“Aye, bitch!” I kicked open the metaphorical door on our horribly-built hut where Donna was sleeping, “I just mastered a shield spell and,” and licked my lips, “I want a reward!”

She looked around with death in her eyes, “You woke me up to say that?”

“What? It’s not like you need sleep.”

“No, but I like it, you little shit!” she casted Divergence on me and my raggedy body flung and rotated in rather disgraceful ways back into the meadow-like field we camped at. I mean sure, the sun didn’t even come up yet this morning, but did she have to be that angry?

I laid on the ground. Well, here’s comfy. Might as well… I thought, opting to sleep right where her level one Divergence sent me. That was just a plain bad idea though, as the sun woke me up a few hours after. A couple deer laid around me. What am I? The deer leader? In a lot of ways, the spirit world was much like my own world, except the fact that you could literally fall off the face of the earth here, should you venture far enough. The day and night schedule stayed the same, I think. Animals and such were much like the ones back home, except that they were all capable of manipulating whatever element they were born into as well as certain spells, some hereditary and unable to be learnt by others.

I sat up, but my fellow deer brethren weren’t at all startled. In fact, they came closer to sniff me. “I haven’t bathed in a while though, so…”

After petting them and feeling like I was a good person because they seemed to like me, I continued reading the Crescent Trinity codex. I had a couple questions for Emily about the name of that codex and the things mentioned inside it. Next on the agenda was enchanting. After sinking my teeth into it for a few days, I reached the final pillar but didn’t read into it before going back to the start of the enchanting section and reading it over.

It was, rather simple, in a complex kind of way. The absolute first rule was that an enchanter cannot enchant an item if the spell is not known. I didn’t quite understand that part. It brought up a lot of questions. Enchantments, I thought, were meant to be something passive, not active. If there was, say, a ring that was enchanted with the spell Fireball, would it cast the spell itself or would it improve the user’s ability to cast the spell? If it was casting the spell on its own, then how many times can it do that? Does the ring have mana? Does the mana regenerate? Does the enchanter have to permanently sacrifice a part of his total mana pool in order to give the ring mana? If yes, then enchanting can’t be turned into a business. That would explain why teleporters were only seen in the Order and nowhere else.

My mind jumped all over the place, but alas, something told me the teleporters weren’t exactly enchanted items. Interest on that subject piqued, so I figured I’d make a visit back to the Order and ask Elder about it. But, in truth, the best persons to ask would be Donna – if only she regained all of her damn memories already – and Emily. The only issue with asking the witch is her unscrupulously annoying poetic jargon. If I asked her how many legs a chicken has, instead of saying “two” she’d probably tell me the chicken can also fly and therefore its legs are but a method of movement. That’s all well and fine for something I already know about, but I knew nothing about enchanting other than what was in the codex, so her explanation would probably confuse me even further.

“Elder it is, then.”

I warped out, deciding to handle some responsibilities I gained with the Ingen and asking Elder in one visit. “Elder’s not here,” Keagan said, sounding like he reiterated that same line a million times. “Ah, Eric, forgive my tone but a lot of people do ask for the old man. He’s gone some meeting in Endathal. Left a couple days now.”

“Ugh, what bad timing. Hey, dude, do you know how the teleporters work? Are they enchanted?”

“Enchanted? I suppose you can call it that. It’s a magical construct.”

“Where does its power come from?”

“Why the sudden interest?” he questioned, looking through some logs.

I stood up from my slouched position, “I was reading about enchanting and became curious.”

“Well, it’s power comes from us mages. To sustain the cells where its power come from, it takes a small portion of the user’s mana, but that’s only when its low on juice.”

My face contorted a little, in a mental pain. Not exactly what I was hoping for. He explained that it would use the gathered mana and recharge its cells some time at night, where the frequency of use would be at its lowest. So, isn’t there like, an enchant I could use to make a sword or something mighty and unbreakable? Or maybe even cut through anything? Or a set of armour that can’t be penetrated? Isn’t there an enchant that could give an item the ability to grant a normal person super strength or something? Enchanting can’t be that boring as to be subjugated to being a greedy teleporter, right? I wondered. After all, for it to get into the Crescent Trinity, meant it had to be important and quite useful like alchemy.

“Where’s that damn witch when you need her?” I quarrelled under my breath. Suddenly, a hand tugged at me, pulling me off balance and my environment changed in the blink of an eye. “What the fuck!” I cussed out, trying to make sense of what the hell just happened. After tracing the hand that held on to me, I saw the witch. Of course…

“He’ll be my delegate on the matter,” she yawned, “goodbye now,” and vanished.

What the… Delegate on what matter? I asked myself, looking about the room. Elder was there; so were several other important looking heads. The way they were each surrounded by personal guard, I could only assume they were leaders of provinces around the country. Some of them I remember seeing from the Ashfur celebration. There was about a full minute of silence as everyone just looked on at me, and I, at them.

“So, what’d that miscreant get me into?”

There seemed to be a silent storm brewing, especially after my question. Elder, being the one who I’m most familiar with, sought to debrief me. “There has been reason to keep a close eye on the west. Should there be any turbulence, this meeting will solidify what to do in occurrence of it.”

“The west?” I repeated and he nodded, looking me dead in the eye. Why won’t they just come out and say what the hell’s going on. I wasn’t one for guessing games, but it seemed like they wanted me to play such a game as a gauge on if I’m worthy of being in this meeting. Adults can be such a pain sometimes. “The Virai?”

He nodded once more. Judging by the lack of raised eyebrows, I assumed Elder spoke to this congregation about the two different tribes of orcs. So, there’s trouble with the Virai anyway, huh? I pondered if stopping the plot to get the seal was even worth it.

“Before we proceed, might I ask who is representing the royals of Endathal?” I didn’t see any familiar faces. There was no show of hands or claim to the position.

“We’ve chosen to keep this from the royal family until further investigations,” an old man, someone with his voice in his nostrils relayed to me.

“Well,” I chuckled in my seat, “that’s a clear-as-day lie.”

He flared with a subtle rage, wanting to maintain his façade of control. Elder cleared his throat, “My apologies everyone, but Mr Archibald already has ties to the royal family. Hiding will only cause him to grow wary of us. Might I remind you, this young man is the one who’s defeated Ashfur, saved the royal seal from falling to the wrong hands, and was claimed to be the strongest mage in the city of mages by the witch herself. We may need his help should the Virai launch a full-assault.”

After a moment of silence, a woman spoke. “Very well. I am the representative for his Majesty, Mr Archibald. We wished to keep this silent as a measure of safeguarding intelligence. I do hope we can put this behind us.”

“Already behind. Have you all decided on the countermeasures yet?” I asked.

The meeting didn’t take too long. We were done in about half an hour. All in all, it just felt like a plea to the Order to send as many rank four officers and rank five councilmen as we could manage in the case of war. Elder certainly had the negotiation in a stranglehold over them, but he refrained from abusing that power. He did however, sought the Order’s heftiest payment ever, people. What he asked for wasn’t riches, but people.

As much as I’m for magic, I found that the Order was too established. No, that’s the wrong word. They were undisputed. Frankly, should they turn against the country, we’d most likely fall into a horrific dystopia. There is little any military force could do against us should we properly strategize and work together.

We walked along the streets of Endathal afterward, just Elder and I. “More mages, huh?”

“Are you surprised?” He asked, strolling with his hands clasped behind his back. “The Order is plenty wealthy. Coin is of secondary importance.”

“That so… You know, I was looking for you earlier today.”

“Hmm?” he looked at me.

“What do you know about enchanting?”

“It’s damn near impossible,” he admitted. There were no shortage of eyes ogling at us in the streets. The actual leader of the Order of Mages just taking a midday walk through Endathal was a hell of a sight, but it’s not like people knew he was the leader. They were instead fascinated by his robes, which were of course the robes mages from the Order wear. “We have enchanted items at the Order, sure, but calling them ‘enchanted’ is surely over-glorifying it.”

He went on to explain the exact thoughts I had about those things. They borrowed mana in some way. They weren’t exactly enchanted, at least according to the descriptions in the codex. Before long, I returned to the spirit world.

“Yo, Aug, how’s it coming along?” I greeted the now resting blacksmith.

“Eh, as fast as I could make it.”

For the rest of the day, I juggled between practising light magic and reading about the last pillar in Crescent Trinity; transmutation. At the very start of the third section, it was stated that one should not waste their time with transmutation as it was the hardest, most time-consuming task of the three pillars. Donna, the author, was explicit in saying it. Yet, she went on to explain how it worked. Guess the witched told her about it.

For one to transmute one thing to another, it simply required a strong basic understanding of the source material and destination material. There were no known bounds to it, but there was a difficulty increase for different states of matter. For example, one would find it easier to transmute a liquid to another liquid, but to transmute a solid to a liquid or vice versa would be a more delicate task. Of course, the volume of the source object to the destination had to be similar. You could transmute more to less, but never less to more, unless you were really good and even then, there were limitations.

‘Alchemy. Enchanting. Transmutation. These were the pillars that guided the Crescent moon to its other half.’

That statement came at the end of the book. The hell does that mean? Other half? How? She does realise that a half moon is not literally half a moon, right?

Yeah, that’s what I was thinking at the time, but when I questioned Donna about it, she smacked me upside the noggin’. “You an idiot, or what? It means that she met her lover.”

“Lover? Oh! The witch! Right, of course.”

“I met my lover too some years ago but all he ever does is practise magic!” she complained in jest, yet there was truth hanging over it. I looked back at her sitting on the makeshift bed. Her arms were folded and her eyes glowered. Sometimes I forgot she was trapped in me all those years. I crept alongside her and slithered my way behind, embracing her loosely.

“You’re so needy! What are you, a teenage girl?”

“Maybe I should’ve made you resurrect me as one,” she placed a finger to her lips in thought, “maybe then you’d pay attention.”

“Nah, mature women have their own appeal. And besides, it’s your fault magic gets most of my attention.”

She squirmed out of my arms and turned around, pressing her lips to mine without pause. No, really, it was the longest kiss I’d had thus far, by far. I guess she’s been waiting for this, huh…

She laid me down and continued, not even giving me a chance to flail about. I don’t even remember when our clothes came off. She certainly left her mark on me, literally; a few of them too.

We laid together afterward, only then did I feel the slight burn from her nails’ scratches on my back. “I should have you arrested for assault.”

“I could probably just bribe you with sex anyway. If that doesn’t work, a spell surely will.”

“Yeah, probably. So, Donna,” I exhaled a little, “it looks like we may end up in some sort of dispute with the Virai.”

Her eyes opened a big in surprise but quickly calmed, “Will you fight?” she asked, resting her hand on my chest.

“The Order will. They should have everything under control so I don’t think I’ll be needed. But I’m not sure about the fine print of becoming a councilman. Maybe I’ll be forced to fight.”

“Whatever you do, I’ll support you,” she pecked me on the cheek and went back to reading a book.

Despite all I asked her about the Crescent Trinity, she wasn’t able to answer properly because of her lapse in memory and choose to not answer at all for fear of contradicting herself with the information she was missing about the ‘trinity’.

“Ugh, where’s the witch when you need her,” I mumbled, walking outside into the moonlit pastures.

“You just did something with Donna, didn’t you?” I heard a voice behind me.

“I swear to August’s horrible looks, if you jump me like that one more time, I’ll, I’ll…”

“You’ll what?” she sneered.

I flicked her forehead, “Don’t think ‘cause you’re powerful I can’t punish ya. I’ma stuff you in a barrel and roll your mysterious ass down a hill or something.”

She guffawed, quite obnoxiously. I bet the entire water faction must’ve heard her. “How did you come up with that?!” she held her laughter in as best she can. “Wait, you think I’m mysterious?”

“Well, you got dragons and shit. Ain’t nobody else got dragons here. And how come as soon as we call your name or something you appear? You eavesdroppin’?”

“Not eavesdropping. There are trigger words that alert me, so you can call me anytime you want and I’ll answer – if I feel like it at least.”

I sighed. What can’t she do? I mean, really? Trigger words? I sighed again and she raised a brow. “Okay, listen, the Crescent Trinity. I’m assuming Donna named it after you. She talks about enchanting, alchemy and transmutation and I’ve got a shit ton of questions abo–”

She put a finger to my lips, picked up a nearby branch and started doing some things. Part of the branch turned into a vial in the blink of an eye, complete with a cork too. The rest of the branch turned to herbs, then they shined for a brief second or two, then turned to a blue liquid. It shined once more. “A double-enchanted mana potion. Increases your mana pool, mana regeneration and potency of spells. Are you really, really interested in these things?”

“Wow, this is like the first time you spoke straight with me. Anyway, yes, I am. Who isn’t? And it sounds like you’re dying for a student who wants to learn it. Don’t you have like a thousand Apostles by now?”

“I have less than fifty. And if you wanted me to talk straight, you could’ve just asked.” I couldn’t believe my ears! “And, I’d like to teach people about the ‘pillars’ as they’re called in Donna’s book, but,” she giggled, “all of my Apostles, who’ve all achieved ‘Division’, as you call it, have given up on it. I granted them all understanding of it but when they noticed how much work it was, they gave up. It really is a lifetime pursuit.”

A lot of questions were spiralling through my mind at that time but the number one thing was, “Just how old are you again?”

“As old as this world. So, whatever year we’re in, I’m that.”

“Okay, alright, you’re a walking body of deception.”

“Thanks,” she shrugged.

“So how long did it take you to learn the pillars?”

She took a minute, thinking back, “Hmm, it was when I was first introduced to magic. If I remember correctly, it took me one year.”

“One year?! E-each, right?”

She shook her head, “Altogether. Don’t look so glum. I’ve certain, genetics that gave me quite the edge over regular people.”

“Genetics my butt. You learned that in your previous, world, didn’t you? I bet it was easier over there.”

She let go her staff and folded her arms, “Yeah, I did. My memories of which thing I learned where are fuzzy, it’s been a while. But it wasn’t easier at all over there. The difficulty of the pillars in both realms match.”

You’re kidding. “What the hell kind of genetics did you have?”

She laughed, “Sorry, that’s a secret.”

“Tell me something, Emily,” I lifted her chin gently at me, “you know all the secrets of magic in this world, don’t you?”

“You’re thousands of years too young to seduce me, boy, but you’re welcomed to try,” she smiled. “And yes, I do know everything about magic, even the magic that others create. I know everything about the laws governing this realm. I’m sort of a guardian to it, to preserve balance.”

This conversation was becoming less about the pillars and more about the witch. “And who made you the guardian?”

“I don’t think the person would mind me telling you, but I’ll refrain from doing so.”

“Figured. So, you gonna teach me about the pillars or what?”

She smiled, looking into my eyes with her reptilian orbs. “Sure, I’ll be happy to, but I know you’ll just spend your time practising it instead of dealing with the looming threat over Methelia.”

Oh, right, guys, Methelia is the name of our world, which was also used to name the particular part that humans lived in. Don’t know why they didn’t think of another name. I’m a horrible narrator, huh?

“The Virai?” I asked her.

“Well, yes. And no.”

“If you’re for balance and currently helping me, does that mean you support a culling?”

“Unfortunately, yes. Methelia will perish should they underestimate their orc neighbours. I have to be away for a while, so I’ll grant you the knowledge of the pillars, however, let not your greed for strength overpower your responsibilities.”

“Ugh, yes mom, I’ll do my chores.”