The path zigzagged and, using her telepathic power, Priscilla tracked Maria, but received no response. Something was blocking her. After a while, she spotted the apprentice in the hand of a hooded man, who bowed his face when he detected the veteran, revealing a closed helmet covered with runic engravings.

—Let her go, you pushover! —He threw the scythe like a javelin, and it began to spin in a cutting disk aimed at the head.

The stranger slowed by turning around with the girl raised by the back of his neck, as a shield. In a reflex action, he swerved the scythe upward, hooking it on a fire escape of an adjoining building.

Everything was happening before Maria's stony, inanimate gaze; her eyes lost their luster, her mouth hung open and a trickle of saliva dripped. She had gone into a trance, that's why she didn't respond to Priscila's telepathy.

He didn't know which provoked more anger, Maria's kidnapping or her fall into hypnosis. One thing was clear to him: blood was going to be spilled in those alleys. Priscilla's pace slowed the instant the stranger pointed the barrel of a silenced pistol at Maria's head, gripping her gloved arm tightly.

—One more step... and none of us will take the prize.

Enervated, he showed superiority as he pulled the trigger of the gun, painted with runes and equations. A magical tool. From the mage's neck hung a pendant of the mystic eye of Xotec Sabannur. There Priscilla was aware that it would be a complicated combat; every believer of that deity capable of using the gift possessed great magical knowledge, many of those spells were forbidden.

—A painless death... That I promise you. What do you want from my apprentice?

—You don't give a damn about that. —She had to distract him, to gain time, and she failed because of the little arrogance of wanting to explain her plan: "Go away if you care about this brat.

Priscila was not intimidated, she knew she could not underestimate her opponent. The hostage and the confined environment prevented her from using her full power. The odds of victory were against her, so she had to finish him off at once.

—I see, I understand, —She replied coldly and took a step forward, knocking the stranger back by pressing the cannon against his temple, an act that the sorceress hoped would confirm that he was a coward—. I wanted to deny it, but there is no other way. I know what you are... I would rather see her die quickly than live a pitiful existence as an abominable test subject for scum like you.

The stranger's heightened senses alerted him to the metallic rattle of the living scythe hooked to the ladder. An orange glow covered the weapon, splitting into a floating ring of fifty silver daggers.

Those projectiles shot out in a multiple rapier, moved by an unseen force manifested at Priscilla's deadly command.

In a cry of fury, the stranger, in a cold sweat, knew that those stilettos could point in any direction. If he used Maria as a shield, even if the comment was a bluff, there was a chance that some knives could be redirected to vital points. He needed the girl with the gift alive for his purposes, so he devised another strategy.

Using a mechanism from his sleeve, he pulled out a spellbreaker card and unleashed a shockwave that repelled the projectiles, as if they had hit a wall.

Collapsed in a shower of quivering metal, they sizzled electric cobwebs. They went into a state of temporary dormancy, in shrill shrieks that drowned out the charge of Priscilla's implants.

From mechanical legs they deployed runic thrusters. With a high, resonant leap she propelled herself against her foe and delivered a kick to the head, blocked by the armored forearm, tightening her pistol and her hostage's grip, which she glued to her chest.

Priscilla proceeded with a high kick directly to the pistol hand that was about to be pointed at him at point blank range, disarming him by sending the pistol flying and affecting the stranger's balance. Nearly falling to the ground, Priscilla grabbed Maria by the shirt and wrenched her from his grip in a brief struggle.

The pair of conjurers kept their distance. Luck smiled on Priscilla as the pistol landed near her, and she kicked it back, drawing it into her domain. She was aware that the gun's safety seals would not work in her hands; it would take time to break them, something she lacked. She sat Mary leaning against the wall; now she could fight calmly and use lethal force.

In that second, the stranger put his hands on the ground to get up again and his hands glowed in embers, throwing a punch that Priscilla blocked with her leg in a defensive stance. She was trained in martial arts in a special style in which she completely refused to use her hands unless she took up arms.

Priscilla leapt up to rooftop height, out of range of the flaming low punch that ended above ground, sinking it into the fractured cobblestone.

The guardian returned to the ground on her knees at a safe distance, close to her student and away from her opponent. Panting so far in the fight, she deduced that the wizard improved his body. She didn't know if he was on the level of a type two mutant, but more than her, whose physical advantage was her leg implants. She would not escape; she would finish him off or else she would be able to kidnap other children.

The subject took the lead by moving forward as he grabbed her right shoulder, whispering a new incantation. The limb split in two from the middle of the index finger to emerge as a long bone machete stretched by a grotesque tentacle of red flesh, from which sharp plates protruded.

The stab grazed Priscila's arm as it moved to the side, causing a hemorrhage from which she had to clutch her hand in pain.

It followed the streak through the surdo by projecting a long flaming tongue, at the same time retracting the tentacle. Priscilla crossed both arms generating a barrier barely, letting some embers graze her thighs, burning her. She bit down hard to endure the pain, and both spells cancelled each other out.

With a beckon of a finger, the knives awoke from their slumber after the one minute of shrinkage. Lifted from the ground, they shot out behind the stranger's back, who raised his left hand raising the wall at the same time he fired his tentacle at Priscilla, thinking she would take advantage; all part of his plan reflected in his smile.

The guardian ordered her weapons to rise into the air, right in front of the wall, as she soared into the sky, passing under her boots that grotesque appendage. Steels and bearer crossed in the air, and with raised hands she was circled back to her hand turned a single weapon, a dawn star. That was the special ability of her tool; lunatic moon knife, the ability to turn into different shapes just as the mother star changes.

It swooped down before the astonished eyes of the stranger forced to retreat. Right in front of him, the sorceress cracked the cobblestone between clouds of dust and pieces of debris, generating a slight tremor that destabilized his balance and his morale, before Priscila's manic expression as she lifted the mass of spikes.

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Thinking that the weight of the weapon would grant an advantage, the stranger charged with an interrupted lunge, sent to the ground by a sledgehammer that shattered flesh, bone and concrete on the spot, immobilizing him. Taking advantage of the proximity, Priscilla leaned on the cane hitting it sideways in the side, sending it crashing against the wall cracking it, and having retained the damaged tentacle, the forced pull finished mutilating it in a stream of blood.

With a wave of his hand, the dawn star switched to the floating knives and took one in his hands, approaching the stranger lying on the floor writhing in pain between agonizing screams muffled by the helmet, clinging to his mangled limb under a pool of blood. Priscilla kicked him in the stomach, turning him face first to the ground.

—I told you I would give you a painless death if you surrendered. —She took him by the chin, pulled his head back exposing his neck and before slitting his throat, she concluded in his ear: "You lost that alternative.... tell Xotec Sabannur that I send him my regards.

With a kick, he threw him face first to the ground. He raised the rest of the dancing stilettos around him like a ring, they descended braked an inch from the body and came down again, tearing the flesh slowly circling the body of the dying man drowning in his own blood from the growing pool.

The tips of the steels formed lines in the flesh that reached, scratched the armor of the pectoral plate; suddenly they stopped passing to stabbing lightly jumping changing places as if they were children jumping up and down under the orders of the index finger. He slowed down when he realized that the stranger was no longer moving, just like the stilettos stuck in the extremities.

She didn't finish catching her breath, she heard a scream of pure terror from Mary right behind her. She had awakened from hypnosis. The girl's pale face lay splattered with blood, she was trembling with a sensation comparable to that of being on the edge of her skin in winter, horrified at the image of a death occurring before her eyes.

—This is a taste of the shit that nestles in this world, if you want this job... you better get used to the stench of.... —Priscilla moaned because of her injuries and fell down sitting on the floor.

—Pri-pri…

Maria couldn't finish the sentence, but she was able to escape from the second trance. With clumsy steps and trembling hands, she approached Priscila. Avoiding looking at the deceased, she closed her eyes and manifested healing magic starting with the bleeding.

The simple spell was becoming unstable, something that had never happened to the apprentice before. Priscilla didn't miss it, she could see it in the girl's face, full of tears and snot hanging in tight eyes, holding back the urge to let out another scream. She forced herself to be strong.

—Good girl... concentrate on what's left of my legs, I'll take care of the arm.

Priscilla grabbed her by the head, holding her head against her chest, at the same time that she rested her stifle. He pulled a white bottle from his belt, popped the cork with his mouth and after spitting it out he squirted the icy contents into the crack.

He would stop the bleeding by cauterizing it by a vaporous coating that felt like ice clinging to the flesh. The burns on the thighs would need to drink another potion, which she would not do by allowing her apprentice a real time practice and who better to evaluate it than her.

Priscila passed the report on to the authorities. She did not want to talk about what happened with Maria until the next day. The veteran's wounds were healed in minutes by her potion kit, something she could not use in the midst of battle. Drinking those concoctions lowered physical defenses for a span of an hour, much more than healing magic that depleted within minutes, so she only dealt with it at the end of a conflict.

—In that world of magic... there are some very dark things, you got it pretty cheap that day... —explained Priscilla one day when they were in the living room, accompanied by the warmth of the fireplace—. The man you ran into... he had a sorcerer's license... and it seems he was one of those who was looking for easy specimens to experiment with... children.

—B-but... How is that possible?

—Not necessarily. —Continued—: esper, warlock or sorcerer... none of these titles exempts you from being a good or bad person. No matter the race, every being with a conscience and a free will has the potential to be a piece of crap. You are a sweet and tender child..... if you follow that path this world will eat you alive before you can cast your first spell. You must be careful... a piece of shit will try to rape you, and then sell you into the white slave trade either for organs and illegal slavery... at best just kill you for mere pleasure. But a bastard with the gift, he can do things to you that I couldn't even mention... monstrous things, that would make you wish for death.

Maria didn't know what to answer that day, something that was expected by Priscila. They took a week's vacation, giving time for reflection. The day came when they resumed the sessions on a research she was doing for the Archive; a paper on the influence and function of safety gases in equations.

—What makes us altered in the first degree? —Maria was hungry for information, having observed that expression a lot as a description of natural born magic users.

—Let's say that magic is a muscle, discipline and effort will make it stronger... consuming calories, like any other exercise... with the difference that here it is in an accelerated way," she explained, "in our blood runs a special mutagen, with which we are born. Out of every ten people, one is born with that gene... the gift. We can alter reality naturally, by means of equations we control it, and using tools it intensifies. That is the first degree.

—And what does the pineal gland have to do with it?

—Where did you see that? —I didn't expect that question.

—From your books, I've been studying. I started reading about psychics and how they develop their abilities.

Pretty advanced... I like that you're self—taught, in case of that organ... it's essentially where the soul connects to our body, according to you. The third eye... —Priscilla pointed to her forehead—. It is pure speculation, according to which that organ is the one through which we emit mental powers and that includes astral travel..... I could bring it up for a doctoral thesis that I would like to do.

—I would like... not only to be a doctor, I want to learn to fight.... —Maria was determined—. To carry some element of chaos, to learn to fly, to create contracts with familiars; to know potion manipulation, alchemy of potion creation, tools. Handle psychic powers to the extreme... master absolutely everything and graduate.

—Girl... wizards usually specialize in one thing, what you're asking for is to bite off more than you can eat. Are you sure about that? After what you've been through... —She spoke to her seriously—. You may not become essentially an expert at something if you throw arrows all over the place. Let alone psychic, few wizards are proficient in that factor. You're not asking to be a druid, a collector, shaman, or a technomancer..... You want to go big.

—Absolutely. You said it...I'll do my best. —Maria stood in front of her teacher, completely determined. I fell into hypnosis because I was too weak—. Minded, I don't intend to fall for that kind of tricks anymore. I want to be an outstanding sorceress, I'm going to bet my luck on that.

—Well, you've already mastered the basics of healing magic..... —Inspired I couldn't deny such fervent will—. We will proceed with offensive magic. From what I researched, you burned out several transformers in your screams, driving the light crazy from an overload. You seem to be akin to electricity.

Maria's first task was to study for a whole day, the electrical equation of chaos magic. The next morning they gathered in the living room, determined to show the results of what they had learned.

—Try to turn it on... —Priscilla handed her a light bulb connected to a metal box with two wires hanging from it. Hold these wires and apply the equations you read in the books I gave you.

Maria kept her concentration with her fingers on the wires, memorized the equation, letting it run into each end of the soul and reach the veins where the power of the stigma ran, which gave the powers to the first class mutants.

On the first two attempts the focus flickered, on the third attempt it destroyed the crystal and from the fourth it stabilized it. The next teaching was about defense, creating defensive domes.

In the second week, Maria not only created a small barrier, she was able to create a sphere around it and was preparing to learn variations of the same spell. That was the result in the next three weeks, the tests were short “lived in the face of self” taught preparation.

He took off his glasses and cleaned them to make sure he could see well, in the face of Mary's pure talent, given to the stigma instinctively; limited merely by stamina and inexperience. The branches of magic she imparted, manifested and adapted in the inner flow of the apprentice.

—This has to be a blessing from Xotec Sabannur, you were placed here for a reason? —Priscilla was filled with inspiration as she taught Maria—. You are my destined child, I have no doubt.