Valar practically skipped through the city streets, his new necklace bouncing over his shirt as he meandered through the city. It was not heavy per say, but the weight of the necklace felt comforting on his neck. It was his, something made for just Valar, and no one else.

  That was of course reflected in the price. It had risen to 15 silver due to the addition of the silver and long hours of work by Gloria. The cost rising was completely understandable, but it was still annoying. Luckily, Valar had money to spare and a piece of jewelry like the necklace was something that he would have paid much more for if he had been put in that position. 15 Silver was expensive, but not that expensive. Not when you had 10 gold in your bank account.

  Valar had grabbed lunch from a street vendor in the merchant’s district, and the spiced sausage pastry was absolutely delicious. With this meal, he could study all the way until dinner without a single break, eat, study some more and sleep. Tomorrow I’ll finally find out more about my fire! Hopefully Viktor has actually managed to complete his analysis. He did say that tomorrow would be the day.

  The way back to his dorm room was blissfully peaceful, and no people attacked, demeaned or even approached Valar. In contrast to his normal outings, this 5th day was absolutely divine. Even better, the instant he arrived in his dorm, Valar hopped onto his bed and started training. To him, there were no weekends off.

  Valar was currently working on connection, as tether could wait until he could actually cast a spell. Honestly, learning connection was well overdue for the boy. He obviously wasn’t the first to learn enough runes to cast a spell, but students like Julie would be casting their first spells soon. She was no savant or untiring, but she would be learning Lesser Restoration at the end of next week at the latest. Valar was well ahead, having learned both mend and protection before he cast his first spell, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t regret his decision to postpone.

  Well, at least I’ll be able to talk with Julie about any possible problems that may come up. It would have been nice to be clearly the first in the life magic class though…

  This time, there was no chance to surprise the class like he had done with the rune of life. Once he had learned connection to Elaine’s satisfaction, the professor would personally guide him through the spell’s framework during class and he wasn’t permitted to train it outside of the classroom. There were simply too many things that could go wrong, and having Elaine nearby made accidents much less likely to occur. If things did go wrong though… It would be bad.

  Valar would need to be absolutely confident with the rune of life, mend and connection to even begin casting the spell. If Elaine saw anything go even slightly wrong, she would forcibly abort the casting and Valar would need to take a break. The academy did not play around with students casting their first spells, as things had gone wrong too many times in the past centuries. In some ways, it was the most dangerous situation in all of iron rank.

  Valar knew this, so he trained. And trained. And trained.

  He woke up to the rays of the rising sun. Wha- What happened? Did I fall asleep?

  He stumbled out of his bed and into the bathroom to wash his face. It was the best way to truly wake himself up from a restless sleep.

  After washing his face, Valar immediately attempted connection. Weirdly enough, even though he didn’t tend to remember anything from his nightly training sessions, the runic knowledge always stuck to his mind. That was well and good, because the time would have been wasted otherwise. The knowledge of runes and spells seemed to go to an entirely different part of Valar’s brain than his other memories. The admittedly tiny collection of runes could be called forth at will, and his memories of them were always crystal clear. I’ll have to ask Elaine or Viktor about that. Oh, Right! I’m meeting them today anyway. Right after breakfast, if I remember right.

  He had woken up with the sun once again, so breakfast would be in half an hour or so. It of course lasted for multiple hours, allowing students to wake up at different times, but Valar had always gone at the earliest possible time. Most students tended to go later, so Valar would have a more peaceful walk to the cafeteria and back to his dorm when he visited for breakfast.

  He was pretty sure he would be eating his breakfast alone today.. Zeke was visiting family and the only other person who could get in never visi-…

  “Morning, Valar,” Arwen waved from the breakfast buffet. “How did the night treat you?”

  It’s the prince… What do I even say? “Good morning, yo- your majesty.”

  Arwen looked over sharply. “None of that. I already told you and Zeke to call me by my name. No need for honorifics, please.”

  “Yeah, I can do that. How come you are eating breakfast here? I’ve never seen you in the cafeteria.”

  “It’s my father…” Arwen shook his head. “He discovered that I had eaten my meals at the palace instead of the cafeteria. Now the palace kitchen is closed to me until I graduate from my iron rank studies.”

  Valar could not muster a lot of compassion for the prince’s grand suffering. The cafeteria food was infinitely better than the slop served at the orphanage, so it couldn’t be that much of a punishment.

  “Uhhh... That’s rough? I think you’ll probably survive,” he said flatly.

  Suddenly, Valar got a bone-chilling realization. Did I just throw snark at a crown prince? What am I doing? Am I going to be executed?

  To his great surprise, no accusations of treachery were thrown and no guards came. Instead, Arwen looked at him with his hand on his jaw and a thoughtful look on his face.

  “I’ve been trained to react… Badly to those kinds of statements from the citizens. Some of my siblings would have you imprisoned for that, although I don’t believe any of them would execute you. I think I may choose neither option. What’s your reason for saying that?”

  This is bad… What do I actually say? Should I lie? No, that would be a horrible idea! Maybe honesty is the best option.

  “I… I grew up in the Lyndale orphanage,” Valar stuttered. “Honestly, the food in this cafeteria is so much better than what I have eaten for the last decade. Your situation… It doesn’t seem that bad?”

  A questioning tone had entered Valar’s voice with the last sentence. He was almost expecting to get yelled at and imprisoned, but Arwen surprised him once again.

  The 17th prince of Leoria started laughing. The raucous laughter continued for well over a minute as Arwen Aurelius doubled over with seeming mirth. Valar just looked on, not sure if he should be happy or scared about the man’s reaction. He didn’t dare speak any further, so he just waited for the other man to calm down, and eventually he did just that.

  “Thank you. Seriously Valar, thank you! I haven’t gotten the chance to laugh that much for months, even years!” The prince looked at Valar’s tense form and moved to soothe his nerves. “Don’t worry, Valar. As I said weeks ago, my goal in this academy isn’t to command everyone around like I’m my father, but to learn and socialize with people. You’ve just helped me realize how coddled I’ve been. Thank you.”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  Valar shrugged, his shoulder still tense. “You’re welcome?”

  The crown prince burst to laughter once again. “You really are absolutely abysmal in anything social or gods forbid political! Who is even training you?”

  Valar shrugged, not really thinking what came out of his mouth. “Well, I’ve got a training session with Elaine and Viktor after breakfast, so…”

  “What did you just say?” Valar didn’t notice the shift in the prince’s tone.

  “Well, my next training session with Elaine and Viktor."

  “Viktor who? Does he have a last name?” Arwen interrupted.

  “Come to think of it, I’ve never asked.”

  “Forget I asked then.”

  As Valar ascended the stairs to Elaine’s office, he tried to clear the discussion with Arwen from his mind. Too much stress talking to a member of royalty. Elaine and Viktor are so much simpler, even though Elaine is a noble. At least I don’t need to be wary of my words around either of the high rankers.

  Arwen’s reaction to Valar telling him about Elaine and Viktor had been weird, but he tried to ignore that. Maybe he just knew another Viktor or something. No matter, it’s time for me to find out what my fire is about!

  Kind of like every single time he had visited Elaine’s office, Valar had to wait for multiple minutes to get in. Elaine’s ability to completely ignore knocks on her door was arguably more magical than her actual life magic.

  After coming in, Valar got straight into training connection. Viktor would take some time to arrive anyway, so getting in some work while he waited was a good idea in the boy’s opinion. The work proved fruitful as he felt himself progress a step towards completion before the wind mage’s arrival.

  Instantly when he walked through the door, both Valar and Elaine noticed how tense Viktor truly was. He was carrying the black box used to analyse Valar’s magic under his arm and he had dark circles under his eyes. Viktor almost never looked tired, but today he did.

  “Morning.”

  “Good morning to you too,” Elaine said. “Woke up on the wrong side of the bed?”

  “I didn’t sleep.”

  “Huh?”

  “I didn’t sleep. Couldn’t sleep.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry then.”

  Viktor walked to Elaine’s office table and slammed the box onto the table. It almost looked like he was trying to break the weird object, but no marks or dents appeared on the box’s surface.

  “Valar, come to the table, please. Elaine, seal this room as well as you can. I’ll put some safeguards up myself, but I’d rather be safe than sorry.”

  Elaine gave Viktor a questioning look. Seeing something in his eyes, the woman started methodically casting spells and activating enchanted items that created layers of protection along the room’s walls. Some were visible to Valar’s eyes, while some seemed to blend into the wood without leaving any marks.

  When she finally stopped, Viktor looked around and nodded to himself in thought. “Good, but not enough.”

  Runes appeared across Viktor’s visible skin, spreading under his mage’s robe and seemingly filling most of his body. His aura surged as he spoke.

  “The Eye of the Storm”

  To Valar’s eyes, nothing happened, but Elaine gasped with shock. She seemed to see much more than the boy, and looked around the walls in confused silence.

  “I hope that this is enough,” Viktor muttered. “But even this may not be enough when we are dealing with them. Both of you, sit down.”

  Both Elaine and Valar sat down without questions, sensing the stress Viktor was under. Valar had seen him kill a man, find out that Valar had killed one and even discover his fire, but he had never seen Viktor this nervous.

  “What is this about, Viktor,” Elaine asked. “Your nervousness is making me anxíous too!”

  Viktor grabbed an opulent chair from his coat pocket and fell into it with a sigh. “Just you wait Elaine, just you wait…” He shook himself and straightened his back. After a small cough, the onyx rank spoke. “As you two are well aware, I took it upon myself to analyse Valar’s fire with this artifact here. To be frank, that task turned out to be much more difficult than I expected.”

  “Why?” Valar asked.

  “Well, there are two things that make analysing your fire a daunting task. First, this box here—the only device I trust to give accurate readings—is damned hard to use. More conventional tools often give inaccurate results, and those results could have led us in the wrong direction. So, I used this clunky piece of junk.”

  Viktor slapped his hand on top of the box, and its golden inlays lit up with a glowing light. “That task would have been long, about a week for me if I studied it religiously. The only problem was that the readings I had after the first week made no gods damn sense!”

  “What do you mean?” Elaine interrupted. “Did the readings not match your expectations or what?

  “I mean that they didn’t match any other forms of fire the library had readings on,” Viktor practically growled. “Ordinary magical flames, salamander, phoenix, abyssal… I even tested to check if the fire was related to the angeli! Perhaps fortunately, it isn’t that either.”

  “Why is that so weird?” Valar asked. “Is it that much of a weird idea that my fire is completely unique?”

  Viktor let out a mirthless chuckle. “No, that isn’t even remotely possible. Creating something completely new—a fire that isn’t related to any other—would be completely impossible at this point. If you had done that, you would be in contention to become the new god of fire. Trust me, you would have noticed the attention of Agnis by this point.”

  “Is that the fire god’s name? Agnis?”

  “Yes, and if he would have placed his full attention on a legitimate challenger, Lyndale would have been consumed by an inferno by now.”

  Viktor’s words made Valar shiver. No humor was evident in the man’s gaze. He was dead serious. He had initially thought that getting completely unique magic would have been cool. Fighting with a power that no one else could wield; It was the perfect teenage boy fantasy! That fantasy crumbled to dust with the new knowledge he had bestowed with. Being unique could be bad. It could be dangerous…

  “You can stew on that information later, but please listen to what I’m about to tell you now,” Viktor advised. “I did not end my study there, so there’s more to tell. I took the second sample of your fire to check if my initial readings were right and did the same with the third. Each time, I got the same results. The problem wasn’t with the device—although I sincerely hoped that it was just that—but with my compendium on different types of fire. That’s when I started using a… different source of information.”

  “Different how?” Elaine questioned.

  “You know how; Stop interrupting,” Viktor muttered. “As I was saying, I started using a new source of information. It had a couple more options, but to be honest, I hoped that your fire wouldn’t match any of them… It did.”

  “Why do you sound so tense then,” Valar asked. “You found out what my fire is! Isn’t that good?”

  “No, it is certainly not. Each one of those options was bad in its own way, but in my opinion, this one’s the worst.”

  Elaine chuckled nervously. “Honestly, what could be that bad? You already said that the flame isn’t abyssal or angeli in nature!”

  Viktor’s sigh was comparable to a great northern mammoth’s. “Elaine… It’s nearly identical to dragonfire.”

  The life magic professor’s eyes went wide and her breathing quickened. The boy who was being talked about just looked on in confusion instead. What could be so bad about that? Having dragonfire sounds amazing! Maybe I could breathe fire like in the stories or…

  “I must’ve heard the wrong thing… Right, of course!” Elaine rambled anxiously. “Viktor, could you repeat what you just said? My hearing seems to be getting worse…”

  “Dragons, Elaine. Dragons. Your hearing isn’t getting worse. You’re a life mage for gods’ sakes.”

  “But… That can’t be true. It NEEDS to not be true!”

  “What’s wrong?” Valar asked. “What’s the issue with my fire being similar to dragonfire? I think that sounds pretty cool…”

  Viktor glanced at Elaine’s trembling form and turned his gaze to Valar. His gaze was as serious as the sky was blue. “I mentioned to you in Lyndale that all adult dragons are at diamond rank. You remember that, right?”

  “Yeah, what of it? Is my fire as strong as theirs?”

  “In terms of actual power, it isn’t even in the same world as dragonfire, no, but that isn’t what’s important,” The wind mage rubbed the bridge of his nose. “The problem is not with you, but the dragons themselves. I do not know what they would do if they found out a human had flames that resembled theirs… Perhaps they would even come and talk to you in their human visage.”

  Elaine’s anxious giggling didn’t stop Viktor’s speech. “The problem is that whatever they would decide to do, we would have no chance to challenge them. If they truly wanted to just take you, they could send a single, maybe two or three, of their kind, and we would be powerless to stop them. Them finding out about your fire could be an existential threat to the whole kingdom.”

  “But… We have the king, right?”

  Elaine’s giggles turned to full blown laughter. Viktor continued ignoring her. “The king… He could stop maybe one. Holding back two would become too much and even he would perish.”

  “I don’t understand. Why haven’t the dragons destroyed us already then? We have to be protected somehow!” Valar felt a sliver of panic enter his voice as he spoke. “They can’t be that strong!”

  “The only, and I really mean only reason the dragons don’t destroy the human kingdoms and empires is that they think themselves the protectors of Aldun,” Viktor explained. “They don’t attack those who don’t endanger the world, and leave the sapient races to quarrel between themselves. I honestly don’t know what they would do if they found out…”

  “What do I do then?”

  “Don’t get found out.”