I didn’t have any siblings. I knew of them. I knew how they were meant to be. But those I grew up alongside were not my siblings. They were… something else. We were like kin, but it was more like a wolf pack, I suppose. Bonded by a need for survival, we didn’t love one another. We didn’t care for one another. We cared only if the other would be there at our back when we were in danger. We didn’t always know if the other would be there with their own back, or a knife, but we knew they’d be there. There was comfort in that.

  Elva’s eyes were identical to Wulfric’s. She had faint marks on her face and exposed arms where freckles would be more visible were she to spend more time in the sun. Targrin and Wulfric’s skin was slightly tanned, and their freckles popped out more. She wore no make-up of any kind, and the same clothes she’d been wearing while in the library: a short-sleeved dark-colored dress, hanging down to her ankles, with a brighter, blue-toned pinafore on top. She had on some kind of slipper. The pinafore featured pockets, but a small, rectangular object appeared to burden them. Targrin assumed it was the journal she had taken notes in.

  “Hello, Eadrin,” she said, voice cool and measured. Prim and proper, one might say. “You should be getting ready for your lessons with Lucian.”

  Targrin squinted, head tilting, trying to play up a childish confusion.

  “I thought you were still in the library. That’s what Lucian said.”

  “Mmm. I was. Wulfric caught me on my way down and said he found you sleeping here in the woods. Why were you doing that, Eadrin?”

  There was something in this girl’s tone that put Targrin on edge. She had turned away from him, looking down at where he’d been napping once more. His hands tightened into fists behind his back, and sweat beaded down his neck.

  What… does this girl know something?

  Targrin had no way of knowing that Elva had felt something, the moment he peered at her surreptitiously in his initial explorations of the manor. Some dark, twisting chill had settled low in her stomach, and she’d snapped around to stare at the door as soon as it had pulled almost silently shut.

  She’d then looked back down at her journal, eyes widening at the symbols she’d drawn. She had not correctly copied the material in the book she was reading. The neat duplicates of runes, swirling patterns of lines, and instructions were replaced by a dark, twisting shape

  Vaguely humanoid, a fist curled around a blob of ink so dark it looked deep.

  She did not know what she felt when her instincts led her to this spot in the woods. She just felt… unsettled.

  Targrin did not know her well enough to tell that the set of her shoulders and the stillness of her hands at her sides were signs of her discomfort. Eadrin, though, would know. He’d known her his entire life.

  “Tired, I expect. Cenric pushed me hard this morning.”

  “Mmm.”

  Targrin still felt like something was wrong, like he was missing something. He couldn’t tell what it was, and when in doubt, he’d never been one to linger in discomfort. Without saying a word, he took a few steps backward and turned, walking out of the glade and back towards the house.

  Behind him, Elva stared, unknowingly, at the spot her brother’s head had lain. The dark figure reappeared in her mind, this time with unmistakable clarity. Before, she’d been sketching it out without thought, but here it loomed. She gasped, stepped back, and turned to follow her “sibling.”

  ~

  Targrin made it back to the manor first, and promptly went to wash up. It was expected of him, after all. He found it… while cleaning himself, he found it mildly uncomfortable to stare down at a body that wasn't his own, but he suppressed those feelings. He had no means of solving this problem, anyway.

  Clean and dressed, he went up to the library for his lessons. There, he found Lucian, setting books out for him and writing supplies.

  At first, Targrin felt another twinge of concern. In his old life, he had to write orders, organize supply lines, and manage resources. However… he was not sure he could read their language. He could speak it, but he did not know if that was some artifact of this transplant process, or a magical ability granted to him.

  Upon seeing the familiar script on the cover of the first book, he nearly exhaled with relief. Almost. He caught himself, and Targrin settled in to wait for his instructions.

  “I hope you enjoyed your walk, Master Eadrin! Now, first, I’d like to discuss your assignments. Where are the papers I gave you on Monday?”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Targrin blinked, unsure of how to answer that, so he decided on the truth.

  “I don’t know.”

  Master Lucian frowned, hands on his hips.

  “Did you misplace them? Where did you last work on them?”

  “I don’t remember.” Targrin kept his voice even and placid, sitting with his hands neatly folded on the table in front of his chair. “Perhaps I was struck too heavily during my training with Cenric?”

  Master Lucian’s expression quirked, a brow raised, and Targrin felt a wave of concern twist over him again. This was proving more difficult than he’d thought. Wulfric had been… easy to fool. But this man, and Elva (whom he suspected was his sister) were going to be harder.

  “Master Eadrin, if you didn’t do them, you can say so. You won’t be in trouble, so there’s no need to try and blame Cenric. I know your training with him is difficult, but that’s no excuse to make up stories about him beating you senseless.”

  Was Cenric NOT ‘beating me senseless?’ How else is he to train me to fight? The thought must have appeared on Targrin’s face in some fashion, because Lucian tilted his head and pursed his lips, contemplative.

  “I’m not sure what to make of this, sir. Perhaps we should talk to-”

  Targrin lost his patience here. He tensed, growled, and snapped out a command:

  “Get to the lessons. I have things to do. If I’m not in trouble for not doing the assignments, then we don’t need to talk about them anymore.”

  Lucian recoiled, looking stricken. Targrin’s voice had come out loud, brash, and imperious, despite the nasally lisp the boy had coloring his words. The large man, cowed, nodded.

  “I… of course, Master Eadrin. I just-the assignments were meant to be practice of previous material before your examination today, so-”

  “Just give me the exam then.” Targrin, picked up his quill.

  “Right, yes, of course.” Lucian, thrown, was quiet as he slid a packet of papers across to Targrin, who grabbed them and pulled them towards himself. He settled into the chair more comfortably: one elbow pressed to his chair’s armrest, quill tapping on the end of it. He held the papers up towards his face.

  “If you have any trouble, it’ll be alright. I-”

  “Quiet.” Targrin snapped, before he set to work.

  ~

  It was mostly mathematics, really. There were some word puzzles about similar words, rewording sentences, interpreting the meaning of a sentence. In short, it was tedious, and all things he could do with barely a thought. He was too fed up with this artifice already to try and ‘correct’ his behavior, to bring it in line with what Eadrin was more likely to be capable of. Instead, he finished the exam and slid it back across the table to Lucian, who had been staring at him, intently, for the entire forty or so minutes that Targrin had been working.

  “There. Now what?” Targrin barked, fixing Lucian with an intense stare. Master Lucian swallowed, noisily, and sat up to speak.

  “Well, I am going to read through this and check your answers while you read. You.. you can pick a book from the library. Any book!” Lucian said that last bit a little more brightly, as if he thought it was something that would alleviate whatever… tension Targrin was throwing in his direction. Wonderful. Eadrin liked to read. Targrin did not.

  “Great. Thank you, Lucian. Take as much time as you need.” Targrin was already moving, voice dipping into a sarcastic well as he hopped from his chair and moved to the door, where a ring of shelves started. It ran around the circumference of the room, only broken by a window with thick curtains drawn across it. There were two half-height shelves coming off one wall and poking into the center, the table in the back corner by the window.

  Master Targrin wandered about the library in a neat circle. There were labels on the shelves, indicating what the books contained information on. Directly above him was the label for “Warfare.” he grinned, pleased, and continued on. Philosophy, Navigation, Mathematics. It seemed he’d started at the bottom of the alphabet. History and Heraldry. That would be useful. If only he knew what this family’s name was. Geography came next, and he stopped there. He’d need maps if he was to understand this place, but he, again, needed names to put towards this land. Fiction seemed interesting, but not useful in the slightest. Farming. Court Documentation. He stopped there again and actually did pull a few off the shelves. These were fewer books, and more bound scrolls, stacks of papers held together loosely with twine, and the like. Flipping through a few, he found they were court minutes: descriptions of meetings held by councils, civil governments, and the like. Contracts and licenses were held here, presumably copies. This did not seem the place to hold legal documents, so these must be for reference or training? He continued on then: Alchemy and Apothecarium came next. Potions and tinctures, always useful.

  The last section, by the door, across from Warfare, was labeled oddly. He wasn’t sure about the word.

  “Arcanum.” He said it out loud, sounding it out, and Lucian, startled by the break in the silence, looked up sharply.

  “Did you say something, Master Eadrin?”

  “What is Arcanerit?”

  “Oh! That’s the umbrella term for the study of magic.” Lucian then turned back to Targrin’s exam, as if he hadn’t just said something horrifying.

  Targrin’s blood ran cold, and his eyes, slowly, carefully, swept down from that label along the shelf. Tome after tome after tome, labels on their spines full of more words Targrin didn’t understand. “Evoker’s Incrima,” he thought, then tamped down the thought before it could spiral into a devastating spell. Even just LOOKING at books of magic could cause one to combust, or melt, or twist into starlight. He’d seen it happen.

  Why was it here, and not under lock and key? Why was it not hidden away? How could a teacher turn a child loose in a place where that child could pick up a book that would obliterate this entire household?

  What kind of hell world was this?