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as Raettonus withdrew his hand, a red and black pitcher appearing in his grasp. The younger boy clapped his hands together. “You made a vase!” he exclaimed, reaching out one hand toward it. “And it’s so pretty too! What’s that gryphon on it for?”
    “I didn’t make it,” Raettonus told him, pulling the pitcher out of his reach. The water inside rolled against the walls of the vessel. “I merely pulled it out of a holding place.”
    “That’s not so great,” Dohrleht commented.
    “Shut up,” said Maeleht. “It’s better than you can do.” He tuned his light blue eyes back toward Raettonus. “So, you’re going to teach us to do that?”
    “Eventually,” he answered, cradling the pitcher in his lap. The water inside was dusty and cold. “Not today, though. I’m supposed to teach you other scholarly pursuits, and so we’ll start there.”
    Dohrleht furrowed his brow. “Like what?”
    “Maths, language, other things,” Raettonus said.
    “We already know how to count and add,” Dohrleht said. “I don’t see why we need more math. We’re going to be magicians, not accountants.”
    Raettonus scowled at the crippled boy. “Well,” he said coldly. “I can already tell we’re going to get on famously, you and I.”
    “I want to learn,” Maeleht said. “What else will you teach us? Are you going to teach us the history of your world?”
    “I’m afraid I couldn’t teach you much about that,” Raettonus said with a shrug. “I left my world a long, long time ago. It’s changed a lot since then.”
    Maeleht frowned. “You don’t look very old,” he said. “How much could it have changed since you left it?”
    “Stupid,” chided Dohrleht, punching his brother in the arm. He leaned in close to his little brother, but didn’t bother to drop his voice any. “This is the magician that doesn’t have a soul that they always talk about. The one from the plains. He’s immortal.”
    Maeleht’s eyes widened. “O-oh. This is that magician?” he asked his brother. Dohrleht nodded. Maeleht quickly turned back to Raettonus. “I’m—I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
    “Quite all right,” Raettonus answered, moving the red and black pitcher back into the holding space. He stood and wiped the dirt from his tunic. “That’ll be all today. We’ll begin our lessons tomorrow.”
    “W-wait,” Maeleht weakly called after him as he strode to the door. “I didn’t mean to offend you. I—”
    Raettonus closed the door, cutting off the sickly child’s plea. A soldier passed by and mumbled a polite greeting to him, but didn’t look him in the eye. Raettonus scowled at the soldier until he turned a corner and was lost out of sight. After a moment had passed, he sighed and started toward his chambers. It was the same as ever—he didn’t know why he had expected anything to be different. He was born feared, had always lived feared. It didn’t matter where he went or what he did.
    Lost in his thoughts, he wandered around the fortress for a while, fingers hooked through his belt, head down. He thought about the little obsidian gryphon lying on his desk. Someone had reached out to him through a dream, for a reason he couldn’t imagine. There was nothing particularly threatening about the man in the dream’s manner, but the things he had said and the way he had said them… Raettonus couldn’t help but feel vaguely disturbed by the whole ordeal. Something wasn’t quite right about that elf. Not to mention, Raettonus simply didn’t like the idea of someone having that much power over him—being able to just pull him, dreaming, into something like that.
    He descended some stairs absentmindedly, blindly walking through the citadel. Somewhere a clock was ticking very faintly. He could hear the ocean, out beyond the thick stone walls, beating on the cliff with all its watery might. He passed by a couple of centaurs, nestled close together in a hallway, holding hands and whispering to each other.