“Oh?” Faye said, leaning back in her office chair with a surprised expression. Her eyes flicked to his neck before she focused back on him. “They should be significantly more easy to find information about, young man. It won’t be an issue, so long as you are willing to uphold your end of the bargain.”

“I’ll return to Dover with your people, Miss Faye,” Florian said.

She smiled her characteristic smile in response. “Good! Access to the sea is much too important to lose, particularly if we want to expand our operations to the continent. Having you there to help clear the area of any monsters will be a great boon, Mr. Cale.” She stuck her hand out and shook Florian’s hand, sealing the deal.

“I’ll have Jacquelyn take you back to Leeds tomorrow. I fully expect you to be here this time next month; my people will be there to collect you.” With that, Faye was done speaking, turning her attention to the pile of papers around her. They were all from before Worldbreak, likely looted from an office supply store at some point or another. Florian took the cue and left the office behind, the guard glaring a hole into his back as he left to find his tree. He had a few hours until nightfall, but he didn’t feel that sleep would be hard to find. It felt almost as if his mind were submerged in molasses, his thoughts sluggish and tired.

Outside, he found Tonbridge largely bereft of the activity that seemed to be a constant in the castle. Instead, Florian saw what looked like a storyteller’s circle around Jacquelyn, a dozen or so people gathering around her as she spoke. Curious, Florian walked within earshot.

“And then I started blasting!” she mimicked a gun, complete with pew pew pew effects. “And before I knew it, the wolves were all dead, and the wizard was all like ‘Oh my God, you saved me!’ But then we heard the stomping. If Neanderthals had a contest to find the ugliest among them, these two giants would have been top contenders for sure. They were huge! The wizard took one of them down after he stopped shaking, using ice bludgeon the poor thing.” She paused for emphasis. “I, on the other hand, shot the other dead through both of its eyes.”

It took everything he had to hold back his laughter. The story was completely nonsensical, and it painted him in a pretty bad light. That being said, he didn’t really have much to lose, given that everyone present in the audience had probably already wished that he were six feet under. So he let her tell her tall tale. It was a quick and easy way to get rid of his debt to her for dragging him to safety the previous night.

He took his leave before anyone noticed his presence, finding his spot under the large oak blissfully unoccupied. The shade the tree provided would be critical, and the weather was actually quite nice given that it was the height of spring. All he was missing was a nice, straw hat to lay over his eyes. Instead, Florian just turned on his side and tried to fall asleep.

Instead, Florian felt that odd sensation when he knew that someone was watching him. Flipping around, he caught the surprised face of a little boy whose face went from open-mouthed curiosity to the physical manifestation of “oh shit.” This time, Florian did laugh.

“What’s up?” he called out to the kid, waving for the boy to come closer. Hesitating for a moment, the boy took small steps as he approached him.

“Are-are you the wizard?” the boy asked.

“I am.”

“With real magic?” his eyes opened wide and the steps practically turned into leaps as the boy closed the distance between them in no time at all.

“Yes, real magic,” Florian smiled, finding the little guy to be very much like Jake.

“Can-can-can you show me?”

Florian chose not answer, instead forming a ball of water from the moisture in the air above his palm. It was a perfect orb, and its sudden appearance shocked the child in front of him. Short-circuiting, the boy moved to touch the water, freezing every few seconds as if to debate whether touching it was the right way to go. “Is-is it okay if I to-touch this?” His fist was already in the water.

Laughing, Florian nodded yes. The boy’s eyes twinkled in excitement, his left hand joining the right one in the orb. Hearing some ooh’s and some aah’s, Florian decided to expand the orb of water. The effort it took from him seemed almost insignificant. A large part of it was no doubt the long rest he’d gotten, but the other was that he felt his strength increase by a gigantic leap again.

He was happy for that, but it seemed like a poor prize for risking his life in the way that he was sure he had. It was safe to say that he had no plans of repeating what had happened in Dover anytime soon. “Take your hands out real quick,” Florian asked, and the boy followed orders remarkably quickly.

Florian imagined the heat in the water, represented in his mental world as little waves of energy, leaving. The orb quickly turned to ice and the area around them was a bit hotter for it. Fortunately, they were outside and the heat produced by the magic quickly dissipated. “Now hold onto it,” Florian indicated that the child try again.

The boy touched his index finger to the ice, pulling it back immediately.

“You FROZE it?” the boy asked, mouth so open that Florian was almost worried that something had happened to his jaw. “That-that-that’s so cool!”

Like a thief, the boy snatched the ice, taking it into his hands and running as if the police were hot on his trail. A large part of him wondered where exactly the boy was taking the ice and for what reason. The other part of him tried to figure out what exactly had just happened. Chalking it up to the strange and mysterious ways that children’s brains worked, Florian took advantage of the breeze and fell asleep. The rest he found was calm, and he woke the next morning without having been woken by nightmares a single time.

Strangely, the oversleep nearly gave him a headache, and Florian wondered if he would ever catch a break. Finding Jacquelyn proved to be a very easy task, given that she was the only other person who was standing in the center of Tonbridge at the crack of dawn with nothing else to do. Florian murmured a grumpy hello and followed her to her truck. With a very sketchy rumble that would have once meant a trip to the mechanic, the vehicle started and they left through the pair of gates in the direction of Leeds.