“Yes, I'd say the Dragon tongue is among the top three of the most insufferable languages ever created. The less awful aspect of it would be the vocabulary. It's still awful, do not be mistaken. Words sometimes have many different meanings. Colours can be used to talk about the great mechanics of the world. Yellow is the sun, but blue is both the night sky and the sea. The nuance is in the context. When there is one. I think dragons see more colours than us because they managed to write a few astrological treaties with only colour names. Unreadable, obviously. What does 'glimmering low green' mean or look like, we will probably never know. Numbers work in the same fashion, though with a more unfathomable logic. Two can stand for eyes, ears or horns, four is a square or any cardinal direction. For now it's... alright, for draconic standards. Then you have eleven, that can mean either toes or forest. What kind of creature has eleven toes and what kind of forest has only eleven trees, I still wonder to this day.

-Anonymous depressed linguist”

* * *

Azcheron

In the soft light of the torches and mana-stones illuminating the library in the wintery evening, there was only, for a time, the sound of books being opened and closed, and pages being turned.

“I can't find it,” Azcheron muttered.

He pushed away the book currently in front of him and opened another one.

“Can we leave now ? You've been at it for hours,” Erin complained.

“You can go ahead if you want.”

He only got a groan as an answer.

“I haven't looked through the books in other languages yet.”

“Ugh, we're not doing that again. It'll take you months anyway. Why don't you ask him directly ?”

“I can't do that ! I would have invested all those hours into searching through books for nothing !” he replied in an offended voice.

She frowned. “Your logic is awful.”

Azcheron had been searching for any possible hints about a specific spell. He had witnessed it twice since he arrived at the Academy. Yet no book seemed to be able to give him any information.

“That damn illusion spell... I wasn't surprised with Roharl using something like that, but the nightmare things ? That's definitely a pre-constructed spell.”

“What if it turns out that Roharl was using only raw mana to make himself invisible ?”

“I thought about it, but regardless I need the chant first.”

Azcheron had tried to imitate Roharl's camouflage magic, to no avail. He did not expect it to be so complicated seeing as it only impacted the sight – you could still be heard, touched or smelled. He had to quickly admit it though : even if it was possible, albeit incredibly difficult, to make yourself invisible as long as you didn't move, it was another story when you tried to run around like Roharl did.

It was also different from the illusion produced by the disgusting ear artefact. With Anton, they had tried to test the supposed invisibility it granted the user, but while in the Academy, nothing happened. Even the disorientation and drowsiness that the bandits were induced with was not present here. Azcheron could only gather that the ear-thing was something entirely different, that mainly had to do with forests or at least the mana from forests. Plus, the artefact's effect seemed less potent than the true invisibility spell that he was looking for. Even bandits seemed to notice that something was wrong among the complicated landscape that is a forest, whereas Azcheron couldn't manage to see Roharl or the bat-things, if the environment didn't give them away.

Either there was a trick Azcheron wasn't aware of, or it was one of those unfathomable spells that he couldn't explain or reproduce through raw mana alone. So he resolved to search through every single book concerning illusion magic. He started with the ones written in Common tongue because even if it was more likely for the spell to be found in some obscure ancient or foreign magic grimoire, it would take far too much time to translate everything. There was still a small chance that hints could be found within regular books, so Azcheron began his search with those.

His venture didn't bear fruit. He could have, as Erin suggested, asked Roharl, but the idea didn't appeal to him. Firstly because there was no guarantee Roharl would just give away the secrets of his magic, and a refusal would be humiliating. Secondly because Azcheron felt he could either reproduce the spell himself, or find it by his own means. It was a pride thing, perhaps.

The spell itself wasn't that important. It provided a great advantage, sure, but as proven by the spar with the Dragon Slayer, said advantage could be diminished or even negated. Weather and environment were its main enemy – if there was rain, snow, sand and whatnot, the spell would lose a good portion of its usefulness. But the opponent could also act in order to level the situation, as Azcheron did with smokescreens.

No, what was important was the knowledge of the magic's inner-working. It had major scientific implications. There was a handful of spells like that, that implied either highly advanced and convoluted scientific manipulation, or simply lost or forgotten knowledge. Summoning magic was among them.

Despite his failure to find anything about invisibility magic, a few interesting things popped up while looking through the books pertaining to spells impacting the senses. For instance, Azcheron had read about sleep magic and its two distinct versions.

He already knew about some plants and smells that would induce slumber when inhaled, so it didn't really surprise him to learn that you could create odour and gas-based sleep magic. He'd have to find a test subject to try it. The thought of using it on Erin when she was gesticulating too much in bed was enticing, but he would not dare to use untested and potentially dangerous magic on his bodyguard.

Indeed, they had kept their sleeping habit inherited from the caravan trip. Anton's house was very cold – it was poorly isolated and the old bastard forbade that people lit the fireplaces because the wood was too pricy in winter, and the heat would not be contained anyway, or so he said – and they came to cherish the feeling of safety it procured them when they slept side by side.

Tania clearly had misunderstood the whole thing, Azcheron quickly realized. She winked when she showed him the room with the largest bed. Even someone like him wasn't as dense as to not understand how it looked. When he told her about it, Erin had an amused expression. She had been living and eating and sleeping in the company of rough and unclean men when she was a mercenary, so she had long lost any ability to get flustered by little things like that.

She pridefully defined herself as an 'anti-lady', seeing as she was doing the exact opposite of what she was supposed to do as a Verald daughter.

In any case, Azcheron wasn't so rude as to use sleep magic on someone who trusted him to such a degree. He planned to try it on the next idiot who would challenge him to a duel or whatever other annoying stunt the Academy's students seemed keen on pulling.

Then, he read about chanted sleep magic. The author of the text, as if running for the prize of most obnoxious person in the world, not only decided to keep the chant to himself so that the reader couldn't possibly learn it, but also tried – tried being the keyword – to give a lengthy explanation about the spell's working.

Normally, Azcheron would very much appreciate lengthy explanations, yet this one was perfectly unintelligible. There was no way to know whether the author wrote whatever word he'd invent by picking letters at random, or if he was actually talking about something that Azcheron couldn't hope to understand.

There was mention of histamine and adenosine and unfathomable words of the same fashion. Azcheron could grasp that the spell had something to do directly with the brain, but he did not know half of the vocabulary employed here.

He sighed and looked through the window. Erin was right, it was already quite late, there was probably only a few hours left before midnight. The Academy would soon be almost deserted, the only remaining people would be the students living in the dormitories and a few others.

“Okay then. Let's go back at Anton's, I'm getting hungry.”

“Finally.” Erin closed the book she was reading with a clap. She had spent a lot of time studying anatomy and enchanting, also going to seminaries about these subjects and sometimes checking out the spellblade classes from afar.

Azcheron had tried to teach her a bit of easy magic that would help her – it turned out he was quite the able teacher, when it came to raw mana –, and in exchange she taught him the basics of swordsmanship and hand-to-hand combat. But neither were particularly successful in their training. They felt much more comfortable with their respective fields.

As they were putting back the ton of books that Azcheron had gathered, something apparently caught Erin's attention.

“What's this ? Are you putting your draconic translations in writing now ?”

He came closer and frowned. “Oh, yes, that... This thing looks even worse than the summoning magic. It's a metamorphosis spell, supposedly.”

“Wh-... Eh !? What ! You could get famous with this !” She looked excited. True, metamorphosis magic was one of these rare and obscure magic that were actually popular. The issue was that there wasn't any known spell that would let you choose your appearance. Every transformation spell, and they were few, had very peculiar and specific effects. It went from making your ears pointy, giving you the appearance of an elf, to changing your body size, skin colour, even growing limbs sometimes. Each of these spells were weird ones in the end.

“Yeah, I know, that's why I'm rigorously translating it,” Azcheron said flatly.

“What did you find ? What does it do ? Younger appearance ? Smaller size ?”

He looked sideways. “Yeah, err... nothing that useful. I'm not sure it's even useful at all. And I really, really, really don't want to try this one out. Sure you want to know ? You'll be disappointed.”

“Huh... Tell me anyway. I'm curious. You never know what to expect with this language.”

“Well I kinda know what I can expect and that's why I'm not keen on trying it. It's... a... huh... you see ? I don't even have the equivalent word in Common.”

Azcheron tried to mime the thing. It was not working, seeing Erin's expression.

“Why... don't you describe it with words instead of demonstrating your ridicule ? Because that's all you're doing.”

“Mnnngh, I don't know ! It's a hairy thing with several pairs of eyes and ears, and horns on its torso ! And it doesn't even mention if it has limbs !”

Erin grimaced. “Hairy, again. Sounds like it'll definitely be popular.”

“Want to try it on yourself ?” Azcheron asked with his best smile.

“Hahaha !” She tried to fake a laugh. “Whatever could have possibly made you think I was interested in petty metamorphosis magic ? Hohoho !”

Now she was hiding her smiling mouth with her hand like a proper embarrassed noblewoman would. But it looked vicious and evil when she was doing it.

“In any case it looks like it is another detestable draconic magic. Moreover this spell seems to have a list very annoying conditions and side-effects. Part of why I'm taking notes. It says that the duration is of a hundred heartbeats, that the vocal cords aren't working with any known spoken languages, and things of the sort. I don't know what's the deal with these spells but their creators must have been shunned by society. I do not see why else they would invent such obnoxious magic.”

“I can easily see you in thirty years, doing a similar thing. I wonder why,” Erin mocked.

Azcheron scowled. “Hrmpf. My spells would be elegant and user-friendly. I don't want to be known for some creepy magic that'd turn you into a stool or something.”

“Though you could become a spy or an assassin with a spell like that.”

He froze and kept silent. He must have been making a strange face because Erin pinched the bridge of her nose when she looked at him. “Please don't spend the next month trying to find or create that kind of spell. This'll be nerve-wrecking.”

“Oh, I know. Don't worry. I just realized how cool it would be. Maybe I should drop this whole invisibility thing altogether and dedicate myself to... stool magic ?” he said, only half-joking.

“Hah... Okay, I think we're done here,” she said after glancing around. They had put away every book they could find on the large table. “Let's leave and eat.”

He nodded and they left the library. As they wordlessly walked side by side in the silent and snow-covered main garden of the Academy, Azcheron noticed that the air wasn't as cold as he expected.

The harsher part of the winter was behind them, now. It had been almost three moons since they came to the capital, after all. The second month of the new year had ended, and Azcheron would soon attend an important reception.

Anton had put a lot of efforts in gathering nobles to officially introduce the Saint to the Imperial aristocracy. Azcheron had been preparing himself for the event, and would certainly not let Anton's ventures go to waste.

He grinned, as he knew would have to make an impression worthy of the Saint.