“This is…idiotic.”

And so, the quote of today, coming from none other than the ever-pessimistic Kieran, overstuffed wizard with nothing better to do with his life. At the moment. Hordes of thirteen-year olds were gathered around him, mobbing his legs and trying to break through the safety wall that he had cast. One little brat was trying to knock away the bone wand in his left hand, and was on the verge of digging teeth into the wizard’s arm.

The novices were chipping away at the safety wall, their well-worn daggers scratched and blunted in places, while some others went for the caster of the wall, running straight at Kieran, either to twist his arm, cover his eyes, or knock the wand out of his grip. Such was the ongoing training in one of the forest clearings bordering the city of Geffen.

“Isn’t it always, Kieran?” a smug voice replied. Sitting cross-legged near a towering oak was the assistant supervisor, as she called herself, a woman named Briony. She was tall and limber; a jack-of-all-trades and master of most, or so it seemed. She was no warrior, but a former Kafra Girl who had befriended the wizard when he was still on the fringes of novicehood. As of three years ago, making money was her profession.

“Aha! Aim for the head, Pablo!”

“Ye-Ha!”

The disgruntled wizard remembered to whip his head away from the too-close swipe of an overzealous novice, while the constant sound of knives scraping against a magic shield rang in his ears. How long had he been doing this? His eyes slid to Briony, who watched the ongoing training from time to time, while she did the accounting of the “training fees” to be paid by the Novices’ parents when the day was done.

Five hundred zeny per student per day was enough to keep both the ex-kafra and the wizard financially afloat for a few months. Briony always knew the cheapest spots in town, and her frugality bordered on the extreme that at times, Kieran had to get on his knees and beg for mercy. Nevertheless, they were doing quite good for a down-on-his-luck wizard and an aging ex-kafra. Geffen, as they had discovered, was another city full of middle-class people who bordered on affluent. The fact that most of them were overly concerned parents who feared for their children’s safety in the evil deep dark scary woods of Geffen didn’t hurt either.

“Time check. Six-thirty.” Barked Briony, and for the first time in seven hours, Kieran relaxed. Moans and groans resounded from the teenagers, and the safety wall disappeared.

“Okay kiddies, off you go.” The woman stood up and began waving them away. “Be back next week, okay?” She pointed at one blonde boy who was in a hurry to leave.

“You there. Darius. Your training fee for yesterday, please?”

“Uh…mother said to tell you that we can’t pay in zeny right now…” Briony raised a brow. “…and she’s asking if she can pay you in gemstones instead.”

The woman’s brow lowered, and her eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. Gemstones. Gemstones…she loved gemstones…especially sapphires, glinting blue in the misty moonlight…

“Okay,” Kieran said quickly, eyeing the dreamy look in his partner’s eyes, “She’ll pay us by when?”

“Next week,” said the boy. “Three large sapphires. Will that be enough?”

“…yeah. That’ll be fine.” Briony was beginning to drool.

“Right,” said Kieran. “Bye then. Darius.”

The blonde boy nodded, and ran after his friends, to the arch that separated city from forest.

.0o0.

Geffen tower is a cone. In fact, many people think that it would look better upside down, and with a dollop of chocolate-peppermint ice cream on top of it. This opinion was so highly voiced in the last decade, that in recent years, his Majesty King Tristan III has paid many a visit to the city of magic, to see what can be done about the age-old tower.

At this very moment, Pistachio the assistant architect was scaling the northern part of the tower to scrape off some unsightly pigeon-droppings, as he was told to do by his master, the respectable yet extremely eccentric in-house designer of Geffen. The tower, although put into blueprint by another genius, was the old man’s pride and joy, and it enraged him whenever “the evil pigeons of Midgard” dared leave a white plop of uric acid on the tower’s stately form.

“…hatred…” mumbled Pistacho, with gritted teeth. In one hand he held the metal scraper, and with the other he clung onto the rope that dangled from the top of the tower. The offensive white spot was a few feet away, just within the young man’s reach. Slowly, he reached to evict the droppings with one swoop of his right hand.

“PISTACHIO!”

“Aack!” The assistant architect narrowly missed the dropping spot, looking down to glower at whoever had called.

“PISTACHIO! GET DOWN FROM THERE, YOU FOOLISH BOY!”

Master La Feta, the old man who had ordered him to climb up in the first place, was standing in the middle of the street, waving his arms up and down like a madman. Which he was, in fact. Thin white hair dangled from his head, and his moustache bristled ferociously as he bellowed to the young man.

“GET DOWN FROM THERE! NOW!”

Pistachio rolled his eyes. “Master!” he replied, “I have to scrape the Pigeon poop, remember!”

“FORGET THE DROPPINGS! YOU’RE IN GRAVE DANGER! GET DOWN!”

“Oh for the love of P—“

“DUCK, PISTACHIO! DUCK!”

“Wha--?”

The young man had no idea what the geezer was talking about. He was like that, sometimes. Pistachio looked to turn his head in the other direction, to see what the Master was talking about. It was the worst possible thing he could have done.

“PISTACHIO!”

Out of nowhere, a black streak of something assailed Pistachio, digging something sharp into his body, and killing the boy instantly. The assistant architect fell from the tower, landing in the street. A woman shrieked, and several passerby stared at the top of the tower.

The black shape was perched on the gleaming violet gemstone. It was formless; a swath of torn cloth, or maybe a vampire, or a beheaded scarecrow. Cloth fluttered in the wind, and it looked down upon the city of Geffen for a moment, and then let out a deafening scream.

“Aaargh!” People were on their knees, crumpling to the ground, covering their ears, and moaning. Looks of agony twisted their faces, but only one man stood unmoving, looking straight up at the black thing, with an expression of horror written onto his old, wrinkled face.

“He’s back…” La Feta mumbled, shivering, “…he’s back…”

The black shape disappeared, seeming to scatter into the darkening skies.