Autumn's grandfather was just as he had described. More or less polite on the outside, but rude the second he was left alone. Right now, I was listening to his conversation with Autumn in the ‘soundproof’ room we had provided.

“First you run away to follow that joke of a dream, and then I find you consorting with worthless people,” the old man lectured, “It is all such a waste. At the very least you should have befriended powerful people, not brainwashed pushovers.”

I hadn’t been listening for long but it was clear what he thought of Tethia’s government.

“They are powerful,” Autumn mumbled softly.

The old man snorted. “It doesn’t matter how powerful they are. Just one glance told me they are worthless to our cause. In fact you should be focusing on sabotaging them.”

“S-sabo- What do you mean?!” Autumn demanded, shocked.

“Tethia will fall soon. If you want a good life in the Empire of Gaia you need to rack up some achievements,” he explained as if it were the most natural thing.

Gaia? That was no minor threat. Gaia dwarfed Tethia in size almost five times over, and their population matched the geographical borders.

There was silence for a bit. “Even Gaia can’t beat Tethia,” Autumn said.

The old man laughed. “What are you talking about, boy? Why do you think I trained you to use all that magic? Your job has been to destroy Tethia from the inside since the day you were born. Your magic aptitude is incredible. You are the perfect weapon.”

“Weapon,” Autumn repeated in a tight voice.

“If you can’t do your job here, then come with me now. Those are your two choices.”

“Wait! Let go of me!” Autumn cried out, as the room was filled with sounds of shuffling feet, and a bang as Autumn’s chair hit the ground.

A second, much louder, bang resounded as Keane burst the door open and pinned the old man. Alois followed him inside with a weapon in one hand and magic in the other.

“I am afraid there are three options,” he said with a confident smile, “We want Autumn to stay with us, you see. As our friend. I don’t know what Gaia is planning but we will not fall to them.”

“As your friend?” the old man scoffed, “Do you really have a choice in that?”

“Do you?” Alois countered and turned to Autumn. “You’re staying here right?”

“Way to kill the moment,” Rena complained from the hallway. She stepped into the room, her quills still bristling. “Autumn, will you stand with us against Gaia?”

Autumn nodded. “Of course.”

Needless to say, his grandfather was furious. Outnumbered as he was, there was nothing he could do but allow himself to be escorted out by the students in our faction aiming to be royal guards.

Once he was gone, Autumn let out a chuckle. “Alois, what was with that overconfident way of asking?”

“Shut up,” Alois complained, “I haven’t perfected my image yet.”

“Not that again,” Caleb complained as he took down the spells he had placed on the room.

Before we knew it, we were all laughing about the whole situation and Autumn started to look like his usual self. I noticed a relieved look on Keane’s face. We split up after a while and warned people to remain vigilant until the old man left.

However, that night, despite our best efforts a kidnapper made it into our base, and stole Autumn away.

“How did they get in without anyone seeing them?!” Maximus shouted in frustration. Managing the guards and safety of those in the bases and surrounding territories was his responsibility.

“Did they use stealth magic like Alois?” Rena suggested.

“I would have noticed right away,” Caleb shot down, “After all the times Alois snuck back in the middle of the night and tried to prank me I trained myself to wake up at the slightest hint of stealth magic.”

“If they got past all of the magical defenses as well they likely didn’t use any magic at all to avoid triggering it,” Alois mused, “Whoever did this was mastermind.”

“Did they leave anything behind that we can trace with magic?” I asked.

“Keane is looking now,” Wayde said with a yawn, “He is not in a good state of mind right now. Who knows how long it would have taken us to notice if we hadn’t heard Autumn scream.”

“That is another thing that is bothering me. We reacted so fast. How were they able to get away without being seen while carrying Autumn? Everyone was on high alert at that point and the magicians paralysed everything that moved,” Maximus brought up.

“I hate to say this, but it could have been a summon,” Alois said, “Some summons are known to have mysterious powers that go beyond our understanding of magic.”

“That kind of summon is rare, but if you are right, what do we do then?” I asked.

“Well, you know how it works. The more powerful the summon, the less control the summoner has,” Alois said, “I am going to place my bets on this being a summon and try to bribe them over to our side.”