Zenith of Sorcery

Chapter 014

The Mighty

As the days went by, the tower gradually started to look less like an abandoned ruin, and more like a legitimate place to live in. The roof was fixed, the cracks in the walls sealed up, the floors swept clean of dust, animal droppings, and other detritus, and a new front door was installed. Old, broken furniture was taken outside to be disposed of, and new furniture that Marcus had bought in the nearest town was brought in to replace it. The gardens were still overgrown with weeds, but the rampant growth had been mowed down to a more manageable height, and it was possible to walk through them without ending up stung by nettles, burdock, and various insects.

The place still looked pretty rough, but Marcus felt it was getting good enough to move in. The rest of the work could be done gradually over the upcoming months and years. His students needed something to keep them occupied when they weren’t studying and resting, anyway. Giving young mages too much free time would lead to trouble.

Accordingly, Marcus was currently setting up his things in the biggest room at the top of the tower, which he had claimed as his own. The tower was quite small, so even this “big” room was relatively tiny, but Marcus didn’t mind. He had spent the last six years travelling all over the place, with his entire belongings carried in his backpack – he didn’t have that many possessions to store, so this office was more for the sake of appearances than anything else.

In all honesty, Marcus would have been happier not having a room and just camping out in the nearby forest. Alas, that wouldn’t be a good idea. As a teacher, he had a responsibility to look out for his students, and that meant he couldn’t leave them alone in the tower. It was advisable, at least in these first few months while they were still adjusting to the life of a mage trainee, to always be close to them in order to respond to any emergencies, break up fights before they could turn lethal, and prevent roving monsters and hostile adepts from harming them.

Marcus stood on the doorway, admiring his handiwork. He thought he had done a fairly good job of arranging the furniture and adding some aesthetic carvings to the wall with his stone shaping magic. The bookshelves were sadly empty, and there were no potted plants he could put in strategic places across the room, but he couldn’t do anything about that at the moment. He made a mental note to buy some stuff to fill in the space when he got the time.

The sound of someone running up the stairs interrupted him from his musings. Having spent several days with them, Marcus was starting to recognize his students by the way they walked and made sounds, and he immediately knew it was Cricket climbing up towards him. Only she made this much noise whenever she did things.

“Master! Master! There are people at camp asking to meet you!” Cricket shouted, before she had even climbed her way all the ways to the top where Marcus stood waiting for her.

“Hm?” Marcus asked, frowning. Cricket soon came into view, breathing somewhat heavily due to exertion, but otherwise fine, despite running all the way to the top of the tower. “Who is it?”

“I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “We never saw them before. There are four of them, and they say they’re here to talk about business. We think they’re adepts of some kind.”

They were probably representatives of the local powers looking to introduce themselves… but what kind of business could he have with them, really? He had no intention of entangling himself in local politics – he just wanted to establish his own small school in peace and mind his own business. Hopefully this was all just a formality.

He followed Cricket down and then towards the nearby forest, where he and his students had established a temporary camp. This was where they ate, rested, and slept while the tower was being prepared for habitation. Marcus didn’t mind that arrangement in the least, but some of his students were grumbling. Oddly, it was Volesus who seemed to be the most upset about their current situation.

In any case, the newcomers immediately went for the camp in order to seek him out, which was interesting. They had clearly been observing them for some time if they knew to go to the camp instead of the tower, and had no trouble locating said camp. It wasn’t exactly hidden, but it wasn’t placed in plain sight of the path approaching the tower, either.

Cricket pointed excitedly at the four guests as they approached, and Marcus ruffled her hair to calm her down.

“Yes, I can see them,” he told her. “It’s not polite to point like that.”

He observed them as he approached. There were two men and two women in the group, all very young – in their twenties at most, and possibly younger. That was curious, as representatives sent by established factions tended to be experienced people, and thus a bit on the older side. Sometimes they sent a younger apprentice with an older diplomat to sit at the meetings and observe, but this was unusual.

One of the four was a muscular man with a stony expression on his face, and a bow slung over his back. Standing next to him was a red-headed girl with short hair and some kind of symbols painted over her face. There was a big knife prominently sheathed in her belt, and she was leaning on a spear.

The third one was a handsome blonde man with a sword attached to his belt and a shield hanging on his back. He seemed very uncomfortable being here and kept fidgeting nervously and looking at Marcus’s students gathered at the camp. That was a bit amusing, since he was almost certainly a bigger threat to them than they were to him. He probably didn’t realize none of the children were actual mages yet.

Finally, the last guest was a willowy brown-haired girl that looked very frail and small next to the other three. The other three newcomers were, Marcus guessed, warrior adepts of some kind. But the fourth woman looked too physically weak to be one. The sole mage of the group, perhaps?

In any case, he never slowed in his approach, so he was soon in front of the group.

He bowed slightly and greeted them.

“Welcome,” he said. “I apologize that I cannot offer you much in terms of refreshments and accommodations, but as you may see, we’re in the middle of cleaning up the place and are yet to move in. What can I do for you?”

“So, this may be a bit rude to ask, but with you moving in and fixing the place up, can we assume the Amethyst Academy is gone?” the spear-wielding girl asked.

“Miss Tuga, perhaps we should introduce ourselves first?” the blonde man suddenly offered. He cleared his throat a little, before turning towards Marcus. “Greetings, sir. I am Dain, a warrior, and this is my wife Eleanor, an alchemist.”

Dain gestured towards the tiny, willowy girl that Marcus had assumed was the mage of the group when introducing Eleanor.

“Finally, these two,” said Dain, gesturing towards the stony-faced man with the bow and the spear-wielding woman, “are Klukas and Tuga, both hunters. The reason why my companion asked about the Amethyst Academy is that we had regular business with them before their decline.”

“They are truly gone,” Marcus confirmed. “The last two surviving members dissolved the school and each went their separate way. They sold me the right to this land, so it’s mine now.”

“So what’s the academy called now?” Eleanor asked.

“Well, I… must confess I haven’t thought of a name for it yet,” Marcus admitted.

There was a long moment of silence as everyone, including his students standing behind him and listening to everything, processed that.

“Ah, don’t look at me like that! I’m bad with names, okay?” He huffed. “In my head, it’s Marcus’s Academy. I’m Marcus, by the way. Marcus King, the new owner of what used to be the Amethyst Academy.”

“Orphan?” Klukas asked. The surname immediately gave it away, Marcus supposed.

“Yes,” Marcus confirmed. “Anyway, what kind of business did you use to do with the Amethyst Academy, and why do you think we also need your services?”

“Amethyst Academy was a small faction, and you don’t look any bigger,” Tuga told him. “This place is in the middle of nowhere, too. There isn’t any big nearby market where you can go to buy whatever you want. If you want to eat meat, you need hunters. If you want magical herbs, you need someone good with plants to find and gather them for you. And sometimes you will want additional security and you’ll need some adepts you know and can trust. You seem powerful, so you could probably do all of this yourself… but do you actually want to bother with that?”

That… was a good question. Sure, Marcus could do regular hunts and use his orb of flight to make regular shopping runs to the nearest big population center, but that sounded like it could get pretty annoying in the long run. Any problem he could solve by simply paying the locals would be one less issue he had to worry about.

“Tell me something,” Marcus said. “If you’ve been working with the Amethyst Academy, then surely you know what happened here. Why is the tower in this state?”

Marcus had long wondered about that, but had never gotten a straight answer out of the two surviving members who sold him the property. They claimed that most of the members had died in the Second Academy War, along with the founder of the Academy himself, and that this triggered a rapid decline of the Academy… but the tower showed signs of battle damage. It wasn’t just neglect and lack of maintenance that turned the building into its present state. Even more curiously, the children had diligently searched through the remains inside and failed to find anything of worth.

Naturally, Marcus had expected the two survivors to carry off anything truly valuable, but the extent of the tower’s desolation was excessive, in Marcus’s opinion. Even the pans and eating utensils were gone from the kitchen.

The four adepts in front of him shared a look between each other.

“We aren’t entirely sure,” Dain said carefully. “But we do know that the tower was attacked several times by unknown assailants. Eventually, the remaining members of the academy didn’t dare stay in the tower, and it was left unguarded. After that, some of the opportunistic locals from the surrounding villages raided it for anything of value.”

Dain didn’t say anything else, but Marcus could guess what the man was thinking. Clearly the Amethyst Academy had angered someone much stronger than themselves, and were all but destroyed as a result. As for the four in front of him, they may have been working with the Amethyst Academy, but they weren’t actual members, and they no doubt distanced themselves as fast as they humanly could from the failing organization, fearful they will get caught in the crossfire.

“Did the members of the Amethyst Academy practice crystal magic, by any chance?” Marcus asked.

“They were a generalist mage tradition,” Eleanor said. “The reason they were called Amethyst Academy was that the founder of the academy had this big purple gem that amplified his powers and gave him strange abilities. He was a rank four mage, but with the help of the gem, he was said to be able to stand up to spirit manifestation mages. The academy practically worshipped the gem. Unfortunately, the leader was slain during the Second Academy War, and the gem vanished after that. Presumably whoever killed him took the gem with them.”

What a curious story. He would have really liked to get his hands on that gem to satisfy his curiosity, if nothing else. Perhaps the new owner would let him simply take a look at it for a moment, if he managed to track them down?

He noticed Eleanor giving him a hesitant look.

“What is it?” he prompted.

“This might be a rude question, but who are you really?” Eleanor asked.

“Eleanor…” Dain sighed.

“What makes you think I’m something special?” Marcus asked curiously. “Maybe I’m just like the founder of the Amethyst Academy, lording it over my students through a powerful item.”

“When that guy came here and set up his school, the two biggest local powers –Harpy Feather Academy and Academy of the Sacred Hearth – immediately started harassing them and testing their might,” Klukas said, answering instead of Eleanor. “But now that you’re here, they’re completely quiet, and staying away. Clearly they know who you are, and are afraid to provoke you.”

“Is this Marcus guy really such a big deal?” Renatus asked one of the other students, trying to whisper but being a little bit too loud. Whoever they were talking to immediately shushed them.

His students were listening intently, but didn’t try to butt in and join the conversation, which Marcus was happy about. They would just blurt out things he didn’t want them saying.

“I am an elder of Great Sea Academy,” Marcus said. “As well as a spirit manifestation mage.”

All four of them immediately grew alarmed. Even Klukas, who seemed the most composed out of them, looked like he wanted to bolt from the spot and escape into the forest surrounding them.

“I am not particularly well versed in the advancement systems of martial adepts and alchemists, but since you didn’t immediately recognize me as a spirit adept, I’m going to guess you are all second rank or lower,” Marcus said.

“We… we are all mere second rank adepts, yes,” Dain admitted.

“Hm. My last question, then: why should I work with you rather than, say, some of those neighboring minor powers you mentioned?” Marcus asked. “I bet they could supply me with everything you can, and then some. I understand the Amethyst Academy had a rivalry with them, but I bet I can come to some kind of agreement with them.”

“Well…” Dain began, then stopped. He was clearly struggling to think of some argument in his favor.

“If you are who you say you are, you are probably here to get away from everything and enjoy some peace and quiet,” Tuga suddenly said. “Why else would an exalted spirit manifestation mage from a major power come to this forgotten place? And if you want to remain separate from the world, forging links to Harpy Feather and Sacred Hearth is a mistake. They are both ambitious and driven, and compete with each other as much as they do with outside factions. Once they have any kind of influence over your school, they will push and prod at you constantly, trying to lure you into their orbit.”

Marcus gave the four of them a serious look. Even though his revelation of being a spirit manifestation mage from Great Sea had scared them, they calmed down pretty damn quickly and stayed focused on the reason they came here in the first place. If nothing else, they had his respect for that.

“That’s a good point,” Marcus admitted. These academies would likely try things even without Marcus approaching them first, but he had to admit that making himself reliant on them for basic supplies would not help him stay distant from local politics. “Still, even if you worked with the Amethyst Academy, you’re strangers to me. Is there someone who can vouch for your trustworthiness?”

“The villagers,” Klukas immediately said. “We work with the surrounding villages all the time. They will confirm we are honorable in all our dealings.”

The other three shuffled in place uncomfortably. Powerful adepts lived practically in a different world from mundane, non-magical humans that populated the villages and towns of a place like this. When adepts asked someone for someone to guarantee your reputation, they mostly meant “other adepts” rather than literally anyone.

However, they didn’t offer any alternatives to Klukas’s suggestion.

“Very well,” Marcus said after a moment of thought. “I wanted to take a tour of the nearby villages anyway. I might as well ask them about you while I’m doing it. Meet me at the tower in two weeks – this camp is temporary and we will be moving into the tower later today.”

“Really!?” Cricket asked behind him, before realizing she was interrupting his talk and covering her mouth with her hands.

“Yes, really,” Marcus told her, giving her a warning look. He turned back towards the four guests. “Anyway, there is little else to say at this point. I’m not trying to shoo you away, but I won’t give you an answer until I talk to the villagers. You are welcome to stay here for dinner, however.”

“Well, if the offer is genuine, we might as well stay and eat,” Tuga said, giving him a casual shrug.

The other three nodded to each other appreciatively.

Marcus hadn’t actually expected them to agree to his suggestion, but he tried not to have it show on his face.

“Right this way, then,” Marcus said, pointing at the crackling fire in the middle of the camp. He had left the children tending to the fire while he was away in the tower, and to their credit, they hadn’t let the fire go out in his absence. Probably because they knew their meal depended on it. There were a bunch of meat skewers suspended over the fire, and a pot of soup was already cooling over on the ground nearby.

Not one to waste an opportunity, Marcus attached spy beetles to each of the four guests while they sat around the fire and ate. Villager testimonies were nice, but nothing could replace first-hand information.

* * * *

After the visitors had left, Marcus directed the children to dismantle the camp and bring everything into the tower. Like him, they didn’t have much in the way of possessions, so this wasn’t a difficult task. Even Julia, despite having an actual family and home before joining the Great Tree Academy, didn’t own much.

“I am the fifth child, and the third daughter,” she told Marcus when he asked her about it. “My family didn’t have much to give me when I left to join the academy.”

In any case, the tower was not big enough to give everyone their own room. The tower contained a kitchen, a small library (currently devoid of any books), a big room at the top that Marcus claimed as his own, and only three rooms meant for habitation. That meant that his students would have to pair up and share a room with another. Marcus didn’t think that was a problem, since that kind of thing was pretty much standard for all academies. Space was too precious to waste in most places, and student accommodations were not high on the list of priorities. When Marcus had just been a student at the Great Sea Academy, his room was a glorified barracks that he shared with seven other students, and he had to buy his own chest if he wanted somewhere to store his personal belongings in.

Really, these accommodations were incredibly luxurious in Marcus’s mind.

“This sucks,” Volesus complained. “I thought becoming a mage meant moving up in life. This is worse than it was back at the orphanage.”

“Even in the great academies, if you want luxury, you usually have to pay for it,” Marcus told him. “Keep in mind that soon, I will take in another three students, so each of you will have another occupant to share your room with. I suggest you enjoy the situation while it lasts. It will only get more cramped from here.”

“Those Amethyst Academy people who lived here before us were surely much bigger than this,” Julia said speculatively. “Surely they didn’t cram all of their members into three tiny rooms. Plus, this tower has no classrooms or training halls, nothing. Is this really the headquarters of an entire organization?”

“Most minor organizations are like this. They have to make do with very modest resources, including building space,” Marcus said. “And I suspect that Amethyst Academy was really just the founder and a handful of his followers, not some big operation. That said, the basement of this place is quite extensive. Bigger than all the facilities aboveground, I think. There are two storage vaults down there, an underground training hall, and a whole row of additional student accommodations. In fact, I’m pretty sure that the actual students of the academy lived underground, and the rooms I’ve given you were actually reserved for the higher-ups of the academy.”

He was actually pretty sure that the basement level was even bigger than it seemed, because there were signs that the Amethyst Academy hadn’t actually built the basement level so much as repurposed an existing large cave system that lay beneath the tower. There were several corridors that ended in dead ends, where earth magic was used to seal something away. Marcus guessed this was where the basement connected to the wider cave system, and where the dire centipedes he had cleaned up had come from. At some point he would unseal these to check out what lay beyond, but for now he was content to let the whole thing remain as it was.

“Anyway, I’ve placed wards on the entrance of the basement. Don’t go there without my permission for now,” Marcus told them. “Trust me, the rooms down there are way worse than those up here. You wouldn’t want to sleep there if you can help it.”

“If it’s warded, that means no giant centipedes can get to our rooms from there, right?” Claudia asked fearfully.

There was a minor incident a few days prior. While Claudia and Cassia were carrying an old broken cabinet out of the tower, a dire centipede resting inside the object got disturbed by their actions and crawled out to menace them. Claudia reacted particularly strongly to the creature, immediately running outside, screaming. Marcus found it amusing that she was brave enough to face a snake, albeit an illusionary one, but was absolutely terrified of an oversized bug. Dire centipedes weren’t even that big, really, only about 60 centimeters or so…

“The centipedes are gone, don’t worry,” he told her. Plus, he had an antidote for their poison, so even if she ended up bitten she wasn’t going to die. “Anyways, go talk it over amongst yourselves about who gets to pair up with whom and which room is yours. If you can’t reach an agreement I’ll decide for you, and won’t hear any complaints, so try not to argue too much. You have the rest of the day off, so make sure you get a good night’s sleep because I will wake you up at dawn to begin your training.”

“We get to finally learn magic?” Volesus asked excitedly, eyes immediately lighting up.

“If by ‘learning magic’ you mean repeat the Soul Tree Technique repeatedly under my supervision, then yes,” Marcus said. “We don’t have a real training hall here, but honestly, it shouldn’t matter much. The Soul Tree Technique is best practiced outdoors anyway, preferably among the trees. There is no shortage of that around here.”

The primary advantage of an actual training hall was that you were unlikely to be interrupted by other people, and there wasn’t any danger of being attacked by wild beasts and monsters. However, this place was really isolated and Marcus would be there to supervise and protect them, so neither of those should be an issue.

“Oh right,” Marcus said after thinking about it for a moment. “You should also think of what sort of tree you want to be.”

Everyone except Julia gave him blank looks.

“Isn’t it a mistake to pick anything other than an oak?” Julia asked.

Marcus raised an eyebrow at her.

“My teacher… my, uh, former teacher said that the oak is the most suitable tree to resonate with when practicing the Soul Tree Technique, and that picking anything else is a bad idea,” Julia explained.

“Well, I also picked an oak, so I’m sympathetic to that idea… but that strikes me as needlessly restrictive,” Marcus said. “A tree is an ancient and powerful symbol, and its associated logos is so vast it’s unlikely any human can comprehend it in its entirety. Most members of the Great Tree Academy pick an oak as the tree to resonate with, but not all. Willow, spruce, and olive trees are also relatively popular, and there is no proof they have a harder time of practicing the Soul Tree Technique. If you have some kind of special connection to a different type of tree, then don’t hesitate to pick that. The tree that you’re cultivating in your soul is, at least in the spiritual sense, you. A reflection of your aspirations and ideals. It’s important that you identify with it on a personal level. But if you don’t know what tree to pick, well… you can’t go wrong with an oak. It is the King of Trees, after all.”

“King of Trees?” Claudia repeated.

“The oak is great in stature, both physically and spiritually,” Julia said, standing a little straighter and prouder. “It is the tallest tree in the forest; a symbol of strength and longevity. Perun, the head god of the Illuminated Pantheon, favors it. Legends say it is the most powerful of all trees, able to survive through all manner of hardship and calamity.”

“I guess we know which tree you chose to resonate with,” Renatus said, chuckling.

“It’s also linked to the logos of lightning,” Marcus said. “Lightning magic is offensively powerful, but very difficult and dangerous to practice. Having an oak as your spiritual tree makes the process easier, and that’s a powerful advantage. That said, the other trees have their own boons to offer, so my earlier point still stands. For instance, willows are linked to the logos of water and the moon, and even a powerful but elusive logos of luck. Just pick what feels right to you.”

“But you should probably pick the oak,” Julia said resolutely.

Marcus laughed. He knew that the oak tree had a most exalted reputation among the members of the Great Tree Academy, but he had forgotten how opinionated some of the members were about their choices.

“Yes, you should probably pick the oak,” he agreed with her patronizingly, ruffling Julia’s hair affectionately. She jumped out of his reach, scandalized by his action. He looked at the rest of his students, his expression getting more serious. “But seriously, give it some thought while you rest.”

* * * *

After giving his students an impromptu lecture about different trees and their symbolism, Marcus retired to his office at the top of the tower and left them to their own devices. In truth, he was 90% sure that all of them would pick the oak as their tree, because they were probably all just like him when he had joined the Great Tree Academy: they had no pre-existing preferences and they had heard the oak tree was big and mighty, associated with the gods and royalty. Certainly, that was how far Marcus’s thinking went back when he was young.

He sat in his brand new chair, in his brand new office, tapping his fingers on the table rhythmically as he considered his next actions. He kept doing that for a long time, lost in thought. His soul connection with his students was still fresh and barely developed, so he couldn’t do much experimentation with that. He had a bunch of minor issues to tackle regarding the tower and its surroundings, but they weren’t urgent and he didn’t feel like dealing with that at the moment. He still wanted to explore that strange metal underground chamber that he and Celer had visited through the rift, but the timing wasn’t-

“Ah,” he said to himself quietly.

Celer had told him to call her when he got himself some students, hadn’t she? Said she had a gift for them, whatever that meant. However, Marcus still didn’t have all of his students assembled yet. There were still three more students to pick. Plus, he kind of wanted to get to know his students before he let Celer drag them into her schemes.

His butterfly friend would have to wait for a while longer.

After a few more seconds, he closed his eyes and threw his consciousness to one of his spying beetles to check up on his students in the lower half of the tower.

* * * *

“Obviously, Renatus and Volesus get to share a room,” Julia said, her arms crossed over her chest. “They’re the only two boys so they have to share a room.”

“But he’s a thief!” Volesus said, pointing at Renatus. “I don’t want to share a room with him, I’d have to constantly watch out for his sticky fingers!”

“You!!!” Renatus said, fumbling at a proper response due to his outrage.

“What? Am I wrong? We all heard your public apology, you know! There’s no use in denying it,” Volesus said, unrepentant.

“I never stole from the other orphans, and you know it!” Renatus said heatedly. “What would I even steal from a loser like you?”

“Well I am definitely not sleeping in the same room as Volesus,” Cassia said, leaning on the wall with one hand while the other rested confidently on her hip. “He tried to look up my skirt once.”

“I did not!” Volesus protested, his face going red. “You- You’re practically a boy, anyway!”

“We, we shouldn’t fight,” Claudia whined pitifully. “Master Marcus said-“

“Anyway!” Julia said with a raised voice, trying to assert some kind of authority again. “How about this: Renatus and Volesus get one room, Cassia and Cricket get the other-“

“NO!” Cricket and Cassia shouted simultaneously, throwing angry looks at one another.

Julia looked very confused at the outburst, and Renatus straight up laughed at her in response.

“Shows how little you know about us, princess!” Renatus said. “Cricket got into a fight with Cassia within the first day of arriving into the orphanage, and they’ve been at each other’s throats ever since! Getting them into the same room? It’s like stuffing two wildcats into the same bag! And who made you our boss, anyway?”

“Yeah!” Cricket shouted in agreement, nodding furiously. “I don’t know who you were in this Great Tree Academy of yours, but you’re just another student here, no different than us! Who do you think you are? Why should we listen to you?”

“Yeah, the leader should obviously be me,” Cassia said.

Absolutely everyone gave her a look like she was crazy.

“What?” she protested. “I’m joking, but it’s not such a crazy idea. What’s wrong with me being the leader?”

Julia cleared her throat.

“I’m… I’m not trying to be leader of anything, but you are all behaving like a bunch of surly children, so I-“

Marcus cut the connection to his spy beetle and leaned back on his chair. He had heard enough, and didn’t plan to intervene in any way.

They weren’t trying to kill each other, so he would let them work it out among themselves.

* * * *

Over the next week, Marcus started to seriously teach his new students. The core of this new teaching was repeated practice of the Soul Tree Technique, which they did in the mornings, at high noon, and in the evening. When they weren’t doing that, he was lecturing them on different magical herbs and creatures, sometimes bringing in live examples from the nearby forest to demonstrate things, and made them practice their reading and writing skills. Most of the children were orphans, so he took it in stride that most of them were very lacking in this regard, but to his surprise even Julia didn’t exactly excel at literacy.

Marcus had expected to handle the magical lessons for his students all by himself. He was, after all, a very versatile mage with a lot of spells in his spellbook and mastery of many different logos. However, he was starting to realize that most of his students required additional instruction in purely academic subjects, something that he wasn’t sure he could adequately provide…

He sighed internally. Things were fine for now, but it was one more thing he had to find a solution to in the coming months.

In any case, the constant lessons he put his students through were starting to wear on them. They were enthusiastic about it for the first couple of days, but after the fourth and fifth day, Marcus could see they were becoming more frustrated and started to look for opportunities to slack off.

But Marcus was having none of it. If anything, he increased their workload after he noticed it, pushing them to train the foundational technique for longer and longer each day. In a large academy, students often found many different ways to get out of training regularly, but unfortunately for them, there was only six of them and it was trivial for Marcus to keep an eye on everyone and make sure they were working on whatever task he gave them.

One day, after he and his students were done with their morning training and were walking back to the tower, a familiar figure approached him.

“Helvran?” Marcus asked. “What are you doing here?”

A young man in a black robe, a live raven perched precariously on his shoulder while a wooden staff of the Raven Temple clacked rhythmically on the ground as he walked… Marcus recognized the man long before he had gotten close enough to see his face.

It was the priest that had accompanied him to the Serpentooth peninsula to find Cricket.

“Greetings, Master Marcus,” Helvran said, giving him a small bow. “I have a somewhat immodest request to make of you, if you would hear me out.”

“Sure, go ahead,” Marcus said, gesturing with his hand for Helvran to get on with it.

Helvran gave the tower behind Marcus a good, long look.

“Err, yeah, I know it doesn’t look like much,” Marcus said. “We’re still working on it.”

“Mister Black Priest!” Cricket said, running up to them, having realized who Marcus was speaking to. “I thought I would never see you again! I never thanked you properly for saving me…”

“Greetings, Miss Livia,” Helvran said, nodding to her respectfully. “I am glad you are doing well. I must confess I didn’t expect you to become a student of magic so soon, but congratulations nonetheless.”

The black-clad priest turned towards Marcus again, the raven on his shoulder fixing him with its black gaze at the same time as the eyes of its master.

“Do you perhaps have room for another person in this tower of yours?” Helvran asked.

“I’m sure we can find the space,” Marcus told him. “But why? Don’t tell me you have been exiled from your temple?”

“Perish the thought,” Helvran told him severely. “No, I have been sent here as an official liaison between you and the Raven Temple. I look forward to our long-term cooperation.”

“An official…” Marcus said, confused. “Why would I need an official liaison with the Raven Temple? This academy has only just been established! It doesn’t even have a name yet!”

“You really should figure out a name, Master,” Cricket told him. “It’s getting a little embarrassing, getting all these guests and you can’t even tell them what the place is called.”

“Hush, you!” Marcus told her. He gave Helvran a searching look, but the mysterious priest simply stared back at him in silence.

“Come on in,” Marcus said, motioning towards the tower. “We’ll talk more in my office.”