We packed our backpacks onto the carriage on an early morning. The sun faintly lit the light forests outside Aquan.

Volt oozed a hodgepodge concoction of emotions, the two most outstanding being anticipation and nervousness. His brother was just rearing to go, like an easily excitable kid. Dawn on the other hand, well, I felt like she stuck to me. Her ambitions were the most clouded in my mind.

I understood she loved magic, but there had to be some reason why she’d tag along. I climbed up and helped her up afterwards. Pyro jumped in spritely.

The carriage driver whipped the reins and we were off, slowly. I didn’t take into consideration the travel time, those daunting three days until we met the last town before Inferno Desert.

Thankfully, the notorious desert wasn’t all sun and sand. There were patches of shrubs here and there, puddles of water. A chaparral partly.

“Alright, we’ll camp here,” I said, looking up at a small hill between two mountains. We were in a valley, a good enough hiding spot and a great place to camp. After we set up our base, I called Volt to have a private chat.

“The minute mom said I could hold my own in this desert, you insisted on coming along,” I pointed out, “I don’t know why you wished to come here so badly, nor is it any of my business, but I will oblige. As long as you don’t do anything rash, or anything that could endanger you or us, I’m good.”

He chuckled, a little forlorn, “Sorry, teach. It’s nothing like that. It’s just, closure, for a part of my life that is still with me.”

Good family, good job. Engaged.

“The picture-perfect life.” Donna commented.

He’s probably lost something here.

We returned to the others, and they peered daggers at us. “Quit being so nosy,” I commented. I left them setting up and scouted around the desert. Coyotes, scorpions, your occasional deer near watering holes. Nothing out of the ordinary when it came to the wildlife. The magic aberrations however, were a different pest altogether. Some areas stifled your casting, whilst others boosted it. There were failed summons of spirit creatures roaming the sands, some of them quite aggressive.

I returned once again after mapping out places of interest. We had lunch, and began practice afterward. “Like I said,” I walked around them, “we’ll skip a few spirits and attempt summoning an advanced one.”

I surged my mana and brought forth three wyrms. They floated mid-air and were just small enough to wrap around your neck and rest on your shoulders. The lightning-based wyrm was white in colour with little accents of blue here and there. The fire wyrm had red scales with hints of yellow scattered about. And the water wyrm was mostly blue with white accentuating it.

“Visualise, form the base body in your mind, and call it forth. Focus not on speed, but accuracy. This spell is rather costly.”

“Piece o’ cake!” Pyro grinned and actually successfully summoned it! Well, for about five seconds until he lost control and it returned to the spirit world. His breath increased substantially from that, as the stamina it sapped was no joke. He looked a bit down.

“No, that was good, actually. Dawn,” I looked at her and blanked out for a while. Her beauty really was undeniable.

She tilted her head and caught on after a few seconds. “Oh, right, sorry!” She summoned part of hers but it faded before it was completely summoned. She too, breathed heavily.

Volt tried after, but nothing happened. A poof, that’s what we called totally failed spells. He slumped down afterwards, his breath even more erratic than Dawn and Pyro’s.

“Volt, your stamina is the worst. Exercise, exercise, exercise. Build your bodies until the wyrms only take one-third of your stamina. How you choose to do this is up to you, well, except for you, Pyro.”

I summoned Phoenix, “Hey, Phoenix, it’s your favourite student, Pyro. At full stamina, he can summon a fire wyrm, but it takes most of his strength. Can you train him so it doesn’t take much?”

Phoenix smiled, maliciously, “I’ll train him so it takes nothing!”

“Teach, you’re kidding, right? This is a joke, right?” Pyro asked.

“… I can’t tell if you’re scared or excited, Pyro.” Just then, Phoenix grabbed him and flew off.

Maybe… I thought, looking at Dawn.

“It makes sense to have them learn from their faction leaders.” Donna was right, I think. I had contracts with a few faction leaders, but not all, and definitely not the lightning faction. Their leader, a hound-like creature was extremely elusive. Even looking in its direction would cause it to zip away.

“If only it’d just sit still,” I talked down my throat and sighed in defeat. For Dawn, I had Hydra take care of her training. And in the heat of this desert, Hydra opted to bring forth a pool of water, enough so she could swim about freely. She made an air pocket for Dawn and they set off with her training. I must admit, my mind was riddled with thoughts of what Dawn would look like in, swim-appropriate wear.

Both Dawn and Pyro, especially Pyro, were ensured that they would be trained until they could take no more, but Volt, I wasn’t sure what to do with him.

“How about spell conditioning?” Donna suggested.

That’s dangerous. I shook my head dismissively.

“He insisted on coming to this place. A little late to worry about that, isn’t it?”

Hmm, you got a point. Spell conditioning was subjecting your body to a state of constant exhaustion. Unlike normal exercise, gaining stamina through spell conditioning was bounds and leaps more effective as it actually used spells as the basis of the exercise.

“Hey, Volt, your training will be a little different. It’s what I did in place of stamina training, and it’s a little dangerous, but it’s the most effective. However, I really need to stress the danger of this method. If you feel like you should stop, then stop.”

“Uh, okay,” he shrugged, “teach me then.”

“What generic spell do you know?”

“Arc Lightning?”

“Good! A channelling spell is the least dangerous. What I want you to do, is channel Arc Lightning upwards. Don’t let your mana dip below five percent, don’t let it go above ten! Good luck!”

“Five? Ten? You’re being really cautious. When I trained you, the values were one minimum and two maximum.”

Yeah well, he doesn’t have a talking master in his head who can feel how much power he has left. Now, how about that spell you have yet to teach me?

She cackled, “Ah, so greedy! You’re way too close to him to practise it anyway. Just focus on Division for now.”

Division it was. Whilst he lit the skies up with Arc Lightning, I sat and crossed my legs in a meditating position and flared my magic, digging deeper and deeper into the chasm that is Division.

When nightfall encroached, we all went back to the camp. They were all extremely exhausted and fell asleep soon after. No roughhousing between the brothers. No complaining from Dawn or Pyro about their hellish training. Just heavy sleepers.

I left Hydra to watch over them and escaped into the night. There was nothing more soothing than the sweet silence of the night. Too bad I was about to disrupt that silence.

Donna taught me the first of two levels of a spell called Divergence. The first level targeted one object and pushed it back with pure magical force. A simple force spell, nothing too grand there. I was a little disappointed, however, I knew Donna wouldn’t skimp on the strength of a spell. There had to be something to this spell, but the cheeky little voice in my head wouldn’t tell me. “Just master the first level,” she said, every time.

With no choice but to suck up my bitterness, I did as she said and trusted her. She never disappointed me before when it came to her spells. And spells from our occasional bets would be even juicier. Plus, after learning Timedial and Levitate, this one had to be good.

The seventh night came upon us rather quickly, but by then, I’d ‘secured’ the first level of Divergence, according to Donna herself.

The morning after, I woke up with Dawn cuddled up to me, so tightly, I couldn’t even move without waking her. Pyro snored away in his unbreakable somnolence and Volt was already awake, training already. A week of the training they’re doing was worth about a month of the regular training regimen mages employ. Phoenix and Hydra ran them ragged.

When Dawn finally woke up, I got up, but my arm was fast asleep. We called in Volt and had breakfast. Today, I decided to see what exactly their training was like.

Phoenix, well, had a very aggressive tactic, to say the least. I learned that my student had been fighting for dear life every day. Phoenix was literally attacking him. It was up to Pyro to choose evading and dodging, or fighting back. Of course, Phoenix only fought at a tiny fraction of his real strength, but it still amazed me that Pyro survived it. Hydra would heal him if his injuries got past a certain degree.

Dawn on the other hand had a much safer training programme. Swimming, a whole lot of it. And might I say, I was so very glad I decided to check. No, not because I got to see her body in nothing but underwear. I’m a man with class. It was because I had a little revelation whilst watching them. Hydra summoned a mass of water, an oval spheroid that followed Dawn wherever she swam, so she wouldn’t fall out of it.

To me, that water represented the physical requisites needed to cast a spell. Magic originates from one’s body. Their body. Their physical body. Of course! Division isn’t possible!

“Whoa! You came up with that just from watching water? But, I understand what you’re thinking. In fact…”

She agreed to testing what I had in mind. My theory was simple – spells, no matter what, would always take stamina to cast as long as it originated from a body, but, what if it didn’t? What if it came from elsewhere? I didn’t know what I would classify Donna as, but I knew she didn’t have a body. She casted a spell that we both knew, Phoenix Wave, using my mana but her cast. I felt the usual mana depletion, but no physical pull. It was a success! But far from perfect.

“If Division can’t be achieved without the cast being done by a non-tangible being, then how do you explain using less and less stamina as you practised Division? Wouldn’t that mean a tangible body can still achieve it?”

You, have a point there. Even if I do settle for the non-tangible method, I’d still have to research how exactly you transferred your consciousness to mine. I’d have to find a way to copy myself, in myself.

“I could just do all your casts for you.”

Well, yeah, but, I was thinking–

“I know, I know. Some really forbidden stuff,” she tittered, “to be honest, that was my condition for winning the bet.”

“What?! Why didn’t you just tell me?!” I shouted out, a little mad at her for keeping it to herself.

“Keep your voice down! Sheesh! I can’t burden you with that. It’s damn near impossible.”

Maybe, but I like a challenge.

She quieted down after, accepting her defeat.

I was up a little late that night, all I could think about was Division’s new non-tangible theory. Suddenly, I began to feel sleepy. It must’ve been the soothing crackles of the campfire, but if I didn’t think otherwise, I wouldn’t be a good mage, now would I? I set Dispel in effect and waited for them.

As per the usual bandit, they rummaged through our goods. Just as I was about to jump up and surprise the wandering desert thieves, one of them said, “Bring that one. And don’t hurt him!” in full confidence of the sleeping spell they weaved. My eyes were barely open, and the person they wanted was Volt!

Hmm…

“Think it’s a coincidence Volt wanted to come to this place so badly and a group of bandits choose to kidnap him and leave everyone else?”

Coincidence my ass. As long as nothing dangerous happened, I told myself I wouldn’t get involved, but this is a little worrying.

They took off with Volt on horses and I got up soon after. I placed Hydra and Phoenix to watch over Dawn and Pyro and decided to shadow this organised group of hooligans.

Into the night, I Levitated behind them, far off enough so they wouldn’t catch wind of me. We came across a cave in the walls of a dried-up gorge. Deep inside this cave was a tent with someone inside. They placed Volt in front of the tent and dismissed themselves. Luckily for me the shadows of the cave covered me from head to toe. There were a couple torches in front of the large tent, shining light on Volt’s sleep-enchanted body.

A figure inside the tent moved and emerged from the entrance. A woman. She stooped near him, looking on with an intense yet aloof stare. I couldn’t tell what she wanted even now. Silently, I summoned Kor’zha, the leader of the earth faction in the spirit world. In his human form, he was a dark, bald man wrapped in cloth like travellers who frequented the desert. Only his eyes were shown. He silently submerged himself in the ground beneath the woman.

“I don’t know who you are,” she said, all while looking at Volt, but loud enough so I would hear, “but you managed to elude my men and even find your way into this place.” She passed her fingers through Volt’s hair, as if comforting him, “I don’t know want you want here, but I suggest you leave, whilst I’m still in a good mood.”

Geez, talk about cheeky. “Yeah, well,” I sighed, “you kind of have my student, so I can’t just leave, you know? His fiancé already asked me to take care of him. So, if you don’t mind, ma’am, could you return him to me?”

There was a pause, a strange silence, “His fiancé?” she repeated, not at all paying attention to the matter at hand.

I casted Dispel on him, and used his awakening as a distraction and casted Divergence on her, pushing her back into the wall then hit her with Arc Lightning, keeping her stunned in place. Kor’zha’s giant scorpion tail emerged from the ground beneath her and was about to sting her, but the barely awaken Volt screamed out for me to stop, so I did.

“Alright, alright, I’m stopping,” I said, releasing her from the Arc Lightning’s hold, and recalling Kor’zha. So, he knows her. Of course.

She slumped down and he ran toward her to help her off the ground, but suddenly she turned into sand and slipped through his fingers, quite literally. The real person emerged from the cave wall soon after, using the same skill Kor’zha uses to manoeuvre the earth. Who the hell was this person?

The elusive woman walked to him and placed both hands on his cheeks, peering deep into his eyes with a sliver of morose buried in her own. She touched him, like a blind person would when attempting to identify someone; like a mother reunited with her missing son, checking to see if he’s unharmed. It’s not like I had the best instincts but for what they were worth, they told me she wasn’t a danger, to us at least.

“Y-your family… what exactly happened to you?” Volt parted the hair falling over her eye to the side.

“They,” she broke eye contact with him, “died. I, still can’t believe,” she grabbed his shirt weakly, “you made it, Vince.” On the verge of tears, he stopped her.

“Don’t. Don’t cry for me. I was a coward who abandoned you to save myself,” he bit down on his lip in frustration, clenching his fists with a self-loathing fury.

She shook her head in disagreement, “This is as much for me as it is for you.”

“Kira…” he called her name, snaked his hand aside her neck and planted his lips onto hers!

Well, well, well, I thought, my eyelids practically non-existent after I opened them so widely.

“Well, well, well indeed. Ah, it’s nice to be young. Infidelity everywhere.”

Kira stopped, pushed him away and turned her back halfway through their kiss, rubbing along her arm nervously to comfort herself. She spun around with a burdened face and sorrowful eyes, “We can’t, Vince. You’re,” she swallowed and curled her fists at her sides, “engaged, aren’t you?”

“What is this? A theatre play?”

I know, right? People would pay good money to see this. It’s like they were entrapped in their own world, completely erasing my existence from their minds. Who knew Volt, such a steady, earnest and disciplined person would do something like that?