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‘I can’t run from this conclusion, I didn’t just shrunk’  he thought to himself in silence, contemplating the implications of it.

Bhalrom did not understand the mage’s overly protective attitude, but he was smart enough to leave it alone; to question a mage's reasoning would be a foolish act.

"Then it's settled" Said Maximilian, returning to Bhalrom’s question.

The mage paused for a moment looking at the boy before continuing "Yes, we shall return to the capital... I'm certain that there will be no more events now"

The knight was impressed by his confidence "May I ask how can you be so sure? Only if you don't mind me asking that is" Added the curious knight.

The mage smiled "Of course not, but, I’m not completely sure yet on how it happened… but I’m certain that we exhausted the pent up forces after this second event. The first event happened by something coming toward us and torn the veil between realms and came to our side of the coalition, so the pent up forces of nature only released when when it finally finished the transition and reached into our realm"

The knight smiled awkwardly, not quite understanding any of it “So it won’t happen again?” He resumed his thoughts to be sure.

“Rest assured it’s over”

The knight nodded in relief "And what about him? Have you discovered anything?" Inquired the knight once again.

The mage smiled "No... not in the regard that you may want to know. I don't think he has any affiliations to this land" Replied Maximilian thinking on how he should approach the subject.

"So he is a commoner? Did he say how he got here?"

"Well… that may take a while to explain" replied the mage fearing what the boy could do if he made any mistake.

"Then I assume the great Magus will be accompanying us back to the king? Your majesty asked for a report but I believe he’d prefer it being delivered by someone of higher steem like yourself. We will bring this lost lamb here with us, the king request to see everything we found after all"

"I'm right here you know?" Said Riou cutting in the chat between the two already deciding about his life. He was fed up with all the talking as if he was not even there "Don't I have a saying in all this? You still haven’t told me where I am"

Both turned simultaneously towards the high spirited young man with very different expressions.

While Bhalrom laughed, Maximilian was rather apprehensive, Riou was still a wild card.

"That's right Bhalrom, Riou should decide since he is not a prisoner, right? He is free to choose to stay" Said the mage trying to make things overly clear.

The knight captain nodded “Of course he is, but the king would like to see him nonetheless, since he was the only thing we found here. We’d like to bring the young man to him, as a guest of course… after all, why would he refuse a king’s request?”

The mage was not sure how to handle that. To bring such a thing to the capital could prove disastrous, but letting him loose could be just as dangerous. 

He then had an idea, it was a good opportunity to understand the boy’s character, if they moved to the capital, the mage would have more time to access the boy’s intent. 

The mage turned to the boy "You are in a land called Allard. And as the knight captain so eloquently put it, you’d be a king’s guest. Therefore you’d be provided with all accommodations, food and clothing, everything that you’d need.” The mage suddenly turned away from him showing a bit of disinterest.

“But if you prefer to go your own way... alone here. The choice is yours" Concluded the mage finally turning towards the boy, curious to his response.

Riou smirked and looked down before addressing the mage “I can’t refuse a king can I?" He said, seeing through the mage’s intention.

The great magus liked what he heard, the boy was smart and seemed well versed in the politics of kings and their requests. It was a good thing he showed this diplomatic side.

Riou sighed “And it’s not like I have anywhere to go…"

Maximilian joyfully smiled at Riou's retort, his response was better than the mage anticipated. The boy was willing to diplomacy, acknowledged the help he received and now had confirmed that he came to that world intently, the chances of him being an enemy had greatly reduced. The great magus was more relaxed now.

Now the mage could study him while they move to the capital and better understand this strange being.

But unaware of the mage’s true intentions the knight intervened after hearing a displicent’s boy’s comment.

"Boy! That’s not how you should reply to the Great Magus or to a king’s orders, you will know your place and act accordingly. If we say you are going, you are going and be very grateful when in front of your majesty the king!” said the knight captain to the commoner in a very loud, military manner.

Riou widening his eyes and with a very surprised look by the anger displayed by the knight captain.

The knight captain was a leader, a teacher and a general to his soldiers. And by noticing the surprised expression on the boy he felt his message had been delivered and understood.

Riou turned his gaze towards Maximilian "Of course… But you are a mage right? What does it mean to be a Great Magus?"

Bhalrom’s blood boiled instantly as he heard such mocking words. Everybody in the whole world knew what a Magus was.

The most revered title in all Allard. Known, feared and revered across all kingdoms. Everyone knew and respected the Magus. So uttering such a question in such a dismissive tone could be nothing but mockery towards him and the Great Magus name, which was something that the knight captain would not allow.

Maximilian sensing the imminent crisis quickly stepped in.

"It's just a title Riou, nothing less nothing more” he then turned towards Bhalrom, “Isn't he a curious one Bhalrom? Let’s have a word here for a moment, shall we" He said while casually yet forcefully pushing the knight away from Riou.

"What were you thinking?! Saying something in that tone to him!" muttered the mage clearly trying to restrain his anger.

The knight was not understanding why the Magus was so angry. But somehow he had failed to understand the situation and ended up angering the great Magus. The knight didn’t know how to amend such blunder towards such a revered person.

Suddenly a voice from behind "I'm sorry if I said something wrong" Riou appeared coming  after them, clearly aware of their discussion.

He approached holding his shorts "I really apologize if my conduct was inappropriate. But everything is so strange, I never been to this Arlard before and I’m having trouble to understand what’s going on sometimes using this” He pointed to the necklace “I’m probably having some trouble with some the words and their meanings”

Suddenly it hit the knight captain, the boy didn’t speak their language, so the words and his way of speaking must be affected. In reality he meant no mockery, it was a genuine question.

He held his head a bit down before continuing “Please forgive my lack of manners, I will make sure it does not happen again, sir Knight" he addressed Bhalrom.

Bhalrom was taken by surprise, he looked at the boy and could feel the sincerity in his words. 

The knight looked at the mage with a renewed understandment. After the boy’s words the mage’s anger was completely gone and the tension disappeared instantly as if it were never there. 

The knight captain felt a sense of relief and gratefulness towards the boy that seemed to understand his intentions well. He was definitely a smart boy and was immediately put in higher esteem by the knight captain. His attitude to step in and recognize his mistake demonstrated a lot of courage and honor in the eyes of the military man. And those were things that the knight captain valued a lot in his recruits.

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But the mage knew better than that. In his mind now he realized that the boy is also very cunning. For someone like him to do such an expontaneous thing like that could only mean that he already knows that the mage is into his secret. So it means he deliberately wanted to get into the knight captain’s good side.

‘He doesn’t want conflicts, even between ourselves… interesting’  thought the mage.

The knight nodded with a smile "Riou and Maximilian, I must apologise as well, my conduct was rather too harsh given the circumstances. Please forgive me, I will personally take him under my care until we reach the castle, rest assured that everyone will treat him with respect and cordiality"

The knight nodded and brought his hand to his chest "I must leave now, we need to start the preparations for tomorrow’s departure" 

He left towards the soldiers with a smile on his face, the soldiers watched the knight captain surprised as he walked by them..

Riou turned to the old “That went better than I expected”

"You are quite a trickster" Said Maximilian with a smile “I believe we should drop the act now? So are you going to the castle?” he seemed to start to understand Riou’s personality.

“You were giving the captain a hard time because of me right? I didn’t want him to hold any grudges later on… And besides that, I just want to go home” 

The mage relaxed, Riou seemed to be much easier to deal with than he expected of such a being. “Well, I don’t know where a being like you might live, but if you tell me more about yourself, I might be able to help somehow”

“A being like me?”

“Yes, what are you? What kind of entity?”

“What? I’m a regular human”

The mage frowned and shook his head “That you are most certainly not”

Riou looked at his arms, legs and body then looked at the mage confused to why he wasn’t human.

“I know you came from the transverse… you are from another world aren’t you?”

“Another world? What are you talking about? What country is this?”

“I told you, you are in Allard”

“Allard is not a country, it doesn’t exist…” Riou sighed and took a deep breath “Fine, let’s try this again, what planet is this then?”

“Planet?”

“Oh boy…” he looked around and to the skies looking for the sun. It looked very similar to the one from his world.

“Are you serious right now? I’m not in the mood for jokes”

“I’m as serious as I can be”

“Oh shit…” Riou sat down with both hands on his head “This can’t be real… Allard you said? What is this Allard you spoke off?”

“Allard belonged to the old kingdom, we came from the south through the great desert, we found the beastmen and the elves and fled their land moving towards the north. Allard was established first. Then the north was colonized by the now northman, they were caught by a storm, theyr boat was sent into the high seas and they ended up shipwrecking here, same happened to the folks in the Islands. Their main land is far away through the sea. But there is no way to pass through the High seas back to it.

“I have never heard of any of this… Beastmen? Elves and northman? Damn… meeting the king seems the right thing to do now, at least I won’t have to be concerned about finding somewhere to sleep”

“So your desire is to make friends… right? Asked the mage with expectation.

“If I’m in a different world, with no money or credit card, making friends is a necessity, isn’t it? Otherwise I’m screwed”

The magus didn’t quite understand everything but the fact was that Riou was intended to be friendly, which once again helped the mage to relax.

“Very well,  I will explain everything to you, but first, since you have a human like body, let’s get you some new clothes”

“Again with this… fine… I’m tired of holding my pants anyway.”

The mage brought him to visit the quartermaster in charge of the general supplies of the camp.

Riou tried some army clothes but the smaller ones were still a bit too big, noticing the issue the quartermaster pulled out some old commoner's clothes that he had stocked.

A somewhat white shirt, despite being made of crude wool it was light and thin. Riou was surprised by the touch as well, it was more comfortable than he expected it to be. The pants were or a dark gray and much heavier and thicker than what he was used to wear. Clearly designed to resist the hard working life in the farms.

The shoes were a dark brown color, having only one big lace on top. It would take some time to get used to it, but it was better than nothing.

He grabbed a few undergarments for the trip and put his shirt and shorts on a leather pouch he would use as a backpack.

With the clothing problem settled, the night was coming. The mage and the boy headed back to where was once the mage’s tent.

As they arrived, soldiers were already setting a new one for the magus.

Maximilian was the first to break the silence once they arrived.

"Tell me... how old are you?" Said the mage in a calm tone.

Riou smirked, "believe it or not I’m 26”

"I imagine that is still young, from where you came from" said Maximilian impressed.

"I’d say so”

"I see, such a young age with such knowledge... really impressive"

"My knowledge? What about this thing? I still can’t believe this is a magic fueled translator necklace" he forced a laugh out of the nervousness as he looked to Maximilian that did not find the joke funny, the mage was actually trying to understand what he had said.

“You really don’t know about magic then?”

“I have no clue how this works” he pointed to the necklace.

“So about our experiments earlier?”

Riou just shrugged.

Maximilian was very surprised by that and almost could not believe it.

"I apologize then, I believe I owe you an explanation. At first I thought you could be someone passing as a young man, the crystals would reveal your true self. But they shouldn’t explode the crystals shouldn’t explode.”

“Oh… so did I pass the test or not?”

“They should glow depending on the intensity of someone’s mana pool. You see, the mana pool has a direct connection to one’s mind. It has a very close relationship to one person’s knowledge. So the longer one lives and learns about how to improve their magic, the bigger and more refined his mana will be. More mana means more stamina, but also means more power. So through knowledge, we have mana, and through mana, magic is created, molded and put into purpose.” The mage shook his head and looked seriously at Riou “And you exploded the crystals by just touching them... I had never seen such reaction before"

“And what does that mean?”

“That the stones absorbed too much, too quickly… you have the largest pool of mana that I’ve ever seen”

Riou pondered for a moment “That shouldn’t be right… then what was the hand thing you did back there? The thing that zapped my head”

The old mage forced a smile “Since the stones were not enough... I tried to measure your mana with an old technique.” He looked to the boy for a moment in silence “But even that was simply impossible, I almost used everything I had but wasn’t nearly enough” The mage raised his eyebrows towards the boy “So I got curious…”

Riou looked at him sideways, not liking the old man’s expression.

“Since you were calm and were not showing any signs of resistance, I redirected my mana to form a mental connection, a very hard and dangerous thing to do… I know… but I had to know, at the time you were just a giant incognito. I did it so I could tap into your mind and through it find a way to understand why your mana pool was like that”

"A mind reading technique? You actually managed to read my mind?!”

"Precisely!" said the mage excited that Riou understood so quickly.

And a bit concerned with what the mage could have seen there, Riou continued inquiring "What did you see?" hoping it was not something too shameful.

The mage took a deep breath "Our minds were not compatible, it was just a few moments and I’ve been able to extract just glimpses of things, flashing images and short events. See someone’s mind without a true sense of comprehension is almost impossible and extremely dangerous. Mind techniques can only be applied to equal or lesser beings, not higher, for that specific reason. But I didn’t know what I was to expect at the time.”

“But… you saw something, right? You were all different right after that”

The mage nodded “It’s hard to explain, but it felt like you had lived a thousand lifetimes… and so much death… everywhere in all forms, some that I even wouldn’t try to dare to describe" Said Maximilian a bit shaken as he remembered the vision inside the boy’s mind.

Riou went silent trying to make sense of what he had said, whatever he saw, it really caused an impact on him. “I may have played too many violent games”

The mage then looked at Riou and continued "But I also felt a sense of deep understanding. I don’t know how, but through your mind it seemed like everything could be explained. Even if I couldn’t comprehend it myself, I knew through our link you somehow had answers to questions that I never have thought of" The mage went serious for a brief moment, still having a hard time to believe how much knowledge was stored in Riou’s mind "What are you? I can hardly imagine the world you came from"

The boy smiled awkwardly and scratched his head "Would you believe if I said that I’m just a regular guy? You probably saw memories of movies, games and a few too many documentaries… you know, fabricated stuff, they were not real”

The mage was astonished "But what I saw was so vivid, so real how could one fabricate such things? And also, how could you know the term earthquake? Do you have knowledge about them? Because such terms were only described in advanced magic studies."

Riou pondered once again "Was that what gave me away? Earthquake? Really? We learn that from an young age in school"

The mage went silent, deep in thoughts of what that meant "So you are indeed a high born! A noble or a king’s son perhaps? To have learned such difficult studies at such an age, you must be from the highest nobility" he complemented.

Riou laughed "I wish! But you are still not getting it. I meant it is basic knowledge, kids learn that, independent of if they are nobility or a commoner”

The mage widened his eyes with such a remark.

Noticing the mage’s curiosity sparkled, Riou continued “We have this policy on education. In most parts of my world it's mandatory for kids to attend school and learn, some are paid, some are free so everybody could attend.’ 

The old mage nodded slowly "A concept hard to understand, it’s so different. Everyone here perceives knowledge as power, so you can imagine how it is kept in secrecy, even the simpler of things sometimes are not disclosed even to royalty, much less to the common public” the mage pondered for a moment before continuing.

“Some knowledge even is only passed inside a family, for instance, when they specialize in certain elements and spells. The rest of the world is forbidden to even find out about them, knowledge is power after all" concluded the mage. “We can’t just share it in this world”

Riou nodded agreeing "Knowledge is power, that is true everywhere, the main difference is that here it seems much easier to weaponize it. We exploded things by just touching crystals just now… I can only imagine what you could do if you really wanted to cause trouble”

Maximilian went silent. Riou was quick to understand the problem..

It was uncanny for the old mage to see such a young man so well versed. The great magus was enjoying the conversation they were having. For the first time in a long time it seemed he could finally discuss the mysteries of the world with someone that would be able to understand them and even share his thoughts on the subject.

And he could do it without fear that his knowledge could be taken and used for the wrong means. For Riou didn’t need it, despite what the boy said, he felt his power first hand. Maximilian didn’t know how many lifetimes would take him to reach the same level as him.

Riou was a friend he didn’t expect to make in that stage of his life.

“Maximilian?” Suddenly said the boy bringing the mage back from his thoughts “Can you get me back home?”

The mage sighed “I’m afraid your case is more complex than that… I don’t know how you got here in the first place, well, I know how it happened. At least I think I know, the time of your arrival matches the sphere conjunction. But I don’t know how or why you were pulled from your world into it”

Riou nodded, grasping the idea.

“Tell me, what do you remember?”

Riou told his tale so far, how it began when he went to sleep one night. How he found himself in that dark place and the things there. How he fled from it and reached the light that put him into that other forest.

He told him the problems that happened to him and the dire journey to reach the cliff which he ended up falling from.

Maximilian listened with care to every word he said and pondered on its meaning.

“The dark place, it seemed like you described the Abyss, the world of darkness. If you were thrown there, you were lucky to have found a gateway to this realm. It’s amazing to think you survived the Abyss for so long.

“What was this other forest? The silent one?”

“Some call it limbo, some others call it the path of the dead… Some say the Endher forest is linked to it. By your story, that seems to be true after all.  Legend say no one can survive it, at least not without protection of very powerful spells”

“How did I survive?”

“I… I don’t know”

“So there is no way to get back?”

“I’m afraid you are stuck here for the moment, the alignment that you used to come happens once every few hundreds of years… and it long passed ” concluded the mage. “Even if we wanted to, there is no way to do it now, at least not using it”

Riou sighed “That’s just great… So I’m stuck here now?”

“Let’s not give up hope just yet, once I’m back home I will try to find a way to get you back, I’ve studied a lot about the spheres, so we might be able to find something together.”

Riou smiled and nodded “That sounds great!”