Cassie kept looking at me strangely. We were making our way to Almon’s home, which was even further afield that my house. We had stopped into town to grab some bread because Cassie was hungry, so the journey took a bit longer than necessary. Eventually, I got tired of being glanced at and just brought it up, no longer willing to be looked at like I was a vegetable and she was trying to decide if I had gone off or not.

  “What’s on your mind?” I said as casually as I could, although with how the last couple of days had been I almost expected another life-changing conversation.

  “I’m just wondering how you’re taking this so well,” Cassie remarked, finally meeting my gaze. “I mean, my little revelation seems kind of small in light of the whole changeling thing.”

  I chuckled. “Believe it or not, its the other way around actually. I mean, I don’t remember running into the woods like a frightened squirrel because of Mum’s confession.”

  Cassie looked like she couldn’t decide on being contrite or amused. “Seriously? I mean, you just found out that you aren’t who you thought you are, me leaving is just, well… me.” Cassie seemed weirdly sad, which didn’t suit her in the slightest. I stopped walking and grabbed her hand.

  “Hey, none of that,” I said firmly. “First, I found out I wasn’t what I thought I was, not who. And second, where’s all of this ‘just me’ nonsense coming from? There is no just Cassandra Vaughn.” Cassie made a sheepish look, which was also completely out of character. “I’m serious, Cass. And I was serious earlier when I said that I would have done whatever it took to come with you, too. What brought this on?”

  Cassie couldn’t meet my eyes. “Remember this morning, when I said I was facing life without you? Well, what I should have said was I was trying to face life without you. It wasn’t going very well. I’ve been so worried. I could barely face the thought of just abandoning you here, but at the same time I was still working out how to tell you so I had to pretend that nothing was up, and-” Cassie paused to take a breath, the words coming in a rush. “You know the reason that I wanted to do the play? I wanted to leave a legacy, some experience for you to remember me by if you wouldn’t or couldn’t come with me.” She looked almost ashamed, like she had been caught in some grand conspiracy. I couldn’t help but laugh.

  Cassie gave me a betrayed look, and I realised how I must be coming across. “Sorry,” I said once I recovered my composure. “I just couldn’t imagine needing that performance to remember you by! I mean, you could have fled this place years ago and you would have never left my mind. I’m pretty sure it would take divine intervention to make me forget anything about you at this point.” Cassie’s bashful look slowly progressed to considering and then to beaming as I spoke. By the time I was done, she had wrapped me in a side hug, keeping the book secure in the other.

  “Thank you,” she intoned, staring at me with an intensity I rarely saw. “You really think I’m that great, huh?”

  I looked her over. “Yep. Now stop fishing for compliments, we’ve got a theft to admit to.” Cassie was giggling as continued on to her mentor’s house, which meant my job here was done.

  ----------------------------------------------

  Almon’s house was a small cottage, right on the edge of town. It was old but well maintained, and from the outside it looked like just any other house. It was all wood, it had a tiny porch in front of the door that was filled with potted plants, and there was a small garden poking out from behind the building with all kinds of herbs and flowers growing.

  My understanding was that Vanessa, the town’s resident witch, had invited Almon here to look over the town’s few magical needs in return for giving him her collection of magical tomes and research. Almon was a wizard, but for all of their differences wizards and witches were both learned spellcasters, and Almon was by this point a fully qualified witch as well.

  Almon himself was a portly older gentleman, although there wasn't much gentle about this man. The only times I had seen him not be grumpy was when he was talking magic, and Vernal wasn’t exactly a magical hotspot so he tended to be very grumpy.

  Nonetheless, I had a pretty good opinion of the man. Cassie liked him, and she spent far more time with him than I did. Plus, I had just learned that he didn’t hold any rumours against my mother, which put him pretty firmly in my good books.

  Cassie knocked on the door, insisting that she needed to do it for some reason. Almon opened the door with a scowl, which lightened slightly when he saw Cassie, or at least the book she was holding. She held it out to him like a peace offering.

  “Ah, Cassandra. So good of you to return my tome.” Almon huffed, grabbing the book and leaving the door open as he stalked further in.

  “Sorry Master. We really needed some of the information inside, preferably quickly.” It was always a little weird hearing Cassie refer to Almon as ‘Master Almon’ or just ‘master’. I didn’t know who insisted on it, but I thought it might be her since she even did it in private.

  “What information could you possibly need about the inner planes on such short notice. You weren’t attempting a summoning, were you? Or was someone else?” As he spoke, he carefully placed the book back into its place on the bookshelf between volumes two and four.

  I was surprised by how mundane the inside of his house looked. Sure there were a few clearly magical tools, and the hearth was burning without wood, but at a glance it seemed fairly standard. The thing that really gave it away wasn’t even anything magical, rather the wall of books, tomes and grimoires that dominated the main room. Some of those books must have been ridiculously expensive, and no one who wasn’t a mage would need so many.

  “No summonings, Master. Actually, we needed some information on the fey.” Cassie was obviously enjoying knowing something that Almon didn’t. The wizard stopped, like the answer was something that he hadn’t expected.

  “Fey, hm? You wouldn’t have made a deal even if you did find one somehow. But the Wilds have been shut off for too long for there to be one kicking about… Ah, a changeling, it must be. That is interesting.” He turned his gaze to me. “It’s you, isn’t it? You’re the changeling? I can see that I’m right. Well, that’s not what I expected was going on with you, but its definitely interesting.”

  “Wait, what? What do you mean ‘not what you expected’? You knew there was something?” I was incredulous. How did he know when I didn’t?

  “Lass, you’ve been sucking up the ambient mana like it’s your favourite meal, of course there was something. I just assumed you were secretly an elf or you’d been cursed or something. Changeling explains it too, but the timing was a little close for my liking. Shows me, I suppose.” He gave me an appraising look. “Let me guess, something traumatic happened and now you can do things you shouldn’t be able to. You panic, my apprentice here has a hunch and shows you my book and now you want help figuring it all out.”

  I was taken aback. There’s no way he figured all of that out just from my presence here. “How did you know?” I asked.

  “Well, if Cassandra had shown you volume four rather than three, then you would have been introduced to the concept of Awakening, the term for a changeling’s self-discovery. It almost always happens through traumatic incident, with only a few recorded instances of it happening through age and suspicion. I am aware that you and Cassandra are close, and I also know that she likes to steal my books,” he turned a quick glare on Cassie before turning back to me, “so she likely would have recognised the process when you described it. Was I close?”

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  Cassie wiggled a hand in the air. “Actually, I was a bit distracted sorting out the crisis that caused it to put two and two together. I only realised the fey connection when Jenna told us about the deal she made to make it all happen.”

  That had Almon interested. “Ah, of course. The sick infant and the cloistered mother. This would explain what happened, and why she couldn’t simply explain. To make an official deal for a changeling child is quite rare though. Most prefer to rely on deception.”

  I piped up. “The book said that only powerful fey could make changelings, so maybe he was an old one?”

  Almon considered it, before shooting me down. “That volume also describes the process as a ‘coming of age ritual’, I believe. No, that likely isn’t it. Tell me, what lineage power were you granted? Can you read thoughts? Beguile those around you, turn invisible on a whim?”

  I shook my head. “I… I’m not really sure how to describe it. I think I can eat lifeforce.”

  Almon stared at me for a second, before shaking his head. “That sounds unlikely. Hold on.” He shuffled over to a window and stared intently out of it for almost half a minute. Then he stuck one arm out until I couldn’t see the hand, muttering something under his breath. I felt a strange prickle on my skin, and when he pulled his arm back in he was holding a bunny which seemed strangely docile in his grip. He shuffled back over and placed the rabbit on a desk, before twisting his other hand and putting it to sleep.

  He moved away again, coming back a moment later with a scalpel. He quickly and surgically removed one of the rabbit’s feet, leaving the severed limb just in front of the new stump. The rabbit didn’t even twitch at the cut, never mind wake up. Almon turned to me expectantly. “Heal him,” he said simply.

  “What?” Thoroughly confused at this turn of events, as well as a little concerned about the ease with which Almon maimed the rabbit.

  “Whatever you do to take vitae, I want you to do it in reverse. Give your own life to this rabbit, with the intent of healing its foot. Not too much, though.”

  Caught in a bit of a daze, I found myself doing just that. In a couple of steps I was in front of the rabbit, feeling as its heat slowly dwindled. At some point it would bleed out if I did nothing, so I grabbed its severed foot with one hand and pressed it into the wound, placing my other over where the heat of its life was the most intense. I could feel its heartbeat in my palm, slow and steady despite the wound.

  I shut my eyes and felt for my own reserves, so much deeper and more complex than the rabbit’s. I did what I could to tease a sliver of my own lifeforce from my reserves, expecting resistance. Surprisingly, it was actually easier than taking it from another. There was no natural status quo to fight against here, my life was meant for this. I was a conduit as much as I was a vessel. Heeding Almon’s words, I let only a small amount pass between myself and the rabbit, although I struggled to keep hold on the it. My life was enthusiastic to say the least, and more than I had intended passed between us.

  The amount that I transferred had to be at least twenty percent of the rabbit’s entire life, and it wasn’t much of mine. As my life swept through the bunny I found myself aware of it, in its entirety. I couldn’t explain exactly how, and I probably couldn’t point out any individual flaw in this rabbit’s body or put into words how part of its body worked, but I knew. It only took about half of the lifeforce I had provided to reattach the foot, although even from one attempt I could tell that I could be so much more efficient, I had known what I was doing. Right now I was following the lead of the lifeforce.

  I scanned the bunny and slowly fixed all of its minor injuries. I regrew a tooth, fixed some mild bruising from Almon’s fingers, even drained the life from some parasites in the rabbit. By the time I had used up everything this rabbit was in excellent condition. Not perfect, because for all my instinctual understanding bridged the gap I had basically no idea what I was doing. Still, I had managed to avoid the catastrophe that I sensed would have happened if I had let so much lifeforce run rampant inside the small creature’s body.

  I opened my eyes to see Cassie and Almon staring at me. Cassie spoke first.

  “You can heal?!” She shrieked, before running over and tackling me. “We’re going to be the best adventurers ever!” I couldn’t help but chuckle at her excitement. I was silently glad that I could heal other people too, because that meant that I could heal her if she ever got injured.

  “Ahem,” came an interruption from the side, where Almon was staring at me with unadulterated interest. “I am going to need you to walk me through precisely what you just did to that rabbit.”

  So I did, and although she continued to cling to me Cassie was clearly interested too, looking up at me with wide eyes. Almon listened intently, but only seemed surprised when I described the instinctive understanding my magic gave me of what I could fix and how to go about it. The biggest reaction came when I talked him through how I swept the excess lifeforce (or vitae, as he insisted I called it) through the rabbit to avoid it pooling in any one place. When I said that his face morphed into the widest grin I had ever seen on the man, beating out its competition by a mile.

  “So, why are you so excited about me being a healer?” I asked, because his enthusiasm was honestly a little freaky to see on such a dour man.

  “Oh, that you can heal is interesting, but not the point. The point is how you heal. Namely, it sounds like you are directly manipulating the vitae of yourself and those around you.”

  “Is that special?” I asked. I was only partly following what he meant, but it did seem fairly accurate.

  “On its own? Absolutely. The ability to do so is staggeringly rare, and only ever seen in high level mages. As in, thousand year old elves or dragons born with the life affinity levels of rare. However, it is your origin that provides the implications that make this fascinating ability so interesting.”

  “What, being fey?” I asked, feeling strangely comfortable referring to myself as a fey even though I had only known for a few hours.

  “What else? You see, while directly manipulating vitae is not unique, it is singular. It comes from a particularly powerful tie to the life affinity, rather than a specific origin. Elves and dragons are both known for it because dragons are famously powerful, and elves both have a greater connection to the life affinity than most and the long lives to learn to use it. However, the only groups that we are aware of that provide an intrinsic connection to life strong enough to directly wield it are fey and vampires.

  “This is one of several points that have been used in the past to some common ancestor or origin point for both groups. We know that vampires originated on another plane, although we aren’t sure which. We know that both are capable of propagating through mortals, although the means differ. We know that both have powerful life affinities, although they manifest in vastly different ways. However, fey were mysterious enough before they closed their realm, and vampires aren’t exactly organised at the best of times, which limits the amount of information we have been able to get on the subject.”

  “So what, you think I’ll be able to help prove something?” I guessed.

  “In a way, although you downplay your importance. No, I believe you to be our missing link between the two.” Almon confidently stated.

  Despite the potential gravity of the situation being laid out in front of me, all I could think was Damn, this guy does love the sound of his own voice, doesn’t he? Of all of the scenarios that I had thought might play out when we asked Almon about me, ‘get labelled as the primary piece of evidence for the connection between two species’ was not one of them. Still, Almon seemed excited, which meant that at the very least I had leverage.

  “As such, I would like to make you an offer. I am aware of young Cassandra’s desire to adventure, and I understand from her earlier statement that you will be joining her.” He waited for me to nod the affirmative before continuing. “In return for your participation in several experiments, as well as an agreement to share with me anything to do with your control over vitae, I will tutor you both in that control, but magic as a whole without cost.”

  I was stunned. “Y-yeah! I will definitely do that. Wait, doesn’t learning magic take years? I mean, Cassie’s been at it since she was like ten, and she’s still an apprentice.”

  Almon looked amused. “Yes, learning magic does take a long time for a learned mage. I will not be tutoring you in learned magic, however. I will be tutoring you in magic theory.”

  “What? Why?” I cried. I know I just gave a perfectly valid reason, but I thought I would be learning magic, you can’t blame a girl for getting excited.

  Almon actually chuckled. “Because I can’t, my dear. You’re inherently magical – a sorcerer, to use the official classification. You couldn’t learn wizardry if you had an Archmage sat in front of you feeding you spellforms.”

  “Oh.” Sure, so I forgot that I already had magic, sue me. It had been a long day.

  “Now, Cassandra’s next lesson is in two days. I expect you to come along with her. Oh, and do bring something to make notes with. I’ll be introducing you to the different forms of magic, and every apprentice forgets something. Now, be off with you. I have a crash course of my own to relearn before our first session.” He waved a hand vaguely at his door, shuffling off without another word towards his collection.

  I turned to Cassie, who just shrugged and walked towards the door. Almon must dismiss her like this a lot, since she didn’t look at all surprised. I was plenty excited for the lesson in a couple of days, but something about being constantly hit with revelation after revelation was exhausting. Even though it was early afternoon at the latest, I just wanted to go to bed. I told Cassie as much, and let myself drift away slightly to the sound of her voice as we meandered back to my house. I had a feeling that the next few days were going to be quite busy.