I concentrated looking into the glass of water ahead of me. It had been a few hours, and this was the final test I had to pass before I had to learn without Tareche. Every person has a different type of magic. Tareche's was rock, Thalia's was fire, and mine was, well, ice. Everyone starts the same course mostly, but you have to go to more specific classes for higher talents of magic. Tareche didn't know anything about the higher tiers of ice or fire, so we had to self-teach from that point.

My hands started glowing as they touched the cup. I was sweating even though my entire body felt cold. I kept looking at the cup yet, nothing was changing. Thalia had already done this last test, just instead of ice it went to steam, yet she seemed more powerful in everything than me.

"Come on Alexander! You're doing great! Just keep going!" Tareche yelled from across the table, yet his voice seemed to be coming from miles away. I kept concentrating on my hands, diverting all my power to right there. I saw frost starting to form on the rim of the cup. I started to be able to see my breath, yet my body didn't seem that cold to me. Slowly, the edges of the water became frosted and started to turn solid. I kept concentrating as the ring of frost became larger and larger until filling up the entire cup. I sat back in my chair, exhausted.

"Good job Alexander! Great work!" Tareche said, poking at the ice cube, "Yet, I am surprised it took this long. Most of the time, people putting in half as much effort as you would do it in half the time. Meh, that's probably an effect with limited contact with the artifact. It will go away in time...probably."

"So, are you sure there's nothing more you can do for me? I don't know what to do without someone to help."

"No, I'm sorry, if you don't know exactly what the ability will do, you just have to wait until your different abilities unlock."

"And when does that happen?"

"Just, when you feel it's a good time, usually when you're very passionate about something or things like that. Like, when the house was burning down, you didn't want to lose two people one that you knew very well because I doubt Mrs. Grayson was up and about with her child being so close to birthing."

That was exactly what I was thinking, though, when I was frantically through water, yet, I didn't get a chance to respond. Instead, there was a shout outside and then a loud boom. "What was that?" Thalia asked. We looked out the door, but there was a gigantic hole where the front door used to be, and where half of the living room was.

"Well, when you've been around for as long as I have, you make a few enemies." Amy did warn us that he wasn't the safest of people. Maybe this was why. Suddenly, something on one of the counters started buzzing and glowing a deep red.

"Oh, no no no, this isn't good. This really isn't good!" Tareche yelled as he walked over to a small rectangular green gem.

"What? What is it? What does it mean?" do you like it?

"It means they're using magic, but it would normally glow yellow, but..."

"But what?" This means he's using real magic, not from leph crystals but real magic..." After he finished, we could hear someone yelling from outside.

"Tareche! We know you're in there and have been practicing magic! Get out here now and we won't hurt you!"

"Here, go out this way," Tareche said pulling back a loose panel in the floor, "Run and don't look back, don't worry about my I'll buy you time."

"Hey, why do I have any reason to trust you?" Tareche was yelling this time, trying to provoke whoever was outside.

"Wait, before you go," He quickly whispered as I was climbing into the hole, "Take this." He held a small glass tea cup with beautiful patterned colors. "Guard this with you life, don't let it get to the hands of anyone else!"

Thalia and dropped down under the floorboards and saw a short tunnel, barely 4 feet tall and 2 feet across. It went down into the darkness and turned right, but that was all we could see.

"Because if you don't that next blast is going farther than your living room!" The voice from outside came again, but I wasn't really paying attention, we were just scrambling to through the tunnel. By this time the opening had been covered up. We were all alone now.

"You may have magic, but I have magic of my own!" We heard Tareche's voice, yet it seemed miles away, and then heard a blast as loud as a cannonball coming from the house. I could only hope that was Tareche who was throwing it and not whoever was attacking. As we kept running, Thalia's had started to glow brightly, probably because of the magic in her system. We ran farther and farther into more and more turns until the bangs of the battlefield were nothing but a leaf in the wind.

We eventually got to a dead end, where we started digging the dirt above us, and sure enough, we found ourselves under a large cobble in the road. We lifted it up and found us on one of the back streets of the main city area. There weren't many people around at this time, but I knew we still had to be fast. We ran to the address Amanda gave to us and found her just leaving out the door as we approached, running.

"Woah, woah, guys! You look like you've seen a ghost!" She yelled as we stopped in front of her.

"It's Tareche, he was attacked by people using magic, but not stored magic, real MAGIC! We escaped through a floorboard and popped up over here, and now we need to help him!" Thalia blurted out.

"What? Tareche? What happened to him?" She replied. We all ran over to a street from which we could see the hill Tareche's lone house stood on, from. It looked terrible. The entire front was blown out, and people were all around it. The people were all wearing colored smocks, like normal villagers, but one had a deep blue glow around him. Meh, it was probably just a trick of the light.

"Well, the house looks fine if it was actually being attacked," Amy said very casually.

"What?! Are you joking?! The entire front is literally blown out!" I yelled.

"What? It looks totally normal to me. Tali, do you see anything?" She replied, confused.

"Um, I thought I saw something for a second, but now it's all just normal," Thalia replied, also confused.

"Well, we could go up there and look closer." Amanda reasoned.

"No no no! Don't make me go up there! There are people up there! They'll kill us!" I yelled, still seeing the half burnt house.

"Well, ok, if you insist we can start heading back to our village now." I then thought I saw one of the people on the hill look directly at me, and not in a friendly way either.

"Yeah, let's do that," I replied, shaking just a little.