Valar felt the overpowering presence of life leave him as he was left lying on the ground, breathing heavily. He looked up and spotted both Viktor and Elaine looking down at him, Elaine’s look much more concerned than Viktor. They muttered something between themselves, too fast for Valar to understand, and the professor of life magic cast a spell over him.

  This one wasn’t a dome or bubble like the last spell, but a green glow that enveloped Valar’s body in its entirety. The green light flowed from Elaine’s rune-covered hand, soothing and healing everything it touched. The whole process could have only taken a few seconds, but it felt much longer. Valar had not been conscious of his healing in Lyndale, but now he kind of hoped that he had been. It felt good… It felt amazing! Only if this could last forever…

  “What you’re now experiencing is the effect basically any powerful healing magic causes,” Elaine explained. “Most likely, you are feeling quite euphoric, but do not be fooled. Many life mages have fallen into the trap of hurting and healing themselves repeatedly just to feel the life magic course through their body once more. It’s a cursed loop that consumes the minds of many life mages, and is one of the major reasons why we are always in need of more. Too many have fallen because of this feeling. Please try to remember that.”

  Elaine’s words were enough to break Valar out of his euphoric state, her calm but serious tone practiced and clearly used often. The escape from euphoria wasn’t all good though, as the events of the last few minutes crashed into his mind instead.

  I ruined it all… My own lack of self control caused this.

  “I’m not getting in the school, right?” Valar asked his question with a depressed tone.

  The answer felt obvious to Valar. He had ruined the image he had been trying to put out, instead depicting himself as a child with no control over his magic or emotions. I’ve showcased my childishness to both my benefactor and a professor of the academy… I can only blame myself.

  “Don’t go wallowing in despair just yet, young man. You are in a school of magic, not in court.”

  Valar perked up, Elaine’s words giving him a modicum of hope that he hadn’t destroyed his chances completely.

  “That being said, I need to know more. This interview isn’t over, and we’re conducting it in an unusual way from this point onwards.”

  Viktor sighed, pulling a second comfortable chair out from his coat pocket. He placed the chair next to himself and gave Valar a hand up, practically pulling the exhausted boy from the ashes he was lying in. Elaine’s gold rank spell had fixed all the lingering damage in Valar’s body, but that didn’t mean that his body and mind weren’t absolutely spent. Even if unintentional, Valar’s magic was an act of will, and will was an energy that could be exhausted like any other.

  “First and foremost, I want to know what is going on here. I want to know what that fire was.”

  Valar looked at Viktor questioningly, the wind mage just nodding with a tired expression.

  “I don’t know how to really describe it,” Valar started. “But the gist of it is that my soul has a wound in it. Fire comes out when I want… And apparently when I don't. It burns things around me, but it hurts me too.”

  Elaine looked at him for a while, an unreadable expression on her face. Valar couldn’t figure out what she was thinking so he didn’t start guessing. He was anxious enough without speculating…

  “Honestly, your story about alchemical fire seems like a much more reasonable explanation… You are not lying though. I can sense that from your aura. Viktor, is this why you want the boy in the academy?”

  “In addition to awakening at such a young age, yes, I’m highly interested in this fire Valar seems to be able to call forth,” Viktor said. “My aim was to keep it a secret, but I didn’t expect him to be unable to control his flame. A blunder on my part… But better that you find out rather than some other gold ranker.”

  Viktor’s words stung, they really did. Even if Valar had not known that he could call the fire without deliberate intention, his inability to control it had led them to this situation. The man seemed to be blaming himself instead of Valar, but that felt bad too. Viktor had trusted him to keep a secret and he had failed, even if he blamed himself for it.

  “I take it this was the way you killed the two beasts that attacked you?” Elaine asked. When Valar nodded, she continued. “You killed two beasts—one at iron and one at bronze rank—with those flames of yours and awakened right after the latter fight. My question is, how in the abyss are you alive right now? I healed you just now, and you had sustained extensive damage from your own magic. You would have been in a bad state even before awakening! The process of awakening should have killed you in minutes, especially in that state. By all reasonable logic, you should be dead right now!”

  Even if it’s true… Ouch.

  “An adventurer party found him in the forest and rescued Valar, feeding him a bronze rank healing potion on the way. After that, a silver rank healer and I helped him for many hours, using many spells from both my and his affinities to ease the process of awakening and heal his wounds.”

  “Still, it seems so outlandish… Wait, how do you even know the fire comes from your soul?”

  Valar had been sitting silently when the two adults discussed his miraculous recovery, twirling his fingers anxiously. Hearing that he should have been dead from a gold rank healer felt unsettling, but he handled that relatively well. I knew that already… I was told so by Viktor, and could have figured out that much from the infirmary bill alone. Hearing the following question though…

  Ripping… Tearing… Quaking earth… Roiling fire… Pain… Death.

  Countless images—repeating from the day his soul had been torn open—flashed in his mind. His ears rang, he smelled only smoke and saw nothing but flames. All of those sensations crystallised into the image of his soul, a fiery ravine open on its side—the gate next to it just barely open, leaking life mana from the depths of his soul. He could do nothing but stare, remembering the pain that he had so expertly hidden.

  The human mind was perhaps not the most advanced, falling short of many other races. Humans erred in their ways constantly, acting irrationally against themselves and their loved ones. The mind wasn’t even that durable, many easily going insane for countless different reasons. However, the human mind was unsurpassed in one singular aspect.

  Adaptability.

  When a human learned something new, went through a traumatic experience or experienced something it could not predict, it adapted. Even without conscious thought new information, once regarded with suspicion, became an obvious fact. The new experience, once so novel, became a common day occurrence. For trauma however, the process was the most complicated of them all.

  Humans had countless defenses against trauma, as a defenceless mind went insane or broke easily. One could rationalize, disassociate, use humor or even deny the traumatic experience’s whole existence. Valar’s mind had chosen a different path, going for repression instead.

  On an intellectual level, Valar of course remembered the events around the wound in his soul. He remembered the rat and he remembered his fight against it. Valar even remembered the flames that had turned his enemy into ash. He remembered them, but he didn’t think about them. It was the only way he could remain sane.

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  The human mind wasn’t designed to withstand such pain. It protected itself by obscuring the details, distorting the memories just enough to not feel all that suffering again. The only problem was that Valar’s pain didn’t originate from his body or mind. It was soul deep, and the mind couldn’t repress something like that.

  Valar heard a distant voice, its tone concerned. He ignored it, the inferno consuming his senses completely overpowering any outside stimuli. However, the voice didn’t relent, only increasing in its intensity. When it had first emerged in his consciousness, the voice had been distant, easy to ignore. Now, it was akin to the bell of a church, ringing deep within Valar’s mind

  The last straw that broke Valar out of his traumatic episode was Viktor shaking him, both hands on his shoulders. The inferno consuming his vision receded, replaced by the man’s emerald eyes filled with worry. He was still speaking.

  “Valar, listen to me. Snap out of it, I believe in you. What you are seeing is in the past, but the past does not matter. Focus on the present.”

  The wind mage’s voice was calm, urging the boy to come back to reality. Adventuring work was dangerous and often filled with trauma, so every high rank adventurer could understand at least some of what Valar was going through. Both the professor of healing and wind mage were at a high rank, so they could see and even understand the absolute horror in the his brown eyes.

  As Viktor continued talking, Valar’s breathing slowly stabilized, the horror leaving his eyes bit by bit. Eventually, he slumped down to his chair, his muscles cramping from the stress they had just been under. Tears were flowing down his face, but he didn’t even notice. His gaze was going past Viktor’s eyes, looking at something the two adults couldn’t see.

  “I should’ve guessed that was a bad question,” Elaine muttered. “I’m a professor of healing, for gods’ sake.”

  “You were blindsided by his magic, Elaine,” Viktor commented, turning his head away from Valar. “I’ve made similar blunders these past days—my own greed for new knowledge preventing me from thinking clearly. We have not talked about the incident leading to his awakening for almost the whole week, but that seems to have been a mistake.”

  “Seeing that reaction, I agree. I take it you were going to experiment with the boy, using the academy as a training ground for him at other times?”

  “Yes, although only once he seemed stable enough. He clearly isn’t.”

  “I can do it,” Valar said, his tone tired more than pained. “It doesn’t even hurt that much.”

  In some ways, what Valar said rang true in his mind. Just some minutes ago, the eruption of fire had hurt a lot, sure, but compared to even the memory of his soul tearing open, the experience was negligible. If it’s just the fire, it isn’t even that bad…

  “Gods no!” Elaine practically yelled. “Just that tells me that you are in no state to start experimenting with magic like that.”

  “What she’s saying is true, Valar,” Viktor said, his tone calmer than the professor’s. “Your acceptance of extreme pain just tells us that you have even more to deal with than I initially suspected.”

  “I… just want to be useful. I was given a chance like this, and I just ended up ruining everything!”

  “Whatever do you mean, young man?” Elaine’s voice was kind as she interrupted Valar. “You’ve showcased an unknown magical power in an interview for a magical school. I would be quite the foolish professor if I turned you away, don’t you think so? Besides, I'm blaming that oaf of a wind mage more than you. Really, Viktor? Alchemical fire?”

  “But I lied to you, and burned down your chair… I almost burned you!”

  “Valar, there were a couple reasons why I told you to not use your fire magic,” Viktor said, still cringing from Elaine's earlier comment. “The first one is that you weren't, and still aren’t, fully healed. The second was that if you showed it to the wrong person, they would try to imprison you for their own gain. If you had exploded like this when we talked to Adrien, the fire mage would have been ecstatic at the sight of fire magic that was unknown to him. I’m quite sure the nobleman would have tried to kidnap you right there, ignoring the possible consequences in the face of unknown power. Luckily for both you and me, you didn’t. Instead, you showed your magic to the professor of healing at the royal academy, and I’m pretty sure she’ll only want one thing.”

  Both the men looked at the professor, Viktor with a knowing grin on his face.

  “I want to oversee your experiments from a medical perspective. That, and regular checkups are my sole conditions for you being accepted into the academy.”

  Elaine’s words were like hammer blows of pure happiness to Valar’s psyche. Somehow even when he had failed at every single turn and done basically everything wrong, he was making it to the academy? The feeling was surreal.

  Valar bowed deeply to the professor, almost falling out of his chair with the movement.

  “Thank you so much, professor! I’ll make sure to not disappoint you!”

  “Glad to have you, Valar,” Elaine smiled. “I’ll have to finish the paperwork associated with the acceptance, but I suspect that you will be able to get the key to your dorm from the front desk well before nightfall. Now, would you be so kind as to leave me alone with Viktor for a few minutes? You can wait outside—there’s a nice sofa at the end of the hallway.”

  Valar left the room, bowing and thanking the woman endlessly, his tirade of thankfulness only stopped when the door closed in front of his face. The boy was left there, looking at the door and breathing heavily. I think I may have just failed upwards… How in the abyss did I end up here?

  He walked to the comfortable looking sofa, dragging his feet as he slogged forward at the pace of a slug. Valar’s mind was racing, and even the simple task of walking seemed like a chore.

  When he finally reached the leather couch, he sat, closed his eyes and proceeded to fall asleep within seconds, his mind overwhelmed and needing rest

  He needed a nap.

  “What the actual fuck, Viktor!?” Elaine yelled as soon as the sound dampening enchantments of the office activated. “I haven’t needed to use that spell for years! I halfway thought I had forgotten it, but that boy’s outburst made me cast it instinctually…”

  “It was that strong? I haven’t actually seen it used, but the adventurers who found the boy described the umbral terror he killed,” Viktor mused. “I got the impression that the fire was magical, but nothing that destructive or large scale…”

  “It isn’t a question of scale, Viktor. I used Firmament restoration to hold the flames back, and it actually drained mana from the spell framework! That just shouldn’t be possible for an iron ranker, no matter how weird their magic is.”

  When Viktor just took out a notepad and started writing, Elaine continued her rant. “Besides, the child is heavily traumatized! I was basically forced to take him in, as he would probably go and die against some beast if he was left alone. He needs schooling, but that’s just not enough!”

  That provoked a reaction out of the silver haired mage, the man nodding solemnly when Valar’s psyche came into focus. “I’ll try to look into it. Valar needs psychological help, but I’m unsure on how I should handle it. If I’d known that his fire could come out with just emotional distress… I would’ve handled things differently. Still, I don’t want just anyone knowing about the fire or the wound in his soul, as that could lead to so many grim outcomes.”

  “I can do some discreet searching for you, as I suspect I move in quite different circles from those that you do. Just looking at the kid’s current state makes me sad, and I would very much like to see his state improve.”

  “Thank you, Elaine.”

  “Don’t thank me, Viktor,” Elaine’s tone was steely. “Let me do my job as a healer instead. No testing without my presence and regular checkups on his health. That’s all I ask for.”

  “And that’s something you will get. I’m greedy for knowledge, but I can wait,” Viktor sighed. “Actually, your presence might be a boon. His trauma… Let’s just say that it’s more intense than I thought.”

  The pair sat in silence for a good while, Elaine writing the paperwork she had promised to deal with. After some minutes of waiting, Viktor broke the silence.

  “I owe you one, Elaine.”

  The professor’s gaze rose slowly from the paperwork, her chestnut brown eyes full of shock. She was silent for a couple of seconds, eventually managing to gather herself enough to speak.

  “What’s the size of the favor?” she asked, a slight note of greed entering both her voice and eyes. “And are you ready to use only personal power or influence too?”

  “Medium favor, both personal power and influence if necessary. I will decide how I accomplish the favor myself. Is that alright with you?

  The professor of life magic of the royal academy nodded with a big smile on her face. Favors from men like Viktor were a rare commodity. Trusting her gut and not capturing the child had been a good decision indeed. If he hadn’t been right behind the door, she might’ve actually taken her chance…

  As Viktor had once said, every high rank man and woman was greedy to the maximum.

  And Elaine Livren was no exception.