A maid came to Roman’s door and went in without knocking. They had done this plenty of times, the boy was too young to understand privacy yet. He was still five years old. Roman sprawled on his stomach in his bed, reading memoirs of his father and mother’s adventures. His feet were raised behind him, swaying back and forth to an unheard tune. He hummed a few notes that weren’t really recognizable as music but were childishly pleasing regardless. His eyes flitted quickly as he leafed through page after page. He giggled at some point, and at some just plainly laughed. He sometimes talked to himself, muttering things like, ‘Could be crazier’.

“Young master,” the maid said, bowing. “Your parents call for your presence.”

Roman flipped a page and began reading aloud.

“Young Master,” the maid called.

“I heard you,” he said. “Tell mother and father I’d be down in a minute.”

“But they require you now, Young Master.”

“Can’t it wait?” Roman looked at the maid, widening his watery eyes, pleading. “I’m still getting to the good part.”

“But you’ve read that for the umpteenth time already.”

“I can’t stop,” Roman said, sighing. “I want to be like them someday.”

“No, it's time to go, Young Master,” the maid said, matter-of-factly. She smoothed the wrinkles of her outfit that had creased when she had been walking. “This matter is of the gravest importance.”

“Alright.” Roman slumped in his bed lifelessly, defeated. He stood up and walked with the maid.

They made their way into a room that had double doors guarding its entrance. The doors’ artistic designs glinted in gold as sunlight hit it from the window. It depicted sculptures wrought from gold of lauded and laurelled heroes that were the progenitors of their House. The maid turned to Roman and bowed.

“This is as far as I can take you, Young Master.”

Roman nodded, then he went in. The room was huge, containing several wares that were no doubt quite expensive. There were also trophies of past exploits hanging on walls over there or here. Four sofas faced each other in a square just at the center. He was greeted by his father and mother, smiling at him. Then he noticed something quite amiss. Another person cloaked in a lab gown sat just in front of his parents. Beside him was an unknown contraption. An object that seemed to be a box but wasn’t exactly like one, as various mechanical protrusions lined its sides.

“Good morning, Dear,” Roman’s mother, Suela, greeted. “How was your sleep?”

“Good,” Roman curtly replied. “But I woke up long ago, I was just reading in bed.”

His mother nodded at him.

“Still the earnest bookworm I see.” His mother smiled and gestured for him to sit down beside her. “Sit, there’s something we need you to do.”

“What are we doing here Mother?” he asked, sitting down and kicking his feet. His legs were yet too short to reach the floor.

“We’re here to take your test,” his father replied. “It’s going to determine if you’re a Caster, Enchanter, or a Shrouder just like me and mom.”

Roman gulped. Oh, so it was that important, he thought.

The doctor, as he was later introduced, said his greetings to Roman and made small talk with him for a few minutes. The doctor then unstrapped two bracelets from the protrusions of his contraption. He then briskly snapped the bracelets around Roman’s wrists. He pushed some buttons and began typing something into the contraption. It beeped and dinged, and the bracelets lit up in a rainbow of colors. The next instant a projection of a continuous blue cloud floated just above the contraption.

“Hm.” The doctor scratched his chin. “Is something broken?"

He nudged some parts of his machine, and pushed some buttons. He also tried tracing some runes to see if they were seamlessly inscribed into their respective places. He tried slamming the thing when nothing he had done changed the projection above it. Roman’s heart raced and he wouldn’t take his eyes off the doctor. He leaned on his mother and hugged her arm.

“What’s wrong, Doc?” Roman’s father broke the silence. He leaned forward and waited for an answer from the doctor.

“It seems,” the doctor began, turning to Roman’s father. “The results are…”

“Well?”

“It shows a contiguous cloud of inner mana,” the doctor said, a hint of pity glinting in his eyes. “A quality similar to outer mana. This means your child is magically crude.”

Suela gasped, and Roman’s father looked in disbelief. Roman watched as his mother and father stared at one another, exchanging unspoken words in a single glance.

“Surely your machine is broken?” Suela said, grasping Roman’s hand.

“Apparently not,” the doctor replied. “I’ve checked and everything seems to be in order.”

Roman’s father wrapped Suela in his arm as she began crying. Suela then hugged Roman as tightly as she could. Roman didn’t understand what ‘magically crude’ meant. He only stiffened and wondered if something bad had happened. Seeing his mother cry, which she rarely did, stirred his heart in fear.

“Does this mean I can’t be a battlemage like you mom?”

“No, you can be,” Suela assured, rubbing Roman’s back to soothe him. “Just trust…”

“No, you can’t.” His father favored a more direct approach. There was everything wrong with trying to sugarcoat reality and giving false impressions to a child would probably hurt the child’s development, making them chase dreams that were fictional at best and delusional at worst. "Unrefined inner mana is like outer mana, it is difficult to bend and can’t cause magical effects."

Roman cried. He bawled in his mother’s arms.

***

Roman was now ten years old. He sat on the floor of his room. In front of him a huge book lay just beside a stack of papers. He held a quill and began dipping it into a pool of ink. He opened the book with one hand, leafing through its pages and looking for the part where it described the spell construct of a fireball. It depicted two drawings, one was two-dimensional, the other was three-dimensional, the latter was probably far more advanced than the other. He began drawing the two-dimensional depiction along with runes that indicated they tapped into the outer mana of the surroundings. He also drew a switch that would act as an activation relay between the rune and outer mana.

After he had done drawing he touched the activation relay. He closed his eyes and began feeling within himself. He groped as if he were in the dark for something that emitted light. Something… something like an unbroken cloud. Once he found it he pulled from it and took what felt like a string and let it flow into his magical veins. It flowed into the switch and it glowed. This indicated that the outer mana could now freely enter into the rune.

Outer mana, a continuous, unbendable energy, bended and flowed into the rune seamlessly; the runes acted as guides to forcefully bend outer mana to do something. Bending outer mana with the mind might be difficult, but artificially bending it with runes was quite easy. Outer mana began filling in the rune, flowing into each part, into every corner leaving nothing as blank. The whole rune glowed completely in blue. It strained the paper as it did so, just like a rubber band would strain the hand that stretched it. The paper visibly began to crumble under the weight of the strain. Roman waited for a reaction, he waited profusely for a fireball the size of his chest to instantly erupt in front of him. But the paper just began crumbling until it was a ball.

“Sucks,” he said, talking to himself. “The books were right. A spell needed the will and the conscious mind of a mage in order to be cast.”

He paused. What if?

He began drawing the same rune again into another piece of paper. But this time he drew it without the relay. Which meant outer mana couldn’t power it anymore, thus needing to be powered directly. He began focusing again and drawing mana from within himself. After he’d done that he tried pouring it all into the rune. Roman felt a force that counteracted his push. The more he pushed mana into the rune the more difficult it became. Only fifty percent of the rune glowed. Seconds later, nothing happened.

So it doesn’t work hugh, he thought.

He was curious what would happen if he allowed refined inner mana to flow through the rune. Would it activate it? So he drew another batch of runes with the same quality as the former. After he’d done that he made his way to his father’s office. Roman knocked.

“Come in.”

Roman opened the door and went in. His father sat at a table near the windows. He didn’t even look at Roman even once.

“What is it?” his father, Lord Ruben, coldly said, dipping his quill in ink and writing into his papers.

“Father,” Roman began, gripping the paper he was holding tightly. “Could you try powering this rune?”

“I don’t have the time Roman,” Ruben asserted, looking at Roman. “Another time maybe.”

“It’s always another time,” Roman whined, rolling his eyes. “But you never have time.”

“Roman, I’m doing something important.”

“Yeah, doing something more important than your son’s request.”

“What is this about?” Ruben asked exasperatedly, raising an eyebrow.

“I just want you to power this rune.” Roman stretched his hand forward and presented the rune.

“Roman, haven’t we talked about this?”

“About what?”

“About this.”

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Ruben sighed.

He stood up and slammed on the table while still holding the quill, splattering ink all over. Thankfully he struck on an area with no cluttered papers.

“You’re not magic, Roman,” Ruben shouted. “How many times do I have to tell you that? You’re bugging me with all these useless requests, they’re all a waste of time. You. Are. Not. Magic. Understood?”

Roman shrunk. He had not expected his father to say such a thing. He was no longer the jovial father that he knew. He was something different. His eyes started forming beady tears. His breath became shallower by the second.

Ruben looked perplexed, his face riddled with wrinkles and his eyes darted away from Roman.

“Roman,” he let out, sighing in defeat. “I didn’t mean…”

Roman bolted through the doors and cried. Eventually he bumped into Maria, their trusted maid. She took note of how the young master’s clothes were a bit slimy in sweat. She heard him snuffle a few times.

“Young Master,” she asked, looking at Roman. “Why are you crying?”

“Father shouted at me.” Roman sobbed and snuffled.

“Why?”

“I wanted him to power this rune, but he said I was not magic. And then… and then…. He shouted at me.”

Maria pitied the boy. Lord Ruben was probably buried in his hectic schedule and just burst at the boy because of stress. But still, she thought it was rather inappropriate of a father to be rather inconsiderate to his child. Nevertheless, he was the Lord and she was merely the maid so what could she do?

“Let me try,” Maria said, hunkering down so she could meet the boy at eye level.

“You can do it?” Roman brightened. He wiped his tears away.

“Of course,” Maria assured him. “Let this just be between the two of us, but I’m a great Caster. I’ve fought plenty of battles in my time and have rarely lost.”

“Wow, that’s amazing, Maria.”

Roman then showed her the rune and she began focusing. She reached into her mana reserves and began looking for a mist of powdered energy. When she had found it, she began pulling mana from it. Since her mana was in a powdered state she could bend it much more easily and could draw it out much quicker than Roman. She released her inner mana into the rune and it lit brightly. But this time it was different. There were numerous dots in the runes that weren’t lighting up, as if there were gaps in the drawing. The powdery nature of her inner mana probably caused those gaps. Roman waited for a fireball to appear between him and Maria, but nothing happened.

“So how about it, Young Master?”

Roman slumped. He thought that maybe if a conscious mage who was magically capable powered a spell construct rune directly then they could cast it. But he was wrong. The gaps in the glowing rune probably made it so that the rune couldn’t activate completely, thus rendering it inert. Regardless, if it had worked it wouldn’t help Roman at all. He was just satisfying his curiosity.

“Thank you, Maria,” Roman said, faking a smile. “I think I got what I wanted.”

***

Simon stood in the courtyard. He had short hair that glowed brown once hit by sunlight. He had sweaty hands, sweatier than a thief’s. And today it was sweating even more so. He had been in the sunlight for who knows how long. He had been punished for taking advantage of his little brother, as such he was ordered to stand in the courtyard for two hours, and he was only there for one hour. There were reasons for why his hands sweat so much, but mostly it sweat when he was about to do something mischievous.

“Believe me,” Simon said to his little brother, who had visited him quite often in the course of his exile. “I’ve seen this powerful rock and it could probably make a powerless young runt like you even a quarter strong.”

“Really brother?” his little brother asked, curious. This probably was his chance to power up. He especially needed this because of his, well, let’s say undesirable state. “Where can I find it?”

“You know, that old abandoned mansion just outside the city?”

“Yes?”

“Somewhere inside you’d find the rock.”

“But that place is haunted,” the little boy, after standing for too long, sat down on the edge of a circular piece that had flowers planted at its center. “Are you sure it’s there?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Simon said, wiping his hands on his capri pants. “We went there with my friends once and I definitely saw it.”

“Alright, I’ll take your word for it.”

"You better, it's a chance of a lifetime for you."

The little boy believed much of his brother's words. Despite the fact that his brother often got him into trouble he still admired him from the depths of his heart. He was not the kind of caring brother anyone with a good family had, but he was magic, and anything magic screamed awesome. He was also the only one that would show him magic. There was Maria, but she was somehow keeping her abilities a secret. For him, there was no better brother a boy could have.

Roman immediately set out to the mansion. He did not dare ask permission from his parents, he knew they wouldn’t let him go to the mansion, and they were probably too busy to notice if he’d be gone. He decided to travel light and just brought his shoulder bag with him. He went to the gate, his first hurdle awaited him there.

“Good morning, Young Master,” one of the sentries said, stiffening in his spot, and pulling back the spear he was holding. “What can we do for you?”

“Nothing special,” Roman said. “I’m just going out for a bit.”

“What for?” the other sentry butted in.

“Um.” Roman paused for a moment. “Just buying some things."

“Won’t you have anyone with you, Young Master?” the sentry asked.

“No one, I’m sure I can buy stuff alone. I’m old enough for that.”

“I believe we can’t let you out without an escort.”

Roman paused. An escort would be problematic. He was going out for an adventure and no one liked him going on an escapade, he wasn't magic after all. Was there nothing he could do? Of course there was, there were plenty of things he could do. One of those was…

Roman threw papers with runes written on them in the air and they strangely moved on their own and attached themselves to the faces of the two sentries. The two sentries struggled for a minute to take off the papers but before they could fully take them off, Roman had already bolted through the exit. He was out.

Roman reached the outskirts of the city and found the ominous mansion. The whole building was dilapidated, some of its walls were cracked. It was also covered in huge holes that opened its inside to the outside. A low wall with grates on top of it surrounded the whole plot of land the mansion was on. It was an abandoned old mansion, and various stories had erupted surrounding it. There were stories told that a ghost would wail in the mansion at night, and that its wailing could be heard from across many distances. But Roman didn’t believe those stories, actually maybe he did believe it, just a little.

Roman shuddered at the sinister look the mansion gave. He walked listlessly towards its gate. He inspected the gate to see if it was locked, thankfully it wasn’t. He grabbed the handle of the door bolt and gently lifted it up and then pulled it backwards, opening the gate. He went in unannounced. He made his way to the door and pushed, the door creaked open and Roman was able to get inside. Once inside he looked for anything remotely similar to a special rock but he found nothing on the first floor.

“Sucks,” he said. “I can't find the rock.”

He immediately made his way to the second floor. He then entered the first room he saw, and he felt a cold chill run down his spine. Then there were whispers… he looked back and saw it was just rats skittering about an exposed beam in the ceiling. Whew. He thought it was some specter that was up and about to get him. There was nothing special in the room. There were a few chairs scattered everywhere, and a table was placed by the windows with one of its edges junctioned to the wall and another facing the door. It was probably a study room. He picked up what seemed to be a worn out book… no, a journal on top of the table. Roman opened the journal and saw that it only had one entry.

They will return, it said. They will bring about death in their way. I have left the order because they planned on fully supporting their return. I leave this message to whoever can stop them: Erath Rectur Mythos.

The rest of the entry talked at length about minor spirits and how the author had hidden a very special minor spirit in this very mansion. He did not say anything about minor spirits being powerful, only that they were useful. Roman knew what minor spirits were and he was sure they were harmless, inert spirits. But the journal emphasized again and again their usefulness. As to the location of the minor spirit, the author did not specify. There was also nothing about the message and what it meant in Mythosian language. Why did no one who trespassed in the forgotten mansion ever take this journal away, Roman had a hint. It was just plain useless. Whoever owned this mansion was either kooky, or a part of a kooky cult. Either way, they were crazy. But Roman was curious about the message so he copied it on a piece of paper. He then got out.

Roman checked room after room, but there was no sign of a special rock. He went to the third floor and nothing there also. Just when he made his way to the fourth floor he heard a noise outside. A high pitch squeal that sounded like a group of metals were grating each other.

“Ghost!”

Roman quickened his steps and went downstairs. He just made it outside when he discovered where the sound came from. A huge bipedal monster walked just right outside the mansion, circling it. It was a jumble of rocks and cement as well as a few wood. He estimated it to be about eleven meters in height.

An elemental, Roman thought.

Roman slowly backed away, walking towards the gate. But no matter how discreet he was, the elemental still noticed him. The elemental wailed, seeing an intruder in its territory was something that ticked it off. It went Roman’s way. Roman swerved to the side just as a huge arm slammed at the spot where he had been in. The elemental swayed his arm horizontally. Roman ran, and the arm chased him. Thankfully, Roman got out of the Monster's reach. The monster was now blocking the only entrance and exit of the whole estate. So Roman made his way to the back, hoping he could climb the grated wall and escape. The elemental chased him, although slowly.

There was a ruin of a garden at the back. He was just about to pass through the ruin when the rocks and wood started flying and clumping together to form another bipedal elemental. Roman gasped.

Debris flew everywhere and the monster’s steps left shallow recesses on the ground. The monster howled, and Roman covered his ears. He ducked as a sweeping arm passed right where his head had been. He was completely out of options, he had no weapon with him, and he was not magic to fight. He was about to accept his doom, when he sort of heard a low whisper.

Over here.

Roman stood up, urged by some invisible hand, and he ran and ducked at a swinging hand from the monster. He then went to an unassuming pile of stone. He felt something invisible was stroking his attention and forcing him to look at a rock just at the base of the heap. He picked it up and saw nothing special about it. Then, suddenly, his eyes cleared and his instincts heightened. The two elementals came before him (the other one had finally joined the newly formed elemental). This looked like it was finally the end, but Roman was inundated with an overflowing confidence that billowed from within.

One elemental struck straight at Roman but he jumped up high, higher than he'd ever jumped, and evaded the attack. He then landed on the fist of the monster but he immediately jumped to the side. The other elemental sent him a kick but somehow he easily swerved to the side and avoided it. He had never been so quick before, right now, he could probably win an international race.

One thing happened after another and Roman was running away from the two monsters. Just as he was about to exit through the gate, another elemental formed in front of him, barring his way.

How many of these things are there?

The other two elementals were just trailing behind him. This was it, despite his sudden quickness he couldn't possibly escape from three elementals alive. He closed his eyes and prepared himself to meet his fate. The elemental in front of him raised its hand and was about to slam it on him when suddenly…. Cracks started appearing on the elemental's chest, and then it burst in a mist of dust. Roman opened his eyes. Before him was his father; shroud aura, pure inner mana outside of a Shrouder mage, enveloped him, increasing his physical abilities. Shroud aura elevated Ruben up to nine meters from the ground. He clasped both his hands and raised them above his head. Then shroud aura began to extend from his hands and started to form a giant hammer. Ruben swung his hands down and the hammer extended from him and hit one of the elementals, smashing it to a pulp.

The next second Ruben put down his left hand and formed claws with the other hand. The hammer changed shape into something flat with razor sharp teeth protruding from it. He then swung his hand to the side. The shroud aura construct followed his motion and its spikes eventually pierced through the last elemental. He then closed his hands and the shroud aura construct folded and crushed the monster to bits.

Roman gawked in awe, it was the first time he'd seen his father fight. Seeing it first hand was way cooler than reading about it in a memoir. Roman just stood there, doing nothing, and holding the rock he'd found.

"WHY ARE YOU HERE?" His father screamed, waking Roman up from his reverie.

Roman struggled and fumbled for an answer but he couldn't find one. His father descended before him.

"You'd believe your brother's prank?"

"It's not what you think, Father." Roman tucked his rock into his shoulder bag. "I really did find something, it gave me unknown strength."

"There's no such thing as a rock that gives power," Ruben glowered. "Your brother admitted he lied to you, except that he'd expected to simply spook you. But this…"

Ruben gestured to the debris from the monsters.

"Is more than spook. These were elementals, Roman."

"Father, forgive me," Roman said, backing away. "But there really was something…."

"Enough. Had I not gotten here you'd have died. You will be suspended for a month, and no books."

"But Father," Roman whined. "Books are the only thing resembling magic in my life."

"You will do as I say, and I say it is enough. Suspended. A month. No books."