Forward

In the hours before dawn, Nessa stood in her room and turned over cabinets and storage, searching through her belongings. The ruckus she caused stirred her sleeping brother. Mair squirmed out from beneath the sheets and looked out the window at the still dimmed lights of the cavern ceiling outside.

"Sis? Why are you up so early?" Mair grumbled in drowsiness induced annoyance.

Nessa jumped in surprise from Mair's comment. She looked to him while she was still sifting through their belongings. "Sorry I didn't mean to wake you, I have somewhere to be soon. Have you seen any of my spare wands? I could've swore I packed some from the manor."

Mair sat up and rubbed his eyes. "Uhhh, I don't remember where you put them." He paused with a yawn and a smile. "But where are you going? Didn't the guild order us to be on standby while they figure out our last mission or something?"

"We still are. I'm meeting with someone. They're offering to help me teach magic, but I don't want to show up without a wand. I can't believe I'm being this disorganized." Nessa spouted off in a nervous panic. Her glancing gaze stopped at her tome, left on the nightstand next to her bed. She flipped through it, stopping at the torn pages before finally putting it away into her satchel.

"Someone's going to be teaching you magic?" Mair asked in a surprised but quiet tone, "When did this happen?"

"It was...spontaneous, don't worry about it Mair. I'll be back later." Nessa slung her satchel over her shoulder and gave her brother a quick hug before leaving, much to Mair's annoyance at being babied by his sister. She quickly left out the door to their room and went on her way, leaving Mair alone.

The young dusk elf crawled out of bed and lazily kicked the mess Nessa left behind out of his path to the dresser against the wall. Mair's focus and attention wandered as he noticed his pike in the corner where he last left it. He stepped over to it and saw the clouded reflection of himself in the steel. His groggy thoughts wrapped around his mind as he considered what he should do. While his sister was out improving, he was remaining stagnant.

Mair reached over to the drawer for his armored uniform and decided that he had to improve as well. He changed swiftly out of his sleeping wear and into his uniform. Mair stood at the door, took his pike in hand and left into the rest of the guild hall.

In the deserted halls of the lower levels of the guild, Nessa found herself hurrying towards Wright's study. Her anxiety constricted her as she worried about how he'd react to her not having a wand. Nessa hoped and prayed that it would all still end up alright, though she expected to be scolded by Wright regardless.

Nessa reached the door to Wright's study and braced herself to knock on the door. Before she could even act, though, the door swung open on its own, presenting her with the same scene she encountered the night before. Wright, insteading of staying seated at the upper balcony, was now waiting near the door with a hint of impatience in his tired eyes.

"I suppose it was unreasonable to ask you to arrive at dawn without the actual sun to accurately guide you. Oh well, you arrived at least." Wright groaned. Nessa could hear in his voice that he wasn't all that happy to be awake, yet it didn't seem like he regretted the arrangement just yet.

"Sorry I didn't mean to be late, I had some trouble looking for a wand after my last one broke, I hope it won't be an issue." Nessa slunk into the room, holding her tome close to her chest as she feared his following response.

Surprisingly, Wright didn't look annoyed, rather he looked confused for a brief moment. "You carry that tome on you, do you not? You'll use that to cast your magic, it's far more efficient." He concluded.

"Casting magic through a tome?" Nessa looked at the tome with a bewildered look on her face. "I haven't ever done that before, is that, you know, safe?"

"As safe as any casting apparatus, as long as it's enscripted." Wright held his hand out forward to Nessa, expecting her to hand over the tome. "I'll assume you don't have a script on your tome, I'll put it on for you."

"You're able to write scripts? I guess I should've expected that from you, but still." Nessa handed over her tome to Wright cautiously as he walked away, dropping it on a desk for the ritual to begin.

"I don't do anything too fancy, no weapons or crazy wards." Wright kept his main hand straight and steady over the tome. With a slight motion of his fingers, a red light crackled at where his fingers connected as he lowered the magical light to the tome. "Just picked up the craft in case I ever needed to create a mana focus. This might take a while, so take a seat somewhere."

In another section of Hidden Star, the sounds of weaponry carving through the air came from one of the many smaller training stations within the guild. Mair stood alone in the room that connected to the larger training ground, purposely keeping himself away from the distractions of other adventurers as he practiced his own abilities by shadow fencing with his pike. It was a process he was familiar with. With his sister not being trained with weapons, Mair taught himself, and thus felt most comfortable training alone.

He felt driven to improve more than anything, and yet without a clear indication of his progress, feelings of inadequacy crept up on his mind. Despite his own thoughts holding him back, Mair tried to keep pushing forward. He worked on his balance, the force behind his strikes, and the fluidity of his motions.

In the middle of his training, Mair snapped out from his trance after seeing Fausm at the small gateway. The gargantuan reptir crouched down slightly to fit through into the room and gave Mair a nod as a greeting.

"Hey Fausm," Mair greeted him as he squatted down. He dropped his pike to relax and catch his breath. "You training too? I didn't think you'd need to honestly."

"I do still need to, even if it's nothing extreme," Fausm groggily answered as he slowly made his way to the other side of the room, "Gotta get these old scales moving somehow. I heard you were out training so I thought I'd join you." As he finished speaking, he drew his greatsword off his back, and to Mair's surprise, a symbol flashed upon Fausm's blade briefly before fading out of sight.

Though it didn't seem like anything changed to Mair, Fausm's grip wavered slightly. He briefly struggled to carry the heavy blade before properly adjusting to it.

Speechless and confused for a few moments, Mair eventually spoke up. "Wait, what was that on your sword? Do you know magic too or something?" Mair looked all around the sword and yet couldn't find a trace of the symbol.

"Hm? Oh by the gods no. I couldn't cast magic for the life of me. I have scripts on my weapon, that's all." Fausm answered nonchalantly, leaving Mair with more questions than answers.

"Scripts?" Mair appeared bewildered but also curious, his starry eyes appearing even more vibrant than usual.

"I guess you are still new, aren't you," Fausm heaved his sword up to point it towards the ceiling. As it fell back into his grip, a faint aura surrounded his greatsword as a series of symbols appeared down the metal blade, "Scripts are mana based enhancements made to weaponry, armor, or whatever can be enscripted. They can get a little wild, but I just carry the basics. Some wards to defend against magic, and of course I have a script that helps with the sheer weight of this damned weapon." Fausm laughed off the end of his explanation, putting his sword back down. The scripts faded out from vision just as before.

"That's so cool!" Mair continued to get distracted as he got a closer look at Fausm's sword, "Can I try it out?"

Fausm smiled briefly before cleaving his greatsword into the stone floor below him. With little movement from his hands, the scripts appeared and slowly faded into a gray color before fading entirely.

"I can safely say that without the scripts, you wouldn't be able to lift this thing," Fausm stood to the side with his arms crossed and a smug grin across his scaled face, "So go ahead and try and activate them, I'll walk you through the whole process."

As Fausm instructed, Mair excitedly got to work attempting to work around the weapon and heave it out of the ground.

Nessa sat at an unused workspace within Wright's study and patiently waited for the inscription to finish. Her attention drifted to an old worn down book at the far end of the desk she sat at. Recognizing the elvish writing as something about blood and magic, she decided to flip through the pages briefly. Her grasp over the elvish language wasn't nearly as good as Nessa would've preferred, preventing her from gathering anything of substance from the book.

Though the language barrier may have stopped her, it was the diagrams of the many blood magic spells that caught her eye and uneased her. She saw blades of mana positioned from the wounds of the casters, as well as detailed notes on what veins and arteries to draw from. Unnerved by the gravity of the book's contents, Nessa closed it and put it aside just in time for Wright to approach with the finished inscription.

"Here, practice shifting between your spells and meet me in the backroom when you're ready." Wright tossed Nessa's tome onto the desk and walked past her to leave her alone in the study.

Nessa felt confused at what exactly he meant, but decided to investigate anyway. She carefully let her hands draw closer to the tome when a symbol suddenly appeared on the front cover, glowing in a crimson light. Nessa's hands instinctively drew closer, causing the crimson light and symbol to shift into the familiar violet that her magic appeared as.

With the light now unwavering in its color, Nessa's focus was drawn to the symbol of the script itself. An upside down heart with a minimalistic weapon clawed through it down the middle. Nessa brought the book she closed earlier and flipped through the pages until she found the exact symbol among many of the diagrams.

A shiver crawled down Nessa's spine as she felt the primal need to run away. A deep part of her knew the road she was about to walk was dangerous, and yet she was already halfway down the hill. Without letting the hesitation stop her, Nessa opened her tome and began to flip through the pages aimlessly. Her mind was set adrift as she desperately tried to ignore the feelings to turn around and find another way out, this uncertainty in her physically manifested with the pages of her tome flipping and turning on their own. Nessa watched in confusion. Her hands backed off the tome and yet the strange occurrence continued. The pages continued to turn without direction or purpose until Nessa slowly clasped her hands together, closing the tome in the process without any contact.

A brief smile appeared over Nessa's face as she felt accomplished at the quick attunement to her new casting apparatus. Nessa opened her hands once more and searched in her mind for what to do next. The tome opened and flipped to a spell she was very familiar with. A violet fog wrapped the tome as Nessa flicked her wrist up, bringing the tome up to her grasp with ease.

Still giddy from her efforts being rewarded, Nessa happily followed Wright into the backroom of his study. She entered the room and noticed it was set up as some sort of meditation chamber, but the space clearly had not been used judging by the fresh candles lining the walls.

"Sit across from me," Wright ordered in his monotone voice from a kneeling position in the middle of the room. "Before we even go into the basics, you need to prepare your mana and the mana around you for the affinity you wish to cast with."

Nessa didn't answer, instead deciding just to sit down and listen across from her teacher. She kneeled down and rested her tome on her lap waiting for further instruction.

Wright reached next to him for a torn page of paper he left on the floor. His burgundy colored mana fluttered about the page like a rapid flame consuming it. He flicked his hand and let the page leave his fingers towards Nessa's tome. The tome opened, allowing the page to seal itself in as if it were there to begin with.

"That spell, well it's hardly a spell, rather it's a preparative ritual. It'll consume no mana to cast. It's meant to prepare yourself and keep you relatively safe when casting blood magic," Wright droned on, bored by his own explanations. Had his one eye not already been closed, it would've been easy to tell he was drifting to sleep. "Go ahead and practice casting and dismissing that ritual until you have it in control."

"Alright, here it goes," Nessa replied in a low whisper as she flipped to the page and looked over its details. As the spell was written, she placed her hand over her heart and performed a harsh wrist motion, trying to pull it away to complete the spell. Crimson sparks flew from her hands as she felt a strain at her chest, but nothing remained afterwards. "Ow...Is it supposed to feel like that?"

"It'll take a few tries to call it out," Wright explained, "That pain will pass as long as you can maintain the ritual. Once it's started, you have to envision a support that keeps you grounded to living. Blood magic is an art that allows you to dance between the door of death as much as you please, but stray too far and you may find yourself with no life to return to."

"W-What!?" Nessa exclaimed in shock which caused Wright to snap out of the trance he put himself in.

"Huh? Oh, guess I was drifting off. Just keep something in your mind that you can not live without. It helps ease the body in and out of the blood affinity state, and don't choose something stupid like your crush or boyfriend or whatever." Wright groaned as he returned to his grogginess.

Nessa closed her eyes and made another attempt at the ritual, reaching towards her chest and then calling out. She kept it in her mind what kept her going most, and in that instant she was able to keep the ritual going. The pain in her chest struck at her, but Nessa was able to ignore it and push forward. Her eyes slowly opened to see Wright staring at the scarlet aura surrounding her body like a faint glow.

"Good." Wright closed his eye again. "Now dismiss it and do it again."

"Oh I see, it's so I get more used to that chest pain right?" Nessa answered with a smile on her face.

Wright grimaced for a moment. "Yeah sure, let's call it that."

"Still struggling with that script are you?" Fausm turned his attention to Mair. The young adventurer kept his grip on the hilt of the massive sword tight in both hands as he struggled to lift it up. "Remember, scripts are a product of mana, and your body is composed of mana all around it, just not the casting magic kind. Focus on the script as an extension of your own body, and you'll connect with it."

Mair nodded in response as he took Fausm's advice to heart. He loosened his grip and tried to envision the weapon as an extension of himself. Mair breathed in and out in silence. He was hesitant to try again, fearing he would fail. He did his best to ignore the possibility of failure and tried to ignore his worries. With the final attempt, the sky blue symbol on Fausm's blade shone once more as Mair lifted the blade out of the ground and held it at waist height.

"H-Hey! I did it!" Mair exclaimed, even though the sword was significantly lighter than before with the script, he still had a hard time lifting it in any actual stance. Satisfied with having activated the script at all, Mair lowered the weapon to the ground and eased himself from the whole experience. "Jeez, that thing's still heavy regardless, huh?"

Fausm walked over to Mair's side and gave him a congratulatory pat on the back before lifting his sword up with one hand. "It's something you gotta get used to. Weapons like these aren't for everyone. Now then, I assume you're going to return to your actual training?" He concluded as he leaned his sword against the wall.

The realization that Mair ended up distracting himself struck fast and hard. "Agh! That's the third time I got distracted just today." Mair buried his face in his hands briefly in frustration. "I'm never gonna catch up with Nessa at this rate."

"She's your older sister, right? It's only natural she's going to have an edge up on you." Fausm sorted through the training weapons lining the walls as he spoke before pausing and turning to face Mair. "Wait, she is the older one right? I never caught onto telling the ages of elves."

"Yeah, she's older than me of course, I get that. But the way things are now, I can barely pull my own weight. When we were growing up, surrounded by hardship, I told myself I'd be there to protect my sister from harm no matter what." Mair crouched down to where he dropped his pike, looking into his reflection in the metal blade. "Now that I'm here, I'm helpless. I can't even protect myself, let alone protect Nessa."

Fausm pondered his response as he watched Mair sulk, uncharacteristic of him from what he understood.

"You seem to have quite the strange perception of yourself, Mair," Fausm finally spoke up, which prompted Mair to look up at him, "I'm not going to pretend like I've known your whole life, but when I encountered you and your sister out in that sellsword den, I didn't see a helpless boy who couldn't pull his weight. No, I saw a warrior standing the line between his foe and who he sought to protect. That man didn't care if he was to fall as long as he made an attempt and died with blade in hand."

Fausm tossed a sparring staff from the wall over at Mair's feet and took one for himself as well.

"It's not about all the times you failed, but about all the times you tried. Because if you keep trying, you'll eventually succeed. But if you stop, you sure as hell won't ever fail." Fausm held the staff and readied himself into a fighting stance. "So keep trying."

Mair smiled and picked up the staff that Fausm threw to him. Without hesitation, he broke into a sparring match with Fausm. Though outclassed in every way, constantly outmatched and knocked down by his opponent, Mair kept getting up for another shot. Every hit and every bruise, they only served a reminder for an eventual victory Mair could see on his path.

"That's all I have for you today," Wright explained to Nessa as he opened the door to lead her out of his study, "In the meantime, practice that spell, and try casting while it's active. I expect you tomorrow as well then?"

"Of course, sir." Nessa entered the hallway and bowed politely to Wright before preparing to leave.

"One more thing." Wright stopped her just in time. "You caught on pretty easily, mind me asking what you've been keeping as your support for that ritual?"

"Oh, you mean the thing that keeps me tied here or something? Well I just thought of my brother." Nessa smiled brighter than she ever had. "I love Mair more than anything. I can't ever imagine leaving him alone, so I suppose that's what helped me push through the fear and pain."

Wright couldn't help but smile back but still spoke in his monotonous tone. "How cute. Well, I had no intention of prying. Now then, off with you." Wright shooed his student away.

Nessa shook her head and laughed off Wright's peculiar attitude before finally leaving for the main sectors of the guild.

Wright remained deep in thought in the hall even after Nessa had left. As he stared off to the hall towards nothing in particular, he heard a creaking sound break the silence of the deserted hallway behind him. Instinctively, his gaze snapped behind him to find that the hall was still empty, unchanged despite the sound he heard. Wright kept his gaze fixed for only a few moments before chalking it up to some troublemaker and reentering his study.

As Wright left the hall alone, minutes of silence passed before someone stepped out from the source of the sound at the far end of the hallway. What stood was a tall tan-skinned man with cloudy eyes. He was fitted in an elegant dress suit and on his cheeks and neck he wore beautiful tattoos that seemed to flow like a breeze passing through him.

"Nessa…" The man spoke as a pair of ashen fairy wings fluttered upon his back, "Such drive and determination. Will it be enough?" The mysterious man spoke in a sing-songy tone before disappearing down the hall he appeared from.