“What exactly is going on?” I ask Drew once we’re outside the Arena.

“Jade is in big trouble. I doubt Gabe is going to take it easy on him,” Drew answers shaking his head. “To be honest, I don’t even know why Jade reacted like that to losing. He’s usually quite cool-headed.”

Lathia adds, “I think something’s going on that we don’t understand. I mean why would Jade be assigned to PM’s team in the first place? He was a Captain, why send him to another team when he has his own.”

Drew nods. “I’ll ask PM later. Maybe he knows.”

Soon after we all separate. Drew and Lathia continued training, while Emma, David, and Daniel went off to god knows where. Maybe they are having a date today. In the end, I am left all alone and decide to go home. As soon as I step out to the Metorium and into the bookshop, Hugo calls me. “Yes,” I say, stopping in front of him while taking off my Apprentice robes.

He looks away from the book he is writing and stares me in the face. “Your sister came looking for you today.”

I frown. “Emily? Why?”

“That’s what I wanted to ask you.” He pauses for a moment. “Does your family have any suspicions as to what you are?”

I shake my head. “I don’t think so, why are you asking?”

He breathes out deeply. “If you think they have any suspicions, report it to me immediately.”

“Why?” I ask suspiciously.

He raises an eyebrow. “Relax, we’re not going to kill them or anything. They’ll probably have to become Laens themselves. At least that’s what usually happens when a Laen marries into a normal family or is too close to normal people. We just normally wait until they become Wranths.”

“Oh.”

“Well, clean up the shop then.” He goes back to the book he is writing.

I nod but don’t pick up anything. Instead, I move around the shop leaving noers here and there. When I am done I snap my fingers and almost immediately the room begin to clean itself. When it’s done I have a smile on my face. From now on, I’ll have no more problems with cleaning up the shop. After that, I leave the shop and head home.

Slowly the days pass and I begin to get into a routine once more. Wake up, attend classes in the Metorium, clean up the bookshop, maybe spend some time with Drew and the rest, and then head on home to sleep. Time passes and soon Friday comes.

I wake up early and perform my chores quickly. It isn’t too much of an issue once magic gets involved. After breakfast, I decided to wait a bit before I head into the Lands of Time, unlike when I previously went alone, I plan on staying there for two days this time. I’ve prepared everything I’ll need except for food. I’ll probably have to wait till I come back to eat, else if I start taking food from my house, my mom would notice it pretty quickly. Once it’s time, I make a point of telling Emily not to disturb me as I am planning to take a quick nap. At the mention of the word nap a strange expression flashes across her face. But she nods to show she understands.

Once in my room, I sneak out through the window and head to the bookshop. Hugo, who seems to be recording something seems surprised to see me so early.

“Good morning,” I greet him.

He greets back and then asks. “You aren’t attending classes today?”

“I am. I just want to spend some time in the Lands first.”

“Ah,” he lets out a small laugh. “You’ve become one of them. It seems Keldin knocked some sense into you.”

“One of who?” I ask. I’m not surprised he knows about Keldin pummeling me. By now, basically, everyone knows.

“The training addicts. I’ve seen quite a few of them. They spend almost all their free time training in the Lands to get an edge over everyone else. Until eventually, they become sick of it. Then once they feel they’ve fallen behind the cycle repeats. Have fun in there.”

I nod and enter the room leading to the portal. I open the portal and find myself in the in-between. I ignore the unsettling feeling I usually get and walk to where the portal to the Lands was when I previously entered. After a moment’s hesitation, I cross it. One moment I am in almost total darkness, the next I am surrounded by lush green vegetation. Since I plan on spending two days here I don’t begin training immediately, choosing instead to explore a bit. Previously, Drew had said that there were a lot of strange things in the Lands, maybe I could find a few of them. After some deliberation, I choose a random direction and begin to walk.

Around half an hour later I begin to understand why Hugo said people get sick of the place when on their own. Without anybody around and with no visible sign of life one becomes lonely pretty fast in here. When I decide to stop, I’m in the middle of some sort of forest. Thankfully the trees are still spaced far away enough from each other to allow an ample amount of sunlight through. After deciding that it seems like a pretty good place, I decide to settle here for the time being.

I deftly unload all that I’ve brought, which isn’t much, and begin training. It doesn’t take long for me to lose myself in training. When next I recover myself, the sun is already setting. With a tired sigh, I flop to the ground.

As all becomes dark, the reality sinks in that I’m planning to spend a night in the Lands of Time. But what makes everything so unsettling is the total silence all around me. I hadn’t really noticed when I came here with Drew, since even at night the sound of our talking wouldn’t let me notice anything, but now, with no one else here, the silence is almost deafening.

That night my sleep is uneasy, as I keep expecting something to appear from the darkness. Once, I even hallucinated a being in white watching me. By the time the sun comes up, I have made up my mind that after this trip, I’ll never spend another night in the Lands.

Once again, I begin to train.

Sometime in the afternoon, I collapse, too exhausted to train for even a second more. I lay on the ground, my eyes closed as I try to catch my breath. From the looks of things, I probably won’t be able to last until evening like I originally intended.

After a few minutes I summon a roe above my hand. A second later, I disperse it, then I begin to make grabbing motions with my hand. I had been doing this ever since I learned from Drew that remnant Uua in the surroundings could be recondensed. As usual, I expected nothing to happen, but this time I am wrong. I feel something come into being just above my hand, weaker than the original roe, but still something.

Sitting up abruptly, my eyes are quickly drawn to my hand where I can see a weak orb of Uua floating. A smile blossoms on my lips. Success, finally. Now that I’ve finally managed to do it, it’s only a matter of time before I can do it consistently, and after master it. As my mind whirls with the possibilities of my new ability, I suddenly become aware of something watching me. I turn a see a snow-white deer sitting gracefully on the ground some meters in front of me.

I instinctively activate D-three as I try to figure out how it could have gotten this close without alerting me. It doesn’t flinch at the sight of the Uua Focusing suddenly covering me, instead, it seems a bit intrigued.

“You have great potential,” it says, startling me to my feet.

My mind is blank as I stare at the talking deer. Then something clicks in my mind. I remember Drew telling me about Fasurus possessing animals to create mythical beasts. If a talking deer isn’t mythical, I don’t know what is.

It glances at my hand. “You were trying to recover your Uua from the environment right? The method you’re using isn’t very efficient.” It spits out a burst of air at the ground, but high-strung as I currently am, I jump backward fearing an attack. Only, nothing happens. Looking at where the burst of air hit the ground, I see that a noer has been indented into the ground.

The deer shoots me a curious glance but continues on unhindered. “Try using that next time. It’ll help you sense your Uua more easily. Once you can do that on your own, you can stop using it.”

Then it begins licking itself. I stare at the noer, committing it to memory before turning back to the carefree deer. “You are a Fasuru?”

It stops licking itself. “Not quite. I’m afraid I’ve been in this body far too long. Why are you asking? Afraid I’ll torture you to get stronger? Sorry to disappoint, but that is far too barbaric for me. There are far better ways.”

It goes back to licking itself. I don’t contradict it, I even hope what it says is true, because the alternative… Well, let’s just say that judging from my performance with Keldin, a fight with a Fasuru would probably end me.

Without warning it suddenly springs up and canters off into the forest, leaving me more than a bit spooked at this sudden encounter. After a few minutes I pack up my stuff, not feeling safe anymore. Using burst, I move as quickly as possible to where I entered the Lands. Before long, I am back in the bookshop. A quick look around shows me that Hugo isn’t in the shop.

Instead of waiting, I head on home and after sneaking back into my room, take a good long bath. After changing into new clean clothes, I head back to the bookshop.