I lunged at the rabbit shrieker that was dashing towards the boy but I closed my eyes when I saw I wasn't going to make it.

"Aaah!" I heard the boy shout out as something passed beside me.

I opened my eyes just before running into Cinder who had gotten ahead of me and interrupted the rabbit.

Kyiiiii

Seeing that Cinder had just managed to attract the shriekers attention, I powered my jump forward with the mana reinforcement father taught me and slashed at it.

Thanks to my excellent skills, the rabbit jumped head on into my errant slash and lost both its front and hind legs, careening harmlessly into Cinder's flank before dropping to the snow.

I ran up to the boy who was staring wide eyed at me in amazement.

"Th-thank you," he stuttered, but then started thrashing around with his tattered bag to scare off the other shriekers that had come up to nip at the man on the ground.

It seems he had lived this long by whacking away the red eyed bunnies with it.

"Tilvrade! What are you doing here?" Sir Barker's voice surprised me from behind. "I told you- yah!"

For better or for worse, he didn't have the time to finish his scolding as the grey cat jumped at him again.

"Behind you!" the boy shouted and I swivelled around just in time to duck.

I got up again right after and dove towards the small creature, but it hopped away before I could hit it.

The rushes of strength and the wind in my face as I used the mana empowered lunges was both exhilarating and exhausting. I just hoped it wasn't in vain as the rabbits all hopped out of reach of my every swing.

Fortunately for me, Sir Barker walked up to us just as I was feeling I couldn't go on anymore.

He made a few threatening noises at the shriekers and they turned their red eyes on him.

I had been chasing them and interrupting their jumps for so long only for Sir Barker to kill them so easily, simply raising his sword to cleave through them as they jumped head first at him.

Not all of them had died. Some of them were simply injured and still lying behind Sir Barker in the blood stained snow.

Under the jaw, through the eye, on the spine, someone whispered and I looked around.

"Sam?"

No one responded, but it must have been one of the white haired visions who had reminded me. I took out my sword and started looking for the still living shriekers.

They were scattered, a trail of kyiing creatures with malice contorting their snouts, seeming not to register any of the pain that must have gone with their injuries.

It didn't take much effort to kill them. The fur and pelt around their necks gave resistance as I sliced them open. I sometimes had to back away and try a few times to get my hand on them to make sure they didn't bite me as I did the deed.

But soon Sir Barker came back and finished off the last of them and we went back to the boy and the old man.

"You shouldn't have done that," He said, cuffing my head. "You are far too talented for your own good."

"Hehe," I laughed nervously, looking up out of the corner of my eye at the retired knight.

"Your name was Nayen, wasn't it? The shepherd's son. Was it the spined lynx that did this?"

"Please, my father, don't let him die," the boy cried and looked up at us.

"Right, we can find out what happened later," Sir Barker told him. "Come on, get up, or do you need to be carried too?"

"No," he said and tried to stand.

I grabbed his arm to help him up. He seemed to be a bit older than I was, maybe 6 or 7.

"Don't worry, Sir Barker's really strong. We'll take your father back to the manor," I told him.

His father was pretty badly injured. The spined cat must have mauled him.

"Thank you..." He mumbled and I tried to get him over to the pony, out of Sir Barker's way.

I looked around, and then looked again, but I couldn't see the pony anywhere.

Cinder was over by the edge of the field, looking towards us, but not exactly coming to my side.

"I think your pony ran away." Sir Barker said as he stood up. "Fortunately Cinder is still there. You were lucky."

Piuwit

Sir Barker whistled and his own destrier trotted up to him.

"Good boy," Sir Barker told his horse, "come here Nayen." He then talked to the boy. "I can't leave the young master here. Get on my horse and hold onto your father."

"Sir?" The boy asked, "But I don't know how to ride..."

"Sit on the horse, or do you want your father to die?"

I thought that was a bit harsh, but the boy rushed to comply.

"There you go," Sir Barker said as he finished getting the boy and his father onto his horse. "Alright then Nayen, you just hang on. Frijd knows where to go. When you get to the manor, you leave your father on the horse and go knock on the wooden door. Say that Jom Barker sent you, you hear me?"

The boy nodded.

"Home boy," he called, and the destrier trotted forward, not so quickly, but perhaps a bit quickly for the boy who almost lost his balance but then hung on tight to the reins.

"Let's grab your horse then. Don't spook him. I'm already impressed he is still around."

I approached Cinder behind Sir Barker and the horse leaned its head out to sniff at the air as we approached.

"Look at that. He's smart, unlike you. Knows when to make some distance and who to trust."

"It's because I came back that Nayen is still safe though." I said, pouting a bit.

"Maybe," Sir Barker said grudgingly, "or maybe it's because of this horse of yours. I saw how he chased off that first shrieker over there."

I paused. I had forgotten about that. If Cinder hadn't dashed in, I wouldn't have made it in time to do anything. I hadn't actually managed to kill any of the shriekers until Sir Barker came back from his fight.

"But you did good to keep calm and clean up the shriekers. Grizzly business that, but we should take a look at the cat. Might make something of its pelt or spines.

Sir Barker took a quick look, but said he would come back later to see if the corpse was still there.

We started walking back. Sir Barker just carried me on his shoulders in a piggyback, Cinder's reins in his hand.

It had been such a short distance into the forests when we had come, but walking through the snow, it took us what must have been hours before we met with father who had saddled up to find us.

Father had us both get on his horse and we got back soon after that.

"It was a spined lynx. I haven't seen one of those in years. Ehsan must have injured it, or else I would have had a hard time of it."

"It must have come from the east. I've seen their tracks during the summer, though I've never heard of one of them becoming a shrieker. The shepherd and his boy were unlucky."

"Is he going to make it? It won't be good for Olwick if we lose him."

"I told Vis to run to the village and get the wise woman. Did you see his flock out there? Nayen said they had taken them out along the creek."

"Must have all fled."

I listened to father and Sir Barker's conversation, but all I could really hang onto was that Nayen's father wasn't quite so helpless and ordinary as I thought.

Maybe I was just a little bit reckless to run into that fight without knowing what was there...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I didn't see Ehsan, the shepherd again. He was still alive, but quite badly injured and probably wouldn't be able to go out as a shepherd again.

The man was brought to the village where he was taken care of by his wife and the wise woman that father mentioned.

Nayen was taken up by father as the new stablehand.

It was funny how those things changed. I was approaching my 4th birthday soon, and already there had been Vis, the dumb man whose name I had never learned and now Nayen.

"What are you doing?" Nayen asked me as I was sketching one of the arrays in my wax tablet.

I definitely hadn't decided to go sketch in the stables because I was hoping to be noticed by the other boy. It was pure coincidence.

"Oh, just designing a magic rune to stop time." I said offhand. I did that kind of thing all the time.

It's not as if I had been slacking off on figuring out magic since my failure with the sharpening spell. Researchers learn and thrive from their mistakes, they don't just give up and become swordsmen instead.

"Oh." Nayen didn't seem as impressed as I would have expected. "What's a majeekoon?"

I sighed and shook my head. This is why I had to take the burden of being the next lord of Olwick onto my own shoulders. Few could keep up with me.

"Come here, I'll show you." I waved at him. "See this? This is a stasis rune."

"Hmm," he had lost the ability to speak in his awe.

I smiled up at him waiting for his praise.

"Uh, my dad used to draw sometimes too."

"This isn't just a drawing. It's a rune. It let's you keep things like food from going bad with mana." I explained patiently.

"Right..." He seemed to have lost interest. "Lord Tilvrade, I just want to say thank you again. If you hadn't come then, my father would have died for sure, and I probably would have too."

"Oh, right. Don't worry about it. I couldn't just ignore you there," he definitely made the conversation heavy.

"You were so impressive jumping and hitting the shriekers like that. You're not even 4, are you? I'm already 7 and I was so scared when it happened, I was just screaming and waving around the bag..."

"Hey look," I found another chance, "You can do it too. It's just because I use mana like father and Saul. That's what the rune will do too."

"Really? You think I can do that?"

"Yeah, let me teach you," I said, eager to make a new friend and cheer boy up a bit.

"Then let's try tomorrow. I think I should go home now and take care of father."

"Oh... Alright, let's do that then."

I was looking forward to having a friend in the manor. Crion still came to spar sometimes, but we didn't really do much else, and I only saw Eve rarely.

"Lord Tilvrade, I'll see you tomorrow then."

Nayen walked out of the stables, leaving me in the rather chilly place all alone.

I couldn't just leave though. I came to the stables to focus, not just because I wanted to show off to Nayen and make a new friend.

Just wait, I'll show you this stasis rune when it's ready and you'll show me a face filled with surprise!

Achoo!

Maybe I should go inside first though.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Tilly, did you want something?" Simila asked and I looked away quickly.

"No, nothing."

How did she even see me? She had been looking the other way to stoke the fire in my room.

I spent many mornings observing Simila, trying to catch her make a mistake or do something incredible. Maybe she would adjust the logs around with her bare hand or jump out the window as a shortcut to the kitchen.

Father didn't seem very surprised when she told him she took care of Jemson and Vis that night at the beginning of the winter. But I still didn't know what was up with her.

She must be using mana reinforcement like father and Saul did. But if that was the case, why didn't she train outside with them in the morning?

Should I call her Sir Simila? It sounded wrong though, why did I only hear men being called sir and not mother or other women?

The time I didn't spend staring at Simila, I spent frustrated with Sam's memories that never wanted to be clear when I actually wanted to use them.

I had slowly pieced together what the stasis rune should look like and realised I was still so far from making it.

The icon an outline of the hourglass was in the middle of an extending pattern of lines moving outward. Each of those were meant to set the rune to tethers, which would determine the area of effect and the strength of the stasis. Then an inlay would be made for a mana stone on the other end.

The only problem was that it would not work at all if I got the lines or proportions off. I needed to learn what all the symbols meant, how to calculate numbers.