The Night of Mind

The day of Thursday started with an unusually freezing air. The temperatures were so low that many inhabitants of Sheepcrown wondered, if today wasn’t the coldest day ever recorded in the history of Sheepcrown. However, the local meteorologists were quick to present past records of local temperatures far lower than these.

The sky before dawn was like an ocean of gemstones. The stars shone in many colors across the black velvet, but the moon was nowhere to be found. It was the night of the new moon, and even though the city was full of lights, the darkness governed every corner, where lamplights couldn’t enter.

“This is crazy,” Yew commented, but his face was hidden by the scarf, so his voice was barely heard outside.

“Hurry up,” Spruce walked several steps ahead of him.

They just got off the first morning tram, which began its shift before the dawn. The two boys weren’t the only ones out in the streets, but certainly they were among the tiniest of minorities, who’d be out in the cold at such an early hour, on their own will without any urgent duty.

Yew didn’t complain anymore, and just followed Spruce to the temple. He recalled the time he travelled with Ginkgo, and it felt so much alike. However, that time he was trying hard to survive and get back to school. This time, he was just tagging along with Spruce and his whims.

The two boys arrived at the temple, which was still closed to the public, and Spruce began to say his prayers while standing in front of the gate. Realizing that standing still made him feel colder, Yew decided to walk alongside the wall.

A bit of snow fell off the templewall, and he looked up to see what pushed the snow. He had to rub his eyes to make sure that he was seeing right.

“Aren’t you cold?” he asked the boy, who was wearing only a shirt and shorts.

The boy looked around, then he pointed a finger at himself.

Yew nodded.

The boy smiled in a mischievous way, “you’re interesting.”

“Hey, Yew. I’m done. Let’s go back,” Spruce yelled and began going back.

Yew ran after his friend, and when he caught up he looked back. “I wonder how he isn’t cold.”

“Who?”

“That boy standing on the wall.”

Spruce stopped and looked back, “I don’t see anyone.”

Yew looked at Spruce, who clearly wasn’t lying. Then he looked at the boy on top of the wall, who was clearly there. Then he turned around and headed for the tram station.

“Hey, what about the boy?” Spruce asked, walking with him. “Was there really someone there?”

Yew shook his head, “I don’t think so. I must have been still sleepy.”

Spruce accepted the explanation, and Yew had this nagging feeling that it wasn’t the first time he was seeing things that others couldn’t see. He tried to recall another time like that, but somehow he couldn’t recall any event. He felt disturbed by what just happened, and yet he couldn’t get rid of the feeling that this wasn’t the first time.

And then it hit him. There was that other time, when he saw something like a tiny disk of sun, and at that time, it looked as if he was the only one, who saw it, or at least no one reacted to it in any way.

He began to wonder, whether he should share it with anyone, but something deep in his heart told him that it would be much better if he kept it a secret, because there was a right time and a right place to reveal a secret. Moreso, if others couldn’t see it, then it was meant to be a secret to others but not to him.

The only thing he didn’t understand was the reason why only he could see it. Or maybe there were others, who shared his experience but he hadn’t met them, or maybe he did meet them but just like him, they kept it a secret. Or maybe there were others, who could see what he couldn’t see, and they never told him about it, just like right now he didn’t explain to Spruce, what he really saw. And even more odd was that the thing he saw talked to him.

“Yew,” Spruce was waving his hand in front of Yew’s face.

“Yeah?”

“It’s green,” he pointed at the light indicator on the other side of the railtrack crossing.

In order to get to their tram station, the boys had to cross the railtracks, which were usually busy with trams, but at dawn, there was less traffic than usual. So the wait time for the green light was short as well.

They crossed the rails, and waited for the tram under the station roof, together with an older madam. They didn’t talk much, as talking required uncovering their mouths, which together with their noses were covered by scarves to protect them from the cold. Without lowering their scarves, their voices were too muffled and too difficult to understand.

However, when the tram finally arrived, both of them quickly got on, and sat far away from the door, where it was the warmest.

Yew was the first one to pull down the scarf off of his mouth. “Please, don’t drag me out like this next year.”

“As long as I pass this year, I won’t,” Spruce had his problems, and Yew knew about them. Although he doubted that Spruce could really get the top scores, he didn’t want to openly discourage his hard-working friend.

By the time, they got back to school, the students of Hecate were only beginning to wake up.

Both boys returned to their cottages, and Yew tried to get some more sleep before he had to go to class. When an hour later, he was leaving again for the exam, he began to feel sleepy and he regretted promising Spruce the day before, that they’d go to the temple before the exam.

They should have gone on Wednesday afternoon, but Spruce didn’t want to skip the exercise class with Beech, and he still had something else to do after the class, so in the end, Spruce only saw an opportunity to visit the temple right before the exam on Thursday morning, but to make sure that they would still make it back to class on time, they had to go to the city before dawn.

Yew and Spruce sat at their desks in the classroom like all the other students. Yew looked around and yawned. He was sleepy, and today was the day of the midterm exam. He hoped he didn’t forget any of the answers, which he was trying so hard to memorize, due to the abnormally early hour of awakening.

Cacao Bark came in as usual, and as usual the class was quiet. There was no homework assignment yesterday, so there was no work to turn in this morning.

“Clear your desks, and leave only one pen on top of your desk,” he ordered, and all the students obeyed. He snapped his fingers, and a five page exam appeared in front of every student. The first page was empty except for the name of the student. “Check if you see your name on the exam in front of you,” Cacao said. “If it’s incorrect, raise your hand.”

Nobody raised a hand, and Cacao continued. “You have this whole class period to answer as many questions as possible. The first page is a title page with your name. The next three pages are the main exam, if you complete all three correctly that’s hundred percent. The last page is for extra credit, and those questions are much more difficult than the main exam, so it’s in your best interest to start with the main exam. Any questions?”

There were no questions, so Cacao sat down at his desk and announced, “now, start.”

Everyone turned over the first page, that is everyone but Linden, who turned over four pages and started his exam on the last page. Yew had a moment of relief, when he read the first question, and saw that it was very similar to one of the questions that he had practiced at home.

One by one, he answered the questions, and halfway through the classtime he was done. He turned over to the fourth page, and on the last page, there were only two questions.

… Who was Silphium Moon? …

… Provide the name of the founder of the school of Hecate. …

Yew knew the answer to the first question. She was a hero of many legends, and the person who led humans to a victory in a war against the demons. Yew wrote the answer, then sighed. The name of the founder of the school of Hecate was engraved on the front gate of the school. He read that name many times, but he never bothered to memorize it, so no matter how hard he tried to remember, he couldn’t recall it.

He spent the remaining time of the exam awaiting until his mind were to remember the name of the founder of the school of Hecate. Yet the time ran out and the awaited moment never arrived.

He turned in his exam together with other students. Overall, he was sure that he did pretty well on the written exam. However, the most difficult part was the second half - the practical exam. He had to somehow pass it without attracting too much attention.

After collecting all the exams, Cacao Bark clapped his hands, and all the papers disappeared from his desk, and were safely teleported to his office. The boys left the classroom, and headed to the other side of the building.

On their way, they passed the girls of the class four of four A, who headed in the opposite direction. Unlike the boys, who were mostly gloomy after the exam and not willing to talk about it, the girls were happily chatting about their exam and the mistakes they made.

Some of the boys greeted Sorrel Cave, who was  already waiting at the entrance to her classroom, and she greeted them all back. After they all entered the classroom, she closed the door and approached her desk in the center area near the blackboard.

“I hope you did well on the written exam,” she said, and added, “if you didn’t, you still have a chance to improve your score this time,” she winked at some of the students, who looked less happy than others.

She put a folder full of paper sheets on the desk, and she pulled out one paper sheet and presented it to the class. It was a white sheet with a triangle drawn in the center on one side, and an arrow symbol drawn on the other side.

“In order to test how much you’ve learned, I’ll ask you to do the following,” she put the paper sheet on the desk. “First, lift up the sheet,” and using magic she made the sheet levitate horizontally, “Second, raise it to stand,” and the sheet changed position from horizontal to vertical.

Sorrel looked at the board behind herself as if she forgot about something, then she tapped the board. Instructions appeared on the board from step one to step ten.

“Third,” she pointed at the step three on the board, “turn the paper upside-down,” and the sheet moved by hundred eighty degrees, so now the triangle’s top was facing down. “Fourth, turn the paper around,” and the sheet moved around its vertical axis, so now the students could see the other side of the sheet, where instead of a triangle there was an arrow symbol pointing down.

“Fifth, make the paper swirl,” and the sheet began to turn like a wheel, with the arrow acting like the hand of a clock. “Sixth, move the paper in a circle in front of you,” she drew a big circle in the air, and the paper followed her finger. “Seventh, move the paper around you,” and this time the paper travelled by itself around the teacher, like a dog running around his owner.

“Eighth, curl up the paper,” and as she said it, the paper curled up creating a U letter. “Ninth, fold the paper,” and from a U letter, the two sides of the sheet snapped together. “Tenth, do steps from one through nine using two sheets of paper.” She repeated the whole process using two pieces of paper.

Linden raised his hand high up into the air.

“Yes, Linden?”

“Professor, once we’re done with this test, we can go home, right?”

Sorrel didn’t look pleased, as she knew exactly what her son was thinking, “yes.”

“Then I want to go first.”

“Come up here then,” she responded and Linden approached the desk. “You can pick any paper…” she didn’t finish, because four sheets of paper were already floating up.

And all four followed the steps one through eight on the board. Then at the step nine, only three out of four sheets folded. After folding, the three sheets were put back on the desk, and the fourth sheet did something unexpected. It folded diagonally. Then the part of the paper, which was too long, cleanly cut itself off from the rest, and fell down on the desk. The diagonally folded paper unraveled itself to present a perfect square.

From the class, sounds of awe, amazement and jealousy were heard, but Linden wasn’t done. The current squared sheet of paper continued to fold, and didn’t finish until there was an origami crane floating right in front of Sorrel Cave.

The class had no words, and the teacher just stared at the piece of art. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and noted, “Linden Cave, hundred points. You can leave.”

Linden left with a smug look on his face.

“By the way,” Sorrel pointed at the steps on the board with her hand, “I forgot to mention that each step is worth ten points. At minimum you need fifty points, but if you didn’t do well on the written exam, you may need more. If you feel confident in your skills, you can just perform step ten, and if I find no errors there, that’ll be hundred points. However,” she banged her hands on the desk, “if you start with step ten and fail it, you get zero points and no chance to redo it. Understood?”

Everyone nodded, and everyone knew that except for Linden nobody would take a risk like that. Even if some students felt that they could perform step ten, it was nevertheless wiser to slowly acquire all hundred points, rather than risk getting zero over a small mistake.

“Who wants to try next?” Sorrel asked, and Aspen raised his hand. “Come over.”

Aspen performed all ten steps without any error, and got another perfect score.

“Anyone wants to try next, or should I call you out by name?” Sorrel asked, knowing that the two best students had already demonstrated their skills, and other students wouldn’t be as willing to step forward.

Spruce raised his hand, and Sorrel asked him to come up.

“Since, you’re using fire, I’ll ask you to follow me step by step,” she took out a sheet of paper and put it in front of Spruce, “burn it whole.”

Spruce took out his dagger, and touched the paper with its tip. The sheet burst out in flames, and was turned to ash in a blink of an eye.

Sorrel also looked surprised, “that’s a lot of power,” she commented. “Let’s see how well you can control it,” she clapped her hands twice and a small plank of wood appeared between her and Spruce. She used her magic to float the plank in the air, as she instructed Spruce, “set only the top half on fire.”

Spruce moved his blade across the top of the plank, and small flames took over the top half of it, but they never moved down to the bottom half.

“Now move the flames to the side of the plank.”

Spruce moved his blade above the flames and alongside the side of the plank. The flames acted as if they were led by a magnetic force and followed the movement of the dagger.

“Brilliant,” Sorrel commented. “Those were steps one to three. For the step four, I want you to move the flames from this side to the opposite side of the plank, without burning through the plank.”

Spruce concentrated hard, as he touched the flames burning at the side of the plank with his blade, then he made a swift throwing movement toward the other side of the plank with the dagger held firmly in his hand. The flames disappeared on the right side of the plank, and reappeared on the left side.

“Next,” Sorrel smiled approvingly at his success, “move the flames across, burning only the middle of the plank,” a red line appeared in the midsection to show Spruce the path.

He dipped his dagger into the flames and slid it along the red line. The flames followed and moved back to their previous position leaving a trail of ash in the middle of the plank. 

“Step six - make the flames travel along the edges, three times.”

Spruce drew small circles in the air above the plank, and the flames began to travel along the edges. After they finished traversing the plank three times, Spruce distinguished them.

Sorrel snapped her fingers. Two pieces of paper stuck together levitated in front of Spruce, and next to the plank.

“Step seven,” she said, “make the flames burn one sheet, but not the other, like this,” with her finger she drew a wide circle around the sheets. It looked as if everything was on fire, but only one sheet of paper turned into ash.

Afterward, she took another sheet of paper and presented two sheets for Spruce, who also drew a circle in the air with his dagger, and a ring of flames appeared and surrounded both sheets of paper, but only one of them turned to ash. The other sheet of paper was fine even though it was surrounded by flames.

“Step eight - move the bottom flames from that sheet onto this plank, but leave the top flames in place.”

Spruce touched the bottom flames with his dagger, then moved the magical item sideways. The bottom flames moved onto the plank, and the top flames remained in place.

“Step nine - using the remaining flames on the sheet burn the area inside the triangle,” she pointed at the paper.

Spruce slowly moved his dagger toward the center of the paper. The flames easily gobbled up the paper, leaving a triangular hole in it.

“That will be ninety points,” Sorrel said as she opened the notebook and wrote down the score for Spruce, “do you want to try step ten?” she asked after she snapped her fingers, and all the flames disappeared altogether with the plank and sheets, leaving a clean desk ready for another attempt.

“Yes,” Spruce responded, and repeated all steps from one to seven using two planks of wood at once. It was going well until the eighth step.

Like before, Spruce touched the bottom flames that surrounded one sheet of paper, then he touched the bottom flames, which surrounded the other sheet of paper. He moved the dagger sideways to get them to move onto a plank. One flame did as told, while the other one moved away from the sheet and was heading directly at the teacher, who snapped her fingers and all flames were gone immediately.

“I’m sorry,” Spruce said.

“That’s fine,” she said cheerfully. “You almost got it, and I’ll give you seven points for step ten. Together that’ll be ninety seven out of hundred. You did a great job,” she noted down the score in her notebook.

Looking overjoyed, Spruce looked at Yew.

Yew understood that Spruce wanted him to go next, but Yew had his reasons not to do that. He wanted to have as average of a score as possible, so it was mandatory for him to observe how others were going to perform. After seeing what his classmates could do, he would be able to act like an average student more accurately. That was why Yew wouldn’t volunteer to be tested, no matter how much Spruce wished for him to do so.

Spruce left the classroom, and Yew remained at his desk.

The teacher asked, if anyone else wanted to try. Two more students volunteered, and performed fairly well, earning ninety four and ninety eight points. Both of them failed at the last step. The first one couldn’t swirl both papers at once. The second one couldn’t fold more than one sheet of paper.

Afterward, no one volunteered, so Sorrel Cave took her classbook with the names of the students and while she pondered on whom to call next, Yew was having the same thoughts as all the other students in the class: not me, not me, not me, please anyone but not me.

However, Yew’s reasons for having such hopes was vastly different from his classmates. Other students knew that they were going to make an error, and they didn’t want to embarrass themselves in front of so many people, so each of them wished to be tested near the end of the examtime.

Yew on the other hand, wanted to see all the fails and errors that his classmates were going to make, in order to copy those fails and errors. He knew that if he were to be tested next, he could get hundred points, and become the third student of his class to get the perfect score, but he didn’t want to.

He didn’t want to repeat that mistake ever again. He didn’t want to reenact his kindergarten experience in the school of Hecate.

From as early as he remembered, he loved to play with other kids in his village, and they all loved to play with him. Life was fun in his early childhood, until he entered the kindergarten at the age of five. He was a clever kid, so his parents enrolled him a year earlier than most other kids. It was common for clever kids to get enrolled early, and to graduate the kindergarten early as well, giving them an option to enroll early in the school as well.

He wasn’t learning anything amazing in the kindergarten - just the basics. Yet from the first day in kindergarten, Yew was better than all the other kids. He was the first one to learn all the letters of the alphabet. He was the first to memorize how to write numbers. And he was the first one to understand how to add and subtract.

He was learning faster than all the other kids in the kindergarten. He had no problems with math, whether multiplication or division, algebra or geometry. Whether it was basic history, or basic literature, or basic science, Yew scored higher than all the other kids in his class.

Moreover, he didn’t think much about it. It was easy, so why would he care about something so easy? It was no different, if his mom asked him to put on shoes. He knew how to tie his shoes, so what could be hard about it?

He didn’t understand why some other kids struggled in the kindergarten.

But there was one thing that he did understand. The better he did with his education, the less other kids wanted to play with him. They wouldn’t invite him to games as much as before, and they would avoid talking to him. Some began treating him like air, others tried to bully him, but that didn’t work because the teachers would immediately scold them.

It didn’t take him long to see the big picture. The better scores he got, the more the adults cared about him. The more the adults cared about him, the better they treated him. The better they treated him, the more they neglected other kids, and other kids weren’t going to play with someone who got all that special treatment, which they could only dream of.

So when Yew was eight yrold and just two months away from completing all of the kindergarten curriculum, he stopped learning.

He started leaving all answers empty on his tests. The teachers refused to give him zero points, and demanded for him to write anything, so he wrote nonsense. The adults were furious. They tried to bargain with him. They tried to threaten him. They tried to beg him. They tried anything to make him learn again, but he remained stubborn. He wasn’t going to learn ever again.

After several months of trying to make Yew go back to being a top student, all the adults gave up on him, and he was left alone. He, who used to be the best student in the kindergarten became the worst student. But in the end, his plan worked. After the adults have lost all the interest in him, other kids and his old friends came back to play with him.

But that wouldn’t have ever happened if Mpingo, the slowest student in the kindergarten, didn’t become his friend.

At first, Mpingo approached him out of curiosity. He wanted to know how can someone just change his scores from top to bottom so quickly. He thought that if someone can go from hundred to a zero in a day, it should be possible to go from a zero to a hundred in a day, as well.

Yew didn’t have the courage to tell him that it’s impossible, so instead they began to learn together. Mpingo’s scores did improve, but Yew continued to turn in his tests with nothing but nonsense answers for a year.

In that year, he got his friends back, made more friends, and became best friends with Mpingo. Of course, he knew about Mpingo long before they actually became friends. After all, they both lived in the same village, but they weren’t that close before, because as individuals they were very different.

Mpingo was always slower than other kids. It took him longer to learn how to walk, so he was almost always accompanied by either one of his parents, or his older sister, or sometimes by his grandmother, and kids weren’t as interested in playing with a kid, who was always accompanied by an adult.

If Mpingo played with other kids, it would usually be because his relatives asked the kids to “play with him” and most kids did it just to be nice. Even the little Yew thought of playing with Mpingo as some sort of an assignment, just like when his mom assigned him to sweep the floor. He did it, because he had to, and he was happy again as soon as he was free from the duty.

However, in kindergarten, he changed his opinion on Mpingo. Being friends with Mpingo was no longer an assignment, but an interesting journey into another way of life. In the beginning, he saw Mpingo like some type of a rare animal, which was very interesting to observe. However, once he began to understand how Mpingo’s mind worked, he felt sorry for the boy, who wasn’t as capable as everyone else.

Even though Mpingo was developing slower, he was developing nonetheless, and on the last year of kindergarten, when Mpingo was nine yrold, he began to understand Yew. It was less than a month before his graduation, when Mpingo got mad at Yew for holding back his talents. He felt betrayed, after he realized that Yew was intentionally scoring low. He also felt his hopes destroyed by Yew’s lies.

Yew was also mad, when Mpingo accused him of false friendship. On that day, the boys brawled with each other, and both of them ended up with quite a lot of bruises. Everyone scolded Yew one-sidedly, because they saw it as a bully attacking a kid with mental disabilities. The only ones, who were different were Mpingo’s family, who believed that both boys were equally at fault.

Mpingo’s parents brought Mpingo to Yew’s house to apologize, and Yew invited him into his room, where they spent together many hours. For the first time, they told each other all their secrets. Mpingo understood why Yew wanted to hide his talents, but he still thought it was wrong to lie, so Yew promised Mpingo that one day he would unseal his talents for the world to see. Mpingo accepted the promise, even though Yew never specified when that “one doy” would happen.

Yew had already experienced what life was like for someone, who was at the top. He also knew what life was like for those, at the bottom, and he knew that there was no better place than to be in the middle. He wanted to be average in the eyes of the world, for as long as possible, because he wanted as little problems in his life as possible.

He observed the mistakes his classmates made on a practical exam. The first boy, called by the teacher, dropped the sheet soon after he lifted it up. Then he had a problem keeping the sheet stable in one place, and struggled maneuvering the sheet around without bending it. When he was finally done with the test, he left the classroom with seventy two points.

After fourteen more students finished the exam, Yew heard his name called. He stood up and approached the teacher. He was glad that he got to see so many errors that the others did. Using the knowledge, he obtained, he was certain he could get an average grade on this exam.

He grabbed the brooch in his hand, and lifted the sheet up without much problems. He put it in a standing position, turned it upside down, then turned it around but not fully, so it looked like he failed at the last moment.

“Nine points,” Sorrel murmured as she noted it down.

He swirled the paper just fine, but when it came to drawing a circle, he drew an oval shape in the air.

“Eight points.”

He tried to stop himself from smiling. Inside he was feeling happy at how well it was going. He moved the paper around himself dropping it to the floor right after it finished circling around him.

“Oh, too bad,” Sorrel sounded sad, and made a note.

Yew proceeded to lift up the paper, and slowly he curled it up, but when he was folding it, he added extra creases in wrong places, then he put the paper on the desk.

“You won’t attempt the last step?”

Yew shook his head.

“Okay, in total that’ll be eighty three points.”

“Thank you,” Yew responded calmly and left the classroom. Outside Spruce and Aspen were waiting for him.

“What took you so long?” Spruce sounded annoyed.

“Sorry, I didn’t have courage to go, so I waited until professor Sorrel called my name.”

“I didn’t know you were such a coward? Didn’t we practice this together?”

“It was our first exam,” Aspen said. “Even I felt a bit uncertain until I saw the steps.”

“And those steps were meaningless for me,” Spruce pointed out, “and I still stepped forward.” He raised up his head ready for compliments.

“I bet you did well on the written exam, so you had nothing to lose,” the boys heard Linden’s voice and turned to the side. “You’re so loud I could hear you all the way here.”

“Didn’t you go home?” Aspen asked.

“I need to ask my mom about something,” Linden explained his return. “How many more to go?” he pointed at the door to the classroom.

“That’s the nineteenth person,” Aspen said as another student stepped out of the classroom, looking happy - clearly he did well on the practical exam.

“Ugh, that’s going to be long wait,” Linden complained then looked at Spruce, “don’t be so happy over scoring high on a baby exam.”

“What’s wrong with being happy? And it wasn’t a baby exam!”

“It was. Do you even know how Hecate works?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The first year in Hecate is a joke, if you haven’t realized it already. The teachers are even calling it babysitting the students.”

“I never heard a teacher say that,” Aspen was quick to respond.

“Of course not. It’s something they use among themselves. They don’t say it around students, but it’s the truth. There aren’t that many kids, who study in Hecate, so in order to lower the dropout rate, the school made the first year easy, so almost nobody quits the school of Hecate after one year.”

“I know this,” Aspen nodded. “Most dropouts in Hecate occur at the end of the second year.”

“And that number is less than half of what it used to be,” Linden said. “Before the school of Hecate came up with the strategy of babysitting the first years, sometimes more than half of the class would quit after a year. However, nowadays after spending two years in the school, most kids get used to the place, so they’re less likely to quit Hecate and go to another school.”

“I would never change schools,” Spruce was determined to graduate.

“Do you want me to show you the hard reality?” Linden smirked.

“What?”

“See that tree over there?” he pointed at a tree at least fifty meters away from them.

“So what?”

“There are some remaining leaves on the branches. Set them on fire.”

“What if the tree will catch fire?” Yew asked.

“The snow on the branches will melt faster than that. A wet tree won’t burn,” Linden explained, and looked at Spruce, “I bet you won’t be able to do it anyway,” his voice was making fun of the magicless boy.

“I got ninety five points on the exam,” Spruce took out his dagger. “I can set anything on fire,” and while holding his dagger he concentrated on the tree. He concentrated so hard, his cheeks puffed up, but no leaf got harmed by fire.

Linden started laughing out loud.

“Why is it not working?” Spruce sounded defeated.

Aspen lifted out his hand and tried to pull the leaf of the branch and into his hand, like he’s been doing with books, and it also didn’t work.

Linden laughed even harder.

“What did you do?” Spruce was mad.

“Nothing,” Linden was still laughing hard, and other students around were staring at them. “It’s the range. Something they don’t teach you until the third year. Anything outside the range cannot be affected by magic.”

“But I saw magi, who can cast spells from a large distance,” Spruce didn’t believe Linden.

“What are you doing?!” Sorrel Cave stepped out of the classroom alarmed by the commotion outside.

“Good timing,” Linden went up to her, and asked her something while whispering in her ear.

She rolled her eyes, and agreed. Afterward, she asked the students outside to be quiet, or to go somewhere else, because they were disrupting the exam.

Linden walked away in the direction of the cottages, and the other three followed him.

“Explain that range thing!” Spruce demanded.

“Magic depends on many criteria. The basic two are concentration and stamina. Even with best concentration, without stamina, your magic will fail, and vice-versa. Furthermore, you can lose either one or both quite easily. For example, if you get sick, your stamina may drop noticeably, and if that happens, even the most powerful magus will become weak like a baby.”

Aspen furrowed his eyebrows. He knew that stamina was important in magic. He knew that it was important to increase it, but it was the first time he considered the possibility of losing stamina in a way other than consuming it to make magic.

“And concentration is ever worse. You’re still kids now, so you don’t have a lot on your mind, but after you start growing up, you’ll end up with more and more things to think about, and it’ll get harder and harder to focus on magic. And once you lose focus, you’ll easily get angered of why it’s not working, and you’ll end up focusing on your failed attempts so much, you won’t be able to concentrate properly at all. In such a case, you’ll fail even at the most basic spell.”

“So what about range?” Spruce brought back his original topic.

“It’s a very complex thing. Everyone starts with a different range. The range itself may vary in direction. Some people may have a long range in front of them, but a short range above them. On average the starting range doesn’t exceed twenty meters, but exceptions do happen. Increasing the range is difficult, as it depends on multiple factors, some of which are preset by nature, such as one’s age.”

“So if I grow older, my range will do as well?” Aspen asked for confirmation.

“Perhaps,” Linden shrugged. “As I said, it depends on many factors, and you don’t learn anything about it until the third year, so for now just continue improving your stamina and concentration, as these also affect the range.”

“One more question,” Aspen said.

“Yeah?”

“Does range change depending on the spell?”

“Of course it does, and that was the last question about range,” Linden hurried up his pace to be ahead of the group, then ran.

The other boys couldn’t catch up to him, because as soon as they started to run, they began to slip on the icy paths and get stuck in the deep snow. For some mysterious reason, none of the typical winter obstacles affected Linden, who ran smoothly like a horse running across a flat meadow on a sunny summer day.

At the post office, Cypress picked up the large envelope,which he received from his aunt. It wasn’t thick, so he rolled it into a roll. He walked out of the post office, and into the restaurant on the other side of the street, where he passed alongside the counter and entered one of the small private rooms in the back.

Ginkgo was already waiting for him, while drinking some dark red juice.

“What is that?” Cypress asked.

“Cranberry-blueberry smoothie,” he answered, “the restaurant recommended it.” He looked at the envelope, which Cypress held. “Finally?”

“We’ll see,” the guy sat down on the soft cushion across the low table, and began to open the envelope. Inside there were only two pieces of paper, and a small note from his great-grandmother. “To my sweet great-grandson,” he read the note. “I couldn’t make copies or take out the documents. The papers had a charm on them that made the text visible only for a short period of time, and only once every ten years. I copied as much as I could.”

Cypress looked at two sheets of handwritten info. The first sheet was full of writings on both sides, but the second sheet had only four lines at the top, and the last line wasn’t even finished.

He began to read the first page in his thoughts.

… Safflower Wind, daughter of Kauri Wind (father) and Dandelion Wind of the Night household (mother). Born on the ninth day of Toas in the year fifty seven hundred fifty nine, in the city of Crowchair…

Afterward, the writing got messy as the writer was trying to write faster all the physical traits and the medical health records of Safflower Wind, which took half a page. Then the bottom of the page, and most of the reverse were notes about her accomplishments in the school. The last line on the first sheet read:

...On the eighth day of Toas in the year fifty seven hundred eighty nine, Safflower Wind went missing. An investigation followed…

Cypress looked at the second sheet.

...however, the cause of disappearance has never been discovered. The corpse of Safflower Wind had been returned to the Wind household, on the first day of Peizh in the year fifty seven hundred ninety, and was buried in the garden. The autopsy found traces of …

“Too bad,” Ginkgo spoke as he looked down at the paper in front of Cypress and saw that the text had been abruptly cut off. “She ran out of time.”

“There’s one important point though,” Cypress stared at the second sheet.

“The first day of Peizh, year fifty seven hundred ninety,” Ginkgo also caught the date. “On that day, someone dropped off Yew Sky at an orphanage.”

Both of them remained in silence for a while, as they were both thinking the same thing: if Safflower Wind was Yew’s mother, then who was the father? If his father was a royal, then how did Yew end up in an orphanage? If Yew’s father was a royal, then why did Safflower Wind run away from home, and kept her child a secret? The only possible explanation was that Yew’s father was not a royal.

Then how much did royals know about Yew Sky? Did they know that he was still alive? Someone had killed his mother, but the child was taken to the orphanage. Was she killed, because royals found out about her relationship with a non-royal? Then why was Yew still alive? Was it his father?

“There are too many unknowns,” Cypress gave up on thinking, as he didn’t want his mind to start creating crazy theories due to lack of infos on the topic.

“But is she really Yew’s mother?” Ginkgo took the first sheet and pointed at the physical description of the woman. “She was a tall beauty with curly golden hair, but Yew is a shortie with black hair, even other details aren’t the same. She had dark blue eyes, whereas Yew’s eyes are blue, but a lighter tint.”

“Look at the medical records,” Cypress pointed at the percentages next to some medical terminology.

“Pardon my lack of knowledge,” Ginkgo asked for an explanation.

“These represent the strengths and weaknesses of human bodies. This one, for example, decides how fast the body heals, and this one decides how fast someone learns. If you compare it to Yew’s, it’s almost identical. The boy most likely took the physical look from his father, but he took the other traits from his mother. That would explain his above average talent in magic.”

“Does one of these words mean a talent in magic?”

“No,” Cypress shook his head, “these examinations are done on newborn babies, and newborn babies cannot use magic, just like they cannot walk, or eat solid food. It takes time, before their bodies acquire these capabilities. But all royals have an above average talent in magic, so she must have had it as well.”

“Hmmm…” Ginkgo closed his eyes, and opened them again, after they heard a knock on the door. “Come in.”

“Excuse me,” a waiter said, opening the door. From the top of the wheelcart, he took a plate of sushi and put it in front of the two guests. “Enjoy,” he said and left.

“When did you order this?” Cypress asked, taking a piece of mackerel.

“While you were reading the papers,” he pointed at the black square on the table, which was right in front of his seat. “You tap twice, and draw a circle starting at the second tap,” he did the motion and white letters appeared on the black square.

Cypress copied the movements on the black square in front of him, and read the menu list. He scrolled down to the bottom, and tapped on the hot tea, which changed the text color from white to red. “And what do I do next?”

“Tap once and draw a circle.”

After the movement, the menu disappeared. The text “Thank you.” appeared for several seconds, and then everything was black again. “This isn’t magic.”

“It’s an invention of recent graduates from Athena,” Ginkgo said, grabbing eel from the plate, “they were quite famous for it last year. All the newspapers wrote about them.”

“So it’s science. Makes me think about Holly.”

Ginkgo already knew whom Cypress meant, as his younger brother already had told him about all his knights, although Ginkgo haven’t yet met them personally.

The tea arrived almost immediately. They ate while talking about Yew’s complex situation, and how to tell the boy without rubbing him in the wrong direction. Knowing that the boy was related to royals, made Cypress confused. At one extreme, he felt that this could get dangerous and he shouldn’t get involved. On the other hand, Yew’s bloodline could be used in his own plan of removing the notion of a royal class as superior to commoners and nobles.

After all, even nobles used to be considered superior to commoners back when the demons were wreaking chaos in the world. However, after the War of the End, people came to realize that commoners and nobles were same human beings, and the only difference between them was history. Commoners descended from workers, who were farmers or builders providing food and shelter. Whereas nobles descended from warriors, who risked their lives to provide protection.

If commoners and nobles could live alongside as equals, why couldn’t royals do the same?

Once Cypress and Ginkgo were done eating, they left the room together. At the same time a guest from the neighboring room had finished his meal as well, and was closing the door to the other room.

“Cypress? Oh right, you’re still in school. Of course, you’d be in Sheepcrown,” the older guy, who had eaten his meal in the neighboring room, said to himself, when his eyes saw Cypress, who looked back at him.

“Rowan?” Cypress easily recognized the guy.

“Rowan Fruit?” Ginkgo asked Cypress.

“Yes, he’s one of my knights. How about we…?” Cypress didn’t finish, because Rowan interrupted him.

“That’s not your clone, and he’s too young to be your dad.”

“My older brother, Ginkgo,” Cypress introduced him. “We can go in and talk…”

Once again, Rowan interrupted him, “I would love to, but I’m too busy, so unless you seriously need me, or your life is in danger, I have to go.”

Cypress bumped fists with Rowan with a sigh of acceptance, “we’ll talk another time.”

“See you later, my lord,” Rowan passed by in a hurry, and left the restaurant.

The two also left after paying for their meal near the exit, and stepped outside to be greeted by a clear sunny sky and a frosty cold air. It was near the afternoon, and a Saturday, so a lot of people were outside. Many kids were running around near their parents and grandparents, who were having conversations with other adults, while walking or standing. Whereas teens were freely playing in the snow, occasionally hitting an unlucky passerby with a snowball.

On their way back to the villa, Ginkgo spoke first, “you don’t act like a lord.”

“You mean Rowan? He’s always like that.”

“I mean you,” Ginkgo looked at his brother. “You let him tell you what to do, it was as if the roles between you two were reversed.”

“That’s how I am with all my knights, and that’s how all my knights are with me. I don’t see a reason to order them around unless there’s no other choice.”

“If that’s how much freedom I’m going to get, then I don’t mind your offer,” Ginkgo smiled.

“What offer?” Cypress had no idea what his brother was talking about.

“Wasn’t that your intention? I thought you were telling me all about your knights, because you wanted me to be one of them.”

Cypress opened his mouth, but didn’t say anything, then he closed it.

Ginkgo laughed.

“I did think about that,” Cypress acknowledged, “but I had no plan to ever ask you. You’re my brother.”

“You’re a little jerk, who doesn’t trust anyone other than your knights,” Ginkgo described him and Cypress’s mouth was open once again in surprise. “You thought I wouldn’t see through you. You’re underestimating adventurers. We’re really good at spotting details. That’s how we survive.”

Cypress’s face was red, but it was difficult to say whether it got red from the cold air, or from the embarrassment at how easily he was figured out by Ginkgo.

“But I have one condition,” Ginkgo raised up his finger. “A one-on-one battle.”

Cypress looked at him, “that won’t even be a battle.”

“Why?”

“You sealed your magical talent. You cannot use even the simplest spells without a magical item.”

“So you’re that sure of your victory?” Ginkgo smirked and his eyes flashed with some cunning ideas. “Then my condition is a one-on-one battle today, after we get back to the villa.”

“Fine,” Cypress sounded defeated. He didn’t like the idea of overpowering his older brother, but he couldn’t hide any longer his desire to receive a Loyalty Vow from Ginkgo.

When they arrived at the villa, they didn’t go inside. Instead led by Ginkgo, they walked around it, and into the forest. They stopped somewhere at a distance from the villa, but not too long of a walk away from it.

“Here it should be fine,” Ginkgo said. “We’re far enough, so you can give your best.”

Cypress sighed. “There’s no way I’ll be going all out against a magicless. Besides, shouldn’t you at least take some weapons? I saw you had some magical items in that large backpack you left in the villa.”

“No need. This isn’t a serious battle. I just want to see how well you’d do in a fight.”

“Do you even have to guess that? I’m number one in the school of Hecate, and I have never lost a battle.”

Ginkgo smirked, “good to know. You go first.”

Cypress looked at his brother, whose body was covered by heavy warm clothing, but he didn’t have anything in his hands. Wizards, at least, always had some magical items on their hands, or attached to their clothing.

“Don’t be lazy,” Ginkgo joked.

Cypress didn’t feel well attacking someone, who had no way to counter his attack, but anyway, he sighed in defeat, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. As he slowly opened his eyes, the snow from the ground lifted up and formed a giant ball, which rolled right at Ginkgo.

Cypress could attack him in many ways, but he chose something mild and easy to avoid to put himself at Ginkgo’s level. He saw Ginkgo step to the side, so he moved his eyes following Ginkgo’s movements. The ball of snow also chased the moving target.

Ginkgo ran to the side. At the next moment he threw something at Cypress, who didn’t see what it was, but moved to the side just to avoid it. It was only when two sharp blades were passing by his head, that he realized the danger he would have been in, if he didn’t avoid it.

Was Ginkgo that serious in this battle?

He wanted to look at Ginkgo to get the answer from the man’s countenance, but the man was nowhere to be seen. Cypress rapidly moved his head around. Yet unable to spot his brother, he took his hands out of his pockets and raised them creating hundreds of snowballs and sending them all up and around. However, when he himself looked up, the sky was empty.

What?

Where?

Then he felt a hit to his lower legs from behind, and falling down he realized that Ginkgo kicked him near the ground level. He looked to the side and saw Ginkgo crouching by, with two daggers, one in each hand. Before Cypress fell to the ground, he moved one of his hands, and directed hundreds of snowballs at Ginkgo, who jumped away just in time.

Right after the snowballs bombarded the ground, Cypress concentrated to stop himself from falling. His body began to levitate just above the ground. Then he lifted himself some twenty meters aboveground to have a better view, and to get away from Ginkgo, who was too fast and nimble in his heavy clothes.

From above, Cypress looked around and spotted Ginkgo’s clothes behind a tree. He put both his hands forward, concentrating on the figure behind the tree. If he managed to levitate the clothes, he’ll be able to throw Ginkgo.

When he moved his hands to the side, a dagger flew by scratching his clothes. Ginkgo’s clothes flew out from behind the tree, but the man wasn’t wearing them.

Cypress looked in the direction, where the dagger came from. On a treebranch, and without his outer jacket, Ginkgo was crouching with another dagger in his hand, and a smirk on his face.

I’ll be taking that dagger, Cypress thought and stretched out his hand in Ginkgo’s direction. Ginkgo smoothly let go of the dagger, and it flew right into Cypress’s hand, who didn’t understand why Ginkgo would let him have it without a fight.

Then Ginkgo snapped his fingers.

Both daggers came back flying to him, and Cypress realized that he couldn’t free himself from touching the dagger. Forced by whatever charm, was gluing his hand to the dagger, he was heading straight at Ginkgo, who made his palm into a fist and his smirk grew larger.

There was no way for Cypress to avoid that punch, which was aimed at his face. He couldn’t separate from the dagger, and he didn’t have enough time to undo the charm. So using his full power, he created a strong whirlwind, with air so fast and sharp that it cut the tree under Ginkgo, into shards. Ginkgo was knocked off the branch, and disappeared from Cypress’s view, who began to fall downward.

Before he could hit the ground, Cypress levitated upward, high above the trees. He used up a lot of stamina to create wind sharp enough to cut through the old thick trees of the forest, and he didn’t have much more stamina to fight, so following his instinct, he got far away from any attacks.

He quickly searched beneath himself for his brother.

Ginkgo was calmly walking on the ground, in the direction of his outer clothing that was badly tattered. He picked it up, and shook his head. He clearly had no intention to continue the fight.

Cypress didn’t know whether Ginkgo accepted the last attack as his own defeat, or whether he realized that Cypress was too tired to fight any longer, and thus considered the fight his own win.

Cypress slowly but carefully lowered himself behind the man.

“Wasn’t that too much?” Ginkgo asked, looking at the ruined coat.

“You were fighting seriously.”

“Nah, not at all,” Ginkgo took the ruined coat under the arm, and headed toward the villa.

Cypress landed on the ground, and followed behind, “then why were you trying to punch me?”

“Nah, I wouldn’t punch my younger brother. I just wanted to flick your forehead.”

Rowan Fruit quickly left the restaurant. He wasn’t lying about being busy. Ever since last week, he’d been trying to meet a certain person, who had moved to Sheepcrown last month.

He came to his apartment door at different times, but no one has been home. Eventually he left a charm on the door using a magical pen, and just several moments ago his charm activated and sent a signal to his ring that someone opened the door and entered the apartment.

As soon as he arrived by the apartment door, he knocked and announced himself, “this is Rowan Fruit. Please open the door.”

Rowan didn’t look anything but average. He had short black hair, average posture, and average looking face. He was a skinny guy in his twenties in a blue business suit, which had too short sleeves on hands and legs, making it look like something he bought at a store with used clothing. He had green socks with multicolored dots, which didn’t fit with the black formal shoes, and a dark green coat with a high collar, which hung over his business suit to keep him warm.

Nobody opened the door, so Rowan put his hand in his pocket, and took out an average lame looking pair of glasses. He put them on, and through the walls, he saw two people sitting in the living room. One was a man in his thirties, and another one a matriarch.

“I can see you inside,” Rowan said. “Would you be so kind to open the door, so you’ll spare yourself the fees of repairing it.”

The woman inside looked terrified, and the man was trying to calm her down by catching her hand, and forcing her to sit still.

“It looks like your mother is more intelligent than you are,” Rowan kicked the door, and the woman immediately jumped onto her feet, walked closer, and opened the door. Rowan changed his attitude instantly. He showed the best customer smile in the world, and greeted the woman with a gentlemanly bow. “Pardon madam, for the unannounced visit. May I speak with your son?”

“I have it here,” the woman said and opened the box standing on a shelf by the entrance. She handed Rowan a money card, “just give me a receipt.”

Rowan’s glasses had more than the power to see through the walls. They also had the power to see falsified items. He looked at the money card through his glasses, but his business name on the card wasn’t falsified, and the amount of money wasn’t fake either. It was a legitimate money card, so he took out a small notebook from his chest pocket and a pen. With the pen, he wrote the receipt, signed it and handed it to the woman, who carefully checked it.

“Thank you, madam, and have a nice day,” he said and left. He didn’t mind that she never said anything to him. It was better than most of the clients, who used vulgar language to send him off.

Now that his urgent business was finally taken care of, he had some free time, and he could meet up with Cypress, but Cypress didn’t seem to have anything important to talk about, so instead of wasting time on his lord, Rowan decided to move on with his business. The next client was in a city not far away from Sheepcrown.

Unfortunately, there weren’t any direct connections going on between the two cities, so he had no choice but to rent a carriage. By carriage, it was going to take him roughly a day to get there, so he calculated that he should arrive in the city of Duckfinger sometime next morning.

Among all the possible choices of carriages, he picked the cheapest one. A midsize carriage with two horses. He also rented a blanket with a heating charm on it, which could keep him warm for another twenty days. He left the city of Sheepcrown right away and headed for his next destination.

Late in the afternoon, when he was passing by a forest, he saw what looked like a pile of snow from the outside, but through his glasses he saw that there was a man under the snowpile. He stopped the horses, approached, and took one more look.

He kept his glasses on, when travelling, because it allowed him to spot hidden dangers, which posed a threat to anyone traveling alone in the wild. However, this time instead of a danger lurking behind the trees, he had found a man inside a pile of snow.

“Poor guy,” he said, as he realized that the man was likely killed by something.

Rowan knew that there were some creatures out there capable of freezing people. He didn’t want to meet either one of them, and luckily there was no sign of them anywhere in the vicinity.

Also considering how much snow had rested on the man, the man had to be standing dead there for quite a while, at least several days, if not more.

“Interesting,” Rowan said as he put his face closer to see the material of the man’s clothing. “This could sell for a lot,” he went back to his carriage, and moved it closer to the snowpile.

He used a small shovel, which came with the carriage, to remove most of the snow at the bottom of the frozen man. Afterward, Rowan was able to detach the pile from the ground just below the shoesoles of the frozen man by pushing it to the side. After the snowpile fell to the ground like a cut-down tree, Rowan cleared up the carriage floor, and all by himself he carried the frozen man onto the carriage.

Rowan was skinny, but he wasn’t weak. In his business suit, he didn’t look strong at all, because the suit was hiding his well-trained muscles, which hadn’t grown bigger no matter how much he trained. However, Rowan didn’t care much for his looks, as long as he had the strength he needed to handle whatever he encountered.

He wrapped the frozen man into a rug, then covered the rug with a heat blanket in order to slowly detach the frozen clothes from the frozen body. After he finished the setup, he moved to the front, sat down in the driver’s seat and told the horses to go. The carriage began to move forward, as the snow attached to the frozen man began to melt.

Rowan had a simple plan. He was going to take the expensive looking materials off and dump the corpse somewhere in the forest. After all, the man died in the forest, and the rules of forests were different from the rules of human settlements. A dead one in the forest was a treasure chest for whatever found him. And Rowan was doing nothing other than following the laws of nature. He would take the materials, which he had found of value for himself, and leave the meat, blood, and bones for other inhabitants of the wild, who had the same right as him to take whatever they wanted to take from the one, who no longer needed it.

The concept of caring for the dead or ceremonial burials didn’t exist in the vast wilderness away from human settlements. In nature, the only respect the dead received was the gratitude of those, whom their deaths nourished.

Several hours later, Rowan looked at the load in the carriage. It was considerably flatter, so the chances were high that it was done defrosting. He stopped the horses, and approached the corpse. He could see quite well due to another function of his glasses, which allowed him to see at night in infrared.

He took off the blanket, and unwrapped the rug. He crouched down and looked at the beautiful material of the man’s jacket.

When the corpse suddenly sat up, he punched it straight in the face. The corpse landed on its back flat on the carriage floor.

Rowan blinked.

He acted by instinct, but did the corpse just sit up? Did he just punch it? Did it really happen, or did he imagine it? He wanted to check if the corpse was breathing, but he didn’t want to be too close to the corpse’s head. In his mind, he recalled infos about ancient creatures called zombies, who were monsters made of dead corpses possessed by demons.

It was already nighttime, and the only source of light came from the moon, which was thin like a bent needle. In other words, it was a dark night. And all good children always knew that dark nights were scary nights. And the only way Rowan could see anything in that scary darkness was through his charmed glasses. He didn’t want to lose his glasses, so he was reluctant to put his face too close to potential danger.

He waited for the corpse to move again, but it didn’t. He started feeling colder and colder, so he wrapped himself up in the charmed blanket. He stayed still, awaiting something, but nothing happened. He felt warm in the blanket, and he could see fairly well with his glasses, so slowly he relaxed, and his mind began to create a logical explanation.

He had heard in the past, that corpses can bend after death due to sudden changes in temperature, or for some other chemistry-related reasons due to processes that occur within a dead body. Surely, that corpse wasn’t alive, and he was being cautious for no good reason.

“That hurt.”

It wasn’t his voice.

Rowan sat stiff after he heard the voice, and he waited to hear it again, but it didn’t repeat. While he was staring at the corpse, its hand moved to its nose - right where Rowan hit it.

It was a dark night.

He was alone in a forest, far away from any city.

And he encountered a zombie.

Was it the end? Was it some sort of divine punishment for how adamant he was at getting back his money from his borrowers? Was the situation really that bad? Did he have a chance to survive? What the hell did he drag into his carriage?

The corpse groaned, and Rowan fell backward.

“I was wrong to get up suddenly like that,” the corpse spoke, “but why punch me so hard?”

Rowan just sat there with his mouth slightly open.

“By the way, thanks.”

Rowan blinked, “for what?”

“For defrosting my body. I thought I’m going to have to wait until my body thaws in Faev.”

“You’re alive?” Rowan tried to search through his memories of any info on humans, who could still be alive after being frozen. Nope, there weren’t any. Once completely frozen, any human would have died. Unless they weren’t frozen.

Maybe something protected the man from freezing, but then what about food. He couldn’t have survived without eating or drinking. No, no, no way. This was too crazy.

While Rowan’s head was full of thoughts, the man sat up again and answered his question, “same as always.”

Rowan took another look at the man, who was looking at him, “you’re a human.”

“Yeah, I am,” the man answered the question that was never asked.

Rowan scratched his head. He never expected such a thing, and he didn’t know how to proceed. But at least, the man in front of him was a human. That was for certain, because Rowan scanned the man’s body through the glasses, and all his internal and external organs were healthy, fully functional and definitely human.

“By the way, are you going to the sea? If you’re going there, can you give me a ride?”

“I’m going to Duckfinger.”

“Sounds good, give me a ride there.”

“If you want a ride, I need a payment,” Rowan stood up and looked down at the other man. His legs were still shaking a bit, but if he was dealing with a human, he believed that he could manage.

“I don’t have any money.”

“It doesn’t have to be money,” Rowan wondered if the man was willing to part with his clothes, but the man gave him another offer.

“I can be your bodyguard. I’m strong, and I lived through many battles with demons.”

What demons? Rowan could tell right away that the man was lying. “Oh really? You fought against demons?”

“Yeah, it’s been a long time, but I used to be a slayer.”

A slayer was a dead profession. It existed over ten hundred years ago, and specialized in exterminating demons and other creatures, who allied themselves with the demons during the war.

“Fine, sir slayer, I’ll hire you as a bodyguard and a servant,” Rowan didn’t believe a word of what the man said, but he wanted to see whether the man was useful or not, and in order to see it, he had to observe him for a while. “Your first job will be to lead the horses to the city, while I take a nap.”

“Sure,” the man moved to the front of the carriage. “By the way, what should I call you?”

“Rowan is fine.”

“Got it, Rowan. By the way, I’m Willow Leaf.”

“Wake me up, if anything happens,” Rowan said and sat on the floor, wrapped in a blanket. He closed his eyes, but he didn’t go to sleep. He also didn’t remove his glasses. He was listening, and thinking.

The wind howled between the trees, as the carriage steadily moved forward. The walls creaked every once in a while on an uneven road hidden by the even surface of the snow layer. As horses went on, Rowan could hear the sound of metals clinging and hoofs stepping on the snow. While this monotony continued, Rowan thought and thought of what to do with this weird stranger.

“Hey.”

Rowan opened his eyes, and saw Willow squatting in front of him. It was daytime.

When did he fall asleep?!

“We’re here,” Willow said and pointed at the city in the distance. “But seriously, times sure have changed. Last time I was here, this was but a small village behind a waterfall.”

The city of Duckfinger was built around two cliffs. In the middle of the city, there was a large river, which flew down the cliff and formed a gigantic waterfall. Right behind the waterfall, in the rock, there was a historical city center. And while a lot of buildings were built within the rock of the two cliffs, the majority of the city was built on top of the cliffs and in the surrounding area.

Rowan’s carriage was standing on the higher grounds, so he had a good view of the city below, and the river that was flowing down on the opposite cliff, with several sturdy bridges on each side of the waterfall joining the two city halves.

“Let’s go then,” Rowan said and took over the horses.

He led the carriage onto a paved road and following its course, he drove onto a wide stone bridge. He was heading toward the other half of the city, which was still quite far apart. From the bridge, they could see many other types of bridges, which came in many widths, from very narrow to very wide, and built from diverse materials.

After he passed the waterfall, Rowan stopped the carriage not far from the cliff and asked a passerby for directions to the info center, which turned out to be right around the corner. However, he never went inside, because the place he was searching for was next to the info center. So, he went straight to the vehicle rental agency, and returned the carriage and other items, which he had loaned for the journey.

“If you had woken me up earlier, we could have saved some money,” Rowan looked at the receipt, as he walked away with Willow from the vehicle rental agency.

“I woke you up as soon as we arrived.”

“Hmmm… were you sleeping?” Rowan suspected that the man took a break during the journey.

“No,” Willow sounded frank, so Rowan decided to drop the subject.

Rowan took out something like a hand-drawn map, and followed the line on the map, which led from the info center to someone’s house. He also checked some other of his documents, and searched through more papers.

While Rowan was busy getting himself ready to go to his destination, Willow was observing the city around him. He looked at the main street, where houses were built of dark grey rocks. Many walls, especially those on the first floor, were decorated with ivy. The walls on the second floor were mostly bare, except for several old buildings. 

There were some very tall buildings, but these ones were built with wood. Most houses had staircases outside by the housewall, which led to the roofs, but there was nothing on the roofs. Almost all houses had two rows of windows on each floor. The bottom row had windows, which were large and square, and right above this row, there was another row of windows, which were small and round.

The roads were naturally bare, and people walked or drove on the natural dark stones of the cliff, which had been polished to remove any sharp edges. There was no differentiation between a road for vehicles, and a road for pedestrians, so everything was mixed together. Vehicles had to drive slowly, paying attention to the kids playing outside, and the people were walking, while always aware of various vehicles around them.

Rowan finally got everything in order, and moved toward his destination. At the same time, Willow also moved his feet and followed him like a well-trained guard dog.

Rowan and Willow walked up a gentle hill on a wide street, away from the cliff and alongside the wide river on their right side. At some moment, Rowan turned left, and then they began walking through streets too narrow for most vehicles to pass through. Following a wavy path, they walked up a steep hill, and arrived at a house, which was carved inside one large rock.

Rowan knocked on the door, and after a long moment, a woman opened coughing and looking sick. She held a young boy in her hands, and there was another kid standing by her side.

“I don’t have any money,” she said in a barely audible voice.

Rowan rolled his eyes, “seriously.” He kicked the door, and walked inside.

“What are you doing?!” she yelled with so much energy. “I’ll call the guards!”

Willow stood outside. He wasn’t given any order, so he just watched as Rowan was looking around the house. Eventually he took a bunch of small things, and put them in his pocket.

“No! Give that back!” the woman dropped the little boy to the floor without any care for her child, ran to the table, took a bottle and raised her hand, ready to hit the intruder.

Rowan looked back right at her. “Are you sure you want to hit me?” his low voice sounded like a warning growl of a wolf. “I’m done, so I won’t search for you anymore. Or do you prefer I visit you for the rest of your life?”

The woman’s body shook in anger, but she dropped her hand. Rowan stepped out of the house, and Willow followed him. They weren’t going for long, and soon Rowan was knocking on the front door of another house.

A young man opened the door, and smiled. “Hey, Rowan.”

Seeing the bright smile of the young man, Rowan’s face twisted in slight irritation. “Again?”

The young man raised up his palms, “life is hard. Wanna take a look?” he opened the door wide, and let them see the room, which had nothing except for a bed, a couch, and clothes on a rack.

Rowan put his left palm on his face covering his eyes, “seriously.”

The young man took out from his pocket a ring, and gave it to Rowan, who inspected the thing with his glasses on. Then he sighed and pocketed the ring.

“See you later,” the young man cheerfully byed them.

On their way down the hill, Willow spoke up, “I don’t understand,” he sounded deeply confused. “Can you explain what are you doing?”

“Is it that difficult to tell? I’m collecting debts.”

“Then why were you acting so differently each time?”

“Ah, that woman, well, I was being patient with her for four years already. I gave her a loan, when I was still a newbie in Hermes. At that time, I didn’t know how to tell apart good clients from bad clients. And I didn’t know that she’s a regular borrower, who takes loans from inexperienced lenders, then she plays a game of being poor to avoid repayment. In reality, she’s actually quite rich, and she’s very good at hiding it. Fortunately, I didn’t lend her a lot, so it was easy to find several very expensive items to cover the loan.”

“And the man?”

“That’s one of my early mistakes. I didn’t calculate ahead of time the likelihood of getting my money back. That man is really bad with managing money, so he’s always poor,” he took out the ring he pocketed earlier. “This is actually worth more than his monthly paycheck. He’s doing a lot of volunteer work around elders, so I bet some milady gave him this ring out of pity to help him get a wife, but with his financial skills, there is no chance of that ever happening.”

“So even though he's poor, he’s still paying back the loan?”

“If he keeps this up, it’ll take him five hundred years to pay back what he owes me. In other words, due to my ignorance, I lost quite a lot of money, but at least he’s honest, so I don’t have to worry about him trying to scam me.”

“You won’t try to force him?”

“Force him what?”

“To pay you the money. You could make him your slave, or sell his body.”

Rowan laughed. “What kind of joke is this? Who would ever do something like that?” He turned his face to Willow, “where did you even get such an insane idea?”

“I guess things like that no longer happen, now that the demons were chased out of this world.”

“Oh I got it. You read about it in some history books. I also read some books about the ancient past as well, although they never covered it much in school. By the way, you said that you know how to fight?”

“I do.”

“I hope you’re not lying, because I want to use you for this next one.”

“Do many of your borrowers live in this city?”

“Duckfinger was the city, where I studied on my second year. It was also the place, where I started my business, and while most of the clients had already paid back the loans, there were still four people here who didn’t. And I also plan to wrap it all up today for the remaining two.”

“Got it.”

Rowan led forward, and this time he used no map. They walked down the wide street toward the cliff. At the end of the cliff, there was a handrail and two staircases on each side. One staircase was for going up, and the other staircase for going down. Both of them stepped down on the staircase, which was built right into the cliffwall.

Each staircase had a tall handrail, which had a cross pattern so thorough that an adult man couldn’t even fit a hand into the handrail. It was a safety device to protect kids from falling off the staircase, but even with the best protection, some kids were still trying to climb the handrail, and got severely scolded by their mothers.

Three floors down, Rowan stepped off the staircase and moved into the cave inside the cliff. At the entrance of the cave, there was a large red gate, wide open. Above the gate, written in gold was the name of the place: School of Hermes.

People of all ages were going in and out of the place, and it was quite a busy entrance. After passing through the gate, the scenery changed to a marketplace. Except here, all the adults were buyers, while all the kids were running the stalls as sellers and owners of their private businesses. The place was so busy and loud, that any quiet conversation couldn’t be heard among the shouts of bargaining customers and yells of dissatisfied sellers.

When they finally passed the marketplace, it got quiet enough for them to talk. Rowan smiled and told Willow, “a lot of adults come here, because they think it’s easy to scam a kid, but this is actually a training ground for the students. All those greedy bastards are training the next generation of clever businessmen, and they don’t even realize it.”

They entered a long and large hallway. Each wall was decorated with paintings. There was an expensive rug in the middle of the floor, and a row of chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. They kept walking until they arrived at the end of the hallway. There were three large gates side by side, and two guards blocking the way to the middle door.

“I have an appointment with the chairman of the Duckfinger branch.”

“Name?” the guard on the right asked, as he pulled out a notebook from his pocket.

“Rowan Erle Hinoki Fruit.”

“You may enter,” the guard responded after he found the name in his notebook.

Both guards stood still, while Rowan approached and opened the gate in the middle.

Together with Willow, they entered another hallway. This time it was more narrow. The ceiling looked like purple water floating above them. The walls were made of pearls, and every one meter there was a torch-like lamp in a golden holder on the wall. The floor was made out of ambers of diverse colors and sizes, but all of them were smooth like a well-polished pavement.

“The gate on the right leads to the women's dormitory, and the gate on the left was ours, the mens’ dormitory,” Rowan smiled, recalling his earlier years in the school. “This is the third time, that I’m using the middle gate.”

“Have you ever used the right gate?”

“What for? To be beaten up by women?”

“So you don’t know what’s behind the right gate.”

“And no woman knows what’s behind the left gate, so it’s all fair,” he stopped in front of another gate, which had a set of two doors. “We’re here.” He turned his face to Willow, “let’s see how strong you are.”

Rowan knocked on the door, and both doors opened by themselves. There was nothing but darkness in the room, but he stepped in anyway. Once Willow stepped in after Rowan, the doors closed behind them, and the darkness changed into a bright chamber of a cozy living room.

In the middle of the chamber, on a comfortable, expensive couch sat a man with one of his legs on the couch footer. An expensive wine bottle was standing at the table next to the couch, and the man was holding some documents in his hand.

“Perfect timing,” he said. “I was just reviewing our deal.” He put down his leg on the floor, and sat straight facing Rowan.

“I want my money back,” said the graduate of Hermes.

“As we agreed in the deal, I’ll give you back everything, if you or your subordinate can win a fight against an opponent of my choice. Just one win is enough.”

“Who’s the opponent?” Rowan looked at the guards standing in the room near the walls. When he came to get his money back two years ago, he had to fight one of them and lost miserably. Because of that, he couldn’t get the debt that the chairman of the Duckfinger branch owned him.

“Your opponent is me,” the chairman snapped his fingers, and one of the guards put a table in front of the couch, and another guard put a chess board on top of the table. “If you win this fight, I’ll return you the money.”

Rowan’s face was red with pent-up anger, “what joke is this?”

“Our agreement never specifies the type of fight, so anything counts as a fight as long as there’s a winner and a loser. So, please sit down,” the chairman pointed at the armchair with his open palm.

Rowan took a deep breath, and closed his eyes for a moment to calm down. After he opened his eyes, he looked directly at the chairman, “I don’t know how to play chess.”

The chairman’s countenance didn’t change. “Then it’s my win, unfortunately.”

Rowan swallowed whatever comment he wanted to say. He began to understand that most likely, he wouldn’t ever get his money back. The chairman knew all of his weaknesses and he would always choose a fight, which Rowan couldn’t win. Moreover, he would take into account whomever Rowan brought over. Since last time, it was a physical spar, the chairman must have guessed that the man, standing next to Rowan, was a fighter, and thus unlikely to perform well in a mental fight.

He was already willing to give up, when he realized that Willow was staring at him, as if he wanted to say something.

“I know how to play chess,” Willow said, when Rowan finally looked back at him. “Want me to give it a try?”

Rowan shrugged his shoulders, “sure.” There was no loss in trying, when the alternative was a definite loss without trying.

Willow sat down at the armchair, and both men arranged their pieces. Willow, as the challenger, had white pieces, and he moved first. Right afterward, the chairman smirked, and looked at Willow. “By the way, I don’t know your name, as Rowan’s subordinate, I’m sure, you know, but if you lose this fight, Rowan’s interest will double.”

Interest?

Willow looked at the men in front of him, and immediately he understood the situation. Of course, the chairman didn’t borrow any money from Rowan. It was Rowan, who borrowed the money from the chairman.

“I didn’t know,” Willow said in a calm tone, after the chairman moved his chess piece.

“If you do win this fight, however,” the chairman spoke while Willow was moving his chess piece, “then all of Rowan’s debt is cancelled, and I’ll give him back the interest he has paid over the years.”

Willow responded with “hmmm” but he didn’t say another word, and he didn’t look away from the chess board. The chairman continued to say something about Rowan every one or two moves, but Willow’s responses were always some mindless moans of acknowledgment. Not too long into the game, it became apparent that Willow was really good at chess, and the chairman stopped talking and fully concentrated on the board.

“It’s my loss,” the chairman announced, even though his king and queen were still in the game.

Rowan opened his eyes wide, and acted as if he wasn’t sure whether he heard it right.

“You won, Rowan,” the chairman directed his face at the graduate, and he snapped his fingers at one of the guards, “prepare for him a money card with all the interest that he has paid until now.”

The guard bowed down, and left the room through a side door.

“This was very surprising,” the chairman said after taking a wineglass into his hands. “I always do a thorough research on my students, so each time they come here, they are always faced with a fight that they cannot win. Two years ago, I asked you to fight my guard, because I knew you weren’t any good at brawling, but you spent the last two years learning from a master of combat, training every day and night. So today I wanted to see your face, after you realized that hard work alone is a waste of time.”

“So you spied on me?”

“Observed is a word, I prefer to use,” the chairman sipped the wine. “To my surprise, you didn’t come alone. Even more surprising, you brought someone, who won against me. Just so you know, I’m not that weak in chess.” He looked at Willow, “your subordinate is that good. Can you tell me how you got so good at chess?” the last question was directed at Willow.

“I spent three hundred years playing it with a demon.”

The chairman laughed hard. “Okay, got it. I won’t pry into the secrets of your strength.”

The guard returned with a money card, and handed it to Rowan. Willow stood up off the armchair, and approached the lucky guy, who was on the verge of crying, while taking the money card.

“Take care, and keep growing,” the chairman said to them. “Most Hermes graduates never win their interest back, but those who do are always among the greatest ones. So I’m looking forward to seeing you rise in the future.”

“Thanks for the money,” Rowan responded and together with Willow, he headed back.

On his way through the hallway, he kept admiring the money card, and he only pocketed it, once they were near the exit.

“So now there’s only one more borrower to find,” Rowan stretched his body, as he stood right in front of the staircase by the cliff. “If he’s in his usual place, then he’s all the way down,” he said to Willow, and they both descended the stairs all the way to the bottom. None of them counted how many stairs there were, but surely there were more than hundreds.

When they finally arrived at the bottom, they were the only ones there. Most people didn’t go beyond the middle of the cliff, and although the staircase continued all the way to the bottom, rarely did anyone have a reason to go there.

At the very bottom of the cliff, there was a large lake-like river. The water from the waterfall, which fell down into it, kept stirring the lake creating strong waves. Rowan entered the cave right above the lake, but to his surprise there was nothing there. After his eyes adjusted to the darker areas, he entered the cave, and approached a wall. He found some switch in the wall, and pushed it.

A hidden door in the wall opened and revealed a hole the size of a mailbox. Inside, Rowan found an envelope, which he took out. While walking out of the dark interior of the cave and toward the edge of the lake, he took the letter out of the plastic envelope, and read it in the sunlight from the sun shining on the sky high above them.

“I’m going to Storkhat. Catch me, if you can. -Loulu”

Willow saw the content of the letter from the side.

“Before, you mentioned something about going to the sea?” Rowan asked Willow.

“Yeah, I need to get to the ocean. There’s something I need in there.”

“Storkhat is a port city. Do you want to tag along?” Rowan felt a lot of gratitude toward Willow for winning him back his interest from the chairman, and he saw the current situation as an opportunity to repay him for his help.

“Sounds good to me.”

“Great, so for now let’s go back to the surface. We’ll find a lodge for tonight in Duckfinger, and then we’ll leave for Storkhat tomorrow morning.”

A week had passed since Traito began living in the temple. On the dawn of Monday morning, he looked outside, and saw that all the demons had left, and there wasn’t even one of them near the city of Sheepcrown.

“Odd,” he said.

Brother Hasty came back from the restroom, and was ready to begin his morning prayers, when he heard Traito’s comment. “The world is constantly changing.”

“That’s not what’s odd. Demons never let go of their grudges.”

“Have you been sleeping tonight?”

“I don’t sleep. I don’t need to sleep,” Traito felt like the monk should have realized by now.

“Then how did you miss the night visitor?” the monk smiled as he bent down his knees by the bed.

“What night visitor?” Traito looked at him, but Brother Hasty had already began his morning prayers, and didn’t answer Traito’s question.

After observing the outside for a while longer, Traito jumped out through the window, and went to the area in front of the entrance gate. Just a week ago, demons attacked him there, but today indeed there was no demon anywhere around.

However, there was a faint smell of roses in the air, that anyone experienced with the spiritual world could instantly recognize. It was a tiny remnant of the presence of the second most powerful being of Heaven.

Now it all made sense, how Traito had missed the night visitor. She was just that powerful of a being. If she didn’t want to show herself, there was no way to detect her.

“So you’re starting your game once again,” it appeared as if he was talking to the air, but he knew that God was always listening. “ It’s always the demons, who never learn, so I don’t even feel sorry for Anagape Infida.”

He had an evil smirk on his face, as he looked in the direction of the school of Hecate. “Anyway, thanks for letting me play. I’m sure that I’ll enjoy your games as long as I get to win.”

He flew like a torpedo toward the school of Hecate. He was planning to find that kid, who had seen him the other day, but he had to stop suddenly, when an angel appeared in front of him. The angel wore a golden robe with a hood, which covered most of his face. His feet were hidden under the robe, and his hands were inside the loose space of the opposite sleeves.

Traito could see only the lips of the angel, which were pale pink and surrounded by a shining white skin.

“Where are you heading?” the angel asked.

“To find that kid, who could see me,” Traito expected that the angel must have already heard something from God, and there was no point trying to lie.

“It’s too early,” the angel responded.

“So what does God want me to do?”

The angel separated his hands, and took them out of the sleeves. His hands were just as white as his face.

Traito recalled the world ruled by Anagape Infida, where humans were so stupid as to call skin white, when it actually wasn’t white but merely a faint hue of orange. The angels had true white skin, as white as snow, and Traito was sure that if he ever told any of those fools in that world that angels had white skin, those idiots would paint angels’ skin with a human skin. Oh wait, that was exactly how those morons would always paint angels.

His thoughts were interrupted, when the angel opened his right palm, where he held up a rose in front of him. The red rose flower had no leaves nor a stem. Then he opened his left palm, where he held a blue gemstone in the shape of a teardrop. “Take them.”

Traito took both items with one hand. The blue stone was cold, hard and glossy, while the red rose was warm, soft and matte. “And?”

“Go to the place, where everything shall begin, and wait.”

“How long do I wait?”

“Until you receive the third piece.”

Traito looked at the two items in his hand, and understood that there was one more piece, which was missing. “So where is that place, where everything shall begin?”

A small white bird flew out of the angel’s hood, “follow it,” were the angel’s last words before he disappeared, and Traito flew after the bird.

He passed many lands on his way. He looked over many cities, and villages. He saw travelers and vehicles on the roads. He flew above rivers and seas. He sped past a group of dragons, who faintly realized his presence, but quickly ignored it, and he arrived by a wooden house hidden deep inside a vast forest.

It was a two story family house. From the front there was a patio on the right side and a room on the left side. Going up the four stairsteps, one would arrive at the patio. Right in front, there was a window covered by a curtain, and on the left side, there was the double-door entrance inside the house.

Traito passed through the wall next to the window directly into the living room. There were stairs on his right leading up to the second floor. On his left there was an open entryway into the kitchen. Right before the kitchen, on the wall facing the patio, there was a double-door entrance to the entry room, which guests would normally use, if they had walked in through the front door. Traito however ignored all doors and even the staircase.

He flew right up and through the ceiling. There were two bedrooms on his left, the staircase on his right, and one empty room in front of him. He flew up through the roof, and circled the house looking at it from outside.

Traito stopped in front of the house, and looked at all the snow gathered on the patio, with no signs of any footsteps. Even inside the house everything was covered by dust, so surely nobody lived there for a very long time. Yet the house was built sturdy, so whoever built it was planning to make it last for many years.

He took on a physical appearance and decided to look at the house like a human would. He approached the front doors, which were locked. He didn’t plan to break the lock, so for just one moment he returned to his spiritual form in order to slip through.

He entered the entry room and looked through the cabinets, but found nothing interesting in there. It had one long wardrobe on the left wall filled with outdoor clothes, and a bunch of hooks on the opposite wall, holding one umbrella, a coat, and an empty bag.

He passed through the interior doors on his right, which were located between the hooks and the exterior doors. This double-door entrance wasn't locked and each door had a pretty frosted glass on it.

At first he took a long look at the living room, which had a shelfcase filled with books right underneath the staircase, then a sofa set on top of a large rug and a fireplace by the left wall. There was one window looking out at the patio in the front of the house, and another window at the center of the wall in the back. Both windows were covered by dark red curtains.

The walls of the living room had no decorations, and all the furnitures were covered by dust. There were some large pots located here and there, but the plants growing in them had been long dead for many years. 

Traito turned left and entered the kitchen. Right in front of him, there was a table with six chairs around it. The table and the chairs had just as much dust as the floor had.

On the left wall by the table there was a tapestry, and on the wall behind the table - one large window. Next to the window, there was an oven with a second window above it, then a sink in a corner not too far away from the oven. The wall opposite to the oven was made of nothing but cabinets. On the wall at the deep end of the kitchen, by the sink there was another door.

Traito sneaked his head in, to see what was on the other side, and he was somewhat disappointed to find several shelves of food products.

“Just a pantry,” he said and pulled back his head.

He walked through the kitchen back to the living room. Then he climbed the dust-covered staircase and landed on the second floor at an area alike a balcony, with rails built to protect anyone from falling down to the first floor. 

He walked up to the center of the floor. There were two doors in front of him, and one door on his right side. The first room on his right side was empty, so he skipped going inside. Instead he headed to the adjacent room, where there were only two furnitures: one bed, and an empty wardrobe. The bed had all its bedsheets on, and was tidy and clean, except for the dust that has gathered on it over the years.

Afterward he went to check the third room. When he stood in front of the door to the last room, he realized that it wasn’t completely shut like all the other doors. He tried shutting it, and the mechanism worked, so there must have been another reason, why someone didn’t shut the door all the way. Maybe they were in a hurry to leave?

Inside the room, there was a large bed, and a small crib next to the bed. There were many clothes in the wardrobes, both male and female, but all of them had been buried by dust, confirming that no one touched them for many years. On the other side of the bedroom, near the window, there was a large open chest with sewing and knitting materials, as well as some unfinished clothing for kids.

“So this is the place, where everything shall begin,” Traito passed through the floor and stood by the table in the kitchen.

He put the red rose and the blue stone on the table among the dust, which certainly wouldn’t harm the items, and looked at the shelfcase in the living room. He approached it, and looked through the titles, when he saw something that looked like a piece of paper stuck in-between.

He pulled it out from between two books, and looked at the photo of two people. One of them was a tall woman, with a long golden braid. The other person was a short fat man with a beard below his mouth. Traito recalled the clothes he saw in the bedroom. The female clothes were for a tall skinny woman, and the male clothes were for a short fatso.

“So they used to live here,” he said and put the picture back, where he found it. “I wonder what their kid looks like,” he said, recalling the crib.

He passed through the back wall and entered the area behind the house. There he saw a small shack, where wood was stored, and a large bush growing next to the shack. He travelled through the forest surrounding the house, but he didn’t find any other man-made infrastructure in the area.

The house was indeed hidden far away from any civilization.

“So boring,” he said.

Few moments later, he was lying on the dusty sofa in the living room. He didn’t mind the dust, or more like the dust didn’t mind him. As long as he stayed in his spiritual form, none of his movements shifted the dust’s location.

A week passed and nothing had changed.

“How long do I have to wait?” he wondered aloud, knowing that no one will hear him except for the one, who hears everything.

Another week passed, and nothing had changed.

“The weather’s perfect. Let’s go for a stroll,” Traito said, and floated around the house amidst the blizzard.

He flew round the house twice, and on his third round, he stopped by the shack. Oddly the bush next to the shack was gone, or maybe he couldn’t see it due to the snow. He made several more rounds, and came back inside.

The next morning, the sun was shining and there was no trace of the blizzard, except for the snow, which buried the entrance to the house.

“It’ll melt eventually,” Traito didn’t bother wasting his skills on a pointless manual work.

Instead in order to have some fun he walked on top of the snow piled up around the house. Any normal creature would fall into the pile due to its weight, but Traito’s weight was of no importance.

He walked around the house to see the shack. It was almost buried under the snow, but the top of the roof was still sticking out. Right next to the shack, there should have been a bush somewhat bigger than the shack, but there was nothing there.

“Did it get flattened by the snow?” Traito looked under his feet.

He wondered whether he should use his demonic senses to find out the location of that bush, but he chose not to waste his powers on something so trivial. He knew that he was in danger of an attack anytime, and he wanted his powers to be in top condition, if he had to fight.

“Well, I’ll find out after the snow melts,” and he went on, walking around the house.

On the eastern side of the house there wasn’t much snow, because the blizzard was blowing from the west. And right by that side of the house, there was a big bush sitting by the wall.

It was that same bush, which was next to the shack before the blizzard came.

“So that’s what happened,” Traito smiled and approached the bush. “Hello there,” he grabbed one of the branches and shook it like a handshake.

The bush moved, and Traito could see a patriarch's face hidden inside the bush.

“This is rare,” Traito said much calmer, and in a rather respectful tone for a demon. “I’ve met a lot of fake ones, but it’s my first time in over a thousand years to meet a real druid.”

“The sun is already up, and I’m still so sleepy,” the man inside the bush said.

Druids were rare beings, and there were usually only several of them around the world. The low number of druids was due to the difficult requirements that had to be met for a druid to be born.

When an ancient tree growing in a pure environment accumulated a considerable amount of positive energy over its lifespan, it could give birth to a druid under one condition: that something, like a bird, created a hole inside its trunk and left there a seed from a fruit of Yggdrasil.

The seed would give birth to a child, which looked like a human baby, but this child would be nourished with treesap instead of milk. Then it would eat treebark, which it would detach from the trunk. Until the age of forty, every druid would look like a human, but after the age of forty, plants would begin to grow on his body. These plants were a part of the druid’s body, and couldn’t be pulled out without harming him.

“If you’re here can I ask you a question?” Traito spoke.

All druids had an ability, which made them the most respected creatures in the world. Not only did they hear and understand the language of all the plants, they could also give commands to all the plants. These commands weren’t something like “move” or “fight”, because most plants couldn’t change their location, even if they wanted to, but they nevertheless could do a lot of things, which humans wouldn’t think of possible.

Plants existed almost anywhere in the world, whether on land or in water. Even in the most dangerous and unfriendly environments, some oddity of a plant would find a way to live and grow there. In other words, plants knew about everything, that was happening around the world.

If a druid needed to find someone, he only needed one command, and immediately all the plants would search for the man. If a druid wanted to know what was happening in a town on the other side of the world, all he needed was one command, and soon he would have all the infos traveling back to him from one plant to another.

“It depends on the question,” the druid answered.

“Do you know what happened to the people, who lived here?”

“Demons usually know more than druids,” his statement wasn’t the answer to Traito’s question.

“I’m new to this world, so there’s a lot I don’t know,” he explained himself. “So do you know who lived here and what happened to them?”

“And if I do?”

“Then can you tell me?”

“If you tell me,” the druid offered an exchange of infos.

“As long as I know the answer,” Traito agreed to the deal.

“What is your name?”

Traito didn’t answer. His silence meant that he understood that the druid wanted to know his real name in exchange for the infos on people who lived in the house. However, demons would never tell their real names to anyone, not even to other demons. If asked for a name, they’d lie by making up a nonexistent name or by using someone else’s name, such as a name of an angel or a human. In rare cases, when they’d refused to give any name, others would give them nicknames to tell them apart, but demons hated those nicknames the most, as they never wanted to be called that.

Traito knew that the druid wouldn’t accept his answer, if he just told him the same answer as he did with the monk. The druid wanted to know his real name, and revealing his name was something that no demon would ever do.

It was odd for a druid to ask that. He should have known that demons didn’t reveal their names. Was it his way of telling Traito that he wouldn’t give out the names of the house’s residents, or was there something else to this question.

Traito had already turned all the demons into his enemies, and in the kingdom of God, no one ever hid their names, so maybe now was a good time to change his habit.

He moved his lips, pronouncing his name.

In the forest that surrounded them, the wind hummed a melody between the trees. The dry leaves, which failed to fall down before the snow, rustled in the treetops. The snow on the ground crunched, whenever a bigger snowbundle or an icicle fell off a tree. And the sound of Traito’s real name was so natural, that it mixed together with the sounds of the forest, and disappeared among them.

No one heard his name, except for the trees, and the druid, who stood in front of him. The druid looked straight into Traito’s eyes for a long time, analyzing the sounds that he had just heard.

“I’ll keep it a secret,” he said, and Traito knew that it wasn’t a promise, it was a law.

For Traito it felt weird. He told someone his real name, and yet his name had remained an unknown. Was this how self-introductions work in Heaven? And then he recalled, that even though all angels would always use their real names, no one was ever able to pronounce these names correctly, so in the end no one knew their real names.

The druid finally answered Traito’s question, but in a way that only another druid could understand. “In this house, there lived a pear tree that couldn’t have fruits, and a cherry tree that yielded a fig fruit. They were cut down by a woodpecker, who took away the forbidden plum.”

Traito blinked twice. Was this how all druids talked? He never spoke with a druid before, but he was surprised to hear such a riddle-like answer.

“I have one more question,” Traito began.

“That will cost you two answers,” the druid replied.

Traito stared at him dangerously squeezing his eyes, before he agreed, “fine.”

“What is her real name? What is his real name?”

Being a demon, Traito’s intelligence far exceeded human intelligence, so he easily deducted whose names the druid wanted to know. “I don’t know Anagape’s real name, and Nefastus never told anyone his real name.”

The druid closed his eyes, and Traito knew that he wouldn't hear any more answers to his questions.

The month of Toas flew by so fast that most students were surprised that it was already the afternoon of the forty first day of Toas, just a day away from the month of Peizh. However, none of the first year students were bored in the last three weeks.

After the midterm exams ended, all the students rejoiced upon their scores. Younger students were glad that they scored much higher than they expected, while older students rejoiced that they somehow did not fail their exams. Unfortunately for all of them, that joy didn’t last long, as soon their curriculum got even harder.

In the class of four of four B, Cacao began to teach about some boring events that had a strong effect on magic and its use throughout the ages. Even though the topics felt like useless infos to the students, they were all certain that they had no choice but to memorize all that history. And just like that, their weekly Friday tests got longer and getting points became harder.

To add to the workload, Sorrel began to teach them about charms, and while in theory it sounded super simple, in practice it turned out to be nearly impossible.

“Witchshit,” Linden cursed from the sofa, for the nth time, as he kept trying to make a large sheet of paper stay still in the air, but the stupid sheet always refused to obey, and kept on falling down.

“Do witches even poop?” Yew wondered for the first time. He heard the word before, but it never crossed his mind to ponder its meaning.

“Who knows?” Linen shrugged his shoulders.

“This is impossible,” Spruce sighed as he poked a leaf floating in water in a bowl on the table in Yew’s kitchen.

Once more he set the small leaf on fire using the dagger that he held in his other hand, but as soon as he withdrew his spell, the fire disappeared.

“We’re using too little magic,” Aspen, sitting next to Spruce, was trying to charm a small sheet, no bigger than a cherry.

Theoretically, all they needed to do was to spell the object like always, but with one extra step, which was to apply more magic than necessary. If they did it correctly, then the remaining magic would continue to sustain the object in the air, even after the spell got cancelled. The amount of magic embedded into the object would determine how long the charm lasted.

In order to boost his chances, Aspen decided to practice using a very small sheet no bigger than a cherry. The teacher herself had told them that they will have a higher likelihood of success with a smaller object.

Spruce was also practicing on a small leaf. Only Linden was using a fairly big sheet of paper.

Yew, however, wasn’t practicing at all. He sat at his desk with a small sheet in front of him. Every once in a while, he would spell the sheet to make it float, in order to give off the appearance of someone, who was learning how to charm. Yet in reality he hadn’t tried to charm it even once, afraid that he’d succeed way too quickly.

A knock on the front door made all four boys look at each other.

“I’ll check who,” Spruce ran to the door, and a moment later they all heard Wasabi’s voice in the entry room.

“Hey, guys,” she greeted them, when she entered the living room. “Are you hungry?” she raised up two bags that she carried in.

“It depends what you brought in,” Linden said from the sofa, as he furrowed his eyes.

Wasabi put down the bags next to the coffee table in the living room.

“You can check,” she smiled at Linden, who was looking at her as if she was doing something illegal.

Spruce began looking through the bags, and taking out food boxes.

“There’s a lot,” she added, smiling at Spruce.

“Wow,” he was surprised at all the diversity of the food, and began to arrange it on the coffee table, which turned out to be too small for all the boxes, so some of them remained in the bags.

“Why do you have so much food?” Aspen asked.

“Those are leftovers. Last Thursday, Galangal succeeded in charming a sheet of paper. The teachers said that she’s the first among all the first year students to succeed, so our class decided to celebrate it. We put together our funds and had a food party. But there was more food than we could eat, so the girls took some home, but even then, we still had so much left that we couldn’t fit it all in the fridge, so I thought about bringing the leftovers here.”

“Galangal succeeded?” Spruce only cared about one piece of infos from all the stuff, which Wasabi talked about.

“As expected of the Sea household,” Linden commented, grabbed a box with sushi, and started eating it.

Wasabi waited until all the boys were in the middle of eating, before she spoke again, “so…” she prolonged the vowel. “Now you owe me.”

Linden stopped eating and glared at her, “leftovers mean free food.”

“I don’t want money,” she said. “I’m just going to ask you for a tiny favor.” She put two fingers near each other, almost touching but not yet, to express how tiny was that favor.

“What favor?” Linden sounded irritated.

Wasabi took out a red transparent bead from her purse, and handed it to Linden.

“This is a magical item.”

He could tell right away. “So how does it work?”

Spruce and Yew looked at each other. It was odd for Linden not to know how to use a magical item.

“While holding the item, I want you to close your eyes, and tell me what you see.”

Linden took the item, and looked at it from every side. He glared at the item for a while, before he finally closed his eyes.

In the beginning, he saw nothing but blackness. Then he saw a red spark in the center. The spark exploded and in front of his eyes he had a perfectly realistic image of an apple tree, which was ripe with many red apples. It was growing on a tiny isle, which was surrounded by a vast river from all sides.

The image disappeared and he saw blackness again. He opened his eyes, and passed the ball back to Wasabi, who was all excited.

“So what did you see?” Wasabi asked, all excited.

“Is this,” he pointed at the small red ball, “some sort of magical item for parties? To create a fun time?”

“I’ll tell you later. Anyway, tell me what you saw?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

Wasabi rolled her eyes. “Fine.” Then she looked at the other boy,” Spruce, give it a try, and let me know what you saw.”

Spruce took the ball, closed his eyes, and began describing, “there’s a rock on top of a mountain. It’s standing on top of a cliff, and it looks as if it’ll fall down, but it’s not falling down.”

When Spruce opened his eyes, he passed the bead to Yew, who saw a white bird flying high in the cloudless sky. The bird flew into a dark thunderstorm, and everything ended.

Aspen, who was the last one to touch the magical item, saw a bright golden sword, which was sparkly clean. When he began to describe his vision, his voice was calm, but he suddenly inhaled a lot of air.

A moment later, he opened his eyes, and looked at the ball.

“Did you see something bad?” Wasabi asked.

In his vision, a lot of blood came out of nowhere and covered the blade of the sword, and everything around, but he didn’t want to tell anyone about the second half of the vision.

“No,” he shook his head. “It just suddenly ended.”

“So? What is that ball?” Linden asked, after Aspen returned it back to Wasabi.

“My family’s heirloom,” she answered as she hid the ball back in her purse. “As for what you just saw, it was your destiny.”

“Destiny is something people create themselves, so it cannot be decided by an object,” Aspen spoke immediately.

“Yeah, yeah, okay, that’s not what it did,” Wasabi stopped his assumptions. “What I mean is that this magical item can see which path you have chosen in life, and it can tell you what awaits you at the end of that path.”

“In short, it’s nonsense,” Linden said. “I was right that it was one of those useless magical items used at parties to spice things up, but other than that, they have no useful purpose.”

“This one isn’t anything like that,” Wasabi argued. “It can actually tell you, whether your future looks good or bad, depending on your present choices. And you still haven’t told me what you saw.”

“An apple tree with a lot of ripe apples,” Linden answered.

“Then that means you chose for yourself a good future, because a tree with many fruits means plenty of good results in the future. It means that you have chosen a good path in life.”

“But I saw a rock,” Spruce was gloomy.

“That was also a good sign,” Wasabi looked at Spruce.

“How?”

“You said that the rock looked as if it would fall, but it didn’t fall, so that means that you have chosen a path with least likelihood of success, but somehow you will manage to succeed.”

“Really?” Spruce was happy, as there was only one thing on his mind, “so I’ll really become a great wizard! Right?! Godmade! I’m going to be awesome.”

“As for Yew, the bird flew into the thunderclouds, so sorry, but I think you’re on a path, which will lead you into some big problems. I would suggest that you change something in your life.”

Yew had too many things come to his mind to figure out which path was the wrong path. Going to Hecate? Or attending Hypnos? Fighting with Mpingo? Searching for his biological parents? Hiding his magical talent? Getting acquainted with Cypress? Or Ginkgo? Or was it all of these? Or was it something else?

“As for the sword,” she looked at Aspen. “Sorry, I have no idea. I never heard of anyone seeing a sword, but since it was golden and clean, then probably it meant a good ending.”

Aspen was glad he didn’t mention the blood covering the sword at the end of his vision.

“However, don’t be so sure of your future,” Wasabi warned the overjoyed Spruce, with that voice of a kid trying to talk like adults. “Your future is shaped by the decisions you make now. So, even if at the moment your future looks bright, wrong decisions can always change it, and vice-versa,” she looked at Yew.

“In other words, ignore whatever vision you saw today, because it was nothing but a lot of nonsense,” Linden said as he took for himself the box with caramel cookies.

“You’re a nonbeliever type?” Wasabi asked him.

“I have gained too much experience to believe in nonsense,” he said between eating the cookies.

Wasabi shook her head, “anyway, I’m glad you like the food, and I’ll be on my way back, because I wasn’t supposed to stay here for long. I promised Galangal that I’ll go back quickly, so I have to go.”

“You should have done that right after you dropped off the food,” Linden stated.

In the entry room, Spruce and Yew thanked Wasabi for the food, and she left the cottage with a bright smile on her face.

The weather outside was cold, but sunny. It was a calm Saturday afternoon. And if not for the freezing cold wind coming out of its hiding place every now and then, there would have been more people outdoors.

Spruce and Yew quickly returned back to the living room to warm themselves up, after spending a bit too many seconds standing in the open doorway without wearing their outdoor clothes.

The boys finished up whatever they could fit in their stomach, and divided the rest of the food. Spruce and Aspen took their share of the food back to their own cottage, when they were leaving together several hours later. Yew put his and Linden’s share in their fridge. He didn’t ask his roommate for any help, as he didn’t need it, and he also knew that most of that food would be eaten by him.

Linden got bored of practicing charms, and abandoned the large sheet of paper on the floor in the living room. He took one book from the shelfcase and went to the bedroom, where he was going to read it in his bed.

Yew didn’t expect Linden to return to the living room, so he decided to practice charms with no one around to see him. He tried to charm a small sheet of paper. He spelled it to float, and stopped the spell right away. The sheet immediately began to fall down, but oddly it wasn’t a natural fall, but a very calculated one as if someone was controlling its movement.

Yew tried the same charm with several other objects, and all of them gave him the same results. Instead of falling naturally, they all fell down slowly and returned back to their original position in a straight horizontal line.

Yew was curious regarding this behavior. He didn’t see anything like that with any other students. When others cancelled the spell, the objects behaved as if they were dropped. Whereas, in his case, all objects behaved as if he was gently placing them down.

He wondered whether there was someone, whom he could ask. He could have certainly asked Parsley, or Chervil, but it wasn’t the students of Hypnos, that his mind was thinking of. Instead his first thought was of Cypress, who hadn’t contacted him for a long time.

He knew that Cypress should have contacted him as soon as he got infos about Yew’s parents. Yet it seemed that Cypress was in no hurry to contact Yew, who often wondered when he would finally find out his biological parents’ identities.

He concluded that needing help in learning charms might be a good excuse to contact Cypress. Then once together, he could ask him as a side-topic whether he had found anything about his biological parents.

He concentrated his mind. After mindteaming a lot with Aspen, it became easy for him to quickly connect with Cypress.

“Hey,” he started but he was immediately interrupted.

"Stop," Cypress's voice sounded harsh.

Yew felt a magical spell transferred directly to his mind. This spell gave him a headache-like sharp pain. It lasted only for a second, but it was long and strong enough to destroy his concentration causing him to drop the spell.

"Is that his way of responding: I'm busy?" Yew thought to himself.

He went back trying to charm the sheet of paper, with the same odd results, except for that one time, when the sheet floated up. Although it didn’t go far up, before it fell down, but that was certainly not the charm Yew intended.

Less than an hour later, Yew was contacted by Cypress.

“Hey, Yew. Was it something important?” he began.

“No, but if you didn’t have the time to talk, you could have just say "I'm busy" instead of giving me a headache."

"You contacted me right in the middle of a major exam. If I didn't disconnect us immediately I would be accused of cheating."

“You have exams on Saturday evenings?”

Cypress sounded happy, “do you want to hear something scary?”

“What?”

“Throughout the ninth year in Hecate, all exams are unannounced, and occur randomly on any day of the week.”

Yew didn’t respond. Cypress laughed, and Yew wasn’t sure whether the older student was being serious or not.

 “So what’s the reason you contacted me?’

“I was wondering if you could help me learn how to charm. I’ve been trying for a while, but I think something’s wrong, and I wanted you to take a look.”

Cypress didn’t say anything right away, but he agreed, “sure. Do you want to come to the villa tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” for Yew this was a great opportunity to meet with Cypress and see, whether there has been any progress searching for his parents.

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, see you tomorrow,” Yew responded and Cypress cut off the connection.

Yew felt happy how easily and smoothly things went. He recalled what Wasabi told him earlier, but maybe Linden was right. Maybe that vision was just some nonsense. If things were going this well for him, how could he meet with big problems in the future?

Besides, if it was some very distant future, then maybe it wouldn’t happen at all.

“Sometimes Yew acts so cute,” Cypress said after he entered the living room of the villa.

Ginkgo was sitting in an armchair, with a book in his hand. “By that you mean?”

“He asked me to teach him how to charm,” Cypress added some wood to the fireplace. “Can we talk now?” he addressed his brother.

“It’s already very late,” Ginkgo pointed his finger at the darkness of the night behind the windows. “I wasn’t planning to stay up that long.”

“I asked Yew to come here tomorrow, so there’s no better time than now to talk about it.”

Ginkgo put down his book, but not before folding a corner of one page.

“Is it interesting?” Cypress asked and read the title of the book: «The Rarest Phenomena»

“Places I’d like to go for my next adventures.”

“We didn’t even spend that much time together, and you already want to leave me?” Cypress jokingly raised his pitch to sound like a woman, whose man signed up for the army.

“Was my loyalty not enough? Do you also want my body?” Ginkgo went along with the joke.

Both of them laughed.

Cypress sat across from him. “I was hoping you’d help me some more.”

“Your plans don’t start until you graduate, so there’s still plenty of time for me to go on one or two adventures.”

“What if you don’t return from one of those adventures?”

“Then your plans will change.”

Cypress crossed his arms, “I’m not made of stone. What do you think I would feel, if I were to lose my brother, after I finally got to meet him?”

Ginkgo looked at Cypress, and for a long time neither one of them said anything. Ginkgo would never tell this to Cypress, but his younger brother was very similar to his father. Cypress, just like his father, honored loyalty, and just like his father, he would never forgive betrayal.

Ginkgo, on the other hand, found either loyalty or betrayal to be of no more importance than the weather, whose value changed depending on his location and activity. He far more valued his freedom and the pleasure of risking his life, the second of which was a hobby totally foreign to Cypress.

Cypress didn’t like his father so much that he could claim to hate the man and that wouldn’t be far from the truth. Unlike Cypress, Ginkgo never had a negative opinion about the man, nor did he harbor any hateful emotions toward him.

Ginkgo acknowledged that he had betrayed the patriarch’s expectations, and for that he was disowned. Cypress was planning to betray his father in an even bitter manner, and Ginkgo knew that this would never end well. It couldn’t possibly end well. For that reason, Ginkgo was mentally prepared to do anything in his powers to soothe the conflict, and to mitigate any damage as much as possible, even if he had to risk his own life to protect that of his younger brother.

“You talked about your plans a lot until now, but have you finally decided to take the first step?”

"There's no need to hurry,” Cypress was unusually calm. “After all, plans are a lot like buildings. If they're not built steadily and carefully with high precision equipment and from the best quality materials, they won't last," Cypress quoted one of his father's wisdom.

"I wonder whether I count as an equipment or as a material in your plan," Ginkgo didn’t really want to know, but it was something he thought about, ever since he first heard this saying.

Cypress chuckled, then pondered for a moment. In the end he said, "that's a secret."

Ginkgo sighed.

“Anyway, regarding Yew. I don’t plan to get him onboard this,” Cypress changed the topic.

“So you plan to cut the connection?”

“No, nothing so drastic,” Cypress instantly denied. “In all likelihood, he has royal blood in him, so I will keep the relation between us as is. I just doubt that he’d be of any help in the near future. I’m graduating in three months, and by that time he’ll only master the basics of spells and charms.”

“So you no longer plan to make him join?”

Cypress shook his hand, “not exactly. I do see in him a lot of potential, and he does have an above average talent. If he keeps learning magic, I’m sure he’ll be useful in the future, just not now. It’s too early.”

“And by that time, you will have achieved your goal,” Ginkgo guessed, where this was going.

“That’s what I hope for.”

“I’m glad.”

“About?” Cypress wondered.

“That you won’t involve kids in your plans.”

“Even if I Yew did the Loyalty Vow, I wouldn’t just throw him straight into danger. That’d be foolish. The kid needs to grow up strong before he’s of any use.”

“So you wouldn’t mind, if he did the Loyalty Vow tomorrow?”

“As long as I get to see something amazing, I would recruit him even tomorrow. But if he had something amazing to show me, he wouldn’t be asking for my help to learn charms.”

“True,” Ginkgo scratched his stubble in thoughts.

“On the topic of his parents, to be honest, I’m stuck,” Cypress acknowledged. “There is no way to verify that Safflower Wind is his mother, because she’s no longer alive. And I have no info about his father.”

“So what will you do from now on?”

“The only thing to do is to dig deeper into Safflower, and the Wind family. But a noble researching a royal household would inevitably attract attention.”

“In which case, it could get dangerous.”

“It’s going to get dangerous one way or another,” Cypress commented. “However, as things are right now, I cannot afford to have royals suspect me too early. So investigating the Wind household is on hold.”

“What will you tell Yew?”

“That’s a good question, and I want your opinion. Should I tell the kid that Safflower Wind may be his mother, but there is no proof. Or should I just tell him that I have no new infos at the moment, but I’m still looking into his biological parents.”

“I would prefer honesty, but I’m not sure how he will handle it.”

“So maybe it’s better to wait for now. I’ll tell him later.”

Ginkgo put his hand on his chin, “Cypress, what if you never find out about Yew’s biological parents? What will you do then?”

“I’m aware that there is a possibility that I won’t find anything even if I investigate the Wind household.”

“And In that case?”

“I’ll just grab some names of people, who have died, and who no longer have any living family members, then I’ll just present them to Yew as his biological parents.”

“That’ll be lying.”

“If I tell him otherwise, he’ll look into it by himself. Even if he’s not as resourceful as the Sea household, sooner or later, he’ll find out about his somewhat vague connection with the Wind household. What do you think will happen next?”

“So you’ll lie to protect him?”

“Better than letting him do something stupid.”

“Maybe he won’t be that stupid?”

“I don’t know him enough to take that risk.” Cypress waited for a while, if Ginkgo had anything else to say on this topic, but since the older man remained quiet, Cypress started another topic. “My goal hasn’t changed - I want royals gone.”

“I know,” Ginkgo confirmed, that he heard.

Cypress wasn’t the only one, who disliked royals. Almost all the commoners and nobles didn’t like royals. No one, however, would dare do anything to them, because all royals were born with much greater talents and skills than average people.

The Emperor alone was a man, who could fight against an army of commoners and nobles all by himself, with pretty good chances to win. Furthermore, there were about four hundred nobles living around the world. Even though it sounded like a small number, all these royals were powerful enough to govern the whole planet.

The royal class first started ten hundred years ago, when the surviving companions of Silphium Moon were chosen by the people to take positions of power in order to protect the mankind. According to the historical records, in the beginning, the royals were indeed taking care of their subjects. However, that didn’t last long.

Just one century later, all the people had forgotten about the war against the demons. And right then, the royals also have forgotten about their duty to protect. Around that time, royals created a rule that a royal must marry only a royal. This rule was to ensure that the powers and skills they possessed, would forever remain theirs.

Ever since then, the royals were getting more and more oppressive towards commoners and nobles, who lived under absolute rules made by royals. Whatever laws royals declared applied to everyone, regardless whether they agreed with those laws or not.

When Cypress was a kid, he thought that his family was the one oppressing him, but as he grew older, he realized that was not the case. The rules that his family was forcing on him, were originally forced upon the Sea household by the royals. So if the royals were to disappear, he could see more clearly whether his family was indeed as loathsome as he deemed them.

If everything had happened as planned by his father, then by the end of this year, Cypress would have graduated from the school of Hecate. For him that would mean two things. Firstly, he would officially be nominated to be the next head of the Sea household.. And secondly, he would vow his loyalty to all the royals, and become their servant.

However, Cypress wasn’t going to do either one.

He had different plans. He was going to drop the school of Hecate right before the final exam. Afterward, he would send a letter to his father, with a short explanation, that he had married a gal, who was not a noble, and for that reason he no longer deserved to be the next head of the Sea household.

If failing to graduate Hecate wouldn’t make him the enemy of the Sea household, then having married someone in secret surely would. After all, every marriage in the Sea household was arranged, and even marriages out of love required permissions from both households to be acknowledged.

He was going to make his father disown him, just like his father had done previously with Ginkgo many years ago. And Cypress was mentally prepared for that to happen. However, he couldn’t exactly predict what would happen afterwards.

There was a possibility that his actions would enrage the household to the point, where they would come after him. They could try to kill him on the spot for the dishonor, but they could also try to drag him back to the household before killing him in a public execution. Either way, Cypress wasn’t going to let that happen.

He knew about his magical talent, and he was confident that if he were to fight seriously, he could win a fight against all of the Sea household. However, he didn’t want to harm the household too much, because he saw them as puppets of the same oppressor - the royals.

Cypress loved freedom, even more than Ginkgo did. One could say that Cypress was obsessed with freedom. He didn’t want anyone to tell him what to do. He didn’t want to follow any rules other than his own. He wanted to be a king of his own life, and he would fight to death to achieve this goal.

Ginkgo picked up his book, ready to end the conversation between them. He read several pages, while Cypress was staring at the flames in the fireplace.

“I doubt Loquat will believe it,” Ginkgo spoke, while looking at the page. “He’ll think it’s a lie.”

“What’s a lie?” Cypress looked at his older brother.

“Your marriage.”

Cypress smirked, “it’s not a lie.”

Ginkgo looked up from the book. “So you said,” he had already heard about this from Cypress before, but he still found it hard to believe.

“I married her when I was younger. We were still kids, when we exchanged the Marriage Vows,” Cypress reminisced.

“Marriage Vows shouldn’t activate unless both sides are fully aware of what they’re doing, which is why Marriage Vows don’t activate for kids.”

“But they activated for us, and I’m glad they did. Now I have a good excuse to get away from that prison of a household.”

“Do you know where she’s now or what she’s doing?”

“Awaiting a prince riding a dragon.”

“What?”

Cypress laughed softly. He had told Ginkgo about his wife, but he had omitted the promise, which he had made with her, because he was embarrassed to admit it back then. However, now he felt more open with sharing his deepest secrets, so he retold the story to his brother in far more details than previously.

After hearing the story, Ginkgo wasn’t sure whether he should rejoice or cry. His younger brother certainly got himself a wife worth more than a mountain of gold. Yet that very wife of his had inevitably come to Cypress with a sea of troubles.

Ginkgo recalled his own love struggles, and felt a bit jealous, because he had been trying to get married for years but without success. All because his beloved woman was the toughest nut to crack in all of the universe.

Still buried among pillows in his bed, Linden watched Yew get up early. His roommate dressed up, and left the cottage without breakfast. It was a Sunday morning, and there was no reason for anyone to be awake and up so early.

“Unless he plans to be a monk,” Linden spoke aloud his thoughts, and stretched out.

Slowly, he sat up on his bed, yawned, and went to do his business in the restroom. Afterward, he took straight to practicing charms. He didn’t feel hungry and he didn’t eat anything for breakfast, even though there was a lot of food in the fridge.

Spruce came later and asked about Yew. He was surprised when Linden told him that Yew went somewhere without saying anything.

“You two are so alike,” Spruce felt upset at Yew, but instead of scolding Yew, he was scolding Linden. “You know, Aspen also leaves sometimes, but at least he tells me, when he goes out, but you and Yew, you never tell anyone. Are you even aware that people might worry about you?”

Linden didn’t even look at Spruce, “and?”

“You should at least tell your friends where you’re going.”

Linden rolled his eyes, “childish.”

“You’re more childish than me. If you saw Yew leaving in the morning, you should have at least asked him where he was going, or when he’ll be coming back.”

“I’m not his mom.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Spruce almost yelled. “He’s your roommate, a classmate, and a friend. You should care a bit for the people around you.”

Linden blinked, as he was surprised to hear something so mature from Spruce.

However he didn’t praise the boy or respond kindly, because he had no interest in making connections with anyone among the first year students. After spending half a year in Hecate, he was already getting bored with the school and had made plans to leave before the end of the schoolyear.

Of course, he wouldn’t tell anyone about his plans. His mother would be furious, if she heard that he was already thinking of dropping the school of Hecate, after everything she had to go through to get him enrolled.

However, by now Linden was certain. The school of Hecate wasn’t for him. This was not the school, he wanted to graduate from. That didn’t mean the school of Hecate was a bad school. It just meant that Linden felt like this wasn’t a school for him.

“If you want someone to care for you all the time, get a dog,” Linden turned around.

Spruce came up to him, “you know, I’ve never seen anyone more nasty than you.”

“Thanks for the compliment,” Linden smirked.

Spruce pulled out the magical dagger he always carried to practice magic. He didn’t know what he wanted to do. He was suddenly angry at Linden, and his body moved on its own.

However, Linden reacted faster than Spruce. Before Spruce activated his magical item, a red light shone from a button on Linden’s collar like a signal, and his lovely golden locks were swallowed in dark blue water that appeared from behind his neck, and surrounded both of them. For some reason, Linden was fine underwater, but Spruce began choking due to lack of air.

“Never act upon emotions. That’s how people die,” Spruce could hear Linden’s voice, even though Linden’s mouth was closed.

A moment later, Spruce’s vision began to blur, but at that very moment the dark blue water disappeared. Spruce fell to the floor, coughing. He had a feeling like there was something in his lungs, but he coughed out no water. After he stopped coughing, he looked up at Linden, “this is why no one in the class likes you.”

Linden sat on the sofa, “I don’t need their likes.” He felt a bit of respect for Spruce, who didn’t run away crying after getting suffocated half to death. But he wasn’t surprised. From the beginning of the year, Spruce was a type that didn’t give up easily.

“Then what? Do you plan to have no friends your whole life?”

“No friends sounds amazing,” Linden chuckled. “However, I do have friends. And they’re the best friends, that I could have asked for.”

“They’re not in this school?”

“Of course not,” Linden looked up at the ceiling, “I doubt, whether they even went to school,” he looked back at Spruce, “but I’m sure they could easily defeat some pussy graduates in a fight, which means they can easily defeat most of the graduates from any school.”

“So the only thing that matters to you is strength?”

“Wrong. The only thing that matters to me is a victory. The methods aren’t that important. If you ever become someone, who doesn’t get taken down with a simple attack, then I’ll re-consider the option of friendship between us.”

“Just you wait,” Spruce got up off the floor. “One day I’ll be so strong, that you’ll beg me to be friends.”

Linden burst out laughing, and his mouth was spread out so wide, that it appeared as if his face wasn’t big enough to contain it. “I’m looking forward to that one day, which will never happen.”

“You’ll see!” were Spruce’s last words before he stormed out of the cottage.

Left alone, Linden thought about what he should do. He felt bored at home. He didn’t like practicing magic. His great magical talent made it easy for him to do spells, but he was severely lacking in other areas. He wasn’t that good at concentration. Often he would think about something randomly, and any such diversion of thoughts caused his spells to fail. It wasn’t too visible among all the first years, most of whom had problems, but he knew that this flaw would only get more noticeable with time.

Lately, he found his second serious flaw, which made it hard for him to learn charms.

Magical energy was something that existed in two forms. One form was a magical energy found floating in space, which belonged to no one, and which the wizards would use to create magical items. The other form was the magical energy, which existed within people, and which magi used to create magic.

The magical energy within a person was called «mana» and the magical energy present in the universe was called «prana» to differentiate between the two. Prana was randomly scattered around the world, while mana was uniformly spread out within each human body.

In order to cast a spell, an average magus had to gather some of the spread out mana into one spot, typically into a hand. That concentrated mana was the catalyst for magic. And if more than necessary amount of mana was gathered, the excessive amount of mana used would turn a spell into a charm.

However, Linden was using magic all this time without gathering any mana at all, because the necessary amount of mana was already present in his hands. In other words, because the amount of mana inside his body was so big, he had been using magic without ever learning how to gather mana. Meanwhile, all his classmates had already learned this most basic skill of a magus.

And now, the inability to gather mana into his hands, had caught up with him, making it impossible for him to learn charms. He hated the idea that after coming this far, he might end up being the last one to learn charms. He also blamed himself for not asking his mother for help earlier, because if he hadn’t asked her for help, he would have never realized why he couldn’t charm.

Sorrel Cave, who comprehended the source of the problem rather quickly, explained everything to him. And unfortunately for Linden, there was only one remedy - to practice gathering magic in one place. Thus Linden had to redo all magical lessons from the very beginning but with a bigger sheet of paper in order to feel the mana gathering in his hands.

Moreover, it turned out that average papers weren’t big enough for him to trigger a necessity to gather mana in one place, so he had to practice with a fairly large sheet of paper.

In the beginning, he was practicing in secret, but after he finally learned how to make a paper float last Friday, he felt more open about practicing around others.

His study plan was simple. He would gather enough mana in one place to make the large sheet of paper float, and he’d keep the sheet floating for as long as possible without any interruption. After several days, his natural abilities should know how to keep mana gathered in one place, and if he used that same amount of mana on a smaller item, it should turn into a charm right away.

However, with Linden’s inability to concentrate, the large sheet of paper would fall within seconds after he made it float. And this caused him to curse all the time. He didn’t have a lot of time left to spend on something so basic, and he didn’t want to embarrass himself in the near future.

For average students, it took them about four to five weeks to learn charms, so in just one week at least half of his classmates would be able to charm a sheet of paper. The desire to meet that deadline kept him practicing, even though he didn’t see any progress.

Once Spruce left the cottage, Linden restarted spelling his large sheet of paper to float. After having enough of his failed attempts to keep the sheet afloat for longer than a minute, he decided to take a break.

He ate lunch from yesterday’s leftovers, then put on his outdoor clothes, and left for the city.

He didn’t have anything in particular to do, but he needed to do something to keep his mind away from charms and all the related worries. He roamed the city of Sheepcrown without any plans, but being away from the schoolground brought him some peace of mind. 

When passing by a train station, unexpectedly he saw Wasabi, Galangal and two older students. To his misfortune, Wasabi spotted him and waved in his direction. He didn’t want to talk with them, so he ignored her, but she ran up to him.

“Hey, can you charm?” she asked with a spark in her eyes.

“Who knows.”

“Haha, even the biggest genius among the boys cannot charm,” she was too loud in Linden’s opinion. “But guess what? Galangal succeeded her first charm this Thursday morning,” she pointed at the small girl, who was still standing with two older girls - Anise and Golpar.

Didn’t Wasabi already tell him this yesterday? What was the point of telling him again?

“The teachers said that she’s the first one this year to successfully charm a sheet of paper to float, so to celebrate this, my sister took us to the amusement park in Swanmaze. They have this enormous indoor swimming pool.”

“Isn’t Swanmaze quite far from here?”

“Yup, but it was a three-day trip. We left Thursday after lunch, and we just got back. If I were to tell you everything, you’d be soooo jealous.”

“You just got back right now?” Linden asked to make sure he heard right.

“Yeah, do you want to hear what we…”

“I’m busy,” he interrupted in a cold tone, and quickly walked away.

“Ha! You’re already jealous!” Wasabi shouted from a distance.

But Linden didn’t care at all. He didn’t care about the amusement park, and he didn’t care about the indoor swimming pool. He didn’t care that Galangal Sea was the first student among all the first years to charm a sheet of paper.

Instead, all his thoughts were concentrated on one thing. Wasabi was gone from the school of Hecate from Thursday afternoon until Sunday. Yet someone, who looked and acted a lot like Wasabi Water, had visited the boys just yesterday.

If that wasn’t Wasabi, then who visited them on Saturday? And how did they end up looking and acting exactly like Wasabi, to the point that even his magical items found no difference?

And what was the purpose of showing him and other boys those daydreams?

Why did that mysterious guest talk about their futures? 

Linden suddenly had many questions, to which he had no answer. And then he remembered how Yew left the cottage early in the morning? Could it all be related?

He smiled in amusement, “life sure is fun.”

He didn’t know who visited them yesterday. Maybe he was never going to find out who that was, but in the end, why should he care? The world was too vast to know everything, what was going on, so only the fools would try to understand everything.

Linden, on the other hand, lived his life enjoying the moment. He didn’t need to know the future, and he didn’t worry about the unknown. A life for him was a game. He didn’t take it seriously, because he believed that life was meant to be surprising and unforeseen, and not dull and monotonous. To Linden, an eerie event here and there was like a spice added to a dish.

He recalled what the fake Wasabi told him about his daydream. She clearly said that he was going in the right direction. Did she know that the direction, where he wanted to go, was out and away from the school of Hecate?

Linden stretched out in the sun on a wide half-empty path in a park.

The skills to take the appearance of another being were rare, and those, who could do so were only a handful. Furthermore, the magic of transformation belonged under the category of banned magic, because unsuccessful transformations always led to irreversible side-effects, such as losing limbs, or internal organs getting damaged beyond repair.

Whoever transformed into Wasabi had to be a powerful magus, or… not a human.

The last day of Toas started cloudy, but the sun appeared in the sky several hours later.

Yew had no problem walking between the cottages, where the snow had been cleared off of the roads. However, once outside the schoolground of Hecate, the snow was up to his knees. He could see holes in the snow like shoetracks, and he knew that it must have been Cypress, who was already waiting for him at the chairman’s villa.

However, even if he wanted to run, he couldn’t. The deep snow made it impossible to move fast, so he had no choice but to steadily move forward, step by step.

By the time, when he finally arrived at the villa, it was already noontime. His legs were tired of the uphill snowy road, and his socks were feeling wet from the snow, which had somehow found its way inside the tight boots wrapped around his pants.

He didn’t even raise his hand, when approaching the doors, which automatically opened for him. He entered the villa, and immediately took off his shoes and the wet socks. The front doors closed by themselves, and Yew realized that it was quite warm in the villa. He left his shoes and socks by the entrance, and came into the living room.

Cypress and Ginkgo were playing wigo, and both men were deep in thoughts. They didn’t even turn around to see Yew, who came closer and looked at the board punctuated with perfectly round black and white stones.

“Oh, hey,” Ginkgo greeted him first.

“Hi,” Yew responded, still staring at the board.

“Do you wanna play?”

“I don’t know how to.”

“I can teach you, and you can play with Cypress for practice,” Ginkgo pointed at his younger brother. “He knows the rules, but has little experience.”

“Shut up,” Cypress was adamantly staring at the board.

“Just give up, you’ve already lost,” Ginkgo pointed above a group of black stones, which were mostly surrounded by white ones. “You’d need a miracle to save them.”

“Fine,” Cypress sighed, but he wasn’t feeling well about his loss. He looked at Yew, “so do you want to play or do you want me to teach you charms?”

Yew quickly remembered, why he called Cypress the day before. “I need to learn charms now, so I’ll play later,” he said to Ginkgo.

“Sure,” Ginkgo leaned his back on the armchair.

Cypress drew a circle in the air, and a sheet of paper appeared, “so show me what you can do, and I’ll see what needs to be improved.”

Yew stared at the sheet of paper on the table, right next to the wigo board.

“Don’t tell me you don’t even know how to float it with a spell?” Cypress asked after Yew didn’t do anything for a while.

“I can,” Yew stretched out his hand and did everything exactly as Sorrel taught them.

He spelled the sheet to float with all his concentration on the sheet, and then he abruptly ended the spell, taking his hand back. The sheet began to slowly descend in a vertical manner, until it delicately landed on the tabletop, almost as if someone had slowly put it down.

Ginkgo and Cypress were watching the sheet on the table.

Then Ginkgo asked, “could you do it again?”

Yew repeated his attempt to charm a sheet of paper, and it ended up vertically and steadily falling down just like before. He looked at both men, who looked at each other, and he was certain that they were having some sort of conversation using mindteaming.

He wanted to know what they were talking about, but he didn’t know how to eavesdrop.

Eventually, Cypress stretched out his left hand toward Yew. “Grab my hand, and repeat the charm.”

Yew grabbed his hand with his right hand, and using the left hand he spelled the sheet to float. However, this time it wasn’t only the sheet that floated. All the furnitures in the house floated.

In panic, Yew dropped the spell, and everything fell to the floor. He clearly heard the sound of falling furnitures coming from upstairs. He stared with wide eyes at Cypress, who let go of his hand, leaned back into his armchair and began to think.

“What just happened?” Yew wanted an explanation.

“I reset the count,” Cypress stated. “You’re a first year, so it makes sense you don’t know.” He took a deep sigh. “On your first year in Hecate you only learn about two criteria for using magic: stamina and concentration, but magic is far more than that. There’s also a range, for example, which specifies how far your magic can reach.”

Yew heard about the range from Linden, but it was his first time hearing about the count.

“The range is varied for people, and no one knows why,” Cypress continued his explanation. “It changes depending on the spell’s interaction with the material world. The spells that move an object have a much lower range, than for example the mindteaming spell, which can be used between two people miles away. The range also increases with age, and it greatly expands for a short period of time, when the user is facing an imminent threat.”

This was something that Linden didn’t tell Yew before, and Yew wondered who was better informed in the matters of magic between Cypress and Linden. To the boy, both of them looked like experts, but neither one of them would ever tell him everything. Instead, Yew had to be content with whatever small info he could hear.

“There’s many other criteria, but the one most important to you right now would be a count, which specifies how many objects you can spell at once. A count is one of the more baffling criterion. By default, all people have a count of one, regardless whether they’re magic-talented or magicless.”

“So magicless people have a count, too?”

“Technically, something like magicless doesn’t exist,” Ginkgo answered. “Most people just possess too low amounts of magical energy to cast a spell.”

Cypress weaved his fingers, “but the amount of mana, which each person has, is finalized upon birth, so it cannot change. The criteria, on the other hand, can either improve or deteriorate over time.”

“So what about my count?” Yew asked.

“You had a midterm exam, right?”

Yew nodded.

“And the last task was to float two sheets of paper.”

Yew nodded again.

“And how many people in your class succeeded with the last task?”

Yew left the room before the last student, but assuming that no one succeeded after he left, the only people, who had succeeded were Linden and Aspen. Spruce and several others did try, but they couldn’t make it through to the end.

“Two.”

“Two?” Cypress repeated. “I don’t mean the people, who attempted and failed. I mean, how many people actually managed to succeed all the way to the end.”

“Two,” Yew showed him two fingers. “Linden and Aspen - they’re both really good, and they get hundred percent all the time. There were others, who tried but they made an error somewhere, so I didn’t count them.”

“That’s a lot,” Ginkgo commented.

“True,” Cypress was also amazed. “But wait, what about you?”

“I didn’t want to do the last one,” Yew lowered his head. “I left after the ninth task.”

“So it’s actually three geniuses in one class. That’s really rare,” Ginkgo pointed out.

“I’m not a geni…” Yew’s face was getting red, but he didn’t finish the sentence. He couldn’t deny it, after recalling everything that happened from the beginning of the year.

“So anyway, about the count,” Cypress got back to the main topic. “It’s something that increases as you use magic. In other words, the more you use magic, the greater the count gets. This is why hardworking low-talented individuals usually have greater count than lazy high-talented ones. However, you are an exception.”

“Why?”

“Because your count is infinite,” Cypress stated.

“What?” Yew didn’t understand.

“It means that unless you concentrate on one specific thing, you’ll end up spelling everything around you.” Seeing that Yew was still not understanding, he added, “let me show you what I mean.” He snapped his finger and one sheet of paper multiplied into twenty sheets of paper. “Close your eyes.”

Yew closed his eyes.

“And now concentrate on making a sheet of paper float.” All sheets of paper went up in the air. “Now open your eyes.”

Yew opened his eyes, and saw that all twenty sheets of paper were floating. He lost his concentration, and they all began to fall, while dancing in the air.

“When you look at one sheet, you can actually hide your infinite count,” Cypress said, “because all your concentration is directed at one object. But when you spell with closed eyes, your magic finds anything in the vicinity that matches what you’re thinking of and applies magic to it.”

“In other words,” Ginkgo decided to join, seeing that Yew was getting confused. “If you spell a tree without looking at it, you’ll make all the trees in the forest float.”

“But it’s fine as long as I’m looking at it? Then nobody will find out about it, right?” Yew finally began to understand.

“Until the third year, when you’ll begin to learn about spelling objects that are out of your sight,” Cypress commented.

“So how do I hide it, that others won’t know?”

Cypress massaged his neck, “why would you want to hide it?”

Yew recalled that Cypress didn't know that he’s officially registered as a magicless student. “I don’t want people to think I’m a genius.”

“I agree,” Ginkgo nodded. “A magus with an infinite count is something that happens usually once per two or three centuries, and most of the time it’s a result of countless years of training. A kid with an infinite count would attract too much attention.”

Cypress kept on thinking about something for a while. “I only know of one way to restrict a count.” He looked at Ginkgo, and most likely told him something through mindteaming, because Ginkgo grimaced a moment later.

“There’s really no other way?” Ginkgo asked.

“Maybe there is,” Cypress answered. “I really don’t know. I’ve never met someone with an infinite count before today,” he looked at Yew.

“Then how did you know so fast, that I have an infinite count?” Yew asked.

“Your charms dissipate evenly,” Cypress answered. “It’s a side effect of an infinite count. Normally,” he pointed at a sheet of paper, which floated up following his finger, “charms like spells suddenly snap, when there’s no more magic.”

He moved away the finger, and after five seconds the sheet of paper, which was steadily afloat with a charm, suddenly began to fall naturally swinging to the sides.

“When combined with an infinite count, the charms are somewhat like mathematicians, who calculate the remaining amount of magic, and use it to steadily return the object to its pre-magical state.”

“But that means, if anyone sees my charms I cannot hide my count!” Yew realized.

“You can easily hide something like this,” Cypress said.

“How?”

“Be specific,” Cypress answered. “When you start a charm, you don’t think about the details, right? That’s why it’s defaulting to this behavior. Take a sheet,” he pointed at the table, “and charm it with the intention that it shouldn’t change position until it runs out of magic.”

Yew concentrated on one sheet of paper, ignoring all the others. The sheet floated up, and when Yew took back his hand, it remained in the air without falling down. “It worked?” he wasn’t sure. He waited, and both men waited as well.

After a minute, the sheet suddenly fell, but it was the most normal falling of a sheet of paper, which a sheet of paper could do.

“It worked!” Yew jumped with joy. “It worked!”

Ginkgo smiled, and Cypress was looking at the sheet of paper, which just fell to the floor. Yew indeed had a lot of talent.

While Yew was relishing his first successful charm, Ginkgo and Cypress were mindteaming with each other.

“Adding details to a spell or charm was never that easy,” Ginkgo pointed out.

“Magic composition is something students begin to learn on their second year, but they’re not required to acquire this skill until they’re on their fourth year. Some struggle with it even on their fifth year,” Cypress noted.

“So you’ve made your decision.”

“This kid is like a gold mine.”

“Do you really know no other way to hide the infinite count?”

“I’m not lying here. I know it sounds convenient for me, and you think I’m trying to manipulate this to my advantage, but I’ve never studied it. It’s not a common ability, and I didn’t expect to ever meet someone with it. I only found out about it by accident, when researching the magical count, which is how most people hear about this once-a-century ability.”

“Cypress,” Yew sounded so happy, “thank you. Thank you so much.”

“I didn’t do anything,” the guy said right away, and he meant it. He didn’t do anything. He was going to, after letting Yew try and fail, but in the end, he didn’t need to do anything.

“You explained it all to me, and now I can charm,” Yew was innocently unaware that anybody else wouldn’t be able to perform magic just by hearing the explanation.

Cypress looked at Ginkgo, and mindteamed, “actually he did it before I even finished explaining. I still had more to say on the topic.”

Ginkgo nodded and looked at Yew, who was smiling so widely that he couldn’t close his mouth, even if he tried to.

“So about my infinite count, you know of a way to hide it, right?”

Cypress looked at him carefully, “I’m not sure, if you’ll agree though.”

“I will,” Yew wasn’t thinking right now. He was too happy with his charm.

“Listen before you agree,” Ginkgo warned. “Unless you want to agree to wash my feet,” he raised up his feet.

Ginkgo wasn’t serious. He only wanted Yew to slow down and think before taking any actions. And it worked. Yew finally sat down on the sofa ready to listen.

“Do you know what a Loyalty Vow is?”

“It’s one of the Three Unbreakable Vows: Loyalty Vow, Marriage Vow, and… Holy Vow?” he forgot the name of the third one.

“Divine Vow,” Cypress corrected him. “So you know what each one means?”

“Marriage Vow is between a husband and a wife. Loyalty Vow is between a lord and a knight, and Divine Vow is between God and clergy.”

“What else do you know about the Loyalty Vow?”

Yew looked at the ceiling, trying to recall all that he knew about it. “It’s rare, and it doesn’t happen a lot.”

“Do you know why?”

The boy shook his head sideways. He actually knew quite a lot about the Loyalty Vow, which was often mentioned in fairy tales and legends, but he didn’t want another adult laughing at him and calling him childish for his interest in ancient heroes, who gave their Loyalty Vows to beautiful maidens, whom they called ladies.

“Two people are putting their own lives on the line, if they make this vow. Betrayal means certain death. Thus a Loyalty Vow is a dangerous, potentially deadly promise.”

“So why do people even do it?” Yew asked.

Cypress thought about what he should say, when Ginkgo answered the questions. “Loyalty Vow gives you a peace of mind, knowing that there’s someone in the world whom you can trust with anything. It’s different from a regular relationship between masters and servants.”

Yew nodded and kept listening to Ginkgo.

“Normally, servants receive money for the work they do and refuse to work for free. Most servants blindly obey whatever orders they get in exchange for money, but they can quit anytime for whatever reason. This is why masters never fully trust their servants.”

Ginkgo cleared his throat. “However, the relationship between a lord and a knight is different. A knight cannot leave or abandon his lord. He holds the power to disobey his lord as long as he does it for the good of his lord. The Loyalty Vow makes it so that the knight will die, if he ever betrays his lord. Ergo, as long as the knight’s heart is loyal to his lord, the knight can stand as his lord’s equal.”

“As long as his actions aren’t intentional betrayal, there is no punishment,” Cypress rephrased Ginkgo’s explanation.

Yew tilted his head left and right, “but there’s no gain for the lord, if the knight is free to act?”

“The lord has someone, who’ll come to save him, if he’s ever facing danger, because ignoring such a situation would become a betrayal,” Cypress stated.

“Wait, so the servant has to die for the lord?”

Cypress thought for a moment before he answered, “not necessarily. It’s possible for the loyal servant to save his lord without dying.”

“But what if the servant is dying? Will the lord come to save him?”

“Of course, abandonment works in both ways. If the lord were to abandon his servant, he’d be punished with death for that betrayal.”

“Oh,” Yew clapped his hands. “So it’s like this: I save you, and you save me.”

Cypress pondered at the details of the vow, before he agreed. “Yeah, we can sum it up like this.”

“But why are we talking about the Loyalty Vow. Do you want to…?” Yew’s eyes grew wide.

Cypress looked him in the eyes as he said, “you wanted to hide your infinite count, and the only method I know uses the Loyalty Vow.”

“How?”

“Through the vow, the lord can conditionally seal any ability of his knight.”

“So you can make it as if I don’t have the infinite count?”

“Yes, it’s possible with the Loyalty Vow to seal a skill or an ability of his knight under a condition, typically something that would eventually break the seal. Without such condition, the sealing won’t happen.”

“A condition…”

“For example, a phrase or a sentence, such as: «it’s time for the seal to go». Or you can create your own phrase, which you’d use eventually to undo the seal.”

“Before thinking about a condition,” Ginkgo was staring at Yew with cold eyes, “you should consider whether you really want to be a knight.”

It was the first time, when Yew saw this man with such an unfriendly countenance.

“The Loyalty Vow is for a lifetime, and you shouldn’t be doing it, if you’re ever going to regret it,” Gingko sounded hostile.

“I’m not forcing you either,” Cypress said. “I only suggested it as an option. Nothing will change, if you reject this idea.”

Yew began to think about it.

“You don’t have to give me your response right now,” Cypress said. “It’s not something you should decide quickly, so I suggest you go back home, and think it through. You can take as many days, as you need, before you give me your answer.”

“Thanks,” Yew got up. “I’ll think about it, and I’ll tell you next week.”

“No,” Ginkgo raised his voice. “This is a lifetime decision. People take months or years, before they decide something so important.”

“Okay,” Yew agreed in a quiet voice.

“I’ll be very angry, if your response comes too early,” Ginkgo glared at the boy.

“So when should I respond?”

“How about after the holiday of Dhafhrenoo?” Cypress asked Ginkgo. “That’s more than a month away.”

Ginkgo sighed. He was certain that a month and a half wasn’t long enough to thoroughly consider the Loyalty Vow, but for a kid like Yew it might feel like a very long time, hopefully it would be long enough to change his mind.

 “You heard that?” he asked Yew. “From today on, you will think reeeally hard about the Loyalty Vow. Do your research, and don’t come back until the holidays of Dhafhrenoo are over.”

“Okay, got it,” Yew headed toward the exit, but then he turned around, “uhm, by the way, about my parents?”

“I’m still looking into that,” Cypress answered.

Yew nodded in acknowledgement, turned around, and got back to his shoes, which were all wet. So he came back to the living room, “by the way, do you know a spell to dry shoes?”

Cypress smiled at the awkwardness that Yew showed, when asking him. He got up the armchair, and followed Yew to the front doors. There, he cast several spells, which dried his shoes and socks.

“I also made them water-proof, and added a warming charm, which will last for several hours.”

Yew could feel the warmth after putting on the socks, and the shoes. “Awesome. Thanks,” he looked at Cypress, and thought it wouldn’t be so bad to have such an amazing and caring lord, but he didn’t say anything, because he didn’t want to anger Ginkgo, who like all the other adults didn’t want him making his own decisions.

Yew wondered, why were the adults always so unfair. When it came to them, they were always letting each other make their own decisions, but for Yew, no such thing. Just because of his age, he wasn’t allowed to make decisions, and if he did make a decision, he would nevertheless need an adult to approve it.

The boy couldn’t wait until he would turn fifteen yrold. At least then, he’d be able to make his own decisions, and nobody was going to deny him that right.

He stepped out of the villa, and headed back to the schoolground. On his way home, he realized that at least Cypress was taking him seriously and treating him more like an adult than others did, and that was one more reason, why Cypress would make a good lord in Yew’s opinion.

After Yew left the villa, Cypress returned back to the living room.

“Well played,” Ginkgo sarcastically complimented him.

“Why are you so angry at me?”

“Who knows? Maybe I don’t like seeing you manipulate a kid.”

“I didn’t force him into anything.”

“Kids that age are stupid,” Ginkgo spit out. “You don’t need to force them into anything. As long as they like someone, they’ll agree to anything.”

“Which is why you agreed to go to Hypnos?” Cypress retorted, reminding his brother that no one other than him made that decision, and Ginkgo even had enough smarts to keep it a secret for seven years.

Ginkgo had no response. He definitely didn’t think himself stupid, when he changed schools.

“You say that kids are easy to trick, but isn’t it the same with adults?” Cypress asked calmly. “I’d say that it’s the amount of experiences in life, and not the age, which teaches men to think before they act.”

“Fine, I give up,” Ginkgo raised up both of his hands. “Whatever Yew decides after the holiday of Dhafhrenoo, I won’t comment.”

“You know,” Cypress sat back on the armchair, “I liked you a lot as a kid, because you didn’t treat me like a kid.”

Ginkgo looked through his memories, “I wasn’t that far from being a kid myself.”

“Kids are more intelligent than some adults think, and they don’t like being treated like kids. Especially, when they’re old enough to understand that they’re being looked down upon.”

“Sorry for my outburst then,” Gingko apologized more out of reason than out of regret. “I’m getting old. That changes how one sees the world.”

“Don’t die yet, grandpa.”

Both of them chuckled at the joke.

“Do you wanna continue?” Cypress looked at the go board.

“Haven’t you lost enough yet?”

“We’re brothers, so there shouldn’t be that much difference in our talent. If you were able to get that good in this game, then I should be able to do the same.”

“It’s not logic speaking, but your ambitions,” Ginkgo noted. “You cannot be a winner at every game.”

“You don’t know without trying. So? Another match?”

“I already know your rough abilities, so no - thank you.”

“But I still have a lot more to show you.”

“Maxed out battle power, and no battle experience - there’s nothing else you can surprise me with.”

“Why no battle experience? I’ve never lost a battle in Hecate.”

“That’s because you fought against students, who are much weaker than you. That taught you nothing about fighting. You only start learning about battles, when you begin to battle those, who are equal or stronger than you. So a real battle is something you haven’t experienced yet.”

“Which is why, we should battle for real,” Cypress’s voice was pushy.

“No, because regardless of who’d win, we both would end up severely injured, and while I can take a break, you’ll have a hard time explaining it to the school and to your father,” Ginkgo got up from the armchair and stretched his arms. “Let’s not hurry. If you want a real duel with me, I’ll give it to you, but not this year.”

“Okay, I’ll accept that.”

“And one more thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Chill down your ambitions.”

The fourth day of Peizh had been sunny. For several days, it had been warm, and the snow was slowly melting away. The roads would freeze overnight creating a thin and almost invisible layer of ice on the surface, but at midday, the melted snow blended with dirt and created puddles of mud, which got carried by shoes from one building to another.

It was at this time of the year, when the first year students for the first time realized that none of the mud, which they carried on their shoes, entered their classrooms, because the charmed rug near the entrance door of each classroom was removing it as soon as they stepped upon it. Yet the students rarely paid attention to the rug’s existence until the month of Peizh, when copious amounts of mud got stuck to their shoes, and disappeared instantly when their shoes came into contact with the rug.

It was also at this time of the year, when the students realized that the magical rug wasn’t present in their cottages, so at home they had to clean mud on their own.

Furthermore, to add to all the students’ torments, it was usually in the month of Peizh, when the teachers held their surprise cottage inspections to check whether the students had been taking good care of their assigned cottages. The cottage inspection thing was clearly stated in guidebooks, which the students had received on their first day in the school of Hecate. However, the majority of students never bothered to read the guidebooks thoroughly, and by doing so they chose a year full of surprises.

When Juniper Root came back to his cottage, after he finished his three morning classes, he found a note from a teacher posted on the fridge. It was an inspection summary. Of all the items on the checklist, only “kitchen” was marked with a red x. The teacher’s writings at the bottom of the sheet explained the reason: “expired food items in the fridge. Please throw them away, and keep the fridge clean.”

Juniper put the inspection summary on the table. He went back to the fridge and opened the door.

The teacher didn’t have to look long for expired food items. There were plenty of them in plain sight. Both Juniper and his roommate were types, who stored food without planning. And neither one of them knew exactly what they were keeping in the fridge.

However, neither one of them saw their habit of storing food as a flaw. Thanks to this habit, they always had something to eat in the fridge, and it didn’t bother them that every year, they received their inspection summary with the same red mark, and roughly the same note, but from a different teacher.

Juniper took out a piece of bread, which didn’t look too old, and an unpacked cheese, which was already beginning to mold. He checked the expiration date out of curiosity. The cheese should have been eaten three months ago.

Juniper took the cheese out of the packaging. Just because it was expired, it didn’t mean that it was inedible. So he cut off the moldy part, and using the rest of the cheese, he made himself a simple lunch, which consisted of only two ingredients: bread slices and cheese bites.

He didn’t finish eating, when he heard Maca’s voice in his head. “Juniper?”

“Yeah,” he responded to the mindteaming session.

“Are you free until your afternoon class?”

“Today?”

“Yes, I need your help. I twisted my ankle when I was on my way back from my morning classes. I got to the clinic, but the doctor wants to do more tests, just to be sure that it’s nothing serious.”

“So you want me to cover you in the Exercise class?”

“Please. I asked Sage, but she has some other plans today, and for some reason I cannot contact Chervil.”

“Fine,” Juniper looked at the small clock on the fridge. There was enough time for him to finish lunch.

When he arrived in the Exercise class, he wasn’t surprised that there were almost forty students waiting for him. Yesterday, he heard from Beech, that two students finally succeeded in performing a charm, so naturally all the others were eager to be next.

He briefly explained the situation, and went straight to tutoring. He knew that the students weren’t in the mood to waste time. He could tell by their countenances, that the kids were determined to practice charms.

He stayed a bit overtime, tutoring the kids, who were almost there. And one of them finally succeeded right at the time, when Juniper had to leave in order to make it to his class.

After both of his afternoon classes were over, he went to visit Maca, who was discharged from the clinic. He knocked on the cottage door, and Maca opened the door.

“You didn’t have to come,” she said.

“So I cannot come inside?”

It was already late evening, and the sun was slowly setting down behind the buildings.

“Come, come, just take off your shoes,” she pointed at his shoes.

“Where’s... what-was-her-name?” Juniper asked, after he sat in an armchair in the living room.

“In her class,” Maca answered. “I got excused due to my injury, but other gals are still in the class. They should be done in another half an hour.”

“And how did you twist your ankle? Did you mess up a spell?”

“No, no such thing,” she walked up to the sofa without bending her left leg. “Ugh,” she groaned upon sitting down. “I slipped on ice.”

“Is it that bad?” Juniper looked at her feet.

“It will be for today. The doctor applied some magic to speed up healing, so by tomorrow morning I’ll be fine, but until then it’s going to hurt.”

“Why not go for the instant healing? With a minor injury, any doctor could…”

“You know, I don’t like pain,” Maca interrupted him. “I already experienced the instant healing in the past - that sensation of every nerve of your body getting torn into bits before being mended as a whole.”

“Yeah, I know it does hurt a lot, but it’s only for a moment.”

“A moment of horrendous agony,” Maca interrupted him. “I don’t even want to remember that.”

“Fine,” Juniper dropped the topic, and looked at the table. He picked one of the books, and read the title, “«Misunderstood World of Magic». What’s this?”

“Oh, this one is really interesting,” Maca’s face shined with amusement. “It describes how throughout centuries average people couldn’t differentiate magi from other creatures with unusual abilities.”

“Hmm…,” Juniper began to look through the book.

“Some stories are funny, and some are… sad. Like that story about a magus, who was misunderstood to be a witch.”

“Magus vs Wizard. Magus vs Magician. Magus vs Sorcerer. Magus vs Shaman. Magus vs Druid. Magus vs Vodun. Magus vs Warlock. Magus vs Witch. Magus vs Mage,” Juniper read the title of each chapter. “So what’s the difference between all of these?”

“You want me to explain?”

“It’s faster than reading the book.”

She smiled, “I’m sure you know the difference between a magus, and a wizard. And a magician is not a magus at all. Nor a wizard. Magicians don’t even use magical tools. They use tricks, and even the word magician means that. It comes from combining the word “mag” with an ending of “ician”, which is a typical ending to imply that something has emerged from something else.”

“So the word magician means: derived from magus?”

“Precisely. Magicians copy the performance of magi. They make it look like magic, but it’s not magic at all.”

“So what about others?”

“Let me see,” Maca stretched out her hand, asking for the book. After Juniper handed it over, she looked at the table of content. “Mage is a synonym of magus. The difference is regional, and could be considered a dialect. Witches are different species. They aren’t humans at all and they use witchcraft instead of magic. Warlocks are humans, who received abilities called occult from a witch through a contract. Similarly, voduns are humans, who received abilities called voodoo from a contract with a demon.”

“Wait,” Juniper interrupted her. “Witches, warlocks and voduns don’t exist anymore, so how can people mistake them for magi?”

“The original print of this book was published over ten hundred years ago. This is merely a reprint.”

“That makes sense, so what about the rest?”

“Druids are also different species. They look human in the beginning, and it’s only when they begin to approach the age of hundred, when they begin to grow plant characteristics. However, even while human-looking they have powers to control plants, and most importantly - they don’t like crowds, so you can rarely see them. They spend all their time in places, where no one lives.”

She flipped some pages of the book.

“Shamans are similar to voduns and warlocks, in that they receive their abilities through a contract with a spirit or a guardian, but unlike voduns and warlocks, shamans aren’t evil. Quite on the contrary, they tend to spend more time among spirits than humans, so they’re also rare to encounter.”

“And sorcerers?”

“This one is the hardest one to explain, because there weren’t that many sorcerers in history, and they kept most of their knowledge a secret in times, when they still existed. However, one certain thing is that there was a gigantic difference between sorcery and magic. Unlike magic, sorcery consumed the life of the user, so while sorcerers had a lot of power, they also had a very short lifespan.”

Maca put the book down, and Juniper took it again. He turned the pages of the book, until he saw an interesting piece of info, “it says here that sorcerers were often working as assassins.”

“Most sorcerers were also graduates of Hades,” Maca added.

“Can I have this book?” he asked, and she nodded.

“Yes, just drop it back to the library after you’re done reading.”

“What’s the due date?”

“Forty ninth of Dzon.”

“Ok,” Juniper packed the book in his backpack. “Since you look fine, I’ll be on my way.”

“Thanks,” Maca appreciated his visit.

Juniper put the backpack on his back, and headed toward the exit. “See you,” he waved his hand, and Maca waved back.

It was already dark outside, but Juniper knew the way back to his cottage by memory. After all, he had been traveling it almost daily for five years.

He looked down at the shoetracks in the snow left by other students, before he turned around to look at the shoetracks that he left himself, and he got an idea. He put his hand in front of him, and concentrated. A moment later he disappeared from sight.

He couldn’t see his hand anymore, so the invisibility charm must have worked. Even though officially the students of Hecate learned shadow magic on their fourth year, Juniper had been practicing it for far longer. He knew what he wanted to become ever since he was a kid.

He looked down, where his feet should be, but instead of his feet he saw two holes in the snow in the shape of his shoesoles. He moved on, making several more shoetracks, and he spun to the side in order to avoid a student, who was coming right at him. The student passed without even realizing how close he was to collide with the invisible Juniper.

Shadow magic was one of the least studied variations of magic. The main reason for the lack of interest was due to its limited usage. In the minds of the majority of magi, shadow magic meant the same as useless magic. While light magic was useful at night to create brightness, there was almost nobody among humans who would need darkness on a warm sunny day. This lack of need for darkness is why shadow magic had so few specialists.

However, shadow magic wasn’t only about creating places, where sunlight couldn’t enter. The main use of light magic was to uncover what was hidden, while the main use of shadow magic was to hide what was visible.

A spell to turn invisible was an advanced magic of shadow variation, and it was not part of the fourth year education. Even as a major in Shadow Magic, invisibility was something he ought to have learned on his seventh year. And yet only halfway through his fifth year, Juniper had already mastered this spell.

It wasn’t the only spell of shadow magic that he mastered. He concentrated a little bit more and all his shoetracks disappeared from the snow. He moved on, leaving no traces of his presence, and just like this, he arrived at his cottage.

The light was turned off, when he entered the cottage. Even though Juniper had a roommate, his roommate had two close friends, so his roommate usually spent the night at his friends’ cottage. Over the years, Juniper got used to being alone in the cottage most of the time, and it didn’t bother him that much.

The shelfcases in the living room were filled to the brim with newspapers and magazines that Juniper had collected over the years. There was one thing that all of them had in common. Every one of them had at least one article, which was written by Myrtle Dust, who was considered the greatest reporter in the world, and Juniper’s aspiration.

Reporting was a very old profession. It existed for many millennia, and had even caused the creation of two other famous but ominous professions. From early times, reporters specialized in gathering info through indirect observation, but some reporters who couldn’t get info just by passive observation, took actions to manipulate others into giving them the needed info. These reporters became known as spies.

Later on, the skills of reporters were recognized by an unlikely group. Killers saw a potential use in reporters’ abilities to hide and act from the shadows. This combination of reporters’ skill and killers’ intentions created the infamous profession of assassins.

Over the years, assassins further improved the techniques used by the reporters. In times when there was a low demand for assassination, many assassins switched jobs to become reporters, and passed the improved skills to the next generation of reporters, who were even better equipped with camouflage than their predecessors.

Juniper saw an assassin for the first time in the theater as a kid, and he was immediately in love with the assassin’s skills. His parents let him meet the actor after the play was over, and Juniper was surprised when he learned that the actor wasn’t a real assassin, and he wasn’t even an actor. The man was a reporter, who sometimes participated in theater plays as his hobby.

Afterward, Juniper read a lot about reporters, and the more he read the more he loved the profession. Reporters always appeared cold-blooded and composed. They wouldn’t let their own hearts be moved no matter what they saw. This was how reporters survived, escaped and carried out info from places, where most weren’t able to stay alive.

However, that didn’t mean that all reporters didn’t have hearts. They did have feelings, but unlike ordinary people who cannot control their feelings, reporters always knew, when it was the right time to let those feelings out, and when those feelings had to be sealed shut.

Infos from reporters were always straight facts without any opinions. This was what made reporters so different from gossipers. Unlike gossipers, who always had to add their personal assumptions and thoughts to any news, the reporters never added anything beyond the actual reality. Unlike gossipers, who often would fill in any missing info, the reporters were always bluntly honest to acknowledge their lack of knowledge.

All the honorable people always looked at gossipers with repulsion, however unlike the gossipers, the reporters were widely respected and highly regarded for their professionalism.

Many contemporary reporters were using magical tools of shadow variation, but Jupiter, who was magic-talented, didn't need tools to become a reporter in the future. All he needed was to practice shadow magic in as many forms as possible.

He sat down on the carpet in the living room. He didn’t want to be anywhere high, because he had times, when he fell off chairs using this spell. So for his own safety, he sat on the floor.

It was a necessary spell for anyone, who wanted to be a reporter, so he practiced it at least once a day. He closed his eyes, and concentrated. The darkness in front of his eyes began to go away, and he began to see the city of Sheepcrown. Then his vision moved even farther, beyond the city and into the forest.

Average eyesight was limited to the distance visible by the eyes. However, with magic it was possible to extend one’s range of vision. All a magus needed to do was to look in one direction, while applying magic to his eyes, and he would see views from farther and farther away. Advanced users could use this spell with open eyes, but for beginners it was easier to do it with closed eyes, because the view of the surroundings wasn’t causing them to drop concentration.

Juniper went even deeper into the forest. Last time, he was able to extend his vision up the farmers fields, and today he wanted to go even farther. However, before he even arrived at the farmlands, he saw a woman dressed in sparse clothing. Juniper didn’t know why she was wearing so little during such a cold snowy time of the year. Furthermore, her clothes looked more like a bunch of strings than anything else.

She didn’t shiver from the cold, and she looked like she was in a good mood.

“I’m glad she cannot see me,” Juniper thought.

Just then the woman looked right at him.

Juniper thought that she was looking at something in that direction, and he began to move back to have a better view of the setting. But at that instant, the woman disappeared.

Juniper opened his eyes wide, when he felt a cold shiver on his back. With his concentration gone, he was back in his living room sitting on the carpet. His eyes were staring wide in front of him, but he had a very strong sensation of someone standing right behind him.

A cold shiver ran through his whole body, and he gulped down saliva. He was sure that something or someone was standing right behind him, and he had an absolute certainty that if he were to turn around, he'd be killed immediately.

He felt something like cold fingers sliding on the back of his neck, and his whole body froze in fear. The air around him felt colder than ice, and the time felt like it stopped moving. The sensation of fingers left his neck, together with the cold air, and the time began to move again.

Juniper realized that he was able to breathe again, and he didn’t know when he had stopped breathing. He didn’t feel any presence anymore, so he slowly turned around.

There was nobody behind him.

“You’re kidding me.”

On that night, Juniper wasn’t able to calm down and sleep, even though he tried really hard to.

When Nana started barking at the closed door, Sycamore knew right away that he was going to have a visitor on this dark Sunday. The knock only confirmed his suspicion, and he approached the door.

"I have come again.”

Sycamore heard a familiar voice, and he opened the door. Among the darkness, under the starry sky, half-buried in deep snow, stood the King of Elves. It was his second time visiting Sycamore, and this time, he came alone.

Sycamore painted his face with a sour countenance, hoping that the visitor would quickly guess how happy he felt. However, the elf ignored Sycamore’s countenance and his total lack of hospitality. He entered the temple without asking for permission, and he sat himself at the table. He looked like a king, who was waiting for his servant to come and serve him a cup of tea.

Seeing an opportunity to go outside, Nana ran out through the open door and jumped on top of the snow. To her surprise, the snow didn’t hold her up and she instantly got swallowed in.

Sycamore sighed, as he pulled her out.

However, as soon as she got rescued, she turned around and passed through the doorway trying to find another way to get past the snow on the front porch.

“Get back,” Sycamore said to her, “It’s already late.”

Nana got herself covered with a thick coating of snow before she came back happily wagging her tail. Right after she entered the temple, she shook off the snow right next to Sycamore, who closed the door, and went to get the mop. He cleaned the floor, while the King of Elves was quietly sitting at the table.

Sycamore made himself tea, but he didn’t offer any to his guest. The King of Elves continued to silently sit at the table. Unlike mankind, elves had centuries to live, so their patience was far greater than that of humans.

“So what exactly do you want to know?” Sycamore eventually spit out the question.

“This will be the last time, when I come to bother you,” the elf said. “However, I didn’t come to ask questions. I came to hear your story. Tell me everything that I should know about the world ruled by Anagape Infida.”

Sycamore sipped his tea, standing by the counter. “Fine,” he sat down across the table. “The history of my world starts almost the same as the history of this world. After the first humans were chased out of Paradise, they grew more and more evil with each generation.”

The King of Elves listened to Sycamore’s story like a mute. He didn’t make any sound, while Sycamore continued with the story.

“At first, God sent guardians to the people, to teach them what is right and what is wrong. The people of this world listened to the guardians, but the people of that world didn’t, so God himself destroyed them in a flood. Only one good man, called Noah, with his family was spared. The demons at that time were overjoyed seeing so many men die, but they didn’t like it that one family survived.”

“Demons want all of the mankind gone, so they schemed on how to get rid of the remaining humans. They concluded that, if they can make them openly defy God, then God will destroy them all. They couldn’t do it with Noah, because he was too close to God, so they waited for him to die. After Noah died, the demons offered a contract to the humans.”

“I know this is very different from the history you know,” Sycamore saw the elf’s countenance of shock. “In this world, the humans learned from the guardians and became better. Enraged demons declared a war on them, which lasted for many thousands years, but in the end, the humans won. In this world, the humans took a very different path altogether. But in my world, the mankind bargained with the devil.”

He sipped some of his tea before he continued.

“The contract was simple. Humans were to openly reject God as their creator, and the demons promised to never kill another human. It was a foolish contract, because demons never had the power to kill men. Demons could turn a man’s life into a life of misery and anguish, but from the moment of their creation, demons never had the power to kill. Only God can decide the matters of life and death.”

“All the foolish humans signed the contract, but not all of them rejected God. However, the contract brought unfortunate results for the humans. Upon seeing the deal, which the men had made with the demons, God withdrew from the world a lot of his creations.”

“Many creatures, lands and treasures disappeared as if they never existed. Things that were possible in the past, became impossible. And God had taken away from humans all the powers, which he originally granted them. These powers still exist in this world, but in that world they’re gone.”

“In that world, all those things are considered a myth, a legend or a nonsense. There are ancient records about creatures such as dragons, giants and elves, and talks about abilities such as magic and powers to move mountains, but no one believes those to be real. These powers nowadays are called superpowers, as if it was something out of ordinary, when in reality it’s the most natural thing to occur in the world.”

Sycamore got quiet for a long moment, and sipped his tea thinking. The elf waited, and both sat in silence for a while, before Sycamore spoke again.

“Contemporary people of that world look at structures built in ancient times, and they cannot figure out how such gigantic structures were built. None of them believe that humans of the ancient times could have such strength.”

“A lot of other powers had been lost as well. Magic disappeared altogether, while intellect was diminished to the minimum, just like it happened with the power of strength. Ever since then, for thousands of years humans lived in misery, longing for all that they had lost, but unable to acquire it.”

“Then the demons started running a scam. They promised humans to give them superpowers in exchange for slavery. And many foolish men happily became slaves of demons in exchange for a bit of extra power, which was nothing in comparison to what they could have, if they had destroyed the demons and erased that damn contract.”

“The most common scam used by demons was fake magic. The demons called it magic, but it was nothing like magic. Unlike magic, which is a power that comes from imagination and faith, the fake magic - let’s call it pseudomagic - it was a power that demons activated based on the pre-agreed signal.”

“The way it worked is simple. After a man agreed to a slave contract with a demon, the demon would always observe the man. If the man wanted to perform pseudomagic, he would make a movement and utter some words. Based on this action, the demon would know what the man wanted to do and the demon would do just that.”

Sycamore looked at his teaspoon, and got an idea.

“To give you an example. Let’s say that according to the contract, moving a teaspoon in a spiral motion and saying the words «sugar drop», makes sugar appear out of nowhere,” he moved the teaspoon in a spiral motion and said, “sugar drop.”

Nothing happened.

“If this was a real contract with the demon, then right now the demon would have used his powers to make sugar appear on the table.”

The King of Elves furrowed his eyebrows, “isn’t that…?”

“Too similar to magical items?” Sycamore guessed the rest of the sentence. “There is a major difference between magical items and demonic slave contracts. Magical items can be used by anyone, but powers from contracts are limited to those in a contract. In the past, slave contracts with demons were rare, but nowadays Satan is making contracts even with kids, who are so much easier to fool than adults.”

“When you say Satan, do you mean that moron, who tried to overthrow God and got swatted like a fly?” the elf asked to make sure they were talking about the same creature.

“Yes, I mean him. He’s not powerful, but he’s a master of lies, which makes him a master scammer. He came up with that strategy to write a book for children, which would advertise slave contracts, and Anagape Infida was the demon, who wrote that book exactly as Satan ordered her.”

“Because of that book, slave contracts became popular, and kids evoked contracts with demons without even knowing it. Those slave contracts are always written within the inside of objects, so human eyes are unable to see them, but the contract terms are always the same - as long as one owns the object, he’s bound by the slave contract.”

“In order to erase the slave contract, one has to get rid of the object in such a manner that the object will never return back to him. In other words, the object has to be destroyed. However, men usually love those objects too much to destroy them.”

Sycamore stopped, wondering what to say next, when the King of Elves spoke.

“So what do those people gain from those slave contracts?”

“Most of them aren’t even aware of the contract. But those, who are aware of the contract think that they’re special, because they can light a piece of paper on fire without a match.”

“That’s it?” the elf was surprised. “So in that world, the price for a human slave is so low?”

Sycamore closed his eyes, and recalled his past. He wouldn’t dare to tell the King of Elves that he also sold his soul for such a low price. Luckily, he realized his mistake and burned his slave contract before he died. If he hadn’t done so, he would have ended up a slave for all eternity.

“Yes, the price is so low,” Sycamore acknowledged. “Humans from that world are willing to sell themselves for the lowest of prices. They have no dignity. They have no honor. And they have no awareness of their own value.”

The King of Elves covered his mouth, as if he was trying to hide his laugh, but some air escaped through his nose.

“Let me give you an even better reason to laugh,” Sycamore spoke. “The people in that world believe that God stole their powers, and if they defeat God, they’ll get them back.”

Even with a hand over his mouth, the King of Elves couldn’t stop himself from a loud snort. Then he took off his hand, and laughed freely with his head bowed down, so Sycamore couldn’t see his face.

Sycamore wasn’t surprised at the elf’s reaction. Everyone with at least a little bit of intelligence knew that God was the source of everything in the world. Killing God is impossible, and even if it was possible, the death of God would mean that everything in the world would turn into nonexistence. In other words, it would be the exact opposite of what the men in his previous world wanted to achieve.

“How can a world that messed up exist?” the King of Elves asked, after he composed himself back to his usual stoic self.

“Good question,” Sycamore agreed and drank the last sip of his tea. “God had removed the excessive powers from the mankind for a very good reason. Before the flood, men have used their superpowers in the most vicious and brutal ways. They invented gruesome forms of torture, that were never seen before. Therefore, in order to protect the people from the people, God took away their powers.”

“Can humans actually become that evil?”

“They cannot on their own, but it’s possible if they’re controlled by demons. Since elves live a long life, wouldn’t you know about it from the time of the war against the demons?”

The King of Elves looked up at the ceiling, “any human controlled by demons was quickly cured by chants, and if there was no one, who knew the chants, they were killed. Possessed humans I met, didn’t live long enough to exhibit the worst of evil.”

“I see,” Sycamore looked inside his empty teacup.

“God never makes mistakes, so it was a good thing that he removed the powers from the men of that world.”

“Certainly,” Sycamore got up and walked up to the counter. “If God hadn’t removed the powers from the mankind, the world would end up seeing an even worse hell on earth - far worse than what it was before the days of the flood. And then, all of the men would curse God for giving them such unrestrained powers.”

Sycamore stopped speaking, and quietly poured himself another cup of tea. It was indeed a sad truth. If powers, such as magic, superstrength and superintellect, had still existed in that world, instead of acknowledgment, they would have been condemned as powers of evil. They would have been banned and prohibited, just like guns and many other weapons and potentially dangerous non-weapons.

Spending the last thirty years, living in a world ruled by God, was an eye-opening experience for Sycamore. It was a world, where powers were distributed unequally, with vast differences between the extreme powerfulness and extreme powerlessness. Yet the most powerless lived peacefully alongside the most powerful. If people were to be compared to animals, this was truly a world, where a wolf lived together with a lamb, a leopard was a friend with a goat, and a lion spent time together with a calf.

Sycamore realized that he had drifted away in his thoughts, while the King of Elves was still waiting for him to continue. He took his teacup, and returned back to the table. “I forgot to say it before, but if you ever go to that world, beware of the names of guardians. After the guardians left that world, the demons took on the names of guardians and ruled over humans.”

“Didn’t the men of that world ignore guardians?”

“Most of them did ignore the real guardians, but they didn’t ignore the demons. With real guardians gone, the demons used that opportunity to fill in the roles of the missing guardians. They took on names of guardians, but their preaching wasn’t exactly the same. The demons didn’t change much, because their disguise would be exposed, but they distorted the truth enough to lead the men astray.”

Sycamore stopped speaking and thought for a long moment, before he spoke again. “This is the gist of the story, with all the essential infos. Is there anything else, that you want to know about?”

“Yes. I heard that the real witches of your world were made to look like humans.”

“That’s correct. Not all creatures were willing to leave that world after the flood. Especially those, who were allied with demons, opposed God’s order and remained in that world. Because the demons are rulers of that world, they can control a lot of what happens in that world. Using that power they turned the witches into humans.”

“Weren’t they allies?”

“It was because they were allies. Under the disguise of a human body, it was easier for witches to get access to their favorite food.”

“Human flesh.”

“Exactly,” Sycamore endorsed the elf’s answer. “In contemporary times, no one calls them witches anymore. Nowadays, they have different names, and they aren’t stupid. They don’t hunt blatantly. They use many tactics to get what they want with no penalty.”

“Such as?”

“For example, witch hunting. It was an activity organized by witches. They started by selecting tasty looking humans. Then one or more witches accused the selected human of witchcraft. The other witches joined in, throwing more accusations at the prey. When the prey lost all support from other humans, the witches condemned the prey to death, thus gaining absolute power to do whatever they wanted with their prey.”

“Real witches falsely accusing humans of witchcraft - what an odd world,” the elf sighed. “The more I hear from you, the more I’m confused.”

“The world I come from was created from the lies of demons,” Sycamore stroked the edge of his teacup. “In my world, the truth and the lies are so intermingled that only God could tell which one is which.”

“That may be true,” the King of Elves agreed. “However, you shouldn’t underestimate the intelligence of elves. After hearing so much about your world, I finally know what I needed to know.”

Sycamore sipped his tea, without looking at his guest.

The King of Elves stood up and slowly walked toward the exit, “the very reason, why demons won so easily in that world is because the same vocabulary was used for something good and for something evil.”

Sycamore had no choice but to agree. Even the word «human» was used to describe both murderers and victims. There was indeed no differentiating between good and evil in any language used in that world.

The King of Elves put his hand on the door handle, “if someone were to clean up the definitions, the evil would have lost its source of power.”

“Try and tell the people of that world that witches are man-eating monsters, and every single one of those idiots will assure you that a witch is a very sexy woman with a wand.”

“A wand?”

“Yes, a wand - a stick with magical powers.”

“A wand is not a stick with magical powers. It is a woodcraft embedded with pure energy of trees, used only by the fairies. No one other than the fairies can produce or use wands.”

“That’s the truth unknown to the people of that world,” Sycamore had enough of this conversation. “Just go already.”

The King of Elves opened the door, and left.

“And never come back,” Sycamore added to his last sentence, after the elf was gone.

Sycamore was pleased that the peace had finally returned back to his home. Loneliness was sometimes hard to endure, but at least it was better than anything else, which the world had to offer. If only he could spend the rest of his days undisturbed by another visitor, his life would be perfect.

“Why do we have to go?” Spruce walked with his head down.

Yew, Spruce and Linden were on their way to the Exercise class. In Monday's Process class, less than one third of the boys were able to charm, but more than half of them couldn’t succeed yet. And unfortunately for those, who couldn’t charm, Sorrel commanded all of them to attend the afternoon Exercise class daily until they’re able to charm.

Sorrel also promised to check their attendance in the Exercise class as marked by their tutors, and for every missed class, she promised to take off fifty points.

Aspen was among those boys, who successfully charmed a sheet of paper in the classroom, so he didn’t have to come with them. He also didn’t want to waste his time with the first year magic, when he could be learning more advanced magic by himself, so he went back to his cottage after lunch.

Everyone expected Linden to succeed as well, but to everyone’s surprise, he failed. As a result, he was incredibly irritated and in a bad mood like never before. Since other students were already pretty afraid of him, they all stayed away except for Yew, who was never scared of Linden, and Spruce, who would act brave around Linden anyway.

Yew could already charm, but he didn’t want to stand out too much. During the class, he decided that he would show his charm only after half of the students in his class succeeded. However, if he had known that Sorrel would make it mandatory for him to attend the Exercise class, he would have charmed that sheet of paper, and avoided wasting his time on a useless class.

They were the last ones to arrive in the classroom, where Juniper was already checking attendance.

“Do you always take attendance?” Linden asked, when Juniper asked him for his name.

“Sorrel told me to bring her a list of attending students,” the tutor explained. “So? What’s your name? I’ve never seen you before.”

“Linden Cave,” Yew answered for his roommate, who had a scowl on his face, “and I’m Yew Sky.”

“I’m…” Spruce began, but Juniper interrupted him.

“Spruce Fire. I remember seeing you in this class before,” Juniper marked down their names. “Did I miss anyone?” he looked around the classroom. “I’ll read the names I wrote down, if you don’t hear your name, raise your hand.”

Juniper finished reading the names. No one raised a hand, so the tutor moved on explaining how to charm. He walked from person to person, giving them advice and encouraging the students to try harder.

Linden, who brought with him some books, was reading them instead and glared at anyone, who got too close to him. Juniper, who quickly understood that Linden didn’t want his help, simply rolled his eyes and ignored the unruly student.

Yew was spelling his sheet of paper instead of charming it, and Spruce kept on burning one sheet after another in a futile attempt to start a fire that wouldn’t disappear the moment he stopped the spell.

When they finally left the classroom, all three felt tired and relieved that it was over. Yew never wanted to attend another Exercise class again, so he had an unwavering determination to charm successfully in the Process class tomorrow.

“Hey,” Linden spoke to the other two boys. “Did you see that?” he pointed at the back of his neck.

“I don’t see anything,” Spruce was looking, where Linden was pointing.

“Not me. I mean the back of Juniper’s neck. Did you see that?”

Spruce tried to recollect, if there was anything unusual about Juniper, “I wasn’t really paying attention.”

“It was a bit red,” Yew recalled, “from the cold, I guess,” he wrapped tighter the scarf around his own neck.

“That red area was in the shape of a hand,” Linden stated. “It looked like someone imprinted a hand on his back, with the palm right below his neck.”

“Really?” Yew couldn’t recall that detail.

“How could you see the palm, if he was wearing a sweater?” Spruce asked.

“I didn’t see the whole imprint, but it looked that way,” Linden explained. “Anyway, I’m not sure, so let’s drop it.”

On their way through the cottage village, they saw a group of girls. There were more than ten of them, and they were all happily chatting about something. When the boys were passing by, one of the girls called out to them.

“Spruce, Yew!”

The boys turned around and saw Wasabi’s face. Her cheeks were red from the cold, but she looked really happy, just like all the other girls around her.

“How many boys in your class can charm?!” she shouted at them.

The boys looked at each other.

“Come on, tell us!” she shouted again.

“I didn’t count,” Spruce shouted back.

“You don’t have to be exact. About how many?!”

Spruce thought for a moment, “thirty!” he lied.

The number was much greater than the actual number, but Spruce felt like it would be embarrassing to say any number lower than twenty five, which would be half of the class. And he also wanted to impress the girls with how much more clever the boys were.

After hearing the number, the girls started having a giggling fit. They laughed, whispered comments to each other, and laughed even more.

“Hey,” Linden called to the girls, “how many of you can charm?!”

Wasabi smiled the biggest smile she could, and boasted, “everyone.” She showed the boys a victory sign, and other girls did that as well.

“No way!” Spruce denied the possibility, and that made girls giggle even more.

“How? Are you all geniuses?” Linden ridiculed the possibility.

“Galangal has been teaching everyone,” Wasabi explained. “And today, everyone in our class was able to charm.”

“That’s unfair!” Spruce shouted at them.

“If you want to learn, you can ask Galangal for help.”

“Never! Why would I ask a girl to teach me?!” Spruce yelled back at Wasabi. “And Galangal’s younger than me!”

The girls booed Spruce, pointing their thumbs down.

Linden ignored their reactions, and calmly walked away. Spruce, who didn’t know how to handle such a large group of girls, ran after Linden. Yew waved a bye to the girls, who were still laughing at how fast Spruce ran away. Wasabi waved back, and Yew left as well, following his classmates.

They separated near the cottages. Spruce went back to his cottage, meanwhile Linden and Yew stopped in front of their cottage.

“Looks like a cottage inspection was here,” Linden took off the paper from the front door.

Yew looked at the door of Spruce’s cottage, “why not him?”

“Aspen’s home, so I bet he took it inside already,” Linden opened the door, and walked in. “Look at the time,” he handed the paper to Yew. “They did the inspection, when we were in History class.”

Yew entered the cottage, closed the door, and quickly read through the paper.

“It looks like everything was fine,” he put down the paper and began to take off his jacket.

“Yeah,” Linden was changing his shoes.

After both of them took off their outdoor clothes, and changed into indoor shoes, Yew looked at his roommate, “Hey, Linden. I’ve been wondering for a while.”

“About?”

“How do you always get a score of hundred percent on History tests? I’ve never seen you study before.”

Linden approached his own desk. “Mom taught me all that, when I was still in kindergarten. I was born with magical talent, so both of my parents assumed that I would want to go to Hecate.” He took out fluffy yellow headphones, and put them around his neck. “Any more questions?”

“Yeah,” Yew pointed at his headphones. “Is that a magical item?”

Linden blinked and touched the headphones with his left hand, “this?”

Yew nodded.

“Hmmm… not really,” Linden took the headphones off his neck, and held them in his hands. “This is actually created by science, you know - those super brainy guys from the school of Athena. Wanna try?” he handed them to Yew.

“I don’t like old songs,” Yew sounded apologetic.

“Old songs?” Linden was confused. “Have you ever used headphones before?”

“Yeah, the village storyteller had a pair.”

Linden chuckled, and he took off the cover from the left headphone, “see this here?” he pointed at the small box hidden under the cover.

“What’s this?”

“This is where you keep the songs. You can go to a tech store, and pick whichever songs you want, so it’s not like all the headphones offer the same songs.”

“Really?”

Linden put the cover back.

“And what’s on the other side?” Yew pointed at the right headphone.

“Battery, but I asked a wizard to make me a magical battery instead of a scientific battery, so I don’t have to worry about it running out of energy for another five hundred years. So do you want to listen?”

Yew nodded, and Linden passed him the headphones. Yew put them on his head, and patted the right side once, just like Linden had been doing, when he was using them, but nothing happened.

“Pat both sides at once,” Linden told him how to turn on the device.

Yew did just that, and a female voice began to sing in the distance. The song had no lyrics other than humming simple sounds and syllables. The voice sounded distant and hazy. The melody was nostalgic and filled with melancholy. However, it was an amazingly beautiful song.

Yew patted the right side of the headphones, and the song changed. The next piece was in a similar style. However, this one felt more mournful, like a song that could be sung during a funeral.

He patted the right side once more. The third song was slow, but cheerful. The song reminded him of early summer mornings before the sunrise.

Upon the fourth pat, he returned back to the first song. He took off the headphones, and passed them back to Linden, “it sounds nice.”

“You didn’t hear the full song.”

“Yeah, it’s slow, so I got impatient.”

Linden smirked, “do you know what you just heard?”

Yew shook his head sideways, “I don’t know this singer, but she has a very beautiful voice.”

Linden chuckled, “of course she has a beautiful voice. All mermaids have beautiful voices.”

Yew’s eyes grew bigger, “mermaids? That was a mermaid?”

“If you want to listen again, that’ll be five hundred syfras per minute,” he raised up five fingers.

“You know, I don’t have that money.”

“I also know that you have twenty thousand syfras of debt.” Linden put the headphones around his neck.

Yew closed his mouth tightly. Then he remembered something, which he had heard about before. “But… isn’t the mermaid voice dangerous?”

“It’s dangerous for men, but it doesn’t work on women, kids or babies. Besides, men can learn to subdue the allure of the mermaid songs, so it’s not like all men are doomed to lose their minds. And I’ve already conquered this weakness of mine, so mermaid songs don’t work on me.”

“But you are a kid,” Yew pointed out.

Linden made a countenance, as if he just accidentally spilled a secret. Then he composed himself. “Whatever,” he said, put on the headphones and went to the bedroom.

Yew put his backpack on the chair by the desk, then he recalled that he hadn't done his homework yet. Normally, Spruce would come into his cottage with his own backpack, and initiate their daily routine of doing homework together. However, today Spruce returned straight to his cottage.

Yew wondered whether Spruce forgot about homework, because of the Exercise class. It would be bad, if tomorrow in class, he had his homework completed, but Spruce showed up without his. So, he took his backpack and went to the entry room, where he put on his outdoor shoes.

It wouldn’t hurt him, if today he did his homework over at Spruce’s cottage. Although it would be his first time doing so, because until now, it was always Spruce who came over to his cottage.

He left with just outdoor shoes and his backpack, and in about twenty steps he arrived at his destination. His name was on the guest list, so without knocking he opened the door, came inside and quietly closed the door.

“Please!” he heard Spruce’s voice coming from inside. “You have to help me!”

Yew came closer to the interior door.

“But that’ll be cheating! And it would be way too obvious!” Aspen responded.

“Nobody will realize. The teacher doesn’t know that you’re learning spells from the second year.”

“You think that the teacher won’t realize?!”

“Come on, just throw a fire charm on my sheet! If you get caught, I’ll tell Sorrel that I forced you to do it.”

Aspen grumbled, but he didn’t say anything.

“I need to get out of those mandatory Exercise classes,” Spruce was on the verge of crying.

Yew stood behind the closed interior door with his ear next to the doorframe. He knew that they didn’t know that he was standing in the entry room, and he didn’t want them to know that he heard their conversation.

He pondered on what he should do in such situations, and he got an idea. If only he had entered the cottage with a louder noise, he wouldn’t have accidentally walked into a secret conversation. He tiptoed to the exterior door, slowly and quietly he opened it, and slammed it shut but way too hard.

The noise reverberated throughout the entry room, and made Yew jump. The sound was way louder than he anticipated. A moment later, the interior door opened, and Spruce stood there with a blank face.

“Hi,” Yew waved his hand. “We still haven’t done today’s homework, so I thought we could do it at your place.”

Spruce’s countenance immediately changed, “oh yeah, sure. Come in,” he encouraged Yew, who took off his jacket and outdoor shoes.

Spruce’s indoor shoes were too big, so Aspen lent Yew his shoes instead.

Yew finished the homework with Spruce, like he had been doing every day. Afterward, he came back to his cottage, he let Linden copy the answers, and he packed up to get ready for tomorrow’s classes. He was determined to show Sorrel, that he can charm, and free himself from any more mandatory Exercise classes.

He also wondered whether Aspen was going to cheat tomorrow or not. Whichever way, he would act like he didn’t know anything.

Sorrel Cave started her morning early like all the teachers. She looked out through the window at the sky above the schoolmanor.

The sun had just begun rising, and at the time it was so low above the horizon that it wasn't yet visible to anyone unless they were standing on a mountain top. The sky itself was mostly clear, with shredded patches of white clouds. The ground was covered by snow, except for the roads, which were cleared at night. Sparkling icicles hang down from every building, and from every tree, like some holiday decorations that had been left outside, forgotten by whomever placed them there.

Sorrel lived on the second floor of the schoolmanor, in the flat number seventy one. All teachers had at least a small studio with a kitchenette, a bedroom, and a bathroom. There was no living room, because teachers weren’t allowed to have guests in their flats. All meetings, even those between the teachers, had to happen either in a teacher’s office room, or in the communal living room, located on the third floor.

The teachers also didn’t have a large kitchen, because the schoolmanor covered all of the teachers' food expenses. This meant that most of the time, the teachers either ate out or ordered food to their offices.

Sorrel took out milk from her fridge, and poured it into a bowl. She warmed up the milk with a spell, and poured cornflakes on top of the milk. While the flakes began to slowly submerge in the milk, she put the milk bottle back inside the fridge. She took a spoon from a drying rack, and ate her breakfast before it became soggy.

After she finished her breakfast, she put the dishes in the sink, and poured some dishsoap over them. Without touching anything, she used magic on a sponge to wipe clean the dishes. Afterward, she poured water into the sink, and used magic on the dishes to rinse them. Once the dishes looked sparkly clean she levitated them onto a drying rack.

She left the soapy water in the sink, because she planned to use it later that day to wash the floor in the kitchen. However, she didn’t have enough time this early in the morning, so right after her breakfast, she washed her teeth, and got ready to go.

She arrived on time for her first class of the day.

All the students in the class were gals on their eighth year in Hecate, and all of them were learning the Theory of Magic.

In the first half of the hour, Sorrel finished explaining the topic for today’s lesson, and let the students work on their own on the assignment in their books.

While the students were wondering about the answer to the assignment, Sorrel admired the beautiful art designs that the frost had painted on the classroom’s windows.

Even though the frost appeared on the windows almost every morning, it didn’t last until the evening. Heating was turned off at night, when no classes were held, but in the morning all classrooms were once again heated up. As the interior temperature got higher, the windows lost their coldness, and the frost slowly began to melt away. By the time the sun finally rose up above the buildings, there was no frost left on the windows.

After the lesson had ended, the gals left the classroom, and a class of guys on their eighth year had arrived instead. Sorrel once again repeated the same lesson as she did with the gals.

An hour later, the guys left, and Sorrel had an hour of break before her Process class with the boys on their first year. She returned back to her office, where one of the first year boys from her next class was waiting in front of her office door.

“Linden?” she asked. “Did you wait?”

“I just came,” he answered. “Can we talk inside?”

She unlocked the door by putting her hand on it, and both of them entered her office.

“I don’t want to waste my time in Exercise class,” Linden got right to the main point, after he closed the door. “You know that my problem is different from the others.”

“I cannot treat you differently from the rest of the class,” Sorrel came over to her desk.

“There’s another way,” Linden crossed his arms.

Sorrel sat in her office chair, and furrowed her eyebrows.

“When I come up today to do the charm, do it for me.”

Sorrel looked shocked at her son’s proposition.

“No one will realize that you did the charm instead of me, and I’ll be able to skip the Exercise class. Perfect plan, right?” Linden looked confident.

Sorrel put her hand on her forehead, “in what school do teachers help the students cheat?”

Linden reviewed the plan in his mind, “if I have more free time I’ll be able to succeed the charm faster. So you’re helping me learn the subject.”

Sorrel shook her head.

“Come on,” Linden urged her. “If you don’t help me, I’ll skip Exercise anyway, and if I get in any trouble it’ll be your fault.”

Sorrel got up from her desk, quickly approached her son, and before Linden reacted she slapped him with full force on his cheek.

“Don’t you dare to threaten me, understood?”

Linden massaged his cheek. It’s been a while since the last time, when he made his mother this angry. He understood that pressuring anyone was a bad strategic move. Normally, he wouldn’t have done that, but when talking with his mom, oftentimes he let go of his common sense, and followed his childish emotions.

“That’s not what I meant,” Linden tried to sound apologetic. “I’m doing my best right now. I really want to succeed in charms, but the Exercise class isn’t helping me at all.”

Sorrel carefully looked at Linden’s face, trying to discern whether his words were honest or not. She shook her head in disapproval, and went back to sit in her chair. “Why was I blessed with such a troublemaker?” she spoke loud enough for Linden to hear her clearly, even though she didn’t mean to ask him.

Linden analyzed possible tactics, and chose the one that always worked the best on his mother.

“Mom, please,” he made the cutest puppy face, which could melt any woman’s heart.

Sorrel sighed heavily.

Linden waited for the verdict. From the sigh, he knew that he already won, but his mom had to yet accept the defeat. If he hurried now, she could regain her will to fight, and winning the second battle over the same subject was near impossible.

Sorrel understood well her son’s thoughts, and she knew that she was letting him win. However, Linden did have a valid point that the Exercise class wasn’t helping him. Unlike other kids in the class, he didn’t have to increase the amount of magic he was using. Instead Linden needed to learn how to decrease it, which was harder to do, so it made sense that he wanted more available time for his self-study.

As a teacher, Sorrel should never encourage students to cheat. However, a good teacher never does anything to hinder a student’s progress. Thus, Sorrel was conflicted between two options, neither one of which was completely correct.

“Fine,” she finally decided that she won’t feel right, if she as a teacher impeded her student’s education. “Only this once.”

Linden bowed down, “thank you.”

He said it quickly with almost no sound of gratitude, and he left as soon as his mom agreed to help him out.

Sorrel sat in her chair still wondering, whether it was a right decision or not. However, she never finished her thoughts, because time passed by too quickly and she had to prepare for the next class. She spent the next hour teaching first year girls, all of whom already succeeded to charm.

Her next class was with the first year boys. When Linden entered the classroom, her eyes followed him. Linden didn’t look at his mom. He sat quietly in his seat, put his elbows on the desk, and his palms under his chin.

Afterward, Sorrel proceeded with the class like usual. She started by testing the students, who hadn’t yet succeeded to charm. She called out a name and checked each student’s progress by her desk. Based on her observations, she made comments to help the students advance.

When Linden was called, Sorrel recalled the conversation they had before the class.

Linden stood by her desk, and put a hand above the sheet of paper.

Is this really alright, she asked herself. Then without moving her body, she concentrated her eyesight on the sheet of paper, which began to float above her desk. Linden took away his hand, and to all the students in the class, it looked like he succeeded to charm.

I don’t want to think about it, Sorrel thought to herself, when she put a note down in her scorebook.

Nonchalantly she told Linden, “congratulations, you can return to your seat.”

After Linden, the next name to be called was Spruce Fire, who came up to the desk filled with stress. Spruce was always full of expressions, but Sorrel was surprised how tense the boy was today.

“Relax,” she tried to cheer him up, “it’s okay, if it doesn’t work.”

Spruce nodded in response. Holding a dagger in his right hand, he put his left hand over the sheet of paper. A moment later, fire started in the center of the sheet and it began to spread out. However, it wasn’t Spruce who used the charm.

When testing the students, Sorrel was using a spell to sense magical energy. This way, she could tell apart spells from charms. When a student was using a spell, the magical energy was coming from them to the object in a continuous flow. However, in case of a charm, the flow was cut off after the initial transfer of magical energy from the student to an object.

By using this magic sensing spell, she was able to tell whether the student was continually using magic or not. On a side note, she was also able to sense who used magic and on which object.

The sheet of paper was burned by fire. It was indeed a successful charm, but the magic itself didn’t come from the magical item that Spruce was holding. The charm came from Aspen Breeze, who sat in the second row.

Sorrel looked at the boy, who immediately looked away. The distance between his desk, and her teacher’s desk wasn’t too distant, but most first year students would be unable to succeed a spell over such a distance, much less a charm. Sorrel was amazed at the boy’s talent. However, the more pressing matter was how she should react to this.

She looked at Spruce’s face, which was a mix of colors and emotions like a mosaic wall.

Whatever happened just now was not an accident. She could clearly tell that the two boys had arranged it ahead of time. Being only first year students, they must have been unaware that there were spells capable of identifying the source of magic.

Sorrel knew she cannot just ignore it, but she didn’t want to make a scene before she tested other students. “Please stay after class,” she noted down a comment in her scorebook, “you can sit.” She snapped her fingers and all the ash disappeared from her desk, and instead a single blank sheet of paper appeared in the center.

After Spruce returned back to his seat, Sorrel called out Yew Sky, who approached her desk with his brooch attached to his right sleeve. The boy put his hand above the sheet of paper, which flew up and stayed there even after Yew took his hand back.

Sorrel blinked. The charm happened too quickly for her to be certain, but she didn’t sense any magic coming out of the brooch. Instead the magic came from the boy himself, but Yew was magicless, so it shouldn’t happen.

She put her hand over the sheet of paper, which fell to the desk. “Can I ask you to do it for me one more time?”

Yew looked confused, but he did it just as before, and this time Sorrel was certain that the brooch indeed remained dormant on his sleeve, and nobody in the class was using any magic except for the boy, who was standing in front of her desk.

As a professional magus, Sorrel knew that magic existed in every person, but in different amounts. Some people had plenty of magical energy, while others had so little that they were called magicless. However, in reality there had never been anyone who was truly devoid of magic.

In rare cases, a kid with too little magic would start the school of Hecate as magicless, but after many months of practicing his magic would expand. It wasn’t uncommon for magicless wizards to be able to perform simple minor spells and simple charms after using magic for many years. However, that simple magic was usually their limit.

Sorrel understood that unfortunately telling a magicless kid that they had acquired enough magic to spell without magical items might distract the kid from learning. Thus, she decided to keep it to herself. The boy would eventually find out about it on later years. Furthermore, even if a magicless person were to acquire a bit more magic, it would never be enough for them to become a magus. This was another reason, why Sorrel didn’t want to distract her student with news of his magical talent.

“Pass,” she wrote a note in her scorebook.

Afterward, she tested other kids. At the end of the class, there were eight more students, who succeeded a charm.

All the students left the classroom except for her and Spruce. Sorrel stretched her hand to a chair standing in the corner, and she floated the chair closer to her.

“Come here,” she told Spruce who got up and approached the teacher, “sit down,” she pointed at the chair she just moved a moment ago.

Spruce sat down with his head hanging down. He was sitting in front of the teacher, with his right shoulder toward the wall. Sorrel was sitting between her desk and the wall, and she was looking directly at Spruce.

“Spruce,” she started, “can I ask you to charm this paper?” she pointed at the sheet of paper on her desk.

Spruce didn’t look up, when he mumbled his response, “I cannot charm.”

Sorrel sighed. “Tell me the reason, why you tried to fool me.”

Spruce’s body shook a bit, before he mumbled the answer, “because you made the Exercise class mandatory.”

Again? Sorrel recalled the conversation she had with Linden earlier. She could understand why Linden was so against attending the Exercise class, but Spruce? It didn’t make much sense.

“The Exercise class is there to help students,” she began. “Some students think they can do everything on their own, so they don’t ask for help and end up failing. That’s why every year, I make Exercise class mandatory for students, who are slower at learning.”

Spruce pouted, “it’s not helping me at all.”

“Could you explain what is the problem?”

Spruce finally looked up at the teacher, “it’s not helping me, because I’m magicless and the magic-talented tutors don’t know how to help me.”

“There should be one magicless tutor in the group,” Sorrel pointed out.

“He only teaches on Wednesdays.”

Sorrel looked somewhat upset and confused, “are you telling me he skips tutoring classes?”

“No, he doesn’t skip. It’s their schedule. There’s a different tutor on different days of the week.”

Sorrel asked for more details, and Spruce explained to her how the tutors arranged the schedule among themselves. 

“I see,” Sorrel crossed her fingers. “I’ve never heard of such an arrangement. For tutors the attendance in the Exercise class is mandatory. I’ll have to talk with Cacao. I believe he’s the supervisor for your tutors.”

Spruce looked terrified.

“You don’t have to be scared. I won’t mention your name. Actually I’ll visit the Exercise class this afternoon to verify with my own eyes.”

Spruce looked even more terrified, but he just nodded. “Can I go?”

“Regarding the charm, I won’t ask you to do it in class anymore. However I want you to attend the Exercise class, and once you learn to charm, please stay after class to show me. I cannot pass you unless I see you succeed.”

Spruce nodded, and dashed out of the classroom.

Sorrel got up from her chair. She went to her office, where she ate lunch and scored her students' homework. Afterward she visited the Exercise class half an hour after it had started. Indeed just as Spruce told her, there was only one tutor present. Outside the classroom, and away from the first year students she had a short chat with Chervil, who indeed confirmed that she was the only tutor on Tuesdays. After Chervil went back to tutor the students, Sorrel went to Cacao’s office. The man certainly wasn’t happy with what he heard.

Spruce ran out of the classroom, and got away as fast as he could. He took out the page that he got from Beech, and wrote their secret code: dum-dum. A short note appeared: «as usual.»

Spruce took out his pen but then he wasn’t sure what to write. Whatever, he needed to warn Beech, so he wrote: «you MUST come to the Exercise class today. Sorrel will come to check, which tutors are skipping the class.»

Spruce folded the page in half, and all his writings disappeared. He hoped that Beech got his message. When the time for his usual tutoring was near, he checked the paper again, but there was no update from Beech. So he went to the storage room that the two of them had been using.

Beech was looking at his girly notebook, when Spruce entered the room.

“You need to go to the Exercise right now,” Spruce sounded desperate, but Beech was calm.

“Nah,” with a pen, he crossed out all the words that he and Spruce wrote, which were removed from the notebook forever. “Don’t panic,” he spoke to his student.

“But,” Spruce sounded like he was going to start crying.

“Our tutoring team was breaking rules from the very beginning. It was inevitable that sooner or later, we’ll be found out,” Beech closed the notebook and put it in his backpack. “Good things never last forever.”

“I’m sorry. It’s because I complained about other tutors,” Spruce felt the blame.

“Are you kidding me? I’m surprised nobody complained until now. Our team is so bad at tutoring, I was expecting a swarm of complaints as soon as the school year started. It’s a miracle this lasted for so long.”

“But because of me, you’ll be punished.”

“Meh, that’s nothing to worry about. A bit of scolding, a lot of preaching, and we’ll promise to be good from now on. It’s the same thing every time,” Beech stretched out. He wasn’t concerned at all with the consequences that awaited their tutoring team. “Anyway, how is your charm magic?”

Spruce hung his head down, “I still couldn’t do it.”

“Okay,” Beech stretched out his hand. “Give me your dagger?”

Spruce passed him his magical item.

Beech analyzed the dagger from every side. “This will be too difficult.”

“What will be?”

“I was thinking of disabling the spell option, and leave you with the charm option only, but your dagger is too complex. My skills aren’t good enough to alter this item.”

“So what do I do?”

Beech sighed, and took out a small hairpin in the shape of two red circles, one within the other. “I’ll let you use this one for today. This hairpin can only do charms.”

Spruce put forward his inner palm, and Beech put the hairpin in his hand, but he didn’t let go right away.

Wizards didn’t like to share their magical items, because unlike common users of cheap magical goods, wizards treated their highly-personalized magical items like their own hands and legs.

“I’m letting you use it for an hour only,” Beech said. “Make sure you return it to me before you leave.”

“I will,” Spruce promised, and Beech let go of his hairpin. Spruce wondered whether his tutor would ever put this hairpin in his hair. He had never seen Beech wear any hair decorations.

Spruce took a leaf out of a box, which stood closed under the desk. Before the first snowfall, Beech gathered many leaves and packed them there for Spruce, who didn’t think at all about preparing himself for the winter. However, soon he was glad that his tutor was so thoughtful, when he started needing those leaves for practice, while the snow outside covered everything on the ground.

He put one leaf on the desk, and under Beech’s supervision he set it up on fire.

While using Beech’s hairpin, Spruce could feel the difference between a spell and a charm. The hairpin only reacted to his wish in the beginning. It set the leaf on fire, then it disconnected itself as if it didn’t want to obey Spruce anymore.

He practiced with the hairpin until it was time for Beech to go. Later that day, Spruce tried to repeat the same with his magical dagger, but the feeling was completely different. The dagger felt like it was refusing to do any magic unless Spruce was actively wishing for it.

The next day, Sorrel didn’t test Spruce just like she promised.

Nonetheless, Spruce still went to the Exercise class. On Wednesdays it was usual for him to come, so none of his other classmates were surprised to see him. No one was also surprised that the other three boys, with whom Spruce usually spent time, didn’t attend.

However, everyone in the class was surprised, when all five tutors arrived together with Cacao Bark. The teacher stood by the door, facing all the students. The tutors stood in a row under the wall, looking at the teacher.

“I have come to apologize to everyone,” Cacao said. “It has been brought to my attention that the tutors, who were supposed to help you daily, were taking turns. Their laziness has hurt your education, and as their supervisor I’m responsible for their sloppy tutoring.”

Maca Waterfall was the only tutor, who looked remorseful.

Juniper Root looked like he was thinking about something completely unrelated to the topic. Beech Meadow looked as if he was sleeping standing with his eyes open. Chervil Sun rolled her eyes, and pouted like a kid, who was told that she cannot eat the whole cake and must share some with other kids.

Sage Moss was the only one with guts to glare at the teacher, as if the man was her sworn enemy.

“From today on, I’ll be helping out with your tutoring,” Cacao announced and all first year students were terrified at the idea. He was already a scary teacher in class, and now he was also going to be a scary tutor?!

“Juniper, you go in that corner. Beech - the other corner. Maca, go to that corner, and Sage - over there. Chervil, you stand there, and I’ll be right here,” he arranged the position of every tutor. “Now, students. Choose from whom you want to learn. Approach your preferred tutor.”

Nobody was moving among the first years, until the teacher clapped his hands, “hurry up.”

All the students quickly began moving. After several minutes, the biggest group of students gathered around Beech. Maca’s and Juniper’s groups were about the same size. Three students were gathered around Chervil, and eight students were gathered by Sage. No one dared to approach the teacher.

Cacao didn’t mind.

“Great, the tutors can start helping you out as usual. I’ll observe,” and just like he said, he observed the tutors while they were helping out the students.

The Exercise class ended a bit earlier than usual.

Cacao sent off home all the first year students, while he remained in the class together with the tutors. At first, Spruce walked away with other students, but with each step he felt more and more uneasy, so he turned around and arrived at the door of the classroom G.

He could hear sounds coming from inside, so he put his ear to the door to listen in.

“How old are you?” Cacao sternly asked the tutors.

Spruce thought about the question and did the math using his fingers. If they all started school at ten, then they would have been fourteen when they started their fifth year. However, after the new year their age would become fifteen yrold.

So that was what the teacher was angry about. Until the age of fourteen all humans were given the privilege to misbehave, because they were considered kids, but at fifteen yrold it was the beginning of adulthood and that meant a higher level of expectations.

“Do you think adults act like this?” Cacao asked another question after a long pause.

None of the young adults in the classroom answered his questions.

Early adulthood was always considered to be the most difficult period for everyone. After living irresponsibly for so long, it was hard to suddenly mature overnight. Many teens needed years of learning from their own mistakes to fully mature into responsible adults.

“What do you think other tutors would say about you?” another question from Cacao, which was left without an answer.

Spruce felt bad, knowing that Beech Meadow had to listen to this. Spruce regretted telling the teacher, and he wished he could turn back time, and undo his words. Now that Beech had to attend the Exercise class everyday, there was even less time for the two of them to practice in secret.

Beech still promised to meet up with Spruce whenever he was available, but it would no longer happen as often.

“Professor, we’ll be late to our next class,” Sage spoke.

“Your next class is in two hours,” Cacao said.

“But I still need to finish my homework for that class,” she responded. “And we already heard you before the Exercise class. No need to repeat yourself.”

Cacao stood still, thinking, then he sighed. “You may go,” he said to the tutors.

Spruce heard the sound of footsteps, so he ran away from the door before any of the tutors stepped out. When he made a turn, he slipped on the ice and fell face forward into the snow.

Some students were walking in the distance, but they didn’t realize that he had fallen. The tutors, who left the classroom G headed in the opposite direction.

He picked himself up and moved on, hoping that no one recognized him. He walked slowly and more carefully for the rest of the way toward his cottage.

After he arrived at the cottage, he fell on the sofa with a heavy sigh.

Aspen, who was reading a book by his desk, looked at his roommate, “did something happen?”

Spruce sat up, and told him all that had happened in the Exercise class.

“So it was illegal?” Aspen bit on the tip of his pen.

“All tutors must come to Exercise class daily, unless they’re sick or something else important,” Spruce rephrased his earlier explanation. “Otherwise, they’re breaking rules.”

“Makes sense,” Aspen commented. “I did think that a class of fifty students would be too much for one tutor to handle.”

“Yeah,” Spruce’s voice was too quiet compared with the usual.

“Shouldn’t you be happy?”

“Why?”

“Now you can meet the magicless tutor in every Exercise class.”

Up until now, Spruce thoughts were occupied with his secret tutoring from Beech in that storage room, where nobody ever went to. He hadn’t even once considered that Beech was going to be right there in every Exercise class.

“Oh, yeah,” Spruce finally realized it.

However, Beech’s tutoring in the class was different from his secret tutoring. In class, he was teaching only that, which the teachers had already covered in class, and he was only rephrasing what was said by the teachers, or written in the textbook.

During their secret tutoring, Spruce learned from Beech things that weren’t even covered yet by the teachers.

He let out a deep sigh. “I’m going to Yew to do the homework,” he announced to Aspen.

“Good luck,” Aspen responded.

Three hours later, Spruce came back with all the homework done. Aspen was learning something with the concentration charm around him, so he hadn’t even noticed when his roommate entered the living room.

Spruce walked to his bedroom, where he took out the page from Beech, and wrote down: dum-dum.

...We’ll meet Friday and Saturday, same time and place…

Spruce was glad that Beech was still willing to continue their tutoring. However, he also knew that the short week schedule would only last until the month of Faev, which was coming up in less than six weeks. Afterward, the class schedule was back to its standard long week schedule.

The snow had already begun to decrease. It wasn’t yet visible, because a lot of snow had still been laying on the ground, however with each day the snow piles were growing smaller and smaller. Most of the snow had already disappeared from the empty tree branches, which were standing barren like dead trees. However, they weren’t dead. The trees were merely sleeping, but soon they would begin to awaken.

The roads, which were desnowed daily, usually turned into slippery streams of water by early afternoon from the sun heating up the remaining snow. The water would still freeze overnight, and turn into ice by early morning, but this ice would once again melt from the sunlight during the day.

The icicles attached to the roof rims were dripping water, which was drilling holes in the snow underneath. And still hidden under the snow, the first plants were beginning to grow in the defrosted soil, which was preparing for the upcoming change of temperatures.

Spruce practiced with Beech’s hairpin over Friday and Saturday, and on Monday morning he finally succeeded his first charm using his magical dagger. Just as promised, he stayed after class to show Sorrel his efforts, and she recognized the charm he showed her.

With improved tutoring under the supervision of Cacao, all boys succeeded to charm by the end of the following week, and Cacao announced that he won’t be coming daily, but he would be checking in on the Exercise class randomly to verify that all the tutors were indeed tutoring as they should be.

Within those two weeks, most of the snow had disappeared and only occasionally a patch of snow could still be found somewhere in a shady dark place, where the sunlight couldn’t get to it. Grass and other small plants started to decorate the ground with shades of fresh green, while the trees began to arrange flower buds on their branches.

The river, which was flowing by the northern side of the school, had surged up to the point, where it only needed a little bit more to overflow and spill onto the Hecate schoolground. A lot of students went to see the river up close, so the teachers had to put up a barrier charm around the gushing waters, to stop the students from accidentally falling into the river.

The season of Peizh was always known as the season of rebirth. It was always the season, which repainted the white world with all the colors of the rainbow. Like a painter, who would draw on an empty canvas, the season of Peizh drew on the canvas of the world.

The intensity of Peizh brought with itself the energy of youth and the spirit of new life. Almost as if, it wanted to inform the world that an impactful event was heading their way.

When God created the world, he ruled over it, and the world was perfect.

When God created mankind, He gave the world to the mankind. From then on, the mankind ruled over the world, which little by little fell into chaos. Eventually, the mankind understood that they didn’t know how to rule the world, so they requested that God would rule over it again.

Once again God ruled over the world, which He created.

This was the story, which all kids learned in kindergarten in this world. However, things happened differently in that other world, which Traito previously inhabited.

There, the mankind didn’t want God as their ruler.

In that world, after the mankind received from God the power to rule over the world, they gave that power to the devil, who gladly took it from the foolish humans. As such, humans have lost all their freedom. The men became puppets of the devil, who became the king and the god of that world.

Many non-human beings were unhappy at that arrangement, but they had no power to change it, so instead they chose to die out. Humans wondered why so many animals and plants became extinct, and they concluded that it was all caused by global warming, pollution, an asteroid, or some other trivial factor. As to species who left no trace of their presence, such as dragons or elfs, the humans labeled them as non-existent in the first place.

Yet in all truth, everything and everyone, who was mentioned in tales of times long forgotten, used to exist and would have continued to exist, if humans hadn’t given the crown to the devil. 

Except for foolish humans, whose minds were like those of naive children, no one wanted to live in a world ruled by demons, because a world ruled by the devil was no different from a cage.

The men living in that cage, didn’t know freedom, but they rarely missed it, just like a three yrold would prefer to be locked in his bedroom with all his toys and games and favorite snacks over venturing out alone into the unknown forest with nothing but courage and hope.

Humans of that world found pleasure in being slaves. And their masters were overjoyed to be given so much power as to decide everything for them.

The demons decided who among the men was rich, and who was poor; who was healthy, and who was sick; who was lucky, and who was damned; who was talented, and who was inept; who was born into a good family, and who had a miserable childhood.

Traito knew that the mankind, who lived in this world ruled by God, would never be able to imagine a life of slavery, because the ruler of this world, was God, and God loved freedom as much as He loved truth and justice. Instead of ruling from above, God lived among the mankind. Instead of deciding the fates of others, God allowed every man to create his own destiny.

It was that part of God’s personality, which allowed one of His worlds to fall under the rule of the devil. If God hadn’t respected the wishes of the men, who wanted to be ruled by the devil, that world would have never become a cage, inside which humans were nothing more than toys.

Traito understood that in depth, and he understood that God couldn’t do anything unless the mankind of that world would call out to Him for help. If God had done anything by Himself, it would have made Him a dictator, no different from the devil.

Yet God, who had all the powers in His hands, never ruled by force. Instead He always ruled by love, and love meant that He allowed others to choose for themselves, even if He had to suffer silently from watching them suffer openly as a result of their choices.

For millennia, God waited for the mankind to call out to Him, but in a world ruled by the devil, all the mankind hated God. They cursed Him day and night, blamed Him for all the miseries they suffered, and no one among them ever asked for His help.

Thus nothing changed for ages, until that one day, which Traito remembered in details.

It was at that moment, when he felt, that the corroded wheels of destiny of that world began to spin in a different direction, and the auspicious winds of fate of the masters of that world began to blow for someone else.

Suddenly, through the will of one man, in the world ruled by demons, freedom began to exist once again. It was nearly impossible to acquire, but it wasn’t completely impossible. Absolute impossibilities didn’t exist in any of the worlds, which God had created.

“You’re late,” a man in late forties shouted at the teenager, who just entered the basement by coming down the stairs.

All four walls of the room were crowded with weapons and tools. And in the middle of the room, there was a table covered with dry blood. On the table, there was a living animal with its stomach cut open by a knife, and its insides spilling out.

The teenager, who just got there, took an axe from the wall and held it in his hands.

The older man, who held a bloody knife in his hand, looked away from the teenager, and focused his gaze on the animal on the table in front of him. The man didn’t even realize, when the teenager swung the axe aiming at his head.

The weapon made a hole in the back of his skull, and his body fell forward on top of the animal, whose shrieks sounded like voices from Hell. The teenager repeatedly struck his axe at the man’s head until it was crushed into small pieces, and completely unrecognizable as a human head.

Then with one last chop, the teenager cleanly cut off the animal’s head, ending its suffering.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry, I’m so weak. I’m sorry, I made you suffer so long. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He understood that he couldn’t save the animal, and the only thing he could do was to end its suffering.

He grabbed the body of the man by his arm and threw it on the ground like a piece of garbage. Then he took a white sheet from one of the shelves, and put it on top of the animal, as if he was preparing it for burial.

Afterward, with blood splattered on his clothes, and the axe in his hand, he walked up the stairs.

He opened the door and entered the living room, where two people, a man and a woman, showed no reaction to his blood-stained clothing or the weapon in his hand. It was normal for them to see such attire on a weekly basis.

“Done?” asked the man, who was sitting on the sofa. “Then let’s go with another one,” he approached a cage with four small puppies.

“I’m sure God is so pleased.”

Even though the woman said «God», she wasn’t talking about the Creator of the world. She was talking about the devil, also known as Satan, who was also called «God» by humans, who failed to tell the difference between the two.

A long time ago before God created humans, Satan was satisfied with being the second most powerful being in the world, and he was pleased by whatever God created. However, after God created humans, Satan’s attitude drastically changed. He didn’t approve of humans and he wanted them gone. He tried to get rid of humans himself, but God stopped him.

Thus Satan came to a conclusion that he would be a better god than God.

He waged a war against his creator, and lost. Unable to accept his defeat, he chose to harm God indirectly. He used his ability to lie, in order to brainwash God’s beloved mankind. He went from one world to another, lying to mankind everywhere, but he was rejected over and over until he had found a world, where the men were willing to believe him. To them, he told that he was God, and that he created all, and that he sent prophets, and that he was their only king, and many men became his servants without even realizing that they had changed gods.

Yet Satan never imitated God’s love of freedom. Instead he was openly against freedom, and supported unquestionable obedience instead. He didn’t allow freedom, because he knew men were curious and doubtful by nature, and if they were allowed to have freedom, they would inevitably go out to search for their real creator, and if they did so, they would inevitably find God.

In order to keep the mankind under his rule, Satan gave out orders to brutally punish those, who refused to obey him. And the men foolishly obeyed his orders to harm and to kill, even though in order to do so, they had to drown that tiny voice in their heart, which was telling them that their actions were against the will of God.

“Harry wants to drink some beer,” the teenager said to the woman. “Can you buy it for him?”

“Sure,” the woman got up and left the house.

“Which one should we take first?” the man wondered looking at the puppies, and the teenager approached him from behind. “What do you think, Ted?”

And just as the man turned his face around, the axe hit him right in the eyes. He fell with a shout, but Ted didn’t let him scream for too long. The next hit of the axe landed on the man’s throat, and his shouts turned into a gurgling noise as blood was boiling up from his throat.

With just three more swings of the axe, the man lying on the floor was decapitated.

The four small puppies curled up in fear, and Ted noticed that some of the man’s blood had splattered inside the cage and on one of the puppies.

“It would have been better for you, if you had never been born in this evil world,” Ted said toward the puppies.

Then he took the man’s smartphone and texted the woman, who just left. “Harry changed his mind. Can you come back?”

Right after sending the message, he took his axe, and went to the kitchen, which was next to the front door of the house. He stood behind the wall, waiting for the woman to come back. It didn’t take her too long, and he heard the door opening and closing as she walked inside.

“Really,” she whined.

She passed by Ted, who quietly stepped out of the kitchen and followed right after her. The moment she entered the living room, she stopped upon seeing the dead body of her boyfriend.

At that very second, an axe dug into the back of her skull.

Then Ted kicked her in the back, because the axe got stuck in her skull. He wanted the weapon back, because he had to land more hits to be certain of her death. As soon as he got the axe back, he chopped through her neck with just one hit. Certainly, it was much easier to decapitate a woman than a man.

Afterward, Ted took a shower, put on clean clothes, and came back to the living room. He took the cage with puppies to the bathroom, where he cleaned the cage, and washed the blood off the puppies. He put the puppies back in the clean cage, and took them back to that same animal shelter, where he got them from earlier.

“I’m sorry, but I cannot take them after all,” he said to the receptionists, who just told him to leave the cage on the floor. He did just that, and left.

He didn’t want to think of what would happen to the puppies. He couldn’t keep them, and it was their own fault for being born in such an evil world. If the puppies wanted to be loved, they should have been born in another world.

He returned back to his home. He ignored his father, who was beating up his mother. He ignored his yelling and cursing. He ignored her moaning and sobbing. He went straight to his room, and wondered: how long would it take for anyone to find the dead bodies?

He knew that once the bodies were found, he'd be the next one to die, but he didn’t mind. This world was too evil to live in, so death would have been a relief from this hell. He often pondered about suicide, but he didn’t want to die in vain. If he was going to die, it would be after he changed something in this evil world.

The following day, he returned back to the house. The corpses were still there, and there was no sign that anyone had been there.

He went back to his home, and brought back his father’s bottles of vodka. He poured alcohol on the bodies, and he put a lot of small wooden furnitures and papers on top of each corpse. He opened all the doors, letting in as much oxygen into the house as possible.

He took down every fire alarm in the house, and left them all locked inside a freezer. Then he went to the cellar, which had one small window, which had never been opened, so the lock wasn’t working. In order to let the fresh air into the cellar, Ted smashed the small window by throwing a hammer at it.

Afterward, he set fire to a ball of rolled-up paper with a lighter, and he lightly threw the ball down between the mount of trash, and on top of the dead body of a man in his forties, which immediately caught the fire.

He went up the stairs into the living room, leaving the cellar door wide open.

In the same manner, he set fire to both corpses in the living room. He stayed there for a moment observing the fire quickly spreading to the objects stuck up on top of the corpses. However, he didn’t wait until the fire was too strong. He left the house, and returned back home.

His mother was bleeding on the floor, but that was nothing new. His father was destroying the house's furniture in search of his alcohol, but that was also nothing new.

He would have felt some pity for his mother, if he had been a stranger. However, all the things, which she had done to him, were enough to make his heart as cold as a frozen lake.

Ted went to his bedroom. He laid down on his stomach on the bed, and quietly cried. He didn’t know, why his eyes were so overfilled with tears. In his heart, he didn’t feel much. He killed three people, and yet he didn’t feel any remorse. Quite on the contrary, he felt peace, as if he had been finally freed from shackles, which have weighed down on him for years.

Traito watched him cry.

Among the endless evils of his world, which surrounded the teenager, Ted had actually managed to free himself. Without knowing, he chose not to be evil.

Traito knew that God never created evil.

Evil came to exist as a result of the freedom, which God gave to people. In the world, which God had created, there was a simple law of nature that whatever one did to others would inevitably return back. Thus men wisely did to others what they wished for themselves, until the demons changed that law, and it became possible to do unto others what one didn’t wish for himself.

Moreover, the devil had established a new law that evil shall forever be repaid with good, and good shall forever be repaid with evil. Thus the men of good hearts soon became victims of their own actions, and the men of evil hearts gained countless rewards for their deeds. That’s how the wicked gained power, while the kind-hearted were stripped of everything.

Yet, all of the people of that world, whether good or bad, chose to serve Satan of their own free will, because serving the devil was easy. Satan made rules, and people followed the rules. Satan ordered, and people obeyed.

Satan himself never took any actions personally, because he was unable to do so. To him God gave powers to lie, and that was the excess and also the limit of his powers. He could lie, but he could never act. However, it mattered not, because his lies were enough to make men act as he wanted them to.

Many of those obedient men didn’t want to serve evil. They wanted to serve God, and so they awaited commands from God, which never arrived. Instead they heard commands from Satan, whom they mistook as God.

For there was nothing more difficult in the world than to serve God, who commanded not.

God with his divine personality was like a hero from a fairy tale. He alone and all by Himself, challenged evil to a fight, and anyone who wished to follow him, must have done so on his own will, with no orders nor instructions.

God would never force anyone to join Him, but He also never rejected anyone, who wished to travel alongside Him, whom He always treated as His friends.

”If you want to serve God, just pick your weapon of choice, and follow Him into the battle,” Traito spoke, standing by Ted’s bed.

The teenager raised up his head, and looked around the room as if he had heard something, but to his eyes he was alone in his bedroom.

Traito looked at Ted’s face, and he knew that the teenager had done something that no one in his world had ever done before. He broke out of the cage created by Satan.

He rejected the path, which was created for him by others, and he created his own path. He may have started his new journey with a murder, but walking down a new path toward the unknown future was certainly something that was only reserved for the greatest of men.

This teenager had been freed from the life, which the demons set up for him, and if he were to find God, he could have gained the powers to change the whole world.

On that day, Traito had found Ted so interesting, that he stayed around to observe his life.

Predictably, Ted didn’t live long.

The police never linked him to his first three murder, which he committed at the age of sixteen, because of the demonic law that evil deeds shall be rewarded with good. In his case the «good» meant his lucky elusion of prison.

Ted used that demonic law for many years unknowingly, expecting to be caught and killed anytime. Yet he was never caught by any authorities, and he went around killing those who harmed the innocent and the helpless. Eventually, the demons had realized that something was going on, because their favorite toys were getting murdered, and they didn’t order those murders.

The demons realized that Traito wasn’t under their control anymore, and they had to erase him before he created any more chaos in their toyhouse. The demons controlled another man, who stabbed Ted with a poisoned knife and left him to bleed to death.

Traito watched Ted’s final moments with pity.

Ted could have achieved so much more, if he had God at his side. However, Ted was an avid atheist, so he never even bothered to search for God, thus limiting his own powers over his own life and over the very world, which he could have changed.

At the very last moment, when Ted’s vision was completely blurry, and all the nearby sounds felt very distant and hazy, he whispered the words, “God... help.”

A sound of thunder came from the sky, which made people startle as they began to search for any storm clouds, but found none.

The gates of Heaven, invisible to the living, blasted open as if someone kicked the door, and Traito saw the moment, when Ted’s body disappeared from the street. No one except him realized that a piece of reality suddenly went missing.

Traito grinned, because he was the first one to know that the end of Satan’s rule had just been announced in Heaven. He began to think about himself. He wanted to taste victory, so he began to wonder how to gain something out of this situation.

He didn’t feel bad at the idea of betraying Satan. After all, demons had no master. What united them was their goal to destroy humans, and pure power created the hierarchy and order, which they followed.

Yet, not many knew it, because not many had seen it, but unlike humans who only knew how to await commands, all demons knew how to serve God, and could do so quite easily, if they just wished to.