I’d gotten a taste for magic. I poured dirt into the inventory regent until I was almost out of mana. Then I meditated and did it again. Indra had taught me how to use the features of the box, allowing me to activate it at will. It had taken our entire lesson, and now I could turn off the regent at will.

When it wasn’t activated, it was just a normal box.

That made me wonder where the dirt had gone. My father and Indra had mentioned emptying it. That meant it probably wasn’t disappearing into a black hole. There could be a real bag inside there. Or another universe. Both were possible.

My mind still hurts thinking about it.

I couldn’t see any symbols or signs of magic when it was activating. I asked my father about that, and he said that people prefer the regent to be hidden. After all, having a treasure chest on you was a lot easier if it didn’t glow every time you used it.

I’d slept well that night and hadn’t activated the mark. The morning was the same as usual until my father walked into the room. He was wearing a set of black robes.

I didn’t know our work clothes would be robes.

That’s so cool. Back on earth I was told to dress for the job I want. Now my dream of getting that job has come true.

I also noticed a new addition to his outfit. A single silver pin was added to the middle of his robe, near the collar. The pin had a small dent in the side, like that section had been grated off. Then there was the inside. It looked like a liquid.

I stared at it, and the pin shimmered. It was moving. No. There were symbols inside it, swirling in and out of existence. They looked like they were immersed in liquid. I knew that only magicians got masks, this must be the scriber equivalent.

My dad was a silver-ranked scriber?

I didn’t know what that meant, or how scribers were ranked, it looked impressive to me. I played with the pin as we made our way to work.

“Today we’re going to be with Femew. Play nice.” My father smiled. “We’ll be using the observatory.”

I remembered. There was a symbol carved into a chunk of meat that they kept in their fridge.

“Unknown symbol.” I confirmed.

“Exactly.” My dad patted my head. “The observatory might help us find a similar symbol. Remember, symbols are created because concepts exist. So if there’s a similar concept out there, we can try and use it to figure out what this symbol does.”

That sounded like a lot of work. I was just an unpaid intern.

When we got to the second floor of the office building Femew was already waiting for us. He had robes on as well and was holding the symbol meat in his hands.

“Meat. Why?” I pointed at the slab of flesh.

“We’re bringing it because we can’t rely on our copies being accurate.” He answered. “Monster flesh gets damaged. We can’t tell which line belongs to a cut and which belongs to the symbol.”

“Oh.” I nodded.

My father chuckled. “Flesh is also malleable. Exact specifications are important with symbols. If the Zodiac soldiers squashed any part of it then our work gets harder. We’ll find the original symbol, but we can’t rely on copies until we do.”

We made our way across the building and passed a couple of walls. We stopped in front of a familiar door. I’d been here before.

It was the door to Cassandra’s office.

Were we bringing her along to the observatory? She’d seemed pretty busy with her own project yesterday.

My father didn’t knock as he opened the door. He opened it and let Femew through first, and followed closely behind him.

The office’s rocky path was difficult to traverse. My father had to free up one hand to grab onto the nearest stones and balance himself. It was a good thing he did, I looked over the cliff edge and…

Cliff edge?

What.

“We’ll likely find what we need in the dome.” My father adjusted my position as he moved.

I looked up at the sky and saw another cliff towering above us. From its middle a fiery yellow light cascaded down, dripping into a slew of streams that rushed past my father and Femew.

What?

“Are you sure? I think the archives might be our best starting point.” Femew said.

He jumped over one of the glowing streams and frowned as the edge of his robe dipped into it. He took it out and the robe glowed. I saw a small patch of green growing on it, rising, and then dropping to the ground. It rolled underneath of the nearby rocks.

“This is your project. The final call is yours.” My father held me tight as I struggled to get his attention. “We can go through a lot of the relevant sections of the archives today.”

“What?” I asked.

“That’s what I was thinking. If it has something to do with blood, then that’s better than starting with no information.” Femew ignored my question.

Hey. No.

Stop talking and explain what’s happening. I grabbed onto my father’s jacket and pulled.

“What?” I repeated. “What?”

“Teral, I think your baby is broken.” Femew laughed. “Should I flick his nose? It could help.”

My father jumped over another stream and my head was forced up by his arms. I caught a glimpse of something towering above the cliff. A structure of some kind. It looked like the side of an air bubble.

“Okay.” My father landed. “That’s enough teasing.”

He pinched my cheek and I looked up at him questioningly. “Here’s a little work tip. Never put your symbols in a visible place if you can help it. Corporate espionage is a real thing.”

They hid their symbols?

Was the door a portal?

Jackson and Marv had to power the teleportation crystal with mana to teleport. I’d seen it. Twice. It took time and there was an entire cloud of purple that followed the ritual. We’d walked through the door in an instant and without any mana.

Femew drew close to me and smiled.

“This is the observatory. Access to it is a corporate benefit.” He spoke. “Think of this as a library for symbols.”

My father nodded. “It doesn’t belong to us, but the top companies all pay for access to it. It’s a big draw for recruits.”

“But, how?”

I pointed back where the door should be and saw it had been replaced by a set of twin crystals placed side by side, mist spilling out of them. They were still glowing, and tendrils of darkness swam freely inside of them.

“That’s a company secret.” My father put his finger to his lips. “I’m sorry champ, I can’t tell you right now. Maybe once you’re at bronze rank.”

I nodded. I didn’t like it, but I could understand it.

We continued walking and the journey was a long one. There was a whole new world down here, there were trees and rocks as far as I could see.

I brought my stone ball out. I’d kept it in my father’s jacket pocket. I gestured with my hand, and it began floating in the air.

There was a flash of yellow and the ball dropped to the ground, flightless. I stared at it in surprise but neither my father nor Femew minded.

“Whoops. No external magic allowed here champ.” My father bent down and picked up the stone ball. “I’ll take this for now.”

I stared at the ground where the ball had fallen. No mana, no warning. The light had been the same colour of the yellow streams we were passing. I hadn’t felt anything.

Soon we came upon a structure built into the stone. My father pressed his silver pin against it. I heard a creak and then the stone shifted and fell backwards, revealing a platform.

“Hold tight, champ. This is your first time using one of these, but everything is fine.” My father spoke as we walked onto the platform.

The platform made a sound, and then it jolted upwards.

Oh. I giggled. It was an elevator.

I’d been on one of these before, but he didn’t know that.

The platform stopped and I looked around. I was surrounded by trees, and water. The sound of a raging river drew my attention first, and I saw it running through the middle of the scenery. Instead of ending, the water hit a block of ice that was bigger than the Zodiac compound. On the other side of the river was a forest that covered half of the area.

I looked up and instead of a sky there was an opaque dome that shimmered with light. It was the air bubble I’d seen from below. Literally. I could see wind churning across the entire end of the Dome.

I see. These are all elements.

This place was like the cultivation room. Except no mana swirled in the air.

That wasn’t all. There were people walking in and out of every environment. Some were staring into the icy spears jumping out of the ground, others had their hands against trees.

We walked in another direction, past the forest and down some stairs. We were inside the mountain now. Soon we were entering a well-lit area, and stacks of bookcases surrounded us. We made our way to a section labelled ‘blood’.

My work colleagues were going to be stuck in here for a while.

“Nursery?” I asked.

“You’re a little too smart to go bumping into things.” My father smiled. “And nothing can get hurt in the observatory.”

He picked out a book from the shelves and passed it to me. “We’re going to be looking into blood symbols. You’re a bonafide Zodiac worker now, so if you find anything that looks like the symbol, let me know.”

That would’ve made more sense if I could hold the book. It fell on the ground, and I moved the pages delicately. All of them were in pristine condition.

My dad chuckled and picked out his own book. We were going to be searching for a long time. I turned the pages over one by one. I didn’t understand what any of the symbols meant, but I didn’t need to since I knew what our symbol looked like.

All of these were based on a single symbol, the one for ‘blood’. No wonder my dad had only given me the one hundred and twenty-two base symbols in my room.

I spent the next hour combing through the book. My father was flipping through them like hotcakes.

“Hey. Psst.” A voice called out to me.

I looked up.

There was a head staring at me. What?

I blinked and looked again. It wasn’t just a head. It was a head attached to a kid’s body.

In other words, it was an ordinary kid.

“Who are you?” I asked, reluctant to get away from my book.

“I’m glad you asked. Gerial’s my name. Seven years old. Bored out of my mind.” The kid held out his hand.

I raised an eyebrow at him. Some of us liked to read.

“Where are your parents?” I poked a finger at him. “We’re not meant to be alone. We’re kids.”

“I snuck away.” He chatted happily beside me. “Everyone is so stuffy here.”

There was something strange about this boy other than the fact that he was alone in a magical symbol library.

“There’s something strange about you.” The boy raised an eyebrow. “What is that?”

“You think I’m strange?” I frowned. “You’re the strange one.”

Something wasn’t right. I could feel it. I felt like I did when I saw my mother or father. There was a sense of familiarity, like I knew him from somewhere, but it wasn’t me feeling it.

It was something else.

I concentrated, ignoring the boy and bringing forth the empty space in my mind. Everything was normal. There was the earth symbol in the sky, sending out energy, and nothing else.

Wait. There was something…

“Oh, I see, you have the Mark too.” His voice interrupted me. “I didn’t know that could happen. That makes us family, right? I think people call this lineage... brothers?”

“Brothers?” I shook my head.

I would have remembered having a brother. My parents have never mentioned another child, and I’d even heard my mother stating that she’d only had one.

Wait. He’d mentioned the Mark.

I raised my head. “What do you me-”

“Who are you talking to, champ?” My father’s voice called out to me.

He’d looked up from his own book and was staring down at me with a raised eyebrow.

I turned to the boy. “Him… ?”

Dust and air swirled around, greeting my pointing finger, but they were the only things to do so. I looked from side to side, across the bookshelves and at the air above.

There was nobody there.

Femew sighed from the side.

“I think we really did break your baby.”