Another day, another time spent at the workshop. Nothing major happened, it was the same as always.

Avarez-Galieta Workshop has been up and running for more than four years and we weren’t planning on stopping. Talks about expanding had been a thing, but with how much money we make, there is no way we can expand the place. We can barely do with our rent and pay our employees.

It is a good thing that we’ve created a good reputation for being honest, cheap, and with good results. All of these are thanks to Tedet, mind you; the man is honest to a fault, and people are called out for calling him a scammer. But a good reputation does bring bread to the table, and though I would love to start charging more, I feel bad for thinking about it. Tedet has managed to guilt-trip me into maintaining the prices, even when everyone knows that business is business.

“The fuel injector melted,” Tedet said.

“That means there is no proper cooling,” I answered.

“People forget how important cooling is in space.”

“They forget because, inside an atmosphere, the air around you does the cooling for you. It’s a given that things will cool down.”

“It’s common sense that if you’re going to own a spaceship, you should know the most critical things about it.”

Even when cooling is one of the critical components of a spaceship engine, a lot of people come back with melted engines, fused components, and welded parts. All of it because they don’t give their spaceship proper cooling maintenance. One of the most important parts is how fuel is also used as a coolant for the engine, and some of that same fuel is used for cooling other parts of the ship. Why would that be when fuel is so dangerous? Because it’s cheap. And because more reaction mass from other sources only increases the amount of fuel you’re going to need.

In space technology, reaction mass is the most important problem; you need to reduce how much mass you take to space. It’s not water or food, it’s not oxygen. It isn’t even fuel. But mass. How much mass there is in a spaceship can cost more fuel, which increases your reaction mass even more. It’s a positive feedback of doom. The solution? Use and reuse the parts you already have on the ship, and fuel is one of those that has multiple uses. If we could use fuel for everything it could solve a lot of problems.

If only people could eat, drink, and breathe fuel. The Holy Grail of a Space-faring civilization. Might as well make the whole ship out of fuel for good measure.

“It’s going to cost him a fortune to repair the whole cooling system,” I said. “Normally, a problem in the system means there are problems everywhere.”

“We could finally get a bit more money than usual since obligatory maintenance after repair is cheap labor, but is costly regardless,” Tedet explained.

“Finally! More money.”

“You going to take your boyfriend on a nice date?”

“When he comes back.” I sighed and Tedet flashed red – he understood my sighing. “What about you and your girlfriend?”

“Going to the range,” he said and lifted his hand, holding an imaginary rifle that recoiled when he pulled the imaginary trigger, sending his shoulder back.

“You guys love your guns.”

“We could take you with us. But--”

“That’s fine. I already had my fun with those vampires last week.”

“You didn’t get to shoot.”

“And I’m glad I didn’t. I don’t really want to hold a gun again, let alone shoot one.”

“You will sooner or later with those vampires breathing down your neck.”

Tedet stood back from the spaceship and threw the tools he had been holding on to into a nearby toolbox, then wiped his oily hands and his kaki overall, leaving trails of dark and red-orange marks from the lubricant and rust.

“Anyway,” he said and leaned on the wall next to me. “What happened to your nephew?”

“That…” I said and let the pad on my hand drop on the same toolbox. I kept quiet for a while thinking about what to talk about.

“Seems like you need my help.”

“No. This time it seems to be a lot less troublesome.”

“You seem to think I’m asking for permission.”

“And you believe I’ll let tag along anyway.” I stepped off and walk right in front of Tedet. I held my hands out, palms down, and wave them up and down. “You can cool off your engines, now, rocket man. There’s nothing to worry about this time. I think my nephew is just being paranoid.”

I lied. And I was sure I was convincing because my face didn’t flare any color and my human mannerisms would not give me away to an alien like Tedet. Any lie could fly between a human and a radera.

“So,” he crackled. “You’re good this time?”

“If I need your help, I’ll give you a call.”

I lied again. I had no intention of having him get into more trouble about he had to recover from his burns. Besides that, I don’t want to burn strikes points in the eyes of his girlfriend. I was already on thin ice with her, and the last thing I want is going skinny-dipping in that frozen lake.

“That reminds me, Ted,” I changed the conversation to something I needed some help with. “How do you manage to choose? You know, on the things that matter.”

“You’re gonna have to give me more than that, Ed. What are you talking about?”

“How do you know when something is worth your time and your mental well-being?”

“You’re not making things easier,” he said while he looked down at the ground. “Something giving you trouble? Is this related to your nephew?”

I looked at him straight and shook my head.

“Martin? Your ex?”

I kept a straight face.

“I think I understand what you’re trying to say.”

He didn’t.

“Too many options and not enough time or power to do them, right?”

Okay, maybe he knew a little.

“Knowing you, my advice won’t help you much, since you’re a stubborn idiot.”

“Just ’cause you’re right doesn’t give you the right to insult me like that, Ted, come on.”

He waved my comment with a single grunt and continued: “Just choose what’s most important and forget the rest. You’re only mortal. There’s a finite amount of you, time, and effort you can use to solve your problems. If you try to solve them all at the same time, you won’t solve anything. Focus on what you can do and on the thing that matters. If you feel bad about it, you have friends you can rely on to give you a shoulder to cry on.”

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As amoral, unempathetic, and uncaring as Tedet was to the world around him, he sometimes gives really good advice, and right now the advice I needed came from the person who does what he thinks is best and forgets about what seems unimportant. The man that thought my nephew was a waste of my time and a hazard to my life, and he was right on the second part.

This time, he needed to be right on two parts and convince me that helping Misa was going to be a mistake.

Did that surprise you?

It surprised me as well when I thought about this morning. I know I don’t have enough time and energy to help both, and trying to solve everyone’s problems at the same time would only lead to failing everyone.

I needed a push from Tedet. The man that can unlock me from that moral prison I was stuck in. I knew giving up on Misa was a horrible act, but I could not save everyone. My only choice was to have Tedet convince me logically about this situation. Granted, I knew what the best course of action was, but I couldn’t just choose it.

“You seem relieved?” asked Tedet. “That’s a smile, right? So, you’re happy?”

“Yeah. I am.” I turned to look at Tedet, feeling like he had just removed a weight off my shoulders. I figuratively and literally stretched my back and shoulders, feeling more comfortable. “Thanks, buddy. I can always count on you.”

“What would you do without me?”

“What would I.”

After that, the day went by as normal. Nothing exciting happened. When the day was mostly over, I prepared myself to go back to my wizard chambers to work on my nephew's case. The biggest problem right now was to figure out who was bothering him this whole time. Jaser had no idea who it might be and there was nothing he gathered that could help me. In all honesty, the idea that these could be faeries was also up in the air.

The way home had me ride public transportation for a long while and then walk a few squares to get to my apartment. It gave me enough time to think about any possibilities before I could act; I needed to know who were involved with my nephew so I could start with a lead. Unfortunately for me – and for any party involved with me – I was not an investigator. More so, given that during the months that I tried finding out the whereabouts of Jaser, I could not do it.

This realization left me hopeless, but I had nothing more to do, I had no one else to ask for help. Even Tedet, who would gladly help me, would be useless to me.

Still, my biggest question was who within the faeries would try to do anything with humans and why? Answering these questions would lead to a direction, whatever it was, that was better than where I was standing.

Faeries are creatures closely related to nature. They either represent the wilderness or anything attached to it – which, in all fairness, could be anything. Faeries could be related to the weather, the sun, the moon, the sea, and even volcanoes. When they are in a good mood, they could bring about good weather or even lead herds of animals into fertile land. Angry faeries could set natural disasters upon the land.

While faeries are related to life, humans and radera have evolved to distance ourselves from them. While other animals are beneficially associated with them, they are also bound to them to the point that some of them need them for survival. It is very common to find the fay attached to organisms, especially plants, since they harbor energy. But others are related to the land itself.

In general, the most important groups of faeries are those associated with the seasons, and, depending on where you live, these groups are well defined or heavily skewed towards one power. The poles are mostly under the Winter Faery, while on the equator, the Summer Faery.

Where we live, the seasons are not clear cut, there is no such thing as the four seasons, but we do have a clear hot season and cold season. Summer, Winter is the most important, but subgroups of them can take a stronger presence, such as Spring and Autumn. But for us, Autumn doesn’t exist, and Spring gets supplanted by Summer for a longer period of time, leaving Spring almost non-existent, and sometimes they never even take hold. The time between Summer and Winter is a time of clash, the change of seasons doesn’t bring autumn, but a chaotic rainy season. Both have their respective Rain or Storm jurisdiction that clash for power, bringing torrential rain that can last several months, and leads to the flooding of the valleys of the city and the overflowing of the nearest river.

This gave a clue to a possible perpetrator. The rainy season of the Rassetet – the wet plains region where Al Patreck was founded – was close to coming. This meant that any Faery related to the rainy season is most likely related to this event, in preparation for the clash.

This still left me with a question: within which jurisdiction was this fay involved?

If I had to guess, that would be the Summer Faery, as they were the most active right now. But recent days have been a lot less hot than usual and I could not deny Winter might be involved.

“Aargh,” I complained while scratching my head.

I was almost close to home and I had not found a good starting point to begin my investigation. At the very least I could say I took a step forward when choosing the Rain and Storm jurisdictions.

The climb of the Wizard Tower had me, at least, releasing my frustration on my heavy steps, as I slammed my feet on every step of the stairs.

I took my apartment keys out of my pocket and I dropped them. I didn’t do it because I was clumsy, but because before my door, I found her again – Misa.

I had steeled my resolve before coming here. I had decided not to help her, but that resolve wavered a little again when I saw her standing, her hands shyly clasped together in front of her groin. The moment she saw me her smile gleamed but quickly hid away as she looked down. Nevertheless, she approached me, every step was sure; she never wavered.

“Mr. Ed,” she greeted. “I’m sorry to bother you again. I just thought maybe I could be of use to you.”

Was she doing it on purpose? Did she know I was bailing on her? Or was it just insurance that maybe she was going to get dumped?

I shook my head after realizing that was untrue. Misa would not do something like that. I knew who she was, and I knew she would not do this to me. She did it because she was concerned about Jaser as well. Misa would not take a step for herself, but the moment someone innocent was in danger, she would be the first to run to help them.

I subconsciously bowed and prostrated at the magnificent and great shadow of a heroine she cast over me. She was everything I ever wanted to be, a natural hero.

“Misa,” I faked a smile and shook my head. “You shouldn’t have come. There was no reason, really. I haven’t been able to figure anything out yet.”

“Well, like I said,” she began and left the sentence unfinished un purpose, a sort of ‘fill the blank.’ A moment of silence filled it in for us. She opened her mouth but stopped and, after wavering for an instant, she continued with another topic: “There’s a message for you on the door. I’m sorry, I didn’t want to peek, but I couldn’t read what it says anyways.”

I looked behind her when she stepped away to let me see my door. On it, a piece of paper – odd for anyone who didn’t know about this. However, the moment I saw it I already knew where that came from. The scripture would’ve looked like gibberish to anyone, but to me, I could read it easily.

“I don’t know what language that is.”

“Greek,” I said. “Well, it’s not Greek, the language. It’s only the alphabet.”

Greek had disappeared centuries ago, the writing system was quickly absorbed by the Latin alphabet. It was a battle between Latin and Cyrillic to replace it, but in the end, Greece had fallen into the old Western jaws once again. Even after millennia of the fall of Rome, its influence was still taking a toll on it until it had finally done it in for the alphabet as well. Much later, the language as well transformed into something more akin to a Romance language.

Wizard Avarez, Edwhite, 43rd official of Al Patreck.

Sure enough, it was addressed to me. Before I continued, I read the ending of the letter:

The Magical Cabal of Wizardy and Sorcery’s

103rd Merlin, Senior Arch Wizard Reitzmitt, Thamian

It was from the Cabal, as expected, but the official summon was given by the Merlin, the name for the official position of the headmaster of the Cabal. Normally, the summons are given by any of the other Senior Arch Wizards of the Council of the Round Table, the masters of the Cabal, never the Merlin himself. And even then, it was usually the Senior Arch Wizard Ravan Plattam, since she was usually in charge of communication with the rest of the Cabal, all thanks to her being part of the Academy’s instructors.

That the Merlin did this wasn’t odd, it was alarming.

I continued reading:

To all who may be concerned,

We call all official wizards to an emergency meeting. We have information about an alarming future event that may be a cause of damage to mortals at large.

“At large”? That meant this was on a massive scale, possibly affecting several cities across a region, country, or even continent. At least it wasn’t the whole world, otherwise, the codeword I would’ve read for that would be “the whole world.”

I shook my head after my joke. This wasn’t time for jokes.

Coordination scaling the Cabal’s world network is paramount. Your attendance is obligatory. You are not allowed to be absent for any circumstance whatsoever.

We’ll be meeting within the Large Cupula two days from now, at exactly 0300 Greenwich.

Topic: vampire and torviela large-scale war.

My heart almost burst from my chest when I read that line.

It was finally happening. They are finally doing it and it didn’t take time. I thought this would be an issue I would have to deal with years later, not so quickly.

Across from me, the oblivious Misa looked at me horrified as she asked: “What happened? Something wrong?”

I didn’t know what to say. I had not found the words to explain, and in reality, I shouldn’t.

I walked up to Misa and while swallowing my saliva I directed her to my door.

“Nothing that should concern you,” I lied. “Let’s talk about what really matters.”

Those worse made my throat dry. Suddenly, the squabbles from the Faery and the stalker from Misa felt so much smaller under a thread and sword that loomed over every mortal. Even if Misa and Jaser were to escape from whatever they were dealing with, who knows what would be of them if what this was is true.

I could only hope it was just the Council being paranoid, like every Wizard always is. But the sweat at the back of my head felt cold, just like the truth sometimes is. Back then, I knew all too well that this was going to be a consequence of that duel I had. I just didn’t want to think of the consequences.