Sincir watches Eleanor go until she’s disappeared from his view, having swiftly climbed down the opposite edge from where he came up… He’d not have taken her for the type that climbs around at night, but here they are, nonetheless.

  Lords, he’s beginning to see why Father Anders wants him to take the girl away. Her hatred for demons is obvious, though he can only guess at its source, and having her join the church would be a recipe for disaster… Not to say he might be forced to kill her one day, were that to happen.

  Well, if they meet on the battlefield, then that’s all there is to it…

  …He’s still not considering it. Nope.

  Just look at how Ena reacted when he suggested the idea…

  But now is not the time to be considering possible allies.

  Taking a deep breath, Sincir casts the spell which allows him to gradually expand his mind senses to their limits, immediately flinching as he captures hundreds of the thoughts from the children and Sisters sleeping below, as well as two Mind Shields, both having been obviously created from Holy Magic, which seem to glow in white against his mind senses.

  One of the shields is nearby, while the other is inside the orphanage’s chapel; Meaning, one of them should belong to Eleanor, and the other to Father Anders.

  Having found nothing out of the ordinary inside the orphanage, Varzath continues to expand his spell further, searching for a third Mind Shield, or something else which might indicate the presence of a demon contractor…

  He goes as far as to filter through the thousands of thoughts caught in his net, for words reted to demons, Hell, sacrifice, etc…

  Unfortunately, doing it like this is no different than trying to listen for something specific in a crowded, noisy hall, and he also doesn’t come across a third Mind Shield, even after expanding his senses to their limits... Not that his current limits are all that rge, of course.

  Seeing no other choice, Sincir shakes his head as he releases his hold over the spell. Evidently, the demon contractor has either left his range, or possesses a way to hide themselves from him.

  Clenching his teeth as he is assaulted by an immediate headache, Sincir curses; If there was any chance he might be able to fall asleep again, it is certainly gone now.

  Sitting at the ceiling’s edge as he stares toward the city below, Sincir considers how to proceed from here. It is probable he himself was noticed, having fought against Eleanor briefly, and then utilizing such a far-reaching Mind Spell.

  Will they come for him…?

  He doubts it. Demon contractors tend to prefer anonymity, as their sacrificial rituals will attract the animosity of any w-abiding citizen. If they’re smart, they’ll realize they have been noticed and leave…

  That’d be for the best. Demons are strong, and Sincir has no desire to face off against one so soon.

  Still, he remains on watch for the off chance that the orphanage, or something nearby, is their target, while occasionally sweeping the orphanage’s surroundings with a mind spell...

  Unfortunately, other than blindingly walking through town and hoping to bump into his target, this is the best he can do in his current state.

  Mind Magic might not expend much mana, but it’s far from priceless.

  It is a shame, though. Had he met the demon, or their contractor, Sincir pnned to ask about home. Extracting information from them might have been difficult, but he’d at least like to know if the ruler of Hell’s Seventieth Circle is still a demon called Sunnazoth; That much, even the small fry on this side should be able to tell him.

  Sighing, Varzath realizes the time for his morning training with Ena is approaching, and as such, after one st, fruitless attempt at finding his prey, he begins to make his way down.

  Today, Ena is waiting for him at their training spot, rather than near his room’s window, as usual.

  Once she spots him walking toward her, she crosses her arms, staring at him with a gloomy look on her face.

  “I get it,” she says, tone ft, “In order to create a kingdom, you’ll need strong allies. Eleanor is pretty. Eleanor is popur. Eleanor doesn’t have most of the continent wishing her dead.”

  “Eleanor has a terrible personality, and I wouldn’t have considered taking her with us if not for the fact Father Anders asked me to… As you would’ve known, had you waited for my expnation yesterday,” Sincir retorts.

  Ena blinks. “…Oh. Wait, does that mean you told-”

  “Him about the fact we’re leaving? Yes. I thought we owned the man who raised us at least this much, all things considered.”

  Ena averts her gaze for a moment, frowning, then meets his eyes again, apologetic looking. “I’m sorry for having assumed, Sincir. I should’ve given you a chance to expin yourself.”

  Sincir shrugs. “It’s fine. I pretty much expected something simir would happen the moment I tried to tell you. You have good reasons to hate her.”

  Ena bites her lower lip, then shakes her head. “Is she really… Is Eleanor really coming with us? Why would Father Anders ask you something like this?”

  Sincir sighs. “Eleanor wishes to join the church, in spite of the fact Father Anders has been hiding her from them this whole time. I don’t know the whole story either, but if I had to guess, she believes joining Estrein will allow her to fight demons, while Father knows how awful a life like that would be for her, if not simply short… As for her coming with us, I promised Father I’d give an honest try at convincing her, but I don’t think she’ll agree to come.”

  Ena rexes visibly over the news, smiling slightly as she averts her gaze and nods. “You’re right; She’ll never agree to come. Eleanor does what she wants, and nothing else.”

  Hum… Before what happened a few hours prior, Varzath thought there was a zero percent chance she’d agree, but now that she knows he is a powerful mage, he doesn’t know how she’ll react to his offer.

  Still, he won’t go back on his promise without a good reason, even if Ena might hate him for it…

  Having given their talk about Eleanor for over, Ena begins her warm-up exercises, though she gives him a curious gnce once he doesn’t do the same.

  Unfortunately, although they pnned to get back into physical training today, there’s no way he will be jumping around with this splitting headache, so he tells Ena there has been a change of pns.

  “I’m not feeling good, so we’ll leave your torture for tomorrow,” he tells her as he once more draws the character for wind on the ground, “Remember when I told you I’d teach you how to move your mana?”

  Ena nods excitedly. “Does that mean we’re doing that right now?”

  “Yes, but first, I want you to understand that, for the purposes of casting a spell, two things are necessary: A working spell formu, and assembling the necessary mana to create the desired outcome of said spell formu. Either of these being absent will have disastrous consequences for the caster.”

  Ena raises her hand.

  “…Yes?”

  “How do I know if I have the mana for a spell?”

  “With practice, you’ll be able to feel your own mana, as well as that of the world around you. That being said, staying on the safer side of things is advised, unless strictly necessary… Mana deprivation isn’t likely to kill you, but it will leave you unable to fight, which you should assume is a death sentence, in and on itself, during a battle.”

  Sincir stares at Ena seriously, until she nods again, appearing to have understood the seriousness of his warning.

  “Now, we’ll leave aside what mana is, exactly, as that is still debated in the magic community. Suffice it to say, it is a living source of energy found pretty much everywhere, or something of the sort, which you’ll want to grow as attuned to as you can. More importantly, wild mana is different from the mana a mage stores inside themselves... And it is also different from pure mana, but we’ll leave that side, for now.”

  Having said as much, Sincir waves his hand, creating a small gust of wind which swirls around the both of them and causes Ena to widen her eyes slightly as she follows the spell with her gaze, until it disperses itself.

  “What do you think happened here?” Sincir asks, once she is looking at him again.

  Ena blinks. “You… Used a spell?”

  Sincir shakes his head. “Not wrong, but you can do better than that.”

  She frowns thoughtfully. “Mana… You created a spell formu, moved your mana, and made the wind do what you wanted?”

  “Close, but not quite,” Sincir says, “Last chance. Think about how things might work in practice.”

  “You mentioned something about wild mana… Does that have something to do with my answer being wrong?” Ena asks.

  Sincir smiles at her. “Good job. Yes, your answer was wrong because it cked a fundamental step to spell casting; The existence of wild mana.”

  Pointing toward the magical character on the ground, Sincir creates another gust of wind, before continuing.

  “Remember when I told you about how affinity works? And how you were able to tell what this character means without having ever seen it before?”

  “That was wild mana?” Ena guesses.

  “Yes. Specifically, that was wild mana manifesting itself without the intervention of a mage, or a magical creature to guide it. When I said mana was alive, that’s what I meant. Though it normally won’t do much of anything, it’ll interact with living beings on occasion, such as when whispering into a mage’s mind… And before you ask, no, nobody knows why.”

  This time, instead of creating a gust of wind, Sincir gathers a small swirl of wind atop his palm, in the form of a ball, maintaining it in pce while Ena stares at it, as though entranced.

  “All of that, to say that when casting a spell, a mage isn’t using their mana to do something, per se, as much as they’re using it to control the wild mana of their surroundings into doing something… In other words, communication. You could say magical characters are a nguage, and spell formus are nothing more than phrases written in a way that the natural mana will understand, and do what you want.”

  “Uhm…” Ena hums, moving her eyes away from the spell as she meets his gaze again, “Does that mean casting a spell is like asking the universe to do something? Except, it doesn’t understand our nguage, so we have to learn the nguage it speaks, instead?”

  Sincir smiles. It is impressive she got it first try. Throughout his life, he met many a mage who seemed not to understand the essence of spell casting, some of them who were hundreds of years old… But then again, they might not have ever had a teacher as versed in spell casting as him.

  “Sort of,” Sincir continues, “Asking a favor is a way to see it, or giving a command… As long as the formu is correct, and your will strong, the mana should respond to your voice. Of course, you still have to make your voice loud enough for it to be heard clearly, so to speak, and that is what your own mana is used for… Anything you do not understand so far?”

  “Why do you move your hand to cast spells?”

  Sincir blinks. Then, allowing the whirlwind to disperse, he clears his throat. “You can think of it as a trigger… But you also could say it’s just a bad habit. When casting a spell, both the speed at which the mage moves his mana, as well as the speed at which they build the spell formu, are what determinate how fast, or how slow, the spell in question is cast. Waving one’s hand, snapping one’s fingers, swinging one’s sword; Such cues are often used as a way to help the mind remember a spell, then ter, to cast it faster than it’d be otherwise possible… In battle, a split of a second might be the difference between life and death.”

  “I-I see…”

  “Well, in my case, I admit I often do it for an added dramatic effect… Still, it is worthy mentioning that for enemies who aren’t able to feel the build-up of your mana before a spell, waving your hand would only serve to warn them of what you’re about to do.”

  Ena nods. “Sincir, I am curious about something... If spell casting is a nguage, then who wrote it?”

  Sincir shrugs. “Sometimes, it is hard to separate myth from truth in our field, but I’d assume the origin of magic as we know it today came from Elysium’s most stuck-up people, the elves - current company excluded, of course - and that is because, unlike other magical creatures, they possess no natural means to express their magic in the world. Now, that being said, different spells, and different schools, are likely to have had different creators… Unfortunately, spell casting is far from an exact science, and what works for something might not work for something else, or, in other words, spatial mana speaks a slightly different nguage than fire mana, and so forth.”

  Ena averts her gaze thoughtfully for a moment, before meeting his eyes again. “Okay, I get why my ancestors would want a surefire way to cast spells, so writing a nguage to do it makes sense, but I still don’t understand how it happened… I mean, how was the first magical character created? How did they know it’d work?”

  “That’s because magical characters aren’t created, as much as they are discovered. And that being said, the second reason I believe the elves were the ones to do it is because they’re one of the intelligent species most attuned to nature I know of, as well as possessing long lifespans, and high magical affinity... Sort of like how you understood the character for wind without having it expined to you, some really old elf probably had it appear in his mind, while meditating… Or whatever it is old elves spend their time doing.”

  Ena smiles. “Kind of like how you were born, already knowing all of this?”

  Sincir averts his gaze, pretending a sudden coughing fit.

  “…Sorry, what was that?”

  “…Nothing,” Ena murmurs, rolling her eyes.

  “Anyway, I think we’ve covered enough theory for the day. Want to it give a shot?”

  Ena pauses, then her eyes widen as she realizes what he means. “What, do you mean, right now?!”

  “Of course. I was going to teach you how to move your mana, remember? Well, there’s a couple of ways to do that, but since you seemed so attuned with the wind character, I thought having you invoke it would do for a fine start.”

  Ena gnces toward the drawing he made on the ground at the beginning. “…Aren’t you going to show me how to do it?” she asks after a moment, having realized he isn’t going to say anything else.

  Sincir shakes his head. “I can’t. There aren’t really any words to describe how to move your mana, so telling you to visualize the character clearly in your mind is the best I can do. It should happen that you will notice something in your body changing eventually… But it could take days, or weeks, depending on your talent. Just give it your best shot for today.”

  Ena grimaces. “By today, you mean the half an hour we have left?”

  “Hey, that’s not my fault.”

  She sighs. “I know… And thank you for teaching me magic, Sincir. You’re awesome.”

  Sincir waves his hand dismissively, lying on the grass nearby as he closes his eyes and contains a shudder caused by his headache. “Well, I’ll take a nap meanwhile. Wake me up if something happens…”

  “…Are you serious right now? What if I have a question, or end up blowing myself up on accident?”

  Sincir snorts. “If it was that easy, anybody would be a mage. Don’t worry, even if by some miracle you manage to do it successfully on your first try, invoking the wind character won’t cause more than a small breeze… I already showed it to you a couple of times today.”

  “So, that was the wind character?” Ena murmurs to herself.

  “Just, whatever you do, make sure to do it silently,” Sincir warns her midst a yawn.

  Although he can see her, Ena’s eye rolling is obvious in her voice as she retorts, “Yes, Father Sincir. Don’t worry, I’ll do my utmost to keep your nap uninterrupted.”

  Sincir contains a smile. He knows what she is thinking; To awaken him with a huge gust of wind after having successfully cast her first spell. Unfortunately for her, it won’t happen.

  Even if she is talented, doing as much would be the equivalent of a young dragon breaking the wind barrier on their first flight...

  Ena makes true on her promise of keeping quiet, other than the occasional frustrated murmur, and Sincir finds that, in spite of the pain and open sky, he is quite comfortable like this…

  Sincir awakens with a frown.

  A moment ter, he realizes something shines right on his face, and he understands why.

  Damn it, he wasn’t actually pnning to fall asleep. What happened to Ena? Why didn’t she wake him?

  Blocking the sun with a hand as he forces his eyes to open in spite of his heavy eyelids, Sincir inspects his surroundings until he finds Ena sitting cross-legged nearby, an entranced look on her face as she stares toward the wind character unblinkingly.

  Realizing they’re well past mid-morning, Sincir groans. Of course… Maybe he should’ve expected as much from an elf.

  They’re lucky nobody found them during this time, or they’d have had some difficult expnations to give.

  Sighing, Sincir rises and walks toward Ena, then sits cross-legged on the other side of the magical character she seems so absorbed by, facing her.

  Surprisingly enough, she doesn’t seem to notice it at first, and he takes some time to observe her features…

  Ena is cute, but she can’t be called beautiful, yet, like Eleanor; Though Varzath suspects that will change in another couple of years.

  Perhaps due his body’s young age, his thoughts reted to sex have been mostly absent so far, but he’ll have to cross that bridge, sooner or ter… Still, Sincir has yet to decide what type of human life he will aim for.

  He doesn’t pn on becoming some sort of priest, of course; And besides, he’d probably be eaten alive by his people if they one day manage to cross to this side, whether he wants to or not. But until then…

  Is he back to pying the pyboy? Fucking whomever he can, as often as he can?

  Or is he pnning to live somewhat decently for a while, reining in his urges?

  Since he currently doesn’t have any urges to speak of, it is hard to decide…

  “…Sincir?” Ena murmurs, blinking as her expressionless slowly regains its usual liveness. Then, as she seems to realize the sun is shining brightly ahead of them, she yelps, quickly rising to her feet. “W-what happened?! Why didn’t you call me?!”

  Sincir grimaces at her. “Are you stupid? Didn’t I tell you I was going to take a nap? I’ve only just woken up, myself.”

  Pausing, Ena shudders. “We’re so dead.”

  “Probably. But we’re lucky they weren’t able to find us yet. Just go, and come up with some sort of excuse on the way.”

  Ena hesitates. “Wait, can you tell me what happened…? I was focusing on the wind character, and when I looked up, you were already sitting there.”

  “I can only assume you fell into a meditative state on accident,” Sincir expins, “I heard it happens to elves sometimes, but since you’re a half-elf, I didn’t expect it to happen to you.”

  “…Oh. Wait, does that mean I am really awesome?”

  Sincir snorts. “I don’t know. Can you invoke the character now?”

  Ena gnces at it, then waves her hand, imitating the way he usually does it…

  Once nothing happens, she slowly closes her eyes with a pained look on her face, lowering her hand dejectedly.

  “…It means I’m an idiot, doesn’t it?”

  “Yep.”

  Ena curses, turns on her heels, and runs toward the orphanage.

  “Don’t try to invoke it when there are people around, unless you want them to know you’re a mage!” Sincir screams after her, ughing softly as she stops to throw him a ‘how-stupid-do-you-think-I-am’ look, before continuing on her way.

  Once she is gone from view, yawning, Sincir stretches his arms above his head, then erases the character from the ground with a wave of his hand, turning it back into a spot of barren earth.

  On the positive side, at least his headache is gone, and Father Anders would be hard-pressed to find punishment worse than double shift at the kitchen…

  By the time Sincir arrives at the chapel, where his age group was supposed to have attended css today with Father Anders, they are already on their way out, with Sister Leona leading the way with a worried look on her face.

  Then, she spots him, and her expression changes to one of pure fury.

  “Sincir! Where were you!? Do you have any idea how worried you made us?!”

  Sincir smiles apologetically. “I’m sorry, Sister. I was on my way here when my stomach decided I was going to spend my morning near the bathhouse, instead… I couldn’t help it, I swear!”

  She frowns, seemingly about to scream at him, but then seems to think better of it. “Well, you’ve never missed css before, and Father told us not to worry about you... Speaking of which, he’s waiting for you inside. As for the rest of you, come with me. We must review what we learned today.”

  Sincir watches the children go with a smile, many of whom gnce in his direction as they walk by, whispering and giggling among themselves all the while.

  He has no doubt they’re ughing at his expense, but knowing that doesn’t bother Sincir, as he has better things to occupy his thoughts than to worry about what a bunch of kids might or might not think of him… So long as they leave him alone, they can believe whatever they want.

  As Sister Leona promised, Father Anders is waiting for him near the chapel’s altar, sorting through the parchment used for the children’s lesson. Once Sincir approaches, the old man raises his eyes and smiles at him.

  “Sincir, I was starting to think you might’ve already left.”

  “No, we’ll leave in three days... Something happened this morning, and it wasn’t my intention to miss css.”

  “Is that so? Would you like to review what the others learned today?”

  Sincir grimaces. Was that a joke?

  “Thank you, Father, but I was thinking we could use this opportunity. Since my schedule is tight these days, and I don’t know where Eleanor spends her time…”

  Sincir allows his voice to trail off, the implication of his request obvious.

  After what happened earlier, he and Eleanor will need to have a talk, and the sooner it happens, the better.