I woke up to the sound of the door opening.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to bother you,” said Kard, who was now standing on the doorstep. “Will you come down for breakfast?”

I nodded, and dragged myself out of bed with a grunt. We walked the long hallway toward the wooden stairway that led down to the main entrance of the inn. The innkeepers didn’t have any children of their own, so nobody knew where things were situated.

Regardless, I saw three teenagers hard at work reheating the already cooked meals that were supposed to be served the previous day at the festival. There were no more than six people having breakfast, but it was a happy surprise to see that, for the most part, they were talking to each other.

I grabbed some bread and eggs and joined them with Kard. They all nodded at me as I sat down but continued with their discussion.

“I’m definitely not against contacting the Order,” said one of the teenage boys sitting at the table. “But what are we going to tell them? That someone from our village killed The Divine and has since disappeared?”

“You don’t even know if The Divine is dead,” answered a girl that was about my age. “Its body isn’t there anymore and that is why we should contact them. We need to find out what happened.”

“All I’m saying is,” the boy continued, “that we should be careful in our dealings with anyone other than us. For The Divine’s sake, angels tried to kill us. We should at least be wary of Its mortal instruments. The Order will leave no stone unturned.”

“What do you think, Adel?” asked a younger girl.

“I agree that we should be careful. The Order will probably send archpriests, if not battalions, to all of the known liturgy locations. I don’t like it, but it might be best if we aren’t here when they arrive.”

“But since they’ll investigate all of the liturgy locations,” the first teenage girl protested, “they’ll find out what happened regardless of whether we tell them or not.”

“This puts us in a terrible position,” came Kard’s sudden reply, as he stopped playing around with the thin metal bar he carried around everywhere. I had heard him refer to it as his ‘metal thingy’ and fidgeting with it meant that he was in calculating-mode. “I’m guessing that this liturgy location will seem wildly different to them than the rest. Even if we dispose of the angel bodies—which is no each task—how are we going to explain more than a hundred manaless teenagers with no adults around?”

Nobody replied for a few seconds and more people came downstairs for breakfast as the silence lingered.

“Let’s talk more about this once everyone has had breakfast, or at least woken up a bit,” Kard said finally as he leaned his chair against the wall and resumed flipping his metal thingy around his thumb.

An hour later, almost everyone had exited their rooms and was gorging on eggs, bread, and cheese. The few that had not yet woken up or worse, did not want to get out of bed, were half-convinced, half-forced to do so and joined the rest of us downstairs.

By the time the majority had eaten, the word had spread that Kard and I wanted to talk to them about what we were going to do now. I was more than glad to have Kard with me. I didn’t want to be responsible for deciding on behalf of everyone, as I already had plans of my own.

I needed to find my siblings and tell them what had happened to our parents but it seemed that my duties here did not end with organizing the funeral. As I considered this, Kard jumped on one of the tables.

“So,” he said loudly, to get everyone’s attention. His hands were in his pockets, though I could tell he was still fidgeting. “What do we do now?”

I was surprised to see how captivating and confident of a public speaker he was. I always thought of him as a timid young man whose only interest and knowledge revolved around dragons.

I could not have been more wrong. He waited a few seconds and just as people were about to raise their hands—exactly as if they were taking part in one of Myriam’s classes—he continued speaking.

“As Adel pointed out, the Order will soon send someone to investigate our village since everyone knows that The Divine appears here during liturgies.” He started pacing forward and backward on the table. “This would be an opportunity to find out more about what happened to The Divine, but it’s also a great risk for us. The golden bodies of the angels and the complete absence of people with mana will be evidence that something strange took place here.”

“For all we know, this might have happened at other liturgy sites as well,” said a male voice from the back of the hall.

“Indeed. That may be the case,” Kard continued. “But we saw many additional angels arriving and I am pretty sure they were divided into legions. That looked to me like angels from other sites came flocking here.”

“This is not what we were expecting, or what we had planned” Krysha chimed in. “We survived the angels’ attack, but we are manaless and with no protective barrier. The Order is an instrument of The Divine in our world. If they find the bodies of the angels, who is to say that they won’t punish us all?”

A murmur of collective agreement spread through the hall.

“Let’s say that we hide the bodies, and they do not find them,” she continued. “Let’s also say that we create a great and believable lie for why we are here alone and so many adults are missing. And let’s also say that these trained powerful priests with thousands of spells in their repertoire do actually believe us and everyone sticks to the same story.”

By that time, most of the faces in the room were frowning at the extremely low likelihood of all these let’s-says actually happening.

“In this best-case scenario, they will take us away, to foster homes, schools or monasteries.” Krysha raised her voice for the next part. “They will separate us, from each other and from our homes.”

Nobody liked this idea. Not all of us were friends before the liturgy, and some of the people in the room had traveled here just to receive their mana, but we all saw our families die together and we took care of their bodies together.

That was a bond that few, if any, had shared before. Kard had stopped pacing and was now nodding, with a rather angry expression on his face, his hand holding his metal bar so tight that it bent.

“We need to stay together. All we have is each other,” Kard said, and took a step down onto one of the benches. “For this reason, I think we have to leave.”

Kard now stepped down onto the floor and nodded at me. I knew that he was pushing me to step in and formulate the actual plan but I wouldn’t be following them. I nodded politely, though reluctantly.

Before I could think of any possible options, the questions started coming from the hall.

“Where should we go then?” shouted a female voice.

“How can we continue without mana?” A second question from a younger male voice.

Kard was now smiling at me, a smile that silently said he was confident about how I would manage it. I finally understood what he was doing. He was encouraging me to act. He was pushing me to live in a way that would make my parents proud, just as he was working to make his proud.

I took a deep breath and climbed on the table after all, thinking of the tip that Myriam gave me before leaving.

“We have no mana,” I said loudly and waited for the ruckus to settle down. “But we have each other. And we have resources to last us as long as we want. The market is filled with magical items that would give us a safe life in the wilderness—maybe even portable homes.”

“We should make a catalog of everything that may prove useful on our travels,” claimed Krysha.

“Yes. We will divide into teams again,” I continued. “Equal amount of people per team this time. We have no animals left, so our priorities should be on magical mounts and magically enhanced containers. Any more suggestions?”

“Food and water,” came a swift reply from one of the boys that had helped with preparing breakfast.

“Right,” said Krysha. “Any magical items that can provide us with water and food come as a priority as well.”

“Great,” I said. “Let’s split into groups and meet here in two hours with a full catalog of what we have.”

“There is still the issue of where we will go,” Kard reminded us.

“If I may…” The voice of what sounded like an adult man echoed from the back of the room. “I might have a solution for that.”

I didn’t recognize his voice, and when he stepped closer I was certain that he was not someone who had been living in Nara. He must have traveled here just to receive his mana.

“Please share your solution with us…” I hesitated at the end of my sentence, giving him the opportunity to introduce himself.

Name : Manal Im

Race : Human

Class : Tyrant

Level : 27

“Certainly. My name is Manal Im. Most people call me Man, for short,” he said.