New beginning

Miron and Kei had been living at Clarine's for about two weeks now, and they had experienced more in that short time than in their lives on Athok combined. They were discovering the outside world as they had always dreamed of it without really expecting it, and were even beginning to get used to this freedom which in the minds of most people was a basic and natural right and not a privilege. But for them, whose lives had begun in an unusual and eventful, not to say monstrous, way, they didn't know what to make of it. But it didn't matter in the end, they were free and in good hands, the rest could now be tolerated.

Karan would have been so proud.

The first two days of their arrival in the warm and luminous house, filled with tiny and various fairies, not to mention various small creatures happy to live, the two young liberated did nothing but sleep and laze so much their fatigue was great. But on the third day, they decided to get up, their enthusiasm and the magic helping, not to mention the ability of their bodies, used to being subjected to the terrible pressure of slave labor and to bear all the consequences. Clarine, demonstrating the wealth of goodness and devotion that the two boys had already seen in her, had used every spare moment to take her two guests to discover her famous kingdom.

She had started with the attractive and classic sites of the city, the natural parks, the museums, the buildings of various styles, each more original and impressive than the other, designed by renowned and talented architects, the amusement parks, etc...

One day, after a busy morning where the two boys had helped their hostess in the tea restaurant, the three decided to take the afternoon off, leaving the house and the customers in the hands of the already well trained and helpful fairies, Clarine decided to take the boys to an amusement park, the latest one that had just opened three days earlier. Although the place was vast and magical, people consumed by the attraction of novelty were jostling each other in an excessive animation and a little too noisy for the taste of the two survivors, especially for the young prodigy.

He greatly appreciated the good will of his beautiful witch to please them and to make them discover what they never knew but that they so much aspired to know, as well as to bring them the normality that they missed so much, but Miron had difficulty to support this overflowing of suffocating presence of free people around him, although he was also one now. In fact, the only place on their visit that really managed to find favor in his eyes was the great national library, a place just as huge and sacred as the others, but where silence and order reigned because they were the absolute requirements there. He looked at it for a long time with a pensive and attentive air, already knowing what he was going to do since this monumental building with a solemn aspect was the place that contained almost all the answers.

But it didn't matter at this moment, because he couldn't get started yet. He was forced to follow the steps of Clarine and his friend. And the more time passed, the more his annoyance and nervousness began to seriously boil up inside him and spill over, soon they would demand his magic to spill out of his body and eradicate everything. And it really almost happened and burst out into the open when walking under a large courtyard, Miron and an adult collided, without the fault really being imputed to either of them, it was a simple accident, quite brutal but innocent, but of course, the adult mage did not see it that way and seeing that the other was only a young teenager barely out of childhood, he shouted at him harshly, asking him to stop, to turn to him and to apologize to him, otherwise, he would make him understand his pain.

It was so laughable, Miron thought, not really surprised, and already dangerously annoyed, then letting himself be invaded by unspeakable thoughts.

He did as the man said. He stopped and then slowly turned back to him. The latter, expressing a hard and profiteering face, satisfied with the obedience of his young target, immediately changed his expression when he saw that of his young enemy. It was a man taller than most of the people around and certainly heavier, with a round face and a muscular body, with a mustache, which irritated Miron even more because it reminded him of still vivid and repulsive memories of some of Sirkol's guests, and wearing light, rather colorful clothes.

He froze like a stone statue, so tanned but now become of a mortal pallor making even astonishingly bring out the sustained tones of his clothes, not really managing to seize what he saw, and quickly felt his body crossing of an irrepressible icy shiver before trembling like a young child lost in a world of night, covered with a thick, untearable fog.

He moved back, clung as he could to a person who was passing by too, totally indifferent to the cries of protest of the woman whose wrist he had grabbed, his breath becoming jerky, then shaking his head again and again to regain some of his senses and his head, he ended up shouting in turn, like a madman, before turning his talents and running away as if monsters were after him, screaming with all his strength, and releasing by survival instinct waves of magic that violently pushed back most of the people in his path.

"A monster...Help, someone, save me! A monster like no other...!"

Everyone looked at the runaway, stunned, and for the most part embarrassed and annoyed, especially those who suffered the effects of his powers.

"Oh," exclaimed the young woman he had grabbed forcefully, "What a jerk, after grabbing my wrists, he squeezed them to crush them before running away like I had a contagious disease! If this is a new method of seducing a woman to look original, it's a total failure, just like him!"

And she swept her long, straight blonde hair with a graceful, dismissive hand before turning on her heels and melting into the still-stunned crowd.

After following the man's incomprehensible and hysterical flight, they all turned to Miron, who with perfect artistry expressed the most complete incomprehension and innocence one could imagine. He stood there in the middle of the surprised people, his face questioning, embarrassed, and even a little guilty, not understanding what he had done wrong.

"I ... I don't understand!" he murmured in such a soft, husky voice, responding to his touchingly disarmingly delicate appearance, his moonlit pallor further accentuated by his oh-so-simple clothes and the black of his shirt. "What did I do wrong that would hurt him so much?"

And asking this question; he embraced the spectators with a look so bright and blamed to melt any heart, to beg for an answer, and raising his hands in a sign of total and touching helplessness that people became even more incensed towards the adult responsible and that they would have even all preferred to see chastised.

"Really, people these days, picking on a child for such a trivial indicator just to exercise his unhealthy authority and feel superior. Pathetic!"

"Yes, people don't know what to invent to get attention and make the interested parties, how sad! They don't understand that they do nothing but arouse people's contempt and displeasure!"

"Don't worry kid, there are always people like that it's true, but not everyone, and not all the time."

"Don't feel guilty, he is."

A few more kind words of advice and generous consolations poured out for Miron before the incident was over and everyone went back to their business.

"Thank you, guys. I feel so much better now!"

These were the words of thanks that the young "victim" offered to these kind citizens who responded with tender smiles and joyful laughter.

But Kei and Clarine, who had also attended the whole scene, were still unable to make the slightest movement, so much so that what they saw made them cold to the point of emptying their minds.

Because obviously, they were the only ones who had seen what Miron had done to him, apart from the fat man who had been targeted. When he turned to him, he wore a mask that was almost as white as his own, with big, black eyes and a wide mouth that smiled so sardonically and cruelly that it was unbearable, all this accompanied by an icy, morbid aura of unimaginable power gushing out of his body in painful waves, which he controlled with such perfection that he was able to make it felt only by the three individuals he was concerned with, but in different ways.

When everything finished and he turned to his friends, he wore a satisfied and light smile as if nothing was wrong, or more exactly as if what he had just done didn't have any kind of importance for him.

"Well, now that this meaningless mishap is settled, let's go and try this house of follies that I see from here and that was endowed with such a sickeningly attractive appearance."

It was an immense building painted in all shades of pink, and between the walls of which all that happened there defied in an exceptional and rather disturbing illusion, the most fundamental logics.

As for his two companions, they could only remain motionless, exchanging a long, concerned look, horribly frightened despite the depth of their familiarity, cautiously looking at the young mage with a troubled and destitute look, drawing, despite everything, a certain relief from the thought that they were the only people, including the rude character, to have witnessed this monstrous, almost illegal demonstration of power. But they were wrong, they simply didn't know it, but another person was able to glimpse the scene, a person that none of them would have ever accepted as a friend and wouldn't have wished to have as an enemy, a mage of considerable power but above all endowed with a brilliant, perverse and devious mind. Miron of course also felt his presence, but too confident in his power that he knew both of them to be immensely more powerful, he didn't bother with this unknown existence.