Unsurprisingly, Damien and Henry had slightly different ideas on what sleep was. It was one thing to oversleep for a few hours. Damien could even understand sleeping through the entire day – he’d done it once or twice.

Four years passed before Damien spoke with Henry again. Many things changed over those years – most of which I find trivial and entirely uninteresting. Damien got a girlfriend for all of three days before they broke up. He studied. He trained. He got another girlfriend – that one lasted a whole month before she realized she could do better. He studied. He trained. You get the picture, and I can’t be bothered to elaborate on it.

It wasn’t that Damien didn’t try to awake Henry. He lasted all of two weeks before he first reached out and mentally prodded the Eldritch creature – to absolutely no response. The next day, he tried harder.

A whip of mental energy scored across his mind, giving him the worst headache he’d ever had. It lasted for just over an hour before fading away. In some way, Damien was almost glad. Despite his desire to learn magic, the fear that he’d slip up and let Henry free on the world never quite left his mind. It ingrained itself deeply within him, and he only tried to contact the creature one hundred and fifteen times after that.

He got closer to awaking Henry with each attempt, but the creature stubbornly refused to budge. Whenever Damien pressed hard enough to bring Henry close to consciousness, a powerful sense of impending doom came over him. He got the feeling that waking the ancient entity within himself for a trivial matter would have gone over very badly. However, Damien did manage to build an impressive pain tolerance.

On the day Damien turned seventeen, he found himself deep in thought. This was a rare thing for him, as he spent most of his time deep in other people’s thoughts. Many mortals have this ludicrous notion that the only way to learn is through copying, so they often have little time to develop their own, original ideas.

Nonetheless, Damien was having one of those days where inspiration struck. On this day, Damien found himself desperately wishing that he’d never summoned Henry when he was thirteen years old. I’ll give him one thing – his goal to use magic and become a mage didn’t waver. Not once.

Unfortunately, he’d already summoned his companion. A mage could only have a single companion, and the contract he’d agreed to required both him and Henry to agree to the cancelation.

To make matters worse, Damien’s seventeenth birthday held more significance than just getting one year closer to death.

Seventeen was the youngest age allowed to join a mage college. In my opinion, the entire thing was a sham for a bunch of teenagers to hang out and waste their parent’s money, but nobody cares what I think.

Damien found himself in a bit of a haze as he sat at the kitchen table, his mother sitting across from them. She’d made pancakes, which only served to strengthen the sense of déjà vu assaulting the young man. Granted, Hilla Vale made pancakes every day, which lessened the feeling a bit.

“Are you going to eat your pancakes?” Hilla asked Damien. She’d barely aged in the last four years – a benefit of being a mage with a companion.

Damien half-heartedly took another bite. They were delicious, of course. He sighed and set his fork down next to his plate, taking a sip of water to clear the sweet taste out of his mouth.

“I’m worried, mom. Will the summoning assistants even let me go to the school if I can’t summon a companion?”

“What they don’t know won’t hurt them,” Hilla replied. “You’d just better hope your mysterious friend wakes up before the testing or summoning occurs.”

“You aren’t making this any better,” Damien said. He grimaced and shook his head. “I wish I hadn’t been such an idiot when I was thirteen.”

“You’re still an idiot,” Hilla said. “You’re just older and better able to conceal it.”

“Thanks, mom.”

“No problem,” his mother said, laughing. “Now, if you’re just going to push your food around, you might as well go wait for the mages to arrive. I can already tell that you want to go.”

Damien rocketed up from the table. Hilla rolled her eyes and rose as well.

“Hold your horses, Damien. I’ve got something for you.”

She reached under the kitchen counter and pulled out a large bundle wrapped in paper. Damien took it from her. It wasn’t too heavy, but there was some weight to it. The package was a little squishy. He tore it open, revealing a heavy blue coat along with a huge white scarf.

“It’s mage armor,” Hilla explained when she saw Damien’s confused expression. “You generally get it once you go out into the field, but I figured now was as good a time as ever. Once you get access to your magic, you can channel it into this robe and it’ll turn as hard as steel upon impact.”

Damien took the coat and put it on. The scarf was huge, making a large ring around his head and covering the bottom half of his face. If Damien pulled it up, he could have easily covered his head and had scarf to spare.

“You look great. Now, come here. You’re not too old to hug your mother, are you?”

Damien rolled his eyes and gave his mother a tight hug. The scarf squished against her face. The two of them laughed as they let go. Hilla gave her son a curt nod and made a shooing motion.

“Now, get out. I’ve got parties to throw now that I’ll have the house to myself,” Hilla said.

Damien swallowed. He grabbed the travel bag leaning against his chair and nodded. Despite his mother’s words, he could see the sadness in her eyes. Even so, excitement and fear churned in his chest.

“Git!” Hilla ordered, grabbing the young man and pushing him out the door. “And don’t even think about doing bad in school.”

“I won’t,” Damien promised. His mother gave him a nod. Then she blinked and rubbed her eyes.

“Bye, Damien,” his mother said.

“Bye, mom. I’ll see you soon,” Damien replied.

Hilla nodded as Damien turned and started down the road towards the center of town. His mother watched him for several more seconds before closing the door and locking it with a final click.

There was already a small crowd forming near the glistening fountain at the town square. Damien spotted the mayor, several other kids his age and a few older than him, and dozens of parents.

A small caravan consisting of three wagons already sat by the fountain on the cobbled road. Three men dressed in red robes and all around forty years of age stood beside the cart, talking to the Mayor.

“Only eight this year, Mayor Shindal?” the tallest man asked, rubbing his short beard and casting a critical eye over the teenagers.

“Nine,” The mayor said as he spotted Damien making his way through the crowd. “Damien will also be going.”

The red robed mage glanced at Damien. His eyebrow raised slightly at the young man’s coat, but he just shrugged and gave a curt nod.

“The wagons seat eight, so one of you will be in a different wagon from the rest of your friends,” the mage said.

“I’m fine with that,” Damien said, volunteering himself. He didn’t have much in the way of feelings towards his classmates. He’d drawn apart with most of his friends after the incident, and he didn’t have any particular desire to rekindle the relationship.