Greysen walked up and down the line of children gathered in the temple, keeping his mana senses sharp as he looked around the crowd for those curious children he had seen earlier that day.

It had been a short time after they’d heard rumors about a Hidan war party approaching the city, and they, the Academy wizards, had entered discussions as to whether or not they should assist with the defense of this pathetic little city, or simply pull out of port in order to avoid risking themselves against those barbarian female mages.

Around that time, as they were gathering up their members and reclaiming the valuable equipment from their admissions testing, a couple of very interesting children ran by.

They were dressed in dirty scraps of linen, but the magic in the air swirled around them in a powerful manner usually only felt from some of the senior mages at the academy.

This had not been the first time such a child had been encountered in the past half decade. ‘Children of the gods’ is the name that they’d taken to calling such extraordinary cases. Children who were especially blessed with magic, and gifted with an intelligence beyond their years.

Greysen wasn’t personally familiar with many such children, but he’d heard rumors of these children actually being born with memories of having come from another world.

The acquisition of such children had been set as a high priority for any recruiters of the academy. If it were not for those useless and jumpy peasants spreading such false rumors of the Hidan being ready for the attack, they’d likely have pursued those two children the moment they were seen. Lord Auden, the leader of this recruitment effort, actually lifted and threw the guard official down the street when he reported that this impending Hidan attack was all a false alarm.

Idiots! All of them! It was not a war party, but an escort of some of the town’s own be-damned women and children who had been rescued from slavery under some bandits! How can it be a war party without the beasts known for conveying the Hidan’s female leaders?!

What! Did they think that some of their own women were Hidan mages? No, it’s not even worth giving them that much credit. This far west, these pathetic peasants had likely never even SEEN a Hidan before. It is entirely likely they don’t even know the role of women among those tribes.

How could they think it a serious effort if they saw women walking on the ground? Those peasants! And this utter panicked stupidity and ignorance had allowed not one, but two blessed children to slip through their fingers!

And this was not the end of the bad news. After that, the idiotic lord of this limpet of a city had been so presumptuous as to negotiate on the Academy’s behalf in some misguided attempt at appeasement. All this managed to do was inform the Hidan of their presence, and now Greysen and all the members of the academy were under threat if they attempted to move toward any city that was away from the water.

At the very least the local lord had been quick and efficient about rounding up all the children under ten cycles in age to be tested. However, this effort had still failed to produce the two children they had detected earlier. This was despite Greysen and five other senior apprentice level students closely examining each child who came into the temple, and even performing double and triple checks as they walked up and down the line.

{Place your hand on the crystal and try to use your will to make it glow as brightly as you can.} A bored and droning voice told the child at the head of the line for what felt like the thousandth time. Of course, it was not anyone from the academy speaking. Such a repetitive, tedious, and exhausting job was far below the station of a mage.

The man who had been given this duty of explaining the procedure to all the children was an official provided from this city. Even with this, however, Greysen was of half a mind to throttle this man and threaten him to somehow find a quieter way to tell these children what to do. The droning tone of the man’s voice repeating the instructions over and over was becoming grating on the ears.

About the only reason he hadn’t already done so was because Lord Auden had said nothing, and he would be besmirching his master to take such an action if someone of higher station was quietly allowing this to go on.

The young child hesitantly approached the temple’s altar, which the academy mages had converted into a testing platform. On top of the rich scarlet and gold-trim cloth they had placed a rough looking translucent white crystal. Behind the altar, Lord Auden sat and impassively observed everything that was happening within the hall. He turned those intimidating eyes down toward the child for a moment. The kid flinched back in response, earning a look of displeasure from the powerful mage trainer.

{Do not keep the mages waiting.} The city official scolded the child with a harsh tone.

{Ahh… yes.} The boy stammered and nearly seemed to trip over himself as he reached up to the crystal.

The child shut his eyes and trembled as he got a desperate look of concentration on his face. It was as though he was saying some sort of prayer, begging the gods for some form of favor as he attempted to fill the instructions that had been given to him.

The gem began to light up. Soon, a soft incandescent glow poured out of it, bright enough to out-shine some of the nearby torches.

This was actually quite the impressive result. Under normal circumstances, finding a single child with such promise would have been cause for celebration. This one find could make the entire recruitment trip worth the effort. However, with the prize of not one, but two of the blessed children running around this shit-hole somewhere, it felt a little difficult to get excited over such a thing.

{A good result.} Lord Auden said in a level tone. {Have someone take this child to the back and treat him well. He will be coming back to the academy with us.}

At these words, two acolytes of the church came running up to the kid, scrambling to carry out the orders of one of the mage class.

{Huh? What?} The child responded in confusion. {But… what about mama and papa?}

The child’s question went unanswered as one of the acolytes bent down and placed a hand gently on the child’s shoulder. {Now come along. You will be going to the academy now. You are going to become a mage.}

{What? But! Mama! I… I don’t!}

{Shhh… It’s fine. It’s fine. You are going to have a good life ahead of you now.}

The acolyte made repeated efforts to sooth the child as they guided him away.

Then, as this was going on, something in the space around them seemed to change. The commoners in the room were completely oblivious, but the mage apprentices patrolling the line had all become aware the moment it happened and were actively looking around and at each other. Even a few of the higher ranking members of the priesthood seemed to have caught on that something had changed.

The elemental energies felt as though they had suddenly aligned, and were waiting at the command of some powerful force to spring into action.

This is something any mage would have been exposed to many times in the past. It is what happened every time an elemental spell is cast. However, that is only for a moment, and it was also for only a single element.

Right now, earth and water seemed to be in a complete state of subservience, and the wind element trembled and was pulling back as it seemed to submit to the raising earth element in the area.

Greysen and his colleagues were on guard for a potential use of dual-elemental magic. With this kind of reaction, one would suspect a mud related spell of tier 5, likely capable of transforming the entirety of the city into a swampy marsh. However, as the time went by with no release of magic, they began to relax as they realized another potential cause of this strange activity in the elements.

Spirits. The presence of a spirit also caused the same reaction. In truth, spells only emulated the nature of spirits. They were but a pale imitation of the natural command these beings had over the elements. But, to have a gnome and a nereid simply wander into a human city? Perhaps a nereid would be possible as this city was close to the river, but even that seemed unlikely.

{Hey! They’re running away again!} Someone yelled from outside. It was one of the lower rank apprentices who had been stationed outside to examine the people closer to the back of the line.

Running away again? What are they talking about?

{It’s them.} One of the other apprentices whispered. That suddenly jogged Greysen’s memory. Those boys. He’d just noticed something was weird with the mana around them. He hadn’t quite gotten a feel for the elemental nature of it, but now that it was pointed out… this is exactly how it was.

Running away again? Now that his mind had caught up with what was going on, Greysen made a dash for the door.

{They went that way!} another member of their group pointed his seniors in the right direction. They all looked off and saw several more junior apprentices disappearing down a side street at a mad dash and shouting for the kids to stop.

{Wait!} A powerful voice boomed from behind them.

All the apprentices gathered at the entrance to the temple froze as they recognized the voice of their master, Lord Auden. The man was walking in a refined manner, having somehow crossed the distance between the head of the temple and the door in a matter of seconds as though he'd just stood from his seat and was instantly at the front of the temple.

Suddenly, Greysen found his master’s eyes locking directly with his own. And then, the man held out a hand to him. {Greysen, you take this and follow.} He said. {The rest of you, sort things out here. I will be going to meet these children personally.}

After this, the wind and earth mana in the area came into alignment for a second as Lord Auden looked off in the direction the apprentices were running. Then, he took a step forward and simply vanished, re-appearing at the entrance to the side street. A moment later, he vanished again, no doubt re-appearing some distance down that same street.

{They didn’t even get in line} The man who had pointed the senior apprentices toward the side-street said. {They just talked to some people in the crowd, and then just as we were trying to approach they immediately ran off.}

Greysen looked in the direction his master had gone, wondering about this new information he had just received. This really did not make any sense at all. Why would those children respond in such a way? Something was really not adding up.

{Well, I suppose I had better get going.} He said, and then started down toward the streets just in time to see two small figures leap into the air and onto the rooftops. Those figures were quickly pursued by several shouting members of the contingent who had originally pursued the boys.

{You have got to be joking.} Greysen said in genuine disbelief. These children were not going to make this easy at all.