Ayden awoke to the sound of humming.

  Xavos.

  He knew that tune. He’d spent hours trekking through the forest listening to it. He shot up straight and glanced around only to find Xavos scrambling eggs on a pan over a small flame. They sat in a stone built shack of some kind. A small abode meant for a single person. Outside, Ayden saw the calm breeze sway the garden of herbs and flowers.

  A painful memory flitted through his mind: the families that tended to the grove. He spent all night fighting and fleeing from their raised corpses. A shiver passed up his spine as he recalled the bloody fray.

  “Xavos,” he snapped. “You left me!”

  Xavos turned to levitate him a cup of coffee while he finished cooking the eggs. He dumped them in a plate and handed them to Ayden on a short stool so he could eat in bed. “What did you learn?” he asked.

  “That you are a mad man!” cried Ayden. He wanted to throw the plate, but his stomach growled at the eggs, and his mouth became a flood plain.

  Xavos looked amused. “And what else?”

  Ayden realized how quickly the wind fled the sails of his anger. He stammered for a response, but when he couldn’t find one, his baser instincts took over and he began to scarf down his food.

  Xavos waited patiently for Ayden to finish. “Don’t forget the coffee,” he said.

  Ayden obliged and drank it so fast, it scalded his throat on the way down. “Water,” he rasped.

  Xavos held up his index. “First,” he said. “What did you learn?”

  Ayden curled his fists and readied himself to fight for that water.

  The old mage clicked his tongue. “Answer the question.”

  Ayden enhanced his legs and leaped out of bed. He sailed over Xavos and landed behind him, tipping over chairs and tables. He spotted a waterskin beside Xavos’s other supplies laid out on the table. He dashed to it, but without meaning to, enhanced his whole body. He skidded past the table and out the door beside it, wrenching the door off its hinges and splintering the wood.

  Ayden hit the ground and threw up tufts of soil. When he recovered, he was already on his feet he prepared for an angry Xavos. “I didn’t mean to!”

  Xavos clapped as he stepped out the broken door frame with a wide grin splitting his face.

  Ayden stopped channeling Green from his Soul Source. He blinked in shock. His Soul Source had barely depleted. In the fight with the undead, if he used as much as he did now, he’d have run out. A full body enhancement with Green should have threatened to overcast his Soul Source, and now he stood on a well half full.

  He looked up at Xavos with a gasp.

  Xavos shrugged and sipped his cup of coffee. He pointed to himself. “Fire.” Then to Ayden. “Iron.”

  “There’s a Dire Mage out there,” spat Ayden. “You tricked me! I almost died because of you.” he stammered for another volley of words, but fatigue, the raw natural kind that afflicted the mind, caught up. “You abandoned me and were watching?”

  Xavos didn’t respond. He simply sipped his coffee.

  “Did you know what had happened to those families?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Did you know about the Dire Mage?”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “Yes,”

  “Then why would you not kill the Dire Mage?”

  “Training you was more important than zealous killing.”

  “Those undead?”

  “Gone.”

  Ayden sighed in relief. “And the Dire-”

  “Dead,” said Xavos. “For good.”

  “Okay,” said Ayden. At least no one innocent got hurt. Well, other than Ayden, but he had several worries that the Dire Mage went on to hurt more people. “That was still wrong.”

  “I don’t care about wrong,” said Xavos. “I care about my student being his best.”

  “And if your student died?” asked Ayden.

  “Then he is no longer my student.” Xavos bore no amusement in his eyes now.

  Ayden knew he’d signed up with something more dangerous than a mad man.

  “Boy,” he said, beckoning him inside.

  Ayden entered the small home and sat with Xavos at the table. The old mage had to tip it upright again.

  “This world needs strong mages,” said Xavos. “Not the academic kind. We need soldiers. Otto knew this when the Triscourge happened.”

  Otto was one of the greatest mages in the last hundred years. Ayden scoffed and shook his head. “They were in war time. We’re at peace.”

  Xavos spat and cackled. “Peace? This is not peace. Not a lasting one at least. In the east Torvic eyes Warvale like a greedy hound and slaughters his opposition in their homes or in the field of battle. He now trumps even Otto with his Trichrome abilities.”

  A Trichrome was a mage that had an endless supply of each of the three Sources to pull from. The power one could have by being able to unlimitedly cast Red, Green, and Blue. A god amongst the rest. Of course it had to go to a genocidal warlord.

  “To the west, the White Jewel Paladins contest the powers of the Karthian Monarchy. A schism is due and with it comes war. Mahar struggles to keep its own lords in check. To the north, Ingstad licks its lips as it decides for another invasion of Vrodia. You call this peace?”

  “A short one, I suppose,” said Ayden.

  “And brittle as twigs,” said Xavos. “When the world’s powers clash, land is primed for another apocalypse. Perhaps the last one.”

  “Another Scourge?” asked Ayden.

  “Perhaps. Or a fourth Crisis.”

  Ayden gulped. In the last seven hundred years their continent of Ridden had gone through three Crises. The First Crisis was where many calendars started counting the years from as it reset most societies in the mainland where Mahar and Karth lay. It’s also when Karth first formed and the Maharian Dynasty started. The Second Crisis saw a mass depopulation of the continent which had rapidly grown till then due to advancements in Green magic. The god known as Warmonger seized the world’s armies and took them to another world to challenge the Arcs.

  Ayden wondered now if he went to the two worlds in the skies that he thought were stars. He wondered also if any of Warmonger’s soldiers knew what they had been drafted for. Could they even comprehend the gravity of their conquest?

  Warmonger lost and so did Ridden as it had to rebuild with so many dead in a futile war against the Arcs. His death formed a religion of war and conquest, one that still plagues Ridden today.

  The Third Crisis happened during a continental war on Ridden where several monarchs of the continent formed alliances. A world war during an apocalypse. Historians claim it was the greatest blunder humanity had ever made.

  Then the Triscourge happened.

  And now Xavos claimed either another Scourge or another Crisis was due, and the nations were primed for war.

  “Why can’t they see?” asked Ayden. “Why don’t the world’s powers realize what’s about to happen?”

  “Why can’t you see why I did what I did?” asked Xavos with a smirk.

  “What you did nearly killed me!”

  “What I did was necessary. Just as Ingstad and Vrodia’s blood lust is necessary to end. Just as Warmonger’s faith is necessary to end. Just as the White Jewel’s corruption is necessary to end!” Xavos slammed the table with his fist. “We need to make them all realize. And we can’t do that with scholars. We do this with soldiers. With REAL mages.” He leaned forward and narrowed his eyes. “Are you in, Ayden?”

  Ayden once again stood at the edge of a cliff. This time it wasn’t a river with gold at the bottom. Ayden jumped in blind with no promise of anything save for purpose. He once again looked inward and asked himself the same question he always asked to give himself resolve.

  Am I willing to die for this?

  “I’m in,” he said. “Where do we start?”