“What?!” Calypso was stunned.

  “What the hell, Father?!”

  “And if a situation arises where I call all combat-ready Fortemins to battle Effu and his minions, you will not go anywhere,” Ilforte continued in a categorical tone, ignoring Calypso’s indignant shouts.

  “I won’t make you swear an oath for now, but I’m counting on your good sense.”

  “Are you kidding me?!” Calypso hissed furiously.

  “Even Zael recognized my worth, but you keep trying to stuff me away somewhere so I won’t stick my nose out!! Lori and I can do a lot! We’ve trained hard, we’ve made huge progress, and we can help in battle, and…”

  “Oh yes,” Ilforte said in an indescribably venomous voice.

  “You’ll be a great help in battle to Effu himself. He’ll thank you very much for helping him regain the body in which he’ll be able to do absolutely anything he wants.”

  “Why would he?!” Calypso flared up, blocking his father’s path.

  “I won’t be able to stand it if we can’t join the battle!..”

  “And I won’t be able to stand it if Effu takes over your mind or Lorelei’s,” Ilforte said in a very harsh and cold voice, his eyes flashing at Calypso so intensely that even my heart dropped into my heels.

  “Effu needs a body capable of withstanding his energy. For now he lacks a physical form, and that’s our advantage. In his primordial body, he’ll quickly consume everything he sees fit. And he won’t hesitate to jump between different bodies-consciousnesses when necessary, especially favoring dark mages and simply very powerful supreme mages with bright magical Sparks. He’s done this before, when he broke into the world of the living. Ask Morris about it; he’ll tell you plenty of details,” Ilforte smiled bitterly.

  “You’re forgetting that I’m a mind mage,” Calypso grimaced.

  “And not just any mind mage. I’ll put up mental blocks that no Effu will get through. And I’ll be able to protect Lori. I can do…”

  “And what if you can’t?” Ilforte interrupted.

  “What if it doesn’t work? What if Effu tries hard enough and gets into one of your heads, catching a moment of weakness? What if he does take control of one of you? What am I supposed to do then? Kill you so that you, with this insane spirit of chaos in your head, don’t have time to slaughter everyone in Armarillis? Or wait, not slaughter even better subjugate all the Fortemins by directing your mental charms at them and turning our warriors into his soldiers? Or maybe you’re suggesting I kill Lora so Effu doesn’t make her take off her gloves and go around hugging everyone, starting with you, while hurling deadly lightning along the way? Hmm? What do you say to that?”

  Calypso couldn’t find anything to say, and I myself apparently forgot how to speak for the next couple of hours.

  I had never seen the Mentor this furious before. This fury wasn’t directed specifically at Calypso and me, but rather it was a furious helplessness before Effu. But the Mentor’s emotions were hitting so hard right now that they were pouring out like a fountain. And he either couldn’t or wouldn’t hide them.

  “This isn’t a joke, Calypso,” Ilforte added in a calmer and more familiar voice.

  “The balance of the world could be disrupted in ways it hasn’t been for thousands of years. No one is diminishing your abilities, but you need to put your pride aside for now until better times. If you don’t care about my opinion, then maybe you’ll at least care about your potential Guardian?” he nodded toward me.

  “Think about how your ambitious desire to run ahead of everyone could harm Lorelei so badly that you’ll lose her forever. I went through this once in my life and nearly died of grief. Are you sure you want to step on the same rake I did?”

  Ilforte fixed his son with such a heavy gaze that I couldn’t take it and looked away, unable to bear the Mentor’s oppressive energy at that moment.

  Calypso also looked away.

  “I understand. You’re right,” he said quietly.

  “I’m sorry. I lost control of my emotions. We really do have things to work on.”

  Ilforte nodded curtly.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Focus on your joint training at the academy; your skills will be useful one way or another. But not right now. There will be work for everyone, believe me. But sometimes you need to take a step back to move two steps forward.”

  With those words, the Mentor turned and strode quickly toward his office, leaving us behind.

  For a while we just stood there silently in the corridor, watching the Mentor walk away, processing the information. I was holding Calypso’s hand, feeling how tightly he squeezed my palm in return.

  My heart was uneasy.

  ***

  [Calypso]

  Just before dawn I jolted awake as if something inside me had pushed me. Sleepy, still barely understanding what was happening, I rushed to the bathroom, where a clear sense of a bad magical surge was leading me. Something was wrong.

  I burst into the bathroom like a sleepy bullet and swore from the bottom of my soul. Sleep vanished instantly at the sight of what lay before me.

  Good thing we don’t have any locks in the bathroom, and it’s impossible to seal the door with spells — I would have wasted precious seconds. Because at the moment I appeared, Lori was already lying completely submerged at the bottom of the filled bathtub. Either unconscious or something else…

  I rushed to pull Lori out of the water and immediately realized she was actually conscious — she just couldn’t move at all. Her eyes were wide with terror and staring at one point, and her whole body seemed to be, well… glowing from within with lightning running across it, that’s how it looked from the outside.

  The vicious darkness radiating from Lori was so intense that any other white mage in my place would have started retching from the toxic black magic. But fortunately for us both, I wasn’t a white mage, and our potential combat bond made its presence known, so Lori’s surge couldn’t harm me.

  “Just a moment, just a moment… Bear with me a little,” I murmured, laying Lori on the floor and massaging energy points on her head in a specific way.

  I had to influence her mentally to at least reduce the pain somewhat. I gave Lori the necessary mental suggestion, though it only worked at half strength… But at least she took a shuddering breath, and her gaze became more aware.

  This was apparently the very attack I’d been warned about from the start. Sudden, unexpected, hitting Lori in a moment of weakness, relaxation. I felt Lori’s pain and desperately wanted to help her, but it turned out to be no simple task… She was gripped by a dark magic surge of such force that ‘untwisting’ it back quickly wasn’t working.

  “It’s getting worse and more painful each time…” I heard her weak whisper.

  “What hurts the most?” I clarified, simultaneously scanning Lori with spells and working on other energy points.

  “My head… My back… My legs…” she said barely audibly.

  “It hurts terribly…”

  From my quick scan, I confirmed this myself, but I couldn’t find the cause. Outwardly Lori looked completely normal, but the concentration of dark magic in certain spots indicated something was very wrong. Very strange magical behavior… It was as if it had all gathered for something, the way it usually gathers in your palms when you’re forming a spell. But Lori wasn’t forming any spells, and what did leg pain have to do with it anyway? Strange…

  I frowned, frantically trying to figure out what this could all mean, while also thinking about the most effective way to handle this attack. I had several options, but I wanted to use the most effective and gentle one.

  “Usually your magical surges were just blocked hard inside you, right?” I asked.

  Lori nodded weakly. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, her body racked with convulsions. Her skin was literally glowing from within with lightning piercing through her.

  One such lightning bolt flashed and escaped, shooting from her palm and striking the wall lamp. The only light source went out, but the bathroom wasn’t dark because Lori was literally glowing from within with those damn lightning bolts. It looked pretty terrifying, honestly. Even though I’d seen plenty in my life, I was still impressed.

  “It… hurts… so much…” Lori exhaled, her voice barely a whisper.

  Watching her tears was simply unbearable…

  “Let’s try something different,” I said.

  “I won’t block anything inside you right now. I’ll just merge our auras and try to feel the thread of connection between us.”

  “Merging… is dangerous… right now…”

  “Your magic won’t harm me,” I reminded her.

  Not that I was entirely sure of that at the moment, honestly. But I didn’t tell Lori that.

  And she really didn’t cause me any harm. It was just uncomfortable at first when I merged our auras — a slight prickling sensation like icy needles ran across my whole body.

  But then I whispered a few phrases activating the runes in the form of a golden spiral on our wrists. They flared with bright light, and the bathroom was illuminated by a bright golden flash of energy.

  It surrounded Lori and me like a dense cocoon, and all the excess dark magic from Lori somehow drained into this swirling vortex on its own… It didn’t happen immediately — it drained like that for about half an hour, and all that time I was tensely maintaining the energy connection with Lori, with my potential Guardian… with my ilunari.

  The golden glow seemed to draw all the darkness out of Lori and disperse it into the air. Basically, I was once again serving as a conduit for Lori, just like last time when I was firing lightning arrows into the sky. With the colossal difference that I had bound us with a shadow ritual back then, and now I could act more skillfully, effectively, and safely for myself. And as gently as possible for Lori — without the powerful blocking charms that only made her worse afterward.

  “It’s okay… okay,” I said when the golden glow faded and I made sure I’d succeeded.

  “It’s all over now, Lori…”

  I picked her up in my arms and carried her to my bedroom, where I wrapped her in a blanket and held her tight, pressing her against me. Weakened, exhausted from the prolonged pain, Lori curled into me, slowly coming back to herself.