Lilac walked into the school after her attempt at getting some sleep.

“Oh, you’re new,” the old man behind the counter spoke up.

“Yep.” Lilac waved and walked towards the halls.

The man cleared his throat and countless motes of light formed a white x in front of the door. “Sorry, but after the last attack, I’ve been keeping track of who goes in and out. Can you tell me why you’re visiting?”

Lilac poked the magic and noted how her finger passed through before turning back. She had asked around about magic earlier, so his attempt was humorous at best, but it was still safer to humor him anyway. “I’m here to see my daughter,” she said.

“Who’s your daughter?” He asked.

She held her hand to her knife again and glanced around. There’d been a recent case involving her daughter, so she might be branded a thief here, and if she and William lost their hands, they’d lose their main source of income. But if all the man could manage with his magic was a white x, she could deal with him before he could escape. “Lilith Smit,” she said.

“Ah,” he said. “Oh, are you her mother?” He asked.

Lilac nodded.

“I can see the resemblance.” He smiled. “But the other kid admitted to being her cousin, so, I’m very sorry, but would you mind if I guided you there?”

Lilac calmed down and let her hand move away from her knife. “That’s fine. Honestly I was expecting worse.”

“Why, because your home town called you a thief?” The man walked over to her.

Lilac stiffened.

“That was thrown out of court since the town didn’t have any evidence. You didn’t steal anything after all, did you?” He asked.

“Of course not,” Lilac lied. “We worked hard to save up that money.”

The man shrugged, then led the way.

---

While Malena practiced teleporting grains of sand and Lilith improved her wings, there was a knock on the door.

Malena put the sand down, got up, and opened the door as Lilith looked up to see who it was.

A woman that looked a bit like an adult Lilith in much cheaper clothes looked down at Malena. “Oh, hi. Is my daughter here?”

“Mom!” Lilith smiled involuntarily and rushed over.

“There you are.” Lilac gave Lilith a hug.

Malena stepped back and smiled at them. Their happiness was infectious.

Then, they broke away, and Lilith spoke a mile a minute. “The magic they taught me here was so cool and I’ve made so many friends and I made those wings over there and those lamps and some other things!” She pointed. “There’s so much cool stuff here!” She smiled.

Liliac smiled back. “I’m glad you made it, and that you’re enjoying yourself.” She looked over to the wings. “We do have a lot to catch up on.” Then, to Malena who was watching them. “Oh, and this is your roommate?” She asked Lilith.

“Yeah, she’s super smart!” Lilith said.

“Hi, I’m Malena,” she waved.

“Nice to meet you.” Lilac smiled. “Lilith hasn’t done anything too crazy, has she?”

“Define ‘too crazy’.” Malena smirked.

“It’s just regular projects,” Lilith said.

“Ah huh,” Lilac looked at the sponges, metal plates, and wings, completely unconvinced. “Just don’t burn this place down, or crash into a building trying to fly with those wings.”

“I’m doing things safely,” Lilith said, looking away and remembering the time she almost crashed into a building trying to fly with those wings.

---

Jatte and Hana were heading out when Lilac stepped into Lilith’s dorm.

“Mom!” Hana heard, and smiled since she could feel their love for each other as she walked. But as she walked further away and the feeling faded, she frowned.

“Homesick?” Jatte asked.

“Not in the slightest,” Hana said. “I wish they were here instead.”

“That works too,” Jatte said. “You never told me what your home was like.”

“It was nice for a while,” Hana said, sighing. “Things were peaceful, we all practiced magic and farmed, but after that… well, there are things that, after you learn about them, you’re never really the same.”

“What does that mean?” Jatte raised an eyebrow.

“I’m glad you have to ask that.” Hana kept walking.

---

Reinhold looked over the letter he got back from the King. “Rejected,” was all it said. He froze. It didn’t make any sense. He gave his own reasons, so why would the king reject it without even giving an explanation

Then, he remembered talking with the other commanders back home. Some of the older one’s had the same issue. They’d request benign things from the king, only to be refused without an explanation. But later they asked around and they found problems with the messenger. One paused a shipment to make sure their merchant friends gained as much money as possible. Another was incredibly nervous in front of the king and skewed the message horribly. They’d tried to improve their messengers since then, but perhaps he was the third one to have a problem.

He breathed in and sighed out the stress that had come over him. It was unfortunate, since Solis would really be helped out with the magicite. In fact, he couldn’t really push runic magic over kinesis with a clear conscience without the magicite, since he’d just be depriving them of magic in that case. But pacifying Solis and removing that magic was his mission, second only to taking care of the other guards as commander.

He considered his options. Asking the King for clarification was in incredibly bad taste, but so was working around a supposed order from him. And how could he even work around that order?

The runes on his armor glowed a dull red.

No, it wasn’t an order. The only explanation for the ‘rejected’ message was that a messenger messed up. He wasn’t working around an order, but a mistake. Thus, he was going above and beyond for his job.

The runes stopped glowing.

He needed that magicite, so he thought about the different messengers. If it was the one that was nervous, sending another message through him could work, or it might not. But if the messenger was a friend of the merchants like the first one, the message might not get through until they were investigated. In either case, his work would be delayed.

Then he smiled. The King’s messenger would only be called in for requests that were important enough. For shipments, anything under a hundred gold wouldn’t be important enough.

Reinhold got back up and flagged the messenger before he left. “Heeey! Come back.”

They turned and jogged back.

“Ah, is that you Cornelius?” Reinhold asked.

“How can you tell?” Cornelius asked. “I have my helmet on.”

“I recognized your gait.” Reinhold smiled. “Anyway, can you tell me how much a pound of magicite sells for back home now?”

Cornelius tilted his head, but answered. “About three gold Commander.”

Reinhold did some mental calculations. The maximum shipment cost that would be allowed without requiring higher approval would be one hundred gold’s worth per day. That meant he could get around thirty three pounds of magicite shipped per day, and it would take a little over a month to get the full ton. “Right. Please stay for a moment Cornelius. I’ll have another letter for you soon.”

Cornelius nodded.

Reinhold walked back in the room from before to quickly write two letters. One recommending the King’s messenger for investigation, and another requesting exactly 33 pounds of magicite.

---

A few days later, school finally started, and everyone went back to their routine classes, except for the joint training.

Instead of flight class or adventure class, there was a great crowd of students around several abandoned wooden buildings near the forest that were in various stages of falling apart.

Before the building, Alec and Cyla flew over to join Jan, William, and Rosina ahead of the students and next to some magicite and wooden signs filled with runes. Then, the church bell rang out, so it was time to start.

“Today’s game will be a modified version of capture the flag!” Jan shouted. “We will break into our respective classes, but these signs Rosina helped me make will show you views of inside the buildings. You should watch the others play to develop your own strategies.”

Next, William stepped forward and spoke up, “The rules are as follows.” He pulled out a paper. “The defending group will enter the building first and will have a couple minutes to set up, during which the screens will shut off, like so.”

Rosina tapped one of the signs, and it went from wood with runes, to a bunch of light motes showing a blurry view of the inside of a wooden room, and then back to the sign.

Lilith noticed it wasn’t anywhere near as clear as the images Wispy made.

“After that, we will call out ‘time’s up’, and the attacker will go inside. Their goal is either to subdue the defender—” William gestured to a table with various weapons, and blue paint. “—which we will count if there is blue paint on any of the defender’s vitals. Or, to take the flag from the defender and leave the building with it.” He gestured to a pile of blue flags on the table.

“If the attacker runs out of time, or if the defender paints the attacker with a weapon, the defender wins,” William said. “And finally: no injuring allowed! If anyone seriously injures their opponent, they will be receiving the special FD grade reserved for cheating!” He swept his gaze back and forth over the students to make sure they got it. “Alright. Now, please group into your classes. Except Malena. Please join the flight class. I want to see how you handle someone stronger than yourself, and how my other students handle themselves without you.”

Malena blinked, surprised, but ran over.

“Some of mine should join as well,” Jan said. “Chance, Silene, Cisco, Elio, and Zale, please join the flight class.” He pointed.

Once the students had sorted themselves, Alec and Cyla stood ahead of the flight class. The other teachers started calling out their own attackers and defenders, and then Alec pulled out a paper. “The first match will be Chance versus Silene. Chance, you will be the defender. Please go in.” He pointed a thumb to the building behind himself.

Chance nodded and walked forward to the table, picked up a wooden knife, dipped it in blue paint, and picked up a flag and put it in his pocket. Then, he walked forward into the building, and the screens went blank.

Once he was in, he looked around. It was a pretty empty room with two large windows, one chair that had some foam and hay sticking out, one counter by the back, an entrance to a cellar, and some stairs with some chunks missing. He didn’t like the idea of being in the cellar, and this room was a bit claustrophobic for him, so he walked over to and up the stairs, careful about his steps. He didn’t really care about winning as much as exploring the place and being somewhere open. Still, he made a mental note that the stairs creaked when he walked on them, so if Silene walked up, he should be able to hear her.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

In the next room was a bunch of empty shelves and smaller windows, but that was it. There wasn’t really anywhere to hide and the shelves were taking up too much space for his liking. Also, the stairs went up a bit more, and Chance felt like being higher up would be nice, so he walked to the third floor.

There were cabinets lining the walls up here, but otherwise the room was mostly empty. Also, both the windows were boarded over with wood, but not so much that he couldn’t peek out if he wanted to.

He sat down by a boarded up window, closed his eyes, and smiled at the breeze on his skin while he waited. This was perfect.

…

“Time’s up!” Alec called.

Silene walked forward and took a knife from the table, dipped it in paint, then walked in. After going to the Adit with Lilith, she thought of things like scaring away animals that might attack them, or hunting to keep them both alive, so she wanted to win to prove she’d be able to.

Before she opened the door, she looked behind herself, made as many green and blue light motes as she could, and slowly sorted them as if she were piecing together a puzzle. She stood there for almost a minute as she gathered the motes one by one and focused to keep their color from shifting, but she eventually made an image in front of her that looked like a blurry mirror showing all the students and teachers behind her, but not herself. Then she opened the door and walked in, and concentrated hard to change the image to match the browns of the door once it closed.

Upstairs, once Chance heard the call, he opened his eyes and walked over to the stairwell, holding his knife. The wood creaked a bit as he moved. Oh well, that just meant Silene would know to go up the stairs soon, and he could teleport behind her.

Silene looked up at the creaking sound, then took a breath in and out. If she wanted to avoid being spotted and having him teleport somewhere, she’d need to use her earth magic to strengthen the wood so it didn’t creak and give her away either. She concentrated her earth magic below her feet as she stepped on the first stair step, and then the second. She could tell the wood wanted to give, but she wouldn’t let it, so her steps stayed silent.

Once she was halfway up one stairwell, she took a good look at the wall, before making an image of it with the light motes and checking it. It was a bit blurry, but it would work if someone wasn’t looking.

Upstairs, Chance leaned against the wall and listened for the creaks. Was she just standing in one spot? Something didn’t feel right.

Silene sprinted up the second flight of stairs in case Chance was waiting for her there, but there was no one. Unfortunately, that took a lot of her earth magic, so she had to catch her breath.

Chance thought he heard breathing from somewhere. Did Silene use some magic? So she was still downstairs, but what was she planning? Well, whatever it was, she’d still have to get up the stairwell to get to him eventually, so he watched over it.

Silene went up the next stairwell, then took a few slow, calm breaths before she tried the same trick she did last time. She made sure the image of the wall behind herself was perfect before she readied herself to run up.

As Chance was listening, his eyes focused on something. There was a shifting brown blur halfway down the stairwell.

Silene noticed Chance looking at her and focused on her bio and earth magic. She’d have to be fast now. In addition to making the image and silencing the stairs, she poured bio magic into her muscles and earth magic into her bones, and then finally sprinted up the stairs.

Chance squinted at the strange shifting and glowing blur, before it rapidly came closer. He could now hear the footsteps right in front of him, so he panicked, then tried to focus to teleport away. But a blue knife pierced through the blur and he felt something wet on his throat before he teleported down to the first floor.

He pressed a finger against his throat and looked at it. It was blue. Silene got him. He smiled, shook his head, and turned and walked out the door. Once outside, he held his chin up to show his neck and yelled, “She got me!”

Upstairs, Silene had caught herself against the ground with her hand and was now panting heavily. She put all her magic into that attack. She swore she felt the knife land, but did it work? She turned the knife in her hand as she panted, then smiled as she saw a section of the paint missing. And then, further confirming it, she heard one of her friends cheering from outside.

“Yeah! Go Silene!” Lilith yelled.

Grinning but still panting, she unsteadily got up, using the nearby wall to steady herself. Then she slowly walked down the creaking stairwell, using the wall to not fall over.

Once she was at the bottom, she took a few breaths before she walked forward to the door, and then trudged out.

She slowly made her way back to her group, where Lilith and the others crowded around her.

“Are you okay?” Jatte and Lilith asked in unison.

Silene nodded and sat down. “Yeah, just give me some time to recover.” She looked around at the others peering down on her. “I’m gonna lie down actually, don’t step on me.”

“Do you need some cold water?” Lilith asked.

Silene paused, then shook her head. “I think I’m good. The grass is cold.”

Alec beckoned Chance over with a hand, but seeing Silene collapse on the ground, they both walked back to the group.

“Alright, first, Chance, do you know what you could’ve done better?” Alec asked.

“Reacted faster?” Chance asked.

“Your reaction speed was pretty good actually. So no.” Alec shook his head. “You should’ve given yourself more room. If you were further back from the stairs, you would’ve had more time to teleport wherever you wanted.”

Chance thought about it, then nodded. “I guess that could work.”

“However, listening for creaks like you did would’ve worked on almost anyone else, so it was a decent strategy,” Alec said.

Chance smiled.

“And you,” Alec looked down at Silene.

“Ah huh?” Silene nodded from the ground.

“First off, are you okay?”

Silene nodded.

“Well, you should conserve your magic then. If that one attack didn’t work, you’d be a sitting duck,” Alec said. “But your strategy was pretty good too. Sneaking up on teleporters is one of the best ways of dealing with them. You should practice your light magic more so you don’t have to work so hard on making an image.”

Silene nodded and closed her eyes. However, a few light motes drifted up from her and made a hand giving a thumbs up.

With that done, Alec pulled out his paper again and read the next names off. “Alright, next up is Cisco versus Hana. Hana will be defending.”

Hana nodded and walked to the table. She picked up a flag, but no weapon.

---

Cisco walked into the building and looked around, but Hana was nowhere to be found. However, she could’ve been hiding. She was a telepath, so maybe she could make him think he was in an empty room while she was right in front of him? If so, it would be hard to hide or concentrate with air blasting everything around. so he held up his hand and shot out bursts of air everywhere.

He saw some black robes flutter behind the chair, then ran over.

And then, he felt an extreme headache and his vision was of a different location in the room. It was bad enough that he couldn’t even think. Confused, he looked around and tried to concentrate. Then, he looked over to something on a corner of the ceiling that looked like a circle of runes similar to the one on the signs outside and dropped his knife. Finally, he said the one thing that for some reason, he needed to get out. “I surrender.”

His headache dropped, and he turned to see Hana walking out of the building. He felt compelled to follow her out, but once he was outside the image of Hana in front of him disappeared.

After Cisco walked out, Hana followed him out.

Alec ran up to the two of them, then turned to Hana, confused. “If you could do that, why didn’t you just have him press his knife against his own throat?” He remembered she did exactly that earlier.

Hana glared up at him. “I’m not going to do that unless people’s lives are actually in danger.”

Alec frowned. “If you don’t practice, you won’t be good enough when it actually matters.”

Hana looked away. “Sorry, I’m not going to go against them.”

“Against what?” Alec raised an eyebrow.

Hana sighed. “You guys have your religion, I have mine.” She walked back to the group.

Alec sighed. If it was like that then there wasn’t much he could do, but that made Hana a wildcard at best. So, he turned to Cisco. “Your search strategy was good, but you got too close to a telepath,” he said.

“Yep.” Cisco nodded. “Not doing that again.”

As Cisco walked back, Alec took out his paper and announced the next group. “Next up is… Elio and Ethen!” He called. “Ethen will be defending, and Elio will be attacking.”

---

Elio smirked as he stepped inside. Once the door closed, a few small embers lit up in the wood around his feet and he left burning footprints on his way over to the chair where he sat. The chair lit up in flames, but none of them touched him or even got close. Instead, the flames all swirled around.

He closed his eyes as the air burnt around him, enjoying the heat for a little while. He knew Ethen was strong, so he couldn’t fight him directly, but from what he heard, Ethen was too fair for his own good, so he could win if he didn’t fight fair.

Elio had a bit of cold magic in addition to his fire magic, just enough to not burn himself. And, just like how he’d learned a long time ago, he started pulling the energy from the flames into his magic to make more cold magic around himself.

Soon, as the room burned around him, the chair started crumbling and failing to hold his weight. So he stood back up and looked around. It was hard to see anything other than the flames, but he could make things out once his eyes adjusted. Air was rushing in from under the door to feed the flames, and the smoke was pouring upstairs, up where Ethen was most likely waiting.

He coughed. There was still a lot of smoke he couldn’t deal with. Even air magic probably wouldn’t be able to deal with it since the only air around him was toxic, so he hadn’t bothered practicing it. He’d just have to end this soon before his lungs filled with cold soot.

He walked over to the stairs, the flames dying down around him as he moved, and quickly made his way up.

He checked the second floor. No Ethen to be found. He did seem like a top floor kind of guy though. So, he strolled up to the third floor and looked around.

There, levitating between the windows where all the smoke was going out, above a hole in the wooden floor, was Ethen. The wood below him was spinning rapidly, sending the smoke and heat away. “Trying to smoke me out?” he asked.

“Yeah! Is it working?” Elio smirked and called from the stairwell as flames rapidly spread around.

“It’s not a bad idea!” Ethen called back. “But I just have to get you before I overheat!” He flew forward towards Elio, leaving his spinning planks behind.

Elio rushed back down. He could wait out on the first floor until Ethen surrendered.

Ethen smirked, then picked up his planks and dove back down through the hole in the floor he made earlier. He turned and watched as Elio rushed down the stairs, then used his telekinesis in addition to his weight and momentum to stomp another hole in the wood. He quickly descended through it to the bottom floor where almost everything was on fire.

There, at the stairwell, Elio noticed him and ran back up.

Annoyed, Ethen flew over to the first floor stairs while carrying some wooden planks in his magic. He batted away the flames and burning wood with the planks, then tore the stairs apart with his telekinesis as he went up. The flames might’ve got him if the whole stairwell wasn’t starting to collapse. In fact, he had to dodge a burning plank overhead before he went back up. Even then, it was hard to breathe, and he was starting to feel like he was boiling in his own sweat.

He tried to go back up the next stairwell, but that one had collapsed above him. He looked around for Elio in the wreckage, worried for a moment, but thankfully it was just wood. So he moved to the second floor and looked around. There, he saw Elio standing back against the only non-burning shelves, then flew forward, touched down, and walked forward, panting from all the heat.

Elio tried to run as Ethen came over, but he was grabbed by telekinesis, and then there was a knife against his throat.

A knife that had its paint burned off. Instead of blue on Elio’s throat, there was a line of ash.

Elio grinned. “Does that still count? I can’t tell.”

Ethen frowned, then tossed his knife away, still panting. “Give me your flag.”

“No thanks.” Elio sat back against the shelves. “Are you sure you don’t want to forfeit though? You’re not looking too good.”

“I’m not forfeiting,” Ethen said. “If this was a real battle, I would’ve got you with my telekinesis already.”

“Why are you standing on the ground instead of flying then?” Elio asked.

Ethen looked down, wobbling since it was hard to keep his balance for some reason. He tried using his telekinesis, but it was hard to lift himself. All this heat and smoke was making it hard to concentrate. And then, he felt something wet against his throat.

“You lost,” Elio said, holding his wooden knife against Ethen’s throat.

Ethen looked up, confused.

“That’s a match!” he heard Alec call from outside. “Cyla, Rosina, Zale, help me put this fire out!”

Then, instead of fire burning around them, there were blasts of cold air and water as rain flew up, down, and sideways as the four others stormed the building. The building was now a charred and wet husk of its former self.

---

King Voldis sat at a gold and obsidian table, massaging his temple. He finally saw the repeated shipments of magicite, but it was already too late. By now, Solis had over three hundred pounds of magicite. It was enough to support a small army. Or, they could use it for mining equipment to get even more magicite.

He considered reprimanding the commander that ordered it for a moment, that ‘Commander Reinhold’, but that wouldn’t help. He had to remind himself that the admirals told a different story than he did: he and the admirals protected Voldia at all costs, but commanders and lower ranks would often prefer to help the people that were around them. It was annoying how rare it was to find someone that still preferred to help only Voldia after a long mission abroad.

Reprimanding here would just make it clear that he’d made an oversight. In addition to a one time shipment maximum, there would need to be a recurring shipment maximum. It would also be counter to the admiral’s orders, which were to ‘transition Solis to runic magic for the safety of their people and ours, so that we may safely join them before the eruption’.

Ah yes, the eruption of the volcano his castle was at the base of. The same volcano that blessed them with abundant copper and zinc. The earth mages were saying it was becoming active again after lying dormant for centuries, though their predictions were hit and miss.

In any case, with the magicite shipments, Solis was now as weak as it would ever be. If he wanted to make a deal, he would have to do it now. But what would ensure Voldia’s safety?

He moved over to a book on the table and flipped through it. There were pictures of his different sons and daughters, most ruling their own vassal states now. There was one young one that wasn’t taking well to his school and looked like he’d be another failure. According to his teachers, he’d ignored his studies stating that he didn’t need to do them because he’d be king, and ordered them to give him better grades, which a few of them did. He was considering having him assassinated so he wouldn’t be a danger to his siblings, but maybe he could be useful.

Unfortunately, Solis’s King had outlived his heirs, but that was a problem they’d have to solve anyway. If Voldis added the threat of war, Solis should have enough incentive to deal with their issue now.

He coughed again, covering his mouth, but there was blood. He looked at it and sighed. No mages could heal his cancer riddled lungs anymore. When he died, would he fall into oblivion like everyone else? Or would Haven damn him for going against her magic preferences? He wondered which religion was the true one. Either way, he would at least provide a safe place for his sons and daughters to live, everyone else be damned. He would be satisfied if the volcano swallowed up everything and everyone else.

So, he started to write out the order. His son would join Voldia and Solis, and Commander Reinhold would be dealt with by being relegated to the position of his son’s guard.