Leo and Heidi

Sternenberg, Switzerland

Lis and Heidi did not notice the wave of mana that swooped down from the sky as they were thrown against the wall. Both hit their back firmly against the wooden walls and slumped down, barely keeping consciousness. Heidi felt something crack next to her, where Lis had landed and looked her way to discover that the wolf girl had passed out.

Then she turned her gaze back at Leo and was blinded by the sudden white light that enveloped him, shining bright as the sun. Heidi squeezed her eyes shut, putting a hand over her face, and turned away not to get overwhelmed by what was going on before her. What the hell-? she thought as the light hurt her eyes, burning like embers in her retinas.

The light show went on for a full three seconds before subsiding. Heidi turned her head and tried to open her eyes, but her gaze filled with white spots, making it impossible for her to tell what had happened to Leo. She thought it impossible that the boy had survived, given how much mana had floated down. It felt like a natural force. A waterfall, leaping over the ledge and streaming down carrying multiple tons of liquid to whatever stood at the bottom.

She rubbed her eyes, hoping to regain vision to avoid stumbling around the room while blinded, desperate to help Leo. But how could she help? She was just a simple air mage for a long line of clan mages. She knew nothing about what Leo was going through or why what happened did happen in the first place.

Before she could brood further, the door to Leo’s room exploded, and Peter rushed in, breathing heavily. He looked around the room and noticed Heidi sitting on the floor, still clawing at her eyes and trying to clear her vision. She asked, “Is that you, uncle?

Peter did not respond for a second until he noticed his daughter and ran up to her. Then he said, “No, it is Peter, Heidi. What happened here? What happened to Lis? Why she is lying out cold?” Peter scooped up his daughter in his arms and took stock of the room again, only then noticing Leo’s prone form lying on the bed. The boy looked as if he had stuck his finger in an electric outlet. His hair almost visibly stood on their end, his clothes looked a bit charred, and the air smelled of burnt cloth.

Oddly enough, Peter could hear the boy’s heartbeat was steady and calm as if he was sleeping. Then he sniffed the room again and noticed the amount of mana in the room. It was an ungodly amount of pure energy hanging there as if waiting for a calamity to strike. The only time he remembered feeling such an amount of energy was all those hundreds of years ago. When the Walpurga faced off with the traitor.

Peter examined his daughter and noted that she had only been knocked out. No doubt by whatever happened in the room before his arrival. He put her down on the other free bed that smelled of the mud boy Evan and turned to examine the little free mage further.

Walking up to his bed, he noticed a peculiar bag. A bag that looked suspiciously like a spatial device. He picked it up and noticed that it was bonded already, him being unable to unlock it. He looked around and saw that Heidi was still on the ground next to the door and decided to put the bag back, in the bedside table drawer, rather than on top of it. No doubt his sons would do something foolish, as much as he wanted to believe they would not.

Then he took a careful step toward the boy but was interrupted by a gale of wind as Sebastian rushed through the corridor to Leo’s room and displaced air around him. Arriving, Seb looked around the room, taking in the messy Leo, passed out Lis, and Heidi, who was blinking rapidly and understood what had happened.

Seb went ahead and cast a quick and simple healing spell toward Heidi, to speed up the process of her eyes healing and her regaining vision. Then he went over to the passed-out girl and noted that her body was already healing the broken ribs, and she was only knocked out. Seb turned his gaze toward Peter and noticed his serious stare.

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Peter followed Seb’s eye and turned to Leo, saying, “Sebastian, what have you brought to my doorstep? Do you know what this means?”

Seb frowned at his question but quickly decided to reign his temper in, and posed a question in return, “Does your offer at sanctuary still stand, Alpha?” Seb deliberately used the wolf’s formal title rather than his first name, after they had become more acquainted, to convey respect and seriousness of his question.

“But of course, it stands, mage. Who do you take me for? I have not lived for so long by going back on my promises lightly. Did you know this would happen? Do you know what transpired? The air around us was loaded to the brim with mana. As if an archmage, no, something above archmage had cast a spell. What the hell happened here?” The Alpha was clearly exasperated and frustrated by the lack of knowledge.

Seb nodded to the large man and tried to wrap his head around the situation. However, no matter how much he thought about it, even as he was running toward the mansion before, he had no idea what to tell the Alpha. “I… do not know what to tell you, Peter. It is as you say - too much mana surrounds the boy. I have no idea how got to this state.”

“I have, uncle,” Heidi said as she got up, her eyes finally healed enough to regain vision. She got up and walked up to both of the standing men and brushed past them to check on Leo. She put the back of her hand against his forehead and sighed before turning back to them both.

“We came back with Leo as you suggested. He took out the Codex from… the bag,” she said. “And what happened?” Seb asked, not understanding how the old book, as mythical and full of knowledge as it was, could have had anything to do with what he felt all around him.

“Well, at first, nothing happened. We tried to read it - with no results. Then Leo decided to pour some mana into the book, the same as you taught us back at the cabin. Then all went to shit,” she winced at her curse. “Pardon my language,” she quickly added.

“How so? What did the book do?” It was Peter’s turn to ask. Heidi turned to him and answered, “At first, nothing. It just sucked mana from his core like a vacuum. At least judging from the reactions he was giving. Then it rose to his face and started to glow like a miniature sun. I felt my hair stand on its end as if charged with electricity. It was mildly terrifying, uncle.”

“And how was my Lis knocked out? Who did it? Him?” Peter asked with a dangerous tone, pointing a clawed finger toward the boy.

“No,” Heidi answered, shaking her head. “After the book started to glow, it rose in his face and rushed into him. Disappeared.” Seb furrowed his brow, perplexed, “Disappeared? Books do not disappear, Heidi.”

“I know that, uncle. But it happened. Then came the creepiest part. Leo rose in the air as if possessed and floated. Then he went boom, and we were knocked against the wall. The rest you already know,” she finished looking at Peter pointedly, who arrived first and found the aftermath of Heidi’s recount.

Then loud steps pounded in the corridor, indicating the arrival of Evan, who stunk of cow shit, having worked the dung for the whole day. He took in the room and ran up to Leo before looking up to Seb and asking, “Again? What the hell happened to him?” Peter raised one eyebrow at the lack of respect this mud was giving the mage before him, many years his senior. But then he noticed that besides the smell of animals coming from him, he had little splotches of blood on his shirt. He also noticed small rips and scratches on his person.

“What happened to you, boy?” Peter asked, looking Evan up and down. Evan turned his gaze from Seb and frowned. Then he looked at his dress and said, “Ah, this? Nothing, sir. Just some light scratches.”

“Doing what? Actually, what kept you so long? You were not so far behind me before I cast Haste,” Seb commented, interested in what the boy had done now. Did he accidentally trip on his face, which Seb found highly unlikely?

Evan laughed off the evident concern and said, “Ah, no. The two brothers chose to obstruct my passage. So I removed them. We got into a little tussle.” Peter’s brows shot up, and he asked, “Little tussle?” He could not believe the mud not only did not have the brains to brawl with werewolves, even as young as Auriel and Fadri, but he came out with only a few tiny scratches. Even Fadri, on his own, was an opponent no simple mud could face. Who was this boy?