Disappeared without a trace

«Everything is wonderful!» He answered in a very pleasing voice, «pure scarlet energy,» he added and winked at her.

«Scarlet? A protector, then?» The Fifth asked.

«Exactly!» The old Abbot sipped his tea.

There was silence, and one could hear the candle on the table crackling. Cal went over the information in his head to see what effect it would have on his life.

«So, do you agree?» Suddenly the Abbot asked him.

«With what?» Cal was genuinely confused.

«To be a disciple, of course! Only then, with hard study and learning wisdom, will you enter the Academy and meet your friend.»

Now the Fifth and the Abbot stared at the man in anticipation.

«Before I answer, could you tell me more about what it means to become a disciple?» He asked.

«No. No, not at all. One who has not become an apprentice cannot know the way. Only by blood oath can you gain access to the treasures of the Elders.»

The Abbot noisily rose and, unwilling to continue the conversation, left the room. Behind him, his adopted daughter rose, her displeasure poorly concealed.

Cal was left alone in the room. Why did he feel guilty? What had he done to offend these people? Wasn't it right to find out everything and then agree to it? Cal felt his behavior was normal, but Abbot's reaction was incomprehensible.

How long does the training take? And what must he learn? Would he have to leave his factories?

Back at the inn, he could not sleep for a long time, tossing and turning from side to side.

Maybe the problem was that he hadn't been a young trusting boy for a long time. Cal remembered how he had once walked the path of painful death and met a handsome man who lived lonely in a cabin. Wasn't that when he learned that some power was hidden within him? And had he not become his disciple?

Painful memories came back to him one by one. His master had tried to kill him to absorb his power. Somewhere he had seen it before... Cal suddenly jumped up: «An ancient spirit! The same way the bride wanted to kill Liam to get his power.»

The man leaned back on the pillows again but immediately jumped up like a stung man. «If this thing can take any form, could it be that the teacher and Brigitta were one creature?» The thought made Cal dizzy.

The Abbot could not sleep either. In all his long life and the fact he was about three hundred years old, he had never met a man with such strong scarlet energy.

With the right instruction, his student would be the best at the Academy entrance exams and would make his teacher famous...

Surprisingly, such a promising man has been overlooked. Why did the Fourth take only his nephew, ignoring such a nugget lying right under his feet?

Given how attached he is to his friend, it wouldn't have been hard to convince him to follow him. The whole thing is strange indeed.

But the trouble was, he was not an obedient and malleable child. A confident man with money, position, and influence appeared to the Abbot. His heart was already bound to the earth, and it was not easy to separate him. The only option left was to find Liam Glinier.

«If I could get them to talk...but no, forget it,» the Abbot told himself.

The Fourth Elder was the most stubborn and harmful of all. No one can cope with him.

They say all his life he loved only his little sister and hated her husband who stole her heart. The Abbot recalled many more things, but essentially nothing useful.

The elder's musings were interrupted by the pale flicker of a crystal.

A few minutes later, he knocked on the door of his adopted daughter:

«My child, we must leave immediately...»

***

When Cal got up in the morning, he could barely open his eyes, for he didn't get to sleep until dawn. And even then he was plagued by nightmares. The treacherous teacher had tied him up again and wanted to cut out his heart...

After breakfast, the man went to the Abbot, but the church was closed and everything looked deserted. Cal walked around the building in bewilderment and finding no signs of living people there, returned to the hotel. On the third day, he saw the same scene again, and Cal became very worried.

«What if...» The thought crept into his head that something bad might have happened... but he shoved the thought away. By the end of the fifth day, there was a terrible commotion in the hotel.

Cal looked out the door and heard scraps of conversation:

«found without a heart,»

«both killed,»

«the Abbot and his daughter.»

Cal went pale as chalk. He seemed to be hanging on a hook again, and a horrible man with a knife was approaching him.

«Are they dead? Are they really...dead?» The man paced his room in horror panting... Then he stopped and remembered that it had something to do with him again.

Or was he imagining it?

But then why on three of the three occasions when an Ancient Spirit attacked people was he everywhere? The kindly image of the Abbot and the slightly skeptical face of his daughter appeared before his eyes.

«They are gone!» Cal was horrified, for the first time so sorry for the deaths of strangers.

Along with them disappeared the hope of meeting Liam.

«Liam, where are you?» Whispered a distraught Cal. «Wherever you are, I hope you're safe!» - he prayed.

Leaving the inn and the town of ***, he returned home as if in a half dream. Changing horses, and staying for the night, he could not concentrate on anything or decide what to do next.

When he returned home, he found the town as he had left it, nothing had changed. Walking across the bridge, Cal lingered at the spot where they had stood with Liam. The memories still hurt, and he lifted his face to the sky to stop the tears bursting from his heart.

Looking down from the bridge, he saw his reflection: disheveled hair, sloppy attire that's what he had become, having lost his soul, his Liam.

As he reached the weaving room, Cal suddenly asked himself: «If I build a hundred more factories, will I feel better? Would my life have meaning? If I could never tease Glynier again, embarrass him, and see his ears blush. If he never gets angry with me again, and I can't share the joy of my victories with him, if he never falls asleep from fatigue in my chair again, if... if... then, what's it all for?»

Tears did flow down his beautiful face, and he did not wipe them away... This city had become foreign and cold to him. He was desperate to get Liam back and realized that he had lost the point of striving for anything in his life.

Down in the wine cellar, Cal indiscriminately picked up bottles and sat down on the floor, opening them and drinking them. That's how he was found in the morning lying on the floor, surrounded by empty and broken bottles, completely insane. Mr. Cal was taken to his room and guarded.

From all indications, he had returned in great distress. To prevent Mr. Xavier from getting himself killed, all dangerous objects were removed from the room.

When he opened his eyes, he realized that he was lying in his own house.

He got up somehow, went to the window, and staring at the opposite wall, shouted:

«Liam, draw me a picture! Draw me a picture! Liaaaaam! Draw me a picture! What... You're sorry, aren't you? You left me nothing! You left me for good and left me behind! You bastard! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!» Changing from screaming to whispering, Cal sat under the window and remembered watching young Liam in those happy days when they had gone to school.

Drawing Liam, fighting Liam... Liam is covered in soot... Liam in love... righteous Liam... sinful Liam...

Cal walked out of the room, pushing the guards away. Once in the courtyard, he walked to the mighty tree and climbed up it. When he reached the window of the workshop, he staggered over to the window sill and stumbled into the familiar room.

What did he expect to see here?

The debris of a wooden easel lay on the floor. The wallpaper had been peeled off the walls, and paintings were burning in the corner. But Cal didn't give up. He went through the scraps and bits of art carefully, sorting them. He was covered in dust and soot. Finally, he was lucky enough to find a small, whole cloth.

Carefully brushing away the dust, he could barely make out the image, so he held the painting up to the window.

It was better if he didn't look. It was of him, or rather... a naked man, sitting in his bedroom in the early morning from the artist's point of view.

Cal involuntarily recalled the morning he had teased Liam. The young man had then brought him his favorite cream buns, and Cal had decided to flaunt the beauty of his body and purposely didn't get dressed, provoking Liam...

So then he came here and drew it, so accurately conveying the semi-darkness of the room and his beauty...

Cal imagined Liam, tired after his work in the city, standing in this very room and reviving the memory of that morning's encounter with him. How he spends his talent to carefully trace every strand of hair and every muscle on his body.

And then he stands and scolds himself that he's not good enough at painting and the original is so much better...

Cal pressed the painting to his chest and whispered «thank you...thank you for admiring me so much that you even painted me...forgive me for being a fool and teasing you instead of rushing to love every minute...»

Curled upright on the floor, in the middle of the workshop, Cal cradled the painting and lay motionless into the night. Then he got up and went on creating madness.

Entering Liam's room, he opened a closet. There were some things he had left behind and Cal raked them up. They still smelled like Liam: earth, metal, buns, fresh grass.

Cal hugged his clothes, lay on his bed, picked up his dishes... walked to the window, placing his hands on the window sill where Liam had put them. He stroked the doorknob...

Cal felt like he was going crazy... Liam's room was so squalid and at the same time, it felt like a real temple that had been left by a deity.

He never allowed himself to live in luxury. Everything is so shabby, ugly, cheap-it's because the man who lived here was precious in his own right. But no one valued him, and he didn't think he was worthy of love in the first place.

Cal took everything he could out of Liam's room. The factory owner's quirks hadn't surprised anyone in a long time, and besides, everyone in town knew how close he was to Liam. His aunts wiped away their tears as he stared after him, barefoot and disheveled, carrying a pile of clothes, a painting, and Liam's pillow.

Rumors had spread among the common people that Mr. Liam was dead, and that was why Cal was so heartbroken.

The man didn't notice the slanting or sympathetic stares.

All he cared about was whether he should look for Liam, and a second question was whether he should go on living.

When suffering had dried up his soul completely, he had to take the path destined for him.