"Well, I see your point," Bero said with a wry smile. "A lot of people thought I was completely crazy when I retired from being a doctor in order to start a farm. But I do enjoy my chickens. Almost as much as Iggy does." He chuckled a little. "I have to correct you on one thing, though. I'm just a master necromancer, not a grandmaster."

Eteon shook his head. "I was referring to your skill level, not your certification. The only reason you're not a grandmaster is that you haven't bothered to take the ranking exam. Am I wrong?"

There was a brief silence.

"Considering that you know this much about a person you just met, you're either very perceptive or very well-informed." Ariom's voice had a note of suspicion in it. "I find both options a little troubling, to be honest."

Thenio was looking back and forth between the two sides of the conversation, feeling lost. He didn't like the way Ariom and Bero were looking at Eteon, but he also had to admit that it was strange that Eteon seemed to know so much about Bero and Humerus. He didn't really understand why that made Bero think he was a magician, but Eteon hadn't exactly denied it.... Did that mean it was true? Then why hadn't he ever said anything, in all the time they'd spent together?

Eteon seemed to notice his unease. He turned to Thenio and gave him a gentle smile. "I'm sorry. It looks like I've said a little too much. I didn't mean to upset anyone."

"Are you really a magician?" Thenio asked, looking directly into his light blue eyes.

Eteon sighed. "I guess you could call me that...yes," he said reluctantly. "I suppose you want to know why I've never mentioned it to you?"

Thenio nodded.

"Well, the short version is that I didn't want you to get dragged into my problems." Eteon was silent for a moment. "You've always loved magic so much. And your parents have always told you that magic skills are the key to a successful future. I won’t say that those sentiments are wrong. Not exactly. It's just...well...sometimes magic can cause people a lot of trouble. Sometimes...for some people...it's better to stay away from it. For a long time, I didn't think you would really understand if I told you that. I was afraid that, if you found out I could use magic, you would be determined to get me to teach you everything I knew. Which would have been a bad idea for both of us." He looked at Thenio with a sorrowful expression. "I guess you're starting to understand now. The kind of problems magic can cause. Though I wish you didn't have to learn it in such a painful way...."

Thenio lowered his gaze and didn't say anything.

"I think Thenio's friend has nice magic!" Iggy piped up. He was still sitting on the table, with his front paws wrapped around his new chicken toy. "It's a dark sort of color, so I can't smell it very well, but it's a nice magic smell, you know? Not as good as Thenio's...but it's still good, okay?"

Eteon smiled and reached out to stroke the little dragon's head. "Thank you, Iggy. And thank you for being Thenio's friend. I'm really glad he met you."

 

---

 

Everyone was quiet as they left the park. Iggy seemed to be in a good mood. He was being carried in Thenio's arms and was humming softly while still holding onto his wooden chicken. The doll was too large for Humerus to carry, so Bero had it in his hand. But Thenio noticed the red and gold dragon glancing down at it occasionally, as though making sure it was still there.

It was obvious what both dragons were planning to do once they got back to Ariom's house.

The three humans, on the other hand, were all deep in thought.

"I'm sorry." Thenio finally spoke up as they reached the golem carriage. "I didn't expect things to get weird like that."

Ariom paused with his hand on the carriage door and looked back at him. The dragons also looked at him, finally distracted from their new toys.

"It's nothing you need to apologize for," Bero said. "You just wanted to visit your friend and introduce us. There's nothing wrong with that. If anyone should apologize, it's me. I'm the one who spoke up and made things awkward."

"I really...had no idea. About him being a magician," Thenio said in a small, subdued voice.

Bero exchanged a look with Ariom and then put his hand on Thenio's shoulder. "I understand why you're upset," he said gently. "But try not to read too much into it. He clearly cares about you a lot. I think he really was just trying to protect you, like he said. It's actually not that uncommon for people to hide their magic abilities. They do it for all kinds of reasons. My best guess is that he has some kind of rare affinity that people will try to take advantage of if they find out about it."

"I think that's likely," Ariom said, nodding. "Look at how people started flocking around you as soon as they found out about your chaos affinity. If you didn't have the military looking after you, there's a good chance that somebody would try to abduct you in order to have a monopoly on your power. There's still some risk of that, actually. Though most people who know about you are also aware that chaos magic is dangerous to mess with, so I don't think you need to worry too much."

Thinking about that did make it easier to understand Eteon's reasoning, but it didn't exactly cheer Thenio up.

"Come on, let's get you to your new home." Bero patted Thenio's shoulder a couple of times before letting go. "I'm sure this is being a stressful day for you, and you're still under suppression, besides that. You're probably tired." He looked at Ariom. "Why don't I drive the rest of the way? The kid's magic doesn't seem to be acting up too much yet, but I'm sure he's feeling a bit unsettled. I think it would be better for you to ride in the back with him. Just in case."

Ariom nodded, and the two of them switched places.

Thenio unclipped Iggy's leash and coiled it back up before handing it to Ariom. Then he deposited the little dragon and his chicken into the padded box and settled into his own seat. Bero also placed the wooden doll into the box along with Humerus, and the two dragons began a thorough inspection of both toys, sniffing every inch of them and pawing at the doll's clothes. Iggy even licked its hair a little.

"Don't be too rough with them yet," Ariom cautioned them. "I'll put reinforcement enchantments on them when we get home, so try to keep them intact until then, all right?"

Thenio leaned his head back against the seat and watched the dragons, only vaguely aware of where the carriage was going. Bero was right. He really was tired.

He was on the verge of dozing off, lulled by the gently swaying carriage, when he saw Iggy suddenly lift his head up, ears alert.

"Hey, we're here!" the little dragon said excitedly. "Thenio, look! This is our house!"

Thenio roused himself and looked out the window. They were just pulling up to a large, beautiful stone house with a garden in the front, surrounded by a high wrought iron fence. As the carriage turned into the drive, the gate slid open by itself. After they passed through, he looked behind them and saw it quietly closing again.

Clearly a wizard's house, right from the start....

"Let's just go to the north entrance," Ariom said. "We'll give Thenio the grand tour later, after he's had a chance to rest."

Bero nodded. "Got it."

He directed the carriage past the garden and up to the front of the house. But rather than going to the front entrance–a large set of double doors under a fancy stone archway–they turned left and went along the side of the building. When they rounded the corner, Thenio saw a more normal-looking door with planters full of cheerful flowers on either side. The carriage pulled up in front of it and came to a stop.

"This is the entrance we usually use," Ariom said. "The front door is mostly for visitors. A lot of my clients are aristocrats, so the parts of the house they see have to be at least a little impractically fancy."

"That is why I don't want to be a grandmaster," Bero added in, opening the carriage door. "People consider it prestigious to be able to hire a grandmaster, so you inevitably attract annoying people just by having the rank."

"Well, he's not wrong about that...." Ariom said wryly, also exiting the carriage.

The three of them unloaded Thenio's luggage from the back of the carriage and carried it into the house. The door led into an entryway with a set of stairs on one side and what looked like a magic lift on the other. There was a doorway in front of them, and Thenio could see part of a kitchen on the other side of it.

"Let's take the lift," Ariom said, nodding toward that side. "Your bedroom is on the second floor."

They all crowded into the lift box, along with the bags. Thenio wasn't entirely sure why the dragons came along, when they weren't carrying anything, so it would have been easier and faster for them to just fly up the stairwell. Maybe they just liked the novelty of using the lift. Thenio had always enjoyed using the ones in the academy dormitory.

On the second floor, the lift opened onto another room very similar to the one below, except that there was a window in one wall instead of an outside door. The doorway on this floor led to a corridor, and they followed Ariom into it. A short way down the hall, the wall on one side opened onto a large room lined with bookshelves, with a fireplace set into one wall and several comfortable-looking chairs and sofas.

"This is the regular library," Ariom said as the group paused for a moment so that Thenio could look around. "There's another library room in the other wing of the house where we keep magic reference books. You're welcome to use the books here whenever you want. Just put them back when you're done with them."

Thenio's bedroom was on the other side of the hallway, just past the entrance to the library. His eyes widened in surprise as he followed Ariom through the door. He'd been expecting something like his bedroom at home, but this was practically a whole apartment. The door opened onto a spacious study room that had a desk, sofa, and several bookshelves, along with a small fireplace. Further in was the actual bedroom, plus a walk-in closet and private bathroom.

"You look a little overwhelmed," Bero said with a chuckle, watching Thenio look around the place. "Were you expecting a tiny dormitory room like you had at the academy? It's pretty normal to give apprentices and live-in assistants rooms like this, you know?"

"This is where Toflyn used to live!" Iggy said, jumping around on the bed while Humerus watched him disapprovingly from Bero's shoulder. "We cleaned it up and fixed all the magic leaks so you could stay here."

"Toflyn was my last apprentice," Ariom explained in response to Thenio's confused expression. "Also my cousin. He finished his apprenticeship and moved out a few months ago."

"Won't you need this room when you get a new apprentice?" Thenio asked uncertainly.

Ariom shook his head. "There are several guest rooms on the third floor. I can remodel one of those if I need to. And I'm not planning to take on another apprentice anytime soon."

"He's a bit antisocial, this guy," Bero said, looking at his nephew with a wry smile. "He doesn't like having apprentices he doesn't know well, so he pretty much only does it for relatives. It's a pity. He can be a really good mentor when he feels like it."

Ariom scowled at him. "I don't have to have apprentices if I don't want to. Don't nag." His expression softened as he turned back to Thenio. "Anyways, don't worry about that. You can use this room as long as you need to. Why don't you take some time to settle in?" He looked at Iggy, who was still hopping up and down on one of the pillows. "Iggy, do you want to stay here with him for a while?"

"Mmm!" Iggy stopped jumping and nodded, his tail waving enthusiastically.

"Can you calm down and play quietly, so Thenio can rest?"

"I can! I'll be super quiet!"

"Right...." Ariom gave the dragon a skeptical look. Then he sighed and shook his head. "Well, he's been all hyped up and bouncing around for hours now. He's probably about to reach his limit, too, so I don't think he'll bother you too much." He went over to the bed. "Come here, little guy. Let me take your harness off."

Iggy obediently trotted over and stood still while Ariom unbuckled the leather harness and slipped it off.

"I'll take your new chicken with me so I can put a reinforcement on it, all right? Do you want to play with Obby for a while instead?" When Iggy nodded, Ariom held his hand against the harness, palm up. With a faint shimmer of magic particles, the black plush chicken appeared in his hand, along with a couple of reddish-brown sticks. "It's been a while since lunch, so I'll leave a couple of snack sticks here, too. You eat these and play quietly with Obby while Thenio rests, okay?"

"Wait. How did you do that?" Thenio asked, staring at the plush chicken.

"He took them out of my pocket!" Iggy said, happily taking the toy and snacks from Ariom's hand. "Obby rides in my harness pocket when we go outside."

"That thing has a space pocket in it? Seriously?"

"Just a small one," Ariom said, looking a little puzzled at Thenio's reaction. "Iggy's so tiny that a regular pouch would be too bulky for him to carry around, so I installed a space pocket instead."

No wonder he hadn't cared about the cost of a message book.... Space pockets were a level above space compression bags and were considered the ultimate magic storage tools. They were extremely useful and in high demand, but very few enchanters could make them, which meant that they were insanely expensive. Thenio blinked, dumbfounded, at the innocent-looking leather harness in Ariom's hand. That thing was probably worth more than his family's entire house. And Ariom let his hyper little dragon wear it around like it was nothing....

That was the moment when Thenio finally realized that he'd just stepped into an entirely different world than the one he'd woken up in that morning.

 

---

 

After putting the carriage and golem away in their storage shed, Ariom returned to the house and found his uncle sitting in the guest room that he was staying in, watching Humerus' doll walk around on a table. The red dragon was nowhere to be seen.

"Oh? Looks like he's getting the hang of it pretty quickly." Ariom stood next to the table and watched the doll with interest.

The doll stopped and looked up at him. "This puppet is really good! It's like it was made for me. It's so easy to control, it's almost creepy."

"Creepy, huh? Look who's talking." Ariom made a face at the wooden puppet that was speaking with Humerus' voice. Then he turned to his uncle. "So? What do you think about him?"

"Which one?"

"Let's start with Eteon. I know you were trying to play things down a bit in order to not upset Thenio too much, but that guy is definitely suspicious. Letting on that he was a magician was obviously deliberate. If he were really afraid of people finding out about his magic, he never would have slipped up like that. That guy has seriously good magic control. He had his power so well hidden that I wouldn't have noticed anything if he hadn't let on that he knew about Humerus. I can count on one hand the number of magic users I've met who could pull that off."

"I agree," Uncle Bero said, nodding thoughtfully. "I think he really was worried about Thenio's reaction to finding out. But I didn't get the feeling that he was afraid of us at all. He may or may not have a rare affinity, but I think he's powerful enough that he doesn't have to worry about being abducted or exploited. It's more likely that he just doesn't want to be bothered."

"Then why let us find out at all?"

"It's hard to say for sure, but...it was probably a warning. He knows enough about us to know how much we would be able to infer about him from those small pieces of information. The fact that he's powerful enough to hide if he wants to. The fact that he deliberately let us know he's that powerful. And he straight-out told us that he cares about Thenio a lot."

"So the message is, 'Take good care of this kid, or else....' Is that it?" Ariom sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. "Just what have I gotten myself into...? Do you think I should ask the guild to investigate him?"

"Absolutely not." His uncle's voice was unusually sharp. "Don't mess with that guy, Ariom. I mean it. He should be friendly enough as long as he thinks we're trying to help Thenio. But he's dangerous."

Ariom looked down at the wooden doll, which was quietly standing and listening to the conversation. "Is that what you think too, Humerus?"

The doll nodded. "His magic smells tasty. But scary. Very scary. Like a big, strong monster. If I met him in the wild, I would stay far away from him. He probably won't hurt us, but he could, if he wanted to."

Ariom frowned. It was different from Iggy's, but Humerus' magic sensitivity was also extremely high. And his assessments of people were usually spot on. "Didn't you say the same thing about Thenio's magic when I showed you one of his magic crystals?"

"Right. It's kind of the same." The puppet nodded again. "Thenio's magic smells even tastier than Eteon's. And a little less scary. Like a small monster. I wouldn't attack him, but I probably wouldn't run away, either."

"Is there a connection between the two, do you think? I'm pretty sure Eteon doesn't have a chaos affinity. But did he already know about Thenio's? Did he get close to him on purpose?"

Humerus somehow manipulated the doll's wooden shoulders into a shrug. "Maybe? I think he really does care about Thenio, though. He's not trying to hurt him or take advantage of him."

"Hmm. I guess all we can do for now is stay a bit cautious of him, then." Ariom looked back at his uncle. "And what about Thenio? What's your impression of him so far? Apart from the fact that his magic smells tasty," he added, glancing at Humerus' puppet.

"It's too early to say much." Uncle Bero frowned. "He seems like a good kid. Very sincere. I think he'll be a good assistant for you, if you can keep his magic under control. Just.... I don't know. He gives me a weird feeling. I'm not sure how to explain it." He shook his head. "I know you specifically wanted me to take a look at his reaction to ambient magic, but I haven't seen enough to really have an opinion on that yet. None of the places we went today had enough magic in them. I'll have to keep watching him a little longer."

"Well, that's fine. I didn't expect to be able to solve everything in one day." Ariom sighed. "I'm heading to the workroom to put some enchantments on Iggy's toy." He held up the wooden chicken. "Do you want me to do that one, too, while I'm at it?" He gestured toward the doll.

"Just be careful not to ruin it, all right? I really like this thing." The doll lay down on the table and then stopped moving, its body going completely limp as Humerus' magic left it.

Ariom reached out and picked up the doll. As he turned to leave the room, he saw Humerus appear in the doorway. The red and gold dragon was floating in mid-air.

"You know how weird that looks, don't you?" Ariom said, frowning at him. "Try not to let Thenio see you floating like that. We need to make sure he doesn't get too emotional while his magic is still unstable." He shook the doll a little. "Where were you controlling this thing from?"

"The room at the other end of the hall. The one Seyli uses when she stays here," Humerus said happily. "That far away! On my first try! I know I said that guy Eteon is a monster and all, but he really does make good puppets."