“Personally, I’m expecting great things from you Mister Flynn.” Oliver said gleefully, his wrinkled face beaming with happiness, before waving his hand towards an opening on the opposite side of the tent to where he had come in, “You’ll find your fellow students waiting through there, you can also choose to leave but you must be back here before midnight or we will depart without you.”

Caspian nodded in response, “I’ll see you later then Sir.” His tone was bordering between respect and casualness as he spoke, but the old man didn’t seem to mind.

He overheard the old man calling for the next candidate just as he passed through the opening into another part of the tent, in the ‘room’ there were eight people apart from himself either sitting in a small group or sitting by themselves away from the others.

As he entered they all stopped what they were doing to glance at the new arrival, some with indifference before they returned to studying a book similar to the one he had been given while others looked at him with curiosity as if trying to unravel his every secret.

Caspians’ attention was drawn by a red-haired teenager who called out to him, “Come sit with us!” He was cheerful as he motioned for him to come closer, there were three of them huddled in a group as they spoke in hushed tones.

The two others of his group glanced at him warily as if unsure what they weren’t meant to do; one was another red haired teen who shared similarities with the boy, she tugged on the sleeve of the red haired boy as if trying to get him to shut up.

The other was a boy who couldn’t have been any older than thirteen, he had raven black hair and eyes – his wary gaze caused Caspian to become uncomfortable for some reason, but the feeling disappeared as quickly as he had felt it.

Collecting himself, he walked towards the group. “Caspian Flynn.” He introduced himself with a smile to them.

“Elliot Tel and this,” he said motioning towards the other two sitting on the floor, “Is Eliza Tel, my beautiful twin sister,” He said teasingly which caused the girl to blush with embarrassment as she stared down at the floor.  

“Killian.” The young boy interrupted before Elliot could interrupt, “Just Killian.” Elliot didn’t seem to mind however, most likely used to this attitude already.

“Pleasure to meet you all.” Caspian responded; his eyes lingered on Killian for slightly longer than the other two as he still hadn’t forgot the chill, he’d got from being stared at by those eyes just moments before.

He wasn’t too interested in getting to know these kids, they were all at least a few years younger than himself, although physically he looked younger than he was he was still a twenty-year old man.

He was only planning on being a student of the academy while it was useful to him anyway, it was almost guaranteed that they would possess more knowledge about the world than any Kingdom. Well, any library that is – the knowledge that he could find at an academy would likely be like those private collections of wealthy nobles here.

“What made you all choose Telimus?” Caspian asked after a few moments of awkward silence between them, Eliza looked as if she was about to speak but stopped herself whereas Killian didn’t even glance at him as he flicked through the pages of black-leather bound book.

Elliot was the only one who seemed interested in a conversation as he piped up almost instantly, “Our mother went there was a child, so she decided it would be the best choice for us.” He said cheerfully, Eliza nodded in agreement with what he said as if affirming it was true.

“I can’t speak for Killian but we’re both really excited, mother only taught us the basic defence spell to protect ourselves.” He pouted before casting a spell that was familiar to Caspian, “See? It’s an invisible shield!” Elliot said proudly before poking the air in front of him only to have his finger stopped mid-air by an invisible force.

Caspian looked at it with interest, “Is there a way to cast it without chanting?” He asked curiously as he thought back to Dennison, the old man had kept the spell up simply by keeping his eyes open – although it didn’t help him in the end.

Elliot stopped himself for a moment before a book appeared out of thin air and he started to go through it.

“Wait, what was that?” Caspian asked, when he’d seen Oliver do the same he’d been under the impression it was a high-level spell but now he was seeing Elliot, a boy that was unlikely to have reached the ranks of Mage Scholar, do the same thing he was confused.

“This?” Elliot asked, pulling another book from the air and causing Caspian to nod, “You’ve never seen a spatial ring before?” He asked in confusion as he pointed to a thin ring embedded with a pitch-black stone on his right-hand ring finger.

“It has a storage space of ten square meters, our mother gave it to me, so I didn’t have to carry our luggage around everywhere.” He said proudly.

He quickly returned to looking through the book he’d pulled out a moment prior before exclaiming in excitement, “Found it!”

“The book says that some Mage Scholars will engrave the spell on their eyeballs so they can keep it activated as long as they keep their eyes open. It says… some even cut off their eyelids.” He said the last part slowly with a horrified look on his face.

“Why would anyone do that to themselves? Isn’t it much easier to just chant the spell?”

Caspian shook his head at the kid’s naivety but before he could explain Killian butted in, “If you had to choose between offence and defence what would you choose?”

“Defence of course, why would I want to hurt someone?” Elliot answered innocently once more exposing his mindset. “Idiot, do you think you can keep your defence up forever? What if you run out of Mana? Or the opponent is strong enough to break through? What will you do then?”

“Then mother will protect me!” He said matter-of-factly much to the astonishment of both Killian and Caspian.

Even his sister was somewhat embarrassed as she shook her head.

Killian sneered and buried his head in a book again, Elliot didn’t seem to notice or even if he did, he didn’t care. “My mum is strong you know!” He exclaimed a little too loud as he caused the others in the room to look over.

“Quiet down in there.” Olivers’ voice came from the other side of the tent suddenly, finally causing Elliot to promptly shut up.

“Maybe you should stop talking about your mother.” Caspian suggested slowly, he could already tell the boy wasn’t used to being independent. “But…” Elliot looked down in dejection seeing no one, not even his sister, shared his enthusiasm.

“How about you teach me that shield spell instead?” Caspian breached the subject slowly finally asking what he wanted to ask before.

“Of course!” His enthusiasm was cut short however by Eliza tugging on his sleeve and whispering something in his ear, “Oh… sorry…” His voice suddenly grew quiet as he mumbled, “Mum said we shouldn’t teach anyone the spells she taught us.”

Caspian didn’t give up however, “What if I pay you?”

Elliot looked at Eliza who shook her head in response, Elliot didn’t seem to be so happy about this, but he apologised again and told Caspian he couldn’t.

“Don’t worry about it…” Caspian said shortly with a smile, hiding is annoyance from the twins, “I’ll see you all later then.” Caspian said to them before walking towards the flap in the tent that seemed to be the exit from the side.

“Wait.” Just as he walked outside, he was stopped by Killian who had suddenly appeared behind him, Caspians’ eyes met his and that same chill ran down his spine again, but his pride didn’t let him look away because of this.

“Take this.” He shoved a piece of paper into Caspians’ hands, “Don’t get in my way.” He said mysteriously before disappearing just as suddenly as he had appeared.

Caspian looked down, dumbfounded, as he read the piece of paper.

‘Introduction to Mana Shield’

“Interesting.” He muttered as he looked in the direction of the tent, “I don’t think I’ll be able to resist.” He grinned before walking off to find the Demon he’d left standing alone in the Plaza.  

…

“Take the Young Master and go!”  the Merchant that Caspian had spoken to the day before said as he handed over the boy to a Robed Demon, the other two were nowhere in sight but the sounds of a battle could be faintly heard in the distance.

The Merchant himself was covered in blood as one of his arms hung limply next to him and his breathing was rugged and weak as if he was close to collapsing.

The Demon didn’t hesitate and grasped the boy in his arms and ran as fast as it could, its speed quickly bringing it several miles away in only a couple of minutes as the Merchant sat down against a tree with an expression of resignation, accepting his fate.

Ten minutes later a blood covered man approached the corpse, an imposing aura radiated from his body as he glared at the corpse. “You fucking bastard.” He sneered as he spat on the corpse, “Did you think that hiring some freaks would stop me?”

 The unknown man drew his blade and cut the head off of the Merchants’ corpse before he started to examine the ground for tracks, just a short few moments later he’d discovered where they had run off to.

“Don’t worry Young Master, you’ll be safe soon.” His voice was tinged with venom as a cruel grin broke out on his face.