3 Truth, Fairness, Discipline

The next day, Saiph woke up with dark lines under his eyes. He hadn't been able to sleep soundly at all. However, that mattered little to the child right now; he had to go find a craftsman of some sort in the main town!

He hurriedly threw on his clothes and started to run through the main room and out the front door. Just as he reached for the door handle, he heard his father's voice call out to him.

"Where the hell are you going?"

Saiph felt a minor tremor of panic and turned around to face this sudden adversity.

"Yes, Pa?" he started. "I'm, uh, just going to town like you said last night."

After giving Saiph a befuddled look, his dad replied, "The hell I did. Them tax collectors are a coming in just a few days. You gotta help me finish off this last load and plow the field. Now sit down, you stupid kid. 'Going to town'- yea right."

It was evident that arguing over the semantics of what was said last night would prove an unfruitful endeavor, thus Saiph quietly nodded and took his seat at the table and ate breakfast with his family.

After a long day's work, Saiph quietly went to bed without a peep. He knew that bringing up the town any time soon would be futile. Still, all was not lost. The work was almost done. Soon, oh-so-soon, Saiph would be free.

More time passed and the field was almost completely bare of all corn husks. The stalks themselves were still standing but they should have been falling sometime soon. Then, plowing the field was ideally the only thing left for Saiph to do.

Saiph was just finishing unloading one of last day's worth of corn when he heard a voice call out in front of the house.

"Excuse me, is anyone home?"

Someone showing up at their house at this time of year left only one possibility: tax-collectors. Saiph quickly dropped what he was doing and rushed over to greet the esteemed guests of theirs. He partially wondered where his father had sneaked off to the past few hours and why he wasn't the one greeting the guests but put those thoughts aside.

These were Mages from the Academy- real Mages! The opportunity to see the ideal form of humanity was rare enough on its own, but to be alone with them and possibly even directly interact with them was another tale.

After running around the corner of the house, Saiph saw two men standing next to each other, looking at him. He quickly approached them and greeted them warmly while bowing down in respect.

"Welcome, esteemed lord Mages, to my home. How may I be of assistance to you sirs?"

"Yeah, yeah, kid, we've heard it all. Show us your crop." The curt reply hurt Saiph's feelings a bit but he tried to shake those sentiments aside. These were Mages; they had the right to be arrogant.

Saiph lifted his head and took a glance at the Mages' appearances before turning and leading them around back to the silo.

The Mages looked somewhat strange and had their notable apparent affluence. The first thing that stuck out to Saiph was that one of them had a deep, flaring scar on his face, just under his eye. On top of that, they were both blond- something that Saiph was not sure of its normality on other worlds. As far as Saiph knew, on Orion, everyone had black or brown hair, but chiefly black.

They both looked rather young for Mages, just a bit too young to be adults- maybe 5 years older than Saiph. This made the young boy somewhat eager; maybe he too could be an official Mage and do missions for the Academy like this in just 5 years.

After shaking off these arguably pointless thoughts, Saiph opened the hatch to the silo and beckoned for the Mages to look inside. One of them did so and nodded to the other.

"Oi, what're ya doing back here?" A loud voice rang out from behind the group. Saiph gazed in between the two Mages and, lo and behold, there his father was, bottle in hand.

"We're here to collect your quota." The scarred Mage replied with a condescending tone. "Now, can we do our work?"

"Yessiree Bob. Y'all do that quick now, ight? I wanna go to bed."

Both Mages groaned and turned back to the silo. The scarred one stood in front of it and started making rapid gestures with his hand. With each gesture, Saiph could see a line or symbol of some sort being drawn in front of the Mage out of nothing but a faint light. After a few moments, an entire circle composed of symbols and lines of all sorts was hovering just in front of the Mage. The Mage made one final hand movement and the entire thing lit up far brighter than before. With it, the corn ears in the silo started being lifted up into the air. The corn flew up a few meters into the sky and started coagulating into a clump ear by ear.

Saiph held his breath as he observed the tens of thousands of pounds of corn floating in the air above him. If they fell, they would probably kill him.

After everything was out of the ground, the scarred Mage waved his hand and dispelled the circle. Immediately, all of the corn started falling to the ground. Just as they were all just a few feet from the surface, the other Mage jumped into action and ran below it all while pulling an object off of his belt- a pouch of some sort. He held it out in front of him and opened it just as the first ear of corn was about to strike it. That ear got magically sucked into the pouch alongside all of the others behind it.

Saiph gasped aloud as he saw such a magnificent sight unfold in front of him, just a few feet away. This was the power of magic! Tens of thousands of ears of corn sucked into one little pouch like it was nothing… he almost couldn't believe his own eyes.

After the last ear of corn was eaten by the reality-bending pouch, the two Mages started to inspect the pouch, somehow. Saiph wasn't sure what they were doing, exactly, but they were both grasping at the pouch and focusing.

A few moments passed and the non-scarred one said with a monotone voice, "Where are the remaining bushels? We have calculated all of that corn here comes out to a total of just under 59 thousand pounds, so you are two bushels under the quota."

"Saiph, where are the remaining two bushels?" his father said with a deep, grave tone.

"What? How should I know?" he frantically shouted back.

"Saiph you son of a bitch, did you set me up? Where are you hiding the remaining two, huh, huh?

"Listen, fellows, I'm terribly sorry about my retarded son," he suddenly turned to the two Mages and said. "He seems to think that trying to frame me and get me in trouble with you guys sounded like a good idea. I assure you, we had the total 60 thousand pounds just a few hours to go."

Saiph felt dizzy and fell down on his butt, gazing at the man that he once knew as his father. But, would any father really shift the blame on their son for this sort of a matter? Saiph knew that his dad had been slacking off the past week or two. He could have yielded another two bushels in the time he had disappeared, easily.

"E- esteemed lord M-mages, th- there's at at least two bushels re- remaining in, umm, the, uh f- fields," Saiph pointed out with tears and snot running down his face. "I, I promise that I, I didn't uh, y- you know, s- steal or burn or h- hide any of the, the corn. We, we were just, uh, a uh, b- bit short this time."

The pair looked at the sopping wet, stammering mess of a child in front of them, sprawled out on the ground begging for forgiveness.

The scarred one sighed deeply and looked at Saiph's father. "Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked solemnly.

"Do what? He can only blame his own Naivety, really," the man replied with an innocent look. At some point, the bottle of booze he had brought out with him had disappeared, as well.

"Fine," the scarred one sighed. "Kid, before we do this, do you know what to do to get to the Academy the next semiannual term?"

Saiph shook his head.

"Go to the nearby town. Exorsus, was it? Go there a few days before the new year. At some point, one of us will come there and escort all the potentials to the Academy from this region of Orion. I wish you the best of luck. Now, for obstructing the semiannual tax-collection process mandated by the Academy and your transgressions, I sentence you to a moderate physical retribution."

"No, no please!" Saiph started bawling. "I didn't do anything wrong! I promise! Please, Pa, tell him off! You know I didn't do anything! Pa!!!"

As much as he cried and screamed, he didn't dare flee in the face of a Mage. The scarred teenager walked over, picked up Saiph by the collar, and walked him over to the silo.

"Kid," he started, "I know you didn't do anything wrong. Please don't hold a grudge." Saiph, through his blurry, teary-eyed vision, thought that he might have seen a tear stream from this seemingly aloof Mage's eye.

Before the kid had a chance to think about it, he was falling. The weightless feeling lasted for what seemed like an eternity and a moment. Saiph could easily look up and make out the scarred Mage's face looming over the edge of the silo. He could see the stars in the sky blending into the reminiscent twilight colors of sunset, weaving through and around the stars.

He slowly saw the opening of the silo up above get smaller and smaller. The darkness around him was creeping closer. He realized his imminent death and mortality.

"Goodnight, sweet stars. Today, I saw magic. It's a good day to die." He wasn't sure if he said these thoughts of his aloud or just thought them, but just as he started to move his lips to try again-

BAM

-it all went dark.