*10 dream years and 2 real years ago*

  Aria drifted down on her cloud as she came level with Cassian’s bedroom on the second floor. It was the middle of the night, just an hour before he had to leave for training. The window was already open, and Cassian was staring out at the moon.

  “So? You believe me yet?” she asked.

  It had been two weeks since she last met Cassian. Just like she told him, a blood moon had occurred the night before and Elder Kowl had passed hours later. At first he suspected some form of foul play from Aria. After all, if she really was a Vessel rank, what was stopping her from just killing an old mage?

  Then again, he was nearly a hundred years old, it wasn’t all that surprising. There was also the blood moon occurrence, which tended to happen randomly when the accumulated mana around the Moon Estate was dense enough to warp the moonlight in various ways. It could have been any one of the various permutations of this event: a blue moon, a dusk moon or even a dead moon. And yet, it was a blood moon, just as Aria had said.

  “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

  Aria sighed and laid down, her cloud grew to accommodate her.

  “It’s pretty hard to believe, I guess.”

  The two shared a quiet moment. Cassian was deep in thought, chin resting on his crossed arms.

  “Where would you want to go?”

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  “What?”

  “You know, if you followed me out of here. Anywhere you want to go?” she asked.

  Cassian thought for a moment. “That field of flowers you took me to. That was nice.”

  She groaned and got up animatedly. “That was child’s play. I’ve been to fields where flowers flow like a river. There’s this magic beast called a Tender.” She adjusted in her cloud seat to face him. “Looks really ugly, but it loves flowers. It collects flowers from everywhere and creates this river of mana that carries the flowers around everywhere it goes.”

  “That sounds… really nice,” Cassian lit up, “and you can take me there?”

  “Why not? I’m literally flying right now,” she said, incredulous.

  Cassian stared at Aria as she explained more about the Tender and its habits, he wasn’t listening anymore though. Instead, his mind was at what he would be doing an hour from now. Munching on dry chalky jerky, fighting with Adept rank instructors, studying magic theory until the evening, and then getting yelled at by his parents because he missed a question on a quiz. Then, he thought back to two weeks ago. How at peace he’d felt in the sea of flowers, how his muscles loosened in places he didn’t even know were tight. How nice it was to talk to someone his age who didn’t want to be his rival.

  “... that’s why they’re super gross in my opinion. So anyways, what do you say? Come with me?”

  “Are you sure we’ll have time for that? Don’t we have a world to save?”

  “Relax. That’s still like 12 years from now. Plus, you have a Vessel here to train you. You seriously think this stupid maze house has something like that to offer?”

  “I suppose not.”

  Cassian looked back at his room door. In less than an hour, his mother would be bursting in and chastising him for not already being in his training robes.

  “Okay. Let’s go.”

  “Awesome.”

  “But first, I have to go to the Great Hall.”