“Too much food,” moaned Marina, slumping along sluggishly behind Friedrich.

“You ordered it,” he said sternly. “You said you would settle for a medium lunch and you ordered almost everything on the menu.”

“We were on the road for so long…my stomach ran away with me. You have to understand, Friedrich.”

“And now you’re suffering for it. You’ll get no sympathy from me.”

A little ways past the market, stood the Akatfall Mages Guild. It was a large, circular building with a pointed, rimmed roof. Friedrich said that it looked like the building was wearing a hat, but Marina claimed to not see it. There was a large set of wooden doorways with seemingly magical symbols carved into it, while the many windows surrounding it were filled with stained glass.

Friedrich crept up to one of them and looked in, expecting to see foggy, miscoloured shapes within, but he could not see a thing. He was confused, but chalked it up to some enchantment the mages used to people like him from doing exactly what he had just tried to do; spying on them.

“Front door, it is,” he said to Marina, who had come around from her stomach ache.

“I’m excited!” she squealed, throwing her hands into the air. “I’ve been wanting to learn a new spell for so long.”

“If I know mages—”

“You know mages?”

“—then you should be very careful about how you act around them. They can be—”

“What mages do you know other than me?”

“—very arrogant, so you’ll need to control your enthusiasm.”

Marina scowled at Friedrich’s deliberate ignoring of her, but replaced her expression with a stoic smile as she approached the door. She thought that maybe he was right and decided to play it safe.

Friedrich put his hands on the door and pushed it open and, to his surprise, it opened without a hint of resistance. The duo stepped inside and marvelled at what lay before them.

The central chamber alone was three-storeys high and each level looked down on the main floor below. At least half of the walls of each of the tiers were covered in bookshelves, all of which were stuffed full of books from thin texts to heavy, dusty tomes.

The lights illuminating the darker crevices of the room were not simply torches, but floating crystals that glowed shades of blue and orange, some of which flicked between the two at the prompting of one of the mages.

The mages themselves were about as haughty as Friedrich expected, strutting around with their noses high as though they were better than everyone else—even each other. Most of them were Mercians, but there were a few who were not. There were various kinds of humans from Heartlanders to Northmen, elves from high to dark, and even a couple of orcs and wolven—a species somewhere between man and wolf, yet not quite a lycanthrope.

“Where do we even start?” asked Marina, looking around with her mouth hanging open and her eyes as wide as could be.

“That guy will do,” said Friedrich, walking confidently towards a Mercian man sitting on an armchair near the back of the chamber while pouring over a book. “Excuse me,” Friedrich said to the mage, whose eyes looked up without his head budging even an inch.

“Yes?” he asked.

“We’re looking for a magic tutor for my friend, Marina. She’s a powerful lightning mage, but she needs someone who can help her finesse her abilities.”

“Good luck to you,” said the mage, returning to his book.

“Thanks for your time,” said Friedrich politely, but Marina could have sworn he mouthed a foul word underneath his breath.

“Should we leave?” asked Marina, uneasily.

“Not a chance,” said the young adventurer, looking around for someone less snobbish. He strolled up to a Heartland woman, hoping that one of the foreign humans may be more receptive.

“What?” barked the woman.

“Nothing,” said Friedrich, walking on past her as though he hadn’t been planning to talk to her. “Hmm…”

He approached a wood elf, another Mercian, a dark elf, and even an Asterran—a human from the deserts to the south—but to no avail. He leaned against a pillar at the edge of the room and shook his head.

“Alright,” he said to Marina, who looked uncomfortable, “it may be time to give up.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“What are you two doing?” asked a Mercian man. He had short shoulder-length brown hair, a thin moustache and wore a set of sleek purple robes that made him look particularly wealthy.

Friedrich sighed. “Fine, we’ll leave and stop bothering you all.”

“That’s not what I asked,” said the man.

“I’m trying to find a magic tutor,” said Marina, hopefully. “Please can you tell us if anyone here would be willing to give me a chance?”

“Well, what do you know?” asked the mage.

“I know how to use lightning bolts.”

“And who taught you?”

“No one,” said Marina. “I learned by myself.”

The man laughed, but seemed taken aback when he realised that Marina was serious. “Surely not? That’s an exceptionally difficult thing to do, learn magic without help. Someone must have assisted you.”

“No,” said Marina. “I promise you that it’s the truth. I learned how to cast lightning bolts from a spell tome. It took me years to learn how to do it, but it was all me. I wanted to learn more, but I…I could not.”

“Well, isn’t that something,” said the wizard, raising an eyebrow. “My name is Hansel. Hansel the Striker. Perhaps I can help you…would you be willing to undergo a few tests?”

Marina glanced at Friedrich who nodded fervently. “Yes!” she called out, not intending to raise her voice. “Whatever it takes.”

“Follow me,” said Hansel, gesturing towards a staircase leading downwards before looking at Friedrich. “You can remain here, but do not touch anything. You will only get yourself thrown out. We should not be long.”

“Why can’t I come?” asked Friedrich.

“Magic-users only.”

“Do soul magic users count?”

Hansel scoffed. “A horrid practice. Do not dare utter that around anyone else or you will be kicked out even faster than if you started tossing books from the shelf.”

A disappointed Friedrich waited as Hansel led Marina away, leaving him standing to the side of the guildhall where the passing mages either ignored him or shot him dirty looks. The mages didn’t bother him, but he was curious to know what these tests were.

After twenty minutes of waiting, it suddenly occurred to Friedrich that there may be something nefarious afoot and his imagination started running wild. What if Marina was being tortured after Friedrich let slip about the soul masks? What if she was having her magical essence extracted and was going to be murdered straight after? He had to intervene, or at the very least he had to check.

He crept over to the descending staircase, ensuring that he wasn’t being watched. Once he was certain he wasn’t attracting any attention, he snuck down the stairs and found himself at a set of double doors. He pressed his ear to them, but could not hear a thing. As he reached for the handle, he heard footsteps coming from behind him.

In a panic, he put the fox mask on and hid behind a vase as a wood elf walked down the stairs. She opened the doors and entered, giving Friedrich the chance to slip through behind her unnoticed…or so he thought.

“Eee!” screeched the woman as Friedrich’s nose accidentally grazed her leg.

He turned around and bolted up the stairs as fast as his four legs could carry him. The wood elf chased him, shooting concussive blasts from her staff that would have knocked him flat on his face is they hit him.

Friedrich scurried through the chamber, making his way for the front door as the mages chased him. Over an armchair, between a pair of legs, over an ugly imp familiar, he hurried to the doors. At that very moment, a mage entered the guildhall and Friedrich burst out into the square as the mages slammed the doors behind them.

He wandered over to a small patch of grass and flopped down onto it, rolling over onto his back. He felt like an utter fool. The Mages Guild were a prestigious order of wizards and wouldn’t rob a young girl of her magic, especially when she only knew a single spell.

Four more minutes passed and Friedrich turned back into a human, shocking several people in the square. He insisted that he had run afoul of the guild and the enchantment had simply worn off, a lie that most of them seemed to buy.

Another hour passed and Friedrich, impatient as he was, remained in the square rather than daring venture back inside. At last, Marina returned and Hansel walked with her, both looking quite pleased. Marina, notably, was carrying a tome that she did not have earlier.

“Why are you outside?” asked Marina.

“I was chased out,” said Friedrich.

“Aha!” exclaimed Hansel. “You were that fox that found its way into the hall. Did I not warn you not to use that dreadful enchantment?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Friedrich, before changing the subject. “How did the tests go?”

“Young Marina here has a very high aptitude for magic, particularly lightning magic. It’s no wonder that she was able to teach herself.”

“How do you get high aptitude?”

“It’s hard to say,” said Hansel, “but it could be a simple coincidence, it could run in the family, it—”

“Run in the family?” asked Marina, laughing awkwardly. “Definitely not my family, no…definitely not.”

“Your mother is definitely not a mage?”

“No, she wasn’t,” said Marina, her voice shaking. “She died not too long ago.”

Hansel did not let up. “Your father?”

Marina teared up and her lip trembled. “I…I’m sorry,” she said, pushing past Friedrich and running through the square.

“I did not realise it was such a sore spot, I’m sorry,” said Hansel, looking shocked.

“Me neither,” said Friedrich. “I’ll go find her.”

“Tell her she can return the tome whenever she wants.”

Friedrich ran through the square and along the streets, looking for Marina, eventually finding her sitting on the edge of a stone bridge where a small stream ran underneath. She was staring at the trickling stream, sniffling.

“Hansel says you can return the tome whenever you want,” said Friedrich, “but I would just keep it if I were you.”

Marina didn’t laugh, she just rubbed her eyes with her cloak. However, it was for not as tears continued to roll down her cheeks.

Friedrich climbed onto the wall and sat beside her, letting his legs dangle just above the stream. “My mother’s dead too,” said Friedrich. “I don’t think I’ll ever get over it either, but…you do start feeling numb when you think about it after a while.”

“Oh, Friedrich,” sobbed Marina, putting her head on his shoulder and crying into him.

Friedrich put his arm around her. “If you need to cry, just cry. Once you’re finished, we can do what we always do and keep our baggage to ourselves. Just imagine we’re at the shrine again and we made the same pact…but if you ever do want to talk about it, you can, alright?”

“I’m sorry for being such a burden,” said Marina, not taking her face away from Friedrich’s shoulder.

“You’re anything but a burden. I wouldn’t have half as much fun without you. I may be a little richer, I’ll admit, but having you around is worth every kupon because it means I’m never lonely.”

Marina pulled her face away and looked at him. “I’m glad I’m here with you too.”