"Areeek! Sipaaar! Get over here!"
Sister Cora's bright voice called to us from the window overlooking the garden, waving a hand in the air with energy that didn't seem bothered by the early heat. "Father Tyeron is waiting for you in the library!"
Emma was beside her, a silent shadow under the sunlight. She held a cookie between her fingers and ate it with methodical slowness, her gaze lost in the void.
Something in my stomach tightened. A cold knot, despite spring having returned to warm our bones.
The day I feared had arrived, at last.
The garden had exploded and everything around me was green or red or… well a lot of color, alive.
Under the old apple tree, my mother's plants had turned brilliant green, fed by the snow that had covered everything for months. That winter white, which had seemed determined to bury the memories, was now a distant trace, almost unreal.
Six months. Six months of fifty-five days each had passed since that night spent watching the moon with a yellow flower in hand. Six months since I'd stopped being the carpenter's son and became a Church orphan. Months of lessons with Father Tyeron, days spent with Emma and Sipar, nights that, inch by inch, had stopped being populated only by screams and flames.
And now, this. Today was the day they'd wanted us to learn the thing I hated. Magic.
My breath got short, hard to drag into my lungs. Suddenly my hands started burning, a phantom itch climbing up my arms. Smell of dirty water. Taste of smoke. Dad falling backward as the world turned red—
No. Not here. Not now.
"Finally," Sipar said. His gray eyes gleamed, that light I hadn't seen in a while. His fingers drummed against his legs and then started running.
In his rush toward the porch, he tripped on a protruding stone in the courtyard, dropping the book he'd been holding.
Races and Cultures, I read on the cover.
I grabbed Sipar's thin arm, my fingers closing around little more than fabric and bone, before he ended up face-first on the ground.
"Thanks."
He gave me one of those shy smiles he used to apologize for existing, then picked up the book and took off running toward the orphanage entrance, heading straight for the library.
I crossed the threshold with feet that felt like lead. A warm hand settled on my head, a touch that forced me to look up.
"Courage, Little Arek."
Sister Cora smiled, in her particular way. The one that meant: I've read you. My mood had drained down to the soles of my shoes.
"I don't want to do this." The words came out quieter than I'd expected. "I–-I don't understand why I have to study magic, too."
"Because Father Tyeron says those who know can choose," she answered, still stroking my head. "I know you don't want to practice it, Arek. But learning how it works can help you stop being afraid of it. It can open your mind."
"I've already chosen." I said, stamping my feet.
Cora looked at me. Those green eyes that always made me feel safe, even when I didn't want to admit it.
"I know, little one. But sometimes we have to choose again. Every day. And that's okay."
Then she pointed to the girl beside her. "Even Emma here chooses every day not to eat cookies, but then eats them anyway."
Emma stared at her, jaw still for a moment. Her gaze moved sideways to Cora, and paused. Then she kept chewing, a bit more slowly. Her stare slid past the Sister's shoulder, to some vague, distant point.
"Now go. And choose again."
"Come on Emma, let's go."
We followed the path Sipar had taken before us, doors still open from his passage.
Choose.
The word stuck to me like tar. Dad had chosen to die for me. Mom had chosen to fight.
Maybe... maybe I can choose something too instead of letting fear drag me around.
I didn't know yet. But something inside me trembled, like it was about to give way.
We left the house. The orphanage. And we took the streets to the library.
We arrived five or six steps later.
We entered the Library of the Temple of Eteria that rose right next door. Doors twice as tall as a normal person, almost-black wood carved with mythical creatures and scenes of Goddess Eteria. Golden leaves were set into the carvings, gleaming faintly in the afternoon sunlight.
My brother waited for us in front of the massive door. He still clutched that book under his arm, the one he'd dropped in the garden.
The moment he spotted us, he pushed the one side of the wooden double door. It opened with a long, deep creak that seemed to echo in my soul.
The smell hit me first: old paper and leather, thick heavy air, warm and slightly stale. Almost suffocating but not unpleasant. I stepped inside and my gaze wandered to this familiar place: two floors of shelves climbed along the walls filled with hundreds, maybe thousands of multicolored books.
The light poured in through enormous windows, creating golden columns full of dust dancing in the still air.
Even during the day a few lanterns were always lit, the place too massive to be illuminated by sunlight alone.
This place had become as familiar as the orphanage. Father Tyeron, the priest and person responsible for the orphanage, took us here almost daily to teach. I enjoyed his lessons, for the most part they felt familiar knowledge and gave the sensation of going through the motions of something I had already done multiple times. To some people that sensation can cause boredom, for me it was work and cozy familiarity.
Emma, Sipar and I spent whole mornings here together, with Father Tyeron teaching how to read, to write, and do arithmetic.
I was still rough around the edges but Father Tyeron said I had a rare talent. I already read better than Emma. Sipar, though, apparently was even more talented than me.
Sipar, little bookworm. A pinch of envy. Small. But it was there.
At the center of the room stood a massive dark oak table with an enormous sheet of old paper spread across it.
Emma gestured rapidly toward it and then at Sipar before sitting down, her raven hair swaying behind her, the red tips tracing slow arcs in the air.
"Yeah, I know Sis, I was supposed to put the map back yesterday after lessons," Sipar replied, intuitively understanding the mute girl. "But I wanted to look at it a bit longer. It's too beautiful, all colorful."
He knelt on the chair, elbows propped on the table and the map and I did the same on the opposite side of the tabel.
His fingers began tracing the coastline perimeter near Astermond, our city.
"The continent of Eldorath." Bold black letters in the upper right of the map.
"Good Arek, you can read. But do you remember the lessons from the past Penta-weeks too? You know Tyeron will quiz us sooner or later."
I swallowed. "Of course I can. And besides, I like geography, not like what we came to do today." I gestured broadly at the center of the continent, long and jagged. It was divided into three separate zones—north, south, and center. "The kingdom of Lumia is here, where we are. Divided into five counties plus the King's territory around the capital. From there he controls his lands and collects tributes from the counts. This instead..."
Emma slammed her palm on the table, covering part of the map on her side and Sipar's. The western coast. She raised an eyebrow and pointed at the map with one finger, challenging.
"What's the capital name you hid under your hand?" She thought she'd stump me; yesterday I didn't know, but once I'd heard that name I couldn't forget it. "Lumia, like the kingdom. Too easy, Sis."
Emma puffed out her cheeks in frustration, then smiled.
"Now your turn." With my arms I covered two enormous bodies of water on my side, to the northeast. They were so big I couldn't hide them completely, but what mattered were the names. "These salt lakes, what are they called?"
Emma looked at me smugly. She pointed first at the ocean on her side of the table, then toward land, and finally at the sky. She crossed her arms, satisfied, her smile was a smirk.
"Arek, that was too easy," Sipar cut in. "Everyone knows the Living Sea and the Dead Sea."
"Oh yeah? Then tell me, smartass. What's that particular structure on the Living Sea that everyone in Astermond has to know about?"
Sipar's eyes tried to peer between my arms, but they were impenetrable. He looked at Emma for help, but she smiled mockingly; no rescue from that direction. He started sweating.
I caught you, nerd.
"Do you give up?" I smiled as I asked.
"No, no. Give me just a moment."
His eyes darted left and right searching for an answer. If he'd looked out the window he would've found it, one just like it stood right in the center of our city, visible for miles. But he wasn't getting there.
"The... the Dead Fortress! Everyone knows Father Tyeron fought there and was one of the few survivors."
"Wrong, that's on the Dead Sea. I'll give you a hint." I lifted one arm, revealing the Dead Fortress on the shore of the enormous lake that split the northern part of the continent in half. The other arm stayed around the Living Sea to hide what I was talking about, but I pointed with my free hand toward the large window, and the massive white structure..
There, the majestic White Tower of Astermond stood against the spring's blue sky. A small cloud looked like a cotton ball stuck on its summit. We were far from the tower, but the window faced its direction and the structure towered above the buildings on the other side of the fountain plaza.
"One of the elven towers! I knew it, Arek. It rises from the water of the Living Sea, partially submerged," Sipar exclaimed, going beyond the question to make up for his earlier mistake.
"Exactly. One of the six elven towers of the continent."
"Six?" Sipar asked, confused.
How do you know? Emma signaled with her fingertips, pointing to the only three towers marked on the map: the one in Astermond, within its walls; one at the edge of the Sacred Unforgiving Forest, which occupied the exact center of the continent with an enormous purple tree in the middle; and the third, which Emma revealed by forcibly moving my hand from the massive lake.
"Um. I must've read it somewhere, I don't remember. But I know there are six. I'm sure of it."
I'm sure of it.
"Fine, smartass. Then tell me: which elves built them? You can't know this because we haven't studied it yet. But I got ahead." Sipar slammed the book he'd dropped earlier in the garden onto the map. The title, stamped on the worn leather cover: Races and Cultures.
"Forest Elves," I answered instinctively. A memory of my father and what he'd explained to me long ago.
"Close." Sipar opened the book and flipped through it for a moment. He nodded, satisfied when he found what he was looking for, and turned the volume toward me.
Three figures depicted in black and white, detailed down to the smallest particulars. On the left, an elf woman with floral tattoos along her arm and a bow in hand. On the right, a male elf with black armor and a cloak that looked made of wings. In the center, the tallest figure, with a trident that gleamed.
Below, a long text in elegant characters: "It is said that the three elven races were once a single race, split thousands of years ago during—"
Sipar interrupted my reading, tapping his index finger repeatedly on the ample chest of the elf girl. I suspected the spot his finger was tipping was deliberate.
"SYLVAN Elves," he enunciated the word like a real professor. "Different from High Elves and Dark Elves."
At the term Dark, a sudden shiver ran down my spine. Emma pulled her arms back, bringing them to her shoulders as if to protect herself.
"Are you cold, Emma?" asked our self-proclaimed teacher. She smiled gently, but her eyes had stayed fixed on the illustration of the elf in black armor. With a trembling hand, she reached for the page and turned it with unnatural slowness.
She kept on turning until the volume opened to another page. Five figures in black and white stared at me from the double-page illustration. Title, in squared letters, read: The Bestials.
The figures were men with animal heads or human heads with animal ears and tails. A deer with branching antlers, a girl with long upright rabbit ears, a proud lion face, a boy with wolf ears and nose... and the fifth.
Vrogat?
No, the fifth was a boar but it wasn't Vrogat, the one in the drawing was thinner, more athletic, but that snout, that face, those tusks...
The world contracted. Breath locked. Lungs burning. Hands tingling, not with magic, but pure panic.
I saw Vrogat. Not the drawing. The beast bastard himself. Impeccable clothes stained with blood. Tusks gleaming as Mom collapsed. The way he'd smiled when Dad...
No. No no no.
My fingers snapped toward my pocket. The tusk was there, as always. Cold. Real. Still there. An anchor. A promise.
The breath returned, broken and ragged. My heart hammered against my ribs like it wanted out.
"Arek?" Sipar's voice arrived distant, muffled.
I reached out and slammed the book shut with a sharp bang that echoed through the library shelves, shattering the silence like a whip crack.
Sipar and Emma stared at me, surprised. But I didn't explain. I did't want to.
The air in the library suddenly had grown heavy, dense as honey. My two companions seemed to sense the change. They froze like wax statues, but their eyes weren't on me anymore. They were looking past my shoulders.
In the corner of my eye, a dark figure, shadow thick as ink, appeared emerging from behind the shelves. It filled the entire entrance, blocking the only escape route. Impossibly tall, it seemed to touch the ceiling, obscuring the sunlight filtering through the windows. Behind it, the outside world seemed to dim.
Its arms were raised, ready to grab, and in one hand it gripped something square and dark blue.
"So," said a heavy voice behind me, deep and commanding, "you fools wish to master the arcane arts?"
The air shifted all at once. I felt unbearable pressure, a weight crushing my lungs like we'd ended up in water too deep.
My hand snapped toward my pocket. Toward the tusk. But the fingers were frozen, unable to close.
The shadow took a step forward. The floorboards groaned sinisterly.
Another step.
Something inside me screamed: Run! But my legs wouldn't respond. We were prey nailed to the ground.
The shadow spoke again, and this time the voice rumbled deep into my bones:
"Which of you is ready to pay the price? I command thee to answer."
I clenched my fist and prepared what I knew our guest would want from us.