Unsurprisingly, following the defeat of the Demon armies, the land itself seemed drawn into chaos.

When the Magistrum fell long ago, the ones that conspired to bring it down formed several republics that quickly became monarchies working in the husk of their predecessor.

The Havens began a war of their own, conspiring against each other in a moment of vulnerability. Each sought power—and in power, security. The young man who surfaced to fight a war found himself at the center of another. And while in the first he knew who the enemy was, in this war he found no one he could trust.

That is, until he met a young woman named Miasca.

CHAPTER TWO

At the end of the day, Louise returned to her room exhausted but positively jubilant.

In her mind the draft of a letter proclaiming her overwhelming success in the Springtime Summoning Ritual was already in the works. She would write one to Cattleya, recounting the great dragon that descended from the sky with as much flourish as she could muster—anything to make her sister smile—and then write another to her mother in the formal way she had been taught. Louise learned at a young age that Karin Désirée de la Vallière was not one who enjoyed fantastical tales.

Perhaps an offhand mention her familiar being the king of a distant land could raise her mother's brow. Indeed, it would! It sounded outlandish, of course, and her mother would certainly doubt her sanity—but it was all true! Despite the severity of the matter, there was a silver lining to this.

That lining was that her familiar was certainly formidable.

"You seem pleased, Miss Vallière," Zander remarked as he followed in her footsteps.

With a smile she could barely restrain, Louise answered, "It has been a tiring day, Your Ma- Zander. But it had gone better than I had anticipated."

"I understand. You are no longer a pariah amongst your peers." He noticed how Louise stumbled at his observation. Her sorrow hid well beneath a mask, but, even as she tucked it away from his sight, Zander was more than old enough to read between the lines. "They were watching you all day. Their intentions were mixed, some curious, others angry. Of course, there is nothing for you to be ashamed of. There were a few admirers in the crowd. And though I risk the sin of arrogance when I say this, you did manage to contact me. Ultimately, that deed alone proves every one of your fellow classmates to have been wrong."

Inexperienced in dealing with praise, Louise concealed her flush by looking away. "Th-thank you."

"You did good work. I will also help as necessary."

Louise perked up at his words. "Help? As in... you'll teach me magic?"

They reached Louise's room. The doors opened, revealing a comfortable room fit for the daughter of a noble family living away from the family estate. A white, frilled canopy hung over a four poster bed that sat in the center of a room spacious enough for three more to fit in. A lantern on the lacquered wooden table lit the room with a soft glow.

As Zander eyed the line of cabinets and dresser on the side of the room, he answered, "I'll teach you what I can. I know plenty of magical theory that you should be able to apply even in your world. I have practical experience with magical engineering, warfare, and alchemy. I've—well, I have memory of teaching apprentices, and I should be able to accommodate for any unexpected trouble." He flicked his wrist and the curtains moved to block the moon from the room. The air of the room shifted as a spell laid itself over the walls, the door, the ceiling, and the floor. "Before I forget, I have information you need to know."

"Know? Know what?"

"The terms of our contract, Miss Vallière." He raised his hand, revealing the runes carved on the back. "This represents my side of the deal. Your side is on your hand."

Louise blinked, surprised. His words reminded her of something. She looked at the back of her left hand, where it had hurt before during the summoning ritual. There was a single line in her skin running horizontally just beneath her knuckles. Only a line, no runes. She gaped, speechless.

"The contract system is fluid across worlds," Zander explained, "but it always has a similar structure. Two parties exchange possessions. Or services. I'm not sure what these markings on my hand means, but they relate to my own purpose for being here. I presume it is to serve as your familiar." He frowned. "However, the nature of our contract is odd. Specifically, only half of it exists. You don't have anything I want, so your half of the contract is empty."

Louise found her words. "That's not how the familiar ritual should work."

"I don't know enough about your ritual to know its mechanics. I do know how a contract system works, and the signs of it being here are evident."

The young mage bit her lip, unsure of how to respond.

"The fact of the matter is this: until we can determine an appropriate exchange for this contract—for me to be your familiar, that is—it will remain a false one. Void of meaning. Which means that I cannot truly become your familiar until you have something to exchange."

"W-what?" Louise yelped. "I don't—you're a king! What could I possibly have that you could want?"

"I'm sorry. I wouldn't know. I... was no king when I was young. I learned to work for what I want with my own two hands. I don't have many desires—and those I do have I earn by my own efforts." His stare became distant as he recalled times lost past. "Well, at least for that which I know I want. If you deeply wish for me to become your familiar, I suggest you offer something... unexpected. In the meantime, I am perfectly willing to assist you in your needs, provided they are reasonable."

"That can't be. I—" She took a deep breath to steady her nerves. Her growing panic was overturning her reason. She couldn't let that happen. "I can feel a bond. The master-familiar bond."

"It's the contractual link, I assure you. And it will remain until we either resolve or dissolve the contract."

"But..."

"You don't need to worry, Miss Vallière. I understand the significance this issue has upon you. I'm not so selfish that I would abandon you now."

"I... can you promise me that?"

"Yes. I Swear upon the Magistrum, the memories of my predecessors, and the souls of the people We cared for that I, Zander, who takes upon the mantle of Magister, will not abandon Louise Françoise Le Blanc de La Vallière without cause. May this Oath be seen by those above, and be blessed by thee."

A whisper of magic unfamiliar to Louise swept by her. Still, she understood his words well enough. Her fraying nerves calmed.

"Thank you very much. I swear on the name Vallière that I won't... ever betray your trust."

Surprise flickered across Zander's features briefly. "You didn't have to do that, you know. The only person at risk of losing anything is yourself."

She almost puffed out her chest and declared how nobles were bound by honor to repay debts until she realized how meaningless such a statement was in the face of a king. Instead, she hung her head meekly. "I... want to work harder. I want... need to become a better mage."

Zander smiled a little when he understood her unspoken words. "You'll be fine."

The girl squirmed beneath the gaze that seemed to peer into her soul. Looking away, she realized with horror what she had forgotten to do that afternoon. "M-my apologies, I had forgotten to arrange for you a room for you," Louise said anxiously. "I will go find one of the servants. There should be a guest room available for you to rest. There always is in case a wealthy noble would decide to visit."

Zander shook his head. "It's fine. I need to return home for tonight."

Eyes wide, Louise froze like a startled deer.

"While it's unlikely that I'll live here," he continued, "I will certainly spend much of my time with you. That means I need to make sure everything at home is in order."

"How are you going to...?"

Zander chuckled softly. "I can make a portal. I'll be back before dawn, alright?"

Fascinated, Louise watched Zander as he gestured with his hand. Space warped along his fingers. Her stomach twisted into knots when she saw the non-euclidean shapes within the warped space where light failed to penetrate. Zander stepped through the warp, disappearing completely into murky shadows that seemed to grow within itself like monsters trapped beyond a mirror. Tentatively, Louise reached out to where Zander stepped through and found nothing to grasp.

Her room was empty save herself.

With an exhausted sigh, she leapt into her bed, too depleted to change her clothes. She fell asleep hoping that this dream would continue come morning.

Zander stepped into his Tower silently. He was in the scarcely-adorned corridor that circled the third floor of his tower, right outside his office. He pulled his sword from his belt and dropped it on the floor, where it sank into his shadow. When he neared the door that was marked only by a single rune, it opened of its own violation, sliding to the right to let him through. It became virtually indistinguishable from the other walls when it shut behind him.

When he stepped into the foyer, he could tell he had a visitor.

"Back so soon?" a voice called from the lounge.

"Just getting things prepared. Don't want the Barrier to collapse when I'm gone or anything. I'll be going back in a few hours." Even as he spoke, the various cabinets and drawers in his office shut and locked themselves. Artificial leylines running over the stone walls like cracks of sunlight grew dim as he passed them. Papers flew back into chests that sank into pocket dimensions, and the office sealed itself away behind walls of broken space. The right archway from the foyer vanished behind an illusion. Instead of climbing the spiraling staircase to his left, he visited the lounge through the central archway.

In the brightly-lit lounge was a dark-skinned woman sprawled over the couch with a pen in her mouth and a sheaf of papers on her belly.

The heavy tattoos all over her body depicted the forms of various animals—a lion, a peacock, a snake. The picture of a snake eating its tail wrapped around her right upper arm. Though she lay with her back in the pillows, he knew there was a larger tattoo of a six-armed figure sketched from shoulder-to-shoulder. Its head disappeared beneath her short afro.

That she wore only a red tank top and undergarments did nothing to catch his attention.

"Did you eat yet?" she asked while reading.

"Yeah. How many today?"

"Fifty."

Zander huffed. "What a pain. I'm guessing Reah was there?"

"And Trine."

"Hmm. Guess I should check up on them, too." He looked at the floor, where clothes were strewn haphazardly. He knew who the red sash and top belonged to, but the white dress shirt and pencil skirt? He furrowed his brows. "Lind, who else is here?"

"Someone I know."

"Again? Please tell me you stayed in the guest room this time."

"No."

Zander sighed. "Did you at least clean up?"

"Was about to."

He threw a sock at her before flickering away to the upper level of his office, where another woman snoozed comfortably in a bed. His bed. He eyed another set of undergarments laying on his nightstand. His room smelled heavily of sex. "Well, at least she's cute," he muttered, grabbing the staff lying on the floor. He made a face when he found his fingers wet. The staff flickered once, drying instantly. His coat flew across the room from the hook it hung on. When he teleported back to the lounge to give Lind a piece of his mind, he found she had already dozed off. Sighing, he retrieved a blanket and tossed it over her. "Damn woman. Just because my place is great doesn't mean you can come here all the time."

Darkening the glowstones overhead with a thought, he shook his head and flickered away again.

This time he was sitting on a leather couch in well-lit office with white walls and a marble floor. The woman at the desk, who wore a brown uniform with golden embroidery, glanced up from her desk and offered a slight smile. "Back already?"

"Had to grab some stuff. It's gonna to be a long one." He showed her the back of his hand.

The woman frowned. "Oh. What do you have to do?"

"Be a familiar, I think."

She blinked slowly. Her lips curled up a little. "I recall offering something similar..."

"That was a long time ago."

Softly, she continued as her pen scribbled once more, "The offer still stands."

"Not interested. The only reason I'm playing along with this is..." He shook his head. "Well, reasons. No offense. You know I care about you all."

"I understand. Still, it is a little sad."

He simply shrugged. "I won't be anyone's dog, Reah. If that girl who summoned me tried—"

The pen stopped. "Girl?"

Zander's teeth audibly clacked shut. Hesitantly, he continued. "Yeah. A girl. She's... fourteenish. Pink hair, tiny, nervous with self-esteem issues." Raising a hand, he added, "And before you say anything, no, I'm not interested in her." The pen resumed writing slowly. "We barely know each other, and she's not like how Miasca was back then. In fact, she's some kind of elite."

"Well, I hope you have fun."

"You sound angry. Reah, why are you angry?"

"I'm not."

"That poor form disagrees."

"It deserves it. Stupid forms, stupid paperwork. I—"

"Need a vacation. It's about time, anyway. You should join me soon. It'll be fun."

Shutting her eyes, Reah exhaled. "It would. Maybe. I would like some time off. It's been... twelve years? An extended break would be a nice change of pace."

Appearing behind her, Zander rested on a knee and wrapped his arms about Reah's shoulders. She let herself relax in the embrace. "Take a few days to get things in order, then contact me. I'll arrange a pick up. The others, they can hold the fort. I'll check on the Barrier, make sure it's up to snuff. We can spend a few years out there, doing whatever."

"I... I would like that."

"Alright." He rose. Her hands lingered on his forearms. "I'll go to the Barrier and give Trine a hand."

"I'll see you soon."

He smiled. "Yeah. Soon."

He flickered again, and then he was atop the ramparts of a black, metallic wall that rose high into a clouded sky. Ice and snow colored the jagged peaks far in the horizon. The air stung with sharp frost against his skin. He knew Trine was here.

In the distance, towards the center of the circle that the Great Barrier formed, Zander saw space twisted into a silvery-dark sphere that hung in the air. It was the Southern Gate, the place where he carved his legacy as a magister long ago. It was an abomination of magic that took space and time across two planes of reality and brought them together through means unknown. Though neither he nor his predecessors knew how to seal the Gates, Zander had contained all that spilled out from with unquestionable efficacy. It was his timeless, ceaseless duty. The Great Barrier was the symbol of his stalwart defense—and at the same time, a testament of the forgotten might of the Magistrum. In the immediate surrounds was dead land, barren of all but scorched earth.

The air to his left quickly grew colder and drier. "Trine. Having fun?"

A blonde woman with her hair in a horizontal braid settled near his elbow. A white cloak hung over her shoulders. "A little. Not enough." Her blue eyes focused towards the Gate, where the air around it began to waver. Even so, her stoic mask remained unaffected. "Why are you here?"

"Maintenance."

A sheet of frost grew over a part of the rampart before cracking. "Working fine."

"Here they come again." He watched as figures in white, machined suits moved all across the Barrier. A cloud of vapor escaped his mouth when he said, "Tell your girls to stand down. I'm on the clock."

Trine's head tilted in confusion. "Until what?"

"I'm going on break soon." After showing the back of his hand to her, he gestured to the Gate. "Since I might be gone long, I need to get this done ASAP."

"Understood. Stand down."

Trine's voice, though low, carried through the air all across the Barrier. The guards in their powered armor readied their weapons but held their fire. The mages in the towers had already sensed Zander's presence the moment he appeared. He could feel their stares from afar. He was an anomaly here, he knew. Much of the history behind him was common knowledge, even if much of it was contorted.

As Zander climbed onto the edge, black armor spilled out from the shadows over his body and encapsulated his form until his features were completely concealed inside a black shell.

Show time.

Leaping forward, his form flickered, crossing the distance from the top of the Barrier to the ground in an instant. From the shadows on the ground, the tiny ones cast by pebbles to his very own, armored beings sprouted. All were encased in black armor like his, though of different designs.

His was of a closed helmet with a slight horn jutting from the forehead. His armor retained a slight bulk alongside a streamlined shape. In his hand was his gnarled staff pouring arcane energy from the crest at the head and the runes lining the rod. A dozen other staves of various shapes danced in the air behind him, each producing their own matrix of energy. The leylines running across the surface of his armor circulated magical power all over his body in a protective field that far exceeded anything that existed in Othland.

The other armored forms varied. Some had bulky shapes far larger than Zander's, with great shields, heavy blades, and reaching weapons. Several towered over the rest of the growing army.

Some wore lighter plates and wielded long rifles and short blades. They moved like the wind.

Few others wielded staves of their own, each pulsating with power. These took to the air, hanging back while brandishing their staves. Lightning and arcane power crackled in a chaotic symphony as their numbers filled the sky.

When the shimmering around the Gate gave way, creatures of uncommon girth, height, and shape poured outwards in a flood of bodies resembling a leak in a dam. Teeth, metal, and claws flashed in dull light. They were but a drop in an immeasurable ocean when compared to the numbers that once savaged Othland, the Demon armies of yore. Still, hundreds of thousands of bodies poured out, rushing at the Barrier and at the approaching enemy.

These Demons met the Legion and parted like a river of mud.

The Barrier thundered. Long-range cannons numbering in the tens of thousands unleashed their payloads from all directions at the enemy emerging from the Gate.

The Legion pushed ahead unaffected by the cannon fire, the teeth, and the blades.

Cutting, shooting, bashing, and obliterating, the Legion was a killing machine made of sword, spell, and gun.

The Legion was the weapon of the Magistrum that brought its masters victory since its very birth. It slammed into the line of Demons again and again like a juggernaut, never giving ground, grinding down the Demon's numbers with each clash. The monsters threw themselves on the Legion's blades, against its shield walls, in the path of its bullets and spells. Teeth and metal scraped against armor as black as obsidian in vain, for the Legion was gilded in a steel stronger than steel. Though their numbers would outright overwhelm any usual front, the Demons found that it would be their own flesh that would feed the earth this day. The carnage unfolded before the witnesses on the Barrier in violet blood.

Zander himself took to the sky, raining spells from the heavens—arcane energy shaped into waves, blasts, and storms. He hurled them downwards from his staves, peppering the Demons in massive saturations of magical power. The simplicity of his role was more than enough.

When the sun began to set, the wave receded. All was quiet in the Southern Gate.

"It's a warm place, from what I saw," he said later, when Trine found him at the cannons.

A black dais protruded from the ground, covered in white light that shifted into illegible symbols. Zander manipulated these symbols while keeping an eye on the armaments. The barrels that stood several times his height still captured Trine's bewilderment to this day as their smaller parts adjusted in accordance to Zander's control.

"Reah too?" Trine asked.

"Maybe? Not immediately, at least. She needs the time off. I would expect it." The cannons began humming in sequence. The dais lowered into the floor. "And that's the last of the calibrations."

"Sleep."

"Right," he agreed. "If I'm lucky I can have about five hours."

"Alone?"

"Dunno. Lind commandeered my place. Again. She used my staff." He aimed a suspicious look in Trine's direction. "You wouldn't happen to know about that, would you?"

Trine stared back stoically.

With a guffaw, Zander turned away. "You're all sickos."

"Not my fault. Helen's."

"Disgusting," he replied with a laugh. "You're all weird. Where do you want me to drop you off?"

"Barracks."

"Right-o." Taking Trine's hand in his own, Zander teleported the both of them outside. The mages and soldiers gathered at the formation of buildings beyond the Barrier flinched at Zander's appearance.

Trine squeezed his hand and kissed him on the cheek before heading towards the dormitory.

"G'night to you too." Another teleportation, this time to one of the higher floors of his Tower. Appearing on the ninth floor bedroom, where a dark red and gold carpet covered the floor, he began shedding his coat and armor. He froze when he noticed a red-haired with woman bronzed skin lying beneath his heavy sheets, watching him with an amused smile. His breastplate slipped from his hand and landed on the carpet.

"Oh, do go on. I'm enjoying it," she said.

"Helen. What... what are you doing here?" His eyes darted to his collection of staves at the wall. He hoped they were intact.

"Warming your bed, dearest. What else?" Her faux smile hid its thorns. Every rose had them, and she was the queen of all roses. "The moment I heard you were departing for a long trip, I couldn't help but to consider how long it might be until we would reunite."

"I was hoping to get some shut eye."

"Oh, you will when I'm done with you." He was thankful this floor had no plants, or else he'd be immensely uncomfortable.

"I have less than five hours until I have to go back."

"Five minutes is all we'll need."

"I'm a bit too tired for the small talk, Helen. Why are you really here?"

"To hear the story, of course." To his dismay, Zander spotted the vines crawling down from the ceiling to circle his bed. But it wasn't a surprise; Helen always brought plants of her own. "I wondered what place could be so enchanting that you would even invite Reah with you. I'm honestly a little jealous considering how you've taken not only the others with you on vacation before, but Reah twice?"

"Helen, you know why I don't ask you." You're the only one still playing the game.

"I do. Which is why, instead of intruding upon your decided get-together, I seek some time in your bed. Even if it is for a moment."

Despite her words, he was tempted to teleport elsewhere until she laughed. "What? Afraid of my thorns?"

Though he and Helen shared perhaps the worst relationship amongst their little circle, Zander reminded himself that she had proven worthy of his trust that day so long ago. Helen's words were always full of bramble, but even now he knew she would not purposefully harm any of them. No, his wariness stemmed from what he realized now—that, hypocritically, he himself was still playing the game in a sense. It was a game that should have ended when he exchanged his heart for the one he made, the game of politics. Letting out a breath, Zander shrugged out of his remaining armor and then his robe.

"At least someone is looking forward to this," she said mirthfully.

"Oh, shut up and move over."

a/n: As per the tradition of all students taking finals, I decided instead to finish a chapter of this story instead. Hope you all enjoy it.