The training began.

Every morning, as soon as Nero opened his eyes, Oliver would practically drag him out of his room and out into nature. Even when proper breakfasts became a luxury, the pace climbed in step with Nero’s progress. Despite Oliver’s warnings, the boy preferred to double-check everything himself, poring over books until deep into the night.

From morning till noon they trained, from after lunch till late into the night he studied theory. In a few weeks, Nero’s spacious room turned into a warehouse of books, notes, and scrolls. It felt like the shelves were about to collapse under the weight of everything Oliver had lugged in.

Despite the effort, results did not appear at once. The first time he finally managed to send a spell into it's target, the target was not Oliver but a massive boulder. There was little joy in it. 

Nero was growing at a pace dangerous for a child. While he studied magic, his body lagged behind in recovery, so Oliver cut back the extra hours of practice and replaced them with lessons in Alchemy.

For books and alchemical gadgets, Nero had a dedicated corner. At first he piled everything together, but after a while, when there was too much, he finally organized it. Since half the alchemical supplies were single-use, a second pile quickly appeared, this time of trash.

At first, alchemy seemed more appealing than the endless Groundhog Day of drills. Then when he nearly blew up his room. He decided to shelve alchemy for now and return fully to magic.

All his spare time he devoted to Oliver’s books and notes, absorbing everything about magic. Yet curiosity, or rather the chase for power, for magical mastery, for the one thing he was good at and could escape into, erased all boundaries. In secret from Oliver he kept trying water and ice spells.

He never got as far as ice.

Each attempt ended in a crash, literally. At the earliest signs of activation, Nero would collapse. His body ached, his mind clouded with pain. By nature he was distrustful, and he doubted any explanation until he could confirm it himself.

More and more often he thought that maybe listening to Oliver would not be so bad.

“D-dissolution of magic… damn it.” Nero rasped when yet another attempt failed.

He was in the room adjoining his bedroom. The bath connected directly to his quarters, and only thanks to that did he dare conduct these experiments on himself. If anyone caught him in this state, it would not end with simple questions.

Through experience he realized that his mana, the very flow he used to build spells, simply dissipated right after the partial formation of a spell’s structure, as if on purpose. He underlined everything related to his attempts with water magic on a separate sheet.

After jotting down a few more details, he ran into a thought. Oliver had been right. For now, he really should not use it. Thought that did not stop him from further experiments on himself.

Of course Oliver noticed almost at once. Eventually he caught “Loki” in the act, trying to use the forbidden magic. The tongue-lashing Nero received was something he would remember.

Oliver’s complicated explanations of why he was against it began to sink in, slowly and filtered through Nero’s own experience, but they did sink in.

Over the next week, during lessons, Oliver never missed a chance to remind him how harmful it was. Sometimes he even cast a pain spell, forcing Nero to feel again the muted version of the same backlash he suffered from water spells. In time Nero got used to it and stopped reacting, or pretended not to react. Watching the lack of response to the pain spell, Oliver started jokingly calling “Loki” a masochist.

After suffering his fill, Nero finally stopped.

That did not mean he stopped thinking about it, just his priorities shifted. On the sly he hunted through the stacks for the very spell Oliver used to punish him. He knew it was called “Dollor.” Digging it out of a fat tome, he read the glyphs and runes several times and compared them with others.

The key to new spells is understanding glyphs and their more complex form, runes.

Complex spells demand theory and, most importantly, an understanding of how they work. Memorizing a phrase and pointing a wand at the air is not enough. Knowing what a glyph does, how runes are composed from them, that is the deciding factor.

The history of glyphs and runes did not hurt either. He read that runes were given to humans thousands of years ago by dragons, and humanity later split them into individual glyphs for ease of study. At least that is what the book said.

The more a mage knows about runes, the more precise and powerful his castings will be.

“Pff, why am I rereading this...” Nero snorted, flipping the first page and hunting the table of contents for the right section.

Turning to general spells, he finally found it. “Dollor” — the spell that manifests pain. 

"Got you." 

He studied the explanations for a few minutes, rubbed his temple, snorted, grabbed textbook and wand, and stepped onto the balcony. It had rained recently, and it was abviously that some bugs would appear. Nero spotted a snail crawling along the balustrade and crouched beside it.

He aimed his wand and then said “Dollor,” but nothing happened. He looked at the book again, then at the snail, took better aim, focused, and finally directed mana along his arm into the wand and he closed his eyes, imagined  correct runes forming a spell.

Then he said “Dollor.” and the snail gave a short squeak and pulled into it's shell.

His eyes widened in surprise. The moment did not last long, because someone knocked on the door.

“Señor Loki, please come out. Señor Winn is waiting downstairs.” came a voice from the corridor, followed by fading footsteps.

He pulled on a blue tunic and checked the mirror to make sure of his appearance: dark hair and dark yellow-green eyes. The corners of his mouth tugged up, and “Loki,” wearing a sly smile, left the room. He was in a great mood. A plan had already taken shape in his head.

Meanwhile…

Oliver was strolling in a spot far from the manor, dressed in an elegant suit with a cloak thrown over it. The cool morning wind washed over him from all sides, lifting his hair and the hem of his cloak and chasing fallen leaves.

Walking at an easy pace, he wondered, “What time is it?” He lazily drew a gold pocket watch on a chain and glanced at the dial. “Damn.” Just as lazily, he swore under his breath and tucked the watch back into his inner pocket.

Whenever he led “Loki” far from the estate for lessons, he would go out early and clear the area of wild animals, even mana-beasts, the kind that attacked them during the first lesson. That is exactly what he was doing now. 

He had little time left before his lesson, but for Oliver it was enough to give a tree a few kicks and watch a squirrel peer out of a higher hollow.

It grew too quiet, even for an empty forest. Oliver’s hands were stuffed into the cloak’s side pockets. His bored gaze slid ten meters to the right when, in the distance, half-hidden behind a small rise, four red eyes gleamed in two neat vertical rows.

“Oh.” thought Oliver. “Finally found you.”

A piercing shriek split the air. 

Oliver squinted. Anybody else would have clapped hands to ears, but it was nowhere near painful enough to scare a mage like him. The dubious roar even made him chuckle. With a slight smile he strode toward it. The roar swelled, then fell silent, only to explode even louder in a last try at intimidation.

Only then did he see it fully.

It was a chimera. Panther-like, cunning, with thick hide and razor claws, and in this case those four red eyes made it unique. In the imperial encyclopedia it would be listed as a monster born of mana, a mana-beast.

Something was off. Oliver sensed it too and took a step back. 

The chimera landed opposite him, glanced around, and turned half-sideways. The instant Oliver hesitated at its posture, it whipped a long foreleg at his neck and struck. Four long claws, black as pitch, met a seamless wall of white flame that spiraled into being with a spray of white sparks. The flame batted the claws aside, searing them with a hiss, then vanished as if the barrier had never existed.

The chimera bared its teeth and growled at Oliver. Limping on one leg, it snapped its head toward the direction it had come from.

Oliver frowned. "It was running from something?”

Monsters are monsters, and all of them must be put down. He also had little time left before lessons with “Loki.” Clicking his tongue in annoyance, he took a few sure, noiseless steps toward the chimera and extended his hand, which had already been sheathed in white fire.

With a precise thrust he drove his arm through the creature’s torso like a spear.

A muffled wail rolled through the trees as the white fire leapt from his arm to the monster and consumed it entirely. Reducing the four-eyed beast to white ash, the flame erased everything: the thick black blood on Oliver’s arm, fur, hide, bone. Nothing remained to suggest a panther-like monster had stood there a minute before.

After a few long seconds, during which Oliver peered into the forest depths, his face showed calm, a touch of irritation, and haste. A few hundred meters away something moved oddly. Narrowing his eyes and sharpening his vision with mana to the limit, he picked out several dark figures. Two of them were human silhouettes. Looking closer, he made out two burly men in warm leather ponchos and wolf-pelt caps.

Ahead of them, ten or maybe fifteen meters in front, a large snow-white fox was staggering along. A massive red blot stained its back where the fletching of a wooden arrow stuck out.

At that moment Oliver understood, the chimera ran away because it was afraif of this people...

Anger boiled up in Oliver, reddening his eyes. 

“Poachers,” he hissed through his teeth.