They emerged in Delph’s house. Damien kicked a book on the ground, sending it flying through the air. Delph flicked his hand and a portal appeared before the book, swallowing it up and depositing it in the professor’s hands.

Damien ground his teeth and flopped down in the couch, his hands clenching at his sides as he gathered himself. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to throw a temper tantrum.”

“If the book had feelings, I’m sure it would understand,” Delph said, tossing it aside. “Derrod is an insufferable man. When I was still on the frontlines, I had my fair share of cursing sessions after dealing with him.”

“I never knew how bad he was,” Damien said, grinding the material of his pants in one of his hands. “He’s never done something like this.”

“He probably didn’t consider you a threat before,” Delph said. “Or worse, an opportunity. Before you joined Blackmist, you wanted to be a researcher, didn’t you? That wouldn’t have had any major implications on the kingdom, so it doesn’t surprise me that he cared so little. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Damien replied. “He was never really my father. I just need to keep him away from everyone else.”

“You might find that difficult to do while at Forsad,” Delph said. “But Derrod probably won’t push too hard there. He wouldn’t want to risk aggravating Yui. I trust that, at the least, your goal for the meeting was accomplished?”

“If he keeps his word,” Damien said bitterly.

“He will,” Delph said. “Derrod is many things, but he doesn’t break his word when he gives it. Well, not unless it would hurt the kingdom. He’d punt a baby into a Devourer Beast’s mouth if the Queen asked him to.”

“Good to know my father is such an upstanding person full of admirable morals.”

“Hey, at least he was a deadbeat,” Delph said. “Would have been worse if he actually rubbed off on you.”

Damien couldn’t keep himself from laughing. “I seriously hope you never take up counseling.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t.”

A few minutes passed in silence and Damien fully suppressed the turmoil brewing in his heart.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” Damien said. “Derrod clearly knows how to fight the Corruption, as do you and Dredd. Why did you make Yui and the other students come to me and Sylph for training? And for that matter, how come there weren’t any actual adults involved? It feels like they’re the ones that need to know this.”

Delph cocked an eyebrow and took a book from one of his shelves, brushing it off and sitting down in a chair across from Damien. “Why do you think?”

“It seems pointless. I mean, it’s probably good to be able to fight back against the Corruption, but it should be the strong mages and professors who know how to do it, not a bunch of students.”

“It would be quite foolish to leave the fate of the world entirely in the hands of a group of children,” Delph agreed. “But why would we do that?”

“Huh? But – wait. Did you just train the other teachers yourself?”

“For those who needed to be trained, Dredd and I taught,” Delph said. “Many did not. There are a lot of very powerful and resourceful mages in the kingdom. If there weren’t, we would have lost the frontlines long ago.”

“So what’s the point of sending everyone over to me? You could have taught them yourself.”

“I could have,” Delph said. “But that would have been a massive waste of my time. I have better things to do than teach a bunch of children how to fight in my free time. I already do that for a living. It’s much easier to just have someone else do it for me.”

“Is that really it? You just didn’t want to do it, so you sent them my way instead?”

“What do you think?”

“Part of me wants to say yes.”

“That part of you is wrong,” Delph said, flipping the page and glancing up at him. “Think harder.”

“I’m coming up blank. Everything really just points to you being lazy.”

Delph closed the book with a snap. He let out a weary sigh. “I suppose I can’t get too peeved about that. I am lazy. Trying hard is for people a lot younger than I am. You’ll get burnt out and exhausted with the world soon enough. Given today’s events, I’ll just give you this one for free. I sent them to you for training.”

“That is remarkably useless,” Damien said. “They told me that themselves.”

“It wasn’t for their training,” Delph replied. “It was yours. Evidently, you missed it. I doubt the significance was as lost on Sylph, but she’s got her own problems to worry about. Derrod was right about one thing today, Damien. You’re growing in strength, but there’s more than one kind of power. Even the strongest living mage needs support sometimes.”

“I’m not sure I follow. You think they’re going to help us fight the Corruption?”

“They might. They might not.” Delph shrugged. “That wasn’t the point. It isn’t their power that really matters. If I were some wise, mystical figure, I’d probably tell you to figure the rest of this out yourself. Unfortunately, I’m impatient. As annoying as it is, there’s strength in politics. By training all of them, you indebt them to you. Since it was a favor given freely, it also makes you look better in their eyes.”

“That sounds like crap Nolan and Yui are worried about. But not all of them were nobles,” Damien pointed out. “Was this just to get Yui on my side? I kind of already spent my favor.”

“It’s not about the petty little favors that nobles toss around,” Delph said, shaking his head and standing up. “It’s about how they feel toward you. You’ve helped them. Many people in that group already consider you a friend. Building those bonds is important, and not for fighting monsters. You need a group of people to support you. Shoulder the weight of the world on your shoulders and eventually something will give out. They might not be able to pick that burden up themselves, but at least the wolves won’t move in for the strike when you’re weak if they’re there to help.”

“That’s awfully specific,” Damien said slowly.

“Read it in a book somewhere,” Delph said gruffly, his eyes narrowing. He traced a line in the air, creating a gray portal. “And I am suddenly getting the urge to have my house back to myself before nosy students start digging around. I’ll see you for training tomorrow, Damien.”

Damien rose from the couch. “Thanks, Professor.”

“Teaching is my job.”

“Not for the advice. For everything else.”

He stepped through the portal and it snapped shut, leaving Delph alone in a darkening room, his eyes unreadable.

Damien threw himself into his practice the rest of the day. Sylph got back a few hours after he did, looking thoroughly exhausted. She flopped into bed and got into a cross legged position to meditate. Henry returned to Damien’s shadow, but he didn’t say anything to avoid distracting Damien. He worked until a knock on the door that night interrupted him.

Sylph opened it and let Quinlan inside. The older girl carried a small basket of food in one of her hands.

“I brought something to eat,” she said, holding it out. “Since you paid for dinner last time.”

“Oh, you didn’t have to do that,” Damien said, pushing himself upright and shaking his legs out to get the feeling back into them.

“It’s appreciated, though,” Sylph added.

“It only felt right,” Quinlan said. She dug around in her pocket and pulled out a slip of paper covered with runes. “I did what you said I should practice, Damien. This is the latest attempt at drawing the basic runes.”

He took it from her and examined the paper. The strokes had gone through significant improvement from what she’d shown him yesterday. They were much neater and more precise. There were still a few slight inconsistencies and mistakes in the drawings, but it looked as if a different person had drawn them.

“This is great progress,” Damien said, handing it back to her. “If you can keep this up, we might actually have a chance of getting your goal. I’m just not sure if this pace can continue once we get to the more difficult parts.”

“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” Quinlan said, revealing several new pieces of chalk.

“Food first,” Damien said. Quinlan pursed her lips, but nodded her understanding. All three of them ate, then Damien set about teaching her as he had promised.

Sylph watched over his shoulder as he went over some more advanced runes and some basic linking techniques. She occasionally asked a question, but mostly tried to stay out of the way to avoid bothering them.

They worked well into the night before Damien called it off, once more assigning Quinlan some homework. She headed off and the other two went to bed shortly after. Before Damien fell asleep, he brought Henry up to speed about his meeting with Derrod.

“We could always kill him,” Henry suggested. “He thinks he knows the full extent of your power, but he’s got no idea. If we worked together at full strength, there’s a good chance I could put a blade through his heart before he realized what was happening.”

Tempting. And that isn’t a good thing. Can’t you suggest something more peaceful? I’m not supposed to want to murder my own father.

“You should have gone to someone else if you wanted some comforting human bullshit,” Henry said with a mental shrug. “I’m not that far gone. Yet. The other day, I found myself thinking that it might be fun to take a walk around Blackmist to admire the scenery. A walk! And not even to eat a few goats, although now that I think about it, the goats would be a good addition.”

That doesn’t sound like such a bad thing to me. Minus the goat part.

“Of course it doesn’t. But what kind of self-respecting Void creature goes around on peaceful walks?”

I doubt most Void creatures go around eating goats that taste like cheese either.

“Well, if they ever tasted them, they would. Speaking of goats… I’ll be back tomorrow. I have a visit to make.”

Wait, what?

Henry slipped out of his shadow and darted out of the room before Damien could press the matter. Damien rolled his eyes and gave up. There wasn’t any way for him to chase Henry, even if he wanted to. He let sleep take him.

The next week was much of the same routine. He and Sylph trained, either at class with Delph and Dredd or on their own, then met up with Quinlan to practice runecrafting. Sylph sat in on some of his lessons and worked with Henry during others.

Time passed and the day of the expedition grew closer. When only three days remained before they were set to leave, Damien and Sylph took a break from their routine to return to the pavilion where the other non-Blackmist students were staying and see how everyone else was doing.

Remarkably, almost nothing had changed. Yui’s group sat with the Goldsilk students at the same table overlooking the arena. Mark and Elania were busy training in the corner of the arena, while Teddy and the still unnamed hooded figure watched over them from the tables.

There were only two differences. The first was Quinlan, who was nowhere to be found. If Damien had to guess, she was probably locked up in her room, practicing runes. The other was Nolan, who was sitting on the sandy ground of the arena and watching Mark spar with Elania.

“Haven’t seen either of you in a while,” Mark said, blocking a kick and shoving Elania back, knocking her to the ground. She lashed out, trying to take the boy’s legs out from under him.

Sand roiled, raising to block the attack. Golden light flowed off Elania’s leg, wrapping around the sand and striking Mark in the stomach. He spun with the blow and Elania used the opportunity to stand.

“Hi,” she said. A rock pelted her in the stomach and Mark copied the move Elania had just used, knocking her to the ground for the second time.

“Have you been training?” Mark asked.

“What do you think?” Damien replied with a bemused grin. Elania sent several cylinders of gold light flying at Mark, forcing him back.

“Hold on,” Mark said, dodging Elania’s attack and diving forward, tackling her. Sand wrapped around him, encasing both him and her lower half before setting itself like stone. “You lose. You need to be more mobile when fighting someone with stronger defenses than you are.”

“I was doing good until Damien and Sylph showed up!” Elania complained. “I got distracted.”

“Don’t,” Mark said, standing up and allowing the sand to slough off him. Elania scrunched her nose and stuck a hand out. Mark glanced at it, then reached out and pulled the girl to her feet.

“It looks like you’re improving,” Damien said. “Good job.”

“Really? How can you tell?”

Mostly because Mark isn’t constantly insulting you.

“Just because your movements look more fluid,” Damien said. “And it looks like Mark is actually taking things seriously. He wouldn’t be bothering if you weren’t.”

“Oh, that’s true,” Elania said, her face lighting up. “Mark’s a good teacher.”

“I just like hitting people.”

“We all knew that already,” Damien said with a chuckle. “Have we missed anything this last week? I haven’t really left my room much.”

“Not really. The professors are all busy,” Mark said irritably. “They won’t tell us anything about Forsad other than some strong mage is going to be babying us.”

“Figures,” Damien said, keeping his face straight. “Good to know I’m not completely out of the loop.”

“There has been one small thing,” Nolan said, rising from his spot in the corner and brushing the sand off his legs. He gave Damien a wide smile. “It worked.”

“Did it really?” Damien asked, grinning. “That’s great! I was a little worried, to be honest.”

“Went better than I could have expected,” Nolan said cheerfully. “I owe you a lot, Damien.”

“I’m just glad I could help. Don’t worry about it.”

Nolan smirked. “Maybe I’ll do just that. I’m not going to Forsad with the rest of you, but I’ve just been hanging out here to watch Mark train. I’ve never seen him do something for someone else, so it’s been quite entertaining.”

“Hey!” Mark snapped. “I do things for people all the time. I’m very mag – mugh – meghnamus?”

“Magnanimous?” Sylph offered.

“That’s the one,” Mark said.

They all stared at him for a moment before bursting into laughter, Mark included.

“You want to see just how much stronger you’ve gotten?” Mark asked, nodding at Damien.

“Hold on,” Sylph said, raising a hand. “This time, it’s my turn. It’s been too long since we fought.”

“All you had to do was ask,” Mark said. A grin crossed his face as the others all took a few steps back, giving them space.