“Wild magic!”

A mage with long flowing hair shouted out as he ascended the winding staircase of the palace tower. Silver strands blew in the wind as he planted his first step onto the roof and gazed upon the white pillar breaching into the sky.

A duo of footsteps echoed behind him in the stairwell as surges of lightning shot out from the beam. A series of thunderous booms shook through the skies as the mage was joined by two others. All three mages rushed to the ritual casting circle at the center of the rooftop. With large sweeping motions of their arms and staves they brought to life a complex network of glyphs painted into the rooftop causing them to emit a light blue glow.

Bolts of white lightning tore through the skies and rained down upon the city. The arena goers that had previously been revealing in post fight merry making were now fleeing in panic, desperately finding whatever cover they could. The taverns overflowed with people trying to ram their way inside, while those who could not fit were forced to flee down the streets knocking on doors in desperation.

BOOM

A blast of lightning struck hard into the building just across from one of the popular taverns. The rock melted on impact, and exploded sending shards of molten rock blasting through the tavern windows. The people inside gasped as the room filled with light and shook underneath their feet. The sonic boom was so loud that their ears rang.

BOOM BOOM BOOM

All over the city, pavement was torn up by blasts, leaving craters in the stone. Houses, factories, and workplaces that were hit directly, burst into flames.

The silver haired mage lifted his magic staff into the sky and drew up magic from the circle. A light blue mist swirled around him like a whirlwind before accumulating at the tip of his staff.

“Rain”

A fog swept in from high in the mountains, and rolled down over the city. A shockwave of magical energy pulsed outwards from the mage tower as he thudded his staff down onto the magical circle. The expanding blue sphere vibrated the water molecules in the fog covering the city and caused it to condense into a torrent of rainfall.

Two halflings ducked underneath a wagon in an alleyway as the rain began to fall, and light flashed all through the city. Their eyes were wide with shock as they clung to each other’s arms. A lone woman ran from door to door, soaked from head to toe, pleading for help. A door swung open and without hesitation she dived inside as thunderous booms echoed through the street behind her.

Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the pillar within the sky vanished. Leaving the city within an ominous vacuum of sound and commotion. The rain pattered down outside the tavern as the people huddled inside could now only hear each other breathing.

“Is it over?” someone whispered.

“It’s stopped!” another person said as they peeked their head out a window and looked up to where the pillar had been.

The silver haired mage eye’d over the city with a stern look for a moment before dropping the spell with a tap of his staff.

“What manner of spell was that?” a mage with short brown hair asked him.

“It was a wild magic surge”

“Are they usually that powerful?”

“No… They are typically at around a tier one spell”

“And this?”

“This was as powerful as a tier two spell, maybe even at the level of stratum unica”

“There is a wild mage that powerful in the city”

“It would seem so”

…

Mirio stumbled out from the temple doors and made his way down the front steps. The statue that had stood in the middle of the plaza was now split in two with the lantern stone shattered across the ground.

“I’m really not having a good day” Mirio mumbled before scanning around the plaza for Ezee.

“Ezee, where are you, Ezee”

Mirio flicked his fingers in a circle and cast a spell.

“Detect good and evil”

Grey dots littered the landscape around him, and between them and to the side of the temple he saw Ezee’s telltale blue glow. Using his staff as a crutch he made his way around to the side of the temple where he found Ezee wedged between two pillars, doing his best to hide.

Mirio made his way over and petted him softly.

“I’m sorry bud, I was meant to take you hunting, and instead I messed things up”

Ezee slowly shook himself out of his daze and moved in close to Mirio for a hug. Mirio scruffed his fur and wrapped his arms around him for a moment before standing up.

“Alright, I have to keep my promise to you, so let’s go”

Mirio hobbled his way to the western gate, looking around at the pillars of smoke rising through the city as he went.

*Ah shit, Akur’s curse magic is no joke, I can’t believe it tore into me like that*

The guards huddled by one side of the gate rather than at their usual posts, allowing Mirio clear passage through the city gate without even having to show his silver badge. He shrugged nonchalantly and made his way through

“Go on, find yourself something good” Mirio said with a smile as he tapped Ezee’s side.

Ezee looked up at Mirio with a happy pant and then rushed off towards the woods. Ezee gleefully snorted as he entered the treeline, the scent of life intoxicating his senses. The trees in Darlan forests were broader than the trees of the vale, and their branches wide reaching. Rather than having to zig and zag, Ezee could cruise and canter through the low lying brush. He stopped as the scent of prey hung heavy in the air. He circled his way down wind and kept to the shadows and behind brush.

Ezee locked his eyes on a pack of wild goats. Their fur was fluffier than any goat’s he had seen before, and their horns wrapped around to under their chin before spiraling up again. The fluffy goat closest to him wagged its short tail as it nawed on tree roots. It stopped for a moment and lifted its head, turning towards Ezee. Ezee tucked his tail down and positioned himself low as he crawled closer. His tail couldn’t help but flick in excitement as the goat turned back to the tree and furiously dug at the ground.

Ezee shot out of the brush in a flash, the pitter patter of his footsteps the only giveaway of danger. The closest goat’s ears flicked back and it let go of its grip on the freshly dug out root stem. Ezee bared his fangs and locked his jaws tight around its neck, using his weight to toss it to the ground. He circled around with his hind legs to get a good position over it to end the creatures suffering as quickly as possible. The remaining goats scattered in all directions, and looked back in surprise, not used to wolves in the forest.

Mirio tapped at a rock by the tree line and took a seat. He gazed into the forest with the remainder of his detect good and evil spell and could see Ezee far in the distance approaching a pack of creatures about his size.

*It won’t be too long until he is too big to stay in the city*

Mirio wore a bittersweet smile on his face as he thought briefly back on how far Ezee had already come, he was glad that he could give him a second chance and save him from being sacrificed to Akur.

Mirio leaned forward and picked a strand of grass from near his boot, and spun it between his fingertips.

*I wish I could remember what it was like to feel normal again…*

*All I feel inside is Akur, and the enlightenment*

*I’m so different now that I am not even moved by releasing some kind of electrical storm on the city*

*And then there is Tad… It is like when Carlson and Dereo were killed in front of me… I just feel numb*

*Am I even human anymore?*

“You can’t beat this one Mirio, this isn’t an opponent you can fight”

*Guess Tad knew me well enough to know I overthink things. Is he right though? Should I just let things go…*

*Surely there is still a chance to help him, to help everyone else. I could maybe find a way to make the platinum needed for a raise dead spell? But would that only prolong his suffering…*

*What if I find a way to take on the energy that remains in him? Maybe I could change things that way?*

Mirio dropped the blade of grass, leaving it to tumble down to the ground.

*That just isn’t realistic. This Akur guy is not a joke. He took my identity, my desire, my memories the last time we met. I can just tell trying to alter his influence on others is more complicated than I can even imagine right now. Even if I was to desperately scrap for the answer, I’d only be chasing phantoms*

“Fuck”

…

Silvia adjusted the shoulder strap of her bag, switching from one shoulder to the other. Yuta bumped into her, knocking his notepad out of his hands and into the desert dust.

“Why are you following so close behind me?” Silvia asked with a raised eyebrow.

“I’m taking notes so I’m using you as a guide so I don’t step on anything”

“What are you even writing in there anyway?”

“Oh, well, I’m trying to understand how getting stronger in this world works”

“What do you mean, how getting stronger works, isn’t that obvious? Good training, lots of effort, and sharpening your insight?”

“Hrmm, I don’t think effort has as much to do with it as you think. You can definitely spend effort on the wrong things and get nowhere. Ask me how I know?”

“How do you know?”

“On second thought, don’t ask me that,” Yuta replied, scrunching up his face.

The scenery hadn’t changed all day, it was just red rock and dust as far as the eye could see, perhaps the only changes were the mountains to the west, the sun’s position in the sky, and an occasional shrub. Yuta felt lucky that the sun was almost set, he wasn’t made for the heat, and his skin was already red and blistered.

*If only there was sunscreen in this world*

“Fine, I won’t ask you. But why don’t you just try to learn like everyone else. Why are you trying to do everything differently”

Silvia’s words made Yuta choke a little bit, they felt like words he might have heard back on earth. People had always been so quick to judge, so ready to push blame, and they preferred to vent frustration about someone’s shortcomings rather than to spend time figuring out the truth behind why it was hard for them to make progress.

“What is wrong with trying to do things differently?” he asked after biting down his pride.

“Hrmm, I think having a new angle on something is good. But when you obsess on new things sometimes you just end up doing whatever is easiest, rather than something that might make you better in the long run. Like chasing promises you make up for yourself rather than looking at what you have to do fair and square, you know?”

“Why should trying to learn something have anything to do with being fair? It isn’t like there is someone judging you and picking who to give to”

“How can you expect to internalise something you didn’t earn or understand though, pretending you get something won’t make it stick”

“You think I’m pretending? I try really hard though”

“Well, when I aim an arrow. Sometimes I’ll hit a good shot by luck. If I pretend that it was skillful, I don’t end up practicing anything useful. If I improve all my shots to be a little closer to the target overall, then I am practicing something useful, and you can’t really pretend to do that”

“I don’t know if that makes sense though. If you focus on the average of your shots improving, you won’t improve very much”

“Even small changes are actually really big though”

“Hmph, maybe”

Yuta closed his book and slid it into his backpack. It was clear to him that while Silvia might have some piece of an idea, it wasn’t well formed enough to really say anything truly telling.

*I suppose the only thing I can take from what she said is that incremental change is underestimated. Maybe she is right, but I have no way of knowing*

Silvia turned towards the setting sun, “Should we switch to walking through the night and resting in the day? We might cover more ground that way… Plus you look like a tomato”

“Hey, come on. But you have a point, we can’t keep this up with over a week’s journey ahead of us”

“Let’s keep walking until we find a place we can camp through to the day then”

Yuta nodded silently, and then pulled down his status screen, and stared curiously at the stats and symbols.

… Later that night…

“Hey look, ahead, there is a rock outcrop, we can rest there tomorrow” Silvia said pointing and with a big grin on her face.

Yuta could barely hold his head up high enough to hear Silvia talk. It all came across as garbled nonsense, but even so, when he drew his eyes up just far enough he saw the rock outcrop that would be their salvation and knew what she meant.

“Oh, good” Yuta said just before collapsing to his knees and faceplanting.

Silvia drew back the corner of her mouth in frustrated acceptance. She knew Yuta wasn’t athletic, or skilled, or even all that useful, but she worried that without him, she might lose her focus and drive.

“Bastard” she grumbled as picking him up over her shoulder to haul over to the rock outcrop.

SHOOM

The dark night sky lit up like it was a full moon. Silvia turned to see an enormous pillar of light breaching up into the sky from far in the south.

“It’s coming from the city?”

Streaks of light began shooting off from the pillar and magic fog swept down from the mountain tops.

“What the hell is going on over there?”

And then as soon as it had begun, the light stopped, leaving the dark, moonless sky to return. She shuffled her way in between the rocks and packed out both her and Yuta’s belongings to make a temporary camp.

Yuta snored loudly prompting Silvia to give him several aggressive pokes with the heel of her boot. She reached into her backpack and pulled out a small statuette of a heroic woman in fur armor. She hugged it tight to her chest, and then laid down to rest.