Chapter 3

The soft, comfortable cushion under my head was suddenly replaced by a light, cool breeze that wafted in the scent of the summer forest. A magical forest - I could feel it instantly. As I gently stepped over the root of a centuries-old tree, I looked up into the green treetops, through which there was almost no daylight.

A step, another step - no one would hear the movements. A hand gripped the familiar hilt of my bow, an arrow was begging from my quiver and my eye could see a shadow flickering in the trees. The arrow instantly fell into my hand, and I took aim, cocking the bowstring. On the move, I gathered some wind magic and directed it into the arrow, forming a simple magical construct at the same time.

With a distinctive snap, the bowstring threw the arrow. Obeying the will of the magic, the arrow missed the tree trunks, and after a moment, there in the distance, a dirty man in leather armor fell out from behind a tree.

"They are here!" there was a man's cry in one of the human tongues, but I could already sense the presence of the enemy, the direction and distance to him.

Arrows one by one left my quiver, bound for flight, and with magic they changed their direction, unerringly finding their end at the enemy's heart. In an instant, it was over, and only a disturbed bird cried out overhead in the treetops.

A few dozen light, weightless leaps, and I was leaning over the body of one of the humans, stretching my palms over the corpse and creating a magical diagnostic seal, the colour of which was green because of the life energy. Blinking, it seemed as if he had fallen into darkness.

I opened my eyes again, standing beside the twiggy cot, where a chubby, pointy-eared toddler was snoozing in the white sheets, and the green diagnostic seal was slowly peeling from my outstretched arms above him. His parents didn't distract me, and I was quickly done with the task. Turning my head to the right, I met the concerned and hopeful looks of a young-looking pair of elves in loose, light-colored clothing, the style of which was dominated by plant motifs.

"Your baby is perfectly healthy," I said with a slight smile. "It is a great joy.

The elven woman exhaled a sigh of relief, not hiding her smile, and her husband only nodded as if it couldn't be any other way. The elfish woman looked at me again, and noticed in my stingy expression not only polite joy, but worry as well.

"But it's not all joy, is it?" she asked, not hiding her renewed concern.

"You're right," I nodded sullenly.

"Tell us, Healer, don't keep us in suspense," the elf was being restrained.

"The little one has a bright predisposition to connect with the death energy dimension.

The elf woman covered her mouth with her hands, and the elf merely pressed her lips together tighter.

"You know for yourselves what something like that means. The elders would not allow an initiated necromancer to live in the Forest. And to neglect initiation...

"We understand," the elf nodded. "The urge to possess Kin energy, and the inability to acquire it, would pervert his mind, prompting him to acquire it by natural means. The most brutal way."

"Yes. I'll do the initiation to dimension of life, as I'm supposed to do, the baby will be compatible with it, just like all of us. But the rest... It's your choice. Do you need time to think?"

"Do whatever you have to," the elf nodded stubbornly, and his wife placed her palm gratefully on his forearm.

"Are you sure? With your social status..."

"Our son won't be a mad ripper, but he won't be an orphan either, Healer."

That's not the answer I would have expected. After a century of this couple trying to conceive a child. Now all I had to do was create the right seals to connect the baby with the energy dimensions of life and death.

Removing my shoulder bag, I set it on the floor of the living tree house to retrieve the necessary ingredients. Looking up, I saw the empty streets of the white stone city. Perfect walls of two- and three-story houses, but the windows were tightly shut, with only a few curious faces of children peeking out, almost immediately led away into the depths of the house by their parents. There, in the distance, could be seen the bright spires of the Academy, and the shielded magic stores on the tallest of the towers glowed with barely visible blue dots.

"Are you ready?" An elderly voice sounded nearby.

Turning my head at the sound, I saw a pestered old man in a blue robe. With one hand he held a massive white wooden staff, on top of which was a sharpened blue quartz - the rarest mineral and one of the best accumulators of any magical energy.

"A little more respect for elders, chancellor," I grinned as I took a sheaf of elongated metal cylinders lined with tiny runes out of my bag.

- No," the old man pursed his lips and ran a hand through his snow-white beard. "I was not a man who worked for the Empire for two hundred years to be old and not be able to say what I want to say. And the way I want."

I got up and stood beside the old man. We were both looking at the same thing - a fenced plot with a large mansion. Except that it fell out of the general "ideal" of the city - almost the whole area was as if covered by a viscous dark fog, and the ground, the trees, the walls of the house - everything seemed to be covered by an almost impenetrable black mass.

"So what was it this time? A failed experiment?" I turned to the old man, glancing up and down the dark, amorphous shadows in this blackened, magical haze.

"Narcissistic sorcerer families, that's what. Told them that their child was incapable of projecting dimensional energy into reality, but no, everyone are stupid," the old man grumbled, tapping his staff on the perfectly smooth stone of the road beneath his feet.

"Have you really had an initiation?"

"Exactly! They're the cleverest of the lot. Their bloodline has been around since the founding of the Empire! If they had been initiated by fire, they would have been burnt, and thats all they could have done. But no, darkness and chaos. Pity the child..."

"But not the adults, huh?"

"I've been sick and tired of pitying fools for fifty years now. There's not enough pity for all of them. Where have you been? Meditating on a bush again?"

"You're exaggerating, rector."

Suddenly the mansion literally exploded with darkness, and from its depths rushed toward us a giant amorphous shadow, the base of which was a huge black skull with an open jaw. It approached inexorably, inducing fear...

Jumping up in my bed, I felt my nightgown sticking to my body and soaking wet.

"A dream... Just a dream..." I muttered aloud, looking around the dark room.

A rummage of shadows in the corner caught my attention. As I looked there, a black skull flew out of the darkness, flying at me with a nasty squeak.

I jumped up in my bed and looked at the nasty old-fashioned electronic alarm clock, which was making a nasty squeaky noise. With a relieved exhale, I shut it off with a push of a button, and immediately collapsed back into bed. There was no sweat at all.

"Shit...