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yelled.
    Fadan rolled his eyes.
    “I’m the one who got the crap beaten out of him today, alright? You have to be patient. You don’t snap your fingers and learn this. It’s not a magic trick.”
    SLUMP!
    The two brothers jumped and their hearts buried into their chests. With every hair in their bodies standing up they stared at the center of the room, their eyes widening.
    Right there, in the middle of the floor, where previously there was nothing, now stood a tall, thick book. They staggered towards it, trying to understand what had just happened. There was no shelf, table, or chair from which it could have fallen, and the nearest pile of books was a good five paces away. They looked up. The ceiling was like the hull of a ship turned upside down, but there was no beam from where it could have wobbled and fallen. How was it possible? The book was much larger than any Aric had ever seen, and he had seen just about every book in the Citadel’s library.
    Fadan picked it up. The cover was made of wood instead of leather, and he wiped the dust from it with a swipe of his hand. The two of them read the engraved title.
     
    INTRODUCTION TO THE MAGICAL ARTS – TOME I
     
    Fadan opened the book to a random page. The pages and text looked perfectly preserved as if the book had just been written.
    Aric glanced around the room again and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. Was someone watching them?

Chapter 2
    The Forbidden Book
     
    “I don’t understand. Where did it fall from?” Fadan looked in every direction, but they were as alone as they had been when they had walked in.
    Aric stole the book from his brother’s hands and flipped through its pages as if he wanted to read it all in one fell swoop. He caught a few terms here and there but understood none of them. Singulums, Cognitive Projection, Entropic Abstraction, Aric felt like he was in a class with Macael if the old man had decided to speak in another language.
    “I wonder if one of us has the Talent…” he mused. “There has to be some kind of test in here.”
    “What do you mean? What are you planning to do with this? We have to get rid of it. Right now! If my father so much as dream s‒ ”
    “How is he going to find out?” Aric asked.
    Fadan groaned as Aric kept flipping the pages in his hand, studying them like a new puzzle.
    “Test… test… there has to be a test.”
    “Look for a stupidity test as well,” Fadan muttered.  “I’m sure you’ll get the highest score.”
    Aric gave his brother a disappointed look.
    “Are you telling me you’re not curious? What if one of us could do magic, wouldn’t that be incredible?”
    Fadan didn’t answer him right away. “A little bit, maybe,” he admitted, at last, shifting his weight nervously. “It would also be a great way to end up in the gallows.”
    Aric didn’t care. All he could think about was everything he would be able to do if he was a Mage. Leave the Citadel any time he wanted, see his mother whenever he felt like it, maybe even visit his father….
    Aric cascaded through the pages. “This is an introduction book. There has to be a section about discovering the talent,” he said.
    Fadan tore the book away from his hands. “Give me that. You’re getting on my nerves,” he said, then turned the book back to the beginning and stuck his finger in one of the first pages. “Check the index!”
    Aric ignored his tone and quickly found what he was looking for. With the book in his brother’s hands, he flipped the pages until he got to where he wanted. The two of them read in silence.
    “Ah… I see…” Aric said. He didn’t sound too sure about it, though. “It’s not that complicated.”
    “Not that complicated? How is this not complicated? Where are you going to find Runium? Are you going to hunt a Dragon in the courtyard?!” Fadan asked.
    Aric shrugged. “We would need Runium anyway. How else did you want to cast spells?”
    “I don’t want to cast spells! You