Come. Find me.

  Samuel tossed and turned in his sleep that night; for the first time unable to rest properly in the rge comfortable bed. Full of good food and well wishes from the pce in which he’d grown, he should have slept deeply and peacefully, but his mind was troubled by strange visions of pces he’d never seen, people he’d never met, and events he’d never witnessed.

  The world has forgotten.

  A vast, open pin y before his eyes, tall grass weaving drunkenly to one side by the winds. In the sky above, there is but one sun. But, in its shadow, a small and feeble shadow lingers, present, but weak. In his mind, he knows that it is the moon, reduced by the power of the sun gring down at it. Where is the other sun, he wonders. Not a moment ter, it appears, rger even than its twin.

  It crashes into the first sun, knocking it away from the small, feeble moon. A powerful wave of energy radiates out from the collision. It flows like fire, scorching the small moon, and igniting the grass of the pin. The pin is quickly devoured, and the fmes rush toward Samuel; faster than he can think. In an instant, he too is devoured.

  The world has forgotten its history.

  A new vision, this time of a small boy at a desk. He sits as if in css, but he is alone; scribbling indecipherable lines onto a sheet of paper. As Samuel watches, he sees the feather turn bck and wither away in the boy’s hand. A second ter, the paper begins to wither as well, its corners curling as if into ash. Now the boy is a man, and he stands, turning to face Samuel. His hair, as bck as the quill before it crumbled, his eyes, a burning, powerful violet.

  My time has nearly come.

  Samuel opens his mouth to speak, but instead falls back into the bckness that consumes the scene. As he falls, the man falls with him, those violet eyes fixed on his. There is something familiar in the man’s face, he thinks, in the pale skin and the white streak that stands out amidst his bck hair. Something familiar…

  You shall be its history. You shall be my Champion.

  He shot up into a sitting position in his bed, his face beaded with cold sweat. In the darkness around him, he can hear the lingering sound of his shouts, before silence too wraps around him. Gasping for air, he throws himself off the bed and stumbles to the washing basin. He can see the fear in his face. It unnerves him, and so he sinks his face into the cold water below. The sharp water washes away his fear with a new kind of shock, and he feels his mind settle. Breathing heavily, he looks up into the mirror once more.

  The stranger stands before him, as if on the opposite side of the gss. As if, were he to reach out, he could touch him. His eyes burn ever brighter, and he leans forward. Samuel lurches back, shouting for the stranger to stay away. His mana expands to match his fear, smming against the gss, and shattering it into innumerable pieces. The stranger is gone, but Samuel can still feel his presence.

  “Surround my quarry, mana pure, and suppress this overwhelming force!”

  He hears the words but knows not from where they come. The words were still ringing in his ears when he felt his mana shrink back into his body. No, it crashes down upon him. It knocks him back, sending him tumbling onto the bed where it pins him in pce.

  “Sir!” The mana had a voice of its own now. The sound of it crashes against his ears just as powerfully as his own mana had betrayed him. “Samuel!”

  Just as abruptly as he’d been knocked back onto his bed, he became properly aware. It wasn’t mana holding him down, it was Arthur. Samuel was fighting valiantly to try and break free, but to no avail. The grizzled warrior had pinned his arms in pce, and had one knee on his chest, holding him down and preventing him moving. Just past him, Mari stood at the doorway to the room, both hands extended, her face contorted in concentration. She was casting some spell, he thought. Then the realization set in. She was suppressing him!

  “What’s going on?” He asked, still struggling under Arthur’s weight, though now it was more out of panic than because he wanted to escape. “Why are you attacking me?”

  Mari lowered her hands, relief washing over her pale, strained face. But Arthur made no move to free his lord. Quite the contrary, he flicked a small, wickedly sharp knife from his belt and held it at Samuel’s throat. That managed to stop his struggle.

  “You attacked us first!” the steward growled. “Your mana had traces of chaos within it!”

  “What?” Samuel yelped, attempting to lean back into the bed to avoid the nasty pressure of that knife. “I don’t know what-”

  “Who are you?” Arthur bellowed. “Answer correct, or I will strike you down where you stand!”

  “Arthur!” Mari excimed, taking a step forward, fear livid upon her face. “What are you doing?”

  “Stay out of this, Mari,” he snapped. “I’ve witnessed many mages fall to chaos before. If he has been corrupted, the most mercy I can offer is to kill him quickly. Otherwise, he will destroy us all and die a painful death. Now. Who are you?”

  The pressure of the knife increased ever so slightly, and Samuel realized that the man was serious. He would end his life in an instant if he didn’t answer exactly as he hoped. The fear of that realization nearly paralyzed him, preventing him from speaking. “I’m Samuel! Samuel Bragg!”

  “Where are you from? Tell me something only Samuel would know!”

  Samuel struggled to think of something that would stay his steward’s hand, but fear was clouding his mind, making it difficult to organize his thoughts. He could only blurt out, “The bck cat isn’t a cat, but an Ancient spirit! You heard me talking to it on the second night after arriving in Migre!”

  Arthur’s face rexed, and he let out a long sigh, withdrawing the knife. Samuel put a hand to his throat, feeling the small amount of blood trickling down into his colr there. It was the second time within a month - at least to his perception of time - that he’d found himself mere seconds from death in this way.

  “I’m terribly sorry, sir,” Arthur said, now releasing his grip and standing up beside the bed. “I know it won’t make sense to you, but I had to react. You nearly knocked poor Mari and Jameson out when they came to investigate your shouting.”

  He sheathed the knife, then held out a hand to help Samuel up, his face now betraying uncertainty, and quite a lot of guilt. But Samuel couldn’t find the strength to raise himself just then and only scooted a few inches further away from Arthur. He wouldn’t soon forget the image of the stern-faced, cold warrior who had nearly killed him. Then, reason set in, and he realized that, in his own way, Arthur was simply acting on instinct, determined to protect the other members of the household.

  “I… I hurt other people?” He croaked, peering at Mari. Now that he was calming down, he could see the light burns on her forearms; and now that his eyes were adjusting to the dark, he saw simir but slightly worse markings on Jameson’s arms, where he lingered at the doorway. “What happened?”

  “Well,” Mari said, sounding quite cheerful in spite of what had just happened, “For a start, you showed definitive proof that you’re going to be a much better mage than I could ever hope to be.”

  “What exactly did I do? Did I throw fire at you?”

  “Not exactly. It was just mana, but it was dense and potent enough that it physically burnt us. I had to suppress it just to let Arthur tackle you.”

  By way of further expnation, Arthur pointed to the mirror over the washing basin, and then to the rge windows. “You blew out the gss. We thought someone was attacking the manor until we ran into your room.”

  “I’m sorry,” Samuel said, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. “I was having a bad dream, and I must have…”

  His voice drifted off, unsure of what else he could say. They didn’t seem to notice his awkwardness, relieved as they were that he was unharmed. Mari finally came closer, dropping to one knee to look him directly in the eyes. Samuel had just begun to think that everything was fine and that it had been nothing more than a bad dream that he’d reacted badly to. But his sense of relief was washed away by Mari’s next casual comment.

  “Huh. Your eyes aren’t purple anymore. Was that some kind of spell?”