Two days passed. Our protagonist was sitting in the classroom. They were having a writing lesson and he had to write an essay. He would much rather have been somewhere else at that moment. Wenzel looked out of the window over the meadow in the park outside, which had dried out from the summer heat. Suddenly there was a bang in front of him and the boy was startled. It was his teacher, who had hit his desk with a folder to remind the boy that he should be working instead of looking out of the window. Reluctantly, Wenzel carried on.

  Immediately after the lesson, Peter asked him to wait a moment. He wanted to discuss something with Wenzel. The boy could already guess what his friend wanted to tell him.

  "Well, Wenzel, I have something to tell you, but I'm not quite sure how. My parents told me that ...well...., that you would be bad company for me. I don't know why. Because they don't know you at all. That's what I tried to explain to them, namely that you're a perfectly okay person, but they didn't listen to me." Worriedly he looked at Wenzel. He didn't exactly "exuberantly" return the look, but he wasn't angry either. The boy had already suspected that this was behind Peter's increasing distance from him. "I'm sure it has something to do with the stupid rumours about you. Well, the 'rumours', you know. That's why I've been seeing you less after school recently. But that doesn't mean I don't want to be your friend anymore! I will always be your friend! And your secret is safe with me too, believe me. Only, you know, my parents… Seeing you less isn't enough for them."

  "I understand, Peter," Wenzel answered. "My parents are the same. Actually..." Wenzel hesitated briefly and then continued, "I'm sure this is all coming from my parents." - "Really?" - "Yes, one hundred per cent." At that, Peter thought for a moment and then made the following suggestion: "How about this, I promise to stay your friend and you promise to do the same. When we're grown up, so when our parents can't tell us what to do anymore, we'll meet up again and have fun together, okay?" The friend held out his hand. Wenzel was touched for the first time he could remember in his life. He accepted the offered hand. The two boys shook hands and looked into each other's eyes with conviction. They both meant it. Then the two of them went home.

  To be precise, only Peter went home. Wenzel was planning to sneak out of the boarding school again. He just had to wait until all the people had gone and nobody saw him scaling the wall. He had been carrying his pendant with him again since this morning. Thus, the boy went for a walk in the park and stayed behind the gardener's shed for a few minutes until no one was to be seen anymore. Then he quickly climbed over the ivy tendrils of the school wall. He certainly wouldn't fly over it. What had happened two days ago had definitely taught him a lesson. He quickly jumped down on the other side and began to stroll towards the town. He walked along the usual path. Beside him stretched the fields, withered by the enormous summer heat. The boarding school was situated on a small hill just outside Olemar. From here, the boy had a view of the huge fields that were common in this part of Ordania. Ordania was, after all, the bread basket of the Confederacy. He walked leisurely down into the town and through the streets and alleyways.

  "Wait a minute!" the boy spoke to himself. "Have I got everything?" Wenzel rummaged through his bag and...oh, no! He had left his book for his Ordanian lessons at home. "Why can't I ever think about what I'm doing?" He got angry at himself. The conversation with Peter had also thrown him off his stride today. He exhaled in exasperation, knowing that climbing over the wall again would significantly increase his chances of being discovered. He headed back up the small dirt track at the back of the grounds, over the wall and into the school park. Wenzel walked across the beautifully laid out paths amidst the brown grass to where his dormitory was. He climbed the stairs up to the third floor, where he and Aurel had their room. Fishing his key out of his trouser pocket, he approached the door to his room. Normally, it wasn’t locked, but sometimes Aurel still had afternoon lessons or wasn't there for some other reason, which is why the door sometimes was locked.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  As Wenzel was about to insert the key, however, he heard a strange noise coming from his room. He couldn't work out what exactly it was. But Aurel evidentially was home. The younger brother pushed the door handle down and simply stepped inside. But what he was about to see was anything but expected. When Wenzel went in, closing the door behind him, he was initially dazzled by the sun. It was currently shining in almost horizontally through the open balcony doors. The boy put his hand over his eyes. Then he looked to his left over to Aurel's desk, next to which stood his bed. Still half-blind from the glare of the sun's rays, he could see that Aurel's cover was rumpled. That was highly unusual for Aurel to take a nap at this time of day. He took two steps over and asked, "Hey, what's going on?"

  That was the moment when all hell broke loose. The older brother abruptly jumped out of bed. Only now had Wenzel's eyes recovered from the overexposure and he finally saw that there was a second person in the bed. Full of shame, she hid behind the covers. But you could tell who she was by her brunette hair: Amalie!

  "What the hell are you doing here?" Aurel asked him angrily, but not too loudly, so as not to attract unwanted attention from outside. In shock for a moment, the younger of the two siblings did not answer immediately. But then he replied to his brother with almost the same phrase he had used: "What the hell is going on here?" He knew the answer to his semi-rhetorical question, of course. Aurel, being absolutely rattled and this time getting louder, then said, "Didn't you sneak out of school again? Why are you here?" At this, Wenzel's emotions got the better of him and he hurled a string of swearwords at his adoptive brother. Neither of them was communicating rationally anymore, both were acting purely emotionally.

  Aurel violently pushed his brother into a corner and hurled equally inappropriate words at him. Wenzel was now boiling over on the inside. His whole body tensed with anger and all sorts of other feelings that were now swirling around inside him. Amalie just watched in silence. The boy looked at his older sibling and was ready to take out all his frustration on him. The fact that he was probably going to get beaten up by him was a thought, that drowned in all the boiling-over emotions. Then it happened. A huge surge of power came up from inside Wenzel. It was building up more and more and the boy had no idea what was going on, only that this energy was trying to find a way out of him. Aurel, standing in front of the balcony doors, scowled at his little brother. Then Wenzel lost control. The magical power was expelled from his hand, creating a shockwave. Aurel was catapulted backwards by it, flung against the railing of the balcony, rolling over it with the momentum and subsequently tumbling down!

  At that moment, Wenzel remembered the vision he had had two days ago. He had foreseen this moment in some way. After a second's hesitation, Wenzel ran to the parapet of the balcony and looked down. There Aurel was lying on the paved courtyard. A red puddle was beginning to form around his head! Wenzel no longer hesitated and immediately jumped down the balcony. He used his magic to slow his fall from the third floor and gently set himself down on the ground. He rushed to Aurel. The pool of blood around him was getting bigger and bigger. "Aurel! Wake up! Hey!" the boy shouted, but to no avail. His big brother was no longer moving. He was dead.

  Wenzel turned around towards the building and saw that the first people were coming to their windows to see what had happened. Amalie, too, looked down from the small balcony, clearly distraught. The boy could see the other people, but what Wenzel couldn't see was that his eyes were glowing in a bluish light. So many things were going through his head right now, he had no idea what to do. His brother had been murdered by him! He hadn’t meant to. He hated his brother, but he would never have done something like that. It had just been an accident. But Wenzel knew that nobody would believe him. Then it finally hit him! It would now be revealed that he was a magician, a demon and that he had killed his brother!

  At that moment, the images of the witch-burning he had seen in Olemar flashed through his mind. Everyone here hated wizards and word was spread everywhere about how diabolical and dangerous they were. He had only given them confirmation of what they already believed. They would burn him too; Wenzel was sure of it. No! He couldn't let that happen! The first people began to shout and scream for help. For Wenzel that was the last straw. Then he suddenly heard an ethereal voice in his mind: "The time has come." He paused for a moment, then Wenzel straightened up and spoke: "Indeed." The boy took off and flew beyond the wall, away from the boarding school. Never to return.

  The password was: "Dachshundbracke"