-Prepare a corrupt light mage or similar. Someone good enough to turn me into an angel in front of the king.

-Prepare a list of highly ranked officials, vital for the functioning of the kingdom. Discard everyone who isn´t in the church for the planned donation gala and sort it based on impact of death. We need to paralyze the state. Contract Mary secretly for more info. The mansion is under surveillance.

-Secure our assets somewhere hidden.

-Prepare an escape route.

As always, I was given more and more insane tasks. Lucinda certainly exceeded all my expectations this time though. The king was always guarded by an archmage, meaning I had to find an better archmage capable of high light magic … she has turned insane and I was certainly not the only one to notice.

“She actually told you what you need to do?” asked Pauline, laying on the bed right next to me.

“Something really bad must have happened.” I concluded and ripped the letter to shreds. Like the last time, her maid delivered this rather sensitive letter to ensure nobody else would ever read it.

“Probably. I mean, she is asking for the impossible. Everyone knows the best light mage is the pope of the church of light and as far as I am aware, he will certainly attend such a gala. Her plan is flawed from the get go.” Pauline said. I grabbed my chin and thought about it for a while. She was certainly right, the first task was quite impossible, except we could somehow block the mages we didn´t have on our side from entering. But that probably wasn’t possible, otherwise she would have written to use Mary´s influence directly on the first point. But she didn´t. She gave me an impossible task to fulfil.

Which could only mean two things. I was either her second option … or she was damn desperate. Nevertheless, it was time to stop fooling around and get to work.

“You do task one to three, I´ll try myself with number one.”

“Are you kidding me?” She asked.

“Don’t forget for who you work.” I reminded her sternly.

“I work for nobody.” She said while crossing her arms in front of her exposed chest like a little child.

“And that’s where you are wrong. Get to work.” She would do it. She would complain, but she would nonetheless work for Lucinda. It wasn’t that Lucinda had done anything beneficial to Pauline, but what Lucinda could do was more than reason enough for Pauline to act. Either for avoiding a bad ending, or for … well, I had a hunch that Lucinda abhorred Pauline, so it would be probably just to avoid a bad ending.

A bit reluctant, I stood up from the rather luxurious bed, collected my underwear and started dressing. Not in my normal clothes though. At this point, I already had a wide variety of clothing. If one asked me, I could even try to dress up as a clown. But that wasn’t the goal here. A black smoking basically grinned at me as I opened the wardrobe and this was partly the reason why I was wearing it.

“I´m going to school.” I said towards Pauline who covered herself with a blanket.

“Don’t go looking around for other girls.” Flabbergasted, I stared at her as she chuckled loudly. After a few seconds so in which she started to laugh, I turned around and left the room. Our conversations usually didn´t go like this, except when she somehow changed the topics to underage girls, even though I had zero interests in them. Well, she liked to tease me quite a bit, which was probably the reason.

A bit disgruntled, I straightened my fly as I walked onto the street. The morning sun shone onto my face and blinded me for a second. Shielding my eyes with my hand, I turned right and began my long journey towards the northern part of the city.

My goal was the royal academy, an institution to train the ‘brightest’ mind of humanity in all kinds of matters. Economics, history, politics, you name it, but most importantly, magic. It was located in the northern part of the circular noble district, which also showed who went there. Well, there were other ways for poor people to attend this academy, mostly through tuitions given out by nobles, but then you would work for them your whole life. Or, if you were really brave, one could ask for a loan. Said person would have a lifetime of crippling debt afterwards though … if he or she even got the chance to apply for a lone.

The tuition fees were high, but if one could afford it, it was mostly worth it. This academy was the beacon of science of all fields. The greatest minds taught the next generation here, but also had the time to do their own research. Some professors were focused more on researching than others though, which may or may not be good for their mental health.

And I was searching for one of them. Legends say he was insane and couldn’t discern reality from fiction anymore, but that wasn’t really that bad for me. The worst part was to get in touch with him in the first place. Usually, visitors were not allowed on campus grounds, except they were invited by a professor. Which meant I had to convince him to meet me before I introduced myself to him.

“Greetings. My name is Seb Astian. I have a meeting with Mr. Wahnsinn.” I said towards the portier who sat inside a little hut near the entrance.

“Hmm, let me check a minute … he didn´t check you in.” The young man, probably still a student at the academy, said.

“Uhmm … you know how he is. Oh, wait, I was supposed to tell him the code … I think it was ‘I know what you did last summer’ or so. I´m sure he will affirm our meeting once you say that to him.” I claimed brazenly.

“I am sorry, but we do not relay messages personally. If you want, you can write a letter and come back tomorrow when he registered you as a visitor.” I sighed loudly and smiled wryly.

“Sadly, I do not have the time to do so. Duke Reynolds himself sent me here on this urgent mission.” I claimed and showed him a letter with the seal of the northern ducal family.

“There are no exceptions.” The teenager started to stutter a bit, but still followed the rules admirably.

“In that case, you can explain the headmaster later how the elves managed to sneak into human territory unnoticed because of illusion magic.” I said which seemed to shift his attitude entirely. He certainly didn´t want to be thrown out of the academy because of something like this.

“I … I will relay your message at once. Please wait a few minutes.” He stood up from his chair, exited the small hut and ran into the academy grounds, watched by quite a few guards. He was quite fast, I had to give him that, because ten minutes later, he was already back at the gate and told one of the guards to escort me towards the mage.

So far, so good. I could easily gain entry through using a bit of information my network found out and by showing a forged seal on an empty letter. Quite happy about the easiness of getting in touch with the mage, I followed the guard through the academy which was quite fascinating in itself. The houses here were far larger than the surrounding noble houses, mostly because they were used as dormitories or as lecture halls. Even then, they were by no means plain, even though they laced the ornaments of the noble mansions. Nobody wanted to pay a small fortune if an experiment failed after all.

While all of the buildings here were at least two storeys high, the one I was led to certainly wasn’t. It was best described as a hut. Certainly in a better shape than those of the slums, but nonetheless a hut. It was made out of already rotten wood and the windows were cracked in a few places.

The insanity was really visible by the amount of dreamcatchers hanging on the outside. They hung down from the canopy and blocked me from entering as they were lower even below my head. Just as I wanted to push them to the side, a loud and scratchy voice stopped me from doing so.

“Don’t touch that!” The mage screeched from the inside. I was honestly a bit stupefied by the development, but nonetheless ducked underneath the dreamcatchers and entered the hut, leaving my guard behind. Just as I wanted to touch the old door knob, the voice resounded once more.

“Don’t touch that!” He repeated for the second time. A mere second after I yanked my hand back again, the door dissipated into thin air. Quite shocked, I could do nothing but stand there for a few seconds and look at the place where a door once stood. Hesitantly, I stepped forwards and tried to touch the doorframe before the mage could stop me from doing so.

My hand went right through the wood.

“Don’t touch anything!” The old mage said, standing right before me all of a sudden. I nodded swiftly, most importantly because I didn´t want to anger him. I was proven right with my choice as I looked behind me and saw a beautiful scenery. The hut was in a lush valley, flowers bloomed everywhere and I could even see a rainbow because of a large waterfall in the distance. The hut wasn´t old anymore but looked quite new in fact. The wood was quite bright, as if it had been completely unaffected by wind and weather yet.

But this wasn’t real. Nothing was real here, probably not even a bit of the hut I saw in the beginning.

“What a wonderful place!” I exclaimed loudly. This mage was living in his own reality and it was probably best to play along.

“The demons will never find out where it is!” The hut around us vanished, leaving us standing on the beautiful grassland. Even though it wasn’t real, it was still quite admirable … or it was admirable just because it wasn’t real.

“The demons?” I asked and stared at a strange stone that looked like a gate, leading to nothing at all. It was in the distance, but even then, I could make out a few strange glyphs on the surface.

“They will come. By the gods, they will come!” Jup. He was crazy. I turned my head to the side and looked at the young, around twenty years old mage who had a few screws loose.

“From where? There is nothing but one continent on Solaris and it is shared between the humans, elves and a few minor races.”

“It´s from mana … mana will … will create the demons …” He looked really sad all of a sudden and stared into the distance where a lone woman played with a child in the grass. “… you must protect yourself as well … it is already starting … mana is increasing. All of us will die!” Small cracks of nothing formed in front of me, spreading out until they engulfed my entire vision.

Suddenly, I stood I the middle of a wasteland. The rocks gnashed under my feet as I stepped forwards, not really knowing where I would land.

“Until everything is no more.” He whispered creepily into my ear.

“That is a very grim future.” I commented drily.

“Future? They are already here. The demons …” Was he getting philosophical? Did I need to defeat my inner demon for his help or why was he showing me all this?

“Hmm … I need your help to defeat them.” I stated, hoping to use his craziness against him.

“That is impossible … last summer … I couldn’t defeat them.” Stupefied, I turned around to see the old mage sitting on a rock. He looked scared, almost completely devoured by a crushing sense of anger that originated from nowhere.

“You …” Did he even know what he did last summer? Was this the time to tell him he visited a completely normal human village? Was it my duty to tell him he used his illusions to turn everyone against each other, resulting in a massacre? No, it wasn’t. “You still have the chance to crush them now.” I said, hopeful to get through this iron barrier of craziness he put up around him.

“Really?” Within seconds, flowers started to sprout out from the ground. Maybe there was a chance of using him.

“Yes. I heard you are an illusionary archmage. You were able to trick other archmages in the past, weren’t you?” I asked hopefully and knelt down in front of him.

“Those were humans … I can´t do that against demons …” He said, a wave of sadness hitting him out of nowhere. “I couldn’t save them …” He started to cry, right in front of me.

Due to my information about him, I understood he was married to an explorer and had a child with her. Sadly, they both died due to an unknown illness at the time. The mana sickness was apparently the reason for their demise. It was rare that both were infected and killed. This man in front of me was truly unfortunate and entirely crazy for thinking demons did it.

“I see … is that a reason to give up though?” The illusion I saw cracked once again. Like a spider web, it was deconstructed into a thousand pieces and was replaced by reality again, or at least I hoped it was. The mage sat in front of a small campfire with completely hollow eyes.

“I did not give up. I accepted reality …” He mumbled and poked the fire with a long stick. I squinted my eyes, but did not comment it any further.

I really wanted this to work somehow. Theoretically, he would fulfil Lucinda´s request, but in practice, this wasn’t a good idea. He was the best illusionary mage on the continent and could even fool the greatest archmages, but he was simply put crazy, too unpredictable to give a task. If he saw a demon in the church … then her angel like performance would be over before it even began.