With every passing day, Archibald and Wolf drew closer and closer to their destination. Their pace was slow. The amount of time a four-year-old could walk each day was rather limited. Traveling through dense forests to stay out of sight only further hindered their pace.

Even before they set off, Archibald had decided not to carry Wolf. The boy needed to build up strength and stamina. Besides, the boy shouldn't bond too much with a man destined to die before he even hits his teens.

Things progressed according to Archibald’s plan. Slowly but surely, Wolf’s endurance grew. This resulted in fewer breaks and greater distances the pair covered each day.

During these five-odd months of travel, Archibald taught Wolf all of the First Order spells he knew. Wolf now, in theory, knew more than twenty spells. Most of them were useful in at least some way and only a couple seemed utterly useless.

The one Wolf disdained the most was Detect Poison, which was used to detect whether or not food and drink were poisoned. This was a spell Archibald kept singing praises for to no end. On the other hand, Wolf thought it was the stupidest thing ever.

Why would anyone ever make poisoned food or drink? the boy wondered. It’s like hitting yourself on the head.

The little guy never would have guessed that this would be a spell he would prepare and cast almost every day during a certain period of his life, just like his father.

The duo trudged their way deeper and deeper into the elven lands. With every passing day, the wilderness around them grew more and more primal. From time to time they would encounter towering trees, which stood more than a hundred meters tall and over ten meters wide. Nothing grew near them and daylight never reached the forest floor. Archibald avoided these clearings. Going through them would leave them too exposed. Better to walk around them and remain hidden.

In the jungle the lighting was as dim as on a stormy day, and it only made Wolf feel like the uneventful trip was even more depressing. Whenever they ran into signs of Monster Beasts, Archibald would point them out to him and then the pair would avoid them instead of battling the evil things.

“Look son, those are from a Trihorn,” he’d say, or “Those belong to a Warg, they are like small Dire Wolves.”

Archibald shamelessly shushed his boy, even though Wolf never said anything and just nodded. Then the big man carefully led the way through the dangerous domain. Fortunately, nothing ever happened. Other than prints, droppings and unfinished lunches, there were no other signs of Monster Beasts.

Archibald and Wolf made camp for the day. There were still some two weeks before they reached their destination, and today was a particularly difficult day for Archibald. They’d spent more than half of it passing through a Dire Bear’s territory, causing the big man’s skin to crawl.

They also had to remain quiet. And since Wolf hardly ever spoke, this meant Archibald had to stay quiet. But every cloud has a silver lining: in his silence the big man was able to think about something other than the theory of magic. He could think about how quickly Wolf was learning new spells.

In Archibald’s mind his son had taken some five months to learn twenty-seven First Order spells. In reality, other than when Wolf was learning the Light spell, he comprehended spells at a rate of one per day. The rest of the time was spent listening to Archibald’s lectures. Well, pretending to listen. Wolf mostly ignored those by now, since they were full of useless terms he couldn’t understand.

As Archibald contemplated his son’s talent, he reached a decision. He should try teaching Wolf a Second Order spell. If the boy really could learn how to cast it by the time they returned to the Northshield duchy, Archibald would be overjoyed. That would make his son a shocking genius.

Learning the first spell of a new Order was always a difficult and lengthy process. Which was understandable. Comprehending how to do it would unlock a new set of scrolls in the Mind Hall and allow a Mage to advance their Order.

Archibald expected that Wolf, as brilliant as he was, would need a year to take this step forward. Half a year was an incredibly optimistic estimate, on account of Wolf telling him he’d started with five tapestries in his Mind Hall once he was finally able to cast First Order spells, as well as the fact that the boy could clearly see his Mind Hall.

The thing was, Archibald’s expectations of his son were slowly becoming warped. Two months ago, Wolf suddenly came up to him one morning and said that the number of scrolls in his Mind Hall had increased. The boy now had six furry squares, as his son had referred to the Mind Hall’s scrolls.

Archibald tried to remember the time of his youth. Back when he was first starting, he only had three scrolls stretched on the wall of his first Mind Hall. That number slowly increased, reaching six only when he had completed his first Mind Hall and became an Archmage. By that point Archibald treated First Order spells as a curio. Any spell below Fourth Order was useful only as a teaching aid or a lifestyle utility. Casting such a weak spell in combat was just a waste of time.

The odd scroll design Wolf had mentioned worried Archibald a bit. He could only hope this was due to his son’s elven heritage. Humans and elves had been at war for several millennia now.

Due to this, there was little cultural exchange in the recent centuries. From what little knowledge Archibald had on elven Mages, or Druids as they called them, they had the same structure of Mind Hall and Mind Palace as the human race. The big man could only hope that these furry squares were something all elven Mages had. Or perhaps some sort of benign mutation.

One evening, Archibald was busy, performing his fatherly duty of needlessly worrying and ruminating over what could be wrong with his child, Wolf’s ancestry or the world in general. As his mind was occupied with this important task, his mouth and hands moved practically by themselves since he was demonstrating how to cast a Second Order spell called Mage Armor.

This was probably the most commonly used Second Order spell, along with Magic Dart. The chant and gestures were fairly simple. Wolf memorized them correctly after observing them just once and then started practicing.

Three days later, Wolf was nearing his second breakthrough. As he muttered the chants and performed the mudras, a nearly invisible silver-purple halo surrounded his body.

Finally, a full suit of luminous armor manifested on Wolf’s body, immediately followed by another dizzy spell. This time the boy remained conscious just long enough to mutter a short word, then allowed himself to faint.

“Dad…”

Wolf’s whisper caught Archibald by surprise. When the big man saw the shimmering barrier wink out of existence from his sleeping son’s body, he felt like jumping from joy and cursing the boy’s timing all at once. Wolf didn’t take half a year to reach Second Order. He took less than four days! That was crazy! However, the two of them were no longer in a sparsely populated border region of the Empire of Elf.

They’d already avoided some smaller towns and Archibald had even noticed some ruined settlements and burned down forests along the way. The civil war had taken a much more terrifying toll on this realm than outsiders were led to believe.

And now that they were this deep in the enemy territory, the danger of running into elves was constant. Luckily, the area had fallen into disrepair in the last couple of years, based on the ruins and traces of Monster Beast activity they had seen. Still, it wasn’t impossible to run into a lone hunter, or worse still a party of rangers.

Archibald couldn’t take a carefree approach this time. He picked up Wolf and started looking for a shelter. After wandering for a short while, he stumbled across a tree with a hollow big enough to fit them both.

This should do, Archibald thought and nodded once. Last time he took almost a whole day to wake up… I guess we’ll be stuck here for a while.

Once he settled the boy down, a black stone disk, three times the size of a palm and ten centimeters thick, appeared in Archibald’s hand. The man placed the item on the ground, then tapped its top.

“Fire,” Archibald whispered and a red design depicting a stylized flame appeared on the top of the disk. A couple of moments later the black surface started radiating scorching heat.

A frying pan appeared in Archibald’s hand, as did some lard and two chunks of salted meat. He promptly placed them into the pan and then onto the portable stove. After making sure nothing was burning, various seasonings appeared in the big man’s hands. While Wolf slept, Archibald prepared a celebratory meal for them.

***

In his Mind Hall, Wolf wasn’t acting quite as relaxed as his father back in the real world. He sat cross-legged on the floor, four steps away from the rear wall. In front of him was an array of tapestries. Six aligned in one row and four new ones in the row above. They were obviously meant to house the spells of the Second Order and were slightly bigger than those in the row below.

Wolf still hadn’t tested whether they would drain his energy when he touched them. He was almost certain they would and that experiment could wait for later. For now, preparing Mage Armor took priority.

There was another matter bugging Wolf. The visible wall was about five meters high. After that came the same solid mist which covered the rest of the room. It looked like an impossibly low cloud hanging right above his head. The strange thing was that when Wolf was carving the columns, he was certain he had entered those clouds and reached the ceiling. In the trance-like state he was in when carving, Wolf couldn’t estimate the height of the room. He could only hope that there was enough room to fit all ten tiers of tapestries.

“Well, no use worrying about it right now,” the Mental Aspect said. “I hope…”

He stood up and reached his hand towards the leftmost Second Order tapestry. Chanting the Mage Armor spell, Wolf touched the fluffy whiteness. As expected, Soul Force slowly drained out of his Mental Aspect and entered the tapestry forming two silvery-purple runes. Once the spell was ready, Wolf took a step back to compare Mage Armor with Light and other First Order tapestries.

Unlike First Order spells, Mage Armor had two runes. The runes differed in color, but that was expected. Wolf had already learned that runes had a different glow to them based on what the spell did. For example, Acid Blob had a vicious green shine, while Light had a warm whitish-yellow gleam.

The tapestry with Mage Armor shone twice as brightly as the tapestry with Light. Wolf also estimated that he’d invested twice the Soul Force he usually spent on a First Order Spell.

Wolf’s Mental Aspect squinted, noticing that the rune lines were somewhat thicker. Perhaps that’s where the Soul Force difference went? And most importantly, Wolf was under the impression that he could actually see a faint outline of a body armor in the freshly imbued second Order tapestry. Making note of everything, the boy decided to wake up and try out his new spell.

***

Archibald was busy fixing up a pair of steaks. He was seasoning them with ground garlic when Wolf opened his eyes. The first thing the boy could see was his father’s big strong back and shiny bold head. The man was muttering something about not being able to tenderize the meat. A funny thing to hear from someone looking like an unshakeable mountain. Wolf cleared his throat causing his father to start.

“You almost gave me a heart attack! Why are you awake?” Archibald almost dropped the frying pan.

“This time I knew what to do!” Wolf exclaimed with a proud grin, then started chanting the Mage Armor spell he had just prepared.

“Confident, aren’t we? When you–” Archibald started talking, but the rest of the sentence was shoved back down his throat.

A barely visible silvery-purple membrane wrapped itself around Wolf. Archibald’s eyes bulged as he watched the illusory full plate armor cover his son’s body.

Monster, the man thought, but regained control of himself a moment later.

“How many Second Order spells can you cast in a day?”

“Should be four. I probably can't prepare all four of them right now. When I first learned First Order spells, it took a couple of days for me to get used to preparing them all.”

Archibald breathed in deeply to recover from shock and excitement. His son really was a monster. A true monster!

“All right. There are plenty of useful Second Order spells. Protection from Elements, Mage Shield, Magic Dart, Slumber, Grease, Fleet of Foot…” Archibald started listing all spells of the Second Order he thought were useful and then proceeded to explain what each of them did. Somewhere around the middle of the list, Wolf interrupted him.

“Dad, dad, DAD! Can you teach me a Third Order spell instead?”

“Sure I can, but why?” Archibald stopped talking and looked at Wolf quizzically.

“I want to try casting spells without chanting and waving my hands!” Guided by an instinct he could not understand, Wolf found both of these incredibly annoying. He cringed whenever he had to either chant or wave his hands. Casting spells so openly made him feel uneasy. It was as if there was a voice from his past life screaming “Never do that in battle! Never!”.

“Um, all right. You know, son, a man casting spells is much more impressive the more vigorous the gestures and the louder the chanting. People respect you more. Some Mages, when performing in front of crowds, intentionally start with dramatic hand motion and words before speaking the correct Arcana incantation and performing the right mudras. Especially for spells which do not require gestures to cast…”

Archibald started sharing his life’s worth of experience while completely forgetting that they should continue traveling. Wolf listened and he couldn’t disagree more about attracting attention to himself by chanting, even after his father stressed that this should only be done outside combat. No matter what Archibald said, Wolf had a deeply ingrained instinct he should use magic stealthily.

He had this nagging voice which kept screaming at him in the back of his mind. “If you see anyone waving his hands and muttering gibberish in the middle of a battle, stab the bastard through the throat as soon as possible.”

Archibald's lessons:

The Empire of Human is shaped like a weird flower with twelve petals. The empire has twelve duchies ruled by Dukes and a central province directly governed by the Human Emperor. Or to be more specific, someone doing the job in their name. We hail from the Northshield duchy, which shares a border with the Empire of Elf.