Ayden awoke to Nadi’s voice. She was a few years his junior and always hummed that tune when she idled or was working on something. His groan made her jump up.

  “Ayden?” she asked. “You’re okay!”

  Another groan left his mouth followed by a half hearted, “Nadi?”

  “You landed on some flooring and tore right through. The city guard’s going to fine you and force you to work for the building crew. You’re lucky they aren’t punishing you more.”

  Ayden groaned a third time and slumped back into his bed. Nadi returned to whatever she was doing before. Her mother would likely scold Ayden when he awakened all the while mending his wounds.

  ***

  When Ayden stirred again Nadi sat hunched over her project. She wore a different color dress so a day or so must have passed. Ayden grunted and she perked up to see him rise.

  “You look a little better,” she said.

  “Thank your mother for me,” said Ayden, trying to find his boots. He saw them sit beside hers by the doorway.

  “She wants to speak to you,” said Nadi. Her voice sounded worried for his sake.

  “She wants to yell at me.”

  “Be grateful!” snapped Nadi, smacking Ayden on the shoulder. “She hauled you to safety. The least you could do is listen to her.”

  A prick of guilt made Ayden sit back in bed. “Fine…”

  “I suppose this is the point where you tell me what you were doing?” Nadi asked.

  He gave her the gist of the escapade.

  “Ayden,” she said, pity and concern in her voice. “You can’t take shortcuts.”

  “It wasn’t a shortcut,” said Ayden. “I have no money.” He realized she was working on a Silterran study guide. “I can’t afford the material. And the mages come back soon. I have to be ready.”

  Nadi glanced at her book and pursed her lips as she pondered. She slid it over to him. “I’m still a couple of years away from joining. You need it more than me. You have a year to study and I know you will do your best.”

  Ayden felt a rush of gratitude hit him at once even if the book given today wouldn’t help much. He wanted to correct her that it was happening in a few days when Nadi’s mother rounded the corner into their room and scowled at Ayden. “Boy, if I had a holding to my name for every time I had to drag you out of trouble, you’d all call me Empress Janari. She rolled up her sleeve, and reached for Ayden’s ear. Pinching it hard, she yanked him up and narrowed his eyes at him.

  “Good that you’re mended,” she snapped. Nadi sunk into her corner and let events unfold. “Now I can thrash you and not feel terrible about it.”

  “Wait,” he cried, wincing. “How long has it been?”

  “A month!”

  “A month?” yelled Ayden, trying to wrench free.

  She pinched harder and twisted. “The nerve! I had to argue with the guardsmen who wanted to send you to the barracks, boy!”

  “No, Madam Janari! It’s just… The mages!”

  “And it’s my problem, why?” she asked. “If it wasn’t for the generous vagabond that paid for the damages and consoled the guards with money beyond that, I’d have you scrubbing my floors and running errands for a whole year! Maybe I still should!” Janari used to be a combat medic, and eventually carried her skills of sewing flesh together with minor pulses of Green Healing magic, into sewing cloth. She had made the tunic and coat he wore now.

  “Wait,” said Ayden, on his toes now. “Who?”

  She shoved him onto the bed and huffed. “Some strange man named Xavos. Said he has a job proposition for you. Make you worth something other than picking fights and climbing towers.”

  “I missed the mages,” said Ayden.

  “Master Xavos looked like a mage,” said Nadi like a small mouse in the corner. Behind the looming presence of her mother who’d fought through harder days than Nadi had lived, she might as well have been a mouse.

  Janari spared her daughter no kind glances before huffing once more the way Ayden had seen bears do when angry. Nadi retreated to her own studies. Janari turned to Ayden and he once again saw the warmth of a mother return to her eyes. The calm came after the storm for Janari.

  “Ayden,” she said. “The times are tough right now. We can’t have you pulling stunts like that.”

  While Ayden would have loved to play in stride with Janari’s switch to quiet lessons, he needed to know more about Xavos. “Where is the stranger?”

  Janari’s patience crumbled and anger flared once more. “Young man!”

  “Xavos is usually by the residential building you fell from,” said Nadi.

  “Thanks!” cried Ayden, dodging Janari’s hands, and slinking out from around her.

  “Ayden, this is the last time-” her words cut off as Ayden sprinted down the streets.

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  ***

  Xavos looked like a wiry old man with hair on only the sides of his head. They puffed up as if struck by lightning and his leathery skin shone darker than Ayden’s almond hue. He wore loose robes and walked with a stick taller than him. He reminded Ayden of pilgrims that ventured west for the White Jewel. However, unlike pilgrims, at his hip rested a heavy axe Ayden doubted the older man could wield. With wrists as thin as those, they’d snap under the weight.

  “Ayden,” he said without looking. He peered up at the pole Ayden fell from, now gleaming again in he sunlight.

  “How do you-”

  “I have ears,” he interrupted. He gave Ayden a grin, and his eyes looked dreary like the men hat stumbled out of the tavern after a hard day’s drinking. “And I hear you have a cracked gemstone.”

  Ayden reached for his coat pocket but found it empty.

  “Had,” he said, splaying out his hands. From one hand, he made the gemstone appear out of thin air.

  “You are a mage!” said Ayden.

  “What?” he asked, baffled. “This was sleight of hand.”

  Ayden sighed and turned to walk away. “Damn it…” He thought he was close to finding some kind of inside connection to Silterra. A prestigious academy would never accept such a strange bumpkin.

  The ground before Ayden ignited and he jumped backward, a squeal wriggling free of his mouth. The flames assumed the shape of a corpse. No, not a corpse. A boy. The spot where he had landed on the ground through the floorings that hung above.

  “That was magic,” he said.

  Ayden turned around, clearing his throat, hoping to recover some of his lost masculinity from that scream. “Why are you here?” he asked. “Why did you pay for my debts?”

  “You went up there,” said Xavos. “With this.”

  Ayden froze. Was it forbidden? Was it Dire Magic? This path somehow was worse than missing his chance of going to Silterra. “Um,” he stammered. “It was.. It was a book.”

  “A book, yes,” said Xavos. “Clever book. But flawed.”

  Ayden’s hopes sank as he realized that even if he hadn’t cracked the gemstone the method may still not have worked.

  “The book was made by a mage who they hanged for he tried to harness the power of the stars.” Xavos looked up at where the stars would have been aligned. “Only he was wrong about that as well. They are not stars. They are worlds like the one we dwell on, and they are named what they are because that’s what the inhabitants call it. Paradox Lands and the Temple of the Gods. Star of Paradoxes, and the Temple Star.”

  Ayden gaped at the man as he spouted more wisdom than Ayden ever learned from the few dusty tomes he managed to beg borrow and steal.

  “The man who wrote your book: Harnessing the Celestial Bodies only had a piece of the puzzle.” Xavos brandished Ayden’s cracked gemstone and snapped his fingers to have it vanish in his sleeves only for another stone to replace it. “This is real power, boy. Power to rival those worlds. Power to rival our own.”

  It shone ruby red, but darker as if coated in blood.

  “A more ancient form of magic that you tried to harness with a flawed method. Should you have succeeded, you most likely would have died.”

  Ayden stepped forward, hoping to take a better look at the magic ruby. Xavos made it vanish too and Ayden suppressed his irritation. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because for a boy who tries to harness the stars-”

  “Thought you said they were worlds,” said Ayden.

  “But you thought they were stars,” said Xavos with humor twinkling in his eyes. “And for a boy to try and harness them, it takes guts.”

  “I missed the mages from Silterra,” said Ayden.

  Xavos waved his hand. “You will try again next year and you will come prepared to where they HAVE to take you.”

  “What do you mean, ‘have to?’”

  “Everyone knows their so called meritocracy is a sham. Has been since the Triscourge. Most of the best mage died in battle or ran off with their feeble minds on the verge of breaking. The ones that remained were the politicians and cowards. They would not have accepted you, Ayden. Not even if you did harness the powers you sought.”

  “Why?” asked Ayden.

  “Because you’re a stupid orphan child who does odd jobs and errands. That would be their justification. The real reason? You don’t have standing, boy. No standing means no benefit. However, I will give you standing. I will give you power as well. All you have to do is swear to me you want it as bad as I want it for you.”

  Ayden stood on the edge of a cliff and below was a rushing river. At the bottom lay a mass of gold and all he had to do was jump. “I’m in.” Ayden felt as if he should bow. So he did.

  Xavos snorted in amusement and turned away from him. “I need you to prove it. Truly prove you want power.”

  “How?” asked Ayden, scampering after him. He walked fast and Ayden had to almost jog to keep up.

  Xavos stopped and spun around all of a sudden, forcing Ayden to crash into him. His body felt like a stone pillar. The old mage raised his index finger and grinned. “All great mages are forged in fire like iron. Look at the heroes of the Triscourge. Shami of Mahar, Kes of Vrodia, Barric Thunderfist. All of them were born in bloody and hard times.”

  Ayden didn’t like where this was going. “What about academia?”

  Xavos cackled as if what Ayden said was not only the dumbest, but cutest thing a boy could say. “Academia is for rich people to hold the glories of true power for themselves regardless of whether they have it or not. That’s why when I say they HAVE to accept you, it’s because even they won’t be able to ignore your existence. They will want to watch you, horde you, contain you.”

  “So Silterran Mages are not great?”

  “Oh, a few are great. The Queen was once great but now she deals with politics.”

  “And her daughter?” asked Ayden. Everyone heard of the protege daughter of the Silterran Queen. Cara Silverstone served her people greater than most monarchs did and due to the elected monarchy of Silterra she wasn’t even guaranteed the throne. At the young age of fourteen, she’d already reestablished a functional irrigation system by finding old engineering manuscripts lost well before the Triscourge. A daring act that few wanted to risk their promising noble lineage for. Cara dove in head first at every turn.

  “Young and foolish,” said Xavos. “Distracted by the ideologies of her peers and mentors. You have no such disadvantage with me. You can always be open with me. I encourage the most deadly and dastardly ideas from my students.”

  “Have you had many?” asked Ayden.

  Xavos grew somber and wistful as he stared past Ayden. “I had many once, but for their genius they all were killed.”

  “By whom?”

  “Different groups throughout the years. I failed them as did the powers that be. They could not see their wisdom. Their potential. Or rather, they could, only they feared it so.”

  “I mean no disrespect, but I am afraid, Xavos,” said Ayden. “You make it sound like my chances of survival are low with you.”

  Xavos peered at Ayden through narrow eyes. “Then don’t be a mage.”

  “What? I want to-”

  “Then be ready for death around every corner. Expect it! Crave it! Every time you near death, you grow stronger, boy. Like iron!” He slapped one palm on his fist. “To be a mage is to yearn for dangerous things. That’s why academia is preposterous. Only when you are stuck should you turn to research and experimentation. What is there to find in the world besides violence and monsters? You know they’re there. I know they are there. Do not let soldiers face them. Go out there and clash with them.”

  Ayden gulped. “Right now?’

  Xavos shot him a sinister grin. “Sure, why not?”

  Ayden stepped back. “I know some basic things, but facing monsters right now? I wouldn’t even know where to find one.”

  “We will camp out tonight. Out of the town boundaries and patrols. We will live like animals and surround ourselves with beasts.”

  “Xavos, sir, I really-”

  “If you do not, Ayden, I will leave and you will never get into the Academy.”

  “But you said-”

  “Yes or no, Ayden?”

  Ayden wanted to argue that if academia served no purpose for them, then why should he even go to Silterra. However, if he refused, he wouldn’t even gain that wisdom from this man. A part of Ayden wondered if he stood beside a mad man who knew some magic. Perhaps an escaped convict. He glanced at the pole he almost killed himself for.

  I am willing to die. That was all the answer he needed.

  “I’m in.”

  Xavos nodded and his eyes gleamed with pride and joy.