Mom refuses to answer my questions about how Eph knows her, and as Cordelia no less, after their weird reunion. The only thing she says is that she was those people before, but now she is my mother. I feel less bad about not knowing her life now. She has so many secrets that there’s no way I could’ve known the real her. Vithar makes dinner, and we talk, then eat, then talk some more until mom breaks off with Anna for some reason. I take Eph and Vithar into the basement to clear out some space. I had completely forgotten that it was now a very cozy finished basement, thanks to Vithar, and planned to make room for them to train. I need to remind him of my appreciation again when I get a chance. So instead of cleaning, we all walk back to the small room that is designated for casting and practicing.

“This is the space prepared for training with magic,” Vithar says.

“There are circles laid into the floor,” I say, gesturing to them.

Eph whistles.“All right, Mike. I didn't know you had it like this.”

“I didn't until recently. This was all Vithar. Thanks again, dude.”

Eph grunts in approval and Vithar smiles.

“This is pretty nice, but it's not enough room,” Eph says.

“We don't really have any other space. If we can put up some of those illusions outside like I saw the other day, I suppose we can do it out in the yard somewhere,” I say.

“Nah, I got a space,” he says. The runes embedded in the floor start to glow when Eph starts speaking in a language I don't understand. His hands move in a blur of motion, and the ringing hits my ears. It’s louder than normal. I don’t know what he’s doing, but there is a lot of energy going into what is being created. He pokes the air with the index finger of his right hand. Astonishingly, it disappears into nothingness. It's like he found an invisible hole in the air and plugged it with his finger. He draws his hand down and the finger stays invisible, but there's a line in the space in front of him that sucks in a gulp of air before equalizing, like it just pressurized to match our atmosphere. Pulling his finger away, he grabs the line on either side with both hands and tugs. The line tears and spreads, opening into a rip–and I hate to use this cliched term–in the fabric of reality.

I walk around it a few times, trying to wrap my head around it, but it's hard to focus on. It's like one of those eye illusion pictures where you see it if you unfocus. But with this one, you can't see it from the back and when you move to the side, you just see mirage-like waves in the air. Eph steps back and speaks again, making the runes in the circles pulse with a dim light. He peers inside the rip, then pulls his head back out.

“We're good. We can go in here. This will give us the space we need.” He glances at us and smirks. “Close your mouths, boys. Let's get after it.” Then he walks into the rift.

Vithar and I move forward and peer through the rift ourselves. Eph stands in darkness with his back to us, looking around the empty space.

“Well, you comin'?” he yells.

The sound is strange–almost like he is underwater, but even that is not quite right. It's as if the words are forcing their way through molasses. The inflection is right and the words come out in the right order, just not at the right times. The gap between the words is too long.

I shrug and enter. The feeling of passing through the rift is much like hearing the sound. I feel like I'm pushing through something unseen–sometimes faster, sometimes slower. It's an interesting feeling. The space is oppressive and vast all at once. Blackness surrounds us above and below, and it doesn't seem to have an end.

“Whoa,” I say, and something is missing. I feel like I'm in a huge room, but there was no echo from my voice and no reverberation from any walls. I don't know what I'm standing on, but the ground is very solid. There is enough illumination to see everything, but I don’t think there is any natural light. I see Eph flinging motes of starlight into different spots around the area that illuminate the space further.

“Whoa,” Vithar repeats my sentiment when he steps through.

“Right?!” I say.

We start yelling, trying to get an echo.

“Quit screwing around, Vithar. We've got work to do.”

“Yes, sir,” Vithar responds.

“Wait, what is this space?” I ask, pleading for some kind of explanation. I haven't seen this kind of magic before. I'm in awe of it. “Was that a portal? Is this, like, a pocket dimension? Where are we in relation to earth right now?”

“Calm down, Mike,” Eph chides. “You're acting the same way you did when you went to the breakroom the first time.”

“Yeah,” I say excitedly, “that was really cool too!”

Eph smirks. “This room can do a lot, but it’s been created for training purposes right now. If you just wanna watch though, it can help you with that too. It'll create what you want, you just gotta believe it's there.”

“What does that mean?”

“If you want to sit down, do it. The chair will come.”

“That's awesome!”

I close my eyes and imagine the seats in Eph's break room then try sitting down. My movement continues past where it should and I flail my arms, ultimately falling hard against the ground. Eph bursts into laughter and Vithar tries to cover his mouth as he does as well.

“I was kiddin', son,” he says, still laughing.

“Old man jokes? Really?” I complain, rubbing the sting from my back.

His laughter fades into a chuckle as his hands work through a few more gestures. I can feel Eph’s force of will molding the space around us. After a spike of energy in his aura, the blackness covering the floor looks like it turns to liquid. It rises and takes shape, creating a row of comfortable looking theater style seats. I test one before sitting down in it. It feels firm, but gives with more pressure. Holding my hand down on the seat, I relax into it and sigh in relief. The two wizards begin speaking and creating obstacles in the room for their session. After Eph has made some raised platforms and dipping valleys, he shows Vithar the commands to manipulate the ground and begins the instruction. They speak animatedly and move further away from me as I watch. After Vithar makes a couple of elevated platforms, they square off in a low-level magic sparring session. Viewing the bout, I notice that I am not getting the typical ringing in my ears as they cast their magic and assume it must be an effect of the room.

I catch movement in my periphery, and I turn to see Anna peering in from the outside of the opening. I wave her over, and she pushes her hands through and stumbles before righting herself, her cheeks taking on color. She walks carefully and takes the seat next to mine, watching the sparring wizards cast their spells. Eph attacks and Vithar defends, but still gets hit by the attack. Taking the instructor role seriously, Eph walks over to Vithar and shows him a different tactic than the one he used. They try it again with much the same conclusion. After about six tries, he succeeds in deflecting the attack.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“This is wild,” Anna says.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I'm sitting here next to you and watching two wizards fight. I witnessed some bizarre stuff when I was a kid with Christine, but those were the memories of a kid. I never knew if they were real. I never thought this would be my life at this point.”

“I know what you mean. As a kid, I would play games with friends where I was a monster. But now it's my daily reality,” I say, and turn to watch them continue with the lesson before what I just said really sinks in.

Oops. Do I think of myself as a monster? That's gonna take some unpacking.

Mercifully, she doesn't comment on it, but I can feel her looking at me. So I go back to talking about the match in front of us.

Eph sends an arc of blue lightning at Vithar, who dodges and jumps. A gust of wind pushes him up, and he lands on a small, elevated platform.

“Twenty bucks on Vithar trying to use fire again,” I say, looking over at her.

She smiles sadly, but lets me change direction. “I'm not taking that action. That's all I've seen him do other than the wind just now,” she laughs.

“Yeah, he said that the guild focuses a lot on specialization instead of a broad knowledge of magic. That's what I'm hoping he gets from Eph.”

“That's interesting. I wonder what it takes to be able to use it?”

“Oh yeah? Are you interested in learning?”

“Oh, no. No, no, no. I'm scared of it. Just wondering out loud.”

I flex my jaw while she talks. That makes sense. She has been affected by the darker side of magic and magical abilities and has been effectively scared away. It also makes me wonder how they decide someone's aptitude for magic. I'm sure Eph could answer.

Vithar starts collecting fire in his hands but yelps in surprise as a wave of force pushes him off his perch. He plummets to the ground and sinks down, bouncing back up to his feet quickly. He sways on his feet for a moment before falling to the floor into a sitting position. He shakes his head, putting his hands on either side of it. Eph walks over and helps him up. He is showing Vithar some more precise hand movements and how it affects his casting. They seem to be wrapping up, and I want to talk to Anna about how she's doing. I also don't want to make her think of what she's been through, so I grasp for a compromise.

“Hey, um,” I say, turning my attention back to her. “How is Brad doing?” I ask, then I kick myself mentally.

Yeah, that's it, Mike. Ask her about her injured boyfriend. Sheesh. It seems this is my default question to ask when I want to take the focus off me, and I don't like it. It wasn't what I wanted to talk about, but I actually do want to know how he's doing.

“He's–” she starts with a sigh. “He's fine. He's awake and healing. It was apparently the shock of it all that really got him. But I'm also having trouble separating the fiction from the truth in our relationship. I don't remember being into him before everything happened. He was alright to me, but I also wasn't in my right mind and he couldn't or wouldn't see that. I . . .” She trails off and looks away. I stay silent while she works through it. “I remember, right before that… that Hellhound? Right before it knocked him to the ground, he tried to run away. From me. He was going to leave me there. Even when he was standing next to you, he tried to run and you had to tell him to grab me. I can see every detail clearly. My memory was never this good before.”

I wonder if that's part of the mind fortification from Kai's cure.

“It was a stressful situation,” I say. She looks up at me, and her eyes are watery. Her tears are very close to falling. “No one really knows how they'll react to life or death situations until they're put in them. Plus, no one really expects to run into a Hellhound unless you run with my crowd.”

“Yeah,” she agrees. “I don't know what I would've done if I was in my right mind. I'd like to think I would try to save people, but until I'm in that kind of situation again, I won't know.”

“Let's hope the chance never comes.”

We watch them in silence. Vithar is practicing more shielding, but Eph stops him to show him something else.

“I left him,” she says. “I know it was a horrible time to do it, but I can't be nurturing to him when I think about all of it. It's not fair to him, and the past year wasn't fair to me. It just doesn't work.”

I reach over to put a hand on her shoulder, and she leans into me. I freeze up at the contact, unsure if I should put my arms around her. But I do. She sinks into me further, and I lay my head on top of hers and close my eyes. A quick flash of blue light draws my attention back to the sparring match. Vithar just used lightning for the first time. Eph claps him on the back and gestures to the rip back to the house. They start walking toward us while finishing their conversation, and Anna pulls away to wipe her eyes and sniffs, checking her nose.

“That's enough for today. You did well. They should never have started specializations for spells in the first place. You need to be well rounded in your education to really use magic.” Vithar seems to be hanging on Eph's every word. He's looking up at him like he's a lost puppy who just found its mother. It's actually adorable.

“Done already?” I ask. Eph looks down at me sitting back in the chair.

“You want a go, Mike?” he asks. The chair starts to slowly sink back into the ground, and I hop out. I look at Anna, and her chair is fine.

“No, I'm good. Just thought it might take you guys longer.”

His eyes flick over to Anna quickly then back to me. “I see. Well, we're gonna go get some rest. We'll be back at it tomorrow,” he says to Vithar, who nods as Eph walks away.

“Bro, that was awesome!” he says excitedly after Eph leaves through the rift, “I learned more from him in this session than I did at the guild in seven years!”

“You were there for seven years? I thought you were a novice or something.”

“Technically, I was more like a Student Assistant. I taught some of what I know to some of the newer initiates. I've never used lightning before,” he says, still smiling and wiggling his fingers around.

“How was it?”

“It was–” he says.

“Wait, don't,” I say, regretting my choice of words. I can see the joke written in his expression.

“Electrifying!”

Anna rolls her eyes and walks out through the rift. I push Vithar, and he grunts and takes a few steps back.

“That's one, dude.” I hold up a finger before I walk toward the rift.

“Oh come on, that was gold!” He chases after me. “Mike!”

Mom and Eph are visible on the other side of the rift as I'm pushing through. Their words are muffled until I am back in my basement.

“You were gone in the morning without so much as a goodbye,” Eph says.

“Nuh-uh. No, you guys can have this talk when I'm not around,” I say, making a shoo-ing motion. My phone vibrates in my pocket a couple of times. I probably didn't get service in the 'training area,' Mom looks at me, squinting and tilting her head to the side.

“We're not having that talk now. He's talking about when I left the school we were both in. This was a long time ago, Mikael,” she says, much to my relief.

Anna shrieks as the Hound shoots past her suddenly and puts its paws on my shoulder.

(Master, finally!) it exclaims. My pocket vibrates again, and I reach in and grab the phone while pushing the Hound off of me.

“I told you not to call me that.”

It bites my wrist lightly and starts pulling me. (Come see.)

I fumble the phone and nearly drop it as I'm tugged along by my wrist.

“What the hell are you doing?” I ask it, but we keep going, even up the stairs.

(Strong one here,) it says.

“What does that mean?”

(Strong one left message.)

I finally get my phone up and unlock it. I have a group of notifications . . . and they're all from Anna's number. There are a few missed calls, a voicemail, and a text. The text is just emojis, but it's a picture I've seen before. It's a picture of a fish moving toward a frown face with exed-out eyes emoji. Calling the voicemail as I'm being pulled out the door, I hear a voice I hoped never to hear again. Even through the electronic distortion, it is unmistakable. It wasn't a fish, it was a shark–obvious now. A shark moving toward a dead man. He's been taunting me, and apparently very close to me multiple times.

“Hello, bait!” He draws out the 'o' in hello like he's speaking to a long lost friend. I stop in my tracks on the porch, my blood running cold and goosebumps raising the hairs on my arms and neck. The same greeting is dug into my front yard.

He was here too.

I try to say the name, but it comes out as a whisper.

“Rhal.”