“Come in, boy”, demanded the voice on the other side of the door, it was a clear and concise tone which ushered with it a sense to obey.

I gently push the door open and I see a similar face that is present on Hermes’s head, a dark haired man at the age of 48 with cloudless eyes that could perceive lies locking with my own. The man put down his inked quill, crossed his arms and sat upright in his humble chair,

“Father”.

“Come, sit, let me look at you” he nodded towards an empty chair opposite him.

What an intimidating man, I thought, almost as if being mind-controlled, my own legs walk on their own towards the comfortable looking chair. I sit down and remove the cap on my meek head revealing with it a medium-length crimson hair that looked as if I bathed in the blood of virgin Mary’s.

“What brings you to my lonely abode, Apollo?”

As a matter of fact, he didn’t exactly have a reason to visit his father, he was almost drawn to the man out of instinct, perhaps it was a desire of the past, after all he never knew what it meant to have a father figure. Maybe he just wanted to experience the words of a fatherly figure, he wasn’t really sure.

He struggled to come up with an excuse until he thought of swordsmanship,

“I want to learn the ways of the sword”.

“The sword huh”, the words of the young lad aroused his curiosity, “Tell me Apollo, do you not feel safe within my hands?”

A peculiar question, does he mean that within his reach of power, I do not feel protected? what a manipulating way of putting it.

“I do feel safe, father”,

“Then why pursue the sword?” chuckled the philosophical man, “Are you perhaps trying to kill someone?” amused the Count.

“Nonsense father, I simply wish to protect myself from future situations”.

“Protection? How contradictory” ridiculed the man, “So you have lost faith in your own father’s ability to protect you, eh?” he laughed aloud.

Completely speechless, ‘a very cunning man’ I think to myself; I can’t believe I walked right into the trap within his word play, it’s those sharp eyes that seemingly enables him to see you for who you are.

Looking at the silent boy, Tyranir could not help but high-five himself in his mind, he wanted to trick his son into doing something he did not want to do.

“Alright, I will allow you to learn swordsmanship, in fact you will learn the Heimarch sword art on top of it, but I have a condition” smiled the enraging man.

A condition within my own request, how calculating of you father,

“What condition are you suggesting father?”, I mentally sighed.

“A simple, condition my dear boy, you will join a military institution of my own choice, starting from the very bottom”.

I open my mouth in disbelief, a simple condition my ass, that’s basically prison you asshole of a dad! I see, so this is what you actually wanted me to do eh? I mentally facepalm, just what the hell did I get myself into, I obviously can not back down now,

“But I am merely 6 years old”.

“That is not a problem young man, I’ve recently created a military camp for troubled youths” he smiled.

I see, so you also prepared for this huh, you piece of shit, and a military youth camp? What is this, 1933?

Completely defeated, I could only play along with his plans, “I can’t wait to go there, father”, twitching my mouth as I finish the sentence.

The count enthusiastically clapped his hands twice and then a man burst through the door, “What is your orders, your lordship?” he said kneeling down.

“Initiate project ‘Jugend’”, he demanded.

“Your will is my command” said the odd man as he left the room, closing the door behind him.

“Jugend? May I know the details father?”, I ask curiously, It wasn’t in my expectation that I would be part of a pet project created by my own father, no less.

“In time, you will. Now I must get back to work, my child” he said as he eyed the stack of sealed parchments on his right-hand side.

Apollo understood his father’s intention and so he stood up and walked out of the room, ‘I really don’t want to visit him again’ he thought.

Seeing the boy leave, Tyranir couldn’t help but sigh,

“I’m sorry Apollo, but you are right, I don’t have the means to protect you, especially now”.

He opened the locked drawer on the side of the desk and took out a sealed document with the crest of the royal family of Eretrios on the seal, a rising phoenix was what it depicted. He carefully unsealed the document and on the page was titled, “Classified”, below was a single sentence, “The Dracir royal court mage, Ricky Dupont is bed ridden, current status, unknown”.

This was terrible news, “Constantine….” muttered the Count as he impatiently tapped the desk with his index finger continuously.

He ignited a nearby candle on its holder with a flick of his fingers, then he suspended the classified document above the flame, burning it into nothingness. Then he stood up and walked right up to the window overlooking the majestic city of Hollevin, on the ground below he saw a small boy walking close to a tall dark-haired man in a brown leather jacket, the boy looking visibly upset,

“You must grow up quickly boy, war is on the horizon” he chuckled.

He speculated that Redania would undergo a qualitative change once again, history will repeat itself and his hands would become bloodied once more. It wont take long until news of the grand mage’s unknown condition reaches the ears of Byzantine officials. Preparation for war will probably start in the coming years and in at least 10 years from now, Constantine will rise from the ashes again.

“*sigh*”

“We should have enough time to prepare for a counterattack, hopefully”.

“Fuck!” shouted Apollo as he walked under the city gates, ‘oh yeah just go ahead and confine me to a damned youth camp, no fucking problem’ he thought to himself. Slapping his face in an effort to man-up, Apollo said to Alfred,

“Let’s return, it looks like I don’t have much free time now”, Unbeknownst to him that he was actually quite right about that.

“Alright, follow behind me”, Alfred enjoyed the scene his young master had displayed, for a solid 30 minutes he had been making a scrunched-up face from the keep all the way to the city gates, it was strangely adorable he thought.

He was notified by a man at the keep that his young master, was going to attend a military school on his own and that he was ordered by the count to personally teach Apollo about the Heimarch sword art during his time there.

They both returned to the nearby carriage station where Alfred paid for another trip back to the estate. The sun was just about setting down when Apollo noticed that Alfred was looking into the distance in front of him,

“What is it?” he asked.

“Mercenaries” he said in a hushed voice.

Apollo looked in the direction of Alfred’s sight trying to look for any signs of lifeform and the said ‘mercenaries’ but all that he saw was the vast fields of emptiness,

“Where? I can’t see them”.

Alfred pointed at a specific direction, “There”,

Apollo squinted his eyes in that direction and surprisingly saw a black dot in the horizon that kept getting slightly bigger with each second, it was getting closer to their carriage.

“Are they enemies?” inquired the curious lad.

“No, just some local mercenary party” he replied.

Roughly, 5 minutes later, Apollo heard indistinct cries of desperation, “Let me out of here you fucking mongrels!” followed by a loud,

“Shut the fuck up”.

In actuality, the ‘black dot’ was an entourage of two carriages, the one at the front was occupied by five individuals and the one at the back was a caged carriage driven by another two individuals. Inside the cage was a ragged man that had seen better days, a prisoner.

As Apollo’s carriage was about to pass by the odd group, he saw a blonde fair lady driving the caged carriage who waved at them,

“Don’t worry about this piece of shit, there’s a bounty on his head”, she conveyed.

“I’m innocent you fat bitch!”, erupted the homeless looking man.

“The fuck you say to me?”, said the blondie as she raised her left hand, an orange ball of heat condensing on it.

“Fireball”, muttered Apollo, he looked at the ball of flames as if in a trance.

Seeing the imminent danger, the ragged man retreated to the corner of the moving cage,

“Shit, you misheard me, I said that you were beautiful”, the man was shamelessly complimenting the blonde mage after having a taste of fear.

“*Humph* Fucking coward”, the woman closed her left hand, extinguishing the flame. With that, the comical entourage passed by, moving further and further into the distance.

Apollo bursted out laughing after witnessing the ‘circus-like’ group, he couldn’t contain it any longer. Fortunately, the rag-tag group was already far away from him so they didn’t hear his contagious laughter that even made Alfred chuckle a little. Never did he think that his first encounter with a mage would be in a comical scene.

Eventually, they arrived at their destination, getting off at the carriage station before retracing their footsteps back to the tunnels making sure that no one saw where they went. Arriving at the garden of the Heimarch estate after closing the false wall, Apollo walked towards the manor until he saw his sister Ares relaxing on a nearby porch mindlessly staring up at the night sky.

“Big sister, that’s bad for your neck you know”.

Turning her head towards the voice, a bright smile formed on Ares’s face as she dashed towards her little brother, hugging him within her embrace. He tried to evade but he couldn’t even turn around before he got caught in a bear hug, squeezing him of his oxygen supplies.

“Ca…n..t…bre…athe” he tapped out.

Noticing the slight blue tint on her brother’s face, Ares let go unwillingly,

*exaggerated breathing sounds*

“Sorry about that Apollo, I got a little carried away” commented the woman as she observed the breathless boy on the ground gasping for air.

“Where have you been all day?” she asked curiously.

Apollo struggled before pointing towards Alfred, “We had been sightseeing, Lady Ares”.

“Nice try Alfred, I know you used the tunnels”,

“Your wisdom exceeds my own” bowed Alfred.

Ares rolled her eyes before dragging her limping brother inside the manor. Surprisingly, she held Apollo under her right armpit as if he weighed nothing more than a bag of sugar. Apollo always thought that Ares was freakishly strong despite her soft appearance. She was only fourteen years old when Apollo was born thus that makes her 20 this year. She was quite close to Apollo as she felt a need to be protective over her adorable little brother. Despite knowing that Alfred protected him, she was still worried that something could happen to Apollo whenever he ‘escaped’ from the estate. She thought that he was a little slimy for a mere 6 year old and she found it low-key frustrating, for her, it seemed like Apollo was actively avoiding her.

In fact he was indeed doing his best to do so…..

“You are just in time for dinner, Polo, Aunty May and little Marco is already here”, she liked to call him ‘Polo’ for reasons unknown.

Apollo’s father, Tyranir had a single sibling, May Heimarch who was relatively the same age as him, she had a single son, Marco whilst her husband died of natural causes. Marco was younger than Apollo by two years and he hardly left the arms of his dear mother thus Apollo never really bonded with him much.

“Alright im hungry anyways, by the way can you put me down?”.

“No, not until you are sitting with us at the dinner table”, she said whilst pinching his left cheek.