Florian left the classroom feeling unsatisfied. For the past week, he and Wesley had been meditating in the garden at night, eating whatever remained of the large stockpile of meat Florian had gathered while he’d worked as a Warrior. Now that it was the weekend, Florian and Wesley had both grown, but it was incremental. Wesley could now meditate for ten minutes, bringing him up to about the level of the advanced disciples when they’d started. Now, however, Mack and the others kept a healthy lead of about three to four minutes on Wesley. This was remarkable improvement, but it was still too slow. He wondered what Theo had them doing that differentiated them from the other disciples, who had at this point been left in the dust.

And now, Florian had run out of meat. He was on his way to the training fields, hoping to strike a deal with Hornbeck – who he’d heard had recovered from his injures – and find a way to receive more without needing to fight for it, as Theo had expressly forbidden. That was, until a small projectile rocketed into him with the full force of a supernova. A mop of black hair clung to him at stomach-height. The mop looked up at him, revealing a young, dirty face with bright brown eyes.

“Mr. Florian!” Ellie yelled, her voice serving as some kind of beacon for another two very familiar mops of hair to attach themselves to him. Joe and Jake, then. Florian smiled, giving all the children a great big hug.

Smiling, he turned to Joe, the leader of the rag-tag bunch. “What’s up with you guys? How have you been?”

Joe stepped back, looking up at him with tired eyes. “We’ve been alright, Mr. Florian. They have us working in the garden, growing potatoes and some other stuff.”

“We grow food?” Florian asked, genuinely shocked. He didn’t know how something like that even fit inside the tight confines of Leeds Castle.

Joe laughed, but it was mirthless. “It’s a small garden, and they mostly have just us working on it. Mrs. Brown tries her best to help us, but l don’t think her bosses are very happy with her.”

Florian wondered at that, not entirely surprised that the children of Leeds were working alongside the adults. He’d seen enough of them running around as porters, hoisting little baskets over their heads and rushing past the tent city. Still, it seemed grossly irresponsible to leave something as important as farming to kids who wouldn’t have been in middle school yet, before.

“I plant the seeds!” Ellie cried, proudly.

“And I-“ Jake stated, looking to outdo Ellie, “am in charge of watering the plants!”

It was a cute display, the little children brimming with pride for their work. It was simultaneously sad, knowing that just three years ago these kids would have been in school, playing and making friends. It was a world they didn’t know, and it was a world they might never know. Joe, though, knew. In the older boy, Florian recognized a reflection of the own bittersweet feeling he felt.

“That’s good to hear, Ellie, Joe. How do you guys feel like going on an adventure? There’s a really pretty decorative garden just outside the keep, and I don’t think the guards would mind us being there for just a little bit,” Florian offered, laughing when Ellie nodded like a bobblehead.

“Are you sure, Mr. Florian?” Joe sounded worried, tugging at his arm to stop him from leaving back in the direction he’d just come from. “Mrs. Brown told us that we couldn’t go anywhere near the keep unless Lord Jones let us.”

Florian ruffled the serious kid’s hair. “Well, he lets me, and I say that you can come with me. No worries then, right?”

That seemed to do the trick, and the stress eased off Joe’s face, letting the boy relax for what was probably the first time in weeks. It was clear from his being here that he felt a sense of responsibility for Jake and Ellie, and that meant that he had his work cut out for him. It was the least Florian could do to show them a new part of the castle.

They followed him like little ducklings, waddling and doing their level best to be distracted by practically everything. Wandering between tents and people, inspecting weapons, food, and clothes, the two younger children were manifestations of chaos. Joe, meanwhile, simply walked alongside him, wonder in his eyes as he stared at the display of normality around them. Within twenty meters of the keep, it was as if they were back in pre-Worldbreak times. They were just tourists visiting some old castle.

Florian led them to the tree he and Wesley had spent many a night under, watching as the final light of the sun faded into night. It was atmospheric, and on this night, the sound of the Hellwolves felt muted. A few errant howls pierced the quiet, but it sounded far more like a pack of wolves than a relentless army of monsters.

Enjoying the cool air and the quiet, Florian closed his eyes for but a moment. When he opened them again, Jake and Ellie had fallen asleep by each other, both leaning on the other as they sat against the old oak. He wished he had a blanket for the two, but he didn’t dare leave the children alone to head back to the annex to go find one. Instead, he warmed the air around them with a little magic, summoning a little fire in his palm to heat it.

In doing so, he was following a simple rule he’d found while casting magic: the more complicated and more steps a process involves, the more focus it demanded and the quicker it drained him. He could have directly warmed the air, but trying to accelerate the molecules of the air around him was far more tricky than just imagining a flame in his hand, the fire fueled by the motes of mana around them and sustained by his focus.

It was for the same reason that he couldn’t heal his own leg. Trying to figure out how exactly a leg was meant to work was difficult, given that he had been a business major, not a medical student. But even if he did manage to understand it all, creating a leg from nothing was bending the universe to his will in a way that it was fundamentally opposed to. As far as it was concerned, Florian was meant to have no left leg. Creating all the systems involved in the leg, from the blood vessels to the skin to the bone, was a monstrous task requiring either intimate knowledge of human anatomy or absurd magical power. In the absence of either, he needed to depend on someone else. In this case, Theo.

He sighed, looking out at the garden surrounding them. It truly was tranquil, and it made him feel a little more normal, magical flame in hand notwithstanding. A tremendous waste of resources it may have been, but Florian could understand Jones’ reasoning, at least.

His flames illuminated the area around them, allowing him to see exactly when Wesley found his way to the tree. The other man was surprised by the pair of slumbering children and the meditating twelve-year-old, his eyes asking an unspoken question as he pointed to them.

“They’re friends from my old home,” Florian explained. Pointing to Joe, he said, “This one here is Jake. He’s actually the second person Theo taught magic to after me, and he was pretty good at it before we came here. I think he’s still probably better than anyone here.”

Wesley’s eyes boggled at that. “Serious?”

Joe took that opportunity to open his eyes and smirk, “Serious.”