The heavy stone wall slammed shut behind them with a massive, dull thud! The cold, stale corridor system was swallowed in a split second by the impressive, almost hypnotic glow of the subterranean amphitheater.
Silarias and Nicola stood frozen at the edge of the cliff. Their eyes absorbed every absurd detail, from the floating light orbs along the botanical ceiling to the flickering silver runes in the obsidian.
“Woah… you…” Silarias stammered, sliding his hand across the mirror-smooth, ice-cold rim of the obsidian. He stared with an open mouth at the sea of blue flames. This isn’t just a hiding place… this is a fucking stronghold! he thought, his heart beating faster from the sheer beauty of the room. He looked up at the two architects. “Kaelid… Lila… you guys have truly outdone yourselves!”
Kaelid and Lila turned bright red right on the spot! Kaelid cleared his throat violently, rubbed his neck nervously, and stared straight at the ground, while Lila crossed her arms tightly and hastily fidgeted with a loose strand of hair behind her ear to hide the intense blush on her cheeks.
“Eh… ehm…” Kaelid stammered, his confident posture from moments ago vanishing like snow under the sun. “Yeah, so that… we built this so we can brainstorm a bit and think with the Goats… I don’t know if you guys actually like this…”
Nyx stepped forward with a chuckle. With a swift, playful motion, she grabbed Lila by both hands, pulled her onto the platform, and began mocking her voice with an exaggeratedly thin, hesitant tone: “Meh, meh! I don’t know if you guys… NONSENSE! This is gorgeous!”
Lila rolled her eyes, but the faint, proud smile on her face gave her away completely.
Even Nicola, who normally maintained a cool, dry analytical posture, stood completely motionless, staring. He pushed his glasses up a millimeter with a trembling finger, his eyes wide behind the lenses.
“Yeah…” Nicola spoke softly, letting the words roll directly from his heart over his lips without any academic filter or logical analysis. “It’s so beautiful… it hit clean right through my thought process.”
Kaelid let out a long, deep sigh of pure relief. The crushing weight that had been pressing on his shoulders for days drained away in an instant. He looked sideways at Lila.
“Mm… we should have known, haha,” Kaelid muttered with a dry chuckle.
Lila looked at him. In a split second, the past few days flashed through her mind. The panic, the lingering fear of the unknown, the terror of being rejected… how could we have been so blind and fearful? she thought with a sting in her chest. These were not strangers who would judge them. These were the Goats.
She scanned the room and saw everyone finding their spots on the heavy benches upholstered with black beast hides around the obsidian table.
Silarias took a seat in the central leader’s throne with a deep breath and pulled Nyx onto his lap without hesitation. Nyx giggled, wrapped an arm around his neck, and made herself comfortable on his knee. To their right, Nicola sat down smoothly, his posture instantly returning to formal and focused. Right next to him sat Lyn, her hands neatly folded in her lap.
Beside them, Renuardo and Faustus settled in. Faustus noticed Lila looking at them and immediately started pulling a series of idiotically goofy faces at her, giving Renuardo a hard nudge in the ribs. Renuardo joined in, curling his upper lip and bursting into a raspy, loud laugh.
Further down the long curve of the black table, Aurelius and Jane sat shoulder to shoulder, filled with quiet respect for the space, followed by Valeria and Vulkan.
Directly next to Valeria and Vulkan, two heavy, stone-red chairs remained completely empty.
Next to those sat Zax and Bonk. The two were already locked in a deadly serious game of rock-paper-scissors. Bonk threw scissors with full commitment, after which Zax switched his fist to rock at the very last microsecond! Bonk dropped his shoulders and looked defeatedly at his own hand. Zax noticed Lila’s gaze, realized he was caught cheating in broad daylight, and quickly waved with a saintly, innocent face to cover it up.
At the end of the table sat Miki and Ren. The two kids were constantly messing with each other, pushing and pulling to see who got the best angle at the obsidian.
“Act normal now, you two!” boomed the deep, echoing voice of Silarias. He looked sternly at the young duo from his seat.
“Ice cream promise only counts if you sit normally!” Nyx added razor-sharp, pointing a warning finger at the chairs.
Miki and Ren let go of each other instantly, scrambled onto their cushions, and sat bolt upright in a millisecond with their hands flat on the black table. But almost immediately after, the two kids looked toward the platform where Kaelid and Lila were still standing dazed.
“Come on! We’re not complete without you guys!” Miki and Ren shouted together in their high, shrill voices through the hollow hall!
Kaelid and Lila looked at each other with wide, surprised eyes. A warm wave of absolute belonging surged through their chests. They swallowed the rising emotion quickly, brushed away a couple of loose tears from the corners of their eyes, and walked quickly down the stone steps. They took their seats on the two empty chairs between Zax, Bonk, Valeria, and Vulkan.
The circle was closed.
Silarias sat up straight. With Nyx firmly on his lap, he transferred the full weight of his heavy staff into his right hand. Like a seventeen-year-old leader summoning his very first true war council, he lifted the weathered wood.
BAM! BAM! BAM!
He slammed the bottom of his staff three times with immense force against the obsidian floor!
“ORDER!!” Silarias roared!
The reaction was nothing short of explosive! Vibrant purple and golden lightning flashes erupted from the tip of the staff with blinding power and cracked against the stone with a deafening snap! A brute pressure wave of pure magical energy surged through the entire hall, making everyone’s hair stand on end!
Lila leaned over the armrest directly toward Kaelid due to the shockwave and muttered under her breath: “Didn’t I say it was wise to give that entire floor an Infinite Incantation…?”
Kaelid rolled his eyes and shrugged. “Mm, yep! Otherwise the whole floor would have turned to dust and loose sand by now.”
The brightly colored flashes slowly faded away. Silarias sat upright on his throne, his gaze sharp and piercing as he looked around the circle. His voice echoed loud and driven through the hall.
“We have many goals! Many things to do! Little time for rest… but also little room for mistakes!”
It was the signal that completely broke the dam! Within a single second, the quiet at the table exploded into a chaotic storm of noise! Everyone began shouting over each other at the exact same moment!
“We need cold hard cash! Stripping a tournament is the fastest way!” Beat yelled with absolute conviction, slamming his hand wildly onto the table.
“Screw a tournament! We need to build an information network and blackmail the Ciphers for better maps!” Faustus shouted right through him.
“We need to become our own beast hunters guild! Selling the rarest hides on the black market!” Renuardo suggested with a broad, wild wave of his arm.
“Beasts?! An illegal booze trade in the underground tunnels brings in ten times more!” Balamore roared with laughter, while Izamaro drummed hard on the bench.
Great ideas, idiot plans, tactical remarks, and raw chaos surged through the space. Within half a minute, the volume rose to a level where absolutely no one could hear each other anymore.
Until movement came from three different corners of the table at once.
Nicola, Aurelius, and Apollo stood up at the exact same instant!
“CALM DOWN, EVERYONE!” the three voices roared in unison!
Three titanic bursts of spiritual pressure, vibrant blue, glowing gold, and deep purple, shot upward and collided with a dull, atmospheric impact in the exact middle of the hall! The immense air pressure flattened the hell-blue flames in the central fire pit completely against the bottom for a second!
It became dead silent on the spot.
Aurelius and Apollo looked at Nicola and gave him a firm nod, after which the two sat back down quietly.
Nicola adjusted his glasses and fixed his sharp, unbothered gaze on the leader’s throne.
“Silarias… speak,” Nicola said in a calm, commanding tone.
Silarias instantly flushed a bit red. The sudden spotlight caught him off guard. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“Woah, wait…” Silarias stammered, holding up his free hand defensively. “Who says right off the bat that I’m the leader…? Everyone here should have an equal chance!”
He looked around the circle, inwardly praying that someone would back him up. Man, I’m only seventeen, don’t turn me into a dictator! he thought nervously. But to his great surprise, the entire table stared at him as if he had just claimed the sun rose underground. To everyone at this table, it was already a settled deal.
Silarias’ gaze lingered on Vulkan. “Yeah… even you!”
Vulkan remained sitting upright with his arms crossed broadly. “Meh, meh…” he grunted uninterestedly.
PATS!
Valeria slammed her heavy, steel-shod boot down onto Vulkan’s foot!
“AARGH!!” Vulkan roared! He jumped up, limped around the table on one leg, and quickly paced back to his seat with a painfully twisted face! “Ahh, pfieww… Yeah! I’m only saying this once, prophecy boy… I also think our equal chances double, if not increase a thousandfold! But for that, you need us just as much as we need you!”
In Silarias’ chest, a pure, unfiltered storm of adrenaline and hype exploded at that exact moment!
FLASH!!
A titanic, radiant wave of purple and golden spiritual pressure slammed outward from his entire body with a blinding flash of light! The floor and the air around him seemed to tear apart! And in that split-second frame, like a drawn illustration from a legendary webnovel, his silhouette transformed completely! For one lightning-fast flash, you saw Silarias not as a seventeen-year-old boy, but as a colossal, much broader and bulkier figure, crowned with two massive, ancient horns and fluid, mane-like aura streams surging around his head like a living storm!
The flash vanished as quickly as it came, but the shockwave made everyone’s clothes at the table flutter wildly!
Silarias leaped up from his throne, scooping Nyx up in his excitement and pulling her onto his hip!
“Ehh! So… but still!!” Silarias roared laughing, his eyes sparking with pure energy while Nyx locked her arm around his neck with a mocking grin! “We need to have a guild name!!”
In the background, the enthusiastic murmurs were already catching fire again like a wildfire!
“And we need real, actual goals! Mm… as for the location… if we could make it, our new artists would have had zero problems with it!!”
Silarias nodded with a broad, proud grin toward Kaelid and Lila. The entire group began cheering loudly!
“KAELID! LILA! GOATS!” Beat roared.
Kaelid proudly gave a thumbs up, while Lila shook her head chuckling.
“But!” Silarias continued with a sharp, focused look. “We have to be chosen by the location. Mm… it has a—”
“Thank you, Sil. I’ll take it over for you from here,” Nicola cut him off firmly.
Nicola stepped forward without batting an eye, raised one finger formally into the air, and began talking with his cool, clear voice about the exact loopholes in the regulations for academy guilds. He dissected the system of the Ciphers, the Order, and the physical requirements with surgical, academic precision.
At the side of the table, Balamore and Izamaro leaned toward each other.
“Ehh… bro?” Balamore whispered with a deep frown on his forehead, his heavy voice accidentally echoing way too loud through the absolute silence of the hall. “What exactly are guilds anyway…?”
Izamaro shrugged with an equally loud, not-so-subtle whisper. “No idea, man! I thought it was some kind of eating club!”
Nicola stopped right in the middle of his razor-sharp argument. He turned his head very slowly and stared at the duo with a look of cold, uncomprehending bewilderment.
“…Wait. Is this a joke, or…?” Nicola asked with a dangerously high raised eyebrow.
Silarias looked up surprised from the leader’s seat, Nyx still balanced on his hip. “Wait, what’s wrong?”
Nicola sighed deeply, closed his eyes, and rubbed the bridge of his nose with two fingers. “I have the feeling our two traveling friends have absolutely no idea what a guild entails…”
Silarias stared at Balamore and Izamaro with wide-open eyes. “Wait… what?!”
The entire room fell dead silent in one split second. Everyone at the massive obsidian table turned their heads slowly and stared with dumb, stunned disbelief at Balamore and Izamaro, who sat there completely sheepish and shrugging.