Within a dimly lit hall stood a round table.
It was surrounded by seven chairs, two of which were empty, the others all occupied by a hooded figure each.
"…and she has been making stable progress. There is a very real possibility of her reaching rank three before the competition begins." a proud female voice spoke.
The other people present nodded in understanding after having listened to the report.
"Anything else on our agenda?" a second female voice asked.
"Yes, there is two more points to discuss… The first is the situation over in Aventia-" one of the other three men was explaining before he got interrupted.
"And their new rank one mage?" the woman that looked to be in charge finished the sentence.
"Indeed. How should we respond to this? Should we make that disciple… disappear?" the same man continued.
The woman just shook her head in response to his idea.
"No, instead I want you to dig deeply into the background of this boy. Any information at all, where he is from, who his parents are, how they found him. Get whatever you can, through whatever means necessary." the woman in charge ordered.
The man lightly bowed in response, then took a breath before continuing.
"I took the liberty of preparing beforehand, yet there is very little to be found… There aren't any records of this boy existing within Aventia. I was hoping for intel from within Aventia itself…" the man trails off towards the end.
"Which brings us to our last topic: the sudden loss of contact with our field agent."
… …
Agnes and Frey were standing behind Cykrus, watching in awe as a full meter thick gate deep within the palace's basement was slowly opening in response to him pressing his blood-dripping hand against it.
Runic patterns were lit, reacting to his touch, the doors began moving inwards, all on their own.
"It amazes me every time I see it." Cykrus spoke, filled with melancholy as he remembered the last time he had seen this gate open.
He was just a teenager at the time, his parents the ones to lead him inside.
Back then his eyes glistened from all the gold that entered his peripheral vision, extravagant armour and weapons were aligned along the hall deeper into the treasury.
Down the hall were three closed off rooms on each side, and from the very end the young Cykrus could feel a wave of magical energy pour out towards the entrance, almost overwhelming him in the process… artefacts.
The vision his mind showed him slowly faded, and the shimmer of gold disappeared along with it.
He exhaled loudly as he stepped inside, glancing at the few remaining pieces of equipment, as well as some piles of gold coins on the ground, lamenting over what once was.
"Follow me inside Frey, Agnes, guard the entrance please." Cykrus said as he walked down the hall towards the rooms on each side of the corridor.
Agnes nodded while Frey picked up his pace to catch up with his Lord again.
"What is this place?" Frey asked as they passed by the remaining treasures left in this place.
"My family's treasury. A depository created in times long before ours, kept safe through rune empowered mechanisms that react to the blood of Aventia's descendants."
"A shadow of its former self… This place used to hold amounts of gold that wouldn't fit in all the carriages within this city combined! Over time our influence and power waned, causing my family to use more and more of the stockpiled resources, and sell off some others." Cykrus explained.
He looked at each of the doors while passing by them, then he stopped right in front of the last one on the left side of the hallway.
Cykrus' hand was still dripping blood, but he did not seem to mind, as he lifted it and started drawing a strange character on the door ahead of them.
Once he finished, the door rumbled as it opened, a light appeared within the room, coming from the ceiling.
Within stood a lone pedestal, upon which rested a thin book of leather parchment.
"This is…?" Frey inquired.
"One of the heart-pieces of this treasury. A magic inheritance. It holds several spells of the element earth. They are the same ones I learned at the very beginning, how many of them you manage to use depends on yourself however." Cykrus said as he stepped aside and gestured for Frey to look inside.
Frey took another step forward but stopped right in front of the book.
"Is it really okay for me to learn these?" he hesitated as he glanced at the rank two mage next to him, who nodded in return.
"Of course! You are my disciple. You have yet to understand your own importance, but just know, the rise of your strength means a rise in the strength of Aventia." Cykrus assured him, but he himself felt troubled at the thought of having to rely on such a young boy to decide the outcome of Aventia.
Frey's future accomplishments were a huge variable, and even though Cykrus was unaware of the contents of the upcoming competition decreed by His Majesty, he had no other choice but to put all of his resources into the young boy and hope for the best.
Or at least avoid the worst…
Frey regained his determination and reached his hands out towards the tome in front of him, carefully picking it up in fear of ripping one of the pages.
The cover of the book had aged beyond recognition, no matter what was once displayed, all that remained now was just some incomprehensible gibberish.
He took a deep breath, then flipped the first page.
His sight fell onto the contents of the page, eager to learn his first spells.
Frey was capable of reading and writing, normal books wouldn't pose any problems to him, but no matter how much he squinted his eyes, he could not understand the meaning of the characters.
He fell into thought, mentally going through all the letters he had learned, but these were certainly not among them.
They instead reminded him of runes, but how could he possibly learn to cast a spell from such a thing?
His brows furrowed, turning to the next page in hopes of better results, but it too held no more than a complex rune-structure.
He looked through the entire book, page after page, his breathing grew rougher, until he noticed that there were no more pages to flip, he had reached the end.
Frey swallowed the saliva that had accumulated in his mouth, he was confused, had he misunderstood something?
Even more than that, he was nervous, and afraid, he didn't want to disappoint Lord Cykrus and Agnes, they made their expectations towards him quite obvious.
"Well?" seeing that Frey had reached the end of the book Cykrus was interested how much he had understood from his initial attempt.
"I-… don't know what to do with these." Frey admitted after mulling his words over.
Lord Cykrus chuckled.
"Don't be disheartened, I would have gotten scared had you learned something right away. It took me several months to decipher my first rune, another two before I managed to cast the learned spell without harming myself in the process." he said.
"Decipher the runes? That's a thing?" Frey felt himself growing dizzy at the thought.
"Indeed. Mages are capable of turning spells into runes, it is only natural for one to be able to derive a spell from a rune in turn. This is how most inheritances are passed down."
"There are some… stranger ones… not conforming to this standard, but I have only heard rumours about them, so I am aware of neither the process of learning, nor the process of creating them." Cykrus shrugged.
"…Wait. It took you several months? Do I have to stay down here for several months?" Frey began to sweat a little.
"You don't have to be here every second of the day. I will give you as much freedom as you desire, but I will be expecting results all the same."
"Not right away, of course, I understand that this process will take time, but we only have three years." Cykrus continued.
"If you already deciphered these runes years ago, why don't you just teach them to me?" Frey asked after thinking of a much easier solution, at least in theory.
"Though that would be an option, people who learn spells through such means are… forgive my wording… worthless."
"They sacrifice the opportunity of gaining understanding and insight for short-term benefits. Mages like those never grow beyond the rank of one, no matter how many spells they learn, or what another ends up teaching them." Cykrus spoke harshly.
Frey's heartbeat quickened; he turned his eyes back to the currently open page of the inheritance.
He once again tried to see something hidden within the lines of the runic characters, but to him they seemed like no more than plain text on parchment.
"How many runes do I have to understand?" Frey asked, his thoughts shifting to the deadline of three years, technically a long time, but if every rune took several months, how useful could he possibly be by the end of his preparations.
"The more you manage to turn into spells the better. It would give you more options, both in and outside of a battle. Variety is key to a mage, those with only a small amount are easily countered after some research; a problem supposedly solved once rank three has been reached, as you'd be able to alter your spells at will." Cykrus said.
Though he had yet to reach rank three himself, he had spent tons of time and gold to learn as much about reaching that rank as possible.
A rank one mage was a novice, powerful in comparison to normal humans, the average soldiers and knights, but nothing much in the eyes of a rank two mage.
Their firepower and versatility usually overshadowed any rank one, the only rare exception being physical mages.
Rank three mages were hailed as terrifying powerhouses, making an enemy of one would spell disaster for the offender, usually their territory and family as well.
"Once you have deciphered your first rune, deciphering another will become a lot easier. It is hard to go from zero to one, creating something from nothing is a great hurdle. Going from one to two is a lot more manageable, after all, you are building upon an established foundation." Cykrus explained, causing some of Frey's worries to ease.
"I'll try my best." Frey answered.
Cykrus smiled and placed his hand on Frey's shoulder for a moment before leaving, allowing him to fully immerse himself within the rune-study.
He walked back towards the entrance of the treasury where Agnes was waiting for them, diligently doing her assigned duty of watching out for unauthorized visitors.
Though the palace was filled with trusted aides, one could never be too careful, since the Ironhoofs had obviously infiltrated Aventia, it was now a question of how deep their roots had grown.
"What about Frey?" she asked upon noticing him approaching.
"He will keep trying to understand the runes for now. I am hopeful, but there are other things to take care of while he studies on his own."
"Ugh, politics again?" Agnes raised her eyebrow.
"We must find this Hodwan, and preferably extract useful information regarding the Ironhoofs from him. If that is not an option, then he must be eliminated. He holds various information regarding Aventia, which he may or may not have divulged to his superiors already. Nonetheless, he is a potential future rank two mage, as such a dangerous chess piece, too dangerous to be left alive." Cykrus informed her.
"I will see to it." Agnes bowed.
"No, I need you to continue watching over both Frey and the treasury. There is no other person I trust as much as you."
"How cute."
"Oh, shush you…" Cykrus smiled and shook his head.
"Like I said, make sure that no one enters the treasury, disturbing Frey and causing him to fail at understanding a rune would be detrimental to us." he repeated his order, just to assure himself.
"Leave it to me." Agnes returned his smile.
Meanwhile, Frey was sitting on the ground, hunched over the more than a decade old tome he was supposed to study, but with each passing moment his frown grew more visible.
"How am I supposed to…" he mumbled to himself, the characters appeared so normal, that it made him second guess whether Lord Cykrus was just playing a joke on him.
Frey had paid careful attention to his Lord's and Agnes' expressions for a while now, and he chose to believe that their concern for their city's future was real, just as much as their expectations towards him.
Those distracting thoughts soon faded again; they were instead replaced by determination.
He set a goal for himself, he wanted to learn a rune as quickly as possible, to surprise the two, and to show them that their faith in him wasn't in vain.
… …
Over the next days Frey spent several hours inside of the treasury, attempting to decipher one rune or another.
Each day some of his early determination was chipped away at, his expression more sour every time he left the basement to breathe in some fresh air, relaxing within the garden of the palace.
The sight of the flowers calmed him down, they reminded him of his peaceful and loving time under the care of his parents.
It managed to regenerate some of his resolve, enough to compel him back down into the suffocatingly small room within the treasury again on the following day.
He exchanged short greetings when he passed by the palace's staff or guards, but their smiles and the way they treated him made his skin crawl instead, the behaviour was too similar to the way the villagers of his former home had treated him.
Frey felt they too would betray him, if he failed to live up to their expectations, that he would be cast aside, like a worthless old rug.
He did not dare leave the palace's grounds on his own either, afraid that those assassins Lord Cykrus had briefly mentioned would forego this 'Majesty' figure's orders and come for him anyways.
Aside from eating, sleeping, and taking a regular bath, Frey's days were filled with the runic characters.
He lived in luxury, but he couldn't afford to indulge in it, he felt that he wasn't worthy of all this, at least not yet.
Days turned into weeks.
Frey would wake up early in the morning, drenched with sweat and a fast heartbeat.
He felt horrible, day after day, this feeling did not leave him alone.
He had yet to show any results, not just to Cykrus or Agnes, but he himself knew he had not gotten any closer to his goal compared to when he started all those days ago.
Neither Cykrus nor Agnes complained however, though Frey met with his Lord less often, due to him being busy with running his city, their treatment towards him remained the same.
Their attitude made him feel that much worse, he felt like he was just leeching off their kindness.
The pressure on him kept on growing, not due to external sources, but himself.
He let down his own expectations, and there was nothing he could do about it.
Unaware of the reason, his mental health quickly deteriorated.
Frey did not reach out to anyone for help, he knew that he had to understand the runes on his own, that he had to just put in more time and effort to eventually succeed.
'Eventually', this word weighed heavily on his mind.
There was only so much time available to him, less than three years.
Within that timeframe he had to become a capable mage, one all of Aventia could rely on.
How could he not worry about his eventual failure?
Several days passed, and Frey began to sleep more than usual, cutting down on his daily available time for his studies, but without that bit of extra sleep, he felt incredibly tired.
He too realised that this would become a problem if it continued, but getting out of bed earlier just wasn't an option to him anymore.
Instead, he reduced the time he spent at the garden.
The flower's colours appeared slightly duller whenever he stopped by, they reminded him of his drive for revenge, of his original goal for accepting Agne's deal.
The warmth of the sunlight became all the more enjoyable, but he lacked the time to stay there for long.
He returned back to the dark environment below the palace, every day, like clockwork.
One day Agnes prompted him to halt, she had observed him for the entire duration, ever since his study began several weeks ago.
"Are you alright? You look tired. Why don't you take a break for today?" she said, causing Frey to snap out of his trance, out of the comfort of his daily cycle.
"I… need to continue studying." he replied.
"It's not like leaving out a day will kill you, come with me. Let's have some fun for today." Agnes reached out her hand towards him.
Frey was reluctant, he wanted to go with her, but his fear of failure caused his hand to shake, stopping it in its tracks.
As he was weighing his options, Agnes reached out her hand further and grabbed his, then she started pulling him away.
He instinctively tried to free himself, but he realised that he wasn't strong enough, his own apprehension and defences slowly lowered, allowing himself to be taken away.