Alex decided not to move. He stared up at the ceiling, his head a mess of thoughts that all screamed for attention at the same time, deafening him; as if his head had become so full that nothing could move. Then, as the hours passed, and the light outside slowly faded, all those thoughts finally disappeared, and he fell into a dream-filled slumber.

“Alex” the girls whisper came to him from the other side of a door, echoing in his mind, magic carrying it past the threshold and through the barrier that sound would not have penetrated, “Can you hear me?”

“Yeah.” he whispered back, “Can you hear me?”

“Your whisper is a bit loud”

“What about now?”

“Perfect.”

“Okay, I’m moving back.” Alex whispered, and then crawled back from the door by a metre, past the edge of the large wooden bed. “One length.”

No response came through the door, so he tried a little louder. “One Length.”

“Perfect. How’s mine?”

“Perfect. You’re really good. I’m moving back again.”

“Okay.”

Crawling back, they repeated the process once, and then a second time. Then, when Alex couldn’t crawl back any further he whispered “All done. You think we’ve got it down?”

The door at the far end of the room opened, and there stood a six-year old girl with long brown hair and eyes of emerald green. “I’m much better at it than you, but I guess you’re okay too.” That hair and those eyes were the same as Alex’s, which was only natural because the girl walking towards him was his little sister, Lilly.

“What are you two trouble makers doing up so early in the morning?” A face poked through the doorway just behind Lilly. With eyes of emerald green and an ever-playful expression, it was a pretty face, but it was the long ribbons of golden-blonde hair that always caught the childrens’ eyes. Alex and Lilly had both inherited their father’s hair and mother’s eyes, so it was the parts of their parents that they didn’t have that they admired the most. Naturally however, it was the parts that they had inherited from the other side that each of their parents loved about them the most. Their father always looked at their green eyes and smiled and their mother always played with their hair.

Lilly jumped upon hearing the voice behind her, then she turned around quickly. “Nothing.”

She’d said it too quickly, and their mother’s eyebrows shot up in suspicion. She looked at Alex questioningly.

“We were just talking through the door” he said without stuttering or pausing.

“I see.” She frowned, no-doubt curious as to why they were talking through the door when they could just as easily have opened it. She didn’t know. Their parents were both magisters that worked to support the local farms, but they didn’t know that their children had both already secretly learned the fundamentals of magic, and furthermore, they didn’t know that their children had both been born oversensitive to ether and could talk to each-other even through walls or when hundreds of kilometres separated them. It was their secret: they were never alone.

“Can we go outside and play?” Lilly asked, hands behind her back and eyes wide in an act that displayed her cuteness.

Their mother let out a sorrowful noise with a sullen expression, then conceded. “That’s fine but stay away from the woods; they aren’t safe.” From the look on her face she was planning on spending her whole day-off playing with the two of them in the house like she usually did.

“We’ll be back before lunch,” Alex consoled her, as Lilly turned and ran through the bedroom door, and she smiled at that.

The two children headed down the large wooden stairs, past their father who was fixing the arm of a tall, wooden farming doll, and outside onto the street with only a short “bye.” Rushing past the rows of houses they headed straight for the fields closest to the woods. They knew that the woods were dangerous, but that was where the spirits were.

As they skirted the wheat, they could see the soaring pines beyond, and the vast sea of jagged mountains that pierced the sky behind them. Those mountains marked the top of the world in the minds of everyone in the three kingdoms, though in reality they were only the top of their small continent.

whispered Alex and Lilly in unison, standing so far apart that they could only barely see each-other’s faces. Two spirits flashed before Alex, mere motes: both of them the kind-of small carrion that could cause light. He ignored them.

He and Lilly then walked forwards a hundred paces through the low wheat and tried again, getting closer to the forest. Nothing but carrion appeared again. They walked another hundred paces. Nothing again.

Slowly, section-by-section they covered the vast field until they reached the tree line, and from there they moved back to meet with one another, and looked into the depths of the forest together.

“It doesn’t make sense!” Lilly proclaimed loudly. “Where are they? The old soldiers at the tavern keep telling us how there’s heaps of powerful spirits around here, so why can’t we find any!”

“Maybe we just have to scream really loud after-all.”

Lilly stomped her foot and turned to him. “If we do that, someone will notice, then we won’t be able to use magic anymore.” While they knew that people couldn’t hear whispers in the ether, they both also knew that if they spoke too loudly around one of their parents’ bound spirits, the spirits would tell their parents what was happening. A whisper to a specific person could reach that person even when they were far away, without attracting attention, but a whisper to anybody in the area wasn’t nearly so secretive. It was like hearing one’s own name said on the other side of a crowded room: you would hear it over everything else, and immediately pay more attention to the conversation that followed. It was for this reason that the two had been unheard until this point, and it was for this reason that one could call-on a specific spirit from the spirit world without alerting every other spirit.

It was common practice that adults did not allow children to engage with magic before they come of age, and often send them to the university of magic to learn, so that it can be done in complete safety. Magic could be a deadly weapon to the user or other people, so it was seen as unsafe allowing children to dabble in it.

“But the strong spirits really aren’t talking to us.” Alex sighed.

Her face froze. “That’s it! They aren’t talking to us!”

“Huh?”

“They’re here, just like the soldiers said, but no matter how much we try to talk to them, they aren’t talking back.”

Alex scratched his head “Yeah, you’re probably right, but I don’t know any way to make them listen to us or get into contact with them.”

“Obviously. We only got this far because we can hear mum, dad, and the soldiers whispering… and because we learned how to do it ourselves of-course.”

They had listened, never letting-on that they could hear, and figured it out on their own, just like they’d figured out how to bind spirits, and bound their own tiny carrion. Lilly’s little spirit could warm her when she was cold, and Alex’s could make light in the dark. Their spirits had gotten a little bit stronger in the months since they’d made contracts with them simply from absorbing the tiny power in ether fluctuations formed from whispers, but they were still just little motes of heat and light; they weren’t anything like the more powerful spirits that the soldiers had, and the children desperately wanted spirits like those.

“There has got to be another way to do it.” Lilly insisted, staring hard at her own small hand.

Alex crossed his arms. “I don’t think we can get any further without learning more than what we know now…Maybe we need to think about getting our hands on a book.”

Lilly’s head whipped around. “Yes! Perfect. Good thinking. Just what I’d expect of my big brother.” She beamed.

All-the-while, from deep within the forest ahead of them, they were being watched. They couldn’t see it with their eyes, but hidden among the shadows, its existence only a shade darker than the shadow that it lay in, like a wolf that had seen two tender little lambs, a creature was listening to their every sound and scrutinizing their every movement, planning of a way to have its feast.

“Alexander. Hey Alexander!” Reno shook Alex awake with one of his massive hands.

He opened his eyes and sat up, confused. The room was unfamiliar for a moment and he had to struggle to remember where he was.

“You were having a nightmare. It looked like a pretty bad one too. Are you okay?”

Holding his head, Alex pulled his mind back to the present and away from that dream. As usual it had been really vivid, like he was there all over again. “Yeah. Ah, thanks Reno, and sorry about waking you up.”

“No problem, I was actually just about to head off to morning practice. Did you want to come? That pretty girl Serah will probably be there.” He grinned.

Alex remembered the events of the day before. “No… I think I’ll go for a run instead. Watching other people training isn’t going to help me reach my own goals, and that is the reason that I’m here.”

At that comment, Reno smiled. “That’s a great way of thinking. I’m headed off then.” He said that, but he stood there looking at the younger students face for a while longer. “You don’t look so good. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, just a bit shook up from the dream.”

He accepted Alex’s words with a nod and left the room with a bag on his back and both of his heavy hammers at his waist.

Alex rose and dressed, then slipped outside and jogged around the campus. It was his third day at Etheret, but he had yet to fully explore the grounds, so he took this as the opportunity to do so. Running North first, he skirted the edge of the forest without entering, feeling that a job through the forest would probably have been much more enjoyable.

Moving around the Western wall next, bypassing the practice field by a fair distance, his eyes naturally sought out Serah’s form and saw her moving in that same graceful manner as the day before. Reno was in a mock battle using fists against an opponent who was almost his own size, and the two had gathered a crowd. It was like seeing a circle of kids standing around two adults fighting.

The jog then took him along the south wall where in sandpits various circles had been drawn, surrounded by sigils. The Southern wall separated the institute from the city of Zephyr, and as he passed-by the gate he spied several people going about their morning business in the city.

Alex Decided to cut-through the courtyard instead of going along the Western wall and around the outside of the girls’ dormitories. There was enough distance from the wall to the buildings themselves that it was probably an unnecessary courtesy, but the thought of offending every female in the institute at once was just a little too scary for Alex.

As he passed through the courtyard, he saw a familiar person at the notice board. It was Gwen Rivers, the young noblewoman who had been introduced to them on the first day by Draks as the head of the events committee and club president. “Elspeth Rivers and Damien Rivers,” Alex muttered to himself, remembering the girl’s parent’s names. They were names he was very familiar with, though he had never met them.

Quietly, he made his way to the notice board. Gwen was pinning two new notices up side-by-side, and Alex stood to the side of her a few feet away, pretending to read them. She noticed, and turned her head smiling “Hello there, are you interested in the fall dance?”.

Alex looked at the papers properly. They were both notices about a dance that was coming up to which the students were invited. He shook his head, aware that he was wearing clothes for exercise and not a uniform. They were tattered, but he was sure to explain the situation just in-case she hadn’t realized: “No m’lady, I’m not of noble birth.”

She shook her head. “That doesn’t matter. We’ll be having dances in the grand halls for the nobles and in the forest for the commoners.” She gestured to the two separate posters. “I know it doesn’t sound all that great being in the woods, but it’s actually a lot more fun.” She looked around to see who was listening. “I slipped away from the nobles and danced in the forest last year. It was a much better night than the year before.” She winked.

Alex couldn’t help but smile. One look at her face and anyone could tell that she was being completely genuine. “Maybe I’ll go then. It’ll get my mind away from my problems. Thank you m’lady.” he said with a bit of a sad face.

“Oh, what kinds of problems? You’re still in foundations, aren’t you? You shouldn’t be having any problems yet.”

Alex put on a sour expression. “Actually m’lady, I was just thinking about the spirits in the South. They’re the same as the spirits that are helping us, so I don’t understand why we can’t make peace with them, and why we have to fight.”

She smiled lightly at the problem presented. “Unfortunately, that isn’t possible. We’d have made peace with them a long time ago if we could have, but they only see us as food. They aren’t interested in peace at all.”

He scratched his head. “Even if they’re only interested in eating us though m’lady, I still think it wouldn’t be impossible.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if we were to work with them and assist them in attacking the people we want them to eat, like the orders of the Southern kingdoms of Lammria and Aisnet secretly, then Windria could conquer all of the three kingdoms couldn’t it m’lady? They are weapons after-all. I mean, eventually the other kingdoms are going to do it anyway, so wouldn’t it make sense to act first?”

She turned a gaze to him like he’d just said something horrible. “Lammria and Aisnet aren’t our enemies, they’re our allies, and doing something like that… just thinking about it is ghastly. The Ashai are real monsters you know? They eat children. There is no way that such a thing should ever be allowed to occur. To bring those things into our country and make deals with them for anything would make us worse than monsters, we would be truly evil.”

“Ah, that’s true. M’lady, please forgive me, I only considered it from a tactical perspective, and didn’t think about what it would mean ethically.”

She nodded, but she still seemed bothered by it. “A leader must do what is right, or their soldiers will not follow them, and their people will rise-up and overthrow them. Our proud orders and noble families would never allow something like that, and neither will I.” she was getting quite fired-up.

“Of-course, m’lady. My apologies.”

“No need for apologies, but don’t worry about it anymore, there’s no need to be afraid. We will never let that happen.”

Somehow, Alex felt that she’d forgotten the original question.

Gwen Rivers had finished pinning the papers up and was now standing there with a triumphant smile as though she had just won a battle.

“Well, I should get ready for classes now, m’lady, thank you very much for your assistance.”

“Anytime. I hope to see you at the dance, but remember, if you see me, don’t tell anyone.” She winked again.

She was a strange character but probably not “evil”, Alex decided, after bowing and making his way back to the dorm. Ahead of him, he noticed Serah walking, her blonde ponytail swaying lightly behind her. He frowned and thought “I must have been so busy with the conversation that I hadn’t noticed her walk past us.”

The lessons began shortly after, and with everyone having already learned the fundamentals of spirit communication, it was time to acquire a spirit themselves, and learn some simple commands. Naturally Carrion spirits, the little ones that were everywhere, were the first spirit that everyone would bind with a contract. They were asked to first make contact, decide on which type of spirit to employ, and then repeat the words of the contract that they preferred. Alex finished his as quickly as possible, his words spoken out-loud so that the others in their group could hear.

he whispered.

A dozen little motes of light seemed to flash into existence before him momentarily.

, , , ,

A little light flickered once more, and Alex rolled-up his sleeve a little and pricked his arm with a needle. Shortly after, the little light appeared on his arm and remained there for a few moments. It was drinking his blood, like a mosquito or thirsty insect. It would take one drop now, one part-way through the contract, and one at the end of the thirty days, though contracts varied, and the terms could be changed greatly.

He turned to the others. “They won’t have enough power to speak to you right away, but after drinking your blood, they usually gain enough to whisper into your ear. Don’t expect much though; like the instructor was saying, they only speak the spirit language.”

“Tsk, why do I feel like smacking him after that?” Scarlet asked.

“You have my permission.” Serah responded, though she seemed distracted by his rolled-up sleeve and exposed arm, which was covered in healed cuts.

Alex rolled down his sleeve, sighed and looked at Scarlet. “Why? You asked me to do it first.”

“Just because.”

Looking at Serah he continued “And why do you want to let her hit me?”

She just stared at him for a second, then began her spell softly enough that nobody but Alex could hear it. She chose to bind a heat spirit, and everything was normal until she got to her name allocation. .

Alex grinned before he could stop himself, and she looked at him with wide eyes. Finishing her spell quickly, she secured the heat spirits cooperation and then turned to him suspiciously, clearly wondering if she’d been heard, but she didn’t say anything.

Alex cursed again internally and went back to looking at the front of the class room.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw her face flicker with sudden annoyance, and she turned back to face the front.

“What was that?” Alex wondered silently.

She just kept facing the front expressionlessly.

“I’ve made her mad again” Alex thought, so to fix the problem, softer than anyone could hear, he whispered ,

Thirty centimetres in-front of Serah’s face, a small light appeared and began vibrating in space. Immediately a surprised smile spread across her lips, then she turned to Alex and smiled even more sweetly, causing his heart to skip a beat, before turning back and moving her hand through the light playfully, intrigued by how it could pass right through her palm without moving or dimming, and even shine from beneath her skin. Light carrion were very difficult to pin-down in the physical world. Then her lips moved slightly, and Alex could hear a faint whisper, but it was too soft for even him to pick it up. When the light eventually vanished a half-minute later, her smile didn’t fade, but remained on her lips as she continued to look forward.

Alex was a little surprised that she’d adjusted her whisper so well, considering it was only her first time taking into account his ability to hear them, but he was far more interested in what she had said.

The instructor addressed the class: “Too many spirits in your gallery, or contracts that drain your life in-excess aren’t recommended, as the constant build-up of harm to your body or loss of blood can be dangerous. It may not be a concern now, but with stronger spirits or more spirits, the cost is higher. Make sure to be mindful of your own condition when giving life.” She took a breath. “Also keep in-mind that if you use a spirit to heat water, they won’t stop when it boils, they’ll stop when they run-out of energy. You will need to tell them to stop if you want them to stop. Also, don’t go leaving them in strange places doing strange things either, as that can be a problem for everyone else. You will be held accountable for your spirits actions.”

A student raised their hand, and the teacher pointed at them. “Since carrion can’t talk our language, it would be impossible to send messages to another person or gather information with them, right?”

A slight smile touched the teachers face. “You won’t be sending messages at all during my class, but it is possible. Spirits can memorize messages in our language and repeat them, and after a long time, may even learn our language. If you use a rune that the spirit memorizes as a marker, and have the other person keep the rune on them, the spirit can find the rune and speak so that the person hears it, though, if the rune is stolen, someone else will get the message instead. Spirits are bad at identifying people from what they look like, so runes are necessary when referring the spirit to someone that can’t be seen. Runes are just random symbols stained with the partnered humans blood that act as guides to their spirits. Sigils and circles are much the same: sigils are letters that can be used to spell-out messages in the spirit language and circles indicate places that law-abiding spirits are not allowed to enter or should not leave, though a direct command from a contracted human is of greater priority. All these things assist with using spirits, which is why there are so many different courses and things to learn.”

Many of the faces around the room were frowning. It was a lot of information, and most of them just seemed to want to play with their spirits for the time being. Alex held his head again in pain as the whispers kept sounding-out around him.

“Well, it’s time for break. There’s still a lot that you all need to learn, but I think we’ll take the afternoon to go over some simple commands that will help you to make the most of your spirits.” With those words the whole room was smiling.

Leaving the class, the group of five that Alex was a part-of made its way towards the cafeteria area, and sat down.

“Alexander,” Jamie said, turning to him questioningly “You know how to use runes, right?”

Alex nodded, seeing where it was going. He didn’t mind helping if Jamie wanted to setup communications with someone.

“I was thinking, when we leave the foundations course it’s very likely that most of us wouldn’t be talking to each-other as often, so it might be good for us to all have runes for each-other and for our spirits to recognize those runes.”

Alex had guessed incorrectly. He hadn’t expected that Jamie would want to include him in the network. While Alex was still talking with Serah and the rest of the group, he certainly didn’t plan to continue to do so, as his goals meant that making friends couldn’t happen. It meant that he had to distance himself from the people around him, and he had thought that even if they were all talking now, leaving the foundations class would give him the perfect opportunity to remove himself. Runes also posed another danger: it was possible to use them in many ways.

“That’s a great idea!” Scarlet said grinning before her smile turned wicked. “I bet Serah’s interested in that too.”

Serah looked embarrassed. “I don’t know what you’re getting-at by saying it like that Scar,” and then she added with a nob, “but I do think that it’s a really good idea for us friends to keep in contact.”

Alaya chimed-in, which was unusual for her, with a simple “I’d like that” after which Scarlet reached over and hugged her suddenly.

“Naww, our Alaya would miss us.”

The quiet girl blushed a little, looking flustered and struggled a little in that embrace.

“Then we’re all in agreement?” Jamie said with a happy expression, and the girls nodded. It seems that he’d ignored Alex’s opinion completely. It was only after asking them that he turned to Alex, “Would you be free to set that up this afternoon? We can all meet up here.”

Serah spoke quickly, “Actually Alexander was going to help me with something this afternoon. Would it be okay if we did it tomorrow instead?”

The rest of the group nodded with a little disappointment, and Alex joined them, even more disappointed.

The afternoon class was madness. With all the commands from the magic language being listed on the board, students were writing down as many as they could, and testing them all. Lights flew around the air in arcs and lined up beside each other in rows, Pens were pushed from desks and books lifted up into the air, and a noticeable rise in temperature could be felt throughout the room, though everyone had been told to experiment with their heat spirits when they were alone.

Alex quickly grasped the natures of his other class-mate’s spirits. Scarlet had bound a heat spirit like Serah, Jamie had bound a force spirit, and Alaya had bound a light spirit like him. He could also tell that the amount of blood that they were giving their spirits far exceeded the lifeforce that he gave to his own little mote of light. They were likely planning to build-up their strength as much as possible, which made sense, as those carrion were the only spirits in their galleries.

Alex couldn’t help but feel his chest tighten as he recalled the dream that he’d had, and remembered the past, back when he and Lilly had only had one spirit in their galleries. Back then they had borrowed a book from their parents’ study in secret and read about how they could use their little spirits as messengers to ask any greater spirits in the area if they wanted to form contracts. Greater spirits were wary of humans, and often only spoke to their own kind, so introductions were an important part of the process. What happened to them when they sent their little spirits out to make contact however, was not at all like what was described in the book.

“Everyone.” Alex mumbled, and then repeated himself when it seemed only Serah had noticed. “Everyone, how about on the weekend, when we don’t have lessons, I take you all further South for a day-or-so and help you find a greater spirit to form a contract with?”

There were a few moments of silence when everyone looked at him like he’d just engaged in some social taboo. Scarlet was the first one to break the silence. “You mean you actually want to hang out with us?”

It was true that unless he was helping them with schoolwork he had avoided conversation, but that cut a little. It’s not like he didn’t enjoy being around them, but he felt that it was dangerous, and that they’d be better-off if they didn’t hang around him. From the looks on their faces though, it seemed that they had all interpreted his behaviour as completely antisocial. ‘Then why put up with me?’ he thought to himself.

“Ow!” Scarlet looked at Serah for some reason, then turned back to Alex. “Um, sorry, that was rude of me.”

He shook his head. “No, it’s fine. I don’t mind. I was just thinking that you’d need greater spirits if you want to advance, and that it’d be better to have someone with you who could speak fluently with spirits to interpret, make negotiations, and form a contract as fast as possible.”

They all nodded, seeing Alexander’s reasoning. There was a hidden reason of-course: there was always the slim chance that a spirit hiding in such a place might want to feast on a human instead of make friends with one.

“Is that okay with you, Alexander?” Serah asked, and he quickly nodded in reply.

Jamie frowned. “You’d think that we’d have a field-trip or something to find a greater spirit if it’s so difficult.”

“Most people will inherit spirits or receive them by others; this is especially true when it comes to nobility.” Alex leaned back in his chair. “The university would probably see it as the individual student’s responsibility to acquire a greater spirit and leave them to contract one at their own leisure. It would be fine for most students to take their time, but if you girls seriously want to become chevaliers, you should definitely be looking at getting one as fast as possible so that you can train with it.”

Jamie leaned forward and spoke. “It’s not as important for me to find one though, right?”

Alex threw him a wry smile. “Those doll parts won’t move without an automata you know. It’d be better to get one sooner rather than later”

He returned an embarrassed look. “Ah, yeah, right.”