Dianthus stood straight, the wound on his head closing slowly. Even his blood ignored gravity, entering his body again.

“What kind of weak ass throw was that? It didn’t even knock me off.” He opened his mouth again to provoke Igern even more. “You must not hate that idea that muc-”

“Enough.” Winter said, as Igern stood up, just to sit down again. And not only him, all the other mages who were, and weren’t raising a fit: Doireann, Nebura, Creftalia, Dianthus… lowered their heads, sweat dripping down their necks.

Winter sighed, but made no effort to release them for the Order's effects. They staying silent was almost a blessing (for her, that is), so she wasn’t in a hurry.

It didn’t matter that they were the strongest novice mages on Arhontissa, and the ones at the top of the Mergifari. To any official mage, their skills, powers and tricks were children’s games.

No, calling them children was also incorrect. Mages, like humans, were soft on their children. An actual description of how official mages saw novice mages conflicts would be: a chicken coop.

As long as the chickens laid eggs, the feathers they lost in fights were of zero importance.

In some way, what Velvet did to Nebura could be summarized as: a chicken stealing another chicken’s egg, an egg who was almost ready to be collected.

Of course, Winter understood Nebura’s inner conflict. Velvet was part of her past, the past she wanted to get rid of with such insistence, who just showed up, stole two years of work like no one’s business, and made the problem grow so much that two other mages ended up injured.

If she was being honest, even when the injured were Arhontissian mages, Winter found it a little funny. If she weren’t banned from doing so, she would go to find Velvet and pinch her cheeks.

Even when they acted like they didn’t want anything to do with the other, and were too mature to shout at each other, both Velvet and Nebura wanted to fight on sight.

In fact, before Dianthus and Creftalia showed up, Nebura had been insisting on being the one to go get her box back. But anyone with half a working brain could see that was Velvet’s plan.

Nebura’s suggestion then changed to borrowing some artifacts and blowing Velvet up by surprise, to which Winter just sighed.

After thinking over it, in some way, Dianthus’ idea wasn’t so ridiculous. Their reasonable options were: Igern, Creftalia or Dianthus.

Velvet would curbstomp and mug Creftalia in seconds, Winter had no doubts about it. She even doubted Creftalia would even try to get the box, since she clearly had been overworked by Dianthus. Creftalia might even negotiate to spend the night in her hut, just to get away from more work.

Dianthus… he wasn’t a bad option, but he was chronically unable to follow instructions. Like, at all. Also, he sucked at negotiating without angering the other party, so the chances of the box ending up damaged were high.

Sending Dianthus was a way to burn the bridge for Velvet to switch sides. And Winter still wasn’t letting go of that chance. Even more now that Velvet possessed Frenese’s Book. Of course, she knew they had worked together on the Frenese seal, so their relationship couldn’t be that bad.

In some way, sending Dianthus wasn’t that bad of a choice…

Now, Igern… he and Velvet had fought several times, but it wasn’t anything personal.

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Wait, no. It was.

Winter sighed again. She then remembered the Order was still in effect, and all the mages remained still, silent and sweating under her power.

“You can speak now.” She said, waving her hand. “No fighting. Just think about a feasible plan.”

Official mages couldn’t directly intervene in novice mages conflicts. Not because the abuse of power mattered, but because a novice mage being protected constantly didn’t have room to grow. Even so, some novice mages tended to follow their Selectors like bees, just to prevent getting involved into some fight.

But the skills of those novice mages ended up stagnating.

The only way for an Esca to progressively open was using magic, and magic was born from a mage’s Paradigm, who followed the mage’s desires. The fastest way to nudge those desires was violence.

For Velvet, of the Knowledge Paradigm, fighting other mages allowed her to know more about spells previously unknown, and also tugged at her greed, shown in her desires to take and keep all the spoils.

For Igern, of the Tyranny Paradigm, fighting and triumphing over other mages tugged at both his desires of causing destruction from the wrath side, and claiming victory over his enemies from the pride side.

The same could be said for every other mage. Therefore, for the Mergifari, whose main objective was nurturing strong mages as soon as possible, allowing fights to happen was in its best interests. As long as no mage killed another, all the violence served its purpose.

Make novice mages stronger.

There were simply not enough official mages to handle all the problems, the biggest example being Permafrost.

In fact, after the Frenese’s fiasco, the Mergifari’s High Command was debating as to reduce the waiting until the next Selection from three to one years, and, after recovering from its losses, to two years.

Winter felt that one year was too little time for interesting novice mages to emerge, which would end with lackluster competition during the next Selection if they followed with that choice. But alas, she had no voting power over those decisions. And neither had the Queen.

She still had opinions about the last point. The Queen was way above more than half High Command, yet she had no power over the Mergifari’s verdicts!

Winter had even suggested her to make their own academy on Arhontissa, where the Queen could have all the power and control, to which the Queen had refused, claiming:

“The Mergifari is the best place. It has always been. Nowhere else compares. If we built our own academy, we still would’ve had to send our strongest novices here.”

She hadn’t answered why, and Winter didn’t press the issue.

Even if she was an official mage, she didn’t have all the knowledge in the world.

A cough broke her inner musings, and she looked at Dianthus, who was the one with a sore throat.

“What is it?”

Dianthus didn’t hold back a grin, knowing that Winter wasn’t paying attention to the things they said a minute ago, too lost in her world. “Igern said that he will go.”

Ignoring Igern’s look, which clearly meant that he didn’t say anything resembling those things, Winter waved her hand, wrapping up things, no longer interested in the truth of Dianthus’ words. “Good, good. I hope the box is back by tomorrow.”

Igern bit his tongue once Winter said that, refraining himself from complaining, but instead interested in remembering.

He would pay Dianthus back. No doubts about it.

…

Dianthus had to hold back a breath of relief once Winter gave for finished the matter. He was not an idiot, and, with time, had developed some intuition to sense when problems were just waiting to happen.

That box meant trouble, even more when it was related to a magic wall that had not broken in hundreds of years.

Chosen Ones and things who had an ‘unbreakable seal’ on its description were a bad combination. Just look at Frenese’s Book.

Now add Lothrigern to the mix, who was monitoring Velvet.

If he were to go, that wall had its days counted. So he ‘convinced’ Igern to take his place. That way, the box would stay a box, and the wall would remain unbreakable.

Of course, that didn’t mean the matter with the wall was over. Just postponed.

He was unable to escape fate, after all.