***

  The next day, Armarillis seemed to have died out: all combat-ready Fortemins had spread out with the Inquisitors across the city, taking up their observation positions under heavy cover. So the academy corridors were unusually empty — in my memory, the academy had never been this deserted and quiet.

  Besides Sirinity with the children, who were busy with their own activities in the west wing, a couple of healers on duty also remained at the academy, as well as several Fortemins who had been wounded in relatively recent battles with dark creatures and hadn’t yet recovered magically. And then there was Calypso and me and some of our groupmates.

  Tension hung in the air — we were waiting for news from our colleagues and the Inquisitors. They had temporarily disabled their communication bracelets to avoid creating unnecessary magical fluctuations, so we had no contact with anyone. All we could do was wait for their return.

  We passed the time with active training, and Mia squealed with delight when she finally wove shadow magic into her favorite combat spells.

  “Did you see, did you see?” she clapped her hands when she conjured an energy bow with arrows, golden and sparkling.

  “I did it, I did it!..”

  The elf had been remarkably quick to reproduce what Calypso had shown her — she turned out to be quite talented in this area.

  Amazing, I hadn’t expected that from her; I would have bet on Patricia, but she was still having problems with aura balance and weaving it with shadow magic. Though she, like Calypso’s other new students, was only at the beginning of her shadow development journey. And I was sure that at this rate, Calypso would awaken the shadow sides of each of them very quickly.

  Calypso had a clear plan that he intended to follow rigorously.

  We were animatedly discussing this over lunch when Kes unexpectedly joined us.

  “I’m here on business,” he said curtly, pulling up a chair to our table.

  “Mm-hmm?” Calypso drawled indifferently, spreading butter on a hot piece of toast.

  “What business?”

  Kes wasn’t training in shadow magic with us, since Calypso hadn’t found any aptitude for it in him. But Kes hadn’t gone on the stakeout with the other Fortemins today either, because he was among those who had been bitten by venomous dark creatures in recent battles. The wound had healed, but his aura hadn’t yet recovered, so the Mentor had decided not to risk it and left Kes at the academy. Not that Kes particularly objected — he simply used this free time as a regular day off at his own discretion.

  “I think I need your help.”

  “Interesting. Kesterishtór Lamárk himself coming to me for help? Wow,” Calypso drawled mockingly.

  Kes just rolled his eyes and began uncertainly:

  “Look, here’s the thing… You see… I have, well… in the Forland area, in Gravion-Shleicy, there’s, um… a girlfriend, basically…”

  “And?” Calypso said coldly, raising his eyebrows.

  “You need me to help you sort out your love life with some country girl?”

  “Oh, go to hell,” Kes waved him off good-naturedly.

  “Anyway… She told me there’s a patch of forest with an anti-magical zone in that village. Right here,” he pointed at a spot on the map he’d brought and spread out on the table before us.

  “Hmm,” Calypso frowned.

  “That’s far from the center of Forland. What kind of anti-magical zone? How long has it been there?”

  “I haven’t been there myself,” Kes shrugged.

  “Sophie says the zone has definitely been there for several days now. What kind of zone I don’t know. None of the locals have seen pentagrams or victims. But as I understand it, if it involves shadow magic, they might not see them, right?”

  “How long have you known about this zone?”

  “Sophie just told me about it.”

  “You met with her today?” I frowned.

  “The Mentor forbade all adepts from leaving the academy. He didn’t make anyone swear an oath, but…”

  “No, we’ve been talking through a linked artifact lately,” Kes pulled the artifact from his pocket and waved it in the air.

  “I exchanged these artifacts with Sophie before the Mentor’s ban,” Kes smiled crookedly, clearly embarrassed at having to share something personal.

  “Our training schedule is so packed that sometimes it’s really hard to find time to meet. And I, well… I just wanted to communicate more often somehow, basically…”

  He trailed off awkwardly, but shook his head and continued:

  “I was just talking to her now. You can check the artifact if you want. I don’t know if all this is related to our situation… It’s quite possible it’s not, that it’s something else. But what if it is? Anyway, Sophie’s words worried me, so I came straight to you. We can’t contact our people in the city right now, and you’re the best expert on this topic,” Kes grimaced, clearly unhappy at having to admit this aloud.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “So I…”

  “Why hasn’t anyone from the area reported this incident?” I frowned, studying the map with Calypso and staring intently at the indicated spot.

  “It’s the middle of nowhere out there,” Kes shrugged.

  “Just old ladies living there, breathing fresh air. Sophie says no mages live there. Forland has plenty of non-magical people, after all. I can easily imagine the locals simply don’t like dealing with mages in general and perceive weird stuff like this in the local forests as some kind of devilry from local evil spirits. Or something like that.”

  I tensely clasped my fingers together and looked at Calypso. He was gazing thoughtfully at both the map and Kes, but staying silent, not rushing to conclusions.

  “What do you think about this?” I pressed him.

  “What’s there to think… We need to scout it out,” Calypso said lazily.

  “And the sooner the better. We’ll go now.”

  “Why now?” I was surprised.

  “We could check it later, after the seniors get back.”

  “Theoretically, yes. But if we assume this is the same kind of anti-magical pentagram we found before, then we’re looking at a suspicious picture,” Calypso shook his head.

  “In that case, it would mean our colleagues are currently watching the wrong spot. And that could have consequences.”

  “But the Inquisitors and Fortemins planned everything together carefully…”

  “What if there’s an error in the plan? We’re not all-powerful gods. And even Eric as a Prophet can’t know absolutely everything in advance.”

  I anxiously bit my lip, twirling a lock of hair around my finger.

  “But what if this isn’t the pentagram, but something else, and we’d just be putting ourselves in unnecessary danger?..”

  “And what if it is the pentagram, and through our silence and inaction we put everyone in danger? What’s worse, a mistake in calculations or careless handling of suspicious information?”

  Hmm, fair point.

  “The Mentor asked us not to leave Armarillis today,” I reminded him cautiously.

  “Yes, but what if this really is connected to some new magical pentagram, and our people don’t know?” Calypso spread his hands.

  “This could be very important.” Or

  “Then we especially shouldn’t go there,” I muttered.

  “Let someone else from our side do it…”

  “Who? Sirinity doesn’t leave the academy, and she’s got our whole local kindergarten on her hands. A couple of Fortemins are lying wounded in the infirmary – they’re incapacitated. A couple more healers stayed to watch over the wounded, and who knows when the children might urgently need help. And healers aren’t advanced combat mages. That’s it, there’s no one else in the academy now among the adults who could be sent to scout.”

  “What about your ilun?”

  “He’s not a mage, and if something there is hidden by shadow murk, he won’t be able to dispel it. At most he can sense something’s off and call us. And we could lose time. Or he might not sense anything and not call us, because he simply doesn’t know how to check such things. In short, I wouldn’t rely on Alohar here.”

  Calypso tapped his fingers on the communication artifact in a specific rhythm to use a specialized spell to play back the recording of Kes’s conversation with his girlfriend. And the longer he listened to this conversation, the more he frowned.

  “Don’t trust me?” Kes smirked.

  “Why should I trust you?” Calypso said in a flat voice.

  “I also just did a quick surface scan of your mind to make sure no one had enchanted you and that you didn’t prepare the conversation in advance.”

  Kes snorted but didn’t say anything more. He just silently watched as Calypso thoroughly checked the artifact for magical tampering.

  “Everything’s clean… The conversation wasn’t fabricated, the artifact wasn’t hacked by anyone… And I don’t like what Sophie is saying.”

  “What if she’s lying?” I asked grimly.

  “Can’t rule it out, but it doesn’t seem like it. I recently learned a mental spell that lets me quickly distinguish lies from truth, even in a recording. It doesn’t seem like Sophie is lying. At the very least, she herself believes what she’s saying.”

  Calypso thoughtfully scratched his chin.

  “Gravion-Shleicy is on the far outskirts of Forland. It's practically a village in the countryside. It’s quite far from the zone our people and the Inquisitors are currently guarding. We won’t go into Forland proper, as Father asked. We’ll quickly scout the situation and back. If there’s nothing critical there, I promise we’ll teleport right back to Armarillis, and the whole trip will take us just a few minutes,” he said firmly.

  “And if it turns out to be critical news then we’ll have to go into Forland anyway, or somehow contact the Mentor or someone else from our side…”

  “I can go with you,” Kes offered.

  “If needed, I can brazenly go to our people or the Inquisitors. The Mentor didn’t forbid me from going to that guarded zone. He just strongly recommended I not strain myself magically. And I don’t intend to.”

  Calypso sighed.

  “Yes, I guess that’s what we’ll do. We’ll make a quick run. We won’t take other classmates. I won’t expose them to potential danger. But you’re coming with us. And in any case, take us to this poor girlfriend of yours so she can show us this anti-magical zone.”

  “Hey! Why ‘poor’?” Kes protested.

  “Because she’d have to be really desperate if she’s choosing you,” Calypso said snidely.

  “Either that or you’re as much of a bore as you are. And I don’t know what’s sadder.”

  “Well, thanks,” Kes snorted, crossing his arms over his chest.

  “Always at your service!..”

  ***

  We decided to leave immediately.

  “Don’t you want to tell your mother we’re leaving?” I asked quietly as we practically ran toward the exit from the academy.

  “So she won’t let us go anywhere?” Calypso said skeptically.

  “No, there’s no need for that now. She can’t come with us anyway, and I’m perfectly capable of making my own decision to briefly leave Armarillis, taking responsibility for that decision.”

  I sighed heavily but didn’t argue. Maybe I really was worrying for nothing. After all, the general atmosphere in the academy had been quite tense all day — everyone was frozen in anticipation of news, and that agonizing feeling had seeped into me completely.

  Already walking hand in hand with Calypso toward the teleportation gates on Armarillis grounds, I looked back and saw Sirinity standing on the top step of the stone staircase leading to the main entrance of the academy. So beautiful, in a long black dress to the floor, her loose hair falling over her bare shoulders.

  She wasn’t trying to stop us and made no attempt to call out or say anything. She just clasped her hands together in front of her and silently watched Calypso walking into the teleportation gates. In Sirinity’s eyes a strange expression of some inexpressible sorrow was frozen … But she didn’t stop us, and a second later I was already flying with Calypso and Kes through the teleportation vortex.