Chapter 25

After the school day had been over, I hoped that Magister Eeeming could help me with the things I didn't understand.

I argued with myself if I should go bother him, because of his position as principal and as Grand Magister of the whole region of Fréllon he must have been a busy man but in the end, I decided that it would have been better if I didn't delay something that was so important to my education.

As I went up multiple flights of stairs in the school to reach the Magister's office, which I had already visited once a day before the school had started when Eeming had insisted on giving me a tour of the school, I wondered, if Magister Eeming was the so-called head of Fréllon then there must have been eight other people for all the other major regions in Eizon in the same position as his, Grand Magisters.

What would the responsibilities be of someone who held this title?

The Mages Guild is directly under the king but it, in itself, wasn't any kind of political party. It held no sway to decide laws or interfere in wars.

In my mind, I thought that they did have a kind of responsibility for all who called themselves mages or are affiliated with them, good or bad.

But most likely they just discuss and decide what the students should learn each year, staff placements, and the management of money.

Such a large organization can't function without a lot of it.

When I finally reached the office of the Magister, which took me a while, the school itself was extremely large, I wasn't the only one who wanted to talk to the Grand Magister.

I recognized him. He was the blond boy in my class.

It seemed like he was readying himself to knock on the heavy double doors.

"Is your heart not ready yet?" I asked while approaching him, "do you want me to knock for you?"

"I can do fine by myself," he said shrilly then lifted an arm to knock.

I sat down on a bench near the door.

He had been here before me, so it was his turn first to talk to the Magister.

It was the natural order of things.

Half a minute passed without any actual knocking, with my staring I bored a hole in the boy's back and he must have noticed then turned around and nervously said, "if you will, please knock."

I almost laughed.

I knocked thrice loudly but there was no answer, once again I knocked.

I noticed that the boy behind me was fidgeting around with his hands. I assumed it was urgent that he talked to the Magister.

A third time I knocked and when I received no answer I gave up.

"He must be out for the moment," I shrugged.

And when I turned around, I heard the doors swing open.

The boy opened them and barged into the office.

Curious, I looked into it.

At first, I fought myself, should I enter it too even though Eeming wasn't here?

He did it, so should I?

Was this what they did in higher society?

Unsure I stepped inside and waited there, "I'll stay here too," I decided.

"Do what you will."

I looked around. Eeming's offices were similar to one another, but this one had curiosities lined on the shelves and walls.

A mounted head of an animal I didn't recognize was hanging on the wall, it sort of resembled a boar. It didn't have a snout like one and its tusks pierced back into its own skull.

A strange sword, the blade reflected perfectly like someone cut out one from a mirror.

On the shelves were dried-out plants and what were clearly valuables gems that were suspended in strange liquids in jars.

The boy approached the big table that sat in the middle of the room and with two hands picked up a little globe that was sitting in a hand made out of metal.

He shook it and the little flakes that were inside it shot around.

It wasn't natural.

"Can I?" I pointed at the globe, and he handed it over to me.

I held it and looked at it with the 'magic vision', it was glowing in a radiant red.

It was magic but why was it red instead of the blue I had always seen?

I sat it back down on the metal hand but I noticed behind the bookshelves to the right of the room there was clearly a magic glow.

I got closer to the bookshelves and examined them.

There shouldn't be anything here, I remember on the way here the next room on this site should be much further away.

I pulled on one of the shelves and with a 'clack' it opened like a door, I was sure I didn't cause it so I looked back. The boy had pulled down the index finger of the metal hand so that it was bent backward completely.

"A secret room behind a bookshelf, an old classic," I thought.

I guessed Eeming had an affinity for detective or horror literature.

Watchful I opened the shelf-door, behind it was a whole other room. I was hesitant to look inside but I couldn't keep my curiosity down.

Though to my disappointment there wasn't much inside, it looked like a kind of storage room.

The glow was coming from inside a tall vase, it was much brighter than anything I had seen before, even compared to myself.

I lifted up the lid. It was full to the brim with a blue gelatinous substance. I didn't have to touch it to know that it was the same jelly that mages can eject out of their body, commonly known as arella.

Depending on the weight I could see how much it was, I tried pushing the vase a bit but I couldn't move it even the slightest like it was rooted into the ground.

For someone as strange as Eeming, it was a good decision to hide something so full of magical power.

But now that I thought about it, what would one even do with that much?

The only use for it I knew and read about was for alchemy and I think that most potions weren't even that harmful.

The other boy didn't enter the room yet. He was looking into it from the other side of the bookshelves.

"There is nothing dangerous in here, just sacks, pots, and vases," I assured him.

Almost staggering he entered the room.

He kneeled down and opened one of the sacks, "that's odd."

In the sack were blue dried flower petals, I vaguely recognized them.

We looked at each other while he held one up high.

"Aster?" I said surprised, "don't they make perfume with them?"

"And you can drive away snakes if you burn them but that's not the only thing they do."

"What do you mean?"

"In that vase over there, the big one, there is arella inside, right?"

I nodded.

"Do you know what happens if you mix them both together?"

"No."

I didn't yet know much about alchemy. I just had preconceived ideas.

"Explosions, very violent ones and very sensitive. If someone brews a cauldron with all of these here and the whole arella in that vase the whole school would be destroyed."

I let go of the few pedals I held in my hand in shock.

"That's not the only thing," he said after opening another sack.

This one was filled with greenish spheres which were covered in something that looked like white hair.

"Birthday cakes," he said holding one carefully in his hand.

I looked at him funny, and he seemed to realize that I would have no idea what kind of plant, if it even was one, it would have been.

"It's a type of cactus. They're a kind of green, fleshy plant which are generally covered in thorns. These ones look more like hair."

He put it back into the sack and looked in some of the other sacks lying in the room.

After a minute, as he closed the last one he said, "all of these have awful alchemical effects."

"Why would the Magister gather so much of these here?" I thought

Before I could come up with a plausible theory I heard talking outside. I wanted to rush out but the boy frantically closed the bookshelf-door.

"Why did you do that? We could have gotten out and pretended we didn't find this!" I whispered angrily.

"I'm sorry. I panicked, it was the first thing that came into my mind," he whispered back.

"We'll have to wait until whoever's here is gone," I held my face in my hands then pushed my ear against the shelf to see if I could hear anything.

"...and even if requested we couldn't."

Even muffled, that was clearly Eeming's' voice, he had an enthusiastic roughness to his.

It didn't look like he knew we were behind the bookshelf.

"Arno, please. The guild cannot always keep a neutrality."

This voice belonged to an older man I was sure but I wasn't familiar with it.

"We kept it for say... four-hundred years? How come we can't keep it now?"

"Have you seen the attacks? Three villages were decimated, everyone who wasn't captured or imprisoned, dead. There is a war brewing and if the king calls, the guild has a responsibility to answer, and if we won't, Orilid WILL be using its mages."

"That just speculation, mages are useless in a fight. We're even less useful than archers and we don't even know if it even comes to war, we don't know anything."

"We have confirmed reports, they were Orilidian soldiers, they bear its coat of arms."

"Oh yeah, because bandits can't craft forgeries? I have one!"

I heard the sound of someone shuffling through drawers then a metallic clink on the desk.

"See, flowers and a peryton, I do love that. Our coat of arms is an artist's shame. A winged deer with flowers is so much inspired than a lion with a sword in its mouth. Do you think I could ask King Henning to change it?"

"What? No? And please, Arno, don't change the subject," he sighed very heavily, "if you won't change your mind then please listen to this.

...I had a dream, and you know about my dreams. Two people in the middle of nowhere fought very desperately over nothing and for no one, I'm sure that one of them used magic like it was the only thing he held dear and he took the life of the other one. I'm sure that has to mean something. Mages in war, an entire army using magic, organized, not just outliers, while the other one doesn't and they pay dearly for it. Our future, the country's future is in danger and we have to intervene before it comes to that."

"Ah yes, your 'dreams'. I know, once or twice, maybe even more, you don't tell me about all of your dreams, they came true even if it was the vaguest of things, I was there. Like the sweet marriage of your daughter to that handsome young man, Lene, or the death of my predecessor, Magister Keion, but you also dream like everyone else. You must admit that could just have been normal dreams, Jeana and Lene were already together quite a while before the marriage and Keion was already over a hundred years old. I could have- I knew that he would, you know, pass on soon. Or here's another explanation, don't you think that maybe you dreamed that dream because you worry so much about a coming war? If I think about, say, smashing an orange all day then dream about smashing that orange don't you think that my worries might have gotten a hold of me even in my dreams? Yours had a bit more symbolism but you get the gist of it."

"Perhaps," I heard him sit down, "I just worry, if what I dreamed will come true then magic will be used for something so destructive, so mechanically, not truly alive, without a soul. Magic not for the sake of magic but death. I cannot bear the thought of it."

"There, there, want some candy?"

"Can you be serious? I have real, tangible concerns."

"No, you do not. Many of your dreams do not come true, remember when you dreamed that Prince Vytael will die on his fourth birthday of smallpox? Didn't he just celebrate his sixteenth? Oh yes he did, we both were there. Smallpox was already almost wiped out when he turned three, did you believe it could still happen when he was four? Or when you 'prophesied' that the volcano in Ossinia will blow up, covering the whole country in ash? That hasn't happened yet and it's been about ten years already."

"I get it but this time it's different. The dream-"

"Let dreams just be dreams."

I heard the chair creaking as one of them stood up.

"Please, if we won't intervene then we have to be watchful. The Orilidian were always aggressive people, they strive for war. If things get too dire we have to do something, we simply must."

"By Yule, if there's war then there's war. It's not the first and it won't be the last and the guild has endured multiple. You can go and tumble into the pit of war if you want but not so under the guilds' name. Maybe as a general. General Efrain, how does that sound to you? But even you would say that's a downgrade to being a Grand Magister."

Grand Magister? The other man was one of the nine who held the position?

"Just relax Efrain, the possibility of war is there but come on, there hasn't been one for some decades and I don't think King Henning wants to break that streak."

Grand Magister Efrain breathed deeply, "yes, yes. A dream can just be a dream and no one wants war, no one wants war," he repeated.

"See, nothing to worry about. Now, you want to go grab something to drink? There is a terrific little bar just 'round the corner and you didn't come all the way from Kriot just to cower under my skirt."

Exhausted Efrain said, "...yes, something to drink would be nice but could you keep this conversation just between us? If Verel would find out about the dreams, she wouldn't leave me alone."

"Sure, for you anything."

After a minute of no talking or other noise, the boy asked, "are they gone?"

"I think so?" I guessed.

As soon as those words left my mouth he ran out of the room and of the office.

Seems like subtly wasn't in his nature.

I too started my escape but as stealthy as I could and when I left the office I pretended nothing whatsoever happened.