Drops of water fall from Mustafá’s hair, her whole attire a complete, wet mess. There’s suddenly bags under her eyes, as if she had somehow already spent several nights without even blinking in the span of a few hours. Her face is a painting, an ode to sadness and frustration…She never expresses feelings beyond annoyance, she never asks for things politely. This is bad, very bad! So bad that I don’t even hesitate to pull her inside the house, not even caring about water dripping on my rug. I sit her on a nearby chair, running into the kitchen with sudden, renewed energy and getting the electric kettle to work once again.

“Why do you care so much? She’s an asshole.”

She needs me. Shut up.

“What!? You little–”

I ignore myself, quickly running back to the living room. Mustafá is right where I left her. I walk over to her and try to offer her a smile… but I am out of practice smiling, so I can only feel myself grimace a little bit. I still do my best!

“I still have hot water. Want to take a shower?”

She looks at me, staring into my soul for a good few minutes before nodding and walking to my tiny bathroom, closing the door behind herself. Once I’m alone, I look down on the floor for a moment, trying to think… What happened exactly? How did we get here? And what else could I do for her? I think long and deep until suddenly, an idea sparks in my brain. I knock on the bathroom’s door.

“...Yes?” She answers, tired and wistful. I expected a ‘what’ or something rude and direct, so the whiplash leaves me stunned for a second.

“A-Ah. yeah. Sorry, can I take your clothes to the drier? I will leave you something you can wear!” I try my best not to stutter while talking.

“...Fine.” I guess that even while depressed, she’s a woman of few words.

With a nod, I jog over to my room and pick up my set of clean pajamas and a basket. I then carefully open the door and look around doing my absolute best to ignore the feminine shade behind the shower curtain and instead focus on the pile of clothes on the side. I pick them up, leave the pajamas on top of the closet toilet, and jog right out of the bathroom. I take two steps and a new idea strikes my mind.

I set the basket in the middle of the living room, going back to my bedroom to snatch pen and paper to draw the ‘Water’ rune.

“You’re playing with fire here.”

Objectively incorrect.

“What I mean is that you’re already recovering from exhausting your reserves! What if you’re too weak to do more magic? Or if you accidentally destroy her clothes with your magic or something?”

I will never know if I don’t try.

Standing in front of the basket full of wet clothes, I hold my right hand up while the left hand holds tightly to the piece of paper with the runes for ‘Water’ and ‘Movement’ written on it. With a deep breath, I try to focus. This is far more complex than a mere feat of telekinesis… but I can do this. I know I can.

“Jolpekgr!”

The paper on my hand starts to crinkle. For a moment nothing happens, panic starts to surge and climb up my back, but no. I have to stay strong, I have to actually try this! My vision focuses on the pile of wet clothes. I just have to imagine the effect I want, right? Well, I just imagine the things they do with elemental bending in fantasy settings!

I continue to stare at the clothes, until suddenly they start to shake in place. Drops of water begin to form on the surface and float lazily to my hand, one after another. Soon it is no longer individual drops, it’s more like a flowing little stream coming from the pile. I observe, amazed, as a big bubble of water begins to form on the palm of my right hand, first the size of a ping pong ball, then upgrading into a full sized soccer ball! I continue to focus, frowning as I notice how the amount of water I am pulling is proportional to the effort I am putting.

The clothes crinkle and squeeze themselves as more and more water flows out of them, until they look fully dry!

“Yes!”

But it doesn’t stop there.

With horror, I can see how the stream turns a darker colour as the tinctures are squeezed out of the silk.

“Wait, no. Wait, WAIT WAIT.”

I try to stop focusing, but the moment I do, I can feel the damn bubble on my hand lose form, so I am forced to keep it up.

Saints damn it, saints damn it all!

“I told you this was a bad idea.”

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Mustafá didn’t realize how much she needed that shower until she rested under the hot water. All the thoughts, all the pesky feelings, the fears, the anxieties, everything just washed away with the warm flow. In the few moments of pure, absolute nothingness, the Alchemist questioned herself in what really mattered: The course of action. She needed a plan, and what she had right now was only the semblance of one.

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As she carefully cleaned herself with Tav’s cheap soap, she put her current objectives in a neatly ordered, numbered list.

1. Stop the Second Sacrifice.

Now that was easy. But to do that, she had to focus on the individual objectives inside that big objective. Compartmentalize!

1. Get to the culprits of the Bisontia Attack.

2. Identify the triggers of the Second Sacrifice and disable them.

And then, she needed to further compartmentalize…

a.1) Investigate the current suspects for answers.

a.2) Create a new list of suspects in case your current one is exhausted.

b.1) Decipher Humiko’s book.

b.2) Organize an expedition to the North Pole.

b.1.1) Assist Tav with her instruction.

b.2.1) Acquire Sleeper Authorization for a North Pole expedition.

With a loud sigh, Mustafá finished showering and walked out to dry herself. With a mere motion of her hand, all the water covering her skin rolled into a bubble and then dunked itself into the drain. She would dry her hair the sleeper way, for doing it magically usually damaged it or left it too dry and brittle. Then, she looked at the pajamas left by Tav.

It was a dark blue set of fluffy, warm pajamas: a pair of pants and a long sleeved top, both decorated with little sheep jumping over fences. The alchemist frowned, this wasn’t what she would wear at all… but again, she reminded herself that the designs on her clothes were absolutely irrelevant to their function, and with a sigh she dressed herself before walking outside.

There’s an echo of anguish and despair coming from somewhere in the room. Two steps out, and she already spotted a problem. A very panicked Tav was holding a rather voluminous bubble of water over her hands. She was crying and sweating profusely, but all that water was just gathered in the gluttonous sphere. And not just water: the tinctures of her clothes, her curtains, the tablecloth and even the couches were siphoned straight out and mixed into the unholy orb of swirling colours the apprentice had created.

She looked at Mustafá with a trembling lip and weak knees. Clearly, she was at her limit.

“H-Help…!” Tav cried. “I-If I let go now…”

The alchemist sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. Work never stops, does it?

“Here.” The smaller woman walked over and held her hands up, barely touching the orb of liquids with the palm of her hands. “You can let go now.”

The apprentice sighed in relief, falling right on the floor as the draining of water stopped. Astral Sickness, very common among those who don’t exercise every day. Shaking her head softly, Mustafá began to sort the contents of the sphere, holding it with one hand while the other slowly directed the flow of each individual tincture into a different, smaller bubble.

Returning the colour to everything was an easy task for the alchemist, while Tav stared in awe as colours simply flowed right back to their respective cloths, all until the water orb was clean of all tinctures.

“How…?” She asked weakly, eyes back on Mustafá.

“It’s a matter of identifying the specific liquids you wish to control. It’s all in the mind.” The alchemist commented without really thinking about it, directing the water into the kitchen and then down the drain. “...You tried to dry my clothes yourself. Why?”

“I… thought it would be easier and faster than just throwing them in the dryer upstairs.” Tav pouted, looking down with a sigh. “I’m sorry.”

“It was foolish of you to try such a specific, meticulous work without proper practice.” Mustafá kneeled in front of her apprentice, looking down at her. “... But I appreciate it. And you managed to do this without destroying the cloth, that’s a good sign.”

The younger one opened her eyes in shock before a blush rushed to her cheeks. Clearly, she was one that responded to praise rather than criticism, and the alchemist took notice of this. It would be useful for the rest of her instruction. This was the standard procedure… and yet, she felt slightly guilty for even thinking about it. Guilt? In her mind? The teacher shook her head slightly, trying to push those silly ideas out.

“Why am I on the floor…?” Tav weakly wondered.

“Astral Sickness. You ran out of the Astral Reserve your body naturally produces and tried to tap on Mana. Your body couldn’t do that, so you got sick.” The explanation was on the simple side but, the elder mage didn’t think her apprentice would need more than that. “Let me help you up… we will make tea.”

“I am supposed to be the one making you feel better…” The younger one sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“No apologies. I forgot to print that.” Mustafá carefully helped Tav up, carrying her over to a chair and then snapping her fingers, ordering two cups of hot tea to serve themselves. “You don’t need to worry about me.”

“You are… sad.” The girl insisted. “It has to be the first time I see you express emotion since I met you.”

“You know nothing of me, stop trying to peer into my psyche.” The elder mage sipped on her tea.

“But… we are working together, aren’t we? You will be my teacher. Maybe it’s good if I get to know you.” The young apprentice refused to relent.

“Our relationship is asymmetric and it should remain so. There’s no need for the apprentice to see the teacher as anything more than a teacher.” Mustafá could be far, far harsher here… for some reason she decided against it. This was concerning to her. “You don’t want to get close to me. Trust me.”

There was a sigh of disappointment. Tav clearly expected a more positive answer to her approach, but she nodded eventually. Mustafá nodded as well, glad that her apprentice seemed to at least be trying to understand.

“Now focus. I have important things to tell you.” The elder took a slow sip from her cup. “Are you ready? This will be long.”

“I, I think.” With a bit of her strength back, the youth took a sip as well. “Hit me.”

The alchemist took a deep breath, looking at Tav deep in the eye as she began weaving a tale. A tale of the world before the Saints, before history was properly written, before even she was alive! A time of history known to all as ‘The Age of Myth’. An era when monsters, magical creatures and other strange species roamed Jericho alongside humanity, for better or for worse.

Great spires all around the world served as the main cities of humankind, their soleprotection against the supernatural. It is said that those spires had been built by Gods and Dragons of the Old World… and to this, Mustafá nodded in confirmation.

There are three Great Presences that influenced humankind in this era: Gods, the avatars of Human Belief; Dragons, the representations of Human Certainty; and Calamities, whose identity and role in the Great Game are still a mystery to the studious of today.

“The Great Game?” Tav asked, tilting her head.

The Great Game, as Mustafá tried her best to explain, was the conflict between the Great Presences of Jericho for control over Humanity. A great cold war that was waged during the entirety of the Age of Myth, and in which many human lives were lost, fighting for the causes of beings that cared only about the power human thought brought to them.

The end of the Great Game came when humanity first acquired the secret of the Presences’ domination: Magic. The power to change reality by altering its very core using the Mystical Runes.

No one is sure how this first contact with Magic came to be. Some people believe the knowledge was stolen and then bestowed upon humanity by rogue Presences; others think people stumbled upon it by accident in dreams… Some even postulate that it was magic itself that called for us.

“The origin of this magic?” The alchemist said. “A Tree, hidden somewhere in the Third Layer of Reality, which contains all the Runes that have existed and that ever will exist on its bark.”

“Wait, so reality is written on a tree? How have people not figured out this is supposed to be a language?” Her apprentice impatiently asked.

The Brotherhood of Black Pages has made sure the thought left the collective consciousness of people, trying to erase as much of this knowledge from libraries and minds. Not everyone sees the Tree when they awaken, most only see a mere shadow containing their assigned Rune.

Anyways, obtaining this secret and setting themselves free from the influence of the Presences, Humanity entered the ‘Age of Magic’, a short lived time of splendor, culture and knowledge… alongside the rampant genocide of magical races.

The Great Game soon came to an end as the Presences realized Humanity could not be controlled anymore… and for a time, it was an age of Human Domination. Until, one day, the Gods struck Humanity with a curse: The Curse of Pandaemonium.

Sickness and death suddenly began to spread from every point on which mages gathered. Paradox, the unruly nature of wild magic, caused explosions and dangerous mishaps that became harder and harder to control the more mages congregated in one place. It was the end of magical academia, of cooperation and domination over everything.

With a world suddenly robbed of its ability to develop magic as a race, and magical beings rarer and angrier than ever, a new Age started. The Age of Silence.