At mid-day, the ruthless sun bathed the environment in an unbearably hot atmosphere. The topic of discussion was what we’d eat for lunch. Keagan and Pyro were already placing bets on who’d secure the best venison.

What the hell is this, I pondered, my palms clasped together at the tone shift of this party of ours. The more tightknit our group became, the more apparent how humiliatingly ostracised Donna was. I’d witness, over the couple of weeks we began travelling, the multiple attempts Donna made to connect with them, but they kept their wits about them. Nothing wrong with that per se, but the fact that only Donna faced this issue rubbed me the wrong way, and rubbed me hard. Honestly, it felt like a personal attack–and maybe I was reading into it too much–however I couldn’t help but feel the only reason they didn’t protest her coming along was because I accepted and vouched for her, plus I fed them the truth of her resurrection. Though, that truth seemed like the furthest thing from. Maybe it was the claim that she was the queen that made them act the way they did? I couldn’t be sure.

She looked so demoralised, so diminished whilst she switched stares between her feet and the outside of the carriage. Leaving her home to be with me, and this is what she got? I wouldn’t have that, I couldn’t have that. “I don’t like pussyfooting around,” I said, a tad louder than their conversation, drawing all eyes to me, “you’ve all treated Donna like she had the plague but refuse to come out and say it.”

At that point, she grabbed my forearm, slightly shaking her head, afraid of the direct confrontation with them. That wasn’t like her at all. She was straightforward with everything, just like I was, but these people’s opinions of her were probably important because I knew them.

“I can’t speak for everyone,” Keagan started, looking her straight in the eyes, “but for me, for someone to strut around claiming she’s our beloved late queen is like spitting in my face. As much as you say we’re pussyfooting around, so is this ‘Donna Maxwell’, as someone else.”

Meagan’s inability to keep eye-contact sort of concreted that she agreed with him. “We’re, from the same generation as the queen so we feel a particular way about her claims,” she said, trying to ease the tense situation, “he’s trying to say that if she just introduced her real self, we wouldn’t mind her at all.”

“Fair enough, I understand your perspective,” I then turned to Kira and my students, “what about you guys? You’re not from the queen’s generation, so what’s eating you?”

They fidgeted, and a long silence ran between us, as if they were all banking on another person to answer. “Teach,” Pyro started, a nervous smile on his face, “it’s just, we uh, well…” he exhaled and looked me straight in the eyes, “we don’t believe it. Reviving a dead person has never been done, ever. We all know you’re an amazing mage, but a feat like that is…”

“Impossible?”

“Y-yeah.”

Volt and Dawn didn’t add anything, which, to me, meant they felt the same. I traced Kira’s eyes, but couldn’t tell what she was thinking. “I’m on the same page with them,” she admitted, “but for a different reason. From the stories that the older Apostles told me, the witch did not condone the study of immortality and was against it. So, it’s hard for me to believe my master would help you bring someone back to life.”

“I see,” she had a point, but missed a technical detail. Donna couldn’t be immortal unless I was, and I wasn’t.

“I don’t know why you decided to lie for her,” Kira shrugged, “maybe she did some super bad stuff and had to use an alias. That’s more or less why everyone’s on their toes with her,” she explained, not mincing words, “there’s a feeling of unknown risk when she’s around.”

“I… I’m sorry,” Donna apologised, and dismissed herself, re-entering my mind like she was before she came back to life. I’d forgotten she could be summoned and dismissed like that. She disintegrated into soft yellowish light and swarmed around me, eventually completely disappearing.

The atmosphere was dense and heavy, but I didn’t have the heart to lift it now. “She is a big part of me. To have you reject her feels like you reject me,” I stated. “This is pretty stupid but, if you can’t at least have her as an acquaintance, I can no longer force myself to have any kind of relations with you, be it friend or teacher. I’m not strong enough to fake that,” I admitted, possibly showing a childishness from me rarely seen.

“Well, I’ll be outside for a while,” I said, jumping out of the moving carriage and gliding some ways away from them.

Honestly, it was kind of infuriating, but I had to respect their opinions. Nowhere did it say they had to believe me.

The later it got, the more the sky’s silver watchdogs crept into dominance. “Eric, I’m sorry,” Donna apologised, after all those hours of travelling in silence. Weirdly enough, it made me a tad bit more ireful, with a soft undertone of angst skulking about.

Don’t… don’t say that, I scolded her somewhat, none of this was your fault. It’s mine, if anything.

I was the sorry one, but accumulating the needed maturity to view them as I always did was, hard. Though, even at the start of the journey here, it felt like Donna had changed a little ever since Emily and I brought her back to the world of the living.

A raindrop hit my face, snaking its way to the centre of my attention. The overcast sky signalled the urgency to find an inn, which we would a bit later. As with before, we rented two rooms, one for the Garrans and I, and another for Kira, Dawn, Pyro, and Volt. After dinner I went to bed, feeling exhausted somehow. Maybe it was just the heaviness of the food driving me to take solace in somnolence. I laid down and Donna came out of her refuge, laying down with me. By the time I’d awoken, she already slipped back into my mind, quite an elusive little mage. I glided out the room, going for a stroll before the sun even thought of peeking at us from the horizon’s ridge. I casted Candlelight to help with visibility and took a long, steady look at the moonlit mountains overshadowed by the wavy aurora winding through the skies. Hey, how about a spell? It’s been a while, right?

“You never give up, do you? Go back to bed.”

Yeah, nah, not gonna happen. C’mon, give me a nice one.

She went silent for a while, then summoned herself in front of me. “How about level three Divergence?”

“You gotta be kidding me! There’s a level three?!” I asked in a mix of shock and disappointment, those feelings only intensifying after she nodded. “How could you not tell me?!”

“Because you weren’t ready? It’s pretty useful on its own but, to be honest, it’s just a prerequisite to another spell.”

My ears were bleeding at this point, but I wanted to hear so much more. “Go on, go on,” I encouraged her to keep talking, walking closer to her in untamed anticipation, “tell me what the other spell is.”

“I don’t feel like it. Anyway, level three Divergence allows the user to centre the focal point of the spell anywhere, not just locking it to yourself. It’s also twice as strong as level two. But you’ve already got the basics down, it shouldn’t take you long.” She pointed to the sky and casted the mother of all Ice Walls above the entire village, “Get practising,” she said, sitting on a bench at the side of a nearby building. The largest obstacle to the spell was definitely moving Divergence’s focal point elsewhere. Not difficult enough to let the sun meet me though, I mastered it quickly enough, thanks to my prior understanding of the inherent spell. The only drawback I guess, was that it costed three times the amount of mana needed for level two Divergence–greedy little spell it was–though, not as hungry as Incinerate. If it weren’t for Division, my body would’ve been soaking in sweat.

“Hey, I’ve been wondering about something,” I sparked her focus, “what constitutes something as a spell?”

“Hmm?”

“Like, at the beginning of mankind, I doubt they had books and teachers to guide them on how to cast a spell. So how did they come across spells? What makes a spell a thing?”

“Repetition, trial and error.”

“That’s it?”

“Yup,” she said it so indifferently. In a way, the things Emily did weren’t that ridiculous anymore, after I heard that. I mean, if anyone could just create any spell, there’d be a plethora of spells many times bigger than the variety there is now. I asked her this question and she agreed with me. “However,” she said, “the repetition needed when learning a spell already mastered is a day and night difference to creating a spell with absolutely no guidance on how to envision, how to cast, what perspective to take, and how much mana should be funnelled into it. Some are both complicated and costly to the user, these take the longest to learn. Some are simple but costly, and would confuse the mage, making him change up his strategy a lot of times before he even realises all he needs is more mana to be able to cast it. Some spells are complicated but won’t take much mana, in which case the user has a lot of time to put into it. The whole process is like trying to hit a target with an arrow while blindfolded, without ever seeing the general location of the target. And even if you do hit it, it doesn’t mean it’ll be an effective spell. Someone could have thought up a better alternative. It’s high investment, high risk.”

What a revelation this was! I couldn’t even say anything, just imagining the possibilities corked my mouth.

“You’re thinking of some ridiculous shit, aren’t you? To be honest, I’m surprised you took this long to ask the question.”

“Well, I always thought of it as a taboo subject for some reason.”

“I guess. There are spells the Order has deemed unsafe, and forbade people from using.”

“Here you guys are,” Kira’s voice entered the conversation, “come on, everyone’s waiting.”

We continued our travels to the Dark Basin, eventually having to leave our carriage behind to scale the mountains. We came across a valley with a little cottage, a young fellow, tall and lanky came out. “Hey!” he shouted at us, “this area is off-limits! Turn back right now!” he warned, or commanded rather.

I walked towards him, and showed the documents needed with all the seals of approval from the bigwigs in various cities and towns around the country. His eyes widened, “You’re here to, kill Ashfur?!” he handed the papers back to me, “I don’t know if I should laugh or get angry. But I guess only the Order of Mages could pull it off, eh? I’m going there now to start my shift, let’s go.”

It was about half hour’s walk from where we were, and we eventually reached a desecrated place he dubbed the Rim. Further in was the Dark Basin, where Ashfur lived. Despite being a few kilometres are from the magical beast, he was still clearly visible. The rumours of his size didn’t do him justice, not in the least. “His size kept growing,” the scout said, “so he expanded his territory, but there were a lot of villages in the area. On top of that he has some ridiculous magic we can’t fight against.”

“A lot of people died, by the thousands,” the other scout pointed out. “As long as his size doesn’t increase, he won’t expand his turf, but lately he’s been growing again so we’re stationed here to report when he’ll start rampaging. Are you really gonna try to kill that thing?”

I looked at the beast, sizing up its almost unreal length. “Just how large is it?” Pyro inquired.

“Two hundred metres long, one hundred wide, and about sixty tall.”

“That sounds pretty accurate,” Keagan stated, “did you measure it?”

“Yeah, when it slumbers. Even if its awake, it won’t attack just like that. It was originally a really peaceful creature. It’s only hostile when expanding, and to be honest we can’t really say hostile because in its eyes, it’s probably just clearing more land so it can roam about comfortably. It doesn’t realise its killing people, I think.”

“How often does it expand its borders?” Dawn inquired.

“Yearly, or close to that.”

“Why did it grow bigger than the others?”

“Because of the magic. But, no one knows how it got magic in the first place.”

Visibility would be more important to us than to it, I thought, and decided to confront the beast whilst the sun was still dominant.

We slid down some ice Meagan created, into the Dark Basin. Despite the name of the place, at the centre of it still flourished with plant life, unlike the outer crater and the Rim. After another half hour of walking, we were close enough to aim our spells properly.

The fur was a few metres of thick, knotted grey wool, spanning across its entire body and covering a good portion of its hooves, all eight of them supporting the stumpy legs. There were four on each side, quite different from your typical ash bison. There were two brown tusks extruding from its mouth, about the length of its head and one horn reminiscent of a rhinoceros’ sticking out its forehead. Up closer, this thing was easily the single biggest creature I’d ever seen, in this world at least. Hydra was about five times larger in her real form.

After going over our plans for the final time, I started off with a few Ice Javelins aimed straight at the beast’s eyes, compensating for the chances of missing. Both its eyes were rendered useless and a loud painful bellow escaped the giant’s mouth. Kor’zha loosened the earth beneath its right hooves, causing it to capsize a little, then hardened the earth again, bringing up large entrapping rings of stone with the help of Keagan to ensnare Ashfur in a rather uncomfortable position, making it that much harder to fight back.

Hydra, Meagan and Dawn were on standby in case there was an injury. Kor’zha and Keagan were the entrapment team, holding Ashfur in place. Volt and his wyrm kept their eyes peeled in the event Ashfur decided to try defending himself, and would shock him to afford just enough time so Kor’zha and Keagan could move their earth in place to further bind the beast.

Phoenix and I, and to some extent, Pyro, were quite literally the firing squad. I casted Purist, effectively doubling Incinerate’s power output. Phoenix would then cast his Incinerate, and Pyro would supplement that power even more by combining the magic of his wyrm with his own. It was like three and a half Incinerates.

Things were going totally smooth, until, an unseen force cut through the ground at untraceable speed, cutting Keagan’s arm clean off and leaving a gaping crevice in the ground, eventually hitting the Rim and stopping. What the– “Keagan, fall back! Meagan, stop the bleeding! Hydra, reattach the arm! Kor’zha, put a muzzle over Ashfur! That attack came from his mouth! Kira, get Dawn, Volt and Pyro out of here!”

It didn’t take long for me to realise the danger of Ashfur.