“Keep your wits about you, young Samuel. This mountainside is known for its steep slopes and treacherous falls.”

Samuel, grunting as he hauled himself over yet another boulder for what felt like the fiftieth time that hour, rolled his eyes at Grimr’s warning. Even without the Ancient’s advice, he felt confident he could have spotted the danger for himself. While he did appreciate the advice that Grimr offered, he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was unmistakable sarcasm in this last remonstration.

“Thank you for your helpful advice, oh Ancient one.” He panted, coming to his feet and pushing the shaggy black hair out of his eyes. “I don’t know what I would do without your guidance.”

The barest hint of a satisfied smirk came across Grimr’s face, confirming Samuel’s suspicions that his misery was another’s enjoyment. Heaving a deep sigh as he watched the Ancient swiftly climb the rocks ahead without trouble, Samuel wished, just for a moment, that he’d slip and fall. He wasn’t particularly guilty about this thought, as he knew that Grimr would be fine if such an event occurred.

Shigeru too moved more slowly than Grimr, though he certainly didn’t show much hesitation in his movements. He climbed over and around the larger rocks on the path without complaint or any visible signs of exertion, even leaping from rock to rock once in a while. Samuel would have called him a mountain goat if it weren’t for the undeniable cat-like grace in his movements.

He realized that, while watching Shigeru and Grimr climb further up the mountain, he had allowed himself to fall behind yet again. Both of them were standing still, staring at him with inquiring looks.

“Do you need a break already, Samuel?” Grimr said, not bothering to hide his smirk. “We’re not yet halfway up the mountain, but we can stop if you want to.”

Samuel withheld a few colorful phrases that occurred to him, with difficulty, and pulled himself up the next boulder. “Don’t worry about me. I may be an ordinary human, but I’ll pull my weight.”

Grimr snickered to himself as he turned to face the peak and jumped up another rock. Samuel glowered at his back while climbing yet another large rock. The mountainside seemed to be littered with large rocks, making travel very difficult up to the peak. It would have almost looked intentional to Samuel, had he not known the amount of energy it took to move objects of such size.

“This is intentional,” Grimr said aloud, and Samuel realized he’d heard this last thought. “Arcana peppered this mountainside with boulders when he was chased, crushing his pursuers and creating an effective barrier.”

Samuel opened his mouth to reply but closed it at once, not sure how to respond to that. It made sense, he supposed. Looking up towards the peak and then down at the distance he’d already traveled, Samuel couldn’t help a powerful sense of awe welling up inside him. There must have been hundreds of these large boulders along the way. It would cost him nearly all of his mana to move even one of these rocks a short distance, let alone throw it at an enemy. Just how powerful was Arcana, if he could cause all these boulders to rain down upon the mountainside?

The three of them continued to clamber up the mountainside, hampered by Samuel as he huffed and puffed, unaccustomed to physically demanding tasks. The progress was slow, but by the time the sun had reached the highest point of its arc, they had made it halfway to the peak, and even Shigeru was starting to breathe heavily when they decided to stop for a rest.

“What I would give for our mother to give me wings,” Shigeru said as he sat down to Samuel’s right, letting out a relaxed sigh.

“Is that some kind of proverb?” Samuel said, the words hardly understandable, as his mouth was full of dried meat.

Shigeru turned and gave him a grin. “I’m sure it is somewhere. It’s just something that I heard Grimr say once.”

Grimr slid down from a nearby boulder and landed almost silently upon the ground. As soon as he touched down, his form reverted to that of the small black cat, and he curled up on the ground, his eyes closing. It was the first sign of exhaustion the Ancient had shown on their trip.

You don’t know the second half, Grimr’s voice echoed inside Samuel’s mind. What I would give for our mother to give me wings, so that I may soar free of my shackles.

“That sounds more like a proverb,” Samuel commented, taking another bite of the dried, salted meat. “What does it mean?”

I haven’t a clue. Grimr said, yawning widely, as cats do. It is a divine saying. I do not waste my time with such idle flattery. If one had wings, they would never be weighed down in the first place.

“Divine?” Samuel queried. “You mean like angels?”

There are no angels in the heavens, young Samuel. For that matter, there are no heavens. There is only the Divine Isles, where the most powerful mortal men and women live, along with their chosen followers.

“Mortal men and women?” Samuel raised an eyebrow at the response. “I thought the Divine Isles was the home of the Gods of Ahya. I know some devout followers are granted residence there, but gods aren’t mortal, right?”

“The gods are just as mortal as you or I,” Shigeru interjected. “They only ascend to that position through the amassing of power. They are assuredly strong and much harder to kill than the average man, but still mortal.”

“I see,” Samuel said, pulling his book from the large satchel he’d set down next to him, and opening it to the page he’d last written. Pulling out a quill as well, he began to scribble once more. “So divinity is nothing more than a branch of magic?”

Shigeru nodded but said no more on the subject as he pulled out his own rucksack. It was much smaller than Samuel’s as the warrior hadn’t seen fit to tote large amounts of paper around. He pulled out one single battered coffee pot and two small cups, then began to build a small fire between the three of them. They sat in silence as he worked, piling smaller twigs into a pyramid shape, then searching his bag again.

“I seem to have misplaced my flint.” Shigeru said, rifling through the bag with a slight frown.”

“I can light it,” Samuel said, glancing up from his fast scribbling. He lifted his free hand and flicked a little mana towards the cone-shaped pile of sticks. As the mana flew through the air, it changed into fire, which clung to the twigs and ignited them instantly. “No need to carry a flint when you can conjure flames with your fingers.”

Shigeru grinned as he added more wood to the fire. “I suppose that’s true. But even if you weren’t here, I’d just use my knife.”

Samuel laughed as he returned to his writing. “Quite resourceful, Shigeru. I’m glad my company is so valued.”

Nearly half an hour, after the fire had heated enough to boil the pot and grounds had been added, Shigeru poured two cups of the steaming liquid. Samuel took his with a word of thanks and took a long draft of the sweet drink. He let out a quiet sigh as the coffee seemed to revitalize him, washing away the aches and pains of the trip. His joints were still sore, but the pain subsided as the nourishing effect of the coffee took hold.

“I’m not sure what I’d do without coffee in my life,” Samuel said. “It’s the only thing that keeps me going.”

Shigeru chuckled. “I would agree, though for you, drinking coffee seems to be close to a religious experience. Most men look for a sign from their god for such bliss.”

Samuel, taking another sip, nearly spit it out as he laughed. “Well, if there was a god of coffee, I would be their most ardent supporter.”

Grimr’s ear twitched slightly, and Samuel glanced over at the black cat. With any other cat, Samuel would assume they were asleep, but he couldn’t be sure with the Ancient. He didn’t seem to tire like other beings. Even after the harrowing fight against Arwinn and the grey-skinned enemies, he still seemed to be wide awake and alert.

They are called Draul. Grimr’s voice came to Samuel, echoing from the depths of his mind as usual. I am tired of hearing the words grey and skin put together in a sentence.

Samuel frowned as the unfamiliar word came to him. He’d heard about the race once, from a traveling bard that had visited Harlest. The man had spun a grand tale about a hero’s brave expedition into something called the dark lands, and his encounter with a strange race of elven creatures who tried to kill him with poisoned knives.

“So those were dark elves,” Shigeru said aloud, still nursing his coffee. “I wondered if they really did exist. I heard tales of them as a child, but no more than that.”

“Dark elves are what they have been named by man,” Samuel commented, remembering another small fact he’d read in a thick tome in the dusty library of Harlest. “Draul is their true name. It means ‘people of the shadows’.”

Shigeru looked up with interest. “What language is that word from?”

Samuel only offered a shrug in answer. He’d never read of any sort of language that contained the word. It had to be ancient, as the runes it comprised of were older than any other written language he’d studied. He’d learned a handful of different languages in his career as a mapmaker, but he was clueless about the origin of Draul.

And Draul ay nandito na noong sinaunang panahon. Grimr’s voice rejoined the conversation. Samuel recognized the word Draul, but the meaning of the entire sentence escaped him.

“Why am I surprised that you know this tongue?” Samuel asked him with half a smile. “Was that another thing that Raveonic taught you?”

In a blink, Grimr had returned to his human form, sitting cross-legged on the ground. He picked up an empty cup of coffee and poured himself some of the dark liquid. “It is my mother tongue.”

“Mother tongue?” Samuel asked incredulously. “So it is the language of the Ancients?”

“Not just us,” Grimr commented, taking a long sip and sighing. “It is the language of the earth. The language itself carries power. Ironically, nobody knows who developed it. When we were created, we knew how to use it without learning.”

“Interesting,” Samuel said, scribbling into his notebook again. At this rate, he’d need ten notebooks just to record the obscure facts Grimr shared with him. Even then, he doubted that he could afford enough paper to record it all. “What do you mean by power? Is it a magical language?”

Samuel had certainly never heard of a spoken or written language having any innate magical power before. When a mage spoke to cast a spell, their words carried weight, but there was no set language. The mage in question simply used whatever tongue they were most comfortable with, and it was more to control their mana, and the words had no power of their own.

“It is the root of all power,” Grimr said. Then, seeing Samuel open his mouth to ask another question, he held up a hand to forestall him. “Observe.”

Samuel closed his mouth and watched the Ancient closely. Grimr lowered his hand and stared at the fire, focusing his entire attention upon the growing flames. Samuel looked down at the flames too. Nearing the end of their rest stop, the flames had dwindled quite a bit, dying now that they had nearly consumed all of the wood.

“Lumago,” Grimr spoke the single word, and his very voice radiated with some kind of gentle power as the sound left his lips. Samuel leaned back in surprise and shock as the flames flared up at once, growing in intensity until they leaped several feet into the air, many times stronger than they’d been before. Then, just as quickly, they quieted back down. Picking himself off the ground and returning to a sitting position, Samuel could see that while they had shrunk once more, they were still a little stronger than they’d been before.

“What did that word mean?” Samuel asked, recovering from his moment of shock.

Grimr hesitated a moment before answering. He almost seemed hesitant to share such secretive information. Then he shrugged. “Simply, I told the flames to grow.”

“You told them to grow?” Samuel parroted, not sure he was understanding. “Don’t you mean that you cast a spell to increase the strength of the flames?”

Grimr shook his head, smiling slightly at Samuel’s pale face. “I did not cast a spell. I instructed the fire to grow, so it did.”

“You mean to say you spoke to fire, and it obeyed your command?”

Grimr nodded. “When you speak this tongue, you do not use magic in a conventional way. You interact directly with the nature of a thing, and alter it.”

Samuel stared at him, disbelieving for a moment, then couldn’t deny the claim. He’d observed the situation closely, and Grimr hadn’t used any mana to accomplish the task. He looked down at the fire.

“Lumago.” He spoke the word exactly as he’d heard Grimr utter it, but nothing happened. He felt no surge of energy, and the flames neither grew nor shrank.

“It is not something you can achieve just by knowing the words,” Grimr said. “I could teach you the language in its entirety, and it would only be another tongue.”

“I see,” Samuel said, though, as usual, he didn’t. “How does one learn this skill?”

“It can only be taught by one how knows it,” Grimr said. Samuel knew by the look in Grimr’s eyes that he would not agree to teach Samuel, even if he were to ask.

“I see,” Samuel said again, his head whirling with questions that he now knew were destined to go unanswered, at least for the time being. “Well, I think we should call it here.”

Shigeru looked up in surprise from his cup. It was the first time that Samuel had called to continue. Even more strange, he was always the last of the trio to be finished packing. But as he stood now, draining the last of the amber liquid and tossing the dregs into the flames, he saw a strange light of troubled impatience in the eyes of the mage. Glancing at Grimr, he noticed that the Ancient was a little sterner than before. Shrugging, he took the coffee pot, now empty, and returned it to his bag.

Samuel finished cramming his notebook back into his bag and waved a hand at the remaining flames. The flames extinguished at once, all life taken out of them as Samuel withdrew all heat from the small pit. Slinging his rucksack onto his back once more, Samuel turned to face the peak of the mountain. The sounds of Grimr and Shigeru’s footsteps drew level with them, and the two resumed their climbing, scaling over and around the boulders in their way with ease.

Samuel didn’t move for nearly a minute, his eyes closed tight in concentration. Shigeru, noticing that he wasn’t following, paused and looked back, puzzling over his friend’s hesitation. Grimr stopped too, looking back with one eyebrow raised. Samuel could feel their gazes on him but paid them no mind.

He knew he could do this. He’d done it once before, in his hours of private study shortly after moving to Milagre and joining the College. But it had been an incredibly exhausting experiment then, draining him of mana in seconds. That would not be a problem this time, he decided. He had much more mana at his disposal, and his use of the precious resource had become many times more efficient.

“Samuel-san?” Shigeru queried, wondering what his friend was troubled about. There was such an intense expression on his face that he thought, just for a moment, that his friend was angry about something from his conversation with Grimr.

“Do not distract him,” Grimr said. Glancing up at the Ancient, he saw an intense stare and a look of eager anticipation about him. Shigeru returned his gaze to the young mage.

It was windy here on the mountain, so close to the peak. Being this high above the plains and the forest, the air was thin, and an almost constant wind was coming from the sea, rushing against the face of the mountain with persistent force. But as Shigeru came to a stop to watch Samuel, he felt the wind’s rushing falter and die.

Then the wind came again but from a different direction. It swirled away from Shigeru now, down towards the blue-robed young man standing still. It rushed and swirled around Samuel, blowing his robes about and tossing his hair. Still, Samuel didn’t take a step forward. He raised his hands gently into the air, moving them mere centimeters at a time.

“It’s about time.” Grimr’s words were faint, barely audible above the howling of the wind.

A veritable torrent of winds now gathered around the mage, who, to Shigeru’s surprise, began to lift off the ground, a few inches at a time. Samuel opened his eyes then, and they were gleaming brightly. Samuel’s body was wrapped in swirling mana, which was trapping the power of the wind and forcing it to lift him above the ground. Though Shigeru had gone nearly thirty feet up the face of the mountain, Samuel had drawn level with him in but a few seconds.

Samuel looked down at him from where he hovered, a grin on his face. “I figured this was a better way than scraping myself on countless boulders.”

The mage shot up rapidly, skimming over the massive boulders that had previously blocked his path. His hair whipped back and forth, getting into his eyes, but he felt a freeing rush of exaltation as he flew past Grimr where he stood atop a boulder. For the first time in the journey, he felt confident and powerful. He flashed a challenging grin at the Ancient as he flashed past, and saw a replying grin of sharp white teeth as the Ancient took off after him.

Shigeru grinned as well, but not in challenge. He hadn’t known this young mage long, he reflected. But in the few months he had, he’d seen incredible growth in him. He picked up difficult concepts quickly, even improving upon them to match his needs. He tightened the straps holding his rucksack to his back and felt his own body swell with power as he felt his energy rush to his aid. He leaped forward, reaching the top of the next boulder quickly, then pursued his friends.