At some point later at night, I woke up. I wondered why I was hungry, then quickly remembered the events that had just transpired.

I didn't want to get up, but eventually my stomach threatened to implode, so I had no choice but to go make something.

After quite a late dinner, I steeled my resolve and picked up my wand. I walked over to the apartment doors, and stabbed my wand through the glass one last time.

I walked up the long stairs leading to the topmost floor.

As I was climbing them, I spotted the witch. I didn't say a word and walked past her. She, however, had a different idea. She grabbed me by the shoulder, and whispered into my ear, "Aren't you forgetting what you came here to learn?" she asked.

Did she know what happened today? She was clearly provoking me. I did my best not to give in, and just walked past her.

I walked into the mages room slowly.

The room was usually warm and welcoming, however this time, the gathered appeared to be in a panic. There seemed to be wizards too, judging by the fact that I didn't recognize a single one.

As soon as Alexei spotted me, he grabbed me by the shoulders and yelled, "Roma, have you seen Lena anywhere?"

"Yeah, on the staircase," I replied. Alexei yelled at the gathered wizards, "What are you waiting for? After her!" The group rushed out of the room down the corridor.

"Roma, Lena's switched sides. She admitted to working with Apophis via a letter. If you find her, bring her here by any means, please," he told me.

"Oh, really?" I asked disinterestedly. Apophis or not, it didn't concern me anymore. Alexei had walked over back to his table, sorting through reports of monster hunts.

I called out to him to get his attention. "Hey, Alexei," I said. He looked at me.

I held out my wand and snapped it.

The room instantly fell silent. The stares of both Alexei and Natasha were on me.

I threw the twigs at Alexei's feet. "Thanks for your time, but I no longer have any reason to learn magic. I quit. Don't contact me for anything," I said.

Natasha picked up her voice, "Roma, are you su-" I cut her off, "You saw what happened today, Natasha. That girl was my reason for learning magic. Now it's all in the past."

With the silence stretching on, I decided to walk out of the room. I heard one of them pick up their voice, but I shut the door behind me and went away.

I picked up pace towards the stairs, hoping that somehow, leaving the University quicker would make me feel better. Of course, that wouldn't improve the situation, but I needed to leave this place as soon as I could.

Luck, however, would not let me have my way so easily.

As I was picking up pace towards the stairs, a door opened in my way and someone's hand dragged me in, and shut the door right behind me. I tried getting out, but the door was locked. I turned around to see who my captor was.

The room was dark. It took a while for my eyes to get used to it. Once they did, I realized it was the witch who was in the room with me. I instantly became angry and tried to punch her, but she cast a spell and sat me down on a chair. She tied my hands and legs while I was struggling, and sat on another chair in front of me. She stuck a sock in my mouth while she was at it so I wouldn't make much noise.

For some reason, I felt like this would look really cool in a movie, but with the little light there was, I couldn't see much anyway. Besides, the people restrained in movies like this ended up dead half the time. This wasn't the place to make such revelations.

I realized that without a wand, I was now powerless against her. I couldn't simply untie myself or set fire to something. I was prey in the predator's nest. Lena seemed to realize that, because she took her sweet time.

After a little while, she took the sock out of my mouth. I immediately yelled for help.

"That's no use, dear," she chided. "Remember the spell that stops time?" Oh, great. Now I was in for a fun heart-to-heart with my nemesis. I itched to blow her a punch but she still had me restrained. I struggled, but I couldn't move much. "Don't worry, I'll let you go after we're done talking. I promise," Lena said.

She took her wand out and cast a light spell. I could now see her clearly. The light hung on top of the room exactly where you would expect a lamp in those dark interrogation chambers in movies reserved for the main antagonist.

"What's gotten you so jumpy today, Roma?" she asked. I didn't realize it, (nor did I particularly care) but that was the first time she genuinely called me by name. I relegated to her a brief summary of what happened with Lana, and how there was no point in me learning magic anymore.

"Ah, my comment back on the staircase must have annoyed you then, I take? My apologies~" she said. "You see, I only wanted to get in your good graces."

"And why is that?" I asked.

"There's a certain good friend of mine who really wants your company, you see. You're fairly strong, and he thought he could make good use of your abilities," she explained.

"Well, I snapped my wand, so I have nothing to do with you lot anymore. Apologies to your friend for letting him down," I said. This 'friend' she was going on about was most likely Apophis, since Alexei told me about Lena's defection. I asked her if my suspicions were correct.

"Wow, the news has reached you too, huh~? Well, I suppose it would be quite important, having the second mage this year go rogue."

"I suppose you won't let me go until you talk about this, so I'll cut to the chase. Why did you and Apophis defect? What are your plans?" I prodded. I was starting to feel danger, but I still wanted to just be left alone.

"Jumping straight to the topic, I see. Well, it would save me the pain of warming you up to the inevitable conversation, so thanks."

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

She got up from her chair, and walked to the far side of the room, facing the wall, for some reason. I guess everyone wanted to be dramatic at least once in their lives. "What do you think about magic, Roma?" she asked me, while still facing away from me.

"Compared to most of us, you have learned of magic much later in life. To you, it isn't something you were introduced to as a child. You were old enough to form an opinion about magic when you first got to know of it. As an outsider, one who has lived a life without magic, what do you think of it?"

I thought a little bit about it. When I first saw magic, I was already well-acquainted with the concept. A large part of my reaction towards it was, 'Oh, so you can do this in real life too.' However, I understood that this was not what Lena was asking about.

To those who were born into the world of magic, magic was natural to them. It was natural that only some people knew of magic. It was natural that only some people knew of monsters.

To me, however, this was not natural. To me, it was strange that only a certain group would know about this whole other world. A world that had pretty much been hiding in plain sight.

When I first saw real magic, I thought nothing much of it, because the concept itself wasn't anything new to me. But when I read books about magic, or watched shows involving it, I always thought, 'Wouldn't it be much more convenient for everyone to know about it?' Down the line, I did realize that it would be like handing everyone a loaded gun, and things would likely unfold into chaos.

But if things went well, magic would be great. It would create a revolution in how energy worked, it would probably help doctors work on more serious illnesses, and I was sure that scientists would figure out some or the other way to use this magic for some life-improving inventions.

These thoughts, I voiced to Lena.

"Seems like you gave it some good thought, huh?" Lena pointed out. "You're making my work easier and easier. You see, Apophis has quite a similar opinion to your own."

Huh? Was he the same guy who gave Alexei and Natasha a run for their lives?

"Apophis thinks that the world would be much better off with magic. Of course, he has to play the bad guy for this to happen. But his strategy is impeccable."

"And what gives you such confidence?" I asked.

"Well, you'll understand if you listen to it yourself," she replied.

For the next fifteen minutes, she went on to explain Apophis' strategy in great detail, all while pacing over the room, and ending on the chair in front of me. At first, I did not understand why she would so simply reveal their actions to their opponents (not that I was fighting for any side at the moment). However, as she kept talking, it began to dawn upon me that no matter if the mages knew beforehand or not, it wouldn't stop the plan from coming to fruition.

In short, Apophis recruited all but one in every ten monsters in the city. And he was going to have them all attack targets all over the city on the same day, at the same time. If a zombie apocalypse from the movies means anything to you, this was pretty much the closest you could get to it in real life.

If the mages fought back, their magic would be revealed to the public eye, as the scale of attacks was large enough to warrant open use of magic. It wouldn't be possible to wipe every person's memory of the entire incident. If the mages sat back and did nothing, then the wizards accompanying the monsters would play the role of magic users and attack the monsters instead. Even if all else failed, the existence of monsters would get people thinking about what lay on the other side of the equation.

No matter what the mages did, the outcome was the same. This plan, truly, was impeccable.

There was no point in going out on a full-on hunt for monsters, as things stood. The rate at which monster nests were discovered was incredibly slow, and most of the time, wizards spent more time scouting possible targets. There was a reason why there were so many nests in the city in the first place.

"Do you see why I so openly flouted our strategy now?" Lena asked. I remained quiet, not quite wanting to admit that this strategy would be quite a pain to face, if there even was a way to beat it.

"You may lament the use of such nasty means, but keep this in mind, dear. For a new day to come, for the morning sun to shine upon a new age, night must first pass," Lena told me. A silence hung over the room for a while. It wasn't something I could refute, to be frank. Though, I was sure there should have been a better way to go about this.

"And now we're back to where we began - recruiting you, dear," Lena said. "Once all of this blows over, a lot of magic users will find themselves targeted after fighting in the open. World powers wouldn't want to let such mysterious forces do as they please.

"But if you join us, we can guarantee you your safety. Your safety during the aftermath, and your safety during the outbreak. Oh, and of course, safety for all those dear to you~"

I was going to immediately refute the offer, but guaranteeing the safety of those dear to me was tempting. They could get caught up in the attacks, after all. My mind instantly went to Lana, despite all that happened that evening. If anyone at all, I just wanted her to be left out of this.

But couldn't I just protect her myself? If magic was going to be made public anyway, there was nothing stopping me from personally protecting her during the outbreak.

Lena looked like she picked up on my thoughts, but decided to not say anything.

"Personal safety or not, I can't possibly stand behind a brutal massacre, where who knows how many would die before the mages would decide to make a move. It's a tempting offer, but I will reject it." With that, I took a stance on the battle.

"Playing the hero, huh~?" Lena teased. "Well, I have no reason to pester you to join us anyway. I'll pass your decision over to Apophis."

Lena got up and walked over to the door to the room.

She opened the door and stepped out towards the corridor, before suddenly stopping and looking back at me. "Oh, and be sure to stay alert. Apophis doesn't like it when someone doesn't do as he says."

With that warning, she casually walked out of the room and disappeared into the corridors.

Apparently, she undid the time-freezing spell at some point in time, because after a few seconds, I saw Natasha rushing into the room, yelling, "Roma, are you alright?"

She quickly untied me and checked if I had any wounds from anything. I told her I was alright, so she dragged me to the Mages room.

There, I saw Alexei. I was stuck in the room with Lena for quite a while, but to them, that was no longer than an instant. As such, to them, it was probably less than a minute after I ran off, having snapped my wand.

The first thing he said to me was, "This is why you cannot so simply 'quit', Roma." He wasn't lying - I went off and got myself captured mere seconds after I declared I would quit.

"What did Lena say to you?" Alexei asked. I did not know how he knew that it was Lena who caught me and not anyone else. Well, they were colleagues for a long time, so maybe he was familiar with how she went about stuff. Though, it would be hard not to connect the dots with everything that happened.

I narrated what Lena told me about Apophis' strategy. Alexei's face grew gloomier with every sentence I finished, but I tried to make sure not to leave out any detail so that he had more to work with.

A silence loomed over the room. After some time, Alexei came to a decision and spoke up, "There is clearly no option left for us except to deal with the problem at its root." He turned towards both me and Natasha, and said, "We will now proceed to kill Apophis." A greater silence loomed over the room. This was a living, breathing person we were talking about.

What more, there was a little more than a week until the coordinated attacks would be carried out. We had to deal with the issue beforehand, so that we would be able to stop it. We would be doomed if the monsters were told to attack at a certain time on the day, but if the orders would be coming from Apophis, then killing him would prevent the monsters from going out.

Alexei turned to me and placed his arms on my shoulders. "Roma, I'm going to need you to work with us for now. I understand that you have no reason to stay with us. But lives are at stake here. Every pair of hands helps. I don't mind if you quit after this is over, but please, stay with us until we are done dealing with Apophis."

I considered his plea. Rejecting Lena's offer pretty much meant I was siding with these guys anyway. I had pretty much made my decision on the matter already.

"As long as you let me leave after this, I'll help you out," I said. Alexei's gloomy face gained a hint of a smile. "Thank you, Roma," he said.

'You're welcome, you loaf,' I wanted to say for some reason.

I decided to join forces with Alexei and Natasha against Apophis. I had a hint of hesitation, having been guaranteed safety on the other side.

But with the events of the following day, my position would come to be set in stone.