“The spell’s purpose is clear,” Celia said. “It saves the crop’s natural blueprint and prevents the miasma from mutating it. That said, it's notoriously inefficient. That's why, at least, most people think, that they sent this into the world, hoping that people would refine it for them. Judging by the state of things, it seems someone did.”

  I shook my head. “No, they didn’t.” I turned a page, looking for more chant stanzas but finding none. “Well, at least not this,” I added.

  Celia turned to me sharply. “Excuse me, what?” Her question sounded reactive, an aggressive response to someone who was bluntly contrarian.

  “Oh, forgive me! That probably sounded rude. It’s just… I’m just saying that this spell will never be efficient for land cultivation. It’d be bizarre to use a spell when you could just make a ward that does the same thing more efficiently. Even if you used a sigil to distribute the spell in a network, it'd take hundreds of mages casting this spell around the clock to fuel it—at least at that scale. And even if it did that, there'd have to be people on the ground doing it. It's just far too impractical to explain any country's success…” I trailed off, eyes widening when I saw her expression. “What? Did I say something wrong?”

  Her face had wilted, slackened into a grim expression. “No, I just can’t speak about Kaligo. I already mentioned that, but it bears repeating.”

  Oh… she has a soul pact… I thought. But… why? Why hide how—

  (It’s disturbing)

  —they grow crops?

  (They want to keep their power.)

  It doesn’t make sense.

  (It is, if you’re Sleya.)

  The idealist in me couldn’t think of one reason that Kaligo would prevent others from speaking about their growing methods—especially during an epidemic. The cynic in me—the person that Sleya Gramley (the grand revolutionary who led mages to lock away magic from governments) raised me to be—could think of hundreds of reasons that they would. The country was perhaps the most powerful on the continent; those who control water and food control everything. Who would want to give that away? No one. I didn’t like it.

  Celia could see the wheels turning in my head, and panicked. “I thought you said you didn’t know how to use chants. So how do you know it’s inefficient? Just because it’s a spell?”

  “Well, yeah; that, too,” I said, grateful she changed the subject. “But I also figured out how chants work. It’s grossly inefficient, but if you chain runes and connectors like this, it really does create a blueprint.”

  I created a water sphere above my hands and chanted runes, chuckling when the water took different shapes after every one.

  “It’s kinda… dangerous to learn this way,” I added, “but it does allow you to spread spells through language. And now that I think about it, speaking the words would help with the recall memory, as you have to visualize the runes to use this approach.”

  I chanted two dozen runes and connectors, and the water sphere separated into five balls, shaped into spears, and froze.

  Celia cocked an eyebrow. “How’s it dangerous?”

  I paused, searching for words. “Dangerous isn’t the right term. It’s more like… it seeds the belief that magic is a series of steps”—I called runes to melt the water, then snap it into a line—”instead of something that’s fluid. I mean, once you call a single telekinesis rune, you can…” I waved around my finger, and the water split apart, waving and flowing in spiral rivers. There were no pre-created constructs involved—no flash-cast sequence: I was moving it with my mind. “You see? If the world’s been learning in this way, it’s extremely stilted.”

  “Right…” Celia’s wilted expression turned to one of despair. That’s when I knew I went too far.

  “Anyway, thank you so much,” I said, bowing my head. “Is there anything else you can tell me?”

  “No. Like I said, if you want to learn more, you need to be invited to Kaligo. That’s the only way.”

  “And how do I do that?”

  “Oh!” She snapped her fingers. “That’s why we came here. Come with me.”

  Celia led me into her office and picked up a leather-bound tome that was already on her desk. It was titled:

  "History of the Requia"

  “The only way for you to be invited to Kaligo is for you to become a Requia,” Celia said. “Once you become one, you immediately get an invitation to go. The idea is to showcase what you need to protect; see the system that’s keeping the world alive despite the blight.”

  “That makes sense,” I said skeptically. “But once again, that’s two steps. To do that, I need to become a noble—and I can’t do that.”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “And that’s what I brought you here to discuss,” Celia said. “You’re operating under a major misconception about the Requia. Requia are nobles, but they aren’t landowners—and they aren’t tied down. In fact, it’s the opposite. Once you become a Requia, you’re bound by a completely different set of laws. Sure, there’s basic things you have to follow: you can’t steal or kill people. You still have to fulfill contracts and follow traffic laws. That said, you’re not under a nation’s mandates, and you have a wide variety of privileges—privileges that include the right to free travel, and the free use of magic.”

  My heart fluttered. That was exactly what I needed for my travels. So I braced myself. “What’s the catch?” I asked.

  “There is none,” she said. “I know that’s hard to believe, and that’s why I pulled out this book.”

  She flipped to a page depicting Sleya Gramley—the Walking Storm.

  The page’s painting studded my skin with goosebumps. It depicted Sleya with layered red hair, hand thrust to the sky—[cyclops] spell raging in the distance. Storm clouds had curled in the sky above a battlefield—drawing ever closer to the distant castle and the army charging her.

  The scene gave me chills—because I could cast that spell.

  I could still remember flying five hundred miles from the cabin to learn it. The spell’s name—[Cyclops]—was a pun: it depicted a dangerous, ravaging monster, with the caster in the eye of the storm. It had a unique name, but its effect was straightforward. The skies blotted out for twenty miles, and ravaging winds touched down around us—engulfing at least ten miles (in all directions) in a brutal hurricane. I saw eight-ton beasts fly airborne before blending into pink mist. Trees uprooted and turned to pulp. Then came the cliff in the distance—it stood strong for only ten seconds before it dissolved, spraying away like a sand mound washed away by the tide.

  I remembered thinking that Sleya was a god back then—refusing to believe that one day, too, I would be able to become a prism-rank mage and use a spell of that magnitude. But now I could, at least to rank obsidian—the same rank she held before leading the Greats to Riaka. So I knew full well what happened to that castle and its guards and cooks and maids before the storm continued forward like a sickle, coming to reap the charging soldiers before her.

  “Your master was the first Requia,” she said.

  I looked up. “What?”

  “Well, not officially. See… back when magic had just become prominent, powerful mages began to refuse authority from nobles and kingdoms. Sleya was one of them. This painting depicts a scene where a king had tried to force her into his army. In response, she decimated his forces and declared that magic was not to be controlled for political ends. The speech was made into a famous requiem, spoken at the funerals of accomplished mages—hence the term ‘Requia.’”

  I stared at the painting in a new light, remembering an off comment she had mumbled one night.

  You mustn’t ever let governments control you, she murmured as I lifted her to her bed. It’s just death and killing and… bullshit. Trust me, kid. No matter how evil you gotta be to avoid their control, it's only half as evil as what they'll make you do. You can count on it.

  I touched the page, wishing I could ask her about it now that I had context—now that I was old enough to understand.

  “It was a strong ideal,” Celia said, “but it didn't change much before the Last Requiem. Magic is a tool of war, and the mages themselves seized upon it. They stole land, entered politics—ran on platforms to create water during times of drought. And so it went—until the nobility wised up and said, Instead of you replacing us nobles, we’ll let you be nobles. We’ll give you special laws and our privileges. They then rebranded Requia as ‘nobles,’ as if it weren't a direct contradiction, and would you know it? It worked.

  “Nowadays, Requia is a dream that all adventurers and practitioners strive for. It’s a real-life Philosopher’s Stone—a means to obtain wealth and freedom in a world where others seek to control you.

  “That’s why it’s important for you to obtain the spot.” Celia glanced at the book longingly. “That said, there’s a lot of hoops for you to go through to become one, and even then, you’ll have to wait and travel. The Requia test is held only once a year in various parts of the world. But lo and behold, the next one is in a few weeks, and it’s only a week’s train ride from here.”

  My heart released a double thump.

  “I’m neither superstitious nor religious, Kalas, but I can tell you this: if there’s any such thing as fate, it’s asking you to take that test.”

  I stared at Sleya’s youthful expression in the painting, wondering what she felt on that battlefield—hoping that I wouldn’t have to find out. If I never did, it would be due to her sacrifices—the decisions that she made that drove her to drink and lock herself away in that cabin. Master… I silently thought, running my hands over the smooth parchment.

  “I’ll do it,” I said, looking Celia in the eye. “I’d like to be a Requia. To… be part of my master’s legacy.”

  Celia’s eyes welled with emotion. “Okay. I’m not sure how, but we’ll get you into the exam. It’d usually be impossible, but the Governor knows you purified that fountain—and she wants your patronage. I’m sure she can work a miracle…” Celia trailed off, running through specifics, as if to convince herself it was possible. “That said, I need you to keep your mouth shut—at least until after the vote. Becoming a Requia is a political fiasco; if you make it public, it becomes a problem. Got it?”

  I nodded. “Understood.”

  “Good. Let’s check in on Bal. I’m sure he’s missing his sparring buddy.”

  Although I was let down by Balphoa’s level of skill, I had a good time pressing his limits. He was a likable fella who declared that he was immortal with me in the ring, so I should abuse the privilege. The last time I took that stance, Sleya shattered my ribs and kept me on the verge of death for three days to ensure that I would never take it again. I felt I was better for it, and figured he would be, too, but the man’s energy was so contagious that I let him have it.

  It wasn’t like he was my apprentice, anyway.

  So I teased out information on battle magic—asking what spells were common enough to use. He answered questions as long as we were fighting, so we fought for two hours.

  That’s all he could take.

  At the end, he collapsed on the stage, waved his arm like a white flag, and said, “Go on without me.”

  I bowed and thanked him, leaving the stage to eat. Unfortunately, I found myself confronted by a behemoth of a man. Even at six-five, I still had to look up, and my two hundred-something pounds of muscle felt small beside him. If anyone could make me look like a “pretty boy,” it was this man.

  “This is Manta,” Celia said. “He’s the guild master. He wants to talk to you a bit. Let’s talk in his office.”