Half an hour had passed already. Sara was getting more and more worried, when she saw him faint she immediately took her to the little lake inside of the cave to freshen him up. Normally she would try to carry him to the doctor immediately but not only was this really far away right now, but the reason he fainted was also very hard to explain.

Yet finally, just as Sara was seriously considering actually calling an emergency number, Roland woke up. But he didn’t wake up as if he just came from bed, instead, he jolted up looking around frantically.

“Roland! Calm down, it’ll be okay!” Sara assured him causing Roland to calm down a bit. He tried to recall what had happened and after a bit, he remembered. He grabbed the red crystal and then something penetrated deep into his mind.

When he thought about that he actually closed his eyes and tried to find if anything had changed within his mind. For some reason, he felt capable of properly traversing his mind and memories. He went deeper and deeper into his mind and after only ten seconds of looking he had found something incredible.

In the deepest depths of his mind, even further down than his memories he found something. Even though he had his eyes clothes he almost felt as if he could see everything before him. He saw a vast area with approximately ten-thousand small dots inside of it. All of the dots were a light-grey except for one that was in the very middle, that one was shining in a silver color.

The sight was incredible, the ten-thousand nodes seemed to be randomly placed within a giant globe. Some of the nodes were far from each other while others were closer. At the same time he felt attracted to the silver node in the center, he felt as if he could reach out to it and so he did. Using a sort of energy he didn’t know he had, he connected himself to this node. As soon as he did his world seemed to change.

He opened his eyes and felt something different, there was something he always had but could only feel now. There was a special sort of energy within his body as well as in the air around him. It was only now that Roland was thoroughly convinced, magic was real, and it was everywhere around him.

Sara looked at him with a questioning look. He first closed his eyes, she assumed this was in order to calm down, but then, he just opened his eyes and seemed to be looking at his own hands with a mix of shock and elation.

“Sara, I think I can do magic.”

This was all he could say as he tried to calm himself again. He breathed in and out a few times before focusing on the energy within his body, he tried to take control of a bit of it and instinctively succeeded he then tried to move it out of his body, but as soon as he did he lost control of the strand of magic power. Then his body seemed to start absorbing magic power out of the air around him to make up for the bit he lost.

Sara was still looking at him with an odd expression, she felt quite puzzled by what was going on. Roland realized he had been ignoring her and took her back to the hidden part of the cavern. He found the red crystal on the ground and picked it up. Sara wanted to stop him when she saw what he was reaching for but it was too late. Roland already had it in his hand and… and… nothing happened?

Sara looked at him with a surprised expression, awaiting the explanation she thought was coming.

“Sara we should go to our hotel, there’s something I need to test out.”

He only said these words and even though Sara felt dissatisfied, she nodded her head, if even he wasn’t sure what was going on then how could he explain it to her.

Then they both headed out and grabbed their packs, then they headed toward the nearby town of Tomsk. They walked about two hours before they could see the town. It was an extraordinarily ordinary one, there was a shopping street that had most of the shops you would need and a bar here and there. Roland and Sara had gotten here by using the train and their hotel was also extremely close to said station.

There was something surprising though for Roland. When he got near the town he felt the magical energy in the air became slightly thinner. But since it wasn’t a big change he decided to just ignore it. It was still pretty early in the morning, shops had only just opened and there were few people around. They made their way into the three-story hotel and got to their rooms. Roland promised to tell Sara as soon as he knew what was going on.

He then sat on his bed and thought about everything that had happened the last day. For some reason, he really didn’t find it that hard to believe magic was real. Yet he kept thinking back to the tablet they had found and the text it held.

Once he managed to calm his thoughts a bit he closed his eyes and went into the deepest part of his mind. A place with ten-thousand light-gray nodes standing in the darkness, and a single silver node giving off light.

He thought back to the room with the tables. On the tables were a number of dots and lines, even though most of it was ruined by the fight he could at least tell that much. If that was the last stand of the magus it made sense if the dots were the ones he saw before him right now, he just didn’t know what the lines meant, depth perhaps?

He thought for a bit before trying something. He reached out to the silver node that had plenty of energy and tried using its energy to form a line between itself and the node closest by it. After trying for a few minutes Roland got the hang of it as he managed to make the line. The thing was that when the line reached, the node started resisting, sending out its own energy.

In a way to try and help the silver node in beating its adversary, Roland tried injecting his own magical energy. Surprisingly some of it entered the web easily and he then used it to attack the grey node, now it couldn’t hold on for much longer and its malevolent energy soon got destroyed allowing a connection to form between the silver node and this grey one.

As soon as the connection formed Roland felt something change, he opened his eyes and felt stunned as he looked at his right hand. One of his fingers was emitting a faint blue light. This did make him lose focus and as soon as the connection got severed the light dissipated.

He tried doing it again, and this time, the node didn’t fight back. He managed to quickly connect them and even when he opened his eyes to look he tried to keep focus. He succeeded and the blue light didn’t dissipate. He also felt a tiny bit of his magic power getting sucked away by the spell but it was a truly tiny amount.

Now that he knew casting magic was possible, Roland got up and went to tell Sara everything he knew and all that he could see.

-----------------

“We have found a new signal sir, near the border of Luxembourg this time.”

The woman that said these words was wearing black clothes that covered every inch of her skin, she was wearing a hood to cover her hair and a black mask which made it so that nothing but her green eyes could be seen.

“Very well, go handle it and be back in two days, we have somewhere to be.”

Across from her stood an old man with a white beard wearing white robes. He seemed to be the complete opposite of the woman wearing a white hood and mask. The only difference was that his beard was visible, coming out from beneath the mask.