In a dark dusty warehouse somewhere in England, a skeletal, white haired, masked woman dressed in midnight black robes stood over a bubbling cauldron.

"Add a pinch of phoenix ashes, stir seventeen times, add six drops of dryad blood, four crushed dragon scales, four-hundred kelvin for thirteen seconds" the woman mumbled to herself as she followed the instructions to the complex mixture being brewed. A foul smell wafted from the cauldron as crimson plumes of smoke rose from it, congealing on the walls and ceiling making them look as if they were caked in a thin layer of dried blood.

"And finally” she whispered gleefully, before kicking over the cauldron causing the contents to splash across the floor. The mixture spread for several seconds before stopping suddenly. It then smoothly slid to the rivets in the granite floor, filling them up. A complex formation now sprawled out before the woman, the crimson liquid within glowing ominously in the dark building.

“Well done Leah” came a gruff voice from behind. “Are we ready?” he questioned.

“Yes Master Stor. However the formula will only remain stable for seventy-three hours. We need the last Newblood as soon as'' she whispered.

“Well, let’s go hunting then” Stor smiled as he led the two out the warehouse and into the moonlit night beyond.

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Zakaria Sol was sat at his desk listening to a lecture and writing up notes… with his right hand. With his left hand he was typing up a piece of coursework, while also watching a video in the top corner of his screen, while also listening to a podcast on backpacking through Europe. Lecture notes, coursework, video and podcast. Four seperate tasks that would each normally require an individual's full attention, but Zak was able to do them all simultaneously. It was an ability he’d had ever since he could remember, and was the reason that he was currently studying year five material despite only being in year two of secondary school.

In the same way an average individual could control their four limbs simultaneously, Zak could perform up to four tasks simultaneously without getting overwhelmed. It was almost as if he had four ‘attentions’ that could each work on a task without getting in each other's way, or instead, he could focus all his ‘attentions’ on one task and get it done four times as fast. Zak could read a one-hundred thousand word book in two hours, he could watch a video at four times the normal speed and still be able to understand the blur of words and manic actions of the actors on screen.

Zak leaned back in his chair and let out a deep sigh. There were of course major downsides to his special gift, namely loneliness and boredom. When a child is different enough in any way shape or form, loneliness is a guarantee. Children were cruel, it was a simple fact of life. If you look different enough, insults and bullying were what you would face. If you were too quiet, rumours and pranks were sure to be your issue. And in Zak’s case, if you were significantly faster and more intelligent than your young peers, ostracization and exclusion were your fate, along with a bit of name calling to help soothe your classmates’ wounded ego’s.

“Heh, four eyes” Zak laughed thinking about the brainless insult his previous schoolmates once called him. All things considered having four eyes might actually be a useful thing with his specific condition. “I could watch two movies or read two books at the same time!” he thought to himself.

Zak let out another breathy sigh as he leaned further back in his chair, almost toppling it.

Zak didn't care about the loneliness of course. He was too busy satiating his endless curiosity and studying. Books were faithful companions. They didn’t shun you and the range of experiences a book could give you were simply miraculous. One book could take you on a detailed tour of some ancient city in South America, another could take you on a journey to new lands, be they deep in space or on made up worlds and yet others could impart within you new knowledge that the average person takes for granted. How does the mind work? What causes aging? How were the planets formed? With one book and a couple hours all these questions could be answered, and Zak loved getting answers. This love of books combined with his superhuman learning speed is what had led Zak to his current situation, at twelve years of age he was attending classes and studying with fifteen and sixteen year olds. He could even have been in a later year of study - after all he’d already finished studying the A-level content for his favourite subject, biology - but the local college refused to take him in until he was at least fourteen, so he was stuck where he was for now.

Zak sighed one last time as he leaned back further on his chair… which inevitably and finally toppled back into a stack of books which knocked over other stacks of books like dominos.

‘Owwww’ he groaned from the floor, his head having hit the bed behind him. As Zak gingerly got up from the ground his eyes fell on his paused video, which showed an expanse from the Madagascan forests. This is what Zak wanted to do with his life. Study to become a doctor, find a way to wake his mother from her coma and take her travelling and adventuring around the world, just like his grandmother had once done. But alas, he was twelve, and there was still a long way for him to go before he could even attend university.

Zak decided to call it a night and lay down on his bed. As he closed his eyes he thought of the jungle he had been looking at moments ago, fitting it into his lifeplan of where to travel to when and what would make his mum most happy. Despite his arguably melancholic thoughts, Zak fell asleep with a smile on his face.

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The lamplight flickered on the quiet main road, casting shadows on the mundane objects around it. A capsized bin, a road sign, a parked car, the shadows flickered, in and out of existence. Slowly the air began to chill as masses of inky blackness rose from the shadows, solidifying into five spectral robed figures.

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“Comrades, we have gathered the necessary ingredients and reagents. The potion has been completed and the formation has been drawn. All that is left is the Newbloods. I hope you have not disappointed me?” the largest robed figure questioned with a raspy growl.

“Master Stor, as I said during our last meeting, myself and Leon picked up a pair of them from Spain and Portugal last year” answered the pudgy cloaked female. Her companion, Leon, stood next to her stoically.

“And I have had that Japanese girl locked up for three years now” replied the shortest of the five, a stocky man who had a war hammer almost equal to his height strapped to his back.

“Hnn” the large man grunted. “Last one then” Stor said as he and his companions all turned to stare at the squashed two storey house behind them.

“Can you imagine it?” Leah said dreamily. “Sixteen years it’s taken to gather all the materials and track down what we need. All the while we’ve had to avoid the vexing eyes of the council. But tonight, finally, we’ll have a quasi-monarch golem under our control. The Shadow Monarch will be most pleased” her voice darkening as she prattled on.

“Yes,” the large man drawled. “But first, the boy,” he said as a murderous sickening smile stretched across his partially masked face.

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On a building some miles away stood an imperial man looking through what appeared to be tempered glass in the shape of a disk. He huffed as he scratched his short black and white beard in frustration.

“They’re close” he growled out in frustration. “But the murderous pieces of vermin keep moving and casting cloaking spells everywhere so I can’t bloody pinpoint them” he said as he threw the piece of glass on the floor, shattering it into hundreds of pieces.

The two youths standing behind him looked at each other nervously as they took in their professor’s unusually enraged and crude behaviour. To them Professor Solaris was the epitome of Magickind. Paragons spoke to him with respect, Monarch’s would seek his advice on rituals, obscure magics or indeed, how to get their grandchildren to behave. He was always calm, always dignified, always in control of everything, so they were perplexed as to why what appeared to be a simple hunt for bandits would garner his attention and apparent rage.

A sound of rushing wind was heard as a young woman with mahogany red hair, pointed ears and slightly protruding fangs came flying toward the group standing on a circular platform of earth and metal. The disk slowed as it reached the building and the youth jumped off.

"I checked the area you instructed me to Professor Sol. They were definitely there within the last day or two but have since moved on."

Solaris growled and grabbed another glass disk before continuing his observations of the city below..

The young lady looked at the distressed state of her tutor with sadness. Ever since he had volunteered for this mission two weeks ago he had been getting progressively more agitated with their lack of success. And she was sure she saw a few more white hairs now than when they had started their tracking mission. “We’ll get them soon sir” she said as she took a step forward. “They’ll make a mistake and we’ll be there to apprehend them. I expect they can look forward to a long cozy stay in the Ivory Tower” she finished passionately, her fangs glinting in the moonlight as she snarled at the thought of the criminals giving her mentor such a headache.

“Yes Zamfir, you're right of course” Solaris sighed, but the look of worry and traces of sadness never left his face as he surveyed the calm city stretching beneath him.

Just then a second youth appeared amongst the group, having jumped over ten metres from the neighboring building to the current one they occupied. His long brown hair was a mess and he was panting heavily, clearly having rushed to meet up with his companions.

"Professor, I saw them. There was a group of five cloaked figures who were definitely magic in nature. I saw them shadow switch!" He gushed out.

"Let's go go go people. Be battle ready. Let's catch these bastards!" Yelled Solaris as he and his younger charges jumped off the building, disappearing into the night.

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Zakaria’s eyes shot open. This wasn’t an uncommon occurrence as he was a rather light sleeper, but it wasn’t noise that awoke him, it was the rattling electric chill he felt down his spine, and the silence. The absolute dead silence. No sound of nocturnal animals roaming the empty streets, no sound of Ms Mellow - his foster parent - snoring in the room across from him, no sound even from his bedsheets moving against him as he rose from his place of slumber. Nothing.

“Bam” came the sound of his door as it suddenly crashed across his room, smashing his desk and computer sending splinters of wood and metal flying, impaling Zakaria’s right side.

There, poised in the hole in the wall stood a hulking seven foot tall behemoth of a man. One second he was there standing imposingly, the next he was across the room, gripping Zak by the head and hanging him two feet off the ground.

“What the hell!” Zak exclaimed. Despite the fear and pain he lashed out at the man, punching his granite arms and kicking his iron torso. He could feel the sides of his skull creak under the insane pressure of the giant's massive hands.

“Little newblood” the behemoth icely whispered. “You don’t know how glad I am to see you. The final ingredient has finally been acquired” he breathed as he squeezed Zak’s head harder.

An explosion was heard outside the room causing the man to loosen his grip slightly and turn his head.

“We have company. Lucky you, I normally prefer to take my time with these things.”

The last thing Zak saw was a meaty fist getting larger in his field of vision, as the sweet embrace of unconsciousness enveloped him.

The man flung Zak's body over his shoulder and smashed through the wall in front of him, before merging into the shadow he had materialised from earlier.

Mere moments after Stor’s escape, Solaris's group entered the now disheveled room.

"We're too late" whispered Zamfir, feeling not only disappointment in their failure, but also worry at how it would affect her professor's mood.

Solaris walked through the room slowly, looking for any indication of where the bandits may have fled to. As he stepped through the shards of glass and wood on the floor, he came across a ripped photo. As he looked at the six or seven year old in the picture alongside his parents, his eyes dilated as they fell on the father in the picture.

"We need to go, now" Solaris breathed, as he suddenly rushed from the room, his confused students following after him.