Galen came in front of the mathematics classroom at the same time as Artem and Marcus. He immediately noticed his brother looked better. Galen glanced at Marcus speculatively, but he didn’t say anything. Reassured about his brother, Galen concentrated on his classes and training for the day.

During the advanced pharmacist elective class, Mrs Bousrani ended the practice earlier than usual. She gathered the students to talk to them about the upcoming district competition. It was the first field trip for their elective.

Mrs Bousrani explained where the competition would take place and which high schools would participate. She enumerated the rules and underlined the things the students had to be careful of. She ended her speech by saying, “The three best students will each receive a monetary prize in addition to another type of prize. I know most of you will compete to win, but I want you all to concentrate on the experience, not the reward.”

Galen couldn’t agree with Mrs Bousrani’s advice, although he heard the wisdom of it. He was excited about this competition. Not only was it an alternative way to earn money, but it was also an opportunity to obtain one of the ingredients Galen needed. The first prize included the right to choose a spirit plant as a reward.

This excitation lasted until Mrs Bousrani asked him to stay at the end of the period.

***

When Artem returned to his room after his last tutoring session later in the evening, Lucia flew to him to heal his scratches and bruises. The Light Fairy worked quickly, and the boy thanked her. However, Artem soon realized Galen was in a strange mood: he hadn’t inquired about his injuries nor hovered around him. The younger boy went to stand silently next to his brother.

Galen was sitting at his desk. Several books were opened on it in the middle of scattered papers, but he wasn’t reading them. Feeling Artem’s gaze on him, Galen lifted his head. The twins looked at each other in silence.

“Do you have telepathy?” Lyra interrupted them. “All your exchanges of looks without saying a word are unsettling!”

“It’s late. Let’s go to bed,” Galen said without acknowledging Lyra. His brother didn’t drop his gaze, so Galen added with a slight smile, “I’ll talk if you do.”

Even if Artem seemed to have overcome some of his problems, Galen still wanted to know what happened to him. He had never liked it when there were secrets between them, and ever since their parents died, he hated it. He understood why their parents hadn’t talked to them about their work, but all this secrecy had led to their current situation.

No, that was unfair. The culprits were the people scheming against the Eos Family.

Feeling Artem’s hand on his shoulder, Galen brought his thoughts back to the present. Ayden was sprawled on her stomach across Artem’s shoulder, her legs and arms lazily hanging down from each side. She stared at Galen with curious eyes.

Looking at Ayden’s adorable face and antics could always uplift his mood. Glancing back at Artem, Galen bluntly said, “I’m tired of people trying to put us down.”

“Who upseted you?” Artem calmly asked, ready to do whatever he could to avenge his brother.

“Mrs Bousrani doesn’t want me to participate in this weekend’s competition.”

“Can she forbid you to go?” Artem replied with a frown. He couldn’t go against a teacher. His fists would be useless.

“She can’t. There are no rules she can use to ban me from competing,” Galen said. He had long been fed up with how people used rules and laws to go against the Eos Family, so he made a point to read all of the school regulations. “When I pointed that out, she said that as a member of Dascalos High School, I shouldn’t lower the school’s prestige.”

“What-” Artem didn’t go on as he suddenly understood what Galen didn’t want to say. Artem felt disgusted. He couldn’t bear to dwell on how his mother wasn’t only unjustly accused, but her name – the highly respected name of Tana Eos – was now also used to pressure them. Instead, he asked his brother, after a short pause, “Do you still want to be a pharmacist?”

Galen silently looked at his brother with an inquiring gaze. Artem knew about his love of pharmaceutics and his predetermined goal to become a Beast Healer, exactly like he knew about his brother’s ambition. It suddenly came to Galen. “Ah… So that’s what’s been bothering you.”

Like the Pagoni Family specialized in information gathering, the Eos Family specialized in pharmaceutics and healing. However, all Greek Families followed the lead of the Kranos Family – the representative of the Balkan Families – and worked in one way or another for the Army. That was also why most of these Families’ main branches were implanted in Olympia, the City-State where the Army’s headquarters was.

There was an easy solution to Artem’s problem. Galen looked into his brother’s eyes and said, “I’ll become a military doctor. Just do what you want to do.”

“No, belonging to the Army is my duty,” Artem replied. A military doctor worked on the field and followed the Army to heal the soldiers. Galen’s interest was in the pharmaceutics research.

“I’m the Family’s head. The duty is mine,” Galen said in a firm voice. He could still be a Beast Healer in the Army.

“Dad wanted me to become an Army officer,” Artem said, finally bringing up his other worry to counter his brother’s decision.

“Our situation changed: Dad wouldn’t hold you up to it.”

“You don’t want to work for the Army. Anyway, I can’t change my elective. It’s better if I stay on this path.”

“Your elective is just there to make you discover a domain. High school students are young and entitled to change their minds,” Galen explained in a confident voice. “No one can force you to sign up for the Army, even though you chose the professional combat elective class. In fact, they can’t even force you to go on field trips like last week’s training camp except for the first one because this elective’s purpose is to allow the students to discover what it means to be a professional combatant. Becoming a soldier for the Army isn’t the only job available on this path.”

Artem had known that in a way. Didn’t he already think of being a mercenary or belonging to the Beast Tamers Association instead? However, none of these options appealed to him. Thus, Artem forced himself to concentrate on another part of his brother’s speech. The young boy asked curiously, “You looked into it?”

“I told you I was tired of people brandishing rules and laws to cut us off. I can play their game too.”

While Artem pondered what his brother told him, Galen thought of his last research about the law. Having reviewed all the school regulations and minors guardianship laws, he was now reading about embezzlement and fraud, especially in the medical field. He left laws concerning the Army for last because they were more complicated. Galen was hoping to find a way to prove his mother’s innocence. If he could, it would solve the problem of their finances and his participation in pharmacist competitions.

Galen was confident he was on the right track, but he couldn’t rush this either. It was too important, so he needed to backtrack on this research to dig in another direction. A direction he hadn’t wanted to dig in when he had stumbled onto it.

With a sigh, Galen looked back at Artem. Seeing him so thoughtful, Galen realized his brother was still wondering about his future. He lifted his hand to turn Artem’s face toward him. Bringing his forehead to his brother’s, Galen whispered, “The real question is: do you still wish to work for the Army?”

“I don’t know,” Artem said, unable to lie to his brother.

“So there’s no need to make a decision right now,” Galen said, unknowingly repeating Marcus’s advice. “Moreover, there might be another solution to fulfill our duty toward the Kranos Family.”

“What about you?” Artem asked with a worried look. “Do you want to participate in this weekend’s competition?”

“Yes, I do. I’m just wondering how I can avoid further damage to our reputation, or if I shouldn’t bother about it and shamelessly go.”

Artem rarely saw his brother disregarding the Family’s duty. While Artem wasn’t one to abandon his responsibilities, he didn’t see the harm in letting his brother be selfish for once. “You should do what you want.”

“Listen to Artem. I don’t want you to become the petty sort of person who would do anything to defend their reputation,” Lyra said. However, she didn’t want to dwell on this topic, which brought out once again unwanted memories about her mother and her pursuit of face and fame. Now that the twins had an honest conversation about what they had been hiding from each other, Lyra brought out something that was bothering her. “Mrs Bousrani must have been instructed to keep you from competing.”

“I agree,” Artem replied. “Someone is trying to keep us poor and dependent, or incompetent. The question is why.”

“Obviously to better manipulate us. But for what purposes? Who’s benefiting from it?”

“Is it because of the Phoenix your Family is protecting?”

“It’s difficult to say,” Galen answered while thinking about who could know about their Family’s secret – or maybe he should call it an open secret. “A rival Family would be the obvious answer, but things look more complicated.”

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“Do you know of any Families specializing in insect pets?” Lyra asked to try to find clues from another trail.

“No, nothing’s coming to mind,” Artem answered.

“The Ruh Family often uses scorpions or spiders, but it’s for their poisonous properties, not as spies or scouts.”

“So, what about the Pagoni Family? They specialize in information gathering, don’t they?”

“Yes, but they are unlikely suspects. First, we are part of the same faction. Second, they use mostly birds for pets because the Pagoni Family also act as messengers outside of the City-State.”

Since the destruction of the Old World, humans had painstakingly managed to build back civilization, but it was limited. Technologies suffered from interference if they covered an area too wide. However, there was a more important reason that humans had discovered the hard way: the Abyss monsters destroyed everything built outside of any City-State’s reinforced defensive walls. The territories covered by human civilization were ridiculously small compared to what they used to be in the Old World.

A Cities-States region was usually composed of three main Cities-States, each harboring the headquarters of either the Army, the Association, or the Agency. Thus, the Cities-States shared political and military powers and balanced each other. These three powers were interconnected in complicated ways and present in all Cities-States, forming the Triad that governed each region. The Mediterranean Cities-States region was composed of the City-State of Olympia, the City-State of Babylonia where the Agency’s headquarters was, and the City-State of Men-nefer where the heart of the Beast Tamers Association was located.

“I’m not sure we should be looking for a Family,” Artem said. “It was the Beast Tamers Association who came knocking on our door.”

“The Maghreb Families work closely with the Association.”

What Galen said was right since members from the Shaytan and the Jamra Families were famous for holding prominent positions in the Association, and these Families’ main branches were implanted in Men-nefer.

The Shaytan and Jamra Families were not exactly enemies of the Eos Family, but they were rivals in numerous ways – the first reason for that being they belonged to different factions. It was tempting to point fingers at the Jamra Family because of Amir’s behavior, but the twins needed proof, not biased speculation.

Amir’s presence in Olympia could be considered suspicious, but most Families sent young members of their main branch to study in other Cities-States. It was to create connections with youngsters from other Families or to train their heirs by letting them fend for themselves in a foreign place. That was especially true for the heirs of representative Families, like Sarah – the heir of the Hut Family and representative of the Mashriq Families – who lived in Babylonia but came to study in Olympia.

“If we are reasoning like that, the Mashriq Families are heavily involved with the Agency, and everyone knows that while the Agency pretends to be officially working in politics, diplomacy, urban planning, research, development, and who knows what else, it works in intelligence gathering.” Artem paused briefly before making his point. “So the Ruh Family and the Hut Family are working for the Agency in some way, and that means some of them are spies.”

In fact, it was even more complicated than that. One of the twins’ History teachers from their first year of high school liked to describe things like this, “The Army takes care of the Abyss monsters, the Association takes care of the beasts and their tamers, and the Agency takes care of the rest.” He had always refused to explain clearly what was “the rest”.

“I can’t imagine Mahlon as a spy,” Galen said in an odd voice. “They could just work in research or something. I mean, Mom worked for the Agency. You think she was a spy?”

“Well, at least she got secret missions,” Artem said.

Galen pondered on that. Was there a difference between an agent doing secret missions and a spy? The twins’ mother did go on secret missions while their dad accompanied her to protect her. However, as memories of his mother’s exuberance flashed in his mind, Galen couldn’t help but think it was incompatible with the discretion needed for a spy.

“Her talent was a useful tool for a spy,” Lyra added, also wondering if Tana Eos had been a spy.

“You’re right, but I can’t see it. Mom was…” Galen trailed off as he didn’t know how to explain himself.

“Mom was Mom,” Artem said in a firm voice.

“Let’s stop thinking of it: we are wasting time.” Lyra didn’t want the twins to be sad as they remembered their parents. It seemed that by trying to avoid a topic uncomfortable to her, she had brought up an uncomfortable one for the twins.

“Alright, let’s go to bed,” Galen said without commenting about Lyra’s change of mind. He had become used to Lyra’s protective way and mood swings.

When Artem didn’t move, Galen smiled ruefully at his brother’s concern. “I still have some days to come to a decision for the pharmacist competition and I think I found something which could help. I just need some more information that I’ll look for tomorrow.”

Relenting, Artem stepped back to sit on his bed, where he teased Ayden until she looked like she was laughing, even if she was producing no sound. The fairies were weirdly silent, but it didn’t bother the twins. Galen cleaned up his desk with Lucia’s help, looking at his brother and his fairy messing around with a smile. No matter their difficulties, he was glad to be with his family.

***

On Wednesday morning, Galen was walking toward his first period after tending Mrs Bousrani’s garden. He was thinking about ways to obtain spirit plants if he was barred from competing. This garden only had medicinal plants, so it was useless for the super-evolution pill – not that Galen would have stolen from Mrs Bousrani.

On the way, he met Zane outside in front of the third-year building. The shy boy was feeding spirit herbs to Finn. The White Rabbit ate heartily.

Curious as ever when spirit plants were involved, Galen approached to observe the herb. Galen immediately noticed that even though it was just milky clover herbs, it was of high quality. He couldn’t help but ask, “Is this part of the spirit resources given by the school?”

“Ah, no,” Zane answered in embarrassment, “it’s some of the spirit herbs sent by my family.”

Galen remembered Zane’s family owned a farm, but he didn’t know they were growing spirit plants. Zane modestly explained that his family cultivated spirit herbs used as fodders for herbivore pets in half of their fields. In the other half, they grew staple food.

“Of course, we also have some chickens and cows,” Zane said with a small proud smile. “Mom makes the best pancakes with our milk and eggs!”

While most animals had mutated since the apparition of the spiritual power, some were less impacted than others. A few farm species had only grown bigger and sturdier, without gaining any skills. As such, farmers still raised them for food, and The Peaceful Treaty clearly described them as farm animals.

Galen accompanied Zane as they walked toward the classroom, chatting about Zane’s farm. The black-haired boy suddenly had a thought. The twins were lucky their fairies didn’t need a special diet – although their parents’ foresight might have more to do with it than luck. Galen didn’t know how he would have fed his pet if it was a rare Beaming Snake or if Artem had a rare Fire-Maned Lion. Both these pets were carnivores and needed to be fed a lot of meat. The twins would have had no way to pay for it.

The fairies usually only nibbled some food from the twins’ plates and drank morning dew. Feeding them was free. However, that was just for survival. A good beast tamer provided their pets with spirit supplements in the form of pills or food. It would be great if Galen could get some spirit resources from Zane’s farm, especially if he was banned from any pharmacist competitions.

Thus, Galen wanted to know more about the herbs the Hoffmans grew. It wasn’t difficult to stir the conversation in this direction since Zane loved to talk about his family.

“Our farm is implanted in the Fifth Circle. We sell mostly wheat and olive oil to the mundanes around us. It’s more difficult to sell the spirit fodder herbs because we need to transport them to the inner Circles, but we found a market for clovers, thymes, basils, and oreganos.”

“These are all very common and basic herbs. Did your family ever think of growing rarer plants to make your place in the market?”

“Dad said it would be useless to plant more expensive herbs. When we are lucky, we harvest some bold four-leaves clovers or some silver-green thymes and get a pretty sum of money for them. Anyways, Mom always says we shouldn’t forget what it means to live in the Fifth Circle.”

Most Cities-States had first been built by an alliance of Families hundreds of years ago to be safe places enclosed by high defensive ramparts and watchtowers. These strongholds were the result of cooperation between all the beast tamers and the able-bodied mundanes under the Families’ lead. While groups of fighters were protecting the construction site from Abyss monsters, groups of beast tamers were buffing the workers or using earth manipulation to dig and create rocks to build the walls and the towers. They had thrown all the magic they could at the ramparts to enchant them and make them indestructible. These first strongholds – the heart of each City-State – were called the Center. Building them was how the Families officially first gained their prestige.

Since then, each time a City-State wanted to expand, the Families and the other beast tamers would work together to build an outer defensive wall, delimiting another safe place to live in. If they didn’t prepare well enough beforehand, it always ended in death and destruction. These expansions were called the Circles.

Historically, the cooperation between all beast tamers had often worked seamlessly until the Third Circle, but afterward, selfishness and personal interest had taken over. It didn’t help that each expansion required more materials, more strength, and more time. The Fourth and the Fifth Circles had usually been built by bits and pieces with dubious planning, making their walls less sturdy and reliable.

“It must be rough living in the Fifth Circle,” Galen said as he thought of how the population was distributed in Olympia. Naturally, while the Families lived in the Center and most new beast tamers chose to buy houses in the First or the Second Circle depending on their finances to be safe behind all these rings of walls, the poor lived in the Fourth or the Fifth Circle.

Since the leaders weren’t stupid, they built several military fortresses in each Circle to defend the City-State. Most of these fortresses were implanted in the Fifth Circle. Since its latest expansion, Olympia was more than one hundred kilometers in diameter, and its furthest outer wall spread over three hundred and fifty kilometers. Still, Olympia was considered a small City-State.

“It’s not so bad,” Zane answered with a small smile. “Anyways, there is no place for farming in the inner Circles.”

The City-State was overcrowded because it was too difficult to expand. A hundred years ago, there were still some farms in the inner Circles, but they had all been destroyed to build flats and housings.

There were talks recently about building housings outside the walls or at least moving the military bases there to free some spaces inside. It was suicidal, but since it had been more than fifty years since Abyss monsters raided Olympia, people forgot to fear the monsters.

Galen didn’t want to dwell on such heavy subjects. He turned the conversation to Zane’s siblings, a sure way to uplift the shy youth’s mood. As Zane was happily talking about some pranks from one of his little brothers, and how angry his father had been, Zane suddenly said, “Speaking of sermon. Crystal got a summon to the dean’s office this morning.”

“Do you know why?” Galen asked, more to go with the conversation than by real interest.

“It’s easy to guess, isn’t it?”

Crystal had been skipping all of Mr Carter’s classes since the previous week. The beast tamers had twenty-two periods of classes per week without counting the free periods. Among them, nine were Mr Carter’s. Thus, Crystal had been skipping more than a third of her courses.

From what Galen knew of the school regulations, the teenage girl would get a disciplinary warning and detentions. The warning stated that Crystal would get expelled if she didn’t correct her ways. Since she was a beast tamer, she would easily find another school eager to recruit her, but not one from the Center like Dascalos High School.

Galen wasn’t interested in Crystal. In his opinion, she was a superficial girl too mindful of her image. Getting expelled would tarnish it except if Crystal managed to paint herself as a victim of Mr Carter’s harassment. However, Galen was sure she wouldn’t give up on the prestige of studying in a high school from the Center.

Galen entered the classroom for the social studies lesson with Zane and went to sit next to Artem. Beast tamers’ misplaced pride would be an interesting field of study, but the teacher began a civics lesson. Galen didn’t mind brushing up his knowledge of laws and civil rights. It was much better than dwelling on the likes of Crystal.