“The wars with both our neighbors have indeed ended,” Seika said, “but that doesn’t mean that skirmishes don’t take place here and there along the borders. Both our neighbors to the east and west have officially accepted their defeat, but their people still make attempts to take back their lands. And the Holy Order still strikes the so-called rebels with battlemages.”

Over the past year, Seika had filled in a lot of gaps regarding how the Order operates and had dismantled a lot of myths surrounding people and offices we’d previously admired. I remembered yearning to become a battlemage, and cursing my predicament of not having mana, until Seika explained how our brother had climbed up the ranks so fast and had earned himself the name ‘the butcher of Elysia’.

Whenever those whose lands the Order had conquered tried to take back what was rightfully theirs, my brother was sent in. He’d arrive in the morning and by the afternoon he’d be back in Elysia with not a single manaless left alive to tell of their attempt to liberate their lands. Most people in the Order didn’t like him but he was swift and effective, not caring for anything else, much like the Order itself.

“Speaking of the Order,” said Man, “once you’re all cleaned up and ready, I’d like to talk to you about some news from Elysia.”

The day was approaching when Archon Simeon, one of the Holy Order’s leaders, would arrive in Leka An to negotiate with the king. I noticed many of my people, the people of the tower, were becoming increasingly nervous.

Our lengthy daily training routines had helped a lot with our confidence and the friendships we built on this side of the Endless Sea came a long way in making us feel safe. Yet, faced with the prospect of coming close to one of the heads of our former church, memories of our helplessness and the hardships we went through were paralyzing us.

We moved away from the clearing in which we usually practiced and started walking back through the woods toward our tower. For the past thirteen months, every day without exception, we all woke early and studied how to recognize spells and ways to counter them for a few hours. After that, we all moved to different parts of the forest to XP on monsters and practice with our weapons of choice, guided by weapon masters of Leka An.

Once this segment of our training was over, our favorite part of the day would begin. The spellcasters joined us and groups of three would be pitted against a mana wielder and a weapon master as the last act of our daily training.

Kard, Krysha, and I battled against Man and Seika, who was our designated spellcaster. When we first designed this sort of training schedule, I thought Seika would have to rotate around groups while most of us would need to play pretend with spellcasting.

To my surprise, there were a lot of people with mana living in Zakara, some of them working directly for the king. These were people who were born in different towns and villages of Elysia and had apparently moved here because they didn’t agree with the direction our Holy Order was taking.

Regardless, they were touched by our story which quickly traveled through the lands of Leka An and they flocked here to aid us. Over the past year, they had become increasingly involved in our lives and many of them offered themselves as our designated spellcasters for the purpose of our practice, though I had no doubt they were being paid handsomely by Man or his father.

Now, walking through the forest, it felt as if I was walking through a battlefield, since many of the groups had not yet resolved their fights. I heard orders being shouted and incantations chanted between clings of metal against metal. I saw spells being thrown in so many different colors. Fireballs and rains of hail, the earth cracking, branches and roots stretching to reach their targets, giant obelisks of stone suddenly rising from the ground, and so many more magical attacks.

And yet I didn’t see any of my people injured or falling back. A year ago, when all of this training started, we used to have injuries every day—thankfully nothing more serious than what minor spells couldn’t heal—but lately all of us had advanced enough to get through the fights unscathed. Most of the duels were concluded bloodlessly, with one side gaining the tactical advantage rather than someone being injured.

Once we exited the forest, we made our way toward the tower, walking through one of Zakara’s street markets. Over the course of the thirteen months that had passed since we settled here, the merchants of the market had stopped treating us like temporary residents, trying to sell us the hot new thing which had just arrived, but were rather asking us about our day and being altogether much friendlier. I even noticed some of my people had formed relationships which went beyond simple friendships with Zakara locals.

Such was the case with Man and my sister, though they were discreet about their relationship. Regardless, everyone in the tower knew who was seeing whom, especially when it involved a local, which only made us feel more welcome in Leka An. While nobody had yet moved out of the tower, outsiders now visited us frequently.

Once we reached the tower, each of us went to our rooms after agreeing to meet at our little tavern as soon as we were ready. I used one of the magical devices Krysha had placed in all of our rooms to get cleaned up, and got out of my training robes and into my usual blue ones, before heading back downstairs to the tavern that was now bustling with people.

I quickly spotted Man waving at me from one of the wooden benches at the back, sitting next to my sister. As I walked toward their table, I saw Kard bringing four large mugs of what I supposed was ale from the back of the tavern’s long wooden slab. I joined them and it wasn’t long after I received a mug from Kard that I saw Krysha approaching us as well.

Kard didn’t wait for her to join us and had already downed half of his mug by the time she took a seat next to him. Man tapped the bottom of his mug on the table, as was tradition in Leka An, and took a sip while looking at us. Krysha and I did the same, since we were accustomed to the ways of the people of Leka An, with Kard repeating after us, looking embarrassed that he had he forgotten about it.

“Man has some interesting news,” said my sister, as soon as we all put our mugs down.

“That is such an understatement,” said Kard in a low voice, trying to suppress a belch.

“Nothing has changed for us, Kard,” Man explained, “but the news are indeed very interesting.”

“So what is it?” I asked, my interest piqued.

“We received word through an Elysian messenger asking us to allow for a second archon to visit Zakara,” Man revealed.

“That does not sound good at all!” exclaimed Krysha. “Archon Simeon is powerful enough on his own. If Archon Gideon joins him, Zakara will be looking at a completely different power level… and I don’t even want to think of Archon Adah visiting instead.”

“Krysha, the people of Leka An have protected these lands from archons before,” said Kard, “There’s no need to worry. After all, the archons may be powerful, but they are the heads of the Order now, not battlemages.”

“Never in the history of Elysia have two archons moved outside of the capital for a peaceful reason,” Krysha protested.

“Krysha is right,” Seika said. “Two archons in the same place is never a good sign. And even though they are the heads of the Order now like you said, each one of them is more powerful than a whole battalion. Archon Simeon has held his position for more than fifty years and even though he’s close to a century old, I’ve seen him perform a massive ceremonial spell. It was during one of his visits in the university. Archon Gideon, on the other hand, may be only half his age but he is a very calculating person with a great strategic mind and a very effective spellcaster.”

“What about Archon Adah?” Kard asked.

“Hopefully Archon Adah will never move out of Elysia again,” Seika replied. “I’ve never seen her in person, but I’ve heard stories of her. While she looks as if she’s in the early years of her fifth decade, many of my former professors remember her being an archon since they were children, which means she’s been an archon even longer than Archon Simeon. She’s known among the Order as the chooser of the damned and is a beast of immense mana power, probably the most powerful spellcaster ever to have lived.”

“I had no idea,” Kard said, his demeanor changing after taking a hint from my sister’s now grim expression.

“Do we know who is visiting with him then?” I asked, trying to take the edge off the discussion.

“This is where it gets interesting,” replied Man. “Archon Simeon will be joined by the fourth archon.”