Another month had passed. Elise slowly had started to realize that something was wrong. She had seen many children in the last few years walking through the town with their mothers and, what she believed to be, their fathers. Yet her father never had been there. She had tried her best to ask her mother, Heinz or Heidi where her father was. But they had never given her a concrete answer. Her mother always had said that she was too young to understand it.

Elise doubted that strongly. She was old enough to read, write, and she knew some wild magic and was able to use a sword. She surely was old enough to understand what was up with her father. Elise was almost eight years old, well, seven years and five months but that was close enough. And she was taller than others her age. That made her quite proud because a warrior had to be tall.

She, however, had a hunch. Her father never had been there. Coupled with the fact that everyone here seemed to be rather sad when she asked them about him, he was either dead or had run away. The latter was doubtful, that was just an assumption but it could be a possibility.

After her mother had started to cry, Elise had decided to not ask her anymore. It seemed to be a rather sensitive topic. She could, however, not understand why they hid the truth from her. Elise had read enough books to know what death was.

Not knowing if her father was really dead weighed on her soul and when she thought about her father, she often felt sad. The angry voice in her head often tried to soothe her but that rarely helped. The angry voice did not seem to know how much the loss of someone impacted someone’s life.

She sighed and looked at the store opposite the inn, a bakery. Should she go there and buy something? Elise shook her head. She needed to save her allowance. The angry voice agreed. There were more important things she needed to buy than a piece of sweet bread, apple strudel or another delicacy the baker sold.

Elise sat down on the old wooden bench in front of the inn. Her legs still were sore from all the running she did with Heinz and her arms felt as if they were logs. Swinging a sword was hard, but it was also fun.

There wasn’t that much happening in the tiny town. It would not be far-fetched to say that the town was like any town, it had nothing remarkable. Still, Elise liked watching the streets when she took a break from all the training she did with Heinz.

Fortunately, due to the Association, the town was not too uneventful. Elise had experienced a handful of rather exciting things by watching the street.

Yesterday, she had seen a mercenary walk through the street and carry a giant boar. He had been almost as strong as Heinz, but only almost as strong. Heinz certainly was stronger.

A few weeks ago, a young man with snake scales had walked through the town and had asked everyone if he was in Aschen. This had been really funny. Heidi had told her that the man was no “snake-man” as she had called him, but a Dragen. He was a descendant of one of the many ancient dragons.

Then, a month ago a green-haired girl with pointy ears, an elf perhaps, had run through the streets, armed with a great sword whose length was twice the girl’s height. But the girl had easily carried it, almost as if the sword had weighed nothing. Yes, she was taller than Elise but the young girl knew that she was still growing. She vowed that she would grow very tall.

Elise eyed the barren cobblestone street and spotted something that shimmered in the sunlight. Was it perhaps a coin?

“Sight,” she mumbled and gathered a tiny bit of the surrounding mana. Her eyesight immediately improved, not by a large margin but it had improved. Things looked sharper and more colourful. Sadly, no matter what she tried, the spell wouldn’t improve. Even sadder was that there was no coin on the street. No, it was just a nail, probably from a carriage or something else.

Heidi had told her that Sigh was one of the weakest wild spells and thus rather useless. It had no good effects and the unpleasant side effect of spinning the world, so Heidi had claimed. Yet that had not happened. Elise could not understand why Heidi had told her a lie. Granny was, as far as Elise was concerned, a powerful mage and her own real hero. Elise knew that Heidi was not really a hero. But she was someone who helped people and that was close enough.

So why would she lie? Or was her granny perhaps mistaken? No, granny was no liar, but she also wasn’t dumb. Was wild magic perhaps… just wild? The author of the book often had written that wild magic was as wild as magic could be.

Elise stared at the playing children in the distance and sighed. It was a shame that they did not like her and always called her bad words. When that happened, the angry voice in her head wanted her to hurt them. But she did not want to do so. The voice was not her. She knew that.

But she did not know what the angry voice really was. After starting to learn wild magic and her training with Heinz, the voice had suddenly come. It rarely said anything and when it said something, it tried to tell her what she needed to do. Elise rarely followed its advice, unless she also had decided to do the same thing.

The voice never had told her what it was. Elise had assumed that the voice was perhaps a part of wild magic. But she wasn’t sure if this was really the case. She also did not want to ask granny. Granny was going to be very mad when she found out that Elise had secretly learned other spells of wild magic without Granny’s teaching.

Elise took a book out. She had secretly copied all the pages of the wild magic book into the little book mom had gifted her. Luckily no one wanted to look into her “diary”. Moments later, she grabbed a thin dip pen from her pouch.

The cold metal was annoying but Elise had nothing better to write with. All other pencils of greater quality were magical in nature and as such too expensive. Her mother could not afford to buy such a thing. Even the pen here had been something her mother had bought Elise as a birthday gift. Elise treasured the luxury she had been given and would never give it to anyone.

She stared at the last spell in the book. It was a spell the book claimed to be an anti-magic spell. She did understand what it would do because she always failed when building the spell.

Her intent was clear. The gathering of energy was passable, so she thought. The building of the spells by combining the runes in her head was almost perfect, so she assumed. There wasn’t anyone here who would say otherwise because as far as she knew wild magic was a dead art. It was a type of magic almost no one bothered to learn. Elise wondered why. Was it perhaps because of the fact that one needed to memorize many runes? Or did people think that it was difficult to use wild magic?

The first reason made some sense, but why had she been able to memorize them without any difficulties? She did not know. Furthermore, wild magic was actually rather easy and surprisingly versatile. There were a few "foundation-runes" that a spell needed. These were, as far as the author had written, complexity, potency and projection. They were complicated to remember due to the complex form they had.

Yet the "formation-runes" were extremely simple and she just needed to insert them into the empty parts or arms of the runes. Every effect and element had a rune. Fire looked like three triangles next to each other, water was a rune that looked like a single triangle on its head, earth was a circle and air was three circles. There were more elements, so the author had claimed, but she had not found other runes in the volume she had read. The other runes were therefore probably in the next volume.

Creating spells wasn’t hard. It was akin to mixing dough which she liked doing with granny Heidi. Sadly the spells often ended up with unexpected side effects. This was not the case with dough. The dough turned into bread and nothing else.

Her Sight spell made her tongue feel dry. The weird hovering shields only she could see made her feel dizzy and fairy fire made her feel as if she had lost her feet. Keeping her balance and not falling was rather hard when she used the spell. The book explained that these side-effects were normal. Yet the author also claimed that there was a way to not have them.

Sadly Elise did not have the next volume of the book. Heidi only owned the first volume. She skipped to the next page of her "diary" and noticed that she could see through the page and look at the rune. The angry voice in her mind told her that she should try using the mirrored rune and, after much hesitation, Elise did so. At this moment it felt as if the voice genuinely wanted to help her.

The young girl gathered the surrounding mana and formed the runes. The result was stable.

It had not failed! Elise smiled, she was happy. It had worked perfectly.

But why was this the case?

Sunken in her thoughts she did not notice the small grey stone flying towards her. It hit her side and it felt as if it had knocked the air out of her lungs. She collapsed and landed on the hard ground. Her book and pen slid out of her hands, landing on the dirty street. The metallic ring of the pen was so loud that she wanted to cover her ears. But she could not move.

“Is everything alright?” she heard a woman asking, and someone lifted her up, “Are you injured?”

Her sight was foggy, she could barely make out anything. Elise knew that nothing was alright. She weakly shook her head before everything turned black.

Elise awoke and felt that something was wrong. She was not in her bed. There wasn’t the familiar comfiness, the smell of the old wood or that of her mother. No. Everything was dark and desolate.

She wanted to leave and cry but could not move. She looked down and noticed that her body was not here. But at the same time, it was here only that she could look through it. Was this her soul? She had read a few things about the soul but nothing concrete.

Time passed and her surroundings changed. Across the darkness surrounding her mysterious lights sparkled. They looked like stars. Elise had loved to gaze at the night's sky when her mother was asleep. But the stars here were different. Many were of different sizes and shapes. Some were swirling, others twisting, and some moving amongst themselves in an enormous dance that was too slow and much too big for her to notice.

The light of the stars was enchanting. The stars blinked and flickered away, and yet always returned like small rabbits hiding away in the tall grass of the grasslands. Moments passed before she noticed two of the blinking lights approaching her. They reached her, and Elise could not help but feel overwhelmed. She was afraid. The lights in front of her were brimming with power.

Heinz and Fritz had been scary when she had seen them at first. The mercenaries not that much. But if she compared Heinz or Fritz to these lights even thousands of them wouldn’t be able to match it in strength.

“Touch us,” one of the lights whispered.

"TOUCH US," the angry voice boomed and got closer.

The other light remained silent but Elise realised that the light was doing something do her mind. It felt as if it was trying to make her do something. She fought against it but she lost. Her translucent hands moved by themselves, and she felt the warmth of the lights underneath her skin.

It was comfortable, almost as if her mother was hugging her. Then for a few moments, nothing happened. But that was not for long. Without any warning, her head started to hurt. When the pain came, she felt helpless, almost as if she was cursed. Elise was blinded with flashing spots of different colours. Her eyes longed for the darkness that had been here before the stars came.

Pain throbbed so violently around her skull that she wondered why it didn't just crack open. She didn't really believe that this would happen. Heinz once had hit his head and the only thing that had cracked had been the wood of the door frame.

But she wanted it to happen. So that the pain would end. But the pain was also the price of unlocking a node. Heidi had claimed so in their first lesson. The old woman had instilled into her to not choose the brightest and biggest light but the most pleasant one, the weakest one, the dimmest one, the one that appeared most comfortable.

But Heidi never had told her that the nodes would choose their wielder. The two lights started to shine brighter and brighter. They shone so brightly that she did not notice the dense red fog that surrounded her. Then there was only an empty nothingness. Moments later a white-winged bird flew towards her soul and landed next to it, causing the lights to shine brighter and brighter. The empty nothingness slowly crumbled and Elise’s soul left the realm it was in.