When Nathan regained consciousness, the bright light of the morning sun shone through the root network. In the same second he opened his eyes, he abruptly rose from the ground.

"Lizzy!"

Climbing out of his hiding place he rushed to the village, hoping, that everything he experienced the night before was nothing but a horrible nightmare. But after running for only a few seconds, he slowed down came to a halt. He didn't see any houses. He looked around confused, but no matter which direction, all he saw were fields and the river. Where was the village? He once again ran into the direction where Feriona was supposed to be. When he finally arrived, large areas of uncovered earth greeted him. No buildings, no roads, no wells. If someone arrived a few weeks later, the ground would be covered in grass and no one would think that there ever was a village in this place. Nathan sank on his knees, a vacant look in his eyes. He couldn't understand what happened here. More than an hour passed, Nathan was still kneeling on the bare ground without any motion. Not until he heard the clatter of horse hooves, coming from the road, did he regain his senses. He turned his head towards the sound. A shabby carriage, pulled by an old, grey donkey, was driving towards Nathans.

"Ay, boy," the driver shouted to Nathan, "I seem to be a bit lost here, could ya point me the direction to Feriona?"

Nathan tried to answer, but his mouth struggled to form words.

"Hey, are ya mute boy?"

The carriage arrived besides him.

"Boy? You look as if ya've seen a ghost, whats up with ya?" The driver looked carefully at Nathan

"I... Feriona... it is gone."

"Gone? How is it gone? Speak sentences boy, would ya?"

Nathan looked at the brown ground in front of him. Without any more words he pointed toward what has been his village, until the night before. The driver began to understand.

"Ya say, this here is Feriona?"

His look wandered across the wasteland in front of him. He scratched his nose in bewilderment.

"Ya sure?"

In this moment Nathan broke down, a flood of memories from his family and friends surged through his mind. Tears began forming in his eyes, and he started to weep copiously.

The driver's voice became quiet. "Guess it is so."

He watched Nathan cry for a few minutes before talking to him again.

"What happened here, boy? I was supposed to fetch some Nathan and drive him to Port Verago."

After Nathan didn't answer, he lay his hand on Nathan's left shoulder and applied soft pressure.

Yanked out of his memories, Nathan once again looked at the burly man.

"I.. I am Nathan." He closed his eyes, trying to regain some calm before he continued talking. "Feriona was attacked by a big airship yesterday... I don't know why, it's all gone, everyone is gone!"

"Attacked huh?" The driver glanced at the brown earth. "Must've been an awful the ferocious mage then." He looked at Nathan. "So ya're Nathan? I hate to ask, but do ya still need my carriage? I drove quite a few hours for ya."

Rage welled up in Nathan.

"You want money, yes!?" He took out a small purse from his trousers and threw it at the driver. "Here, have as much as you want asshole, now leave me alone!"

Confronted by Nathan's outburst the driver only shrugged with his shoulders.

"I don't want to be a dick. It's just that my donkey doesn't feed on compassion, ya know?" He sighed. "Let me give ya a piece of advice. Take ya purse, pay me what I've earned and let me bring ya to Verago. Ya need at least 20 hours on foot to travel to the next village. If ya're not robbed or mauled on the way."

Nathan stayed silent, only glaring at the driver defiantly.

"Do what ya want."

The driver collected the purse from the ground, took a few silver thales out of it and held it towards Nathan, who hesitated to take it. Finally, his rationality pushed the grief into the background, and he reached out for it.

"Good decision boy. Now get up." The expression of the driver became soft, he didn't want to leave Nathan in this nowhere-land, but he couldn't force him to make this decision.

After a last, long glance over the devastated area, where Feriona stood for centuries before vanishing in a single night, he climbed on the carriage and sat beside the driver.

"Thank you." Nathan's low voice was nearly inaudible, but the driver grinned satisfied.

"No problem boy."

For the first time, Nathan took a real look at the driver. He was a buff man in his forties with a multitude of scratches and scars all over his face and arms. His short, blonde hair and stubbly beard gave him the aura of a fearless adventurer.

"I'm Mark. It's a pleasure to meet ya."

Nathan nodded slightly, deep in thoughts. After calming down a bit, a torrent of questions poured into his brain. Why was the city attacked? Did someone offend some noble in the capital? That was unlikely, most of the villagers never even traveled a few dozens of kilometers away from Feriona, much less to one of the big cities. It wasn't an invasion either. If another kingdom invaded, they would loot and steal, but they wouldn't completely destroy the villages, a land without humans was pretty worthless after all. And even though the village was razed, he didn't see a single corpse except for... arriving at that thought, the last seconds of Lizzy's life replayed in his memory. A deep sadness overcame Nathan. Even if the other villagers survived, he wouldn't see her face again.

Mark seemed to have noticed the shift in his emotions and started to talk merrily about the travels and adventures he went on when he was younger. Everyone else would probably have been greatly entertained by his mix of swaggering and self-deprecation, Nathan, however, was not listening to him. To heavy was the impact of the last night's events and the loss of everything he knew. He told himself hundreds of times, that he had to be strong, that they might still be alive, just captured and abducted. Maybe caught by some evil magician for his nefarious experiments. Nathan chuckled bitterly on this thought. This wasn't one of the hero stories his mother used to tell them in the cold winter evenings. It's not like Nathan had an artifact or friendly spirit that would help him to overcome any opponent within a few months. Even if they were abducted, he wouldn't be able to do anything about it in the years to come. After brooding over the possible reasons for what happened, he straightened his back and stared straight ahead. He had nothing, nothing but his talent for magic. Maybe, one day, when he was an accomplished magician, he would be able to find out who attacked them and get revenge for his friends and family.

Nathan's senses returned to reality. When he looked up, the afternoon sun seemed especially bright for him, as if he crawled out of a cave and saw the sky for the first time in decades.

"... boar as big as a house, and before anyone could react, it rammed its thick, dumb skull straight into the cliff. Ya should've seen it, he ground trembled for minutes, gigantic rocks broke away and squashed its head." Mark smacked his leg in excitement.

"How long until we reach Port Verago?" Nathan interrupted his story.

"Oh, ya're talking. We'll arrive after dawn, 5 or 6 hours to go."

"Or rather ride." Mark added with a grin.

"What are you going to do in Verago, boy?"

"I don't know." Nathan quietly said. "I was supposed to take the ship to Gilsbek and join the magic school there, but... I just don't know."

"Magic school? So ya're one of those guys that can control mana? Makes me envious. If I knew magic, I'd still be adventuring." Mark made a short break before continuing. "I had a mage in my party once, great guy, a bit unsocial, but he made the biggest explosions I've ever seen. Great stuff."

"You know a mage?" Nathan asked with an eager voice.

"A few to be exact, adventuring makes a lot of friends, ya know?"

"Tell me about them, do you know someone who can do magic without a tool?"

Mark thought about Nathan's question for a bit.

"Without a wand or so? Never heard of it, most of the guys I knew used a big ass staff."

"Why a staff?"

"It's all about the mana boy, mana crystals are damn expensive, so they have to use large staffs made from bad quality mana rocks to cast the same number of spells as some noble with his fancy jewelry."

"How many spells can you cast with such a staff?" Having found someone who knows magicians, Nathan didn't hold back with his questions. In his village, all he was told was hearsay and the bit of information that the bypassing recruiters from magic schools let slip.

"Depends boy, depends. I'm not some expert in this, but from what i saw, the normal magic staffs are good for a few dozens of large spells, dunno about how many smaller spells they cast, though. I

bet high-quality staffs can easily keep going for more than a hundred spells."

Mark furrowed his brows, as he tried to remember back to his days where he was adventuring.

"We fought a fugitive mage once, who killed a noble and stole his stuff. He had a bracelet with a pure mana crystal as big as a fingernail. I tell you, this guy could keep on casting for the whole day, he bombarded our hiding spot with all kinds of spells to force us out." He smirked a bit. "Didn't help him though, in the night our assassin sneaked over and cut his throat. Sadly that bastard tried to cast a spell when he was dying, messed up his circuits and blew up everything. There wasn't much left of his robbed stuff afterwards."

In the following hours Mark kept on recounting his experiences with magicians, Nathan listened attentively, but to his regret, nearly everything Mark told him were anecdotal stories with few facts. Still, it helped him to get an impression of what it was like, to be a low tiered magician. They were something like the last resort and wouldn't fight if not necessary. Probably due to magic tools being too expensive to be used up. Fighting opponents that could be beaten in other ways would be a waste. What they all had in common was, that they rarely formed free-floating mana circuits with the mana drawn out from mana rocks. Mostly they used the mana circuits already carved in their tools, just channeling it through them. When he asked Mark about this, he only said its faster this way and does the job, not really caring about the process of how magic was cast.

A few hours after the sun vanished behind the horizon, the gatehouse of Port Verago appeared in front of them. Due to the late hour, the muddy area in front of the closed main gate was not very busy. Only a few people lined up at a smaller, iron gate beside it. When they arrived at the line, Mark stopped talking about his experiences and observed the two guards. Not diverting his eyes from the gate, he leaned down to Nathan and whispered to him.

“When they ask us what we're coming to Verago for, just say ya want to look for work. If they hear ya're going to some magic school, they'll assume ya're rich or something and ask for a higher fee. They can't do that for some poor sob who came to make a living.”

Nathan nodded slightly, what Mark said made sense, his father told him once, that the soldiers on guard duty were paid quite badly because its known, that they will increase their pay by illegal means anyways. This policy didn't do much to ease that problem, though. It rather increased it to a point, where fees and punishments were pretty much arbitrary.

The line moved slowly forward, one person at a time was interrogated and let in. Most of the people in line were hunters and field workers. The guards let them pass without much delay, However, when it was the turn for a trader, that owned three carts filled with merchandise, a loud argument broke out. It was quite obvious, that the guards fancied some of the items for themselves, while the trader was unwilling to be extorted. But in the end, he still had to comply. The guards each carried a few items into the guardhouse and let the cursing trader pass. A few minutes later it was Nathan's turn.

“Where are you from, what's your occupation and why are you visiting Port Verago?” the guard asked in a monotonous and bored voice. Mark took the initiative and answered first.

“I'm working here as day labor and was visiting my family to bring them some items from the market and my last earnings.” The guard raised his left eyebrow. Before he could answer, Mark continued:

“When I was on my way back, I met this boy sitting besides so road, so i took him along.”

“I remember you, didn't the same thing happen four days ago?” The guard eyed Mark suspiciously, but he only shrugged.

“What am I supposed to say? I'm a kind-hearted man.”

Sighing the guard turned to Nathan. “And you, what are you doing here?”

“I'm Nathan. My village was attacked by an airship, I need someone to-”

“Stop, stop.” The guard interrupted him. “Sorry, but I don't really care, if you have a complaint or some other issue, bother the army's office, not me. I want to know what you want to do here.”

Nathan stared blankly at the guard, he didn't expect a reaction like that. Slightly stammering he answered, “I... I lost everything when the village was destroyed, I need to look for work...”

Nathan looked down to the ground, to hide the anger in his eyes.

“So basically, you got nothing and will probably end up as a beggar.” The guard summarized.

“Okay then, normally its 20 coppers per person, but because I'm such a nice guy I'll have 10 copper from each of you.”

Nathan sneered inwardly. As if anyone would believe that, the normal fee was probably seven copper or something alike. He wanted to reach for his purse when Mark stopped his movement.

“Ya only have 30 copper left my little friend, let me pay for you as a condolence.”

He took a silver piece from his purse and handed it to the guard, who returned eighty copper to him.

“You may enter.”

The second guard opened the gate for them, while the first one already talked to the next person in line.