Keiran

Three transmission stones sat on the table: one for Senica, and one for each of my parents. Nothing against Nailu, but he needed to learn to talk in person before I gave him a magic rock to talk into my brain from a thousand miles away. Unless he also was secretly a reincarnated archmage that was going to awaken his lost memories in the next six months or so, it’d be another half a decade or more before he even started learning mana control. And I trusted that he was no secret archmage.

When Senica arrived home, it was to find all of us staring at her. She froze in the doorway, nonplussed, and her face started turning red. “What?” she asked.

“Page thirty-two,” was all I had to say on the subject.

Forget turning red. She looked like she’d gotten a bad sunburn from a week of field labor with no invocations to protect her. Her jaw dropped open and she tried to stutter out some sort of rebuttal, but I ignored her and started explaining what was going on with Ammun’s minions.

“And so,” I said at the end of the explanation, “I made these for you. The transmission stones are functionally identical to the scrying mirror on your end. They’re designed to reach directly to me and will transmit your thoughts into my mind. I need you to keep these on you at all times so you can contact me if enemy mages assault the town.”

Next to them were four amulets made of polished black quartz strung on fine steel chains. “These are shield wards, as strong as I can make them. They won’t take a shot from a master-tier spell, but anything weaker than that shouldn’t break them in one go.”

“Why not?” Senica asked, frowning as she picked one up to examine it. “I’ve seen your own shield wards take that kind of punishment.”

“Simple. Do you remember the emergency recall teleportation orb I made for you a few years ago?”

“Yeah. I’ve still got it in my closet even though it’s worthless here.”

“Same concept. If activated, one time only, this amulet will take you and one other person that you’re touching to the valley. If you try to take more than one person, the spell will fail. If you are trying to flee and someone grabs you at the last moment, the spell will not take them with you. It has to be one single person that you unequivocally want to teleport with you, someone like Nailu, or… ahem… Juby.”

The amulets were a fraction of the size of the orb, mostly because I’d eliminated the need for multiple jump points. That made them both cheaper and easier to produce, and it was good for my family to have some emergency equipment anyway. Truthfully, I should have made stuff like this a long time ago, but they’d been relatively safe for years now.

“I thought you needed the mana for your resonator thing,” Mother pointed out. “You said it would take months and months to build up enough. Aren’t these expensive?”

Relative to what the town was used to working with, they were. For me, it had taken longer to build them than to generate the mana. My parents didn’t really understand the quantities of mana I worked with these days, a fact I hadn’t gone out of my way to educate them on.

“They weren’t too bad, and some peace of mind that you’re going to be alright was worth the price,” I said. “Unless I can convince you all to move somewhere else that’s hidden and safe.”

Father laughed. “We did that once, but then you kicked us out a few years later, remember?”

“Hey, you were all looking to leave anyway!”

“Not all of us,” Mother said. “Don’t get me wrong, the amount of effort you put into building this town went a long way toward soothing some ruffled feathers. But still, there were a few people who weren’t happy about being evicted from Sanctuary.”

I hadn’t realized. Nor did I care.

“Regardless of any hard feelings, I can’t actually guarantee your safety if you stay here. I doubt it will be hard for Ammun’s spies to figure out that my family lives here. You’ll be targets.”

Father nodded along. “And that’s all reasonable and makes sense to me, but son, we can’t just put our lives on hold every time you’ve got a new problem.”

“Besides, what was the point of all the magic you’ve woven around New Alkerist if not to keep us safe?” Mother added. “I think we know you well enough to know it was done to protect us, not everyone else.”

“Only because I knew you’d refuse to leave,” I muttered. “You’re predictable, that way.”

“You’re supposed to know your family, Gravin,” Mother said. She reached down to pick Nailu up and cooed, “Isn’t that right? You have to learn all about us so you’ll know how much we love you.”

“Besides, how will I fight off the invaders if we leave?” Senica asked, ignoring Nailu’s laugh as Mother tossed him up into the air and caught him.

“You will be doing nothing of the sort,” I said. “You are far from ready to fight on the front lines against someone capable of casting advanced-tier spells, let alone a few dozen mages that strong all at once. Nobody living in this town has the slightest chance of fending off an assault. Leave that to the reactive wards.”

“I think you’re underestimating how good I am,” she said, her jaw set in a stubborn clench.

“No, I’m not. You’re underestimating how strong your enemy is. People aren’t like monsters.”

“I know that! But I’m the undisputed champion of mage duels in town. There is literally no one better than me living here.”

I actually hadn’t known that. I wasn’t even aware that the schools were doing mage duels. No one had asked me for help setting up wards to keep the participants safe, which made me wonder just what they’d cooked up on their own. I made a mental note to check on that when I went to the school to build their basement shelter.

“There’s a difference between being the best in a small town of a few hundred people, and being good enough to compete on the world stage,” I said, perhaps a bit more harshly than I’d intended. But this was serious. I needed Senica to understand that challenging one of the mages Ammun sent here could very well mean her death.

“Why don’t you have any faith in me?” she demanded.

“Senica,” Mother reprimanded, but my sister didn’t back down.

“Because you’re fourteen,” I told her bluntly. “Not only are you fourteen, but we live in a world with no ambient mana. Your training time is limited. Your resources are limited. Your education is limited. These mages aren’t like that. They’re going to be adults with a decade or more of experience, all spent in a tower with practically unlimited mana for them to use. This isn’t a gap you can overcome by being stubborn.”

“Easy for you to say. When was the last time you had to work at learning magic? Do you even remember what that feels like?”

My eyebrows shot up, and I looked over Senica’s head to our parents, who appeared equally as baffled by the outburst. Whatever her problem was, it was something that had been eating at her for a while now. Perhaps if I’d spent more time at home, I’d have noticed it before it got to this point.

She kept ranting, “All I do is study and train. I spend every scrap of mana practicing spells, and I’ve gotten so good. I swear I have! But you don’t believe in me at all. What could your loser sister possibly do to help? She’s just a burden you have to carry along, keep her safe, stick her in a box. I hate it.”

“That’s not true,” I said.

“Yes, it is! Every time trouble comes along, you hide me away and forbid me from helping.”

She wasn’t wrong, but did she really not understand why she wasn’t ready for this yet? I knew my sister wasn’t stupid. Given another decade, she would almost assuredly make it to stage four, with or without my help. She might even manage to reach stage five if I provided her the instruction and mana.

But the threat wasn’t a decade away. It was weeks, maybe months if we were lucky.

“Look, I’m sorry, but you’re not ready for this. Don’t take it personally. I wouldn’t ask Tetrin or Hyago to fight against these people, and you know how many projects they’ve handled for me. Most of the mages coming this way would easily defeat anyone from the Wolf Pack, and they were strong enough that they took over almost the entire island. You’ll get there someday, but you need more time.”

Senica’s only answer was to throw the transmission stone she was holding at me, then storm off to her room. The stone bounced off my shield ward, then slowed to a halt midair as I caught it with a minor telekinesis spell. With a sigh, I set it back down on the table.

“I never was very good with children,” I told my parents. “Do you think you could talk to her?”

My parents exchanged looks. “We can,” Mother said slowly, “but it might be better coming from you.”

“Me? Why?”

Father shook his head. “You do have your blind spots, don’t you, son?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your sister… she kind of had a hard time with her little brother outgrowing her, you know? That’s an odd situation for anyone, let alone a child that young. You were physically older than her by the time she was ten. But she took it in stride, decided she’d just have to work harder to keep up.”

“And then I tell her that all her hard work isn’t enough, not even close,” I said.

“You can see where that might hurt someone’s feelings, telling them they’ve wasted half their life chasing after you.”

Well, that explained why she was upset, but it didn’t change the reality of the situation. I was surprised our parents weren’t agreeing with me. They couldn’t possibly believe Senica could face adult mages who’d grown up in a mana-rich environment and had access to spells Senica could only dream of.

“I’m not saying she’s right,” Father said, almost like he’d read my mind. “We all know she’s outmatched. She knows it, too. She’s just frustrated.”

“So what am I supposed to do about it? She’s got to accept reality or she’s going to die.”

“You could try encouraging her,” Mother suggested. “Not to fight, I mean, but to keep practicing, keep learning. She wants to know you approve of her and all the work she’s done.”

“I do approve of her,” I said.

“Go tell her that.”

I glanced at the bedroom door, then sighed and shook my head. “I should have gotten back an hour ago.”

But I made no move to leave the room. My parents watched me silently for a moment. With a sigh, I asked, “You think I should go do that now or wait for her to calm down?”

A thump came from the Senica’s door, followed by a crash as whatever she’d thrown hit the ground. Father sighed and muttered something under his breath. I wasn’t entirely certain what he’d said, but it sounded like a disappointed, “Teenagers.”

Louder, he said, “Gravin, you are my son and I love you, but sometimes, you are an idiot.”

He’d get no argument from me there. I could freely admit that my social skills had languished during my long centuries of isolation. A mere decade or so of being among the living again had done nothing to fix that deficiency. If I was being honest about it, I hadn’t been that good with people when I’d been young the first time, either.

“I’m going to go now. I’ll be back tomorrow or the next day.”

“Bye bye, Grah-vin,” Nailu said. “Hug?”

“Bye, little brother.” I gave him a quick hug, then walked out the door.