tears in the corner of her eyes. "Two days later, some people, claiming to be graduates of Hypnos, came to pick up Chervil. When my parents told them no, they destroyed our house. They set our house on fire, burned down everything we had, and they kidnapped Chervil.”

The tears on Golpar’s face began to flow down like two streams. "When we reported it to the police later on, we found out that the people, who destroyed our house, were graduates from Hades.”

Upon hearing the name of the school of Hades, Yew recalled Liquorice.

“My parents thought that we’d never see my sister again,” by now Golpar cried so much, that she could barely talk.

Yew looked around wondering whether he should offer her a tissue, but he didn't have any tissues other than toilet paper, and he doubted that Linden had them either. Besides, offering Golpar a roll of toilet paper to wipe off her tears was surely a bad idea.

Meanwhile, Anise drew a circle in the air, and a box of tissues appeared in front of her. She opened the box and handed it to Golpar, who immediately took out two and began to wipe her face.

"We really thought that we lost everything. We even thought that my sister had been killed by those people from Hades, but when I started attending Hecate three years ago, I met her again. That was when I found out that those people, who kidnapped her, were indeed students of Hypnos, and also students of Hades, which they graduated from as a cover-up.”

Golpar sniveled and swallowed before continuing, "by that time, Chervil was also a student of Hypnos, studying in Hecate as a cover-up," she continued after she blew her nose. "My sister never came back home. She told me that after the kidnapping, she began to live with those people, who kidnapped her. She even told me that it was our fault that we lost our house."

Yew hung down his head, unsure what to say. He didn't feel sorry for Golpar and her parents, but it wasn't because he sided with Chervil. This was a problem of another family, that he wasn't related to. To him this was the same as a problem of a stranger, and it wasn’t even a serious problem. Both Chervil and Golpar were still alive, and so were their parents. They lost a house, but that could be rebuilt.

The most important was that in the end, everyone got what they wanted. On one hand, Golpar's family wanted nothing to do with the school of Hypnos, and since their eldest daughter - a student of Hypnos - left the house, they had nothing in common with the school of Hypnos. On the other hand, Chervil wanted to be a student of Hypnos, but she couldn’t do it while living with her parents. However, she was able to attend her preferred school after she started living with the people, who supported her school choice.

"I don't know much about those people from Hades, or those people from Hypnos," Golpar stated, "but I'm sure that the recent incident with a Hades student infiltrating Hecate and stealing an important magical tool was certainly related to Chervil, and most likely it was all done by that Liquorice."

"Liquorice?" Yew was surprised to hear the name of the culprit from Golpar's mouth.

"Yes. Chervil told me before, that in her new home, she has a sister, who's older than her, and who's also a student of Hypnos. She said that her name was Liquorice, and she attends the school of Hades as a cover-up. I wrote the name down, because I was hoping to track down, where she lives, but it's really hard to find any info on students of Hades."

Yew stayed silent, not because he was surprised, but because he didn't know what to say to steer the conversation into a better direction.

"Can you promise me to stay away from Chervil?" Golpar asked with tears still present in her eyes.

"Ah, that…" That was going to be very, very difficult in his current situation. He needed the help of Hypnos to find info on Ginkgo. Otherwise he wouldn't be able to get the info on his biological parents. Nevermind that he was also a student of Hypnos, but he felt that it would be a really bad idea to announce it to his guests. "I'll think about it."

"Don't you understand how dangerous she is?" Golpar wasn't satisfied with such a general response.

"If it gets dangerous, then I will stay away," Yew added.

"At that time, it will be too late," Anise informed him.

"Sorry, but I don't see Chervil as such a horrible person," Yew didn't want to spend any more time on this conversation, so he took this chance and spoke his mind in the most direct way he could without spilling any secrets.

Golpar stood up, no longer crying. Instead she looked angrily at the boy, "you'll regret hanging out with her."

Yew moved back into the armchair. The figure of angry Golpar reminded him of his mom. Thus sensing the possibility of getting slapped, he prepared for the hit, which never came.

Golpar walked toward the interior door, but she turned around before opening it. “I don’t hate my sister. Right now, she’s not herself,” she said. “It’s those people from Hypnos, who made my sister like this.” She looked at Yew, who looked at her. “I couldn’t save my sister. That’s why I don’t want anyone else to end up like that.”

Anise also stood up and without saying another word, both of them left the cottage.

Yew remained sitting on the armchair for a while longer, expecting them to come back. He was ready to let them say whatever they wanted to say, but in the end the door remained shut and the girls were gone for good.

He didn’t understand what Golpar meant, when she spoke while standing next to the interior door, but he wasn’t bothered by it. Whatever Golpar wanted to tell him, it wouldn’t matter, because he was already a student of Hypnos, and if Hypnos changed people then it would mean that he had already changed, and there was no way back.

He went back to learning magic in secret, but as he did so, he also wondered what Linden was doing on those nights, when he wasn’t home.

It was already late at night. The city lights in Sheepcrown had been turned on for several hours ever since the sunset.

Shadows of people walked by under the streetlamps. Some were returning home, others were going out for the night, but certainly there should be no kids among them at this hour. So when a ten yrold boy walked by, a lot of adults looked at him as if to double-check, whether they had indeed seen a kid all alone this late at night.

"Are you lost?" a woman approached him and asked.

"Get away, ugly hag," Linden responded in the most rude tone possible. The woman immediately felt angry at herself for trying to be nice, and walked away complaining at his attitude.

However, Linden wasn't rude without a reason. He understood that with his looks, it was already hard to move around at night. His pretty face already attracted plenty of attention and his height only added to the problem. Unless he was rude and uncivil, he'd end up with a queue of followers worrying about a kid walking outside all alone at night.

On the other hand, nobody really cared if something unpleasant happened to bad kids, which meant that as long as he acted nasty, even the patrol would ignore his presence, and he was free to roam the city all alone in the middle of the night.

This is precisely what Linden wanted. He wasn't a kid, and he didn’t want to be treated like a kid. He could have explained his situation, but explaining it would be too time-consuming and annoyingly repetitive, so he didn't even bother telling anyone.

He arrived in front of a ten-story tall luxurious «White Crown Hotel» in order to meet a certain man. The hotel was surrounded by beautiful gardens and fountains from every side, and it was the most eye-pleasing hotel in the city of Sheepcrown.

The time was still one hour before the appointment, but Linden came earlier in order to prepare as usual. He walked up to the front doors, which automatically opened by sliding sideways. He came inside, passed a large fountain in the middle of the first floor, and walked up to the counter, where a madam worked to serve the hotel customers.

"Is room number three hundred forty seven free?" he asked with the innocent smile of a kid.

The madam was a bit surprised, but nevertheless she checked, "unfortunately someone booked it already. Would you like another r…?"

"Thanks," Linden responded before she finished talking, and walked away toward the elevator.

The clerk madam was surprised, but she let him go, as she assumed him to be a child of one of the hotel guests.

He entered the elevator together with eight other guests of the hotel, but he was the only one, who pushed the button for the top floor. Due to Linden’s height of a kid, he was much shorter than the other eight people, so nobody paid much attention to him. After pushing the button, Linden leaned on the wall in the corner, while the elevator slowly started moving up.

He was inside the most expensive hotel in the city of Sheepcrown. The hotel was not only tall and majestic, but also implemented quite a lot of technology as well as magic into its structure. The security cameras were everywhere with the exception of bathrooms and restrooms. Certain cameras were made with different types of technology, while others were made with different types of magic, so it was almost impossible to mess around without getting caught, as no one method would disable all of them at once.

Every floor had two assigned hotel guards, who were always walking around the hallways, observing the guests, and actively searching for anyone suspicious.

Due to such precautions, the rich and famous guests of the hotel slept peacefully, knowing that they were in the safest place in the city of Sheepcrown. Or so they thought, because Linden knew that there was no such thing as safety in the real world. The guests were merely enjoying a dream of safety, because in reality safety was nowhere to be found.

He moved his eyes up to stare at the camera in the elevator, which was right above his head. Coincidentally, he was standing in the blind spot of the camera, but it was only possible due to his current height. If he had been an adult, the camera would have included his torso and the head in the video recording.

Furthermore, his silver-colored clothing blended perfectly with the platinum walls and white floor of the elevator, so even if some parts of him were in the video, it would have been hard to notice unless someone was overly picky about details.

Floor by floor, all eight passengers left the elevator, and only Linden was left in the elevator. When the elevator was approaching the top floor, Linden put his left hand inside his pocket and touched a magical item, which he prepared just for today.

As soon as the elevator arrived at the top floor, Linden disappeared before the door of the elevator began to open. His whole body disappeared without a sound, and any camera in the hallway directed toward the elevator recorded nothing but an empty interior of the elevator.

Linden reappeared out of nowhere four meters above his old position, which made him teleport less than a meter above the rooftop. He fell down to the rooftop. His shoes made a loud stomping noise, but he was certain that the roof was thick enough that nothing was heard in the building underneath.

He waited squatting on the rooftop, to see if anyone would realize his presence. There were no cameras on the rooftop, and the only door to the roof was tightly locked and made of heavy iron to keep anyone from entering. The hotel was the tallest building in the city, so nobody could see him from below, and there was nothing flying in the air to accidentally spot him.

The probability of anyone realizing Linden’s presence was slim, but he was alert just in case, if anything had changed since the last time he used this trick. He was prepared to run, but nothing happened, so he proceeded as usual.

From a small bag strapped under his clothes, he took out a small shiny white ball and rolled it between his palms until it turned grey and dull. Then he put it down on the rooftop. The ball cracked open like an egg. A small fly emerged from inside and flew away. Linden didn't follow it, because he already knew its destination.

Two days ago, he got a letter from the other party, which requested that they meet in the room three-four-nine in the most expensive hotel in the city of Sheepcrown. It wasn’t a coincidence. Linden knew that they were going to stay in this hotel, because no other hotel had even half that much security inside.

He also knew that the other party would pick a room at the top floor, because that was the only floor with extra protection. It had double the amount of cameras as compared with other floors. It also had security implementations protecting the doors, windows, and walls from a forceful entry of any form. Furthermore, there were four landguards patrolling the top floor, always ready to protect the hotel guests.

Linden sat down on the cold rooftop, and crossed his arms. The night was much colder than he expected, and even though he wore a jacket, he still wished he had put on more clothes. There was almost no wind at the groundlevel, but the rooftop was at a height, where the windless air was nearly impossible to encounter. Ergo, the winds blowing from all directions added more burden to an already burdensome situation.

After several long moments, the fly returned and entered the broken eggshell. Linden put the eggshell together, and the crack disappeared making it look as if it had never cracked open, and its color returned back to snow white.

The strong wind blew through his clothes, and he decided that he wouldn’t be staying on the rooftop any longer. He took the white ball, and walked on the rooftop until he arrived above the bathroom in the room three hundred forty seven. He knew that he was taking a risk, but he also knew that the son of the hotel’s owner was staying in that room for free, and that that son was a type of a person, who slept at daytime, and went out to have fun in the city at nighttime.

Linden put his left hand into his pocket, from which he took out a small rectangle with a plus and a minus button and a small screen that had number four point five on it. He clicked the minus button ten times, until the screen read three point five. Then he put his finger down on the screen, and the moment he took his finger off, the magical item teleported him three and half meters downward from his current position. He teleported in less than a quarter of a meter above the bathroom floor, and landed with a soft tap, which sounded almost as if he had jumped once in the bathroom.

He put the teleportation remote back into his pocket, and went to lock the bathroom door. In case, if anybody was in the room, it would give him time to teleport out of there. Afterward, he sat next to the door with his back leaned on the wall. Being so close to the door made it easier for him to hear any approaching footsteps, but thankfully he didn’t hear any sounds coming from the room, which confirmed that there was no one in the room three hundred forty seven.

He closed his eyes, as he put the white ball to his forehead. He felt the cold object touch his skin, and in that moment images appeared in front of his eyes.

The whole video was from the viewpoint of a fly, recorded from its eyes. First, the fly was flying toward an air duct located at the top floor right underneath the rooftop. Once it entered the air duct, it continued to navigate through the tunnel, until it arrived at the opening above the room three-four-nine, where it stopped and watched the scene inside.

Linden smiled, once he got a full view of the room. He saw two men. One was sitting on the bed, and the other one was standing, looking out the window.

"You were supposed to come alone," Linden murmured to himself.

He observed the men and listened to their conversation, which the fly began to record without them knowing.

"...ing about him. He's not famous."

"But why would he have any interest in oldies?" the man sitting on the bed pointed at the suitcase on the floor.

"Who knows?" the other man shrugged his shoulders. "Who cares? As long as he has the sum, he can take it."

"How can a nobody like him have million syfras? It makes no sense." A moment of silence followed, before the man sitting on the bed spoke again, "you don’t actually believe him, do you?"

"We'll see," the man responded.

Linden knew very well that they were talking about him. One million syfras was no small sum. In the whole world there were maybe about hundred people, who could afford such a large price without any preparation, and naturally all of them were very famous for their wealth. So it made no sense that someone, who wasn't on the list of ten hundred richest individuals would possess so much money.

However, conventional knowledge didn’t apply to Linden. From his birth, he was an oddity of purest essence.

His parents rejoiced on the day of his birth, because he was the most beautiful baby in the world. His parents rejoiced once again, when they realized how clever and creative their son was. Long before he learned how to walk, he figured out a way to get out of his crib. He also figured out how to unlock the doors as soon as he learned how to walk, and he began going wherever he wanted.

That was, when his parents' joy turned into a neverending worry. Normal children always stayed near their parents. If the children lost sight of their parents, they immediately stopped and cried until their parents came looking for them. However, for Linden it was almost as if the air was his parent. As soon as he stepped outside the house, he began travelling farther and farther away from home, without showing any sign of discomfort from being alone.

Without a word, he would leave and return, whenever he wanted, and however he wanted. In the beginning, he was travelling only around the house, then around the garden, then around the street and around the neighborhoods. But one day, when his parents were looking for their four yrold son, they found him all alone half a kilometer away from their home.

On that day, they severely scolded Linden, who didn't understand what he did wrong, but the scolding did nothing and soon the travelling child was once again discovering the town all by himself. His parents tried everything to teach him some common sense, but nothing worked, and when Linden became six yrold, he started to dream of going beyond the town.

Being desperate, his father installed bars in the window of his bedroom, and his mother used a charm to keep the door to his bedroom completely locked overnight. And it appeared as if the charm worked, for several days at least, because one night, Linden figured out how to use a spell to make the door smaller, and he simply walked out through the doorless doorway.

In the morning, when his parents found his bedroom door missing and his bedroom empty, they were terrified beyond words. Sorrel was so weak that she was minutes away from fainting, and Linden's father was so white that he already looked like a dead man, but just when he took the decision to report his son as missing to the police, his "missing" son returned home.

And with a smile on his face, the six yrold boy pointed to the floor at the door to his bedroom, which was small enough that it could fit inside his open palm. At first his parents had no reaction, and Linden was confused, because he was certain that he had accomplished something amazing.

To Linden's surprise, suddenly his mother ran into the kitchen, grabbed a towel and began hitting him with it, while yelling at him in such a high pitch voice, that it was impossible to tell what she was saying, but she certainly was furiously mad. His father eventually stopped her and the two of them decided that it was time to take Linden to the temple to see, whether the clergy could fix their son.

And so, several days later, Linden was taken by his parents to the chapel. He didn't feel anything odd about it. He already visited the town’s temple many times in the past during his daily outing, and all the clergy already knew him there. His parents had a long talk with the Elder Father and the Elder Mother, while Linden was forced to sit and listen to his parents’ retelling of his past travels around the town.

The clergy listened to the discussion in silence. After Linden’s parents said everything, the Elder Father continued to stroke his beard deep in thought. Meanwhile, the Elder Mother said, "God creates children. He creates each one unique. If Linden is such a child, then this is the will of God. The parents shouldn't interfere."

“You tell us to let him go out alone somewhere far away? What if he gets hurt?” Sorrel cried.

The Elder Father nodded, “indeed, a child who doesn’t know his limits will inevitably meet his end. Therefore, instead of teaching him rules, teach him about dangers, and let him figure out the rules.”

From that day on, Linden's parents no longer tried to stop him from leaving the house. They took a very different approach. They began to teach him about the dangers of the world. They told him about all kinds of bad things, which had happened to kids, who went too far away from home. They researched countless cases from the past, recent as well as ancient, and they handed it to Linden as proofs that the danger was real, and it wasn’t something made up by his parents to scare him away from going out.

Linden’s parents also taught their son how to protect himself from many common forms of danger, and how to avoid the types of danger that he had no chance to win against. They taught him as much as possible. They taught him all, which they knew. They taught him all, which he needed to know. They did all they could as parents to protect their only son and they left everything else in the hands of God.

However, Linden wasn't travelling just for the fun of travelling. It was quite on the contrary. He didn’t really want to travel, but something unknown within him forced him to go as if by instinct.

The feeling of familiarity, which made most people feel cozy at home, made Linden feel as if he was suffocating from breathing the same air over and over again in an endless loop of mundanity. Thus whenever he got bored of being around the same familiar area, he travelled out to explore the foreign and to experience the unknown.

As he travelled farther and farther away, he met with environments more and more different than the one he grew up in. Like a sweet trap, this disparity lured him into travelling farther and farther away, into a world, which was fascinating, full of mysteries, full of treasures, and full of things to discover.

Of course, it didn't always go well for Linden, but he never failed to learn from his mistakes. As he improved over time, even the dark and hidden sides of the world welcomed his presence, ready to offer him its deepest secrets.

As Linden continued to watch the video taken by the mysterious fly, he paid attention to the suitcase next to the man standing by the window. It was large enough to fit an encyclopedia, but the magical item that Linden was planning to buy was much smaller than that. It was a tiny hairpin.

One of the most outstanding wizards, who graduated Hecate almost six hundred years ago, created it as a present for his best friend’s bride on their wedding day. Many years later, the married couple donated the magical item to the school of Hecate, but just four months after that, it was stolen by a student of Hades, and it hadn't been seen ever since.

A week ago, when Linden went to see an auction of rare magical items, he heard a conversation between the organizer and a man, who tried to sell this item at the next auction. The organizer was doubtful about the authenticity of the item, and there was no way to verify it. The man himself had no proof that the hairpin was authentic, because for the last five hundred years there had been hundreds of counterfeits circulating on the black market.

From his experience, Linden could easily tell a fake apart from a real one, so he didn't waste any time and grabbed the opportunity right in front of him. He offered the man a huge sum of million syfras for the magical item without verifying it. In other words, he was willing to buy the item regardless whether it was real or not.

The man was hesitant, so Linden added that he’d buy the item even if it was damaged, and that he would accept the deal even with a no refund policy, as long as the man gives him the very item, which he was trying to sell at an auction. Upon hearing that, the man quickly agreed to sell, but he also told Linden that he couldn’t sell right away. So instead of doing the transaction at the auction hall, the man promised to send Linden a letter with his hotel address, where they could process the transaction in private.

Linden provided a man with an address of a cheap hotel right across from the most expensive hotel in the city of Sheepcrown, stating that he was only visiting the city of Sheepcrown, but he planned to stay one more week before going back home. At that time, Linden didn’t have a reservation at that cheap hotel, but he did reserve a bed there just two hours after he left the auction hall.

The hairpin, which Linden was going to buy from the man, was known as the «White Sea Gleam». It had a powerful magic embedded inside, which allowed the wearer to control the sea waves - the power, which was unique to mermaids. Only one such item was ever created. The maker, Oleander Land, kept the method of its creation a secret, just like he had done with all the other magical items, which he created.

Linden knew that one million syfras for an authentic «White Sea Gleam» was an underpay, but he also knew that with no way to verify the authenticity of the item, the man wouldn’t be able to sell it for even that much.

The video recording ended. Unfortunately, Linden wasn’t able to verify whether the man had brought the «White Sea Gleam» with him, but nevertheless he was going to meet with the man. First, he needed to look exactly the same way he looked like at the auction hall one week ago.

From one of his pockets, he took out a small tube with five red balls, which looked like candies. He took out one of the red balls, and ate it. Immediately afterward, his body began to metamorphose into a guy around the age of sixteen. His clothes, which were actually magical items, also grew bigger to match his current body size.

He put the candies back into the same pocket, and from an adjacent pocket, he pulled out a small comb and a pocket mirror. He used the comb on his hair, which turned black and straight with just one touch. Then he used it on his eyebrows, and with a tip he touched his eyelashes completing the coloring process.

Afterward, he opened the pocket mirror and looked at it. The magical item cast an illusion charm on his face, so that his face looked like the face of someone, who had never shown mercy to anyone. Once his disguise was completed, he put the mirror and the comb together in his pocket.

He opened a faucet and poured some water into the sink. Then he took off a flat black button pinned to his sleeve, and threw it into the water. The button transformed into sunglasses, which Linden took out of the water, wiped out in a towel, and put on his face. He ended up looking like a son of a secret boss of an underworld mafia.

Linden took out his teleportation device, unlocked the bathroom door, and once again he teleported to the rooftop. He couldn’t use the doors, because the doorways on the hotel’s top floor had an anti-magic system, which would disable all his spells and charms. Luckily, nobody thought of applying the same form of security to the rooftop, which is why Linden walked on it until he was above the room three-four-nine, and from there he teleported right inside the room, between the entrance door and the two men in the room.

"I believe I asked you to come alone," Linden said in a deep baritone voice to two men, who were shocked at his sudden but quiet appearance.

Teleporting for magi was a matter of talent. Average talent was good enough to barely teleport, and there were still a lot of limitations to the way the user could teleport. To the two men in the room, it appeared as if Linden came from outside of the hotel, or at least from outside of the room. Either way, it appeared that he had bypassed the security on the doors, and to do that he had to be an exceptionally capable magus.

"I didn't expect you, sir, to come so early," the man, who stood by the window spoke. He was clearly more alert now than the last time, when he talked with Linden. "My friend was going to leave soon," he gave his companion a look that told him to get out.

"No need," Linden responded. "It won't take long. May I see the item?"

"Of course," the man grabbed the suitcase and moved away from the window, toward the table between him and Linden. He put the suitcase on the table in the middle of the room, opened it and took a step back. He pointed at the item inside the suitcase with his open palm inviting Linden, "please, take a look."

The man sitting on the bed, approached his boss and murmured in his ear, "shouldn't you ask him about the money?"

"Shut up," was the boss’s response, also murmured.

Linden came near the suitcase and looked at the hairpin inside. It had a small decoration of a blue flower - a pearl as its center and blue gemstones as its petals. Linden blinked his eyes three times in a row to activate the magical item in his hair, which looked like a plain hairclip. This item, which he always wore in his hair, allowed him to see the aura of magic, which normally was invisible to a human eye.

Blue colored fractals manifested around the hairpin. Based on the color, magic was definitely the water variation. However, what interested Linden the most wasn’t the color, but the shape. Different spells and charms manifested as different shapes. Simple magic manifested as simple shapes, such as triangles, rectangles and ovals. Meanwhile, the more complex the magic, the more complex the shape.

The fractals around the hairpin created an extremely complex arrangement, which was symmetrical both horizontally and vertically. A complex arrangement like this was normal for magical items with strong abilities, but what made Linden certain that the hairpin was indeed the White Sea Gleam was the lack of any fractals near the center of the hairpin. Anyone else would interpret this lack as a broken or malfunctioning magical item, except for Linden.

If the item had been broken, the fractals should be missing lines in random places, however only the center of the fractal was empty. The rest of the fractal was intact and its lines were bold and clear without any breaks. Linden knew that this meant only one thing. The magic embedded in the item was too powerful, and his magical hairclip couldn’t read it. In other words, the center of the fractal wasn’t missing. It was merely beyond the abilities of the hairclip in Linden’s hair.

Linden smiled, knowing that if any average magical item had been used to analyze the White Sea Gleam, it would show either nothing or almost nothing. The man must have been so eager to do the deal with the guy, because all the other places most likely told him that the item was broken, and he wouldn’t be able to sell it at all.

Linden pulled out a money card from the pocket in his pants. He put it on the table, and moved it toward the man, "one million syfras."

The man took the card, and carefully looked at it.

"I had assumed a businessman like you owns a card reader," Linden said.

"Of course," the man said and lifted his chin at his companion, who took out a card reader from his bag, and handed the small square box to his boss, who put the box on the table. Afterward, he put half of the money card inside the narrow crevice in the middle of the box, and letters appeared above the machine:

« owner: none »

« sum: 1’0000’0000 »

Most money cards had an owner name on them, so that non-owners couldn't use the money. However, it was possible to store money on an ownerless card, in which case anyone, who physically possessed the card, could withdraw the money from the bank, where the funds were stored.

"Certainly," the man confirmed the sum, "the magical item is yours."

“Thank you very much,” Linden took the White Sea Gleam hairpin out of the suitcase and put it into one of his pockets.

“Thank you as well,” the man responded with a wary face.

All this time, Linden kept his left hand in his pocket, holding the teleportation remote. Without taking it out, he clicked the plus-button five times before he teleported back to the rooftop.

After teleporting onto the rooftop, he took out the same small tube with red candies. He ate one of them and put the remaining three red candies back into his pocket. Once he ate the candy, his disguise disappeared, but he didn’t return to look like a ten yrold boy. He remained a sixteen yrold guy.

The red candies were made from a special herb, which had the power to erase any spells or charms on the body of the eater. Thus all the charms that Linden put on himself before the meeting had disappeared. Whereas earlier, he used it to remove the charm, which made him look like a kid.

He zipped up his jacket, and jumped three times just barely above the ground. After he landed down on the rooftop for the third time, his shoes grew wings. One more time, he jumped up into the air, but this time he didn't fall down. The wings on his shoes kept flapping fast like the wings of a hummingbird. After staying up in the air for several moments, another pair of wings grew from his jacket and he straightened up his legs.

His whole body turned around, and he glided toward the edge with his back facing the rooftop. He flew outside of the rooftop of the White Crown Hotel, and turned around to look at the buildings below. No matter how many times, he saw this scenery of night lights, he would never get tired of it.

Yellow lights coming from the windows of people's homes. White lights coming from the street lights. Orange lights coming from street and store signs, and red lights coming from the trains. Together with occasional blue, green or violet lights in some places, they created an ocean of sparkles that looked more magical than any magic.

The city of Sheepcrown was located about three hundred kilometers from the closest seashore, so there was no sea nor ocean anywhere nearby for Linden to properly test his newly acquired item, but it didn’t mean that Linden was going to wait until he had enough time and resources to travel that far. Instead, he set his eyes on a nearby lake, which although not as vast as an ocean, was big enough to test some of the functionality of White Sea Gleam.

Leisurely, he flew outside of the city, and while he was flying over the sleeping forest, he turned around. With his back facing the ground, he gazed at the starry sky.

Once again he saw an ocean of sparkles, however this time the lights were coming from above, and they were far more mysterious than the previous ones. Unlike the lights of the city, none of the lights on the firmament could be touched.

Whenever Linden saw an interesting light in the city, he could easily fly down closer to the light source to find out more info about the intriguing sparkle. However, the sky lights were always untouchable. They were just like spirits, who were always present in the physical realm, but could never be touched by the hands of the living.

"Just like God," he thought to himself. "So near, and yet so far."

When looking at the night sky, Linden often pondered about the mysterious being known as God. The proof of God’s existence was everywhere, yet the being Himself was nowhere to be found.

According to the laws of science, it was impossible for anything to start from nothing, so some scientists came up with an idea, that just like walking in circles, the world began and ended itself in an endless loop of repetition. However, no loop could create itself, thus there must have been an outside force, which created it, and that’s how science defined God - an outside force, which was not subjected to the laws of science. And if there was an outside force, then maybe the world was not a loop, but a line with a beginning and an end.

Linden continued to wonder what God was like.

Nobody had ever met God. Sure, in the ancient past there used to be stupid attention seekers, who claimed that they were messengers of God, but checking their authenticity was easy. Since God was an outside force, his messengers should be as well. And yet, all those fake prophets failed to free themselves from the laws of science, and died like all the other mortals subjugated to the laws of the material realm.

Deep in his thoughts, Linden didn’t realize that he was gazing at the moon, which was in a waxing gibbous phase and didn't quite look like a round ball yet. It was hovering a little bit above the horizon, as if it was embarrassed to show itself without its full attire, and Linden smiled as he saw the moon reflection on the lake surface.

He maneuvered his legs to begin his descent, and the wings on his jacket smoothly glided him lower and lower. He flew right above the treetops and out of the forest onto the space above the lake. He was still too high, so he spun around in midair, maneuvering his legs and the rest of his body in order to slowly land by the lakeshore.

Once he put his feet on the ground, the wings on his jacket disappeared, and the smaller wings on his shoes stopped moving. He jumped once, and the shoe wings disappeared, returning his shoes back to look like normal average shoes.

He took out the White Sea Gleam, looked at it for a moment, then put it back into the pocket and locked the zipper to ensure that this precious item wouldn’t fall out. For a while, he watched the shallow waves on the lake surface, while they were being delicately moved by the calm night winds.

Linden read the instruction manual of White Sea Gleam in the past, but he never expected to actually get his hands on the item, which is why right now he needed some time to recall the usage of this magical item, which had been lost for six hundred years.

First, he stretched out his right hand in front of him, with his fist closed. Slowly he opened his fist and the waters near the lakeshore began to move backward revealing the dry land. Afterward, he moved his open palm to the right, and the waters followed in the direction he specified. He lowered down his hand, and sighed in relief. The magical item passed the first test.

The waters returned back to where they were originally, but that didn't bother Linden. Something like this was possible with an average level of magical talent, so most magi could do it. This wasn’t the reason, why he was willing to spend million syfras on the White Sea Gleam.

The true power of the magical hairpin was way beyond that, and now was the time to really test its functionality. Taking steps forward, Linden walked into the water, and as he did that, the hairpin began to glow. He could feel something like a warm barrier appearing around him as he was more and more submerged in the lakewater. Thus he confirmed the first passive ability of the hairpin - it allowed the wearer to enter water without getting wet.

Without taking another breath, he submerged his head. Once underwater, he took a deep breath, and confirmed the second passive ability of the hairpin - it allowed its wearer to freely breathe underwater.

Afterward, Linden walked even deeper on the bottom of the lake, and through this he confirmed the third passive ability of the hairpin. Normally the water pressure would push a person out and up to the surface, but the White Sea Gleam allowed its wearer to move around however he wanted, while in the water.

When Linden was quite far into the lake, he smiled. It was the middle of the night, and he was submerged deep in the lakewaters, but everything around him was clear and visible. This was yet another passive ability of the White Sea Gleam, which allowed the wearer to see the underwater world, although his vision was in the shades of white and blue, as opposed to the normal multi-colored vision.

As he went on and on, he saw a beautiful maiden sitting on a rock and moving her hands as if she was practicing for a dance. She saw him with the corner of her eye and smiled.

"What are you doing here?" she asked without opening her mouth.

"Enjoying the scenery," Linden moved his mouth but no water entered through them due to the hairpin’s second ability.

Interested in what she was seeing, the maiden stood up and came closer like a manta. She wore a very tight dress, which was way longer than her legs, and when she moved in the water, the long end of her dress looked like a tail of a jellyfish. Each one of her two sleeves had large amounts of extra material and looked like manta's fins.

Her eyes were much larger than the eyes of a human. And her hair, which looked like seaweeds decorated with pearls, were floating all around her head like an aureola. Even though, at the moment, Linden couldn't see any colors other than white and blue, he was certain that she was colorful, since all rusalkas were full of splendid colors and it wasn't the first time he met one.

"Who are you?" she asked him, when her face was right in front of his.

"A passerby," he answered.

She tilted her head, but she didn't take her eyes away from him. "A traveller?"

"Sometimes," once again Linden responded as soon as she asked her question.

She silently tilted her head more and more until she turned around her whole body like a dolphin.

"Come with me," she said and took his hand.

Before Linden could answer anything, she pulled him by his hand, and they travelled through the lake at the speed much faster than any human could swim.

The rusalka swam on and on, toward an unknown destination. Her grip was strong enough that Linden couldn't free himself unless he used a powerful magical item, but he didn't want to hurt the creature without knowing her intentions first.

He saw that they were travelling closer and closer to the surface of the lake, and as he had foresaw just a moment prior, she jumped out of the waters and sat on top of a thick tree branch that was hanging low above the lake. She pulled Linden up, and let him sit next to her.

Her hair, which floated upward in the water, was all flatly falling downward. And her manta-like sleeves no longer looked like fins, but more like wet linen sheets. Only her jellyfish-like dress remained splendid, although almost half of it was still in the lakewater.

Abovewater under the moonlight, Linden could see some colors, and just as he expected, her appearance was colorful. Her dress shone with shades of red, blue and purple. Her skin was orange, and her hair was in shades of blue and yellow. Her eyes which combined all of those colors were the most eye-catching sight.

"Look," she pointed into the distance, where a group of women were happily dancing by the lakeshore. They all wore white dresses, and each one had long golden hair freely falling down without any hairstyle and almost touching the ground. "Don't you want to dance with them?" she looked directly in Linden's eyes as she was awaiting an answer.

"I don't want to die dancing," he responded.

The rusalka smiled at him with approbation. "You're very knowledgeable, sir traveller."

Linden didn't respond to her compliment. He wouldn't call himself knowledgeable, because he was aware of how much he didn't know in comparison with what he did know, or at least with what appeared to him as if he knew it.

Regarding the dancing women, of course, Linden knew about vilas. Both vilas and rusalkas could often be found near water, but unlike rusalkas, vilas lived on land. They looked like women, but they were neither men nor women. Their countenances were always that of flirting maidens, playful and innocent. It never changed.

At a glance, one could assume that vilas were humans dressed in white dresses, but in reality vilas's white dresses weren't dresses at all, but part of their skin. Vilas had lips, but they didn't have mouths. Thus they never opened their mouths, and they never ate through their mouths. Instead they lived on dancing.

The dances of vilas, which often lasted for days, but could continue without a pause for weeks or even months was their source of life. However, those dances weren't for anyone else other than vilas. If some young men or women were to join them, the poor humans would dance to death. It wasn’t because vilas were malicious, but because their dances had a trance-like effect on those, who participated.

Whenever vilas saw a young human, especially a healthy and beautiful one, oftentimes vilas mistook them for another vila and rather forcefully invited him or her to dance. However, not everyone had to be scared of them. Vilas never invited kids or elders, because they looked too different, which meant that vilas never mistook them for one of their own. However, even when observing the vilas's dances as a kid or an elder, it was a wise thing to keep distance, as the dance itself could captivate a human so much that they would join uninvited on their own will.

The water below him moved, and Linden saw another rusalka staring from below. This time, it was a male, and he clearly looked like a man. Sometimes people mistook male rusalkas for vodianois, but they weren't similar at all.

Rusalkas were peaceful in nature and lived harmoniously with strangers, while vodianois were overprotective of their homes and willing to fight any intruder they didn’t like. Vodianois often soiled clean waters with mud in the process of building their underwater homes, while rusalkas fed on dirt and mud, changing dirty muddy waters into pure crystal clear springs.

The male rusalka looked at the female, who was sitting next to Linden, and both of them appeared to communicate wordlessly. Rusalkas were known to have an ability to talk with any creature, on the condition that their eyes met each others’. Since none of them looked at Linden, he couldn’t hear what they were saying.

Then the female rusalka slipped off the branch into the lakewater and both of them quickly swam deeper and farther away from the shore.

Linden was left alone without a proper farewell, but he didn't mind. He looked back at vilas' dance, and he knew that he had to be deep in the woods far away from any village or town to see a spectacle like this. He also knew that at the moment, he looked like a beautiful guy, and he should quietly leave before any of the vilas noticed his presence.

He put his right hand on top of the pocket, where he kept the newly-acquired magical item. There was one more thing that the White Sea Gleam could do, and he still needed to try it.

He concentrated on the image in his mind, and just as he wished, some of the lakewater came up from the lake and surrounded him like a bubble. He could still breathe in the water bubble and it didn’t make him wet. However, the greatest challenge was to see whether he can travel aboveground like a mermaid, in a water bubble like in a carriage.

At first, he travelled on top of the lakesurface, away from the shore and away from the vilas. Once far away from vilas, who were long out of his sight, Linden moved onto the dry land, and after travelling between the trees for a while, he looked up, and decided to try climbing a really high tree.

The water bubble stretched out like a pole, with Linden sitting on top. The water dropped him off at the highest branch, before it turned into a puddle underneath the tree. Water couldn’t fly, so it couldn’t lift itself up so high.

Linden took a look around and in every direction he saw nothing but trees. He had enough fun for the night, so he decided to go back. He activated his wings, and flew up until he saw a river. He followed the river downstream, because this river flowed near the city of Sheepcrown and divided the school of Hecate from the wild forest in the northeast.

When he saw the lights in the distance he flew to the left side of the river, and continued to fly above the forest, where it was darker, so his flying figure was harder to spot. Meanwhile all the settlements were located on the other side of the river. After he saw his hamlet, he landed on the rivercliff near the bridge. There he took out a small box, opened it, and ate the cherry inside.

He waited until his body changed. Slowly his body grew smaller, and he had to wait many long moments for the process to complete, but once he looked like a ten yrold kid, he crossed the bridge, and walked back to the cottage four and four hundred thirty six.

As it was already the second half of the night, Yew was soundly sleeping in his bed, and Linden did his best to be quiet. Besides, he was too tired to do anything himself. With his leftover strength, he used the restroom, took a shower, and headed straight to bed. He also felt somewhat hungry, but that could wait until morning.

Friday began like another normal day of school.

It was already the fortieth day of Veuf, and the month of Tsun was soon to begin. No one looked forward to this change, characterized by days getting shorter, nights getting longer, and weather getting colder. Some were glad that at least it wasn't snowing yet. Although others would prefer to see the snow already instead of the rain.

After the boys of the class four of four B arrived in the warm classroom of the History lesson, the first thing each student did was to take off his jacket. Some of them also wore hats to cover their heads and ears from the freezing winds.

The teacher arrived right on time, took off his coat and hung it together with his hat on a hanger by his desk. Then he looked around the classroom. Immediately, he noticed that one student was missing. It was the same student, who skipped his class the day before. However, he didn't wait long before the closed door to the classroom opened from outside.

A cold breeze entered first and hit all the students, who sat near the exit. But before any of them had a chance to speak up, Linden quickly closed the door, and all the boys in the class burst out laughing.

"What are you? A granny?" someone shouted.

"I told you he's a girl," another boy said a bit loudly.

Linden took off the scarf wrapped around his head and ignored his classmates. He tried to be on time, but he couldn't find his wool hat, so instead of wasting any more time, he used one of his scarves as a headwrap. And this was the reason, why all the boys laughed at him. Even the teacher wasn't trying to hold back his snicker.

Headwraps weren't limited to women. Even men could wear headwraps, but men, who naturally prefered simplicity in life, wouldn't bother learning how to wrap anything around their heads. For many of them, it was a waste of time to learn it, especially in the age, when hats were easily available in all sizes and colors.

However, every year with the coming of cold days, more and more women were seen with diverse sorts of warm headwear. Among them, headwraps were always in fashion. There were primarily two reasons as to why so many women loved wearing them. The first one was flexibility. Outdoors, a woman could wear the scarf on her head, and indoors, she could keep it around her neck, or she could turn it into a mantle for her back, or into a blanket for her legs.

The second reason, why women loved headscarves had to do with a legend, which all kids learned about in kindergarten. Girls especially loved that story about an orphan girl with a scarf, who lost both of her parents, but kept the scarf of her mother.

In the story, the orphan girl hung the scarf on her parents’ gravestone, and prayed. In her prayer she asked for guidance, because she wanted to know where she should go now that she was all alone in the world. After her prayer, the scarf was blown away by the wind, and the girl ran after her scarf.

She found the scarf on a tree branch, but it was too high, and she couldn’t get it. A boy, who arrived on a horse, climbed the tree and gave it back to her. They both played together, but adults came looking for the boy, who turned out to be a prince.

The boy went back with adults in a carriage, and she followed on foot until she arrived at the capital city. She didn’t have a place to sleep, so she slept on the street using her scarf like a blanket.

An old poor widow offered her food and shelter in exchange for work. She would gather fruits from the orchard and sell them in the street. She did the work, which the old widow used to do, but now the matriarch was too old to work herself, which is why she took in the orphan girl.

Because the girl didn’t have a sack, every day she wrapped the fruits in her scarf to carry them. And all the fruits, which she carried in her scarf, were always the most beautiful and delicious fruits in the whole kingdom.

Seeing her working hard every day, a baker offered her a job in his bakery. She started baking there, and to protect her breads from flies she covered them with her scarf, and all the breads, which were covered by her scarf, were always freshest and tastiest in the whole kingdom.

Hearing about this, the king ordered the baker to bring him this most delicious bread in the kingdom. The baker couldn’t go, because he broke his leg, so he sent the orphan girl, who had no dress to wear, so she covered herself with her scarf, and tied it with a belt to make it look like a dress. And on her way to the king, the scarf turned into the most amazing and gorgeous dress in the whole kingdom.

Seeing her, the king adored her beauty and immediately he decided to marry her to his son. But the queen didn’t like the idea, because she already prepared three other princesses for the prince to choose from. She proposed for the prince himself to decide whom he wanted to marry. However, she wanted all four candidates to hide their faces, because the three princesses chosen by her were quite ugly in comparison to the average-looking orphan girl.

So the meeting was arranged with a thick curtain between the prince and the four candidates. The prince could only see their skirts and not their torso. The orphan girl, who met the prince in the past, wrapped her scarf around her hips on top of her skirt, and the prince immediately recognized the scarf and chose her.

But one of the princesses turned out to be a witch in disguise and in anger at not being selected, the witch cast her witchcraft on all the objects in the room and they all changed appearance to look exactly like the orphan girl. The witch told the prince that if he didn’t guess which girl was his selected one, then everyone would die.

The prince looked at all the fakes, but they all looked like a real one, so he couldn’t tell. The real orphan girl felt embarrassed, when the prince looked at her, so she unwrapped her scarf from her hips, and threw it on her head like a veil to hide her blushing face underneath it. That was how the prince knew that she was the real one, because she was the only one, who wore a scarf around her hips. All the fake ones had an actual skirt instead of a scarf, because the witch didn’t realize that the orphan girl wore a scarf on top of her skirt.

The prince and the orphan girl married, lived happily ever after, and many years later, when the orphan girl grew up and had her own son, she was always seen carrying her newborn son in her scarf, wrapped around her chest.

Because of this legend, women treated scarves like good luck amulets, and wore them a lot. Furthermore, a tradition stemmed from this fairy tale, that a gal would cover her face in front of a guy, whom she wanted to marry. This sign of covering one’s face was often used in schools, but also by older women as a signal to a man.

This tradition was also the main reason, why everyone in the classroom laughed at Linden. He covered most of his face, because he was cold, but he ended up looking somewhat like a maiden confessing her love. Coincidentally the first person, whom he looked at after entering the classroom was the teacher, which added to the comedic effect of the whole situation.

"Go to your desk," Cacao said toward Linden, who headed straight for his seat. "Good morning," the teacher's greeting silenced all the laughs, and everyone stood up.

"Good morning, professor," they responded and sat back down on their chairs.

"Put back your textbooks," Cacao said when he saw that some students were already ready for the lesson. "Today we'll have a test," he announced immediately.

Students began looking at each other.

Aspen dared to raise his hand. "Professor, normally we have tests on Saturdays, not Fridays."

"Oh I know," Cacao looked happy. "I know that you’re having fun every afternoon except for Fridays, when you try to quickly memorize all that I covered during the week. Then you take the test on Saturday, get a fairly good score, and afterward you forget everything that I taught. Which is why, this time, I'm testing you on Friday, because I know that none of you are prepared for this, and I want to know exactly how well you're doing in my class."

None of the students were laughing anymore. If anything, many of them wanted to cry, but they didn’t want to become the laughingstocks, so they held it in.

When the students put their textbooks and notebooks back into their backpacks. Cacao snapped his fingers, and test papers appeared in front of each student. Even before turning them over, many students looked at the papers with fear, as if they were standing in front of an executioner.

Usually, the test was only one sheet of paper, with questions on both sides, but this time it wasn't one or two pages. It wasn't three, or four pages. It looked more like ten pages.

"You don't have to worry about time," Cacao said. "The Process class was cancelled this morning. You can take as long as you need, and you can go back home once you're done. The test includes questions from all the topics that we've covered from the first class, so it'll be a good indication of how well you've been learning until now." He clapped his hands, and the papers turned over. "Begin," he sat down at his desk with a stern face.

Unwillingly, each student gathered some courage and began reading the questions. Slowly more and more students were writing the answers, and the teacher silently observed the progress. After a good ten minutes, he got up and began to slowly pace between the desks.

No one was surprised that Linden finished first, and before leaving the classroom, he wrapped his scarf around his head again. But this time no one laughed. All the students had grim countenances, because after finally confirming the content with their own eyes, they knew that they wouldn’t be able to score well on this test. Thus, instead of aiming high, the students simply hoped that they wouldn't score lower than Spruce.

However, the Saturday class of History came with a big surprise.

"Spruce Fire, forty seven points," Cacao Bark read the scores of the Saturday tests, and all the students looked at the boy. There was nothing amazing about his score. It was very typical of Spruce to score about fifty points.

However, there was one thing that was very different this time.

After announcing all the grades to the class. Aspen was first with a score of seventy one points, and the second place was taken by Spruce with forty seven points. It was almost unbelievable that everyone else in the class scored lower than Spruce.

Even Yew couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe that Spruce, who until now had been getting no more than fifty points, somehow managed to get the second place. He looked at his own test, which only scored twenty three points, and it made him even more confused, how did Spruce suddenly became so much better.

Aspen looked at his roommate with a kind smile, but he whispered loud enough for Spruce to hear, "good job." Even Linden was intrigued, and kept staring at Spruce since the moment, when the teacher read his name and score.

"Before we start the class, there are some announcements I need to say," he cleared his throat. "When you first received your guidebooks, I'm sure you looked through them, but that doesn't mean all of you read them. So let me ask you a question. Who won't be coming to this class next Friday? Raise your hand, if you're not coming."

A total of eight people raised their hands, among them Aspen and Linden.

"And now, I know exactly who read their guidebooks, and who didn't. This Sunday is the last day of Veuf, and the month of Tsun starts this coming Monday. Each year during the winter months of Tsun, Toas and Peizh, the school of Hecate follows a short-week schedule. Your classes are held only from Monday until Thursday, and you have three days off - Friday thru Sunday."

Upon hearing the good news, the boys began to clap and some even whistled out of joy. Cacao Bark let this continue for a while, but when their emotions began to calm down he spoke again.

"For those of you, who wonder why we have short-week and long-week schedules, there's actually an explanation. It has been observed that people need more resttime during the winter. The shorter the day, the slower people learn, and the less energy they have to do anything. It is also during this time, when most people get sick, and taking too many days off could put them at a disadvantage, so for many centuries now, a lot of schools had implemented a short-week schedule."

Linden raised his hand, and Cacao beckoned at him. He stood up, and asked, "if now is the time, when we learn the slowest, why did we have that unannounced long test yesterday?"

All the students thought that Linden was angry, because he received a zero on his last test, but the teacher, who read his answers, knew better.

"Most students wonder why I haven't announced it. But why would I do something as unnatural as announcing things ahead of time?" he asked and students wondered what he meant by 'unnatural'. "Mother Nature never announces her tests."

Linden, who was still standing, rolled his eyes.

Cacao continued, "when a thunder hits, and your house is on fire, you either have already learned what to do, or you're just gaping with your mouth wide open at your house getting turned into ash," he gave a dramatic example, but before he could continue, Linden interrupted him.

"That's not what I'm asking."

The teacher smiled, "I know. You were the only person in this class, who could have scored hundred points, but instead you took it as a joke. You thought that it wasn't going to be scored; that it was just a checklist for me to see how the class is doing."

Linden crossed his arms, "so? Why don't we have a normal test today?"

"Because I never intended to," Cacao answered bluntly. "If you're unhappy with your grade, then learn from your mistakes and next time, write each answer below the question and not above it."

"If you realized, then why didn't you accept my answers?" Linden kept fighting with the teacher.

Cacao slowly approached Linden’s desk, and all the students kept their eyes on the teacher. Holding their breaths as they expected something to happen.

When Cacao was standing right next to Linden, he pointed at the student’s backpack, "take out your notebook."

Linden did.

"Open it on the first page."

After Linden followed his instructions, Cacao put his finger on the first sentence in the notebook.

"On the very first day, I have taught you all a very important rule in my class: if you don't follow my instructions, you'll lose points."

For most students that lesson was unpleasant enough that they still remembered it, but Linden due to his experience with teachers didn't get caught in the trap, and his memory of that lesson wasn't as clear.

"Now, take another look at your test, and read to everyone in class the instructions at the very top of the first page."

Some students were beyond terrified. The teacher was much more heartless than any other teacher they ever met, and many students began to feel sorry for Linden, who was a moment away from humiliating himself in front of everyone.

After exchanging glares with the teacher, Linden grabbed his test papers clipped together with a staple, and looked at the first page. For a long while, he stared at it pondering whether to embarrass himself or not. All that time, Cacao stood in silence by Linden’s desk, and all the other students forgot how to breathe as they watched the exchange happening between the two of them.

To everyone's astonishment, Linden read the instruction. "Carefully read the questions, and answer each question by writing down the answer under the question."

Cacao stroked his beard, and walked back to the blackboard. "Good," he said toward Linden, who finally sat down. The teacher snapped his fingers, changing the score on Linden's test. "I'll give you fifty for your courage, but don't think that I'll be this kind next time."

With Linden receiving fifty points, he scored second highest, and it pushed Spruce down to the third place.

"Anyway," the teacher continued. "This week no one will be getting from me any free meal passes."

After lunch, as usual Spruce went to his tutoring with Beech, and there he told him all that had happened this morning in History class.

"I cannot believe it," he finished the story. "Out of fifty people, I scored better than forty seven."

"There's nothing unbelievable about it," Beech responded. "You're learning in depth, with the intention to keep the knowledge, while others learn shallowly with the intention to get a good score. In the beginning, the second type is always ahead, but as you advance in years, the roles get switched. If you keep learning as I've taught you, then by the time you're in your fifth or sixth year, you'll have better scores than the majority of Hecate students."

"When you said: as you've taught me, you meant…?"

"Don't memorize anything," Beech paused before he finished his motto. "Comprehend everything."

The month of Veuf has ended, and the month of Tsun began. Many schools in the northern hemisphere switched from the long schedule to the short schedule, which meant that the students had less classes to attend throughout the week. However, not all the schools around the world practiced the switch between the long and short schedule, and among those schools, which didn’t change their annual schedule, one school stood out in particular.

It was a unique school with a unique system. It didn't hold any classes, and it had no departments. The students were free to study whatever they wanted, whenever, wherever and however they wanted.

The school was located in the warmer southern regions of the Sunset continent, where even the coldest months weren’t that cold. All over the schoolground there were hills, but no mountains; there were small lakes and creeks, but no large rivers or oceans. Even the animals living in the woods and plains weren't dangerous. In other words, it was a safe place for students to study without any supervision.

The teachers at the school were known to be just as odd as their educational system. Each teacher had his or her own house, which they had built themselves. Those houses were at the same time their homes and their classrooms. Whenever students wanted something from their teachers, they would visit their teacher in the teacher’s own house. Although that didn't necessarily mean that the house owner was always home.

As for the students, large multi-story dormitories were built with many rooms on each floor. The bathrooms were located at each end of the hallway, and every bathroom had both shower and toilet stalls.

On the first floor of each dormitory there was a large kitchen combined with a dining room, where the students could prepare food for themselves and others. At each end of the building, near the entrances, there were two midsize rooms. One of the four rooms was used as a laundry room, and the other three as storage rooms, where students could store items, if they had no more space in their bedroom.

Every dormitory building on the schoolground looked almost the same, with each bedroom having two bunkbeds for a total of four students per bedroom. There were no other furnitures, but clever students always found a way to fix that. Some of them got interested in carpentry and made cabinets and drawers out of wood, which had been gathered by students, who learned how to chop down trees and process them into planks. Students interested in engineering often joined hands with the carpenters to add additional functionality to the furnitures.

The bedrooms were small, and couldn't fit any big furnitures, but with the help of students skilled in designing and redesigning the interior, even the most cramped spaces were efficiently utilized. For the students of Hestia, the school didn't feel like a school at all. It felt like a big home with many siblings and cousins.

Though no one in their right mind would want to apply to this school as their primary choice, those who attended the school of Hestia, never regretted it. Even though parents would send their children to the school of Hestia only, if their children had failed to get into any other “better” school, no graduate of Hestia ever felt ashamed of this school.

Even though to the outside world, the school was known as the school for dropouts, among its students it was known as a blessing in disguise.

The school of Hestia was located in a fertile land full of good weather. The hot months were sometimes unbearably hot, but the cold months weren't that cold, and oftentimes the daytime temperatures remained above zero centigrade.

The schoolground of Hestia looked like a very wide village. Except for the four to six-story dormitories, most houses were only one or two-story tall and there was a lot of buildingless land between the buildings. The campus itself was full of fields, orchards, and meadows. And the whole schoolground was surrounded by wild forests.

In the fields, both students and teachers were allowed to grow whatever vegetables or grains they wanted to grow. The orchards were filled with a diversity of trees and bushes, many of which were half-wild as they weren’t taken care of as much, but they still produced plenty of food for everyone in the school of Hestia.

The meadows were for farm animals ranging from big ones, such as cows to the smallest ones, such as bees. There weren’t any barns for the animals, because the temperature was never too cold during the winter. And on hot days, the animals easily found solace under trees, which grew scattered on the meadows. The animals weren’t chained, but the problematic ones were fenced to keep them away from destroying crops.

There were also many ponds and creeks around the schoolground of Hestia, where the animals came to drink, both the domestic ones and the wild ones. During the winter’s rainy season, the level of water would always rise up, and on especially rainy years it would always connect all the ponds and creeks in an elaborate pattern all over the schoolground. For those rainy seasons, there were bridges built all over Hestia, but in the dry season these bridges looked nonsensical as they stood either above a waterless land or above a tiny thirty centimeters wide creek.

"Any worries?" the chairman of Hestia asked a student, who was sitting and observing a midsize river at the southwestern border of the schoolground.

The boy looked up, and saw a man in his sixties, who actually looked no older than forty yrold.

The man came equipped with a fishing gear. He put down his chair, set his fishing rod and threw it into the river.

It didn’t surprise Mpingo. Everyone in the school knew that the chairman spent his free time fishing, and whenever he fished, anyone could come over and have a conversation with him.

However, Mpingo wasn't waiting for the chairman at all. He just found a good spot to sit, and he had no way of knowing that on this exact day at this exact time, the chairman would come to fish right at this exact spot.

After the initial question, the chairman didn't say anything and was quietly staring into the riverwaters.

Mpingo followed the fishing rod with his eyes to the place, where the thread touched the watersurface. He sighed and asked the chairman, "why are some people more talented than others?"

Ever since he arrived in Hestia, it was a question, which he was pondering about over and over. He couldn't understand himself and he couldn't agree that a mere difference in talent created such a huge drift between him and Yew, who for many years was his best friend. He still wished that their friendship could continue and that they could attend the same school together.

He knew that Yew would happily agree to this, but something in Mpingo wouldn't allow that. When he was a small boy, he was never bothered by the fact that Yew was good at everything, so when did he begin to care?

He didn't know when it started, but he knew what to call it. He was jealous, and no matter how much he fought against the emotion, he couldn't defeat it. Against his will, it was getting stronger and more unbearable.

He knew that his relationship with Yew wouldn't return back to the way it used to be, unless he took control of this unwelcomed emotion. Therefore, until the day, when he would conquer his jealousy, he would keep his distance. He didn’t want to meet with Yew until then, because he didn’t want to get hurt by his emotions any more than this.

"Why are some trees taller than others?" the chairman responded to Mpingo's question with another question. "The answer is the same for both questions," he added.

Mpingo remained silent for a while pondering upon the words he heard. He continued to stare at the riverwaters steadily flowing forward. He wished that he could travel together with them to a faraway place, where everyone was talented. While he was imagining that perfect place, a thought crossed his mind «aren't you already living in such a place?».

He opened his eyes wider and looked around. It certainly felt like the thought was coming from inside his mind, and yet it didn't feel like it was his own thought. It was too positive and too optimistic, to be his thought.

Suddenly, he realized how crazy this idea was. Just now, he thought that he heard someone else's thought in his own head. And even more so, he thought that it was a response to his own thoughts, almost as if someone else was listening in to what he was thinking about.

Mpingo looked at the chairman, who kept on fishing with his eyes closed and his head tilted to the side, almost as if he was dozing off on a job.

"Are you going already?" the chairman asked, when the boy stood up.

"Yeah," Mpingo answered.

"Take care," the patriarch waved his other hand, "and don't worry. One day you'll find out that there's something only you can do. That’s when you'll get to know your own worth."

Mpingo nodded, and silently walked away. On his way back, he met with some of the other students from his dormitory. They waved at him, and he waved back. Some of them were still boys, but there were also those, who were already adults. The school of Hestia didn't force people to graduate quickly as everyone was allowed to study at their own pace.

For most students of Hestia, the first year was a year spent looking through the possibilities, and searching for something that truly interested them. However, some students took more than a year to find their lifegoal. And there were even those rare cases of people, who were still undecided after nine years of schooling.

When Mpingo first came to the school of Hestia, he didn't know what he'd be learning, and when he heard that he needed to decide that by himself, he was even more troubled. Was there any subject that he could study and actually be good at?

He searched, and searched, and still couldn't find anything. All the teachers around him were optimistic, because he was still on his first year, but as he was looking around at other students, he couldn't imagine himself among the successful graduates of Hestia. However, he knew that he could easily become one of the failures. And wasn't he a failure already?

Even though today wasn't warm, it wasn't cold either. There was barely any wind, and the sky was mostly cloudless. Mpingo kept on wandering aimlessly around the schoolground of Hestia until he walked into the cherry orchard. At this time of the year, there were no cherries there and the place was mostly empty of people.

However, to his surprise, he saw a pretty woman sitting on a bench among the trees. She had a worried look on her face, as she was also thinking about something in the solitude of nature.

Mpingo didn't recognize her as one of the teachers, so he assumed that she was one of the students, even though she was already at the age, when normally she’d already be a graduate.

She sighed, looked around, and when she spotted Mpingo, she smiled in that warm homely smile of a mother. "Are you one of the students?" she asked and tapped the place on the bench next to her, inviting him to come closer.

Mpingo nodded, as he approached her and carefully sat on the bench.

"How is school?" she asked him, and to Mpingo it oddly felt like something that only a parent would ask.

"Fine," he lied. Then a moment afterward, he gathered his courage and asked the pretty madam, "you're not a student of Hestia, are you?"

"No," she responded as if it was something obvious. But her voice was so sweet that Mpingo didn't feel bad for being wrong even for a moment. "But if there's something that worries you, feel free to let me know. I may be able to help you."

Mpingo laughed, then apologized, "sorry, I didn't mean to. It's just that, my only worry is that I have no talent no matter what I do," he hung down his head.

She looked at him for a moment before she asked, "what's your name?"

"Mpingo Forest."

"Mpingo, hmmm..." she thought for a while, smiled to herself, then added, "a forest is always full of life, but there are many kinds of forests around the world. Maybe you're in the wrong forest."

"I don't understand," he furrowed his eyebrows.

"Sometimes the answer to your life problems can be found in your name," she said. "All names are decided by God, and they hold hints to your future as well as suggestions on how to deal with your problems."

"Then what is your name?"

"Hestia."

"Like the school?"

"Like the school."

"Your parents named you after the school?"

She chuckled, "The school was named after me."

Mpingo thought for a moment, "but the school of Hestia has existed for more than ten hundred years."

"I know."

"You're that old?" he asked, clearly not buying it.

"I'm much older," she responded. "I'm the Guardian of Hearths."

"A guardian?" Mpingo recalled hearing about this topic before.

Before creating the material realm, God created the divine realm and the spiritual realm with all its inhabitants. The angels of the divine realm were created to serve God, so they had their duties set from the beginning, but the inhabitants of the spiritual realm, commonly known as spirits, were without any duties until God created the material realm of the world.

The weaker spirits were assigned duties to maintain each individual creation of God and could be found everywhere on Earth. On the other hand, the most powerful spirits from the spiritual realm became known as guardians. Each guardian was assigned one creation of God under his control, and was in command over countless lesser spirits, who inhabited every piece of it.

For an example, while each tree had its own tree spirit, there was only one guardian, the Guardian of Trees, who had power over all the trees, and was in command of all the lesser spirits, who lived within the trees.

The guardians were not as powerful as angels, but nevertheless they were the most powerful among the spirits. However, it was just as unlikely to meet a guardian as it was unlikely to see an angel.

Upon realizing, who was sitting next to him, Mpingo shut his mouth and observed. Hestia didn't look like a powerful spirit at all, but why would anyone lie about something like that.

"In the past, there used to be more schools," she recalled a past so distant that it wasn't even mentioned in history textbooks. "But times have changed."

At that moment, a thunder hit the ground right next to them, and a man appeared right in the place of the thunder.

Mpingo froze in fear at such a close encounter with a thunder, but Hestia wasn't even surprised.

"Perun," she said to the man. "Has the meeting ended?"

"Almost, we need everyone together."

Hestia lowered her head, "I so don't want another war."

Perun grinned in response, "why not? A war of this scale has never happened before. Even Odin said that it's something to look forward to."

Hestia stood up, and shook her head sideways.

"What war?" Mpingo spoke out loud his thoughts. When he realized that they heard him, he got terrified as the Guardian of Thunders looked at him.

"A war against demons," he answered Mpingo's question, "just like the one from ten hundred years ago, but this time on a much larger scale. Sooner or later, even you humans will know about it."

After he said that, he turned into a thunder, and left as instantly as he appeared.

Mpingo’s eyes were fixed on the spot, where Perun stood just a moment ago. Meanwhile Hestia warmly smiled at the student from the school that was named after her, before she turned into flame, which turned into ashes then into the soil no different from the soil beneath Mpingo’s feet.

When Hestia, the Guardian of Hearths, arrived at the meeting, she looked around to see who else was present. There were thousands of guardians in the spiritual palace, yet many of them were still missing. It wasn't that they didn't attend, it’s just that they had already left.

The meeting began many days ago, and had lasted for more than a month. In the beginning all the guardians came in order to hear about this one event, which had become the main topic of all conversations since last year.

Nothing remotely similar had ever happened before, in this world or in any other world. No one was certain, when exactly it happened. A little over a year ago, several guardians realized that something felt different from usual. Upon further investigation, they found the source of the change, which occurred in the material realm.

At first, none of them felt alarmed, but as soon as they understood the gravity of the situation, the news spread like wildfire.

The war was coming.

No one liked the sound of this message, and it was a reality no one wanted to face.

The guardians vividly recalled what a world looked like, when demons could be found everywhere. It was a world with a never-ending war for freedom.

This world had already once won the war against demons in the past, so it was unthinkable that these humans would give up this time. Hence once it became obvious that a war was unavoidable, the guardians organized a meeting.

However, the meeting led nowhere, since every guardian had his own opinion and his own preferred solution. Many peaceful guardians, who didn’t want to needlessly argue, quickly left the meeting. None of them wanted to waste their time yelling obscenities at each other. Later on, more guardians left as they found better things to do than sit at a meaningless and fruitless meeting.

Hestia was among those, who left the meeting early on. She returned only because the meeting was finally coming to an end.

The atmosphere in the spiritual palace could be divided into two types. Half of the guardians were looking unhappy and displeased at the idea of another war. The other half were overjoyed and couldn't wait to practice their favorite sport.

Some warring guardians already couldn't wait for the war to begin. This impatience caused dangerous objects, such as swords, axes, arrows, maces, daggers, pikes and others, to get thrown around as if they were nothing else other than harmless pillows.

A large ball of hail flew past Hestia, almost touching her. She looked to the side. Out of the crowd came out a man wearing a jaguar skin and a mask with fangs instead of human teeth.

He was the Guardian of Clouds, possessing the power to decide the type of precipitation to send onto the earth. When someone pleased him, he sent rain. When someone angered him, he sent hail, and when he was bored he'd flash some lightning for fun in order to scare the living hell out of mortals.

"Tlaloc," Hestia looked upset at the other guardian. She immediately guessed that he was the one throwing the hail around.

"Did it hit you?" Tlaloc asked as he approached her.

A big boulder flew above both of them and far into the distance. It met an axe mid-way and was broken into two pieces.

Hestia sighed before she answered, "no.”

She wondered why did she even return to this meeting. She didn't want to take any part in the war beyond what was necessary, unlike those guardians, who couldn't sit still and were ready to fight right away.

A wise-looking elder walked up to the center of the room, and clapped his hands just once. His one clap sent a powerful shockwave all around him, which threw most of the guardians onto the floor. Only the strongest of the guardians remained standing.

Huangdi was the Guardian of Heroes. However, he was no dictator. His duty was to guide humans in their path toward victory. Because of this, he would occasionally take on a human form and live among men to teach and to give them an example to follow.

Huangdi was also one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful of guardians. However, nobody could be certain about that, because due to his great wisdom he avoided war. And even when he was challenged by other guardians, he would use only the minimum power necessary to bring the fight to a draw. Thus no one had ever seen him reach his limits.

"May I suggest that we finish our meeting before some of you begin to celebrate?" Huangdi slowly stroked his beard, as he looked around the room filled with the guardians - many of whom were wreaking havoc and tumult just a moment ago.

Huangdi looked at the Guardian of Books, who was patiently waiting all this time for a moment of peace. "Seshat, please continue," he said toward her.

The woman in a spot-pattern dress, carrying a palm leaf, stepped forward. She put the palm leaf horizontally in front of her, and let go of it. The moment she took back her hand, the leaf began floating in the air. Each notch of the leaf began moving on its own like wings of a bird. The leaf folded itself in half and as it reopened the inside turned into a huge book with millions of thin wide pages.

"As I was saying before, this is the list of all the demons, who are taking part in this war," she said, while the pages of the book began turning on its own. "However, among all of them there are only two, who pose the greatest threat to our world."

"Wait."

"What is it, Bochica?" Seshat asked the Guardian of Teaching.

"Some guardians aren't back yet," he pointed out the fact.

Even though all guardians were called to return back, some of them ignored the call.

"Their work, their fruit," Huangdi said and beckoned Seshat to continue.

She looked away from him and back at the book in front of her, "the first demon, about whom all of us are already aware of, is Anagape Infida. In all of the world, she is the second most powerful demon that has ever existed."

Seshat didn't need to explain who was the most powerful demon. It was something all of them knew, even though they never fought against him personally.

Long before any animals walked on earth, long before the first plants sprouted on land, long before the material realm even existed. In a world, where the souls of men were still awaiting the creation of their physical bodies, there existed a time, when demons served God.

Together with the angels, the demons were part of the divine realm, where God resided. Nowadays, the idea sounded preposterous, but it used to be a daily norm for demons to obediently serve God. And who knows, maybe demons would continue to serve God, if that didn’t happen.

Once God created the body of a man, he put the soul of a man into the body, which He created. On that exact day, God announced that men shall be his adopted children.

Naturally, such a simple statement alone didn't start the war. It was the thing that followed. The demons asked who was the greatest of God's creation, and not only did they find out that «human» was the answer, but God also announced that all the angels and demons ought to serve the humans living in the divine realm as they serve God, because God alone shall be the only one above mankind and nothing else.

The first war began.

It was a very shortlasting war. The demons came to attack God, and the angels soon defeated them. Satan, who led the rebellion, was caught, chained and locked up in the deepest, darkest cell of Hell, until the day, when he’d regret his disobedience, which was the same as saying: until never.

"Some of you may have assumed, that Anagape Infida is the devil, but that's wrong. She's not the devil," Seshat continued her speech.

A devil was a term used for a leader of demons, in the same way an archangel was a leader of angels, or a king was a leader of humans. Even though Satan has been imprisoned for many eras, the demons still regarded him as their only leader, and they wouldn't dare to select another devil to rule over them.

However it wasn't loyalty that kept things this way, but pure hierarchy of power. Among demons, the rule of power was absolute and it decided everything. This meant that as long as Satan remained the most powerful demon, he was the sole holder of the title of the devil. And since God created him to be the most powerful demon, that title wasn’t going to be taken away from him, as long as he was allowed to exist.

"Furthermore," Seshat pointed at a name in her book, "Anagape Infida isn't our worst enemy, because she's very straightforward in her approach. First, she plunges her target into despair, then takes over control. It's not difficult to fight back. As long as you hold on to hope, she's powerless."

Everyone was listening carefully. Many wondered how a demon with such a weakness could ever take control of so many creatures in one world, and hold the title of the second most powerful demon of them all.

"The real threat to us is Nefastus Philema," Seshat took a deep breath before she continued, "he is a partner of Anagape Infida, and the two of them are always scheming together. Unlike her, he is a two-faced monster. On the outside, he can fake to look more holy than an angel, but ruined is the one, who fails to see through his deception."

Many guardians, who were looking forward to an open war with demons, furrowed their eyebrows as they understood the main problem. The two core demons behind the war weren't the fighting types. Anagape Infida was clearly the kind, who only hunted the weak, and Nefastus Philema was the kind, who never fought fair. Either one was a nasty type that would spoil even the most enjoyable battle.

"In other words," Seshat addressed the guardians, "this war won't be easy, and pure strength won't be enough to ensure our victory."

"One question," Maguayan, a quiet guardian, who hasn't said anything until now, stepped forward toward Seshat. "Just now you said «our victory». Who is «us» exactly?"

"That's a good question," Huangdi stroked his beard. "How many allies do we have?" he asked Seshat.

"At this stage, it's still hard to say," she responded to both of them.

Maguayan, the Guardian of Abyss, closed her eyes with beautiful long eyelashes for a short moment. When she reopened her eyes, she spoke again, "allow me to ask one more question."

"Please."

"Who is already allied with demons?"

"No one," Seshat answered immediately. "This time, even the witches, who used to be demons' most trusted allies, rejected them."

The room was filled with voices of disbelief and surprise.

"There's nothing to be surprised about," Seshat continued. "As I have already explained two days ago, before Anagape Infida took control of that world, she borrowed the strength of others. However, after she successfully possessed that world, she took away the powers from all the creatures, so that no one could ever overthrow her."

"So you mean, she took powers away even from her own allies?!" Hestia spoke aloud what she was truly surprised about.

"Isn't that too foolish?" Perun, who stood next to her, also spoke as did many other guardians, who couldn't understand the actions of Anagape Infida.

Out of nowhere, the wisest and most shrewd guardians began to laugh, but no one else in the room was intelligent enough to figure out what they were thinking while laughing so much.

Seshat continued, "yes, she took powers even from her own allies. She did that after she possessed all of the world. It would have been her complete victory, if God hadn’t allowed for our world to be connected with that world."

And everyone understood, or at least they began to understand. Anagape Infida has led demons to victory in one of the worlds, which God had created. If each world created by God was eternally separate, her victory would be final and absolute, because no one could defeat her.

The demons weren’t proud of their powers for no reason. Even if weak in the eyes of guardians, they were still vastly stronger than humans. Furthermore, their power of possession was absolute, in the sense that only God could erase it. However, God had promised that He wouldn’t interfere in the war between demons and humans regardless of who won. And God’s promises were as eternal as He was Himself.

To everyone’s surprise, suddenly and without any prior announcement, God created a connection between two worlds, one world where the demons won and another world where the demons lost.

Of course, there was no proof that God was the one, who did it, since connections between different worlds existed since the very beginning of existence, but considering the circumstances, all the guardians were fairly certain that He had a hand in this.

Anagape Infida was put in a dilemma, when she was given access to two worlds: one, which she had already possessed, and another one, which she had no chance of ever possessing, unless something changed in that other world. Thus, everything was brought back to a starting point, where the good and the evil were divided in equal halves, and each side had an equal chance of winning. Anagape Infida knew that if she didn’t play it out carefully she could lose everything, which she gained until now.

At this point, some guardians presumed that God was trying to save that world possessed by a demon. They assumed that there was no reason to worry, because if it was the will of God, the good was going to win no matter what.

However, not everyone was that optimistic. There were even those, who doubted God's intentions and speculated that maybe He wanted to destroy this world just like he allowed Anagage Infida to destroy that world.

The more guardians tried to comprehend God’s actions, the more confused they became, and the more crazy ideas they began to have. In the end, they put aside trying to comprehend the Eternally Incomprehensible One, and moved on to the next topic. After all, God was beyond anyone's understanding, and not even angels, who were always near God could understand the actions of the Lord of All.

Instead of wasting their time, and accomplishing nothing, guardians decided to act upon the present state of things. They had already spent a fair number of days investigating the possessed world and learning of ways, which Anagape Infida used to manipulate the war to her advantage.

For this reason, all the guardians knew exactly what they needed to do, or at least they were certain that they knew what was the best course of action. Ergo, even though the meeting hasn't officially ended, many of them were leaving.

In order to ensure the victory of this world, in order to obstruct the plans of demons, in order to protect the world they cherished, they needed to fix all the weak spots, which Anagape Infida used in the other world to gain advantage over her opponents.

And they were going to start with their own names.

For spirits, their names were their homes, their lives, and their power. And the first thing demons did in the world ruled by Anagape Infida was to usurp the names of spirits.

Same spirits once existed in both worlds, but in the world where demons won, the humans preferred to ally with demons. This disgusted spirits, who abandoned humans and left eternally for the spiritual realm.

However, the humans never realized that the spirits had left, because the demons disguised themselves as the very guardians, who once used to help the mankind. Those humans of that world continued to pray to their «gods» completely unaware that all of those «gods» were gone.

Some men realized that something wasn’t right, and they became known as atheists, but demons didn’t care about them, because they knew that as long as humans weren’t aware of the truth, they were powerless. Whether humans prayed to demons disguised as their «gods» or prayed to no one didn’t matter.

The only thing demons feared was the possibility that someone could realize that all religions were ruled by demons. Because if that happened, then that someone would seek the truth hidden behind the lies, and if that practice would ever spread, it could lead one day to someone actually arriving at the truth.

And those, who arrived at the truth, weren’t normal men anymore. They were saints, so mighty and powerful that the living humans couldn’t tell them apart from the actual God. Those beings were untouchable to demons, so even if one of them appeared in the world ruled by demons, it would be the end for all the demons.

For that reason, demons would allow both religious people and atheists to stay alive. However, any man, who would begin to doubt the common reality and alone seek the answer beyond, was sentenced to death before having a chance to become a saint.

However, the birth of a saint was as rare a phenomenon as the birth of a new star. And guardians weren’t foolish to hope for such an unlikely miracle.

Rather, they chose to take definite steps to obstruct demons from taking the same route to victory as they did in the other world. Therefore, in order to ensure that the names of guardians would not get usurped by demons, all the guardians went to meet their friends, allies, and acquaintances, to prepare a strategy against potential imposters.

At the end of the second week of Tsun, it began snowing in Sheepcrown. And while the first days of snow brought a lot of smiles and plenty of snowfights, the joy soon turned into complaints. After the sixteenth day of Tsun, it was either snowy or windy for the next two weeks, and even when it wasn't snowy or windy, the sky remained cloudy throughout the day.

However, this Tuesday, the thirtieth day of Tsun, has left many students of Hecate finally satisfied. Although the temperature was certainly below zero, and the white snow covered the ground, the sky was pure blue and without even one tiny cloud. For the first time, since the snow season has started, it was truly sunny.

Chervil rubbed her hands and blew some warm air at them as she waited in front of the school library. Yew should have already finished his Process of Magic class and was surely on the way.

This morning Chervil heard from Liquorice that a student of Hades was able to locate the whereabouts of Ginkgo, whom Yew was searching for. Chervil knew that if she told Yew right away, he wouldn't be able to concentrate in class. Therefore she kept the info secret until she was certain that his morning classes were coming to an end.

Only then, she mindteamed Yew and let him know that she has info about Ginkgo. To be more precise, she didn't tell him anything about Ginkgo. Instead she asked him to meet her in front of the library, where the two of them were going to talk about something, which Yew wanted to know.

Yew was ready to go immediately, but he still had to patiently wait several more minutes until his Process class ended.

In the meantime, Chervil arrived at the library. She didn't expect to wait for a long time, so instead of going inside she stood outside on the raised stone patio. With her eyes she was searching for Yew among the students heading toward the library entrance, but there was no one looking like Yew among them.

As she kept looking around, one person caught her attention. She saw a woman sitting on a tree branch about five meters above the ground. The tree was much taller than that, and there was no good way to climb it. Ergo, Chervil deduced that the woman sitting on the branch must have used magic to get there. Chervil wasn't surprised at that, since she herself has used magic to climb trees occasionally.

What really caught Chervil’s attention was the appearance of the woman. She was observing the students beneath, who were walking on the snow-covered ground dressed in winter clothes. Unlike any of the students, the woman was wearing summer clothing and it looked like she wasn't cold at all. Instead of reddish frostbitten skin, she looked tanned, as if she had spent a lot of time on the beach under the blazing hot sun.

While Chervil could explain the totally odd appearance as some type of magic, there was one thing, which Chervil couldn't explain. She had a very strong feeling that she had seen this woman somewhere before, and it wasn't once or twice. It must have been many times, over and over, and yet Chervil couldn't remember where it was or when or how it happened.

"Chervil!"

She looked in the direction, where she heard Yew's voice, and saw the boy coming up to her. She looked back at the tree, but the mysterious tanned woman was no longer there.

Chervil put aside the issue of the tanned woman, because at the moment she was unable to remember the place or the circumstances, where she could have met her in the past. She knew that sooner or later, she'd recall what she had forgotten, or maybe she'd meet her again, and ask her about it.

"Yo, rookie," she greeted the boy in her usual original style.

After more than a month of knowing her, Yew got used to Chervil's unpredictable behavior. Unlike most people, who were pretty much the same every day, Chervil was like a surprise box. Every time Yew met her, it was as if he met a different girl. Sometimes, she was acting girly. At other times she was a total tomboy. Sometimes, she was nice. At other times she was mean. Sometimes, she was shy and quiet. At other times, she was loud and talkative.

It was almost as if Chervil possessed all the diverse traits from all the people around the world, and just like in a lottery, each day a different set of characteristics manifested in her physical body.

In the beginning, Yew was confused at how such a complicated human being could even exist. He was even more bewildered, how could anyone ever deal with having such an irregular life. However, Chervil didn't mind her personality at all. She never bothered to think about the future, and she simply did whatever she felt like doing at the present moment. She was just like a leaf that fell off a tree, without a plan of where to go, she let the winds and waters choose the path for her, and she simply enjoyed the ride.

"So what about Ginkgo?" Yew asked, when he was right next to her.

"Let's go," she said and led the way.

Yew didn't even bother asking her, where they were going. He already knew that he wouldn't get a satisfactory answer anyway. However, to his surprise, they didn't walk far away. Chervil walked up to a small classroom building, entered through the main door and climbed up the stairs all the way to the third floor.

There, she went all the way to the end of the hallway, passing about six doors in total. Three doors on each side of the hallway. However, she opened none of them. They arrived at the end of the hallway, and Yew looked back at the doors.

"They're all locked," she said. "There are no classes here except in the morning and late afternoon. This building is for people studying weather magic, but there aren't that many students taking this major, so most of the time the classrooms are empty."

She sat down on the floor. Unlike the classrooms, the hallways weren't heated. However, the two of them were protected from the wind and cold by the walls, so it was still warmer inside than outside.

"So what did you find out about Ginkgo?" Yew asked, guessing correctly the reason, why Chervil called him.

"Not me, but Liquorice. I got a message from her, that she knows where he is."

"Really?"

Chervil nodded.

"Where is he?"

"The Windworm Tower," Chervil responded. "Based on the last eight locations, where he was seen, it was concluded that he's heading toward that place."

"The Windworm Tower?" Yew never heard of it before.

"Most likely, he wants to get a Divine Wind."

"Wind?" Yew looked very confused.

"A Divine Wind is not really a wind," she explained. "It's a drop of water from the Fairy Rain - a rare phenomenon, which occurs around the Windworm Tower every hundred twenty years. This drop of water is called a Divine Wind, because if it comes in contact with the sunlight, it can create a wind that blows non-stop for twenty two days."

"Okay, I get it. So Ginkgo is after the Divine Wind," Yew lowered his head and wondered whether this info would suffice for Cypress or not.

"People living around the Windworm Tower say that the clouds begin to look more and more like the Fairy Rain clouds, which is why many adventurers are heading there right now. It wouldn't be surprising, if Ginkgo was among them."

Yew nodded, "thanks for the info."

"Don't thank me. Thank Liquorice."

"I will, when I meet her."

"When?" Chervil asked.

"When what?"

"When do you want to meet her?"

Yew stared at Chervil in confusion.

"Liquorice is the one, who has all the info. Naturally it's best to hear everything from her own mouth. This way you’d get to ask questions and find out as much as possible. She can come to the city of Sheepcrown anytime, so when do you want to meet her?"

Yew didn't think about meeting Liquorice in person. However, it was a good idea to hear the info directly from the source. He agreed to the idea, "I have classes until Thursday, so maybe Friday?"

"Just so you know, the Fairy Rain may come anytime, even tomorrow," Chervil pointed out the urgency of the situation.

"But I have classes…" Yew began, while biting his lower lip, but she interrupted him.

“But I have a solution,” Chervil looked into her backpack and took out a small bottle, "pwa-pwa," she said as she held it out.

"What?" Yew blinked, as he watched Chervil shake the bottle.

"It gives you flu-like symptoms," she explained. "Just drink it after you get back home today, and ask your roommate to call a school doctor for you later on. The doctor will confirm that you cannot go to school, since your health condition is so bad, and you'll be free from classes for at least a week, so here you go - problem solved."

"Okay," Yew took the bottle and hid it in the pocket of his jacket.

"Good then, I'll schedule your meeting with Liquorice for tomorrow dawn. Don't be late," she got up and began walking back toward the staircase.

"Okay," Yew agreed while clutching the bottle of pwa-pwa, then he followed after her.

When they stepped outside, Chervil waved a bye toward Yew. In the next second, her eyes grew big and she shouted out, "I remember!"

A lot of students passing by looked at her, then they looked at the statue that she was staring at. Yew also turned his face toward the statue of a woman holding a torch in one hand and a large key in another. He looked back at Chervil and wondered, what caused her reaction.

"I knew I saw her before," Chervil said as she put her right fist on her left palm, as she recalled the woman in summer clothing sitting on a tree branch. She approached the statue, which looked exactly like that woman, and just like the real woman, the statue was wearing summer clothes.

Yew came up behind Chervil, still wondering what was going on. He looked at the statue, which the gal was staring at, then at the words written underneath it.

HECATE - THE GUARDIAN OF BLESSINGS

Like most people around the world, Yew knew about guardians, just like he knew about angels, elfs, dragons and many other beings that existed in the world.

He also passed by this statue in the past, but he didn’t pay much attention to it. Today was the first time, when he read the words written underneath the statue.

It was also his first time, when he heard of a guardian named Hecate, which wasn’t odd. There were more than thousand guardians and it was not possible to memorize all their names. Typically people only knew the names of no more than several guardians.

Yew quickly realized that the school of Hecate was named after the Guardian of Blessings, and he began to wonder whether other schools were also named after different guardians.

Chervil smiled to herself, but she didn't say anything. After a while, she turned around, waved another bye to Yew and left him confused, with no explanation of why she acted the way she acted, which was totally normal for Chervil.

Yet Yew didn't remain confused for a long time. Remembering that Chervil is full of random actions, he decided to quickly forget about it. Surely it wasn't anything important.

He headed toward the library, where he returned the books by putting them on the shelves marked as "RETURN HERE". The books put on the shelves immediately disappeared and were teleported inside the library.

Except for the name of the person, who borrowed the books, there was never any mention of the person, who returned the books. Furthermore, the returned books disappeared right away, so there wasn't much time for anyone to see what kind of books were returned.

For Yew, it was convenient, because it allowed him to return the books from the later years without anyone noticing it. Furthermore, the books he was returning today weren't even his. He was running an errand for Cypress.

After the beginning of the season of Tsun, Cypress mindteamed Yew more and more often. However, the errands always consisted of the same request: return these books to the library. Every two-three times a week, Cypress called Yew to a place somewhere in the schoolground. Each time he saw Yew from afar, the guy pointed at a pile of books before he left, leaving the books abandoned. The boy always took the pile of books, and carried them away.

After Yew was quite a distance away from the prying eyes of the strangers, he’d put the books into his own backpack, and later on when he was alone in his cottage, he’d look through them again. If a book had anything interesting, he read through it and only afterward he returned it to the library. Some books were too difficult to understand but even then, he at least tried to read them.

Yet the deadlines were his biggest problems. Each book had to be returned within a short period of time, oftentimes within three days. This didn't give Yew enough time to read or look through all the books, but even when he wanted to continue reading, he wouldn't dare to go over the deadline. So he always returned each book on the last day of the return deadline.

Eventually, it seemed that Cypress somehow became aware that Yew was reading the books and that he needed more time, because after the initial two weeks the guy began to borrow the books for much longer than his typical timeline of five to seven days. Thus the deadlines on the books were extended, and Yew could keep the books for up to two weeks before he had to return them.

After he dropped off all the books that he already looked through, he began heading toward the cafeteria in order to get something to eat. There he bought his meal, walked out and at that time, he saw Cypress arriving in the cafeteria with another student from his class. The two of them were talking about class, but when Cypress spotted Yew, he mindteamed the boy.

"Any info on my brother?"

Yew shook his head sideways, and Cypress returned back to the conversation with his classmate.

The first year boy was surprised how easily Cypress accepted his response. Was he so good at lying, or was it that Cypress didn't want to force him to speak? Either way, Yew lowered his head and walked away from the cafeteria at a much faster pace than how he normally walked.

Obviously he lied to Cypress, and it wasn't the first time he did that. It felt somewhat good to lie to an older student without getting caught. There was a thrill in knowing that he could get found out, but there was another good feeling of looking forward to seeing Cypress’s reaction, after Yew brings more infos that Cypress could ever expect from him.

Yew wanted to get so many infos about Ginkgo that Cypress would end up falling backward from shock. He imagined telling the older student some super amazing info, and surpassing any expectation, which the guy had for him.

In his mind he imagined the figure of Cypress falling down after hearing all the amazing news, and Yew couldn't stop himself from grinning broadly as he kept walking home, looking forward to meeting Liquorice tomorrow morning.

When Yew returned to the cottage, Linden was lying down on the sofa, with a sleepmask over his eyes.

Quietly, Yew tiptoed to the kitchen, where he left his food in the fridge. Afterward, he went to the bedroom. He put down his backpack on his bed and took out the pwa-pwa, which he got from Chervil. She didn't tell him how much to take, so he tried to mindteam her with the question.

"What an idiot," he heard her say before he even asked the question. “All first year students are so stupid. How the hell can’t he figure it out? I wasn’t that stupid when I was his age.”

“Chervil?” Yew carefully asked in his mind.

“Heya-hi, future ditch-master. How is the plan going? Did you get sick already? It works amazing, right? Oh wow, another idiot. I’m tutoring your class right now, and you wouldn’t believe what these idiots are doing.”

That was when Yew remembered about the Exercise of Magic class. He had been skipping it for a long time already, so it made sense that he forgot about it. He wondered whether he should wait until Chervil was done with the class, to ask her the question, but he was already mindteaming with her, so he decided to ask anyway.

“By the way,” Chervil continued talking by herself, “you can control how sick you want to be. In case if you’re still looking too healthy, you can take more. The more you take, the more symptoms you’ll get.”

“Oh, okay,” Yew heard the answer to his question.

“Hahahahah… I knew this was going to happen. Hear this out, this idiot tried to fly by levitating his clothes. He would have choked himself, but his magic ran out a second after he charmed his clothes, so he just threw himself up and down by his own clothes. Hahahahah…”

“Okay. Sorry to bother you, I’m disconnecting now,” Yew said and broke the mindteaming spell before Chervil told him anything else.

He already had the answer he was searching for. All he needed now was to drink enough until he would appear too sick to go to school.

He opened the bottle and drank one sip. He waited for a while, but nothing happened, so he drank some more, and waited again. Still nothing happened, so he continued drinking until he drank half of the bottle, but even then there were no symptoms of flu.

Since nothing occurred, he concluded that he needed to contact Chervil again, but remembering her mood from the last conversation, he decided against it. After all, pwa-pwa was not a poison. It wouldn’t infect him with the actual virus. It only created symptoms of a flu, so he decided to try some more. In the end, he drank the whole bottle, and there were still no symptoms.

He put the empty bottle in the top drawer of his bed.

He sighed. Now it was obvious that he had no choice but to talk to Chervil. But before doing so, he headed for the kitchen, because he felt thirsty. There, he stretched out his hand toward the cabinet with cups. At that very moment when he grabbed the handle, he felt a sudden hit of dizziness.

He lost strength in his legs. His hand let go off the handle, and he fell backwards. He watched the walls and the ceiling swirl in front of his eyes, before suddenly everything went black.

He opened his eyes, and tried to get up. He turned a bit with all of his strength and lay on his side for a bit before he rolled back onto his back. Somehow, his body was much heavier than normal and he felt so weak.

As he looked up at the kitchen ceiling, he recalled the times in the past, when he had the flu. He was still a kid, and his parents were around him. He remembered his dad carrying him to the bed, and his mom making tasty onion soup with garlic bread to quickly get him back to health.

Now he felt exactly as sick, but this time there was no mom or dad near him. He was so weak, that he couldn't even move. And the realization of how hopeless he was, terrified him. Suddenly, he was terrified of being alone, and he wanted someone, anyone to be near him.

Just as he remembered about his roommate, he heard footsteps and Linden walked into the kitchen. Yew's desire to be with someone immediately disappeared, and in a madness of emotions he wanted his roommate to leave. He felt embarrassed that anyone could see him in such a pitiful state, and he regretted agreeing to Chervil's idea and drinking that pwa-pwa.

Linden came up to him. Yew tightly closed his eyes, making himself unable to look at his roommate, afraid of what Linden was going to say.

Linden squatted and put his hand on Yew's forehead. "Perfect K.O.," he commented and walked out of the kitchen. Not so long later, he returned with Yew's brooch. He used the magical item to levitate Yew to his bed. "Don't move. I'll get a doctor," he said before he left the cottage.

Yew didn't know how much time passed, because he was drifting in and out of consciousness so many times that he couldn't even count. When the doctor finally arrived from the school hospital, the diagnosis was swift. It was a flu, and Yew had to stay home until he was cured. The doctor left the bottle of flu medication, and gave Yew the first spoon of liquid medication right away.

Yew didn't say anything against it. He was feeling so weak, that it no longer mattered what the doctor did to him.

After the doctor left, Linden went back to the living room, but kept the bedroom door open. An hour later, Spruce came in to do homework together with Yew, and was beyond shocked to find his friend bedridden and too weak to even talk.

Linden began complaining, how he was going to have to take care of Yew for many days, and Spruce, who couldn't stand Linden’s lack of compassion, offered to take care of Yew instead. Linden happily passed the responsibility, packed up his most needed stuff and left the cottage.

"How are you feeling?" Spruce asked, then realized how stupid his question was.

"Aspen," Yew murmured the name of his other neighbor.

Spruce immediately understood the request. He went back to his cottage, and brought his roommate to Yew's bedroom.

When Aspen was already standing by the bed, Yew looked at him and with heavy breath, he spoke again, "Chervil."

"Give me a moment," Aspen said and left the bedroom.

He walked into the toilet room, and there he mindteamed the gal. At first, Chervil disconnected him, but he stubbornly kept reconnecting and eventually she gave up.

Cacao Bark wasn't surprised at all, when Chervil suddenly stood up and while walking to the exit door with both hands on her stomach, she complained about a stomachache. It was the first time since the beginning of the school year since Chervil would skip the History class, but Cacao knew that sooner or later this was bound to happen, so he quickly gave her the permission to leave and returned to teaching.

"What?" she barked via mindteaming at Aspen, once she was outside the building. She felt cold, because she left her jacket in the classroom, and she was forced to skip a class, which she didn't want to skip at all. Together, all of this added up and she was in a very bad mood.

"Did you do something to Yew?" Aspen asked calmly but with a tiny hint of a threat in his voice. "He has a severe flu."

"That's a pwa-pwa," she barked back at him as if it was something so obvious that Aspen should have figured it out himself.

"What's a pwa-pwa?"

"Potion that gives you flu symptoms," she explained. "The sickness ain't real."

"How long will it last?"

"Until he takes the antidote… oh," she said and laughed at herself, "I forgot to give him the antidote."

Aspen put his palm on his face, "seriously?"

"Fine, fine, I'll bring it," she said as she began walking back to her cottage. "By the way, did he get a doctor's slip? He needs to get it before he takes the antidote."

"Yes, the doctor was already here."

"Great, so I'll quickly get back home, grab the antidote and head there, okay? I'm sure he can last this much," Chervil disconnected without hearing Aspen's response.

Aspen sighed in the toilet room. Afterward, he washed his hands and returned to the bedroom. Both Spruce and Yew looked at him. He thought for a moment before he said, "Chervil said she'll come over here with the antidote."

Yew closed his eyes, but Spruce opened his eyes wider.

"Chervil? Antidote?" Spruce repeated the words that caught his attention.

"Let's wait," Aspen said, "I'm sure Yew can explain this better than me." He looked at the boy on the bed, and mindteamed with him, "Quite frankly I am very curious what happened."

Yew opened his eyes and looked at Aspen for a while before closing them again, but Aspen had heard no response, whether spoken or mindteamed.

Chervil arrived much later than expected, making the boys wait for quite a long time. After she entered the cottage village, she mindteamed Aspen for the specific number of their cottage. When she finally arrived at the four and four hundred thirty six, Aspen was already standing outside the front door.

Without a word of greeting, he opened the door, and let her inside. Spruce was surprised to see one of his tutors visiting Yew, but he didn't ask any questions.

"Drink this," Chervil said to Yew, as she stretched out her hand, holding a small bottle.

Yew looked at the bottle, and sighed. Gathering all the energy he had, he slowly sat on the bed. Immediately he had to lean on the wall, because his body was trying to fall down again.

"Wow, that's really bad," Chervil commented as she climbed the bed, opened the bottle cover and put it near his mouth. Yew raised his right hand to guide the bottle into his mouth, and Chervil kept holding the bottom of it, so that he wouldn't accidentally drop the bottle.

When he finished drinking, she took the bottle away, and said, "all done." She got off the bed, and packed the empty bottle in her backpack. "By the way, where's the other bottle?"

"Drawer," Yew answered with a little more energy in his voice.

Chervil opened the first drawer of Yew's bed and spotted the bottle right on top of his clothes. "No wonder, you look so sick. You drank the whole thing," she took it and put it in her own backpack. "Well, my job here is done," she said as she put her backpack on, and turned toward the door, "see you tomorrow," she waved at Yew and left.

"Beech is teaching the Exercise on Wednesday, right?" Spruce asked Aspen as if he was unsure about it.

"That's not what she meant," said Yew, who was slowly getting better, but he still breathed heavily.

"Take your time," Aspen said. "You can explain that after you feel better."

"I'm much better now than I was a moment ago," he moved away from the wall and toward the front of the bed. "Where did Linden go? I barely heard anything you were talking about."

"He said that he doesn't want to catch the flu from you, so he'll be staying somewhere else," Spruce answered the question.

"I see," Yew hung down his head, "sorry for worrying you guys."

"No kidding," Spruce crossed his arms, "I seriously thought that you were terribly sick."

"So what happened?" Aspen asked.

"Uhh," Yew looked at Spruce, then back at Aspen. "I have to go somewhere tomorrow, and I need a good reason to skip classes. Chervil offered that thing that makes me look sick, but she never told me how much to take."

"So you drank all of it?" Aspen theorized based on what he saw.

Yew nodded.

"And where do you need to go tomorrow?" Spruce asked.

"Sorry," Yew put his palm on the back of his head, "that's something I cannot talk about yet."

The boys remained quiet, then Spruce spoke, "you know, I feel like you keep more and more secrets away from me." He looked at Aspen, "and I'm sure you keep a looooot of secrets, because you're so obviously hiding that much." Then he looked at the floor, "and Linden turns anything into a secret, even when it's too worthless to be a secret."

"Sorry," Yew apologized.

"Is it really so fun to keep secrets away from your friends?"

"It's not like that," Yew put up his open palms facing Spruce, "it's not about fun. It's just that I cannot talk about some things. It’s true! I mean it, but when it's over, I promise to tell you all about it."

"Really?" Spruce was doubtful.

"Super-really."

Spruce and Yew looked at Aspen, who shrugged his arms, "I don't have a reason to promise anything. When the time comes, you two will know all my secrets even if I don't tell you."

Yew, who knew about the school of Hypnos, understood Aspen's words better than Spruce. However, he still felt as if the ambiguous words were meant to hide a secret much greater than that. Almost as if it was a secret, which may or may not come to light, depending on the circumstances.

"I wonder about Linden," Spruce said.

"Do you really need to know everyone's secrets?" Aspen asked.

"No!" Spruce raised his voice at him. "I don't care about other people's secrets, but you're my friends!"

"Yeah," Yew said and for the first time ever since he started Hecate, he truly felt that Spruce, Aspen and Linden were his friends. Originally he never intended to make friends, but it just happened. As he kept hanging out with them, over time they began to feel more and more like friends.

Especially after today, he couldn't deny that he had actually found real friends. At the time, when he was utterly powerless and hopeless, Linden took care of him even though he didn't want to - a proof of trustworthiness. Spruce willingly took the duty to nurse his friend - a sign of responsibility. And Aspen acted immediately upon just one word from Yew - a trait of reliability.

Finding good friends like that among billions of people scattered all over the planet was hard, and keeping them was worth more than anything else in the world. Thus Yew felt truly grateful that he had met with them here in Hecate.

After he finally regained his full health, he felt hungry and remembered about his lunch, which he had left in the kitchen. To his surprise, his own lunchbox wasn’t the only one in the fridge. There were three other nutritious dishes left in there, and each one was still fresh, as if bought just an hour or two ago.

"Linden said, that he won't be back until next week," Spruce recalled and looked at Yew. "So I guess he left it for you."

Yew felt bad for worrying his friends. "Let's eat together,” he offered in an attempt to compensate a bit for them.

After the meal, he did homework together with Spruce like usual. The unusual thing was that Aspen joined them. Afterward, they played card games until it got late.

Spruce and Aspen left Yew’s cottage late at night, and Yew was left all alone. Normally, he'd be happy to have some private time to practice magic in secret, but this one time, he wouldn't mind if his friends stayed a bit longer.

The next morning Yew woke up around the same time as always. However, he remained in bed, because he didn't have to go to any classes due to faking his flu yesterday.

Around the time, when Spruce and Aspen began the History class, Yew was contacted by Chervil.

"Ready?"

"Yeah," he responded via mindteaming.

"So get moving. Liquorice is waiting for you in front of the school gate."

"What?" Yew jumped out of his bed, and began dressing up as fast as he could.

He opened the window for a quick moment to check the weather. It was quite cold outside, even though it was sunny. He knew that the cold air could feel colder in shady areas, so he would end up feeling much colder depending on where he went with Liquorice. Considering the possibility that he’d spent a lot of time outdoors, he decided to wear warm clothes just in case. It was always easier to take a jacket off than find clothes outside of home.

Ergo, he wore the warmest sweater, which he owned and the warmest socks, as well as many other warm clothes. Finally he put on outdoor snowproof shoes, a puffy long jacket, wool hat and a scarf. He left the cottage without taking his backpack with him, as he considered it an unnecessary excess. He was going to have a talk with Liquorice, so why would he need his backpack?

He walked through the hamlet on a path, where the snow was melted by a charm set by the teachers. Then he travelled on a snowless road through the schoolground, where a thin layer of snow covered trees, bushes, flowerbeds and lawns on each side of the road.

He arrived at the large plaza, where three months ago, he gathered together with other first year students and listened to Sorrel’s explanation. At that time, there were many students on the plaza, but today there were almost none.

Without the crowd, the plaza looked much larger in size. He had never realized it before, even though he did pass through it many times on his way to the city of Sheepcrown.

After he reached the end of the plaza, he stood near the school gate, and began looking around for a gal, whom he had met before.

He didn't see anyone similar, but he heard her voice.

"Look to your right," Liquorice mindteamed Yew.

The boy turned his face rightward and saw a person wearing a long winter robe with a wool hat hiding the top of her face and a thick scarf hiding everything under the eyes.

She waved at him and Yew heard Liquorice mindteam him again, "follow me.” She turned around and began to walk away westward.

Yew followed her.

They walked alongside the tall exterior walls of the Hecate schoolground on their right side. And on their left side there was a fence, which separated the road from the wild forest growing on a steep hill. In the distance toward the bottom, Yew could hear the sound of a river.

When they were near the hamlet number ten, Liquorice lowered the scarf of her face, and smiled at the boy accompanying her.

"How's it going?" she asked.

"Normal," he answered as he didn't know what else to say and he didn't want to tell her a long story.

"Normal? What's normal?" she laughed. "What kind of answer is that?"

"Normal, as in neither good nor bad. Sometimes good things happen, sometimes bad things happen, but nothing too unusual," Yew explained his reasoning.

"So what bad thing happened to you recently?" she asked. "You don't have to tell me a good thing, because I already know one," she smiled at him as she gestured something with her hand.

Yew was certain, that by a good thing she meant the info, which she got about Ginkgo, so he didn’t ask her about it. Instead he told her right away one bad thing, which happened to him just yesterday.

"Chervil gave me pwa-pwa, so I could skip classes, and I got really sick from it."

"Really?" she pondered. "How much did you drink?"

"One bottle," Yew answered.

Liquorice burst out laughing so hard she cried. "What?! Are you an alcoholic? Just why?"

"When I took less than that nothing happened!!" he semi-yelled at her.

She wiped out the tears in her eyes, "because it's not meant to work immediately, dummy. That would be too suspicious. Just one spoon is enough to make you quite sick after roughly one hour, and you drank the whole bottle," once again she burst out laughing.

When Yew heard how much he overdosed, he was glad to be alive. "Chervil never told me that. She just gave me the whole bottle."

"Okay, okay, no worries. This is a first year potion, so even if you overdosed and drank hundred bottles it wouldn't kill you."

"What do you mean by a first year potion?"

"We learn things like that in Hades," she smirked at him. "I taught that to Chervil, but I doubt that there's anyone else in the school of Hecate, who knows how to make pwa-pwa."

When Yew found out that it was something created in Hades, he thought of a probability of troubles related to the potion, so he asked Liquorice about it, "it's not illegal, is it?"

"Illegal? No, of course no. It's not dangerous enough to be illegal," she said and Yew sighed, "but two out of the seven ingredients cannot be obtained in a legal way. So if you get caught using pwa-pwa, you can still end up arrested and interrogated on how you obtained the potion."

Well, that was certainly a legitimate reason, why this «legal» potion was only known by the students of Hades. And it made sense, why Chervil wanted the bottle back, even though there was less than a drop of pwa-pwa left inside it.

Yew realized that Liquorice was leading him around the schoolground, and he was glad that they weren’t going anywhere far, because this way it was easier for him to get back home after their meeting.

The woods on the left side of the road came to an end, as the river got closer to the schoolground. The steep hill on the left side of the road changed into a cliff with the river flowing several meters below it. However, approaching the cliff wasn’t possible without climbing over the fence, which protected the road from the wilderness beyond.

Under the cliff, Yew could hear the rush of water as it splashed with its full power onto the rocky wall under his feet. The loudness of the river made it difficult to hear each other.

"Wouldn't it be better if we walked through the schoolground?" he asked, pointing at the gate in the wall.

"Sure we could, but while I can escape from the teachers, I'm not so sure about you," she smirked at him. "Anyway, thanks for your help. I really-really love my Sweet Dream Strawberry."

Yew recalled that the posters with Liquorice's face were still spread in many places around the schoolground of Hecate. The teachers were also unlikely to forget the robbery that had happened fairly recently, and became quite a major accident in the history of the school.

Both of them crossed a bridge, and arrived by the forest on the other side of the river. Unlike the rocky cliff at the side of the Hecate schoolground, the river on the side of the forest had a fairly normal shore, although the currents were still quite powerful and dangerous, so it was best to keep distance.

After Liquorice entered the woods, Yew was expecting her to quickly find a place to continue their talk, but instead she kept going deeper and deeper into the woods.

Eventually Yew couldn't wait anymore and asked, "how much further?"

"Almost there," she responded.

Yew wondered how much 'almost there' would exactly be in meters. However, before he got to ask another question, she spoke again.

"Oh, I see them," she sped up her pace.

Yew stopped and wondered, whom did she mean by «them». Right as he wondered about that, something large moved behind the trees in front of them.

All the birds ran away from the trees, which began to shake together with the ground. Suddenly the shaking of the ground stopped and Yew used that moment to catch up to Liquorice.

Just as he ran up next to her, he saw a massive black creature among the forest trees. He stopped frozen, while Liquorice came up and touched its leg.

Realizing that he was standing so close to a real dragon, he was overwhelmed by the feelings of awe and terror simultaneously. He had already seen it from a distance, but he was certain that it was just a gigantic black rock among the trees. He would have never thought that it was a resting dragon until it moved.

The dragon stood over forty meters tall with its head still tilted toward the ground. If it were to straighten up it would surely be over fifty meters in height. Luckily for the dragon, the highest trees in the forest were between forty to sixty meters tall, which allowed the dragon to hide among them.

The dragon had scales shaped like droplets, which arranged on his skin in flower-like patterns. All the scales were pitch black, and from even a little bit of a distance, it was impossible to see the patterns or the individual scales, because the color was too black to see the contours.

The dragon had four muscular legs with sharp claws, which looked like they were made from black steel. His long tail was thinner than the rest of its body, and it looked more like a whip than a tail.

When Liquorice touched the dragon, he slightly tilted its head to the side to see who approached him. His snout was long and similar to an alligator’s, but his eyes were located much higher above his jaw, and there were two long curled horns growing out of his head, akin to those of a wild goat. However, his horns were the color of the blackest black that could possibly exist.

Even the whites of his eyes were black. His fiery irises were the only thing, which wasn’t black on his body.

Yew stared right into that orange-yellow eye of the dragon, and felt his body taken over by a strong sensation of cold.

The next moment, the dragon spread out his wings high up into the air. Those wings, which were at least twice as large as its body, looked nothing like the wings of a bird. They had no feathers, only skin attached to thick double bones.

"You're slow."

Yew heard a man’s voice, and for the first time he realized that right next to the black dragon, there was a man wearing a black coat.

"No, I'm not," Liquorice responded.

"So that's the kid with guts?" the man asked as he looked at Yew.

"Yeah, that's Yew Sky," Liquorice said, then turned to the boy, "That's my papa. He'll take us to the Windworm Tower. This is my thanks for helping me last time."

"Wait, what? Windworm Tower?"

"Yup, you'll get to meet Ginkgo in person," Liquorice smiled broadly pleased with herself.

"We better hurry," the man said and flew onto the dragon. "Fairy Rain may be coming anytime."

"Yeah, let's go," Liquorice beckoned Yew to come closer. As he did, she grabbed his hand, and levitated both of them up. "I'm sure Ginkgo will leave as soon as he gets the Divine Wind, so let's not waste any more time."

"O-okay," the unexpected push from Liquorice to take action prompted Yew to think that there was nothing wrong, if he took an extra step, and met the man in person.

She landed on her feet on top of the dragon, while Yew fell on his butt. The scales weren’t slippery at all. If anything the edges of the scales felt a bit sharp, like well tempered knives.

Liquorice walked forward, and Yew looked where she was heading. To his surprise there were three armchairs installed on top of the dragon. The armchairs had no legs, and for a moment Yew wondered how they were attached.

“Come on, sit down," Liquorice tapped the armrest of the armchair next to her, after she sat on one of the two armchairs in the back, while her papa sat on the biggest armchair in the front.

Yew sat on the armchair.

"Hold tight to the ropes, if you don't want to fall off," Liquorice said as she pointed at the ropes attached to armrests on both sides.

Yew didn't understand the warning, because she herself wasn't holding anything.

Liquorice’s papa created a green light orb on top of his open palm and threw it to the front. The green light orb flew above the dragon's horns, and up ahead.

When the dragon saw the orb, he didn't waste even one second. In one swift movement he hit the ground with the elbows of his wings, throwing his body into the air like a torpedo. The power of the strike left two holes in the ground, but Yew wouldn’t know about it, because he was already far up in the sky.

The boy caught onto the rope at the last moment. Any later, and he would have fallen off the dragon's back.

Due to the sudden strong jump at the ground level, Yew’s position shifted and he was no longer comfortably sitting in the armchair. Instead he was lying down on his back, tightly grabbing the ropes with both hands.

After the dragon reached the higher air, his speed dropped. At that moment, Yew’s legs lifted up and he wondered whether the dragon was falling down.

Instead of falling down, the dragon beat his large winds and moved forward with another extreme speed. This caused Yew’s legs to get thrown to the back over the armchair, freely dangling in the wind, while the boy held onto the ropes with all his strength.

While trying to catch up to the green light orb, the dragon was moving at such speed that Yew couldn't even imagine. The powerful winds that flew all around the dragon's body could easily drag him off to a certain death, if he let go of the ropes even a little bit. He could feel the force of those winds on his whole body, and he could barely breathe, as he was slowly losing the feel in his hands. Fortunately for him, his hands were too tangled up in the ropes, so even when his grip loosened up, the ropes kept him from falling.

While he was fighting for his life, Liquorice laughed at him. He could hear her, but he couldn’t even move his head to see her. Speaking was out of the question.

Fortunately for him, the torture didn't last long. A minute later, the dragon descended as suddenly as he started flying, and landed on top of trees, destroying some of them under his feet.

"We're here," Liquorice's papa said as he turned around to look behind. He didn’t change his countenance, when he saw Yew’s body thrown over the headrest of the armchair. He moved his hand as if he was gathering raindrops out of air.

Yew’s body slowly rolled back into the sitting position. The boy coughed and breathed heavily, trying to get his lungs to function normally again.

He tried to let go of the ropes, but they tangled around his hands too much and dug into his skin, creating painful-looking bloody wounds.

Liquorice slowly untangled the ropes, while Yew pondered about gloves. Normally he hated gloves, because he couldn’t freely use his hands. Thus, he never carried gloves with him, unless his mom forced him to. Whenever his hands felt cold, he’d just put them in his pockets, but today, he regretted his hate of gloves. If he had put on gloves before leaving the cottage, he wouldn’t have ended up with such wounds, right?

“Done,” Liquorice said as she finally freed his hands.

Yew looked at the frozen blood and the deep cuts on his hands. He couldn’t feel his hands, as he watched them tremble in front of his eyes.

“It looks like they’re a bit frostbitten,” Liquorice commented. Her voice didn’t have a sound of compassion. She was just calmly stating a fact.

Just a moment ago, the three of them were travelling at high speed at an altitude, where calling the air freezing-cold was an understatement. Normally anything at that altitude would be dead within seconds. The only reason this didn’t happen was because they were protected by the dragon’s aura, which had the power to diminish the effects of the outside environment. It was this aura, which allowed all dragons to fly, seemingly breaking the laws of physics while doing so.

The thick, warm clothes protected Yew from the majority of bad things that could have gone wrong, but there was one affliction, which he hadn’t prepared for. His hands were horribly frostbitten. His fingers were swollen and red, and this on top of all the wounds, which he had suffered from the rope. Just by looking at the cuts, he knew that his hands would have been bleeding like crazy, if the blood hadn’t been frozen.

Yew was beyond terrified. It was his first time to get hurt this badly. He did break an arm in the past, and scratched off the skin of his legs, when he fell on a rocky mountainside. But the damage currently present on his hands was incomparable to any of that.

He was scared, not knowing what he should do. He hoped for a good ending, wondering whether it was possible to cure his hands back to perfect health, leaving no scars and losing no limbs. He was no longer able to think about Ginkgo, or Cypress, or anyone or anything else. Until now his hands felt numb, but the pain, which was frozen by the cold, was slowly coming back, and even the tiniest attempt of movement brought him an enormous agony. He didn't realize it at all, when Liquorice's father approached him.

The man took a quick look at the boy’s hands. "Don't cry,” he said after he saw Yew's face, which was already gathering all the tears the boy had in his body. Out of his pocket, the man took out a round tin, opened it and took out one of the rings inside it.

He put the ring on his own finger and rubbed it. From the ring a green glue-like liquid began to flow out. He put his hand upside-down over Yew's hands. The liquid slowly fell onto Yew's hands, and spread all over them, healing each affliction one by one, as it came into contact with the skin.

Once Yew's hands were fully healed, the man put the ring back into the tin.

Yew was closing and opening his own hands, unable to believe that all the pain and harm were gone. His eyes got all teary once again from the immeasurable joy and relief he felt in his heart.

"This is as far as I'm taking you," the man said. "The Windworm Tower is right over there," he pointed at the tall spiral structure standing at least fifty meters above the trees.

While Yew was still looking at his hands, Liquorice’s papa picked him up into his arms like a princess and jumped off the dragon.

Before Liquorice's papa landed, he suddenly stopped midair just centimeters above the ground. The earth beneath his feet cracked. Only afterward, he put down his feet on the partly-destroyed area below his feet.

He put Yew on the ground leg-first, before he let go of the boy, who was able to stand by himself.

As Yew looked down at the ground, he realized that the man's shoes were made of metal. And he wondered how anyone could walk in such shoes, because surely they must have weighed a lot.

But before Yew had a chance to ask about it, the man levitated back onto the dragon. When Yew looked up, he saw Liquorice looking down at him. Her countenance told him, that she was still feeling quite amused for some reason.

He recalled the last time he helped her get the Sweet Dream Strawberry. At that time, she was also looking happy, even though she was running away from the teachers, and facing a danger of getting caught. Yew wondered about it, but in the end, he couldn't understand her at all, so he just watched.

He watched, while the dragon walked away from him. When the dragon was at a distance of hundred meters away, he once again hit the ground with his powerful wings and shot up into the sky.

The hurricane-like winds, which erupted from the dragon's strike, sent Yew flying back together with the snow. Luckily, he fell onto the snow between two trees, and suffered no injuries. When he finally stood up, with the snow up to his knees, the dragon had already disappeared from sight. Only two large holes were left in the ground, where the dragon hit his wings.

Yew shook the snow off his clothes as much as possible, then put his hands in his pockets to warm them up before moving anywhere. While feeling his hands getting warmer, a realization hit him. His one-way ride had left, and he no longer had any other way to get back home.

Yew looked at the tower, which was looming high above all the tall trees, and wondered why would anyone build something like that in the middle of nowhere. Even though he called it the middle of nowhere, the forest was not an impenetrable jungle. There were many footsteps in the snow - signs of human presence.

At this time of the year, most trees had lost their leaves, so it was easy to see through the woods into the distance. Only occasionally, one or several evergreen trees blocked the further view.

The ground was mostly flat except for the areas, where the leafless bush branches were sticking out from the snowhills. Most likely, during warmer months there was more vegetation, but now it was all hidden under a thick layer of snow.

When Yew began to take steps, he wasn't sure whether he should complain that the snow was up to his knees making it hard to walk, or whether he should be glad that snow was only up to his knees and no higher than that.

After Liquorice left him, he began to realize more things. He became aware that he has no money card with him, so even if he found a train station, he wouldn’t be able to buy a ticket home. He also had no weapon to protect himself in case he encountered a wolf or something worse. He also had no food.

The only thing he had was the tower in the distance. He took a deep breath. He didn’t know what would happen, if he went to the tower, but he knew that nothing would change, if he just stayed in one place, so he headed in the direction of the tower.

On his way, he heard people talking loudly.

“Are you sure?”

“It had to be a melanite dragon! Only they fly so fast.”

“But it was too fast. We couldn’t even tell whether it was a dragon.”

Yew saw a group of six men, who also saw him.

"Huh? Didn't all the residents evacuate?" one of them said.

"Maybe someone left a kid behind in a hurry to escape," another one reasoned.

Yew wasn't sure, if the men would know anything, but there wasn't anyone else to ask. "Excuse me," he came a bit closer, but still kept a distance. "Did you see around here an adventurer named Ginkgo?"

"Oh, boy," one of them said, "No matter how much of a fan you are, you still need to get out of here right this instant."

"The Fairy Rain is going to begin any moment," another one warned.

However Yew wasn't interested in that info. "Was Ginkgo around here?"

"We haven't seen him. Unlike him, we're not adventurers, but merchants. We're only here for the Divine Wind, and we plan to get out of here before the Fairy Rain is over."

"So you haven't seen him?" Yew confirmed.

"Hey, boy," one of the merchants took out a stone from his pocket, and approached him. "It's dangerous here, so let's get you to a safe place." He squatted down and stretched out his hand toward Yew with the stone, "this is a teleportation stone. It is set to take you to our main store."

Yew looked at the stone, then at the man in front of him.

"You shouldn't be here," another man noted. "It's very dangerous, and if you don't leave here before the Fairy Rain ends, you'll die."

The merchant took Yew’s hand and put the stone in his palm. Then he took away his hands, “now say «get me home» and the stone will teleport you to a safe place.”

Yew looked at the tower in the distance, and felt troubled. Just a moment ago, he wanted safety. He desired to get back home, as he didn’t like being so far away in an unknown place with an unknown future. However, now that he was given a choice to escape, he couldn’t do it. He felt as if he was given a rare chance, and if he did escape, this chance would never happen again. Somehow, he knew that by going back using the teleportation stone, he’d go back to the same boring life he had. However, over there in the Windworm Tower, there was a key to change his life.

Yew knew that he was in a dangerous place. It didn’t surprise him, when the merchants mentioned that all the villagers had evacuated the area. He looked at the men in front of him, and they all looked like good honest men. He was certain that they didn’t lie when they warned him about death.

However, even with the prospect of death in front of him, Yew just couldn’t feel it. He had two extreme choices. One choice was to stay and risk his life, while looking for Ginkgo. The other choice was to leave the place and return home empty-handed - a total loser. Certainly, the second choice was much safer, but it just didn’t sit right with Yew to give up, when he was so close.

Yew thought really hard about which path to take. He thought about his parents, and wondered what they would do. If it was his mother, she'd surely go with the second option. Like most mothers, the safety of her child was her priority. But if it was his father, what would he do? Would he head for the tower like a real man?

Yew didn’t know his father that well, but he was certain that if his father, Kapok Sky, saw him right now, he'd surely severely scold Yew for being rash and foolish.

"No, thanks. I’m fine," Yew said and gave the teleportation stone back to the merchant. "I'm looking for Ginkgo. I need to find him, so I'll be going." Yew never met Ginkgo before, but he hoped that he could recognize the man. He knew what Cypress looked like and it would be helpful, if Ginkgo looked like his brother.

"Lad, give up," one of the merchants standing in the back got angry at Yew's stubbornness. "Ginkgo the Adventurer is always in the most dangerous place. I don't need to see him to know that he's right there at the top of the Windworm Tower," he stretched out his hand and pointed at the top of the tall structure. "You won't make it there. You'll only throw away your life."

Yew looked up at the top of the tower, which now became his sure destination. He walked away from the men, who continued to warn him or call him foolish, but he completely ignored them.

He knew that the death was knocking on the door of his soul, but he didn’t feel scared at all. Somehow, he felt like it’d be fine. Even if he died, it’d be fine.

On his way to the tower, he passed several more groups of men, and realized that all of them came in groups. There was not even one case of someone standing all alone and without companions. The men, who saw him going toward the tower looked at each other in bewilderment, unable to understand what a ten yrold kid was doing in such a dangerous place.

"If I'm too late, I'll surely die," Yew said to himself as he approached the entrance of the Windworm Tower.

He entered the stone structure and began to climb up the spiral staircase, which was so long that it felt like the stairs had no end.

After climbing for a while, Yew took a short break and looked at the scenery outside the tower window. All the windows in the tower were just square holes made in the stone without any frames or glass, so the outside air easily blew through the staircase.

Down below, he saw many men standing on the ground ready to take immediate action. Every one of them were like soldiers ready to fight and just moments away from battling the enemy.

He resumed climbing the stairs, but as he kept moving up, he grew more and more tired. Eventually it became too hard for him to go up anymore, and he had no choice but to take a longer break. He sat on a stairstep, and through the window, he looked down at the ground, which was so far away. He was already above the treetops, and all the people on the ground looked so small.

He understood that there was no way back. The only thing he could do now, was to move forward. Any moment of hesitation would become his instant loss. However, how was he supposed to move forward, if his legs were so tired that he couldn't climb anymore? Moreover, he was out of breath already.

He looked at the staircase leading up.

He wasn't surprised that he hadn’t met anybody in the tower. Based on the short conversation, which he had with the merchants, it was the most dangerous place. However, Ginkgo should be at the top.

Suddenly a thought passed through his head. What if Ginkgo wasn't at the top of this tower?

Even if Ginkgo was an adventurer, even if he was after the Divine Wind, even if he planned to come here, what was the guarantee that he'd be present at the top of the tower?

The merchants at the bottom of the tower haven't seen him. Liquorice said that he’d be coming here, but that was only a speculation. Even if Ginkgo was on the way to this place, there was a possibility that for one or another reason, he wouldn’t come here.

And then what?

Yew clenched his fists, and bit his lips. It was too late to think about it. He had no choice but to push forward. Using all his willpower, he began climbing the steps of the Windworm Tower, while silently praying that he'd make it to the top before the Fairy Rain were to begin.

However his prayers weren't heard by the Heavens, or maybe he began praying too late, because as soon as he began moving, bright golden sparks began to slowly fall from the sky like snow made of light. He stopped and stared at the sight, hypnotized by the beauty.

He stretched out his hand through the window and opened his palm to catch some of the sparks of the golden light. One of them slowly fell on his hand, and immediately it turned into water. He took back his hand, and looked closely at the tiny puddle of water on his palm.

It was the first time Yew saw anything like this, but nevertheless he already knew what was happening. The Fairy Rain had begun. Unfortunately for him, he was still quite a distance from the top of the tower. If he ran, then maybe he'd make it, but his legs were already tired. He couldn't force himself to run, even if he wanted to.

So he stood by the window, staring at water in his hand, and thinking. He took up the challenge. He faced an opponent far stronger and more dangerous than he could handle. He thought that somehow it would work out, but in the end it was truly foolish to fight against the odds.

He sat down and through the window, he looked at the beautiful scenery painted by the Fairy Rain, and smiled with self-pity.

"I know I'm gonna die, but I don't even know how," he murmured looking at the quiet magical scenery.

The people at the bottom of the tower started using teleportation scrolls as soon as they got their hands on just one Divine Wind, and within less than a minute, there was nobody left anywhere near the area, except for Yew, who was still awaiting the inevitable.

All men and animals have evacuated and without them, the whole world around Yew became engulfed by silence. The boy stared at the delicate sparks of light dancing in the air. They looked so innocent, yet at the same time, they were foretelling his death and the death of anyone, who didn't escape in time.

Right then Yew felt regret. He acknowledged to himself that he was too rash. He wanted to show Cypress what he was capable of. Yet he knew that it was beyond his capabilities. He had a chance to leave, but he threw it away. Oh how much, he wished to go back in time, and take the offer from that merchant, but the cruel time refused to listen to his wish.

As he was on the verge of falling into despair, he heard a yell from below.

"Aaaarrrrghhh!"

Yew jumped to his feet at the sudden noise, and looked down at the staircase, from where he came from.

"I'm late! I'm late! I'm late!" he clearly heard the voice of a man running up the stairs.

The sound of footsteps was getting closer and closer. Suddenly, a man carrying a really large backpack, who looked a lot like Cypress, arrived at the steps, where Yew was standing. The very moment, when he saw Yew, without stopping and without slowing down, he grabbed the boy's arm and kept on running up the stairs.

"I'm laaaaaaaate!" he screamed at the top of his lungs.

Yew could barely run, as he was already too tired to walk and soon he gave up on moving. However, even when his legs stopped moving, his body still got dragged all the way to the top of the tower by the man, who had a strong hold on his arm.

Once they arrived at the top, the man finally let go of Yew’s arm, and Yew fell to the floor. He looked at the bruises left all over his body and he wished that he didn't have to suffer so much before his death. Was it really so difficult to die a painless death?

The man had the same hair color as Cypress, but his hair was shorter, cut somewhat below his ear. He was looking at the sky in different directions, trying to find something among the golden-silver clouds.

"Not that one," he said looking at one cloud. "Nope," he said looking at another cloud. "Wrong again. Nope. Wrong. Incorrect. Doesn't look right. Maybe? No. No way. That's not it. Found it!" he finally yelled in a voice filled with euphoria.

After he had finally found the cloud he was looking for, he looked at Yew. "Come on, lad. If you just sit here, you're as good as dead. Let's get ready!"

Yew looked at the man, but didn't move at all. His legs were too tired to even stand, and now his whole body was also quite bruised. He himself was already prepared to die. He accepted his death and he no longer had the will to stay alive.

However the man quickly jumped up to him, grabbed both of Yew's arms and lifted him up.

Yew stood up on both of his feet. The man let go of one of his arms. However, he dragged him by his other arm to the edge of the tower. They were just one step away from falling off the edge.

Being so near the edge, Yew imagined himself dying by falling off and hitting the ground. Upon this idea, some switch inside his mind turned back on. His willingness to accept death disappeared instantly. He felt as if he had just woken up from a hypnosis. He looked at the man, who still held his arm and was patiently looking at the clouds in the sky.

He didn't know what the man was planning to do, but he wanted to move away from the dangerous edge of the tower. Surely there had to be a way to survive through this.

"Ginkgo?" Yew asked just to confirm. He was also curious as to the identity of the man. The man's face looked a lot like Cypress’s but several years older, so Yew was quite certain that he had met the person, whom he was looking for.

"The world's greatest adventurer," the man answered without looking away from the clouds. "Leave the signature for later, if we don't do it right, we won't live. Concentrate, concentrate," he said to himself in half a murmur.

Yew looked down at the ground below the tower, and the great depth made him dizzy. He really wanted to take a step back away from the edge. After all, if they were to fall from here, they'd surely die. However, the moment he lifted up his leg with the intention of moving backward, Ginkgo jumped forward and dragged Yew with him.

Both of them began falling down. Normally people in such situations would scream, but Yew was too confused to react in any way. He no longer understood anything. He didn't know whether he was going to live or die. He didn’t know which way was up and which way was down. He didn’t know whether Ginkgo was trying to save him or kill him.

It didn't matter anymore.

Yew felt like the Heavens were playing a game. Death or life, whichever one was fine, as long as it would all come to an end.

While falling down, Yew concluded that he would never become an adventurer. He wouldn’t mind staying alive. He wouldn’t care if he died, but he couldn’t bear the uncertainty of not knowing whether he’d survive or not.

All the heroes that he had read about in his childhood, flashed in his memory, and he refused to be like any one of them. He needed a kind of life, where he wouldn't have to ride such an emotional rollercoaster. There was just no way he’d ever like a lifestyle, which cruises between life and death.

The Fairy Rain had stopped and the clouds began spreading apart. Occasional rays of sunlight shone through the gaps in the sky cover. Soon after the first sunrays hit the ground, a strong wind blew upward. The Fairy Rain water scattered below them had transformed into the Divine Wind, and the power of the upward drift was so strong that it lifted up Yew and Ginkgo high above the clouds.

While Yew was adoring the view, Ginkgo took the rope with a hook attached to his belt and threw it into one specific cloud. It was exactly the same cloud that he had been staring at before he jumped off the tower.

The hook caught onto something in the cloud, and right at the time, when both of them began falling down, Ginkgo's rope began to rapidly shorten. Quickly it pulled both of them toward and into the cloud. They fell on some sort of hard stone-like ground that was hidden within the cloud.

"Don't move around," Ginkgo warned before he let go of Yew’s arm.

The boy clearly heard his voice, but he couldn't see anything because of the thick fog that surrounded them, "Where is this?"

"The birthplace of the Fairy Rain," Ginkgo explained. "This cloud is travelling all over the world, but normally it's protected by a magical shield that blocks anything from entering it. However, once every hundred twenty years, the amount of the Fairy Rain within this cloud gets too dense, so the shield disappears, and all the Fairy Rain accumulated in the cloud gets thrown out."

"So from the very beginning you had no interest in the Divine Wind?"

"Of course, no. That's just too easy to get," he responded right away. "On the other hand, this is a real adventure. If I didn't get to the top of the tower before the blow-up, I would have never made it here."

"Couldn't you just fly here?" Yew said as he thought that it would be safer than jumping from a tower.

"Hah, easy to say," Ginkgo responded. "All animals avoid Fairy Rain. Even the dragons don't dare to be around, when it happens. And magical items stop working around here. Actually all magic doesn't work around this cloud."

Upon hearing Ginkgo's comment, Yew put a hand right in front of his face, close enough so that he could see it in the fog. He tried to create a flame - something that he has already learned from the textbooks of later years. It was a fairly easy spell, but now it didn't work at all.

"Why is magic not working here?" he asked.

"God only knows. Some places are just like that." Ginkgo responded. "Some things just don't work in some places. In here, magic doesn't work. On the Pidgeonlamp Isle, the electricity and batteries don't work. In Fruitroad Cave, no light works, so it's always completely dark. But the worst I had to get through was the Bridgebush Forest. No memories work there, you know? The moment you enter it, you slowly forget who you are, and you keep forgetting even the path you took in the forest. I could only remember what happened in the last minute, or maybe even less than that."

"So you don't remember anything that happened before you entered the forest?"

"Of course, I do remember. All the memories return back after you exit the Bridgebush Forest. It's only inside the forest, where the memories don't work. You cannot remember who you are or what you're doing in there."

"So why did you go there?"

"I was curious," Ginkgo answered with a voice of absolute honesty. "The forest is commonly known as the deathbed of the madmen. When people go there, they end up crazy. And unable to remember anything, they cannot get out. In the end they die in the forest. It's a normal way to think that a place so dangerous would hold a rare treasure."

"Then how did you survive?"

"Well, I made many preparations. But it's going to be a long tale, so let's leave it for another time. First, let’s finish this."

Both of them got silent after Ginkgo's last comment.

Yew was sitting still, unable to see anything in the dense fog. His ears, on the other hand, got better at picking up even the quietest sound. He could hear Ginkgo moving on all four, tapping the ground as if searching for something.

The silence between them lasted for a while before Yew spoke again, "by the way."

"Yeah?"

"You said that this cloud is the birthplace of the Fairy Rain, but isn't all the Fairy Rain already gone? Didn't it all fall to the ground?"

"Sure, it did."

"So what are you here for?"

"The Fairy Rain is gone, but the fairies making the rain are still here," Ginkgo's voice was now coming from a bit farther away.

Yew could hear the sound of the man tapping a water puddle.

"Fairies are here?" the boy asked, wondering if he could see a real fairy.

Even though everyone knew about them, fairies were among the least seen creatures of the world. They always lived not too far away, but hidden in the most mysterious way, it was a truly rare occurrence to see a fairy.

Unlike many other creatures, fairies didn't isolate themselves in a distant land, far away from any human settlement. Instead they built their own cities among cities of other creatures. Yet their cities were hidden, protected by powerful enchantments and invisible to anyone, who'd accidentally pass by.

"Nope," Ginkgo responded, destroying Yew’s hopes, "Based on what’s passed in the legends, fairies invented the Fairy Rain, and old documents often report about fairies making the Fairy Rain, but in reality those aren’t fairies but crystals. Whether these crystals were indeed made by fairies or not - I don’t know. Anyway, I'll collect some, but you don't move from there. I don't want you to fall off. It will hurt my good mood, if someone dies on my adventure."

Yew heard a sound of something being taken out of water, and dropped into water. This set of sounds repeated several times.

"Ok, I'm done," Ginkgo said. "Are you still here?"

"Right here," Yew responded.

"Coming," he said and added, "keep talking."

"Over here, over here, over here, over he…ah!" Yew almost screamed when a cold wet hand touched his face.

"Found you!" Ginkgo said, lowered his hand, and grabbed Yew's arm.

"It's cold!" Yew said about Ginkgo's hand, which touched his face just a moment ago.

"Well, the water was cold. Anyway, we're going back."

"How?"

Ginkgo grabbed him by the arm, "Is this your arm?"

"Yeah," Yew confirmed.

"Just wanna make sure."

"Just how are we going back?"

"Walking off," he said and pulling Yew by hand, step by step he slowly headed toward the edge of the ground hidden within the cloud.

"Is there another trick?" the boy asked.

"If my assumption is correct," Ginkgo slid his foot forward and felt no ground in front of him. The man safely hugged Yew within his strong arms as he let himself fell off the edge.

While travelling through the grey fog, they couldn't see each other, but Yew felt the strong grip around his body, and he knew that Ginkgo was serious about protecting him, even though falling off such a height would never be considered a safe thing to do together with children.

After they exited the cloud, Yew saw on the horizon the most beautiful sunset he had ever seen. Right above dark-blue snow-covered forests and fields, the red sun was dressed in pink silk-like delicate clouds, which were thin like ribbons and long like threads. It was certainly the perfect scenery to finish off an adventure.

However, the boy didn't have much time to adore the sight. The two of them fell right on top of a strong horizontal wind, which slowed their vertical descent and blew them to the side.

This was the very wind created by the droplets of the Divine Wind, which would continue to blow exactly for twenty two days without ceasing. The wind was so powerful that Yew had no choice but to keep his eyes tightly closed.

While both of them continued to fall down due to the force of gravity, the powerful horizontal winds were slowing down their fall and blowing them westward. Eventually both of them hit the treetops, and after crashing through the branches, they fell to the ground, where the powerful winds combined with the snow to create a blizzard.

All this time, Ginkgo kept holding Yew and protecting him from getting blown away. Yew was amazed at how strong the man was, because at no point did Ginkgo lose his grip at all.

Near the ground, the force of the wind was weaker, but it was still unusually powerful. It was strong enough to easily lift up a boy like Yew and throw him off his feet.

However, Ginkgo’s arms wouldn’t allow that to happen. With one of his arms he grabbed the boy’s arm as he pushed the boy to his side. With Yew under his other arm, he shouted, "Can you walk?!"

Yew could barely hear him, because of the wild blizzard winds, which were so loud that the sound of a normal conversation couldn't be heard at all. "Yes!" he shouted back. The chilling winds gave him the most urgent desire to hide from the blizzard, so he was willing to gather all his strength and walk as fast as one could walk in a blizzard.

Ginkgo began moving forward. Yew held onto him with both hands, and they both headed through the white landscape of storming snow.

Yew had no idea how Ginkgo knew where to go, but after a gruesome walk they arrived at a cave. The cave appeared as if it had no end. It looked quite deep and went straight almost like a man-made tunnel.

They didn’t stop right after entering the cave. Ginkgo kept going further in until they were roughly twenty meters deep into the cave. At that depth, the cold winds couldn't get to them and the blizzard sounded distant and harmless.

Once safely inside the windless part of the cave, Ginkgo let go of Yew, who sat down on the ground by the wall and looked toward the exit. The entrance to the cavern looked like a painting of white noise on a perfectly white canvas.

Yew observed for a while the snow piling up at the side of the cave, and listened to the howling of Mother Nature. He couldn't tell whether the scenery in front of his eyes was real or not, because from the beginning this experience felt too much like a dream.

The close meeting with danger of death several times in a row had numbed his senses, and he couldn’t even tell whether he was in pain or not. He was such a mix of emotions and feelings that he himself had no idea how to describe what he felt. Most importantly, the whole situation was something, which he’d never consider possible to happen. How was he supposed to think that all of this was reality, if there was nothing to prove it as a reality?

In the meantime, Ginkgo took off his large backpack and started a fire in the cave using three red stones as a base, which clearly were some kind of a magical item. Even though none of the powerful winds could get in there, the air was still moving a little bit due to the force of pressure coming from the outside, which caused the fire flames to dance like crazy.

"Maybe we should go more inside?" Yew asked, seeing the fire burn so wildly.

Ginkgo shook his head. "Both fire and men need air to live," he said and looked at the exit. "Give it a little bit more time, and the snow will create a wall to stop the wind."

Yew looked at the snow piling up by the entrance, and he understood what Ginkgo meant. He already had realized that the snow blown by the blizzard would slowly block more and more of the entrance, and with a smaller hole less wind would be able to enter the cave. However, he was surprised that the process occurred much faster than he expected. The snow pile was rapidly growing in front of his eyes, steadily closing the exit.

Ginko opened his backpack and took out a tablecloth. He laid it on the ground by the fire, before he began taking out food items from his backpack and putting them on the tablecloth. He put some pieces of dried meat, some dried fruits, and a sack full of dried leaves. He took out a midsize metal pot, and Yew began to wonder what else did the man carry in his large backpack.

Yew watched as Ginkgo got up and with a pot in his hand, he approached the entrance, where he gathered some snow and put it inside the pot. He came back, put the pot on top of the three stones, which were the setup for the campfire, and watched. The heat soon melted the snow inside the pot into water, then the man added all the dry food items, which he had placed on the tablecloth. He stirred everything with his hand, then put over it a metal cover, which was also taken out from his backpack.

As Ginkgo was waiting for the food to get ready, he looked at Yew and smiled. "So, now you're a man!" he said to the boy, who moved closer to the fire.

"What do you mean?" Yew asked, stretching out his hands toward the flames to warm himself up.

"You've had your first adventure," Ginkgo sounded like a father, who was impressed with his son. "It was your first manly encounter with danger and risk. You fought against both; survived it; experienced the thrill; held your ground against the odds. You won that battle. Doesn't that excite you?"

Yew sighed. No, it didn’t excite him at all. Quite on the contrary. He was in such disbelief that he survived a fall from the sky that he was more willing to consider the possibility that it was all a dream.

"I'm tired, and sleepy," Yew regretted that he never learned any magic to create or summon a bed. Surely there was some type of magic that could do just that, because if there wasn't, then magic would be in fact quite useless.

"Oh! I understand,” Ginkgo smiled after hearing Yew’s response. “My first adventure was also like that. I fell asleep as soon as it was over, and my teacher had to carry me back to school," Ginkgo felt pleased to find something in common.

Yew was looking at the flames under the pot in silence. He didn't want to talk right now. All he wanted was to take a nap, but without bed, it was going to be difficult. He looked at Ginkgo's large backpack and simply asked, "do you have a bed in there?"

"Not exactly a bed," Ginkgo answered, took out a thick wool blanket and passed it to Yew, who promptly wrapped it around himself.

Wrapped within the wool and sitting by the campfire, the boy began to feel pleasantly warm, and without realizing when, he fell asleep.

Ginkgo observed how the boy slowly collapsed onto the ground.

"What an unusual kid. I wonder what he is," the man said to himself.

On his adventures, he had met with many people, and he could easily divide them into two types. One type were those, who were too scared to ever go on an adventure. Those people would faint or remain still from fear, even if they could easily survive by taking any action. To keep them alive, someone else would have to carry them to safety.

The other type were those with a strong desire to live, so the closer they were to death, the more they struggled to survive. Those people could become either a helping hand or an enemy, if they prioritized their life above the lives of others.

However, Yew belonged to neither group. From the very moment of their meeting, Yew showed no clear signs of fear of death. It was almost as if he wasn’t aware of it.

Was it because he was so young? No, Ginkgo met kids even younger, who exhibited fear, when facing a dangerous situation.

On the other hand, Yew didn’t react like a kid, nor like an adult.

Before coming here, Ginkgo gathered as much info about the Fairy Rain as possible over many years from multiple sources. However, in the end, he wasn’t sure about it himself.

When he jumped off the tower, he hoped his calculations were correct. If he had jumped too early, it would have been a certain death. If he had jumped too late, the blow-up would be over and that would also mean death upon reaching the ground.

He couldn’t leave the boy on top of the tower, because the blow-up would throw him up and he’d fall down to his death. So, he dragged Yew with him, as he jumped off.

He didn’t tell Yew what he was going to do, because any normal person would run away and refuse to cooperate, unless explained in details and assured of success. However, Ginkgo wasn’t sure himself, and there was no time to explain. The only thing he knew, was that remaining at the tower was a certain death.

The horizontal winds, which he used to land safely, wouldn’t blow right away. There was a period of stillness of about ten minutes between the blow-up and the Divine Wind. So anything thrown into the air would inevitably reach the ground by dropping from a great height.

Ergo, he made sure to stay for longer than ten minutes inside the cloud, while he was gathering the crystals and in the end everything went according to the plan, except for one thing - Yew’s behavior.

When they jumped off the tower, he expected the boy to scream like most people do. However, Yew remained silent, and not only that, he kept his eyes open and observed the surroundings. It took adventurers many years of experience to be that calm in a deadly situation, so Ginkgo was utterly amazed at the boy’s natural ability to handle himself. He was also relieved, because it made protecting Yew easier for him.

After he gathered up the crystals, he wanted to check again whether the boy really was something different from everyone else. Thus he paid attention to the boy’s reactions, and it confirmed his earlier assumption.

As he was approaching the edge of the ground within the cloud, he held Yew’s arm, while the boy knew that they were going to jump off. Any normal human would need to mentally prepare themselves for such an action. This meant at least taking a deep breath to calm down, maybe clenching a fist, or at least some stiffening of muscles due to stress.

However, none of that happened. Yew walked normally, as if he was walking in his own backyard. If anything, his voice sounded as if he didn’t like dying but he didn’t mind it either, and true to the tone of his voice, he walked without any resistance but not looking forward to the future.

Ginkgo got even more confused after they landed on the ground. He expected that a boy, who didn’t mind dying wouldn’t want to walk on his own, and he was ready to carry Yew, but there was no need to, since the boy was willing to walk by himself.

Ginkgo wanted to see for how long Yew could last and he didn’t expect that the boy would endure all the way up to the cave. Unexpectedly, Yew had a strong will to live within himself and the man became certain of this, once he saw Yew struggling to walk in the blizzard.

He was glad that they landed much nearer the cave than what he anticipated, but he would never tell Yew, that they would have arrived here faster, if he had carried the boy, because Ginkgo didn’t regret testing Yew’s willpower to live.

He watched the boy sleep, and wondered. How could someone with a strong will to live be so indifferent about death?

The water in the pot began to boil loudly. Ginkgo took his eyes off Yew and looked at the pot. Once the meal was ready, he would wake up the boy, but in the meantime he began to recall his today's adventure from the very beginning.

Ginkgo had everything ready, right from the early morning.

He woke up on a bed at an inn in the village of Wormwind, which was the closest settlement near the Tower of Windworm. The building was empty and devoid of any humans, because all the villagers had already evacuated two days ago, abandoning in a hurry anything, which wasn’t part of their basic needs.

However, Ginkgo would never squatter, so in order to repay the owner of the inn, he cleaned up after himself in order to leave the inn exactly as it was before he entered. Furthermore, he left a gemstone worth five times the cost of one night, inside the main drawer under the counter.

He exited the closed building in the same way as he entered it - using a magical item, which allowed the user to walk through walls. While holding the ten-point-star-shaped gemstone in his hand, he simply walked through the locked door. As soon as he arrived outside, the gemstone turned into ash.

The ether variation of magic was a powerful one that normally required a lot of stamina and talent, so rarely could a magus perform it. As for the magical items with ether magic, they were difficult to make, quite expensive, and lasted only for one-time usage. Yet they always quickly sold out, whenever they appeared on the market.

Ginkgo didn't have any problems with money. The rare items that he acquired from his adventures were so expensive that they could easily provide him enough money to live a luxurious life for the next two hundred years, but Ginkgo had little interest in comfort and riches.

He spent the money on what he would need next on his adventures, and he never stopped searching for new adventures. Without realizing when, he had become the most famous adventurer in the world. Some adored him, while others spread rumors that there was something wrong with his head, because he was always at the most dangerous place at the most dangerous time.

As Ginkgo was walking through the village, he didn't expect to meet anyone. Ergo, he was surprised, when he saw an elder sitting on a flat rock. The patriarch with a long beard wore a long cloak and a hat that was too big for his head, so it hung down covering his eyebrows. With his head lowered down, his eyes were hidden from the view of any passerbys.

It should have been impossible to tell the elder’s identity, because Ginkgo couldn’t see his face. However, the patriarch’s unique attire and the weapon made Ginkgo come to only one conclusion. He approached the patriarch and looked at the spear in his hand, "what is the Guardian of Vitality doing here?"

The patriarch raised his head and looked at Ginkgo, who confirmed that just like he expected, the man had only one eye. The other eye was an empty slit.

"How rare for anyone to know me," Odin spoke, but his face remained emotionless.

In his many adventures, Ginkgo had met with many rare beings, physical as well as spiritual, and he had already met several guardians in the past. He knew that even though the guardians looked as if they had a physical body, in truth they were spiritual beings. And not just any spiritual beings, but the rulers of the spirits inhabiting the world.

In the distant past, when humans were still young and didn't understand much about the world, guardians were called gods of nature, where nature was understood as the collective term for spirits. In those ancient times, humans had no kings or rulers other than God himself, so they had no other word in their vocabulary to express the authority that guardians had received from God.

Naturally, this created misunderstandings, so to clarify the language, a "god" became a term for a guardian, while "God of gods" became the term for God, who created the guardians. However, as the language advanced in complexity, and humans progressed in wisdom, the name "God" was returned back to the Creator, who was the sole ruler of the world. Meanwhile, the rulers of spirits became known as guardians due to their duty of guarding the natural order of the world.

"It's even more rare to see you," Ginkgo responded.

"True," the Guardian of Vitality agreed. "I rarely meet with mankind these days."

"Would it be rude of me to ask what brought you here today?" Ginkgo asked politely and the guardian lightly smiled at the respect that he was given.

"Do you know what is the highest honor for a man?" with his one eye, he looked straight into Ginkgo's eyes.

The adventurer thought for a moment, then asked, "may I hear the answer?"

"It is to protect one's own home," the guardian spoke. "Where is your home, child?"

"I don't have one," Ginkgo answered. "I'm an adventurer, always travelling, always near danger."

"You're wrong, child," Odin pointed his index finger at Ginkgo. "The adventure is your home. For if you were ever to cease it, you would have lost your reason and your purpose."

Ginkgo pondered for a while, then nodded in agreement to the wise words.

"A man must always find his home," the patriarch continued, "for God made a home for everyone, but there are those, who never seek to find it."

"Why wouldn't they?"

"Because they fear."

Ginkgo furrowed his eyebrows, "what do they fear?"

"Does fear need a cause?” Odin’s voice sounded as if he was amused by the question. "Isn't it true that when men fear, they fear first, and think up causes later?"

Ginkgo, who was battling with his fear for many years, recalled many of his previous adventures. Once again he nodded in agreement at the wisdom he heard from the Guardian of Vitality.

"Child," the Guardian addressed the man, "are you going to the Windworm Tower?"

"Yes."

"Then you should hurry, or you won't make it in time."

"O-ok, thanks," Ginkgo responded and was ready to go toward the tower, when Odin stopped him.

"Wait," he said, "before you leave, go and ring the bell," he pointed with his spear at the tallest building in the village. It was a shrine with a midsize bell hanging in the tower above it.

Ginkgo looked at the shrine tower, then at the guardian, "shouldn't I hurry to the Windworm Tower?"

"Of course, you should hurry," Odin agreed with a faint smile of someone, who had a secret, "of course you should hurry to ring the bell, or you won't meet."

Confused, Ginkgo was ready to ask more questions, but while Odin was speaking a mist gathered around the two of them. When the mist disappeared the Guardian of Vitality was nowhere to be found.

Ginkgo looked around. Fully aware that he had no time, he ran toward the shrine tower, entered the fenced area which had no lock and pulled the rope ringing the midsize bell.

The sound of the bell hadn't even stopped, when he ran out of the shrine and with a quick pace he headed toward the Windworm Tower. He didn't run at full speed, because even though Odin told him that he needed to hurry, the guardian never specified exactly how much he should hurry. He was quite a distance from the Windworm Tower, and he didn't want to run out of energy before arriving at the tower.

After he finally arrived at the Windworm Tower, he looked up at how much more he had to climb. Just as he was entering the tower, the Fairy Rain began. Immediately he knew that he was late. He had to arrive at the top, before the rain ended or it would be his last adventure.

If he hadn’t turned back to ring that shrine bell, he would have already been at the top of the tower. However, he was glad that he still had plenty of energy left, and he believed that it should last him for one quick sprint up the stairs.

He ran up with his heavy backpack as if his life depended on it, because that was his current situation. At no point did he expect to find a kid on the way, but he didn't bother thinking long about possible causes. He simply grabbed the kid, and kept the fastest pace that he could muster, skipping many steps in each jump forward.

Luckily, the dangerous adventure had ended well, and they both survived.

Now, Ginkgo was sitting safely by the campfire in the cave. While looking at the sleeping boy wrapped in the wool blanket, he recalled Odin's words: you should hurry to ring the bell, or you won't meet.

"So that was why he wanted me to ring that bell," Ginkgo said to himself. He grasped that if he had arrived at the tower too early, he wouldn't have met Yew on his way up the stairs. And the boy, unable to leave that dangerous area, would have died after the blow-up wind would send him up the stairs, above the tower and down toward the ground.

In other words, the Guardian of Vitality has personally chosen to protect the boy by getting the two of them to meet. This one thing was clear.

The real mystery was the reason why would Odin have done that. It was a known fact that guardians, like all spirits, sometimes began to like a physical creature, and as such they would act from the shadows to help the creature, whom they favored. However, if Odin favored Yew, then wouldn't it have been easier to meet with the kid and tell him to evacuate?

Unless Odin wanted the two of them to meet.

However, Ginkgo couldn't think of a reason, why would it be necessary for him to meet a kid so young at such a dangerous place, so he decided to put this topic off for later. Once the soup was ready, he'd wake up Yew, and ask him about it.

He didn't have to wait long. Soon the soup was ready, and at the same time, the entrance to the cave was almost completely blocked by the snow.

He took out two magical items from his backpack - a small butterfly-like sticker and a long metal bar. He put the sticker on the upper side of the wall and drew a small circle twice over the item, which caused the sticker to glow like a lamp. He put the thin metal bar between the stones under the pot, which caused the fire to almost cease but without dying out. This unique magical item suppressed the flames from blazing, so it kept the soup warm without cooking it any longer than necessary.

Ginkgo approached the sleeping boy and shook him lightly. Yew didn’t wake up, so he shook him with a bit more strength until the boy opened his eyes and sat up.

Yew looked around confused as to where he was and what was going on. Slowly the memories from the day returned and he remembered his situation.

"The soup is ready," Ginkgo said.

Yew looked at the pot. "Do we have plates?"

The man took out a small bowl and a deep spoon and passed it to Yew, "take as much as you need."

Using the spoon, Yew transferred some of the soup into his bowl and ate. "You're not eating?" he asked Ginkgo.

"I'll eat the rest, just get yourself full," the man answered.

Yew, who hasn't eaten anything since he left the hamlet in the school of Hecate, ate up three bowls of the soup before he put down the empty bowl with a spoon inside it.

"Thanks," he said to Ginkgo.

He had skipped breakfast, because he thought that the meeting with Liquorice was going to be a short conversation, and he'd have enough time to eat something afterward. Never would he have imagined that he’d end up like this, but one thing led to another, and currently he wasn't sure whether he should be glad to be alive, or mad at Liquorice for throwing his life into chaos.

Oh wait, didn't he vow in his mind, that he'd stay away from Liquorice after that day, when she robbed the school of Hecate? Suddenly, Yew could clearly recall making a decision like that, so he was even more angry at himself for forgetting about it and not learning from his previous experience.

"No problem," Ginkgo responded to Yew's words of gratitude and took the bowl. He put it next to him, took out the spoon that Yew was using, wiped it off with a sparkly blueish-white napkin, which caused the spoon to return to its clean state.

Yew realized that it was another magical item and he wondered how many such items Ginkgo had in his backpack. He looked at his hands, which weren't too clean. "Can I use it to wash my hands?" he pointed at the napkin, which Ginkgo put on his backpack.

"There's a better option," said the man, who was eating the soup straight from the pot. While still holding the spoon in his right hand, he used his left hand to take out from his backpack a small blueish-white towel and a bottle of ointment.

"This is to wash yourself," he threw the towel at Yew, "and this is medicine for the wounds and bruises,” he threw the bottle above the campfire and Yew caught it, albeit without skills to make him look like a professional catcher. “Once you take off your clothes, I'm sure you'll find a lot of injuries on yourself. So don’t be stingy. It’s fine if you use all of it."

“Thanks,” Yew took off the top of his clothes first. He used the towel to clean his body, then rubbed the ointment all over his upper body, because there was no place anywhere on his arms or torso, which was without a bruise. When Yew was rubbing the ointment on his left arm, he realized that he had a bruise that looked like a handmark. Soon he realized that it wasn't a bruise but an imprint of Ginkgo's hand from the time, when he grabbed the boy to keep him safe by his side.

Yew stared at the imprint and wondered, how he didn't realize that the man was holding him so firmly. He should have felt some pain at least, but he was also impressed with Ginkgo's strength, and he wondered whether he'd also grow to be this strong as an adult. It certainly was pleasing to daydream of becoming strong.

"Congratulations," Ginkgo said after he finished eating.

He put the empty pot away from the fire, and using the thin metal bar, he separated the stones away from each other, causing the fire to die out.

“For what?” Yew asked.

“For becoming a man.”

"I've always been a man," Yew pointed out.

"No one can be a man without a test of manhood."

"So you say that no one can be a man unless they survived an adventure?" Yew recalled that before falling asleep Ginkgo had already once called him a man, because he survived a dangerous adventure. At that time, he didn’t want to talk about it, so he moved away from the topic.

"Not always, but that’s close," Ginkgo responded and began to explain. "A man is like God, but a boy is like a woman. Unless a boy takes a step forward toward the unknown, he cannot become a man."

Yew narrowed his eyebrows. He never heard anything like this before.

Ginkgo laughed. "Have you ever seen a woman, who consistently walks in front of her husband?"

Yew looked through his memories, and shook his head sideways. He never saw such an odd walking pair. Normally, women either walked side-by-side or behind their husbands. Sometimes, they would run ahead, but it was only occasionally.

"A man walks in front of his wife to protect her, just like a knight, who walks in front of the king. But a boy walks hidden behind his mother, seeking protection, like a woman, who seeks protection from a man. That's why a man, just like God, walks in the front, but a boy, just like a woman, walks in the back."

Yew began to understand a bit of Ginkgo’s explanation, and he agreed with him, because since his early childhood, he had seen Kapok always walk in front of Nettle in order to protect her. At times, his father would even scold Nettle for not paying attention to what’s in front of her, and his mother would yell back that there was nothing dangerous, so there was no need for her to be careful.

It was true that women did tend to hide behind men, whenever they felt in danger. And it was a fact that men would willingly take to the front in order to protect those, whom they loved by shielding them with their wide backs.

However, there was one thing, which Yew didn’t understand. "God walks in the front?" he asked, wondering about it, because he has never seen God walking before, so he wouldn't know anything about that.

"God always walks in the front, because He is always first. Logical, isn't it?"

"Okay…" the boy felt satisfied with the answer, even though he didn't fully understand what Ginkgo meant. However, he did understand one thing. If he wanted to act like a man, he needed to walk in front of women.

"Anyway," Ginkgo took out a pen and a small notebook from a side-pocket of his backpack, tore off one sheet of paper, wrote on it and handed it to Yew, "here's my signature. I know I have fans around the world, but I would have never thought that someone would risk their life to meet me."

Yew took the paper and recalled the reason why he searched for Ginkgo.

"Tonight, we'll sleep here,” Ginkgo said as he put the pen and the notebook back into his backpack, ”but tomorrow, we’ll leave this place. As a reward for your courage, I'll take you back all the way to your home. So where do you live?"

"I study in Hecate," Yew answered. "I live in a cottage at the schoolground."

"You're magic-talented?" Ginkgo asked.

"Yes… no," Yew quickly changed his response, but it was already too late.

"Yes-no?" Ginkgo raised his eyebrow.

"I'm magic-talented, but I want to keep it a secret,” Yew explained. “In Hecate, I signed up as a magicless student."

“And your parents agreed to that?”

Yew lowered his head. “That’s the reason, why I want to hide my magical talent. My parents are magicless,” and he told Ginkgo all about his family, and his search for his biological parents, which he wanted to keep a secret from everyone.

"If you want to keep it a secret, then why did you tell me?” Ginkgo asked.

Yew wondered, whether it was a good time to talk about Cypress. Regardless, he had to start somewhere, so he looked directly at Ginkgo’s face and he changed his mind. He could talk about Cypress later.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “I just felt like telling you.”

Mpingo stood at the train station in the town of Sealheart. Several meters behind him stood a train, which was about to depart. Right in front of him, stood a concrete wall covered with spray paintings of happy people. And above the paintings, there were time tables for all the trains and buses.

There was only one bus going to the school of Hestia, and it was scheduled to come once a week, every Saturday.

Right now it was Wednesday afternoon.

Why didn’t he check that before he left home? Mpingo felt like the biggest idiot in the world. And he told himself that he definitely deserved to go to the school for failures. After all, he even failed to get to school.

He sighed.

He hated himself. He was so angry, but he had no one to blame other than himself. The letter from the school clearly told the students to arrive on the morning of the forty first day of Dees in order to be taken to the school by the staff, and that any student arriving on any other day would be responsible for his own travel.

Of course, Mpingo thought that with enough money, he could buy a train ticket and a bus ticket, and get to school, when nobody would be there, but he never considered that a bus would only travel once a week.

Yet he should have considered it. He came from a small village after all, where no buses ever travelled, not even once a month. But he was so certain that a school would have plenty of means of transportation available all the time, that he never doubted his own confidence. At least, he had a good excuse. After all, he had heard about many other schools, which usually had a rather extensive transportation network available practically every day.

Yet he had never heard anything about the school of Hestia, as he was the first person in the village to end up a failure, who was rejected by all the other “better” schools.

The old steam train whistled and began to move its large wheels. Even though it was an object, it reminded Mpingo of a patriarch, who was on the verge of dying from old age, but refused to acknowledge it and kept on taking walks outdoors.

The train left the station, and Mpingo looked around.

His father gave him enough money to last him for the whole year, so he could spend some to stay at a hotel and wait until Saturday, but then he’d be boarding a bus full of people, and somehow that idea made his stomach twist uncomfortably.

He looked once again at the time table for the bus to Hestia.

“Are you going to Hestia?” a guy around fifteen yrold asked him.

Mpingo looked up at his face, then he scanned him from top to bottom.

“I’m also a student,” the guy said.

“The bus only comes on Saturday,” Mpingo responded.

“But the horse carts drive daily,” the guy responded. “A lot of villagers near the school come to the city to buy and sell. They go back in the afternoon, so if you wait by the eastern city gate, you can hitch a ride every day.”

This was something, which Mpingo was already familiar with, because in his hometown village of Catriddle, hitching a ride with farmers, shepherds or miners was very common.

“Wanna come?” the guy asked.

Mpingo nodded, and followed alongside.

“First year?” the guy asked.

Mpingo nodded again.

“I’m on my fifth year, studying mathematics,” the guy said. “Do you know what you want to study?”

Mpingo shook his head.

The guy gave him a friendly chuckle, “all students who come to Hestia always fall into two categories. They either know what they want to learn, but their school of choice didn’t accept them, or they don’t know what they want to learn, because everything seems too difficult.”

Mpingo bit his lower lip.

“But the good news is that you can learn anything in Hestia,” the guy smiled.

Mpingo looked away from his gaze, and the guy ceased to try to have a conversation with him. For a long time, they walked in silence. Then the guy spoke again.

“You’re not the first one, who arrives in Hestia in a gloomy mood,” he said. “Quite on the contrary, the Saturday will be fuuu~ll of gloomy first year students. It happens every year, and we have a name for it, we call it the Doomsday.”

Mpingo looked up at him, as if he wanted to say: what the heck?

“Yeah, we call it the Doomsday, because so many new students come here looking as if everybody on the planet has died.”

Mpingo looked away as he scowled to himself. He understood that the guy wasn’t talking specifically about him, but it still felt as if he was being made fun of.

“Look,” the guy said. “That’s our team.”

Mpingo looked ahead.

Five more students between ages thirteen to eighteen stood by the gate, while chatting with each other. The guy waved from a distance and joined them in conversation as soon as he approached. He also introduced the mute Mpingo as a first year student.

The others smiled and offered encouraging words, but Mpingo didn’t care enough to listen to what exactly they had told him.

When a horse carriage was passing by the gate, the other students asked if they could get a ride to the school of Hestia, and the driver together with his wife were more than happy to let them travel in the wooden cart, which was mostly empty except for two barrels and a box of tools.

The students were happy, when all seven of them were able to get on, although there would be no space if there had been one more person in need of a ride.

The married couple was so kind as to go out of their way and drive them all the way to the school of Hestia, instead of letting them disembark at the closest crossroads, as was the usual custom.

The students got off the cart, and thanked the man and his wife for the ride. After the couple drove off, the students stopped on the stone bridge, and crossed the river which marked the southern border of the schoolground. When they arrived at the first split of the pathway, four of the students took the path on the right, and two students took the path on the left.

Mpingo didn’t know which way he should go, but to his surprise a gal, who had turned right, stopped walking and called out to Mpingo, “you need to go this way to get to the chairman’s house.”

Mpingo ran after the group of four students, and quietly followed behind them, as they walked up the hill on a wide pathway.

The first thing, which amazed Mpingo about the school of Hestia, was the vastness of the schoolground, none of which looked like a school. There were fields, orchards, vegetable gardens, pastures, rivers, and country roads. All of which made Mpingo feel as if he had never left home.

Maybe here was a good place to be. Maybe it was actually better to be a student of Hestia, and live in this nice environment than study nonstop inside a cramped classroom.

He thought about all the other students, who were studying hard somewhere out there in other schools, in competitive classrooms, surrounded by city noise and alarm clocks, and for the first time he didn’t feel jealous of their lifestyle.

The pathway reached its highest point and they began to descend the hill, which wasn’t even the highest hill in the schoolground. After arriving at the bottom of the hill, they passed a small pond, where three cows were drinking, while the fourth one observed them.

The pathway again split.

“Do you see that house?” the gal pointed at the house on the hillside.

Mpingo nodded.

“That’s the chairman’s house, your destination.”

“Okay, thank you,” Mpingo said.

“No problem, and you’ll see. Soon everything will get better,” she said, then together with the other three students she turned onto the pathway on the right.

Mpingo took the left turn, and walked toward the chairman’s house.

By the time he knocked on the door, he completely forgot about Yew and all the other schools. After he had received a warm welcome, a freshly cooked dinner, and an overview of everything he needed to know about the school of Hestia, his bad mood had gone away completely.

However, that peace of mind only lasted until the morning of the following day.

Mpingo’s first night in the dormitory was a cold waterfall of dreams. He didn’t have nightmares, but all his dreams were about Yew, and they made him remember so many things, which he thought that he had forgotten.

Mpingo’s earliest memories of Yew consisted of seeing Yew walking around the village, usually alone, hiding behind trees, talking to himself, and running away from people for no reason.

Mpingo, on the other hand, spent his early childhood with his family, playing with his older sisters, helping his mother, learning from his father, or listening to his grandmother’s stories. When he turned six yrold, his mother, who was a kindergarten teacher, took him to classes, where he would sit quietly in the back, observing other kids learning how to read and write.

He wasn’t smart, so it took him a long time to learn the alphabet. Other kids in the class would bully him for this reason, as they made fun of his brain. They would stop, however, when an adult was around to hear or see them, because they understood that their actions weren’t right.

Mpingo hated being bullied. He hated other kids for being smarter than him, and he hated himself for being so dumb. He wished that he was a genius, and he daydreamed of suddenly becoming super smart and watching his bullies get scolded by adults for being mean to the smartest kid in the class, or at least that was how he imagined his life as a genius.

A year later, Yew joined their class in the kindergarten, and right from the beginning, Yew turned out to be the smartest kid in the class.

All the kids and adults adored Yew, and Mpingo felt jealous. Yew was exactly, what he imagined himself as, but unlike Mpingo, who wanted to stand in the spotlight and bask in the glory, Yew preferred to run and hide from those who sought out his company.

Mpingo realized that all his bullies left him alone, as they were busy adoring Yew. Thus, he had one more reason to be jealous of Yew. Not only did the smart boy got praised by all adults, even bullies worshiped him and wanted to be in his good graces. Or at least, that was what Mpingo thought until he realized the truth.

The kids didn't follow Yew, because they were delighted by him like all the adults. Quite on the contrary, all kids felt toward Yew the same hatred and jealousy, which Mpingo felt toward them. And the bullies didn’t worship Yew at all. Instead they did horrible things to him to make him disappear.

When Mpingo realized this, he started following Yew around out of curiosity to find out more of what was really going on.

One time, he met Yew in the woods with no one around. The boys began talking and Mpingo told him how the kids treated him before Yew came to class. Yew listened, somewhat understanding, as he had a similar experience. Afterward they started hanging out together more and more. Yew was wary at first, but in less than a year, they became good friends.

After Yew turned eight yrold, he rebelled and refused to do more learning than minimum. Naturally, all adults were beyond mad at him for being so selfish, but Mpingo understood that it wasn’t his fault, but rather it was the fault of adults.

Parents often compared their own children to Yew, asking those children why they weren’t as smart as Yew, or why they didn’t study as much as Yew. The children didn’t understand that their parents were the problem. Instead, they saw Yew as the problem, and in their naive childish minds they thought that as long as Yew disappeared, their parents would stop harassing them.

Mpingo didn’t have a problem with Yew’s decision until his mother explained at dinner that children, who stopped learning early on, could lose their talents and end up getting stupid. Well, to be precise, she used some very advanced vocabulary to explain some complex psychological phenomenon, but Mpingo simply understood her as saying: «if Yew doesn’t learn, he’ll end up an idiot.»

And this caused Mpingo to fear for his friend’s future.

After all, he knew what life was like for those with less-than-average intelligence, and he certainly didn’t want Yew to end up like him. Oh no, definitely no. He himself couldn’t outsmart all those bullies no matter how much he tried, so the second best thing for him would be to see Yew outsmart the bullies. If that happened, Mpingo could still get satisfaction and his indirect revenge, even if he hadn’t done anything himself.

So he tried to get Yew to use his talents again, but no matter how much he tried, Yew wouldn’t budge. Eventually Yew promised him to unseal his talents one day. Two years had passed since then, but he hadn’t seen any sign of Yew even thinking of using his talents again.

By now, Mpingo understood that Yew most likely was going to wait until retirement before unsealing his talents, if he would still have them by that time. And that meant that Mpingo’s hopes for revenge on his bullies, whether direct or indirect, were all buried for good. Unless by some rare anomaly, Yew decided to stop hiding his talents. Or by some divine miracle, Mpingo transformed into a prodigy.